Down and Dirty (Bennett Dynasty Book 3)

by Kate Allenton

  “Not so fast, Faith. You need to go to the hospital and get checked out.”

  I leaned back onto the gurney, trying to make sense out of all of this. “There was a dead body, right?”

  “Yeah,” he answered and lifted a wallet. “Ann Scott, age thirty-four. She does look a lot like I’d imagine your sister might have grown up to look like.”

  He turned the wallet and showed me the ID. I rubbed at the knot forming in my chest. She looked exactly like the aged pictures we’d done of Talia. She could have been a doppelganger if it weren’t for the birthmark missing on her neck. Was this the woman that Fillpot had wanted my sister Gwen to find?

  “I have to call Gwen,” I said, trying to remember.

  “I’ll call her and tell her to meet you at the hospital for those tests,” Jimbo said, picking a Popsicle stick out of my hair. “I’ll also tell her to bring you a change of clothes. You smell pretty ripe.”

  I nodded and turned my gaze back out to the landfill. Unlike the one ghost I’d seen at my sisters, now there were three more.

  “Jimbo.” I caught his arm before he walked off and pulled him down to whisper in his ear. “You’re going to find three more dead bodies out there.” I pointed in the directions trying to help identify which piles the others were standing on.

  “Faith.” Jimbo’s voice turned serious. “Be glad the police chief believes in you because if he didn’t, the only place you’d be going is to the county jail. You might want to keep this information to yourself.”

  I slowly nodded. The entire town already thought I was crazy, but the last thing I needed was them thinking I was also a killer.

  The ride to the hospital took only ten minutes, but that was more than enough time to give Patricia Seymour, the paramedic lady, a reading. The ghosts and spirits had a ton to tell her, words of encouragement, and they’d been opinionated enough to tell her that the new boyfriend was no good for her.

  When they pulled me out of the ambulance, a shiver skirted my spine. My muscles tensed and my chest tightened as my stomach roiled.

  I swallowed hard at the ER’s doors. Spirits of the dead were everywhere, and I wasn’t talking little old grannies with canes.

  The first one we passed was a gunshot victim. The code blue rang out through the building just as the ghost traversed the ER doors, walking out in a daze. Even more were stalking in the halls.

  Blocking myself had never been an issue before and was never a real problem until my first trip to a hospital at the age of ten when I’d broken my ankle. Now I avoided them like the plague, just like my grandmother’s retirement home. Only there was no getting out of this visit.

  “This isn’t going to be fun,” Veronica announced.

  “Yes, it is.” The young ghost Jared’s eyes lit up as he sailed through the door like a quarterback’s football pass.

  “Could you go make sure he doesn’t pull anyone’s life support,” I whispered to Veronica.

  Veronica sailed off like a mother chasing a toddler through a toy store as I was wheeled into one of the rooms. Since Jared figured out how to manipulate energy, he was an unseen terror, and this was the last place either of us needed to be.

  Patricia placed me in one of the ER’s bays as a doctor walked in. His smile was warm as he glanced between us. “Working a double, Patricia?”

  “I love my job. Thanks again for putting in a good word for me,” she answered with a smile.

  “So what have we got?”

  Patricia rattled off my vital statistics before handing him a chart she’d started, and then she left.

  Chapter 4

  After my CT scan, they moved me out of the small ER to a room on another floor.

  I wasn’t complaining. There were no more traumas on this floor, like in the emergency room where spirits were walking the halls, dazed, and desperate to return to the land of the living. This floor was more peaceful with less death.

  The nurse had checked my vitals before showing me to the restroom and the sterile shower. She handed me a pair of hospital scrubs and a packet of toiletries that a hotel would give you if you’d forgotten yours. “I’m going to leave the door cracked and be right outside just in case.”

  My overripe stink could be a candidate for the body odor hall of fame. The gunk at the landfill clung to my pores, not to mention my arms were covered in dirt, grime, and scratches.

