“My father and sister,” he said to Jewel.
They both stood to one side of the gravel road as the Jeep drove past.
Tommy saw that his father had the look of grim determination, as was normal for his father in tough situations. His sister looked like she had been crying.
As the Jeep passed them and went on toward the lake home, Tommy said out loud, “Good-bye Dad. Sis.”
Jewel reached over and took his hand and squeezed it gently.
They stared at the departing Jeep until it vanished around a corner on the gravel road.
Together, they then turned and kept walking.
He had no idea where they were ultimately going, but he knew now that part of his life that was his family and friends and job was done.
They walked on, not talking, their footsteps silent on the gravel.
FOURTEEN
JEWEL DIDN’T KNOW what to say to Tommy after they passed his father. So she just walked with him, hand-in-hand toward town, letting him stay in his own thoughts.
He needed to know she was there if he wanted to talk, even though they really didn’t know each other very well. She did understand family. And right now, even though he was the one that was dead, it felt like he was losing them instead.
This all was flipping strange, of that there was no doubt.
She knew one thing for sure. She loved being with him and was growing to care for him more and more with every second.
When they finally reached the big church on the edge of the small town, she looked at it and felt nothing.
“You’d think we’d want to go in there,” she said, breaking their silence and indicating the church.
“Not much of a believer,” he said, shrugging.
“Yeah, me either,” she said. “And all this that is happening to us is making me wonder even more.”
“Yeah, this kind of stuff would do that to anyone,” he said, shaking his head.
They walked up past the now closed bars and toward her office, their steps almost matching, which was unusual for her. Her longer legs and height usually meant she walked faster than anyone around her.
She liked that he matched her step-for-step and it felt comfortable.
Nothing seemed out of place or different in the small town, which sort of surprised her, for some reason. There were a few people out and about, but not many, even though it was after ten in the morning now.
Shouldn’t they all be in the streets upset at her and Tommy’s death?
She knew that was silly, but dying seemed important to her.
“Going to miss that little place?” he asked, indicating her office ahead.
“Wasn’t here long enough to grow fond of it,” she said. She honestly didn’t feel even the slightest need to go inside. There was nothing in there for her or that she needed.
Ahead of them, a man sat against the wall of Bernie’s General Store on a part of the pavement that had stayed dry in the night’s rain. The guy had put a newspaper under him.
Jewel didn’t recognize him, but that didn’t surprise her from her little time in town. The guy had on a dark suit and light shirt, with a fashionable tie of some sort. He had matching patent leather shoes. She hadn’t seen shoes like that since she watched part of an old golf tournament from 1970.
The guy sitting on the sidewalk was way, way underdressed for being in Buffalo Jump, Montana, in this cold.
He was looking down at the sidewalk, his blonde hair perfectly styled and in place. Jewel had no idea what he was doing sitting out here. The day would warm up to maybe fifty eventually, but it was far from that at the moment.
As they approached, staying to the outside of the sidewalk to go around him, he glanced up and then smiled, clearly happy to see them.
“Hey, Doc, Deputy. I was hoping you two would be show up before I froze my tush off.”
The guy pushed himself to his feet, smiling as Jewel and Tommy just stopped in their tracks, stunned. She couldn’t believe he had talked to them.
The guy brushed off his suit, making sure it was in perfect condition. Who wore dark suits and patent leather shoes in Montana?
“You can see us?” Tommy asked a half second before Jewel could get the same words out of her mouth.
The guy laughed. “Of course I can. I’m a ghost like you two. He extended his hand. “I’m K. J. Moore, originally of Los Angeles, now of San Francisco.”
Tommy shook his hand, looking stunned and Jewel did next, noting the guy had a weak, but firm grip, as if she was shaking another woman’s hand.
K.J. looked to be about their age, not more than thirty, that was for sure, and was fairly short, maybe five-three, if that. His eyes were dark brown and his smile seemed genuine.
“So are you from here?” she asked as she let go of his hand. “You die around here?”
He glanced at the small town of Buffalo Jump and then shook his head. “Not a chance,” he said. “This is really the back-end of nowhere here. I died in Los Angeles in 1951. Too ugly to talk about, but since you asked, I was caught by the wrong people kissing another man.” He waved away the idea and said, “Ancient history.”
She opened her mouth, then shut it because she honestly had nothing to say. This ghost had said he died sixty-five years before.
“Tell me,” K.J. said, looking around, “where do the buffalo jump around here? Never seen anything like that.”
“That’s just a name from history,” Jewel said. “At least I think it is?” She turned to Tommy. “Do buffalo jump around here.”
Tommy just shook his head and focused on K.J. “So what are you doing here?”
“Looking for you two, of course,” K.J. said, again smiling as he pulled back on his glove. “My job to brief you and get you started.”
“Brief us on what?” Tommy asked.
“Oh, why you are ghosts and not headed on to the next world,” he said. “But can we go someplace warmer? I’m not used to this kind of cold. Not like this in San Francisco, let me tell you. This is just brutal.”
“We’re headed to my rental place,” she said, pointing ahead down the highway past the mini-mart. “That’s about a half mile walk.”
