“I think we need to look at the domestic situation further,” Sean replied.
Bogie nodded. “Yes, closely. Very closely.”
Madison walked across the hall with Logan waiting at the door, watching her enter her own room. Sean looked at him. “She’s safe,” he said in a low voice.
“You’re going over there?”
“Yeah.”
“Good night, then. We’ll get organized to question Helena in the morning. I’ll send Tyler and the others to the studio with Madison, and you and I can question Mr. Archer’s charming wife.”
Sean agreed and crossed over to Madison’s room, tapping at her door. She let him in quickly, but it didn’t seem to matter to her whether others noted his arrival or not. He handed her his meal, then shed his jacket, gun and holster, and placed the Glock on the side of the bed.
She set their food up on the desk, and despite the late hour, he was surprised to discover how hungry he was. They ate in comparative silence, asking common meal questions like, “Is there another packet of ketchup?” and “Hand me one of those foil things of butter, will you?”
When they’d finished, Madison threw away the trash. He watched her and found himself thinking that she was extraordinary, and not just because she spoke with ghosts. She moved fluidly and everything about her was natural. With Madison, there was absolutely no pretense in a world where pretense was everything; it was even what she did for a living. He’d thought her beautifully, sensually shaped when they’d met, and now he knew that his every lustful thought had been right, that her skin was like satin, her hair like silk. And when she looked at a man with those blue eyes wide and exhaled on a satisfied sigh, she was as erotic as he could have dreamed.
He stood, coming up behind her, slipping his arms around her. She turned easily into his embrace, and for a moment, he cupped her chin and met her eyes, searching them to understand how her shade of blue could be more beautiful than any other.
“What?” she whispered.
“Nothing. I’m exhausted…and deliriously happy to be with you. But I’m the kind of exhausted that makes me think I need a distraction—some activity—if I’m ever going to sleep.”
“I’ll show you activity!” she said, laughing. Her fingers brushed his chest as she undid the buttons on his shirt. Just her touch seemed to ignite something in him. He shrugged out of the shirt as her fingers moved to his belt buckle….
Later, when they lay spent and sated in each other’s arms, she spoke to him softly. “So…who was she? I don’t mean to open any wounds, but…when you left here, you went back to Texas….”
He was quiet for a while as he studied her. Then he smiled. “She was the love of my life at one time, and my best friend at another,” he said. “We did the mad, passionate on-and-off thing for years when we were in high school, and whenever we were home from college. But…”
“But?”
“We went in different directions. I wanted Hollywood. She wanted politics. We fought like wildcats after college, and then split up. I moved to California and she was a mover in Texas, giving fantastic speeches, fierce and loyal to all her causes. I watched her career from afar, and we kept up, mainly through Facebook and email.”
He hesitated again, thinking about Melissa. He remembered how the illness had taken her bit by bit, and yet never stolen her passion, her heart, her soul or her courage.
By then he’d realized they were friends. The best of friends. But when she died, it seemed that he’d lost the love of his life. Their histories had been interwoven.
Love could change. Love between them had become something different. No longer sexual. Something different, yes, maybe even something more.
He looked at Madison and touched her face with a bittersweet smile. “We were far apart in distance and in the everyday course of our lives. I was still fairly new out here, working constantly, having that occasional wild night out or superficial fling. And then…then I heard about the cancer. Melissa didn’t have family. Her dad had departed—left the family, more or less disappeared—when she was two, and her mom died when she was twenty-two. We’d been together during that hard time, and it might have helped cement what we had, I don’t know.”
“She must have had many friends and been adored.”
“She did and she was, but no one knew her like I did. And as she was failing, she didn’t want to be around others. It was pride, I guess. She didn’t want a lot of people to see her as she was—thin as a rail, balding, drawn. And pretense in front of people who aren’t really close can be exhausting. I thought about Melissa and our situation endlessly after she died. Maybe we were never meant to be. And maybe we both believed that we’d get ambition out of the way and then we’d be together when we were ready. It didn’t matter. When I knew how sick she was, I had to go to her, and she accepted me. I talked to her doctor…. He was a good guy. He never let her completely lose hope—but didn’t give her false hope, either. He told me they’d try everything they could while she had breath in her body, but the prognosis wasn’t positive. Melissa was an intelligent woman, and she could see that she wasn’t getting any better. There were good days when I first got back. Really good days. But what I learned was that ambition didn’t mean a thing.
