Down and Dirty
BENNETT DYNASTY
BOOK 3
Kate Allenton
Copyright © 2019 Kate Allenton
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Published by Coastal Escape Publishing
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
CHAPTER 1
CHAPTER 2
CHAPTER 3
CHAPTER 4
CHAPTER 5
CHAPTER 6
CHAPTER 7
CHAPTER 8
CHAPTER 9
CHAPTER 10
CHAPTER 11
CHAPTER 12
CHAPTER 13
CHAPTER 14
CHAPTER 15
CHAPTER 16
CHAPTER 17
CHAPTER 18
CHAPTER 19
CHAPTER 20
CHAPTER 21
Chapter 1
It wasn’t always easy having ghostly apparitions follow me around like toddlers who think I’m hoarding candy. Some things should be private. Bathroom time, most definitely. Intimate moments with a guy, absolutely. But it was the times like this that I’d forgotten to draw the line.
Times like now when trying to conjure a specific dead person.
My crazy sisters meant well, but I couldn’t have talked them out of wasting their time if I’d offered access to my favorite chocolate, which I had flown in just for stressful days.
Our kind of crazy was genetic and inevitable; no amount of sweets could fix us.
Light from the moon glistened through the cracks in the curtains in my sister, Cassie’s dining room, reminding me I’d forgotten to eat dinner.
My ghostly houseguests had followed me here. Probably to make fun of my sisters and me.
“It’s time to come clean and make them believe that Talia really did die when you were a kid,” Veronica Winters said from across the room.
Even in her spirit form, she wore the badge that reflected she’d sworn to serve and protect. She’d been a hard-nosed cop in her heyday. When most women were burning their bras and spreading the message of peace, not war, Veronica was earning promotions on the force for taking down the drug dealers intent on keeping those hippies high.
“Stay out of this,” I whispered back.
My sister, Gwen turned to stare at me. She raised a single brow. “Faith, is there something you care to share?”
“My ghostly roommate was just reminding me that Talia died when we were children. So, explain again why we’re doing this?” My flat voice remained calm and stoic without pressing my sister’s pressure points. Gwen loved to fight. It was part of her DNA. She also had this unshakable need to be right.
But she was wrong tonight.
Getting her to admit the truth was going to be a challenge.
“You know why,” she said and stabbed the air toward the pictures on the table.
“Just because the FBI believes that girl in the picture is Talia doesn’t make it true.” I shot back, even I could hear the hard edge of frustration in my voice.
The FBI agent in question had known exactly what buttons to push to get Gwen to jump on this crazy train, but I wasn’t ready to retake that trip down memory lane.
“You have to admit that the picture Fillpot gave us and the aged computer rendering of one of Talia’s school pictures are remarkably similar,” Cassie said.
Cassie was a finder of lost things. That was her gift. That was the reason we were here. She was hoping to lock on to the sister we’d believed had been dead for twenty years.
I rubbed at the pinpricks forming in my head. The headache had almost reached behind my eyes.
Like Gwen, Cassie wanted to believe. Our other four sisters, who were conveniently too busy to participate, weren’t here for this little test. They, too, had reservations.
“I just want to go on record as saying Talia’s dead. Even if I haven’t seen her ghost, Grams wouldn’t deceive us about something like this. So, don’t get your hopes up. We shouldn’t have to mourn Talia twice.”
I crossed my arms over my chest and turned my attention to my other ghostly tagalong. Jared had been only a seven-year-old kid when he had died. He still wouldn’t tell me about his passing, no matter how hard I tried to get him to open up and move on, and right now, he was snooping through Cassie’s drawers.
My baby sister, Talia, was as dead as Veronica and Jared. Not that she’d ever come to haunt me.
The pain in my head intensified, morphing into hot sharp needles, causing me to rub my forehead. The air in Cassie’s dining room was chilled due to the ghostly presences. Candlelight flickered on the walls. The scent of apple pie wafting around the room made my stomach growl. “Can we get on with this? I’m starving.”
Cassie dangled her crystal over the map laying open on the dining room table. This was where she worked in her day job helping people find lost things.
I stood at the table, sober, calm, and composed, unlike my other two sisters in attendance.
The worn blue and red threads from Talia’s friendship bracelet were tied onto Cassie's wrist as a good luck charm. The frayed edges indicated that she’d tried this search throughout the years.
I turned my gaze away, letting it roam around the room, unwilling to watch my sister fail and get disappointed again.
The plaster cast of three small hands our Bennett cousins had delivered was sitting on the sideboard against the wall. We’d all been searching unsuccessfully for the owner of the smallest hand. The plastered handprint were the only clue to suggest there had been another Bennett line unaccounted for.
I stepped over to it and ran my finger through the handprint grooves before holding my palm up to the three to see whose was bigger. They were all bigger than mine, only one was a bit smaller than the other two.
