Chapter Twenty-Six
OBVIOUSLY, SARAH WAS not the repeater in the bedroom, seeing as she was still alive. “Boswell, meet Sarah. You both share the dubious honor of living in that apartment.”
Sarah was apparently not in the mood for introductions. “What are you doing with my cat?” she demanded.
“Your cat?” Boswell snapped. “Simon belongs to me.”
Sarah tilted down her shades and shot him a bored look over the rim. “Oh yeah? Then explain why ‘Simon’ is a girl.”
Boswell huffed a few times, then said, “How was I supposed to know? It’s awfully furry down there.”
“Her name is Posy.” Sarah held out her arms to me.
I considered keeping hold of the cat to stop Sarah from bolting again, but I’m not made of stone.
And when the murder mittens came out and she started to squirm, I figured I was better off handing her over.
Posy went into power-headbutt mode, clonking Sarah’s jaw hard enough to hear from three feet away.
That only annoyed Boswell more. “If you’re such a doting owner, why was your cat left out here to fend for himself…herself…whatever!”
I probably would’ve taken umbrage at that question, but Sarah answered with her typical stoic blandness. “It was a calculated risk. Outside the apartment, Posy stood a chance. But inside…let’s just say I knew it wouldn’t end well.”
“Because of Sledge,” I said—and that did give Sarah pause.
She considered me for a moment, then sighed. “Posy was leverage.”
Like the myna bird.
That brought back the conversation I’d had with Haskel: It was always Sarah.
Jacob dealt with a lot of domestics—he would’ve been better at handling this whole encounter.
Or, with her empathic ability, Evelyn. Or, hell, pretty much anyone.
That would teach me to strike out on my own.
But if I didn’t get a handle on this case, Sarah would disappear for good now that she had her cat.
“Is Sledge stalking you?” I flat-out asked.
She shrugged. “He would. If he knew where to find me.”
“Then, let me help. Because you can keep running, or you can give law enforcement what it needs to take Sledge out of circulation for good.”
Sarah unzipped her hoodie and the cat squirmed in and nestled against her. “I do know how to Google, y’know. The most he’d get is five years.” When I frowned in disbelief, she said, “That’s all anyone gets for assault. Plus he’s got his good-boy act down pat.”
Assault? Was it possible she didn’t know about the murder? I’d have to tread carefully so as not to scare her off for good.
“Still,” I said, “it’ll be a relief to stop looking over your shoulder.”
Sarah gave me another shrug—which was probably as much as I could hope to get. I gestured toward the end of the alley where I was parked a few cars down. “Let’s all go down to headquarters and the folks there can figure it all out.”
“Are you nuts?” Boswell said. “I’m not getting in that car.”
Due to the annoying sound that had developed in my suspension, a high-pitched metal-on-metal squeak that grated on my very last nerve, I’d grabbed a standard F-pimp black Lexus sedan.
OK, and maybe I preferred the plush heated seat and the omnipresent new car smell to my low budget ride.
I figured they were both bugged, so I might as well be spied on in style.
To Boswell, I said, “Yes, it’s a government car, and yes, it’s hooked up to their GPS. What difference does it make if they’re tracking us? We’re headed back there anyway.”
“There’s far worse out there than GPS,” Boswell said with great disdain.
Boswell might just be the main target of my assignment—but I was willing to sacrifice him to bring in Sarah. “The safest place for us is our office,” I told her, “promise. You and your cat are welcome.”
Sarah folded her arms protectively over the wriggling lump in her hoodie. “Okay.”
Once Sarah agreed, Boswell changed his tune. “Well, if Simon is going, then I’m going, too.”
“Fine,” I said. “We’ll all go.”
I’d figured it was all said and done, when Sarah said, “But you talked to Zach, right?” I confirmed that I had. “And is that the same car you were driving?”
“If you’re worried Sledge put a tracker on it, too—”
She barked a humorless laugh. “No, nothing that elaborate. He couldn’t even program the remote. I wanna know if he’d recognize it.”
