Ghost of Lies (Medium Trouble Book 1), page 32
I reach out and squeeze his hand, hoping to reassure him. “But this is even more reason we have to end this,” I say. “If they’re also trying to get to you… they think you know something or did something.”
“But I don’t. I knew Franklin because of our fight, but the others, I didn’t know. I have to assume Millie is dead… but at the time, I just… I thought she left. I thought she went with her father like others said she did when I asked. And she’d ditched me, so I just stopped caring. I never stopped and looked back.”
“I think she died the night of the festival,” I say as I pull the wristband out of my pocket and set it on the middle of the table. “Yesterday, when I saw Millie, she had this on her wrist. She could have been wearing it later, but if you say Sean looked shaken that night when he came home… if no one ever saw her again after that night… I think that’s the night she died.”
“You think Sean was involved in her death?” Patricia asks.
“I don’t know,” I admit. “But if we can figure it out, we can stop the last two people from dying.”
“Who are the last two?” Nicolás asks.
I shake my head. “I don’t know.”
Maddox leans forward. “When she was hanging out with Sean and the others, how many were there?”
“Five including her.”
“So the killer has killed four, and two are left.”
“Who are the other two?” I ask. “If Nicolás…”
“It could be Nicolás,” Maddox says.
Nicolás looks at him in shock. “Why? All I did was help her.”
“The killer might not see things that way. If Franklin was spreading the rumor that you raped her or something else… the killer might think you’re just as at fault as the others,” Maddox says.
“It could be her mother as well,” I suggest.
“Why this group, though?” Patricia asks. “I don’t even remember Sean being friends with any of them. I would remember their names at least.”
“I think he started in with them while he was with his mother,” Maddox says. “If we begin looking at these people, while they might not all have had schools or neighborhoods in common, there was something else. Take Franklin, for example. He didn’t have a good upbringing. According to police records, the school called the police on him twice for noticeable bruises and tried to get his father arrested, but Franklin would back him up every time.”
“So… they were a group of kids dealing with shit lives who banded together?” I ask. “I mean, the beginning of it started when Sean was stuck with his mother.”
“Right.”
“I’m still confident that if we find Millie’s body, we can settle her soul and help her be less angry. She might be able to talk to me without trying to kill me,” I say. “Nicolás, could you show us where she ran into the woods after Franklin? If we could track down her body… we’d have something.”
He shrugs. “Yeah… I could try. It’s been years, but I think I’d remember.”
I turn to Maddox. “The cadaver dogs would help, right?”
“They can try. I’ll see what I can get,” he says.
Maddox stands up, and I look over, startled at who’d been behind us. “Sean?” I ask.
He turns and disappears through the wall.
“Fucking hell, Sean.” I rush through the door outside in the hopes that he just passed through the wall, but I can’t see him anywhere. “You’re a fucking coward, Sean. I nearly died twice now. Nicolás nearly died. If you’d just fucking help us! If you’d goddamn help us, we could end this.”
Sean appears in front of me and grabs my face in his hands. “Yes, but what if they all deserve to die?”
“I don’t give a fuck, Sean. That’s what the police are for. That’s why we have detectives to determine what happened and to make people pay for their crimes. We don’t just… watch the world burn,” I say.
He shakes his head, like he refuses to hear what I have to say. “Just stay out of it and you’ll be fine,” he says before disappearing.
“Fucking hell,” I yell as Maddox comes up and takes my hand.
“Hey, it’s okay.” His voice is gentle, immediately grounding me.
I look over at him, semi alarmed he’s still on the phone as I’m shouting like a madman. “I’m sorry.”
“It’s fine,” he says before kissing my forehead and continuing on with his phone call.
It’s like Sean can see no reason. It’s like he’s blinded by this… guilt to the point where nothing else affects him. The Sean I knew would never let something like this put my life or Nicolás’s life at risk. He’d never do that. He’s not thinking rationally, but I’m not sure I’m fully surprised. Sometimes ghosts seem so fixated on shit that they can’t.
Fucking hell.
Maddox ends the call before looking at me. “So?”
“So… Sean is being all dramatic and shit because he thinks he and the others deserve this. He’s just… so fucking stuck on this ‘We’re getting what we deserve’ mindset that he won’t even listen to reason.”
“Haven’t you said before that ghosts don’t always think things through?”
“I have. It’s like they’re so easily consumed by something that happened to them in life that in death it becomes a fixation.”
“I get that. I’m going to talk to Nicolás a bit more while Parker gets me a team ready. And then we’ll head out.”
“We? I’m allowed to join?” I ask in surprise.
“I don’t want you to,” he admits. “But this case seems to be at a standstill unless you’re working it with me.”
I grin at him. “I just seem to be attracted to danger.”
He grunts at me, clearly not impressed, or maybe he wants to be the only thing I’m attracted to.
