Chapter 34
Chapter Thirty-Four
From the passenger seat, travel mug in hand, Natalie glanced over at Liam behind the wheel of his Jeep. “Are you eventually going to tell me where we are going and why?”
“Yes.”
A one-word answer.
If this man wasn’t so hot and she didn’t love him so damn much, she’d be immensely annoyed with him, instead of just moderately so.
She let out a huff of a breath then raised the mug to her lips.
The coffee was good at least. Strong but sweet with just enough half-and-half. But she’d have far preferred to be drinking it out of her favorite ceramic mug still in her PJs back in her apartment.
The metal travel cup and its plastic lid with the tiny drink hole along one edge was more trouble than it was worth.
The poor design made the risk of getting scalded or dribbling coffee all over the front of her too great. She didn’t need that kind of challenge this early in the morning while bouncing along in the Jeep at seventy miles an hour on Liam’s mysterious mission.
Finally, after yet another glance at the dashboard, Liam drew in a breath as he slowed and exited the highway. “Okay. We can talk freely now.”
She lifted a brow and lowered the cup, placing it safely in the cup holder, then waited.
Liam glanced briefly over, then back to the road in front of them. “I needed to make sure we were far enough away it couldn’t hear us.”
“The brain ghost?”
“Yes.” He flipped on the directional signal and swung the vehicle into the entrance to the park in Oneonta.
He pulled under a tree next to the lake, shifted the Jeep into park, then cut the engine.
It was a lovely spot, but she wasn’t convinced it was necessary they drive all the way there just to talk.
“Gabe said the test proved they can only travel three and a half miles,” she reminded him.
Meanwhile, she and Liam had been driving for a solid twenty minutes. By now they had to be five times that distance away from the lab where the brain still resided in its lead container, inside a faraday bag he’d had delivered overnight, inside the lab’s brain freezer.
Liam cocked up a dark brow. “Do you really want to take that chance? We can’t be sure of anything when it comes to the spirit world.
Why can we hear Millie and Gabe but none of the other ghosts, and only when they are in physical contact with each other?
Why can this brain ghost do bodily harm but others can’t?
We don’t know. So no, I’m not going to trust that this thing can only travel the same distance as the others.
I considered driving us all the way to Cooperstown just to be sure. Hell, maybe I still should.”
He reached for the ignition and Natalie laid a hand on his forearm. “I think we’re okay. I don’t feel him anymore.”
Liam whipped around to look at her. “But you do still feel him in Mudville?”
He wasn’t going to take it well that she’d been walking around feeling the press of evil so strong it made it hard to breathe and she hadn’t told him.
Pressing her lips together, she nodded and braced herself for the reaction.
As expected, his eyes widened. “Natalie!”
“I know. Stop. Don’t yell at me. What were you going to do anyway if I had told you I could feel him?”
“I’d have driven you out of range and put you up in a hotel room. That’s what.”
“And who would take care of the shop? Jules has classes—”
“Fuck the shop.” He glared. “You are what’s important.”
How she loved this man, even when he was overprotective. “I’m fine. Just tell me, why are we here?”
Still looking unhappy, he reached for the cell phone he’d plugged into the dashboard charger because they couldn’t keep a battery charged nowadays in Mudville.
“We’re here to make a phone call,” Liam answered.
“To?” she prompted.
He lifted his gaze from the cell’s display and said, “The one person who might be able to help us get rid of this thing. For good.”
Liam tapped the screen and then put the cell on speaker so Natalie could hear.
After three rings, a deep voice said, “Well, well, well. If it isn’t Doctor Liam Walsh. How are things back in Mudville? You bored yet?”
Liam let out a snort. “Definitely not boring here. That’s why I’m calling. As much as I hate to admit it as a proud Army veteran, I need a favor from the US Navy. And since you’re one of the few sailors I actually like, I figured I’d call my old buddy Dean.”
Discounting Liam ribbing Dean about the legendary Army-Navy rivalry, Natalie tried to piece the rest of this puzzle together.
Dean was Liam’s friend from his military days, though unlike Liam, Dean was still on active duty, stationed somewhere in Virginia, if she remembered correctly.
Natalie had gotten to meet Dean last year while he was home on leave visiting his parents. In fact, it had been Dean who’d given Liam a head’s up that the perfect property for his cadaver lab was for sale in his hometown in upstate New York.
