The Ghost, the Girl, and the Gold

by Scott William Carter

  The phone beeped suddenly, so loud and obnoxious it was almost as startling as the gunshot. The twins glanced at each other.

  "You fools," Gath said. "Did you forget to charge the battery again?"

  "I thought I did," the twin on the right said.

  Gath sighed. "Good help is so hard to find, wouldn't you agree, Myron? My boys here, they are good for many things, but technology, well, it seems to elude them."

  "I really feel for you," I said.

  "Oh, you sound so dejected. Don't get too down. Just let this whole case drop and you have nothing to worry about. I may be a vampire of sorts, Myron, feeding upon people's memories, but I am not entirely without honor. I will keep my word if you keep yours. I will leave you and Jak alone if you do the same for me. Do we have a deal?"

  I should have said yes. No matter what I was going to do, I should have just told her what she wanted to hear. What was the big deal about lying to someone like Victoria Gath? She'd used the word honor. Was there really any dishonor in lying to someone like her? I cared about Jak, and I cared about Olivia, and if I was forced to give up finding Olivia for Jak, then I would do so, but I certainly wasn't going to give up without a fight. If Olivia didn't have me, she didn't have anyone.

  No doubt, it would have been easier to lie. It would have been easier to just get Gath and her men out of there, then do whatever I was going to do.

  But that wasn't me.

  I pressed my face into my hands, as if so distraught by the whole thing I couldn't manage to speak, lowering my head and rocking forward, trying to present a picture of a man so bowed and helpless that he was no threat at all. That was what I wanted them to think. I wanted them to lower their guard just long enough for me to make my move. As I stared through the gaps in my fingers at the phone on the coffee table, a tiny cell phone, probably a pay-as-you-go type, my mind raced, trying to think of a way out of this. Then it came to me.

  In one violent motion, I tossed the coffee table at them.

  I knew from experience that the table, despite the glass top, wasn't all that heavy, so I put all of my strength into it. I had enough rage built up that it wasn't hard. The table flipped and spun right into their laps, the cell phone skittering off the glass and clattering to the floor.

  In his surprise, the twin with the gun fired off a round and the glass shattered.

  I was already halfway to the bathroom. They shouted behind me, struggling to free themselves. Another shot fired and the doorframe next to me exploded, a blizzard of splinters in the air. I heard Gath scream from the phone somewhere on the floor: "Nooooooo! Stop!" Then I was inside the bathroom, scrambling for my holster, finding the Glock, back out the door, firing.

  Two shots.

  The twins rose off the couch, finally having freed themselves from the table, and the one with the Ruger was squeezing the trigger. His shot whizzed past my ear and exploded into the bathroom wall. My first shot punctured the thin cushion in the rattan couch. My second shot grazed his left arm, the one without the gun, ripping through his tight shirt and splattering blood on the yellow curtains behind him—like one of Billie's more abstract paintings.

  He screamed. I heard Gath screaming, too, her voice shrill and piercing over the din, still shouting, "No! No!" He fired off three more shots in quick succession, hitting the door, the wall. I ducked back inside. The other twin yelled at him, telling him to get moving, go, go, and I heard them scrambling across the room, heavy footsteps, and the rustle of clothes.

  I slid away from the bathroom door, aiming the Glock, ready for them. Were they fleeing or coming after me? What about Jak? Would they come after her? Then I heard the front door bang open.

  Leaning out, fearing a trick, the only movement I saw was the slight swing of the front door, wide open to the night, and bits of couch stuffing, wood particles, and drywall that still rained down from the air.

  After a moment, I heard the screech of tires far off down the street.

  The snow falling outside caught the glint from the streetlamps. A cold draft blew into the room, all the colder because of the sweat coating my forehead and neck. I waited ten beats, aiming at the door, willing my heart to slow. I expected sirens. The shout of neighbors.

  But there was nothing. The faint tinging of the wind chime. The barking dog. My own breathing, heavy and labored.

  "What's going on?" Gath asked suddenly, voice muffled. "Did you kill him? You fools! I told you not to kill him!"

