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“That’s a mysterious story.” The masculine voice was smooth, cultured, the kind of voice that would suit an actor or a news announcer, and not at all what Sawyer had been expecting.
But it didn’t matter if Paul sounded like a reasonable person, he was out of his mind, and probably had a gun trained on Mia right now. Sawyer had to get closer, and figure out where each of them was standing in relationship to the door. He edged toward the entrance to the room, chest aching when Mia began to speak again.
He really didn’t want this to be the last time he heard her tell a story.
“It is, and no one knows for sure what she was so upset about. But her son, who ran the mercantile, told the sheriff Amelia had come to visit him earlier the day before. She’d said she had something she needed to get off her chest.”
Light footsteps sounded on the boards, and when Mia spoke again, her voice was closer to the door. “They were supposed to go riding together the next day, and talk, but Amelia didn’t live to unburden herself. In later years, her grandson would tell patrons of the saloon that he sometimes heard his grandmother’s ghost singing in the night, or felt her hand on his arm as he started up to bed. He maintained that her spirit wasn’t at rest, and wouldn’t be until her secret was discovered.”
Mia took a breath, so close now that Sawyer could hear the air rush from between her lips. “Would you like to see the place where they found her body? It’s right next door.”
Sawyer’s muscles tensed, ready to grab Mia and shove her behind him if she was the first one into the hallway.
“There’s symmetry in that,” Paul said. “But I’ll warn you, I don’t believe in ghosts.”
But they believe in you.The thought whispered through Sawyer’s head, but it didn’t feel like his own. It was as if it had originated with someone else, and the air on the landing suddenly went so cold he couldn’t help but shiver.
A moment later, Mia stepped through the door and he launched into action, forgetting the chill until later, when he would think back and wonder who was really responsible for everything that happened next—the living, or the dead.
* * *
Hands shotout of the darkness, grabbing Mia by the shoulders, but she didn’t cry out or struggle. The moment those fingers wrapped around her arms, she knew who the hands belonged to.
Sawyer!
Thank God! He was alive, and here, and now they were going to get out of this together.
The world spun as Sawyer shifted her behind him, but Mia kept her balance and turned around in time to see him tackle Paul, and both of them fall backward through the doorway. Seconds later, there was a clatter and the flashlight Paul had been holding winked out, plunging the second floor of the hotel into blackness.
“Sawyer, he’s got a gun!” Mia cried, feeling her way along the wall to the doorway, heart slamming in her chest as she heard what sounded like a fist connecting with flesh.
“Get out of here, Mia,” Sawyer said, his voice strained. “Get to the truck, the police are on their way.”
“She’s not going anywhere!” The rage in Paul’s words scraped against Mia’s ears like claws, making her shudder. “She’s mine. She’s always been mine!”
Mia dropped to her knees inside the door and began crawling toward the far side of the room, patting at the floorboards, searching for the flashlight. There was no way she was leaving Sawyer alone in here to fight it out with Paul. Sawyer was bigger and stronger, but Paul was insane, and had nothing left to lose. He would gnaw his own arm off to get to her, and she wasn’t going anywhere until she knew he was tied up waiting for the police to arrive.
Seconds seemed to stretch on for hours as she crawled across the floor, the sounds of Sawyer and Paul fighting making her pulse race so fast she felt dizzied by the blood rushing through her veins. But finally, just as Paul howled in pain, and Sawyer called her name in a panicked voice, Mia’s fingers brushed against hard plastic.
“I’m okay!” She snatched up the flashlight, fumbling for the on button, sending the bulb flickering to life in time to see Paul go flying across the room. Mia opened her mouth to scream, but her cry was drowned out by the crash of shattering glass as Paul’s body went through the window.
She didn’t know if it was the horror of the moment playing tricks on her perception, or the way her flashlight cut through the night that made Paul seem to hang in midair for longer than gravity should have allowed. Mia only knew that she had time to see the terror on Paul’s face, to see the way his hands clawed at his own neck, as if trying to free himself from a noose, so clearly it would be forever imprinted on her brain. Surely she was mistaken, but she was certain she had time to take two full steps toward the window before Paul plummeted toward the ground and out of sight.
Sawyer bolted across the room and Mia followed, clutching at his arm like a lifeline as she joined him at the window, shining the flashlight down through the shattered glass.
“Oh my God,” she whispered as the beam illuminated the ground below.
Paul stared up at them from the mud, the leg of a sawhorse sticking out of the center of his chest and blood leaking from the sides of his slack lips. His arms were still twitching, but the light had already gone out of his eyes. The sirens Mia could finally hear moving closer to Old Town would be too late to do anything for Paul. He was dead, his body jerking one final time before finding stillness moments before the clouds opened and more rain came tumbling down.
“It’s over,” she whispered, her pulse still thudding unhealthily in her ears as she turned to Sawyer. “Are you okay? Did he—”
“I’m fine. What about you? Did he hurt you?” Sawyer urged her away from the grisly scene outside the window, pulling her into his arms.
Mia shook her head. “No. You got here in time. God, I’m so glad you’re okay.” She buried her face against his chest, not caring that his shirt was cold and wet, only that Sawyer was warm and alive beneath it. “When he shot at you…I was so scared, Sawyer. So fucking scared.”
“I’m fine.” Sawyer’s arms tightened around her. “But I think we should get out of here. Head down the stairs and out to the gate to wait for the police.”
Mia tilted her head back, looking up at Sawyer, but she couldn’t read his expression in the dim light from the flashlight she’d aimed at the ceiling. “Is something wrong?”
