Haunted

Page 21

“What the hell are you doing?” he demanded.
“Matt, it’s her skull—the younger sister’s skull. The story was true. History. We all knew that she had been murdered by her older sister.”
“Put it down immediately,” he admonished harshly.
She stared at him, confused, frowning.
“Down, put it down!”
Slowly, she did so. “What on earth is the matter with you?” she demanded. “Look, whether you believe in any of this or not, you don’t have to be such a jerk. I’ve found her skull. We can bury it with her body. That would just be human decency.”
He hunkered down by her, looking at the skull that now lay on the freshly dug earth. He didn’t touch it, but stared at her again. “Keep your hands off it.”
“But—”
“You’ve got a human skull there. And I’m the sheriff.”
She looked at him then in total disbelief. “But…this murder took place well over a hundred years ago! What are you going to try to do—arrest someone?”
“How do you know that?”
“What do you mean, how do I know that? We both know the story.”
He waved a hand in the air, dismissing her outrage. “Are you a bone expert as well, Miss Tremayne?”
Anger took slow root in her, and, along with it, a sinking feel of desolation. Dammit, he knew it. He knew as well as she did that the skull had been in the earth for eons. And there was something about the way he was hunkered down, near her, yet a million miles away. He wasn’t going to admit that she had found the skull, that she was right, and that she had somehow come upon it through extrasensory perception. At the same time, he knew in his gut that was just what she had done. He drew away. He didn’t believe in her power, but he was still repulsed by it, maybe at some instinctive level of his own.
“All right. There’s your skull. What are you going to do about it?”
“I’m going to see that it’s properly handled.”
“It belongs to a poor, young, innocent girl who was brutally murdered by someone she loved and trusted. To handle it properly, you merely need to get the records out and see that her head is buried with her body,” Darcy said angrily.
“You can guarantee me, beyond a doubt, that this is her skull?” he said scornfully.
“Yes.”
“Well, that’s not the way the law works.”
“You’re being ridiculous.”
“I’m doing my job.”
Darcy stood up and dusted her hands on the sides of her jeans. “Fine. You do what you have to do,” she said, and started walking away from him.
She felt his hand fall upon her upper arm. Hard. When he swung her back, there was too much force to his touch. She stared at his hand, stared at his eyes. He released her instantly.
“Do you go around finding body parts all the time and just burying them because you’re convinced they have to be ancient?”
“No.”
“No to which?”
“We both know whose head this is!”
“Whether we do or not, human remains have to be handled properly. Legally.”
Her eyes fell. Maybe he was right on that. And maybe she was just dismayed by the horror she had seen in his eyes when he had watched her with the skull.
“All right, Sheriff. I bow to your very logical and legal reasoning. If you’ll excuse me, though, I think I’ll head back for a shower.”
He nodded, those gray eyes still on her. She felt a strange hurt inside, and she was furious with herself. Matt Stone had been a hostile force from the very beginning. She’d been an idiot to let any measure of attraction form between them. And yet…attraction didn’t form. It existed. It existed right then as they stood in the woods, as they stared at one another. Something in the air, alive, electric, static. She’d never felt such an urge to come close to another person, press against him, feel his arms wrap around her. She was certain that the sheer heat dancing in the air emitted from him. And she was equally certain that no matter what his raw desire, the static erupted from his mind, like a wild wind that pushed away, even as it pulled.
She suddenly wanted to shout that she wasn’t a leper.
But in his mind, maybe she was.
She turned and walked away, striding to Nellie without looking back. She mounted, turned the horse toward home, and never turned her head.
Anger filled her. To anyone else, she might have just proven that she did have certain psychic abilities. Not Matt. He wouldn’t begin to understand her job. That yes, Harrison Investigations could come in and prove if something wasn’t right—if there was indeed a fake, a trickster, creating ghosts or hauntings for their own purposes—be it simple amusement or something illegal. But when phenomena were real, they tried to find out why, what had happened, why ghosts couldn’t move on. And then they tried to help them.
She’d helped Amy. And the idiot, Matt Stone, should realize that it meant she could discover the truth about his house. And that it should be discovered, because it was something even stranger than she’d ever encountered before.
