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“Detective,” Cassie said again.
“What the hell?” Harris leaned closer to her computer screen. “Jesus, Bradley wasn’t kidding. This guy owns four houses in Savannah alone.”
“Detective!”
Harris didn’t bother looking up. “Go home, Cassie. I’ll call you—”
“I know how to find him.”
Harris stopped what she was doing and looked up at Cassie, who was standing at the edge of her desk wringing her hands. “Come again?”
Cassie took a step closer. Her thighs pressed into the edge of the desktop. “Elizabeth is standing at the end of the hallway with her arm outstretched. She’s trying to tell me something. I think that something is where Baker is.”
To her credit, Harris didn’t question that Cassie was seeing the ghost of one of the murder victims. Progress, Cassie figured.
“How would she know that? She wouldn’t have been taken there.”
“Her heart was,” Cassie said. “And her blood. Some spirits are tied to their bodies. And he has a piece of her.”
Harris tapped her pen against her keyboard’s space bar. “I don’t know about this.”
Cassie looked Detective Harris in the eyes. “It’s going to take a lot more time going to each of his houses and hoping we get to him before he sees the news. This is the best chance we have of beating the clock. Trust me, Detective. You’ve got to.”
For a moment, Cassie couldn’t read Harris’s expression. Her eyes were wide, but her mouth was set in a firm line. She looked down at her watch, then at her computer, and then at the other cops standing around them. No one seemed to be paying them much attention.
“We need to go out the back,” Harris said. “We’ll avoid the press. If they see me, they’ll follow us and that’s not a good problem to have.”
Cassie nodded her head and Harris took off toward the back of the precinct. Cassie followed her through the maze of corridors until they were standing in front of an unassuming door leading outside. When Harris pushed it open, they were both momentarily blinded by the Georgia sun cresting over the roofline of the opposite building.
Harris recovered, then strode across the parking lot with purpose. Cassie had to jog to keep up, and by the time she made it to the front seat of Harris’s unmarked sedan, the detective was already pulling out of the parking spot.
“Where to?”
Cassie pulled her seatbelt down over her chest and felt the buckle click in place. When she looked up again, she noticed Elizabeth standing next to the exit sign that led out to the main road. It was harder to see her in the broad daylight, she was translucent, distorted the world behind her a bit. But her dark hair was enough to make her stand out against the environment.
“There.” Cassie pointed toward the road. “Let the record show, I’ve never done this, so I don’t know how this is going to work.”
“Noted.” Harris gunned the car.
Thirty-Nine
Cassie had never thought about what it would be like to try to follow a glitching, blinking apparition from point A to point B. But if she had, she would’ve imagined a scene close to their current reality.
Cassie knew Harris was trying to stay calm, but it wasn’t easy being directed toward an unknown destination when your GPS was literally dead. Harris left her sirens off because she didn’t want to draw attention to their pursuit. They had to fly under the radar which was difficult when they were making last minute turns and short stops, tires squealing hard, leaving swathes of burnt-rubber flavored air.
“Remind me to never let you convince me to do this again.” Harris pulled onto the highway after almost missing the turn.
“You might change your mind if this ends up working out in our favor.” The sharp turn plastered Cassie into the passenger side door.
“Unlikely,” Harris replied. Her eyes never wavered from the road ahead.
Cassie kept her eyes on the road, too, scouting for a ghost. She didn’t know what would happen if she missed one of Elizabeth’s directions. Would she give up and disappear, or would she keep appearing in the middle of the highway until Cassie realized they needed to turn around?
“Anything?” Harris had had the foresight to hop into her personal vehicle so they could roll right up to Baker’s house in an unmarked sedan without looking suspicious. The downside to that was she had to drive near the speed limit so she didn’t risk getting pulled over. Harris would never be issued a ticket, but they could not afford to lose any time.
Both could feel the clock ticking away.
“Not yet.” Cassie’s eyes roamed from side to side. Every time they passed an exit, she would press her face against the glass and make sure she didn’t miss Elizabeth glittering in the sun. “Wait. There. Next exit.”