  I stepped into the shower and washed from head to toe and still wasn’t able to get out the smell that was branded in my nostrils. I was never going to be clean again. I held my head under the showerhead as steam danced around the small space. My hands pressed into the cold tile walls.

  She’d looked like Talia. Tears gathered in my eyes as the hope was yanked out from under me. She’d looked so much like Talia.

  Anger mixed with despair. How could Fillpot have given us hope?

  A tear slipped free and then two while my body shook with my sobs. Sobs for the sister I’d never see again.

  I dried off, erasing as best I could the grief I’d thought long gone. My red bloodshot eyes weren’t as easy to disguise. After dressing, I stepped out into the room. Gwen was sitting cross-legged in the middle of my hospital bed with the phone pressed to her ear.

  “Where’d the nurse go?”

  Gwen covered the speaker with her hand and answered. “There was some type of code, so I told her I’d listen out for you.”

  “Who are you talking to?”

  She held it out the phone and lifted a brow. “Someone who won’t believe me that you’re okay. She needs to hear your voice.”

  “Who is it?”

  “Who do you think would know when one of us was in trouble?”

  I took the phone and lifted it to my ears. “Grams?”

  “Faith dear, are you okay?”

  “Uh…yeah. How did you know I might not be?”

  “I’m your grandmother. I know all,” she said. “But I have to ask...what in the world were you thinking of going to the town dump looking for your sister, who you already know is dead.”

  Her voice was stoically calm. She’d been that way as we were growing up, and we’d tested her resolve many times. She had her worry nailed down to a refined art form.

  “The ghost asked me to find her, and she looked like Talia,” I offered as an excuse. “I had to go. You know what happens when I ignore their pleas.”

  “Yes, dear. They get louder, more insistent,” she answered. “But we taught you how to deal with that. Do I need to send you some more salt?”

  My lip twisted into a grin. “Are you going to steal it from the retirement home’s kitchen?”

  My question made Gwen laugh.

  “Don’t be smart, dear. I can just order it online like everything else these days.”

  “Right. Grams, I’m fine, and I have plenty of salt. Thank you for asking and checking up on me.”

  We said our goodbyes, and I handed Gwen back her phone. “You could have told her I was resting.”

  “You could have waited on us to go with you,” she shot back. Her statement was accusatory. Her gaze felt like my mother’s when I’d been caught talking to the spirits.

  “I had to know,” I said, slipping onto the bed with my sister. “The woman isn’t our Talia. She’s a doppelganger. Jimbo told me her name is Ann Scott, and she’s thirty-four.”

  Gwen’s brows knitted together. Disappointment sounded in her quiet exhale. “Damn. She could have covered the birthmark and changed her name.”

  I understood my sister’s reluctance to let go of the possibility. It was why I didn’t want to believe. We’d already lost my sister once, and now we were losing her all over again. “We can see if they’ll run a DNA match just to be sure.”

  “Well, I guess you saved us all from accidentally rolling down a hill.”

  Heat claimed my cheeks. I’d never been the sister with style and grace.

  “Thanks for coming.” I knocked her shoulder with mine just as the door opened.

  A
doctor walked in, holding a clipboard. His dark hair and steely blue eyes reminded me that there was something I’d left out telling Gwen what happened. Something important.

  “Is she going to live, Doc, or do we need to buy her casket?” Gwen asked.

  “Forgive my sister. Gwen is just excited one day I’ll die. She plans to dress up like a Reaper at my funeral.”

  The doctor lifted a brow.

  “Yes, well, my sister promised to haunt all of the people who pissed me off,” Gwen said with a grin.

  “I think she’s counting down the days until I kick the bucket,” I said.

  Gwen shrugged. “My list of enemies is long.”

  The doctor shook his head and stepped farther into the room. “Ms. Bennett.”

  “Yes,” we both answered.

  He sighed. “Faith Bennett.” He steered his focus on me and stepped over to my side of the bed. “I’m the Emergency Room attending, Dr. Myers. Your scan indicates that you have a slight concussion. I’d like to keep you here overnight for observation.”