  I crept out of the bathroom. Glock pointing at the black maw of night filling the front doorway, I opened the bedroom door and glanced in on Jak. The narrow sliver of light fell upon her sleeping form, her eyes still closed. Amazing. I didn't linger for long, moving swiftly over the debris-covered floor to the front, peering into the cold air.

  Nobody there.

  I scanned left and right, saw snow-covered trash cans, ice glinting on a chain link fence, and the taillights of a bus far off to the right, blinking in and out of the falling snow. No sirens. I stepped onto the porch, and, feeling the cold concrete, it was only then that I realized I was barefoot. Not only that, but I was bleeding. I must have cut myself on a piece of glass from the coffee table. I looked behind me and saw a trail of three blood spots on my hardwood floor.

  Then I saw blood on the doorframe, blood that wasn't my own.

  "Hello?" Gath said.

  I saw a phone sticking out from under the couch, partially hidden by a jagged piece of black glass. Trying not to cut myself again, I snatched up the phone and returned to the door, holding it to my ear while I continued searching the night for my attackers. Still no sirens. If I'd wanted the help, the obliviousness of my neighbors wasn't exactly comforting, but the lack of response was a good thing in this case. The police would just complicate matters.

  "Hello, Gath," I said.

  The pause was long. I heard the rage even before she spoke, in the sharpness of her breath, in the tension filling the silence.

  "Did you kill them?" she asked.

  "I don't think so. Shot one of them, but I think he'll live."

  Another pause.

  "You didn't have to do this," she said.

  "Yes, I think I did."

  "I'm going to make you pay for it. I'm going to do exactly what I said."

  "Well, you're going to try."

  "I'm much more powerful than you think, Myron. I have many, many followers. I can do things that—"

  "Shut up," I said.

  "Excuse me?"

  "I said shut up. I'm tired of your crap. Here's the thing, Vicky. I know you're scared of me. Otherwise you would have had your twin idiots just knock me off. You're scared to get into my mind. You're scared to kill me. You're just scared all around, and I'm coming for you. You do whatever you want, but it doesn't matter. I'm not stopping until I get you."

  I heard nothing for a long time, not even a buzz or an undertone—just a void of silence that may have lasted only a few beats but felt much longer. It was the silence of something gathering, some malevolent force, like ocean waves being pulled back to sea for the tsunami to come. Then she sucked in her breath through her teeth, a sharp hiss jarring enough that I flinched.

  "I guess this means war, then," she said.

  "I guess it does," I said.

  "You know, if it comes to it, I'll take you out if I must. Erase your mind, even kill you, if you give me no other choice. I don't care about the risk. I'll destroy you, even if it means destroying myself in the process. I guarantee you no matter what happens that you won't come out of this. If I go down—and I sincerely doubt you can make that happen—I'll make sure I take you down with me. And I promise, Myron, I promise that before I take your mind, I'll make sure I've taken everything else from you first. You'll know how badly you lost. You'll know."

  A threat like that, I should have been angry. A little scared, at least. And maybe I was. Maybe I was both mad and frightened, and my ears were still ringing too much from the gunshots to really know what I was feeling. Bu
t I found myself smiling into the phone. I smiled because I knew I'd gotten to her. I'd been casting around in the dark, trying to find something, anything, that would lead me to Olivia, and she'd gotten so nervous that she'd made a clumsy play to stop me.

  Hearing her now, the bite in her voice that barely covered the fear, I knew I'd gotten into her head in a big way.

  "Tell me where you are," I said.

  She clicked off.

  Chapter 13

  It was well into Friday morning when Jak jostled me awake. My eyes felt as if someone had pasted them shut with rubber glue. My muscles had turned to lead. My tongue had been replaced by a thick piece of cardboard. To top it off, my old friend, the brain pincer, was back in full force, squeezing and tightening and pressing.

  My ears were just fine, though, and I heard the swish of rain against the window. How odd. One day snow, the next drizzle.