“When she died, I was already gaining a reputation for special effects, especially computer-generated effects, in Texas. I got established in San Antonio, and there was a lot of work going on there. I stayed, thinking I might go back to Hollywood one day, but my heart wasn’t in it. I worked with the Texas Rangers and the state and local police on a few cases, and it seemed that I’d found my niche.”
He paused, and Madison nudged him to continue.
“A while back,” he resumed, “a man named Adam Harrison—who’d been called in by both private citizens and the government in strange and unusual cases for years—was approached by the FBI to put together a special unit. He formed the first Krewe of Hunters. Then he found out there was so much going on, some of it genuinely unusual, and some of it people playing at the unusual, that they figured they needed to create another team. No one really knows how Adam Harrison gets his information about people, but he has a knack for putting teams together. Five of us are from Texas and were working there. My cousin Kelsey grew up in Florida, but she’d visited Texas a lot. No one has to join the team, of course. We’re all allowed to make our own choices. It’s been good for me. It let me really step back, see where I’ve been and where I want to be.”
“You were approached because someone knew you could talk to the dead?” Madison asked him.
“Yes.”
“Were…were you able to talk to Melissa after she died?”
He nodded. “Once. At her grave site. She touched my face, kissed my lips—and told me to live my life. But at that point…well, I couldn’t. She told me she was going on, that it was only right. We had known how to say goodbye in life. Now we needed to do it after her death.” He remembered his emotions during that awful time when the cancer had become so unbearable he prayed Melissa would die, so the pain would end.
“She was a wonderful human being,” Madison whispered.
He nodded, and hugged her tighter. He didn’t have to say anything else. He didn’t have to tell her she was wonderful, too.
He felt her gentle touch, and then the way she curled against him. He cradled her chin. “And you?” he asked, meeting her eyes.
“I used to feel like a truly odd loner for a really long time—and yet, I was never really unhappy, just scared and convinced I was crazy, and that I needed to keep my secret. When I was young…”
“Yes?”
“There was Josh.”
“The love of your life?”
“My young life. He died before we graduated. A ridiculous accident,” she said, and told him what had happened to the young man so full of promise. “Even at his funeral, all he wanted me to do was make sure everyone found a way to accept his death. And then after he died…I’ve dated casually. But Bogie followed me home when I was still in college, so my casual dating hasn’t been going that great. Maybe I’ve been afraid of getting close to people. My first experience with ghosts was Billy. I was so young that when I tried to tell people he was going to a better place, my mother was appalled. She doesn’t understand.”
“Poor baby!” he said, and he smiled. “There are those of us who do understand. You know that now, don’t you?”
“I know,” she murmured.
They curled together in a comfortable silence.
And then they were both able to sleep.
Vengeance was waiting. Vengeance didn’t like to wait. But the night was dark, and a low fog was hanging over the ground, eerie and mysterious. Rather nice, Vengeance thought.
She arrived, angry, as she tiptoed through the grass. “This is totally going to ruin my shoes. And getting here was a nightmare!”
“You’re late.”
“You’re damned lucky I’m here!”
“You’re damned lucky I just don’t tell them you did it.”
“What? I’d accuse you. You’re the one who did it.”
“You made it possible!” Vengeance reminded her.
She looked away. “I’m not going into the tunnels. I already went into those damned tunnels for you, and I’m not doing it again.”
“You don’t have to go into the tunnels. Not now.”
“Well, you said I have to help clean up. What the hell did you want me to do, then?” she asked irritably.
“Die!” Vengeance said quietly. “Just die.”
Her eyes widened.
When she opened her mouth to scream, it was too late.
14
When Madison woke up the next morning, Sean was no longer beside her. She found a note on the pillow telling her that he’d had an idea and she should join Logan Raintree and the others in the suite.
