The Cursed

The local police had arrived already—there must have been a patrol car nearby—and the state cars were bound to follow.

 

Dallas drew her along with him as he hurried back toward Logan and Kelsey, who were already speaking with the cops.

 

They were standing by the body of the dead man, who lay in a pool of blood on the asphalt. One of the agents had caught him dead center in the forehead. His head had rolled to the side, and most of the back of it had been blown away. Only a gaping black hole remained, surrounded by bits of bloody dark hair. He had been in his mid-forties, Hannah thought dully.

 

“No,” she said when asked. She’d never seen him before. Dallas used a handkerchief to search in the dead man’s pocket for a wallet. His license identified him as Robert Brown of Fort Lauderdale; he’d been forty-seven.

 

The next thirty minutes were a blur as the road was blocked off, and the agents and police hunkered over the dead man, soon joined by Dirk Mendini. The local police, aware that she was the civilian in the mix, kept offering to make her comfortable in the backseat of a patrol car, but Dallas didn’t want her out of his sight, not even in a police vehicle.

 

Somewhere in the chaos, she remembered that people would begin arriving at the Siren for the evening’s ghost tour long before she could possibly get back.

 

Except there was a dead man on the road. Who had tried to kill them. What did a ghost tour matter?

 

Then again, in the greater scheme of whatever was going on, maybe it did.

 

While forms were filled out, while each new officer arrived and had to be briefed, she talked to Dallas about the situation. She realized she sounded like a robot. There was no rise and fall in her voice, no emotion. She wondered if she was in shock.

 

“You use a service,” he said. “Call them and let them cancel. There’s nothing else you can do. I wish there were. Oddly enough, I feel that tour should go out tonight.”

 

“People get to the house early a lot of the time,” she said. “I wonder if we can stop them before they get there.” She hesitated, looking toward the dead man. “My tour and my bed-and-breakfast have always had top ratings. I know that’s not a big deal when a man is dead, but they’re still my livelihood.”

 

He took her by the shoulders. “Hannah, I understand, and believe me, I wish it could be different. No one wants to use deadly force. But he tried to kill us, was probably ordered to kill us—or one of us. And I think that means you. I don’t know if the Wolf knows you have inside knowledge about Jose’s death or if he just thinks you might know something because of what your guests saw. But I’m convinced he wants you dead.”

 

“Do they know who he was? The man who hit us?”

 

“He had ID that said Robert Brown,” Dallas said. “But fake IDs are easily acquired, and I have a strong feeling his was fake. They’ll figure it out soon enough.”

 

Kelsey was standing nearby. “You have every right to worry about your business, but first you need to worry about your life. And not only does the Wolf seem to be after you, he seems to think something he wants is hidden somewhere in your house.”

 

“I know he seems to believe the treasure is in the Siren of the Sea somewhere, but why?” Hannah asked.

 

“Easy. If the treasure wasn’t on Chandler’s ship, it had to be hidden somewhere in town, and where better than Chandler’s own home? And since no one knows where the wreck is but they do know the Siren’s address...” Dallas said.

 

“But after all these years, wouldn’t someone have been bound to find it if that was true?” Hannah asked.

 

“Here’s where we’re in trouble—the Wolf doesn’t need proof. If he suspects something, he acts on it. He probably didn’t have proof that Jose was an FBI agent. He just suspected. He didn’t know that Yerby knew anything, he just suspected that she did, so he had her killed, too—maybe, as a warning to the others to keep their mouths shut.”

 

“Well, he scared the hell out of me,” Hannah said. “But he also...he’s ruining my life and my business. He’s making me mad, too.”

 

“Katie could lead the tour,” Kelsey suggested.

 

“But then I’d worry about her,” Hannah said.

 

“David and Liam could go with her,” Kelsey said. She turned to Dallas. “What do you think?”

 

Dallas looked at Kelsey and nodded. “That would be a good idea. I’ll call Liam—see to it that a few of his plainclothes officers follow along, as well. I’ll tell him we’ll meet them back at the house afterward.”

 

“Good plan,” Kelsey said. “You okay with it?” she asked Hannah.

 

Hannah nodded slowly. “Except that I still don’t want Katie involved.”

 

“She’ll be with Liam and David,” Dallas said. “She’ll be fine.”

 

He took out his phone to make the call as Kelsey left to speak to one of the local police officers.

 

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