“Any luck finding our missing lineage?”
Cassie let out a sigh, and I glanced over my shoulder. “You’re making it difficult to concentrate.”
“Sorry,” I said and left the plaster object behind, returning to the table.
“I’m getting closer to figuring out what happened. It shouldn’t be too long.”
“That’s great. More than we had before,” Gwen said, turning her gaze toward the plaster.
Those hands weren’t the reason we were here. Our baby sister was.
“Has anyone talked to Grams?” I asked, unable to stop myself from interrupting Cassie one more time.
Grams knew the truth, just like I did, although she’d tell you she couldn’t see ghosts and that it was her intuition whispering the universe’s secrets.
“I stopped by and saw her before I came here,” Gwen answered. “She told me t
hat there was no way that Talia was still alive.”
“That’s because she’s right,” I whispered beneath my breath and shifted my weight to my other foot.
“Are you two done?” Cassie asked.
“Grams has no reason to lie,” I reminded them. I spoke quickly before making a zipper motion with my fingers and my mouth.
I’d attempt to keep quiet, but I was making no promises.
Our other sisters—Nina, Mercy, Rachel, and Honor—weren’t in attendance for this little session. I couldn’t blame them. This was a waste of time and a lost cause.
For ten minutes, Cassie held her crystal hovering over the map. Nothing. No movement, no arc, nada.
“It’s not working.” Cassie’s frustration seeped through her voice as she lowered the crystal and dropped it onto the map.
It totally wasn’t the time to state the obvious. “I told you so.”
Gwen speared me with her glare as Cassie headed toward the kitchen where Nathan, Cassie’s new boyfriend, and Gwen’s boyfriend, Maxwell Pierce, had been waiting for us to get done.
“You didn’t have to be here.” Cassie’s voice squeaked, and I knew I was in trouble. She was about to cry, and when that started, there’d be no stopping her.
“I’m sorry, Cassie,” I said, hurrying after them. “We can try again. We can do this all night.”
“Faith,” Veronica called out, and I ignored her.
“Faith.” She said it louder, getting me to glance back.
“Wha—” The question died on my lips as I turned and froze on the spot.
A ghost stood on the other side of the table. Not just any ghost. This one was the spitting image of what I imagined Talia would look like had she lived and aged.
“Hi,” she whispered, glancing around the room as if confused.
I forgot to breathe.
“Gwen, Cassie, get your asses back in here,” I yelled as tears welled in my eyes.
“Talia?” I asked. My voice squeaked as goosebumps from the chill climbed up my arms.
The ghost reached for the pendant on the table and moved it over the town map.
Gwen and Cassie stepped back into the room. Their feet froze as we all watched the crystal begin to move on its own. Only I could see the ghost pushing it around.
“Tell me Talia’s moving that,” Gwen demanded while knocking on my arm.
I was afraid to blink or look away in the event she’d vanish.
“She looks like Talia.” I swallowed hard as a tear slipped free. “Are you my sister?”
“Please find me,” the apparition said before vanishing without an answer.
Chapter 2
Cassie, Gwen, and I hovered over the map where the ghost had left the crystal.
“The landfill?” Gwen asked. “What the hell is she doing at the landfill?”
The pitch of Gwen’s voice rose with each syllable. Excitement radiated off of her like a kid who’d won a soccer championship.
Cassie was the opposite. She was biting her lip like a first-time parent, worried about a sleeping newborn.
“We need a map of the landfill, and we need to do a grid search,” I said.
The butterflies in my stomach turned to rocks and dropped like lead. This wasn’t good, regardless of whether that was my sister. The woman was a ghost, and if she was pointing us to the town landfill, chances were she was already dead.
“Nathan can organize that,” Cassie said, hurrying into the other room and dragging her boyfriend, Nathan, back to the table. She pointed to the crystal. “I need a landfill map.”
“Okay, but you know the government offices are closed on the weekend,” Nathan said. Wrapping his arms around her waist from behind, he kissed her cheek.
“I’ll call in a favor,” Gwen announced. She had lots of people working at Fairy Damn Godmother who owed her favors. I had no doubt she’d have those maps by morning. “We’ll reconvene in the morning to make a plan.”
Yeah, I wasn’t waiting. Not that I was about to tell my sisters. I didn’t need a map if I could follow a ghostly tour guide. I swallowed hard around the lump in my throat.
I couldn’t leave finding this woman to chance; even if it wasn’t Talia. Not until I knew the truth.
We all left, and I drove home after agreeing to meet them in the morning.
A shiver racked my spine. The thought of the landfill smell alone was enough to almost make me reconsider. Yet, when I got home, I jogged up the stairs and rummaged through my drawers.