K.J. frowned. “Too far for me in this cold and that gravel road might just ruin my ankles. How about your office, Doc? It’s warm? Right?”
“It should be,” she said, nodding, feeling stunned that she was talking with this man. She wasn’t sure why she was stunned, but she felt stunned.
She glanced at Tommy and he was looking just puzzled and a little amused.
“Great,” K.J. said, turning and heading toward her office. He walked through the closed front door without seeming to give it a second thought.
Jewel looked at Tommy and laughed.
“Maybe we can get some answers, now,” he said, shaking his head.
“Wouldn’t that be nice,” she said, still laughing.
With that, she moved toward her office door, closed her eyes, and went through the door.
Tommy was right behind her.
FIFTEEN
K.J. WAS STANDING inside and as they came through the door he smiled at them. “Going to need to learn how to walk through doors with your eyes open. Never really know what’s on the other side.”
“We will,” Tommy said, looking around at Jewel’s small office. “We haven’t been dead that long, remember?”
“Ah, that’s true,” K.J. said.
They were in a waiting room with five wooden chairs, a coat tree, and some old magazines on scarred wooden end tables. Tommy was surprised that the room was smaller than a normal bedroom, smaller than he remembered, but at least it was warm.
He had been in here only once before to bring a sick woman, but that was a year before Jewel had arrived and two doctors before her. The place didn’t look any different from the previous doctors, so clearly Jewel hadn’t settled in enough to put her touches on the office.
“My office is bigger and likely warmer,” Jewel said, leading the w
ay through an open side door and into a larger room with a large wooden desk dominating one side. There was an old metal gooseneck lamp on the desk, a clipboard, and a penholder. Nothing else but a calendar blotter on the big desktop.
“You really hadn’t moved in, had you?” Tommy asked.
“Didn’t seem much point in changing anything during the winter,” Jewel said, shrugging off her coat and hanging it on a coat tree, even though it was a ghost coat.
Three chairs faced the desk, so she went around and sat behind her desk, rolling up the sleeves of the big red and brown flannel shirt of Tommy’s that she was wearing. She looked great in that shirt as far as he was concerned. She looked better without any clothes, but he hoped that would come later.
Tommy sat in one chair facing her.
K.J. sat in the other chair, looking very official in his business suit.
“How long had you been out there waiting for us?” Jewel asked before Tommy could think of a first question out of the hundreds he had.
“An hour, but a long cold hour,” K.J. said. “Not sure I could get used to this kind of cold ever.”
“It gets worse,” Tommy said. “This is spring.”
K.J. just shook his head and made a production out of shivering.
“So start from the beginning and tell us what all this is about,” Tommy said, turning slightly in the chair so he could see K.J.’s face better.
The guy clearly was from a different climate and world. His skin was smooth and his nails polished red, which Tommy hadn’t seen on a man in this part of the world. He was short and frail and sat in the wooden chair across from Jewel like a kid in a principal’s office, his posture perfect, his smile bright.
“You died in that horrid wreck,” K.J. said.
“We know that,” Jewel said.
“Did you cause the wreck?” Tommy asked and saw Jewel sort of jerk back at the idea.
K.J. just shook his head and covered his mouth in fake horror as if appalled at the idea. “Oh, my, no. Everyone has a time and you both had run smack into your time, no big tree pun intended.”
Jewel didn’t smile at the bad attempt at humor. Tommy nodded that K.J. should just continue.
“But since your time had come, and you were together, my bosses decided you both, as a team, would be good candidates to join our ranks.”
Tommy felt stunned.
“What ranks? What team? What bosses?” Jewel asked.
K.J. held up his hand, smiling. “You wanted me to start from the beginning, so let me start.”
She nodded, and Tommy made himself take a deep breath.
“For longer than any of us can imagine,” K.J. said, “there has been an organization called A Ghost of a Chance. Ghost for short.”
Jewel started to say something, but K.J. held up his hand for her to stop and she did.
“Ghost is an offshoot of a much larger universe you will come to understand in time,” K.J. said. “But our official mandate is to help set things right that are going to go wrong. We fight for a future that is peaceful. I understand that before I got here this morning, you already stopped a serial killer from killing again.”
“We did,” Tommy said, stunned that he knew.
“That’s the kind of thing we do, and much more.”
Tommy liked the sound of that, but asked his first question instead of making a comment. “So does everyone that dies become part of your organization?”
K.J. laughed really hard at that and his laugh sounded more like a young girl’s laugh than a man’s laugh. Tommy and Jewel watched him laugh for a moment until he finally gathered himself enough to answer.
“Oh, my, no,” he said, trying to catch his breath because to him something seemed very funny. “My bosses only recruit who they think are the best candidates. The rest catch the white tunnel express and move on, thankfully. We wouldn’t want them all hanging around, now would we?”
“You know what’s on the other side of that white tunnel?” Jewel asked.
Tommy was about to ask that same question exactly.
K.J. shook his head. “Not a clue. It’s a pretty closely guarded secret by everyone who does know. The standard answer everyone gets when they ask is that you’ll know when you take the white tunnel yourself.”