Since she put it that way…you see one F-Pimp sedan, you’ve seen ’em all.
Which was how we ended up doing 45 down the Kennedy in a van full of pee.
Me, Boswell, Sarah, and a very vocal Posy Simon.
Cars swerved around us at 70-plus, laying on their horns so hard the noise oscillated like a siren, but I didn’t say a word—for fear of dislodging the cat… or the sloshing bottles.
Sarah felt no need to be tactful. “You drive slower than my grandmother. And she’s been dead for three years.”
Let her know I found her grandma’s wedding ring. Sledge’s words came back to me sounding nowhere near as innocent as they had when I’d first heard them. In fact, I would’ve put money on him being the main reason Sarah had “lost” it to begin with.
I’ve been burned enough by people who turned out to be wolves in sheep’s clothing—from Roger Burke to Jennifer Chance to the freaking Assassin—that I no longer take anyone at face value.
It was hard to tell if my cop-sense was picking up on Sledge…
or if I simply didn’t like the guy, and Sarah was in cahoots with him and playing me like a big, gullible fiddle.
In the dash where a navigation system, or a CD player, or even an old-school FM radio might have been was an empty hole filled with dangling wires.
But not for a minute did I think Boswell had been robbed.
He caught me eyeing it and said, “You can never be too careful around electronics. Do you know how easy it would be to slip in an extra transmitter? It would look just like all the other legitimate components inside. How would a layman like me know if it was an unauthorized addition? I’ve got a cassette player in the back I picked up at the thrift store.
Burns through batteries like you wouldn’t believe.
But at least I know it’s not hollering out my location for everyone to see. ”
I’d let Sarah ride shotgun, mainly so she kept her focus out the cracked windshield and didn’t take much notice of the hoard in back.
So I didn’t see why traffic slowed ahead and Boswell preemptively slammed his brakes.
The car behind him honked and a bottle of liquid rolled up and knocked me in the foot. Hopefully Blast cola. Hopefully.
“And this is why people need to mind the speed limit,” he said, and swerved onto the off-ramp we’d almost passed, all the while serenaded by Posy Simon’s plaintive ballad.
I craned my neck around him and saw the way was clear—what a relief—and tried to calculate the best way to hand him off at HQ so we could focus on Sarah.
His issues ran way deeper than mediumship.
Let the company shrink deal with him. Dr. Santiago would have her work cut out for her.
But she was a telepath, so maybe she’d have a better chance at connecting the dots.
The van jerked again as the brakes squawked by the corner—thankfully, we hadn’t been going fast on the surface street—and Sarah said, “Now what?”
Just as a bloody guy in lycra barged into the van.
He’d rushed through the door—right through the door…right through Sarah—and lunged at Boswell. The cat immediately went silent as the ghost made a grab for a now-flailing Boswell.
“I was wearing my helmet!” the ghost shouted.
Jesus Christ. The van sputtered and lurched as Boswell swatted the air like he was being accosted by a swarm of angry bees.
“Are you having a seizure?” Sarah wondered—not particularly alarmed—while I kicked myself for not being in position to stomp my foot on the brake. “Posy, no—ugh, she peed on me.”
“I was wearing my goddamn helmet! And what good did it do me?”
Instinct took over. I pulled down a surge of adrenaline-laced white light, leaned in over the seat back, and reached directly through the ghost. Cold raced up my arm, the sickening frigid cold of the grave, crawling like frozen ants through my veins.
A small, panicky part of me wondered if they made it to my heart, would I die?
Maybe it was a coping mechanism. Or maybe one of my undocumented subtle bodies was responsible for the idiotic mental commentary that cropped up in life-or-death situations.
Either way, I shoved it all aside, grabbed the shift, and slammed it into neutral.
I yanked myself back and my breath came out in a frigid cloud. My arm was so cold it burned.
“Why did you even let him drive?” Sarah asked me, mildly annoyed.
White light. I sucked it down so hard, pain throbbed behind my eyeball well before my reservoir topped off.
