“What’s going on, big guy? You’re a cat—you’re supposed to sense things.”
He merely swished his furry tail.
Hannah stood, gently sliding Petrie to the floor, and poured herself another cup of coffee before giving the cat a few treats.
It had all happened so fast. She had heard the screams and shot downstairs to see what was going on. Everyone in the place had been out by the pool within minutes, one college boy wielding a dive knife and Mr. Hardwicke, an elderly regular along with his wife, a heavy boot. But there had been no one there other than Shelly and Stuart, both of them hysterical. Their friends had been less than kind, insisting she’d freaked out over the ghost tour, that was all. But Stuart had been adamant that there had been a ghost—a vengeful ghost—and only their screams had driven him away. Someone had suggested they call the cops; someone else had snorted and said that cops couldn’t arrest ghosts.
The next thing Hannah knew, they were all leaving. And while they’d spent most of the night, she’d decided it would be bad customer service practice not to refund their money.
Now the sun had risen on another beautiful Key West morning. Bright and early, just about 7:00 a.m., a westward breeze was coming in, the foliage was moving gently in the breeze, and the dead heat of midday was not yet burning the pavement.
She went to right one of her Victorian lawn lounges, which had toppled over in the commotion.
And that was when she saw them.
Drops of red that led off through the bushes and...
Disappeared.
She hunkered down to study the spots and froze.
They were blood. Real blood. Not astral blood, spiritual blood, ghostly blood or imaginary blood from an apparition of some kind. Real blood meant that someone or something living had come through the yard—not a ghost. There were outside lights by the pool, but at night these drops would have been invisible.
Hannah pushed her way through the foliage where the blood trail seemed to end, though the drops might have disappeared into thin air or they might have been soaked up by the dirt. She couldn’t really tell. The yard here in back of the pool grew rich and lush all the way up to the bushes that lined the brick wall and the white wooden gate that led to the small alley behind her house. Vehicles couldn’t traverse the narrow way; it was a footpath, normally used only by those who already knew it was there.
The gate was unhooked. There was a bloody handprint on it.
Gingerly, afraid of what she would find, Hannah pushed it all the way open.
And there he was. A man lying just two feet from the gate, sprawled faceup, staring wide-eyed up at the sun.
A brilliant crimson ribbon ran around his neck.
And his fingers curled as if he had been holding something....
Like the hilt of a knife.
*
“How did you know there was a body in the alley?” Dallas Samson asked, after introducing himself and flashing his FBI badge.
The young woman who had summoned the police was standing behind the crime scene tape that now stretched across the alley and up to her gate. Detective Liam Beckett was with her. Beckett was a city cop—and a friend of Dallas’s. Apparently Beckett was a friend of the young woman’s, too. She was extremely attractive, Dallas noted almost dispassionately. He filed away everything he noticed about possible suspects and witnesses in the back of his mind, so it was second nature to make a physical assessment. She was about five-five, maybe a hundred and twenty pounds, sleek and slim, with deep blue-green eyes and a mane of golden hair. She was, however, tense. She stood straight—almost frozen. Not panicked, but icy. Almost as if she were battling not to show any emotion, doing everything in her power to remain stoic and calm. He realized he’d barely taken his eyes off her. And the tension he was feeling himself was making him come off like a drill sergeant. He couldn’t help it—not with a dead body lying in the alley and her standing there not answering his question.
He sure as hell wasn’t helping her any, but it rankled that she’d been talking easily with Liam when Dallas had arrived, and now she was just staring at him without saying a word.
Her brows hiked up as she finally considered her reply to his query.
She was taking too long to answer. The tension he was feeling increased.
He pursued his question even more impatiently. “Let me rephrase. Do you usually wake up bright and early and come out to the alley looking for bodies?”
Liam cleared his throat reprovingly, and Dallas winced inwardly. He’d let his temper get the best of him, making him rude and sarcastic. He wasn’t usually that way, but he was feeling a hell of a lot more tense than the blonde—than any of them, at the moment.
But, then, he’d known the dead man.
And he didn’t like the way the man had been found.