Chapter Thirty-One
HIRO
“Like I said, it’s been years, but they went that way, I think,” Nicolás says as he motions.
We’re standing in the middle of a field. Once upon a time, it was the location for that yearly festival, but now it’s just a large bean field.
Maddox has a whole team of people, including a few cadaver dogs that I’m really hoping will do an amazing job and save us from days of combing acres of woods. Because if there isn’t anything to give us a bit of guidance, how the hell will we find her? It’s not like we can dig up every spot.
“We’re not going to find a body in this, are we?” I ask, already feeling overwhelmed.
Maddox squeezes my shoulder. “Well… that’s a defeatist attitude if I’ve ever seen it. You have to be determined, Hiro. They were likely on foot. With the crowd around, if they killed her, they could have even left her body out in the open. They wouldn’t have had a shovel or anything unless they went back for it. But the festival pulled in a large crowd. Someone carrying a shovel off into the woods, even in the dead of the night, would have been suspicious.”
That’s true. I didn’t think about that.
“We also have to think that they were, presumably, four kids who really didn’t know what they were doing. It’s harder to find a body when someone is prepared than when you have a group of teenagers who most likely didn’t mean to kill someone,” he explains.
“That makes sense. But why hasn’t anyone stumbled over the body, then?”
“It’s private property. A lot of no hunting signs up, the owner probably does his part to keep people out, but he gave us permission to search the grounds,” he says. “Let’s walk and see if you happen along something.”
“Deal.”
Nicolás stays back with Patricia as Maddox and I head off after the search team. They’re about five minutes ahead of us, but there are things that I’ll see that they never would.
“Are you doing alright?” Maddox asks.
“Yeah, I’m fine, thank you,” I say as I give him a smile. “I’m… upset about my brother but I really hope that if we can end this, he can see things more clearly.”
He reaches out and squeezes my hand. “Me too. Is Reggie here?”
“No, he’s haunting Nicolás. He thinks you, me, and Nicolás would make a nice man meat sandwich for him to watch. Soo… yeah, I’ve been dealing with that.”
Maddox’s eyes narrow. “Have you found a way to exorcise ghosts yet?”
“Nope, not yet. But when he thought Nicolás was trying to murder me, he knocked the phone out of Nicolás’s hands, redeeming himself. Speaking of which…. I haven’t gotten a chance to check out this dick pic,” I say as I pull out my phone.
“No,” Maddox says as he yanks the phone away and stuffs it back into my pocket.
“But… what’s that!” I say, and he quickly looks at the nothingness I’d pointed to as I pull the phone back out and open the picture. “Ooh la la.”
“No! You can’t just distract me.”
“This is fucking sexy. Did you use the bathroom next to your boss?”
“I sure did.”
“Wow, turning into a bad boy.”
“I… seem to lose a sense of judgment around you, so please… delete that.”
“And saved,” I say, but this time when he crams the phone back into my pocket, I let it stay there. “Do you have an idea of where we’re walking?”
“No, I’m just trying to pick a rather straightforward path. Some place they wouldn’t have had to do much rock climbing or tree scaling,” he says.
I nod. “Makes sense.”
“Caw! Caw!”
I look up as Spite comes diving in and lands in front of me. He drops something in front of me and I stoop down to pick it up before it hits me that it’s not an actual item. Some odd thing that he was… able to think up? Can a bird think something up like that?
I reach out toward it, unsure if it’ll actually feel real to me. Unsurprisingly, my hand goes right through it, but I don’t need to pick it up to know what it is. When I pull Nicolás’s wristband out of my pocket and show it to him, he tilts his head this way and that as he looks at it. “Did you see me have this?” I ask.
Was he trying to show me something he saw me have… or did he see it on her?
“What… are you seeing?” Maddox asks.
“Spite brought me a wristband… it’s dirty, though. Covered in mud,” I say. “I think he knows where the body is.”
“Your bird? Your… ghost bird knows where the body is?” Maddox asks, clearly disbelieving this.
“He brought me this,” I say, waving to it even though I know he can’t see it. “How would he even know we were looking for it?”
“He… pulled… it off?” He seems skeptical and I don’t blame him.
“No… not like that. Like… they can project things. Make things seem real. Like how they can change clothes or have something. It’s a… I don’t fucking know, but he’s a bird. He’s not going to magic up a wristband that he hasn’t seen before,” I say. “Spite, can you show me where you got this?”
The raven seems full-on confused about what I want as he hops around the wristband, clearly just wanting me to be proud that he found it for me.
“How’s that going?” Maddox asks.
“Just about as well as you’d think it’d be going talking to a bird,” I say. “I think he’s very proud at the moment. He’s doing a ‘Look what I did’ dance.”
“Ah… okay… can he dance his way over to a body?”
“One could hope,” I say as I try to convey this to Spite.