  “Oh no…” I said. My gaze flew to the window in the door, where the spirits were already starting to congregate. “Sorry, Doc. I can’t stay, but I’ll get one of my sisters to spend the night with me if you think something might happen.”

  He turned his gaze to look at Gwen and frowned before he met my gaze again. “Do you have other sisters that don’t want you to die?”

  “Oh sure,” I said, climbing off the bed. “There are over a half-dozen of us.”

  “Good,” he said, making some type of note in the chart. “I’ll get your discharge papers ready, along with a list of what to look for over the next several hours.”

  “Thanks, Doc,” I said.

  “Please call me Brandon,” he said with a twinkle in his eye.

  “Okay.” I smiled back at him, caught a little off guard. Was he flirting with me?

  “Faith Charlotte Bennett, thirty-four years old, Gemini, never been married but already owns the white picket fence and the house, and she can see ghosts,” Gwen announced. “Now that we’ve got that out of the way, you can run along and process the papers so I can spring her from this joint.”

  His lips twitched as he cupped the board to his chest. “Ghosts?”

  I smiled and grabbed one of the plastic bags the nurse left me and shoving my soiled clothes inside.

  “How about the paperwork, Doc? I’ve got a hot man waiting in my bed for me at home.” Gwen patted his back and steered the doctor to the door.

  “Right, I’ll get you processed out.” He glanced over his shoulder and smiled at me.

  The door hadn’t even shut when I started in on Gwen. “The first guy in forever to flirt with me and you tell him I can see ghosts?”

  She shrugged. “I ripped the bandage off. Get over it. Now, if he seeks you out, you’ll know that he won’t run scared like Ricky did when he found out.”

  “Ricky was fifteen years old.”

  “And he ran away like a little bitch when you told him his grandpa was hanging around.”

  “He was fifteen years old,” I said again, rubbing the headache forming at my temples.

  Within thirty minutes I was in Gwen’s sports car with the top down as she sped through the streets. She stopped long enough at my house to kick me out of the car with the promise to send one of our other sisters over to check on me.

  Gwen was kind that way.

  Since my car and keys were still at the landfill, along with my purse, I grabbed the spare key from beneath the flowerpot and used it to unlock my door.

  I rested my back against the wood, taking a minute to soak in the lack of spirits and hospital noises. This was my sanctuary. Here I could control my surroundings. Everything in my house was light and airy, unlike the pain and despair in the hospital. I saged my home from negative and unwanted guests weekly. I’d be doing it again tomorrow, just in case one had decided to follow me home.

  I traversed the stairs toward my bedroom. Moonlight cascaded through my sheer curtains, leaving my room in a soft moonlight glow.

  I changed out of the scrubs and into yoga pants and a T-shirt, unsure which sister was going to play babysitter. Stepping out of my bathroom, I grabbed some linens and headed into the spare room to make the bed for whichever sister decided to show.

  A familiar shiver of awareness produced goosebumps on my arms seconds before Veronica and Jared appeared in the hall and started following me around.

  “You were right. I caught him with his hand on the plug,” Veronica announced.

  Jared shrugged. “That guy only had one more day to live. I would have been doing him a favor.”

  “Can we do this tomorrow? I’m tired, and one of my sisters is coming over.”

  Jared grinned. “Which one?”

  “You know which one,” Veronica announced. “Nina.”

  That was news to me.

  “She must have had a premonition,” I said as I reentered my bedroom to find Jared hovering in the air over my clothes hamper with his legs crossed like a buddha. “What’s wrong with you?”

  “You never used to send us away when your sisters visited,” Jared growled, like a seven-year-old he was.

  “I’m just tired, Jared.” I sighed and walked to the window to glance down at my empty driveway. Depending on how long it took Nina to arrive, she might have to let herself in.

  My gaze slid over the quiet street, only pausing on the figure across the road. An outline of a man stood in the shadows.

  The breath caught in my throat as I met his gaze. The same gaze that had been standing over me when I tumbled down the hill.