Something far more sinister.
And it didn’t seem that even Josh could help her here, as he so often could.
When she could solve a mystery and help heal a lost soul, she loved what she did. Which was wonderful, because far too often her work was frightening, and she felt such deep sympathy so many times that it was painful. And yet, a day like today was so incredibly rewarding!
Except that it had to come with a man like Matt Stone!
The great unbeliever.
She knew that he hadn’t moved.
And he wouldn’t move, not for a while.
He would watch after her long after Nellie took to the trail.
It was late, but it didn’t matter. Matt sat at his desk back at the station, doing nothing.
He’d called out a few of his men, and the skull, and the surrounding dirt, though disturbed, had been properly boxed for forensic study.
Because he’d known that Darcy was right about the identity of the skull, he’d had it taken straight to friends at the Smithsonian who specialized in the field, and he knew that he’d get a report back in the morning that the skull was well over a hundred years old.
So he found himself sitting in his office, doing nothing. His door was closed. At first, he’d pretended to be busy with paperwork. Then, he’d given up all pretense, sat back in his chair, laced his fingers behind his head, and stared into space.
The image returned to him again and again.
Darcy, digging.
Darcy with the skull.
Her cry of triumph.
It gave him the creeps.
But not really, and it should have. She was fucking weird. No. Yes.
She was, and it didn’t matter. She was still inordinately attractive to him, arresting. More. Seductive. He should want nothing to do with her. He wanted to be closer to her, instead. He wanted to talk to her, know what made her tick, understand her background. He loved the sound of her voice, the inflections in it. He was equally fascinated by every flick of her eyes, her slightest movement. She could have so much energy, move so quickly and fluidly, and then show such cool poise and reserve that she was maddening.
If he stayed at work, he could keep some distance. He needed distance. If anything was really hauntingly mysterious, it was the allure she seemed to hold for him. So she was good-looking—many women were. All right, so she was sinuous, sensual, and fluid as a cat. Other nearly-perfect people also had such seductive quality.
Not like this woman.
Maybe it was the secrets, or the knowledge in her eyes.
Why the hell couldn’t he be repulsed. Christ, she’d been digging in the dirt like a gopher!
There was a rap on his door.
“Yeah?”
He pulled his feet off his desk top as he called out.
Deputy Harding, charged with the graveyard shift, opened his door and peeked in. “Everything all right?”
Alan Harding was young. A good age to keep peace between midnight and eight. Sandy-haired, blue eyed, nearly six-four, and capable of controlling the occasional rowdy drunks who called for law enforcement at that hour.
“Yeah, everything is fine. Why?”
“Just…er, checking. You don’t usually sit around in here this late, that’s all.”
Matt arched a brow. “How late?”
“It’s nearly two.”
“A.M.?”
Harding grinned. “That is my shift.”
“Yeah, sure.” Matt scratched his cheek. “Yeah, I was just leaving.”
He rose, taking his hat from the peg on the wall. “Call me if—”
“If I need you, yessir,” Alan said, a cleft in his chin deepening along with his smile. “Heard you found an old skull out in the woods today.”
“I didn’t find it.”
“The psychic found it, huh?”
He stiffened. Why the hell did he hate it when people referred to Darcy as a psychic? That’s what she claimed to be.
He didn’t believe in psychics. Refused to believe in psychics.
“Miss Tremayne, from Harrison Investigations, found the skull, if that’s what you mean.”
“She must be for real, huh?”
Matt settled his hat on his head. “She can read, and she ap parently likes libraries. That’s why the name of the company has the word investigations in it, Alan.”
“Sure—sir!” Alan said.
Matt shook his head and walked out, throwing over his shoulder, “Call me if—”
“If we need you,” Harding finished for him again.
Matt muttered beneath his breath. When he exited the station, a low-lying fog sat on the ground. And despite himself, he suddenly felt an intuition of unease. What the hell had he been doing at the station so late?
Deepest night.
He should have been at Melody House for hours now.
His strides were long as he headed for his car. And he was damned glad that he was the sheriff right then because he far exceeded the speed limit as he headed home.