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Kipp glanced up at me with despairing eyes. My heart twisted as if stabbed with a dagger. “I’m a ghost.”
“Er, you’re just realizing this now?”
Max huffed. “What’s going on?”
“Shhh.” I waved my hand for him to shut it. Moments like this one deserved to be uninterrupted. The knowledge and acceptance that he had died hadn’t hit Kipp and I saw reality settle in his expression.
I assumed he’d already dealt with his death since he seemed at ease with it all. I’d apparently been wrong and obviously wasn’t the only one who had trouble accepting things.
“Of course I knew I had died, but being preoccupied with you and the case, I think it took my mind away from it all.”
“That’s understandable.” I hoped my gentle tone would soothe him. Normally, I was cautious and understanding when spirits faced their deaths, but with Kipp there’d been more. To see him in this state, the anguish washing over him, made my heart sink into a bottomless pit of despair.
“It’s all over.” Kipp’s eyes pleaded for me to make it better. “This is it for me?”
My strength to keep myself distant faltered and tears filled my eyes. “I’m so sorry, Kipp.”
He sighed and bowed his head. “What’s there to be sorry about? It’s done. It’s just…” He shrugged. “I always thought there would be more—wife, kids, a family. Just more.”
I couldn’t say anything to change the fact that he’d never have those things. But the part that dug at me the most was that when he said those words, it pained me too, affected me as if those were my stolen dreams as well.
The silence dragged on until Kipp finally glanced up at me. “Do you think I’m being punished?”
I cocked my head. “Punished for what?”
“Maybe I’m still here because I need to earn my right into heaven? That I’ve done wrong while I lived and I’m not welcome until I do something right?”
What could he have done wrong? He’d been a good cop, that had to be a one-way ticket through the pearly gates. “I doubt that.”
“It’s cruel, you know…” His grief intensified in his expression. “To be in a world where you once had control over everything, to now have none.”
I imagined it would be. “Well, that’s why we’re doing this, right, to make sure you can move on.”
“But what if I don’t want to go? What if everything I’ve ever wanted is right here?”
Did he mean his job? His life as a whole? Part of me hoped that he meant he didn’t want to leave me. I searched for something to say to him, but kept coming up blank. He’d been so unlike the ghosts before him. So unsure in why he still lingered here, and even more so, he fought against his want to stay. A definite first experience for me. What makes you so different?
Max cleared his throat. “Are you all right there, Kipp?”
Kipp blinked, as if breaking whatever hold his mind had on him. “Tell him we were talking about the case.”
If my heart could’ve broken more, it just did. In all this, his only thoughts were of others, and my tears dripped down my cheeks. How could a man like Kipp be stripped of his life? I wanted to reach out, take him in my arms and never let go, but the truth bared its ugly head with an icy reminder, it’d never be.
I breathed deep to control my emotions and looked at Max. “He told me about Hannah. I’m sorry, I get emotional sometimes.”
Max didn’t look convinced, but glanced away from me to the file on the table. “All right, let’s get focused. Did Kipp get a look at him?”
Zach shook his head. “Negative.” He leaned back in his chair, laced his fingers behind his head and tilted the chair back on two legs. “But another source gave us a description.”
Max brows furrowed. “What source?”
Zach shifted his weight in the chair, sent the legs down to bang against the floor and gestured toward me. “Kipp and her found Hannah.”
“You have not!” Max exclaimed.
I nodded. “We did.”
He eyed me curiously. “Well now, that could come in handy.”