  Chapter 5

  I let the curtain fall back into place and jogged down my stairs. Grabbing the baseball bat I kept in the umbrella holder, I threw my door open and hurried down my porch steps.

  The man was gone.

  Was I hallucinating? Wasn’t that one of the warnings the doctor had given me?

  I glanced up and down the street, taking a minute to scan each shrub, tree, and house, looking for something, anything out of the ordinary.

  Professor Christopher Bell was stepping out of his car, juggling papers and books. He was a workaholic and wouldn’t return home sometimes till the wee hours in the morning. I thought it was work dedication when he’d once confided in me that his couch in his office was more comfortable than his bed. Our other neighbors on the street did their own gardening on the weekends, Professor Bell hired out. He didn’t have the time or green thumb to master a pretty yard. He was a little like me.

  Chris was an odd duck. It was almost painful to watch how uncomfortable he got when conversing with others. I couldn’t imagine him in front of a college class teaching about environmental law.

  I called out to him and crossed the street. His eyes bulged, and everything he’d been juggling fell to the ground.

  “Faith, you scared me,” he said, bending down to pick up his stuff.

  I dropped to my knees with the bat by my side. “I’m sorry, Professor.”

  His gaze landed on my bat, and his hands stilled from cleaning up his stuff as he met my gaze. “Everything okay, Faith?”

  “Yeah, I just thought I saw a Peeping Tom lurking out here. You didn’t happen to see anyone when you drove up, did you?”

  The professor glanced up and down the road before glancing back at his house. “I didn’t see anyone, but if you’d like, I can see if Elenore is still awake and ask her.”

  “No need to bother your sister. I’m sure my mind is playing tricks on me. Could be from the concussion. How is Elenore?”

  “Why would you ask that?”

  I didn’t want to tell him there were already rumors about his sister. The woman hadn’t been in town over a month, and there were whispers. “I just never see her outside during the day.”

  “Oh.” The professor cleared his throat. “She works during the day. She has an online business that keeps her busy, but thanks for asking.”

  The professor’s brow
s dipped as he rose with the papers in his hands and the keys dangling from his fingers.

  “You need any help with that?”

  His cheeks tinted pink. It was that awkwardness that endeared me. “No, thanks. I’ve got it. Why don’t you run back home and lock your doors? I’ll keep an eye out for anyone who doesn’t belong.”

  “Thanks, Professor.” I picked up my bat and jogged across the road as Nina pulled into my driveway.

  Her worried gaze met mine as she climbed out of her car. “Uh, Faith, what are you doing out here…with your bat?”

  I frowned. If I told her the truth, she might demand I go back to the hospital.

  “I thought I saw someone.”

  Nina wrapped her arm through mine and guided me back up to the porch. “You’ve had a long day. Let’s get you situated and you can tell me all about the four women you found.”

  “How did you know there were four?” I asked.

  “You see ghosts. I see events. Sometimes they are in the future, sometimes the past, but they’re always true. I saw you dressed crazily on a hill, and four ghosts surrounded you.”

  “Right,” I said, glancing over my shoulder one last time in the direction of where the man had been standing. Maybe I was losing my mind.

  Nina had wasted her time coming over. I spent most of the dawn hours perched by my window in the silence of the house staring at the street below, almost trying to will the man to return so I’d know once and for all if he’d been real and not some stressor in my mind.

  I’d fallen asleep in the chair and at some point someone had covered me with a blanket. My shoulders ached as I stretched, letting the blanket fall to the floor. Tilting my head from side to side to work out the kinks, I headed downstairs to the smell of freshly brewed coffee.

  I rounded the corner to the kitchen to find Nina standing at the counter, stirring creamer into her coffee. Jared held a fork at her back as if he were going to stab her.

  “Jared, no,” I yelled.

  The fork clanged to the ground, and Nina spun around, her gaze on the fork and then on me before she handed me one of the two coffees she’d been making. “He doesn’t like me much.”