Lyn Benedict - Ghosts & Echoes

“I have a concealed-carry permit,” she said.

He raised his brows, double-barreled skepticism, followed by a speaking eye sweep of their surroundings. An utterly nonverbal yeah right .

She licked her lip. He hadn’t been anywhere near that expressive during the time they were roaming around the parking lot, checking for burglars.

“They ignore it or lose it,” Sylvie said.

“It’s a conspiracy? The Man out to get you? I hear that a lot.”

Sylvie sighed, pitched her voice to the most annoying whine possible. “Yup. But it’s different this time, Officer. . . .” At his expression, she said, “What? You never played the game at all? Losing info? Just long enough to make a difference?”

“I’m a beat cop,” Wright said. “I risk my neck for a general pop that spit on me if I give ’em a chance. I do my job, I do it well, and I don’t play games.”

“Don’t you?” She stood, tried to stand, and was yanked to an awkward crouch by the cuffs. It did nothing for her mood. “Thing is, I’m used to my clients lying to me, Wright, but it still burns me every single time.”

“I haven’t—”

“Lying by omission is still a lie,” she said. “You have blackouts? Fugue states? You think the ghost is walking around in your skin, and you didn’t think to mention that?”

The receptionist, a heavyset cop with a permanently etched scowl on his face, said, “Hey, Shadows, keep your freak show quiet!”

The rasp in her throat pointed out, if the cop’s reprimand hadn’t, that she’d been one step away from shouting. Sylvie sucked in a breath, brought her temper back under control, and dropped into the seat.

Wright didn’t make it easy. The moment she sat, he said, “I told you I was possessed. I thought that kinda thing came with the label.”

“That’s it?” she said. “That’s all you’re going to say. You just expected me to know?”

He nodded once, jerkily.

The bad temper washed out of her; he looked so . . . broken. A tough guy barely hanging on.

He scrubbed his free hand over his mouth, his eyes, as if he could wipe away things he had seen or said. As if the whole problem could be erased. Then his shoulders went back, stiff and strong. “So, you going to tell me what happened? I mean, what . . . it did when it had control?”

Sylvie studied the juncture of cuff and bench, a spot worn slick in the terrazzo. She wasn’t sure she had an answer to his question—two questions in one, really. The covert one was a plea for assurance that there was a ghost at all.

Setting aside her default paranoia, Sylvie wasn’t convinced that there had been anything more at play than the sleep spell messing with a man already fighting his own mind.

“Did it try to hurt—”

“You were helpful,” Sylvie said. “You were useful. A little mouthy, a little logy, not all that different.”

Wright’s mouth twisted, rejecting what should have been good news. Sylvie reminded herself that cops had their own instincts, and he was reading between what she had and hadn’t said. His voice deepened to a growl, an angry pitch she hadn’t thought he could reach. “I recognize that look. You’re going to dump me and my problem on someone else.”

Sylvie bit back her first, second, third retorts, before saying, temperately, “I just don’t think it’s my kind of problem.” A police station was not the place to have this talk. This discussion should be happening in the privacy of her office, not under the bloodshot eyes of an overworked cop. But Wright was as pushy as the best cops tended to be.

He swallowed hard, his throat working, his chest rising rapidly beneath his thin T-shirt. “I thought you were supposed to help me. Thought you were supposed to believe all this shit.”

Sylvie scooched over on the bench to put her mouth close to his ear. “What ‘shit’ is that? Wright, all I’ve seen so far is a man with a blackout. And that’s explicable by lots of things: drug abuse”—she held up her hand to forestall his instant protest—“psychological trauma, organic trauma, just plain exhaustion. Just because there are monsters doesn’t mean that every shadow is cast by one. You have a high-stress job in a high-stress city that just had big problems. You have money problems. You’re having trouble in your marriage. And you died . You’re the poster boy for stress-related disorders.”

“I dreamed you. Isn’t that proof enough?” He picked fitfully at the fraying denim on his knee. She addressed herself to the high blade of his cheekbone, the bronze stubble blurring his tight-held jaw.

“Tell me what type of possessing ghost would be so helpful? Possession isn’t a good thing, Wright—”

She ignored his dry Tell me about it and bulled on. “Possession means taking over someone else, trammeling their will beneath your own, claiming their flesh. Not the mark of a good guy. Not the mark of a nice guy. Yet your supposed ghost helped out. Do you see why I’m having doubts?” It sounded good. Believable. Solid. Everything she said had been true. Facts. Logic. The PI’s best friends.

Yet she couldn’t quite shake the tiniest doubt in herself. The idea that Wright’s ghost might be a very real threat.

“You don’t want to take the case, fine. Don’t lie about it,” he shot back, and he was hissing in her face now, red-flushed, a vein pulling tight in his neck. “If you don’t believe me, tell me why Cedo Nulli makes you flinch.”

“You’re mangling the Latin,” she said.

The intake cop growled another warning.

Wright leaned back, let bleach-scented air drift between them; the red heat faded from his skin before he said, “I’m not leaving. You don’t believe? Just wait. You’ll get your fuckin’ proof. I’ll be your sidekick if I gotta. But I’m sticking around.”

“You could help your cause,” Sylvie said. Her voice was sharp, torn between guilty relief that he wasn’t going to let her push him away, anger for the same cause. “You got someone else in your head, and you know nothing about them? Not even a name? C’mon, Wright, you want me to believe you? Give me something. Give me a name.”

Wright’s eyelids fell closed, shutting off that fever-bright gaze. The last of the hectic flush faded, leaving him ashen. His brow knotted. Behind his eyelids, movement, searching his own mind. She found herself holding her breath.

“It’s . . .” His hands fisted, his jaw tightened, and he gritted the words out. “I don’t think it knows. It’s all broken glass; edges and bits and pieces. Like those toys, kaleidoscopes, and you turn ’em and you turn ’em and it’s pretty and shiny but it never makes sense. It’s like there’s a piece missing.” He went back to picking at his jeans.

She didn’t say anything. She might be a bitch, but she didn’t kick a man when he was down. Unless he deserved it.

“I’m still sticking to you like glue,” he muttered.

She licked her lips, hated to give him false hope, but ghost or not, his distress was real. “I’ll get someone to take a closer look, do a proper diagnosis. I can help you that much.”

A rude laugh interrupted their talk; Felipe Suarez loomed over them. His partner, three steps ahead, holding two cups of coffee, paused on his way toward the exit. “Shadows, you don’t help people. You fuck ’em over. I’d run back to your wife, Chicago, if I were you. Or you’ll end up on a slab.”

“Felipe, man, c’mon,” his partner urged, and silence fell in their wake.

Wright cleared his throat. “So, why exactly are they out to get you?”

“Rafi . . . Rafael Suarez was an employee of mine, as well as related to a good chunk of the force.”