  "You brought me to the beach?" Jak said.

  Then, as the fog of fatigue and beer finally began to fade, it came back to me. The urgent phone calls until I found a motel that not only answered at such a late hour, but had a room. The hurried hustle of packing a suitcase. The two-hour drive fueled by McDonald's coffee and Red Bull, paranoia prompting me to take a few random exits to ensure that no one followed. Checking in with the bleary-eyed clerk. Carrying Jak up the stairs to the third floor, the ocean air, wet and cold, whipping across the landing.

  I heard the ocean now, smelled it on the air. I pried my eyes open with an imaginary crowbar, and there she was, my beautiful Jak, dressed in nothing but an oversized Doctor Who T-shirt. She leaned over me, blond hair mussed over astonished eyes, an arm on my shoulder, the light shining around the floor-to-ceiling curtains behind her a dull, liquid gray. The curtains billowed gently, and I heard the cawing of seagulls below.

  I sat up on my elbows, blinking away the last of the sleep. "Um, yeah," I said. "I guess I did."

  She sank on to the bed next to me, shaking her head. Her eyes might have been accentuated by dark shadows and her hair might have been a frizzy mess, but she looked a million times better than she had yesterday—lots of color in her cheeks, her eyes bright and vibrant.

  "Cannon Beach?" she asked.

  "Actually, Barnacle Bluffs."

  "Wow, that's even farther. What, two hours away? So … I guess the logical question is, um, why?"

  "That is a logical question. Let me ask you a question first. What's the last thing you remember?"

  "Why?"

  "Just go with me on this. Do you remember last night at all? What do you remember before that?"

  She thought about it, her brow furrowing, and when the answer came it was exactly as I feared. There had been no magical restoration of her memory during the night. She had a vague recollection of me finding her somewhere, someplace cold and dark. She remembered showering. She remembered parts of a dream, with shouting and thunderclaps. Before that? The two of us were talking in the coffee shop, brainstorming about the case.

  I saw panic blooming in her eyes, saw rigidness overtaking her body, and I placed my hand on her leg to reassure her. "It sounds like the rain has stopped," I said. "Let's go for a walk on the beach. I'll explain everything."

  She swallowed. "I didn't … kill someone, did I?"

  "What?"

  "I mean, we're on the run, right? From the police?"

  I laughed, tossing off the covers. "No, you didn't kill anyone."

  Ten minutes later, we'd put on jeans and sweatshirts and were walking on the hard-packed sand close to the water's edge. The ocean churned, white-capped and turbulent. The gray sky, full of random streaks and smears, made me think of a painter who'd accidently swiped his elbow across his canvas. The rain had indeed stopped, but the air was thick with moisture and the wind was strong enough that Jak's hoodie wouldn't stay in place unless she held it there with her hand. It may have been morning, but the lights of the houses on the bluff to our right still glowed in the gloom. Except for a handful of people so far away they were antlike specks, and of course a dozen seagulls pecking at the ground, we were mostly alone. The people in the distance could have been real or ghosts, it was hard to say.

  It didn't take long to explain what had happened in the last twenty-four hours, and Jak, knowing me as she did, didn't even pretend to doubt me. She accepted it all in ashen-faced silence. At some point, she took my hand. She wasn't the holding hands type, but she held fast, her fingers cold and tight, until we were back at the motel.

  We only planned to stop at the room to tidy up before going to breakfast, but I was barely closing the door and her fingers were already furiously working on the buttons of my pants. Seconds later I was on my back on the carpet, neither of us having made it all the way out of our clothes, her writhing and pounding away on top of me as if I was just an afterthought to the whole experience. Like a terrified kid on a rollercoaster who knew, once it started, there was no getting off, I just surrendered myself to the moment and held on for dear life—literally, grabbing on to her thighs and digging in with my fingernails. It only seemed to whip her into a higher state of frenzy.