Satisfied with stained painting overalls, I grabbed my rubber rain boots out of the closet and slipped them on my feet, tucking the ends of the overalls inside. Grabbing my bathroom plunger, I clomped downstairs into the kitchen and dug under the sink for my rubber gloves. Seconds before shutting the cabinet, I spotted a medical face mask and grabbed it too.
I slid the face mask over my head and rested it on top like a pair of sunglasses.
I grabbed my keys and stepped out onto the porch, letting my gaze slide down the street to see if anyone was outside to witness my insanity.
Thank God the neighbors were all tucked inside their houses. My get-up would have me on the front page of the daily paper with the headline, This Bennett has officially flipped her lid.
I drove to the dump to find the place closed and locked. I stepped out of my car and locked it. Twisting in the spot, I looked over my shoulder. The place was creepy at night with no one around.
It was deserted and unmanned. It was the perfect dumping ground. I stepped up to the fence and tossed my plunger over to the other side. Cursing beneath my breath, I climbed.
A front-end loader sat off in the distance. A flock of vultures spiraled overhead as if waiting for sunlight to swoop down to have their meal hidden beneath the debris. The stench of rotten food sweltering beneath the hot sun earlier today permeated in the air, driving the stink factor to an almost unbearable level. With plunger in hand, I began walking toward the mounds of trash.
“I should have made my sisters come with me,” I grumbled beneath my breath. When this was over, I was going to have to hose off, and even that didn’t promise that the scent wouldn’t linger in my nostrils and pores.
I let out a breath into the medical mask covering my mouth. It did little to kill the smell, but I hadn’t been able to find any clothespins for my nose.
“Unicorns and rainbows,” I repeated over and over again, climbing the closest mound and trying hard not to think about what my feet were sinking into inside the black garbage bags.
With each step, I prodded with my plunger before taking the step. Used diapers spilled out of one of the trash bags. Broken toys, empty cans, old clothing, even broken playground equipment made up this pile. Whatever was farther beneath, I didn’t want to know.
My rubber rain boots were no match for broken glass or concrete. It was official. I had lost my ever-lovin’ mind and I was going to be in need of a tetanus shot.
Reaching the top of the mound, I stood on shaky ground, my feet sinking a little farther into God only knew what. I turned carefully in place, scanning the other mounds. Nothing.
When a bird squawked, I followed it’s decent where it was picking its food. The mask did little to cover my gasp. Talia’s body was lying in a pool of blood. A broken mess. Dead rats surrounded her body. A tall menacing figure was standing over her.
I lost my footing and yelped before tumbling down the trash slide until I, too, was lying in the ravine below. My head hit on something hard. My vision momentarily blurred. My entire body ached as I struggled to calm my racing heart and re-catch my breath.
I was staring up at the stars in the sky when the same man who’d been standing over Talia’s body appeared in my sight, blocking my view.
His brows knit seconds before I slipped into darkness.
Chapter 3
My head lolled away as I tried to escape from the offending smell. Muffled voices sounded in the distance; the words garbled. My eyelids opened like a garage door on the v
erge of breaking midway. I blinked once and then twice, wincing at the flashlight shining in my eyes.
I tried to raise my hand to block the light, and it was jerked back into place with the bite of steel around my wrist. “What the…?”
I yanked my wrist again to hear a clanking noise.
The woman above me smiled. A brunette braid lay over her shoulder. Her warm brown eyes stared down at me. A stethoscope was wrapped around her neck. “Welcome back. What’s your name?”
What was my name? Did I even know?
“You’re traumatized, Faith. Snap out of it. Of course you know your name.” Veronica’s apparition appeared, and she peeked her head straight through the paramedic’s body and spoke.
“Even I know your name,” Jared said as he kicked a can at one of the officers, who glanced over his shoulder looking for the source of the movement. He’d never find it unless he could see ghosts too.
“Faith, what are you doing here?” Jimbo Jones, my childhood best friend, asked.
“I…” I snapped my mouth closed and ignored the heat flaming my cheeks.
“Could you give us a minute?” Jimbo flashed the woman a smile before unlocking the handcuffs from my wrists. “You were following the spirits again, weren’t you?”
My eyes widened, and my heartbeat raced as I sat up. “He’s here. The killer is here, and he saw me.”
“What does he look like?”
“Tall, dark, and killer-y,” I answered. “He was squatted next to the dead body when I saw him.”
“Then what happened?”
“The hill happened.”
“Did he push you down the hill?”
“No, I tripped when I saw my sister.”
“Which one?” he asked.
“Talia,” I answered, scanning the area for the face that I’d seen.
“You must have hit your head pretty hard, Faith. Talia died when we were in elementary school.”
“She was here,” I said, slipping my legs over the side of the gurney.
Down and Dirty (Bennett Dynasty Book 3) Page 1