“So how long are we going to be in this ghost state?” Tommy asked.
“As long as you want to keep working for Ghost,” he said. “There are agents I know who have been here since the time of Atlantis and before. It’s a pretty darned good job, to be honest. Rewarding when you get to help someone. No real expenses, no costs, great sex. So, not a lot of us want to move on.”
Tommy rocked back, not even knowing what to ask next. And the entire Atlantis reference just had him confused.
“Agent of Ghost?” Jewel asked.
“Yes,” K.J. said, “that’s what you are now.”
He looked at Tommy and smiled. “You went from deputy to agent in one fell tree.”
Tommy did not laugh and after a moment K.J. stopped laughing at his own attempt at humor.
SIXTEEN
JEWEL MADE HERSELF take a deep breath and focus on the man, or ghost in a suit, in front of her. Her office was warm, and it was her office, so even though she hadn’t used it much, and now never would again, she at least felt in charge in here.
“So we have been recruited as ghosts, or agents, for an organization called Ghost,” she said, staring into the blue eyes of the short, petite man next to Tommy. “Is that correct?”
K.J. nodded, still half giggling at his stupid attempt to be funny with their deaths.
“How many Ghost Agents are there?”
K.J. shrugged. “Not that many. A couple hundred or so, if that, in the United States and Canada. Sweetie, I honestly don’t know. A lot more around the world, but you don’t run into other Ghost members very often unless you are living together, or having a party, or on a similar mission.”
Jewel tried to ignore the hundred questions that sentence brought up and forced herself to just ask more important questions. “Do we have extra powers or skills besides being invisible and being able to walk through doors?”
“You will, given time,” K.J. said. “But at the start you both need to figure out what you can and can’t do in this ghost state. Sort of a stumbling trial and error.”
“I controlled that killer this morning by being in his body,” Tommy said. “You mean things like that?”
“Exactly,” K.J. said, nodding. “And so much more. Just enjoy yourself. Try everything. This is a lot more fun than being alive ever was.”
Tommy shook his head and Jewel again ignored questions around that, figuring she would come back to it.
“You said you had bosses,” Jewel asked. “Are there ranks in this organization?”
“Well, dear, it’s an organization,” K.J. said, smiling at her. “What do you think? And you’ll learn the ranks given time, don’t worry.”
“So you’re our boss?” Tommy asked.
K.J. thought that really funny again. Then after laughing his strange and high and slightly forced laugh, he shook his head and said, “Oh, heaven’s, no, Deputy honey. I’m just your coach and someone to help at times if you need me. I’m still new at all this myself on the scheme of things.”
“Will we meet our direct boss?” Tommy asked.
K.J. shrugged. “At some point, I suppose. I sure don’t see her very often and she’s my boss too.”
“And this isn’t heaven or hell or purgatory?” Jewel asked, finally getting to the point she had been aiming at.
K.J. just shook his head. “This is still very much the real world and your job is to help real people into a more peaceful future. It’s what both of you did before that accident, wasn’t it? So now you just keep doing that.”
Jewel looked at Tommy who seemed to be deep in thought. She still had so many questions, she didn’t know where to go next.
“Look,” K.J. said, checking a bright pink watch that looked li
ke it was made for a teenage girl that had been hidden under his suit sleeve, “I have to be getting ready for a smashing birthday party in San Francisco in about an hour. It’s going to have all kinds of really fun games like bobbing for your partner’s junk. So let me get right to it. Your first mission is pretty clear. In five days, in Las Vegas, someone is going to try to cause a powerful US senator to have a stroke and die in a bad circumstance. Your job is to stop that from happening.”
“A senator?” Jewel asked, shocked.
“Yup, one of the big one hundred,” K.J. said, nodding. “Can’t tell you any more than that right now because, to be honest, I don’t know anymore. Just get to Vegas and get settled, have some fun, explore a little, and I’ll contact you.”
Jewel didn’t even know what to ask.
Tommy looked to be in the same state.
“Great!” K.J. said, standing. “Got to party! I’ve been so looking forward to this all week. See you in Las Vegas.”
And with that he vanished.
No sound, no pop, no whoosh.
He just vanished.
SEVENTEEN
TOMMY STARED AT where K.J. had been a moment before, then laughed. “Think that transporting or vanishing or whatever he did will be one of our future powers?”
“Might be,” Jewel said, still staring at the empty chair on the other side of her big desk. “But I like how our reason for being like this is to just keep on helping people.”
“Yeah, me too,” Tommy said. “I liked helping save that girl’s life this morning. And I like that this is still the real world.”
“Real, but not really what we are used to, it seems, when it comes to our connection to it.”
He agreed and stood as she did. Once again, he was struck at how good she looked in that big shirt of his with her long brown hair pulled back. And her green eyes seemed to be getting brighter as the day went along, as if she was coming alive.
She grabbed his big coat and wrapped it around herself and dug the gloves out of the pocket. “Time to go get you some clothes and head for Las Vegas,” she said. “Ever been there?”
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