  I was barely aware of the sharp ocean air, the breeze billowing the curtains, the cawing of the seagulls. Muted voices downstairs. I was mostly focused on her breasts, or one of them, really, since her sweatshirt and shirt were only half pushed up over her chest. Jak, her head tilted back and her eyes closed, went on working, working, and I told myself I wouldn't let go until she did—she needed this, needed it as some kind of fierce form of healing.

  Then, in a scream that sounded more like a release of rage than one of pleasure, she finally found what she needed, and I did too, and the two of us collapsed on the thin carpet, sweaty and breathing hard, the pounding of my heart the loudest sound in the room.

  After we'd recovered sufficiently to shower and dress, I took her to breakfast at the Pig'n Pancake down the road. I asked for a corner booth at the back, far from any prying ears, and we sat in comfortable silence for a while, drinking our coffee and watching the traffic pass on Highway 101. A man in a monk's robes, the hood blackened and singed as if from a fire, slouched past on the sidewalk. It was raining again, a light drizzle, but the sun had also rallied, shining brightly enough on the road that it actually hurt my eyes to look at it for long. Fortunately, our bit of fun on the motel floor had managed to dispel my headache; otherwise, the glare would have been doubly bad.

  It would have been a cliché to claim that Jak had a kind of radiant glow, but that was exactly the way the shine of her eyes and the flush in her cheeks seemed to me, a happy radiant glow. This didn't last long. Reality always had a way of intruding on even the best of moments. As if on cue, the sun passed behind some clouds, darkening the room. Jak stared into her coffee, her wisp of a smile vanishing along with the sun.

  "I'd ask what we're going to do next," Jak said, "but I think I already know the answer. Or at least part of it."

  "It's the safest place for you," I explained.

  She sighed and looked at me. "You know me. You think I can just hide out here like some scared little girl?"

  "Maybe you're not doing it for you. Maybe you're doing it for me."

  "What, because I'm not tough enough to handle this?"

  "No, because I'm scared of losing you."

  "We can do this together, Myron. You don't have to do it alone."

  The waitress, showing up pad in hand, must have read something on our faces, because she asked if she should come back later. We ordered and she hustled away as if she couldn't wait to get away from the table. I didn't blame her. The temperature was turning cold in a hurry.

  "This isn't about my faith in you," I said.

  Jak, staring out the window, refused to meet my eyes. "Oh really?"

  "I have absolute and total confidence in your abilities."

  "You're just saying—"

  "Jak, shut up, really." When she snapped her head around to glare at me, giving me her full attention, I continued. "It isn't about you. I
t's about Gath. About what she can do to you. She can take your memories. You know what that means? It means she can totally erase me from your mind. It will be like we never even met. Do you know how awful that would be, to have you look at me without—without even knowing who I was?"

  Jak didn't say anything, but her face softened.

  "I can't lose you," I said.

  "You won't," she said. "I just … I can't sit around here doing nothing. I have to help somehow."

  "It won't be for long—just until I know Gath can't hurt you. And you can help me. You can do some research on this Felicity Langford, see if you can find clues where she might be. I brought your laptop! And hey, I didn't even look in the laptop bag, because, you know, you said my present is in there." I smiled, trying to lighten the mood, but it had no effect on her scowl. I swallowed. "You can help me figure out that poem. It might be the key to stopping Gath."

  "Right," Jak said. "So while you're taking on Gath by yourself, I'm hanging out on the beach doing literary analysis?"

  "Jak…"

  "Hey, whatever, I'm not going to change your mind, so I better just roll with it. It's not like I have much a choice. I won't even have a car. I bet that was part of your little plan, right? Strand me out here so far from Portland that I'd have a hard time getting back? You know it's true."

  "I plead the fifth."

  She didn't laugh, but she did make a halfhearted attempt at a smile before turning again to the window. Her resistance had been halfhearted, too, especially for Jak. Though I would never say it to her, and I doubted she knew this on a conscious level, I imagined that she wasn't fighting me that hard because some part of her truly was scared. I was scared, too. It was one thing to try to stop someone who could only hurt you with bullets. It was another thing to fight someone who had the power to rob you of your very self.