“Happy to help if I can. You know I owe you,” Dean said.
Liam let out a snort. “Yeah you do, considering you stole the best lab intern I ever had from me. How is Tessa? You two still cohabitating?”
Tessa, the grad student Liam had hired to help at the lab… until Dean came to town. The two met and fell for each other on his visit home. Then Tessa had moved to be with him.
“Sorry, Walsh. Love trumps lab any day. And Tessa’s great. Happily working hard on experiments that I still don’t completely understand. Unhappily counting down the days until I ship out again.”
Natalie saw Liam react to that. “You’re shipping out? Soon?”
“Yup. Sunday, zero-seven hundred, so it’s good you caught me now. Never know what kind of communications there will be aboard ship.”
“Where are you going? Or can you not say?” Liam asked in a convincingly casual tone that didn’t match the tension she saw in his jaw or the muscles in his forearm as he clenched the phone in one fist.
“It’s not a secret. We’ll be training over the Mariana Trench.”
Liam’s eyes widened.
Why? What was the significance of this Mariana Trench?
Natalie picked up her own cell phone, also plugged into the dashboard to charge. She navigated to the browser and searched Mariana Trench. What she read had her own eyes widening.
Located in the western Pacific Ocean, it is the deepest oceanic trench on Earth.
She remembered during the meeting at the shop when they were discussing where they might possibly dump the brain that would be far enough away from any living people.
Liam’s idea to use the ocean wasn’t random. In all the stress she’d forgotten he had a friend in the Navy. A friend with access to a ship that would be sailing over the deepest part of the ocean, and it was leaving Sunday.
But how deep was this trench? Was it deep enough?
Her heart pounded as she read further. When she found the answer she gasped.
Seven miles.
Double what the ghosts could travel.
Wide-eyed, she glanced up at Liam. He nodded to her. She could see the hope peeking out from behind his usual poker face.
“So, this is going to sound crazy,” Liam began. “But what if I were to drive down to you with something. What are the chances this object could make its way into your duffle and onto that boat…and then over the side where it might sink into the Mariana Trench?”
Liam waited. So did Natalie as the silence stretched on.
Finally, Dean asked, “What might this object be?”
Liam shot Natalie a sideways glance, then said, “It’s just under twenty pounds. Metal. About the size of a funeral urn.”
After another hesitation, Dean said, “Walsh, I’m not saying no—yet. I’d just like to know. Am I disposing of a body for you?”
Liam hesitated just a beat. She understood why. This was a gray area. The brain in that lead vessel was, in fact, a body part.
She also understood the reason behind Dean’s question. Liam’s description had made it sound like it could be cremated human remains.
What she didn’t quite grasp was how calm Dean was while facing the possibility Liam might be asking him to ditch an urn filled with the ashes of a person where no one would ever find it.
This unfailing, unquestioning loyalty must be a military thing. Brothers-in-arms and all that. Or maybe Dean just thought Liam was doing a favor for a friend who’d passed and wanted to have his final resting place be the ocean.
“I didn’t murder anyone, if that’s what you’re asking,” Liam said with complete honesty even if it wasn’t the whole truth.
It was a good answer. Liam always was good at thinking on his feet. She nodded in approval.
Revealing the actual truth seemed out of the question in this situation, because what were the chances of Dean believing they had an evil brain ghost murdering the citizens of Mudville and the only way to save them all, and the rest of the world, was to ditch the brain in the deepest trench on earth?
She had to guess the chances of Dean thinking Liam belonged in the psych ward were higher.
Finally after a tense couple of moments, Dean said, “All right. You get it down here, I’ll take it...and I’ll make sure it doesn’t come off the ship with me.”
She could see Liam’s relief as he let out a breath. “Thank you.”
Dean laughed. “Yeah, sure. No problem... I hope. And now you owe me one.”
Liam let out a short laugh of his own. “Buddy, I owe you more than one for this. Text me an address. I’ll let you know when I have an ETA.”
“I’ll be waiting… because I can’t wait to see this mysterious cargo I’ll be carrying.”
Dean should probably not be so anxious to get his hands on the vessel, because Natalie feared the cargo was likely to fight back.