As the van jerked—less alarmingly now that the gas pedal was disengaged—I threw a strong white balloon around Boswell.
Then, belatedly, me. The dead guy in lycra recoiled.
Not as quick as I’d want. Not like he’d touched a hot stove, but like he’d just noticed the van was full of pee.
But at least he stopped grabbing at the driver.
“What the…?” The ghost had been yelling at Boswell…but now he turned to me. The entire right side of his head was caved in. Shit. “Do you know how much that helmet cost?”
No way was I touching that thing again. Or letting it touch me.
I grabbed for my salt. Damn it, I’d used it back at the apartment!
And I fumbled out my Florida Water. The spritzer seemed ridiculously small now, like fending off a tornado with an inside-out umbrella, but it was all I had.
“You’re dead,” I snapped, and spritzed him with stinky cologne.
“Are you threatening my cat?” Sarah said.
“I’m protecting your cat.” I pumped furiously at the tiny spray. Pathetic gasps of Florida Water misted out. “Stay put, Sarah—you too, Boswell—and let me do my job!”
The van had stopped rolling, mostly, though it rocked as flailing Boswell stomped the brakes.
By whatever etheric physics existed, the ghost stayed with the van, not the landscape.
And now he was focused on me. “I hated that helmet, but it’s the law for bike messengers. Tell me—what good did it do?”
I pumped my spritzer for all I was worth. A cloud of clove-scented alcohol filled the van.
“Well, that’s useless,” Sarah remarked. She had no idea how right she was. “The smell of cat urine never comes out.”
The dead guy flickered and tried to wave off the herbal potion.
I pumped harder…but the juice was getting low.
“Forget about your helmet,” I told the dead guy.
“Maybe your gear failed you, but the longer you hang onto that, the more you keep yourself stuck where you don’t belong.
There’s something good waiting for you. But you’ve gotta let the past go. ”
Boswell and Sarah both looked at me like I was nuts—pot, kettle—but I had to deal with the ghost before he used me like a skin suit to get back at someone for his helmet. Who? No idea. But he was fixated in the way only spirits can be, and I had no doubt he’d do it.
“Let it go?” the ghost demanded. “Over my dead body.” And then he made a grab for me.
If only Carl had packed me a bag, then I’d have more whatnot to throw. If only Mood Blaster still worked, I could’ve filled myself with its whub-whub-whub.
If only I hadn’t left behind the one true Stiff I knew.
The ghost was on me and there was nowhere to dodge. What would Jacob do?
He’d grit his teeth and stand his ground.
Something shifted as my white balloon sucked in, just under my skin, and the dead guy bounced off like I was armored. Frigid cold bloomed across my arm and I huffed out another plume of frost. But my subtle bodies stayed intact.
I imagined the sound of Mood Blaster—not the new version, but the classic made by Evelyn. Whub-whub-whub. Something shifted, and I felt a subtle pressure where my crown chakra should be. Not exactly my third eye. But maybe where it existed in my etheric form.
The van still rocked as Boswell repeatedly stomped the brake in his panic—but the portal to the other side, when it appeared, was steady and true.
It materialized behind the ghost as a shimmer of light, though I suspected its position was relative, and any angle I viewed it from would show me the same thing.
Me. The ghost. And the veil. “You’ll thank me later,” I said, and as my spritzer gave a final, empty hiss, I gathered up my scraps of will, and I shoved.
I’m not sure it would have been enough—the dead guy was just as determined as I was—but, instinctively, Boswell pitched in and helped.
Say what you want about the big weirdo, but his sense of self-preservation was sharp.
The ethers flexed, hard, as the veil closed around the incensed ghost, and the ghostly presence was swept away to the great bike trail in the sky…
or wherever the next leg of his journey might lead.
Afterward, a moment of stillness descended on us where the noises outside seemed far away, and the atmosphere inside the van went calm. Boswell and I looked at each other, and he nodded. I allowed myself to breathe again.
“That’s it,” Sarah declared. “I’m outta here.”