He seems to eventually get bored and starts hopping around a little. When he jumps into the air and flies about ten feet before stopping, I head after him, knowing that I might be losing my mind, but it’s better than just wandering.
“We’re headed away from the others. Want me to tell them to come this way?”
“I really don’t know,” I admit. “He might literally just be flying around.”
“Okay, I’ll see if I can get one over this way just in case,” he says as he goes to make the call before groaning. “Of course the reception is shit out here.” He grabs the radio on his belt and makes a call to one of the other teams to get them heading our way.
Spite lands on the ground a moment before I see Millie step out from behind a tree. Startled, Spite leaps up into the air as I draw to a stop.
“What’s wrong?” Maddox asks.
“Millie’s here,” I whisper as she starts walking toward me.
There’s something terrifying about facing something only you can see. Something that’s stronger than a human and is determined to kill me. Something that I’m not sure I can stop.
None of Maddox’s gun lessons will work here.
“Millie, we’re helping you. It might not seem like it, but we are helping you.”
“You’re helping yourself,” she says as she moves closer to me. “Let them pay for what they’ve done.”
“Tell me what they did to you, let me help you,” I say as Maddox hooks an arm around my waist and pulls me back.
“There’s only one way to stop you,” she says as I back up in a rush, not wanting to face her again. I project everything into being able to pass right through her. I focus on making her nothing more than air to pass through me and when she does, I feel a sense of satisfaction until I feel Maddox’s arm jerk back.
She’s wrapped her hands around Maddox’s throat, preparing to choke him. Being around me gives her the strength to tighten her grip, and as Maddox gasps for breath, his hands grab for her but of course he can’t feel her. He can’t touch her at all as his hands go right through her. My presence is making her solid enough to hurt him, but I’m not making him able to touch her.
“No! Stop! What are you doing?” I yell as I grab for her, but my hand passes straight through her. “Millie, we are helping you.” I drop my hold on making her insubstantial, and all too suddenly, I can feel her, but as I pull and drag her with me, she won’t loosen her grip on Maddox’s throat. It’s not like I can hurt her. It’s not like I can choke her off him. She’s dead.
And she’s going to kill Maddox.
He staggers backward, his back slamming into a tree as he tries to fight against her, instinct pushing him toward it.
“Millie, please, we’re helping you. We’re fucking helping you.”
“No, you’re helping your brother. Don’t fucking pretend you’re doing any of this for me.”
Maddox starts to slide down the tree as I realize that I don’t know what to do. I don’t know how to stop her. How to save Maddox.
Wait…
Her power… her power is this great around me. Only around me or she wouldn’t need a person to kill the others. She wouldn’t need someone to do any of this.
If this doesn’t work… if this doesn’t stop her… I’ll have condemned Maddox to death.
“Fuck,” I yell as I release her and turn. I take off running as quickly as I can, racing away from her as my heart thunders in my chest. The thorns and branches grab at me as I run. I have no idea how far away I have to get from Maddox, but I know I need to get away. I need to get away from everyone who might be hurt by her, and pray it’s not too late, because I can’t help him. I can’t go back to him.
I see Spite up ahead. He leaps into the air as Millie appears on my right and shoves me hard. Missing my step, I trip and slam my shin into a log that sends me diving over it.
“Just going to run away? You just left him there to die?” she asks, voice sharp.
“It got you away from him,” I say. I don’t know that for sure, but I have to hope that I got away quickly enough. I push up to my feet just as she grabs for my throat, but I concentrate hard enough that she passes right through me.
She lets out a rage-filled scream, but I’m back on my feet. I’m moving as quickly as I can, praying that this bird knows what the hell he is doing.
“I will kill you,” she screams.
“You can’t touch me,” I yell back.
Her face is twisting into something dark. “You can’t keep your concentration up that long. I saw how you were after finding my father. I’m not concerned,” she says.
And she’s right. If I were to focus for too long, I’d eventually pass out and she’d get a free ride to killing me. So the moment I’m away from her, I have to drop my focus and hope she doesn’t get a sneak attack in on me.
Suddenly, she appears directly in front of me, waiting for me to run to her, since that’s where Spite is headed, so I don’t even hesitate. I push forward, sliding through her as she grabs for me and screams when she can’t make contact.
“I will kill you,” she roars.
Spite flies ahead before dropping down out of sight. I realize he’s gone down a steep hill that I know I’ll have to descend. While trying not to fall, I find it hard to concentrate on her, so my focus must slip a little because she shoves me from behind hard enough that I fall forward. I miss my footing, slamming down onto my face before rolling down to where a tree stops my descent. She drops upon me as I slip around the side and push back up and over to where Spite is scratching at the ground.
That’s when I see what he’s digging at.
The very edge of a silicone wristband.
I grab a rock and start digging at the earth. If the wristband is toward the surface, the body can’t be far behind. It seems to be an area that deals with a lot of washouts, so the surface might have been worn away by years of rain.
