“I’ve spent my life being open to the general!” Mariah shouted. “He’s part of me, part of my soul, my existence! You’ve got ten seconds, Olivia—ten seconds!”
Olivia suddenly spun around, jerking something out from under her shirt. She fumbled with it; Mariah, thrown from her, fired.
Thankfully, the shot went wild.
Olivia fired, too. The recoil sent her falling back and she tripped, crashing into a tombstone, the gun flying from her grasp. Mariah stumbled to her feet and half walked, half crawled over to Olivia, rising with the gun aimed directly at her.
“Miss Mariah!” Dustin said in a hollow voice, stepping from the trees.
Tension knotted in him fiercely; he was no actor.
“Miss Mariah!”
Mariah turned and looked at him. For a moment, she stared at him in awe. Then she smiled and slowly raised her gun. “You’re not a ghost!” she said. “But good try, Agent Blake.”
“I’m not alone, Mariah. If you fire that gun, you’re going to go down in a hail of bullets.”
She aimed at Olivia again. “She goes with me,” Mariah said.
Dustin felt something touch him—or almost touch him. He closed his eyes, praying that the real general had come. A man seemed to rise from mist and take shape before him.
It wasn’t the general. It was Marcus Danby.
“I am a ghost, Mariah. I’m a ghost because you killed me. And because you tried to ruin the good that honest, caring people were doing. You won’t join me, Mariah, when you die. I’m not sure what lies beyond this—where I am now—but I know you won’t be there. I can feel sun and light—and all you can feel is darkness.”
Mariah’s gun remained on Olivia. She frowned, as if trying to ascertain how they’d created the illusion she was seeing.
Someone else stepped forward, entering into the green shadows of the little cemetery.
Aaron.
“We tried to get the general to come, Mariah,” Aaron said. “But he doesn’t want to know you.”
“This is bullshit!” Mariah cried. She turned to take aim at Olivia again.
Dustin moved as he’d never moved before. He was out of the trees as if he were propelled by a sudden spark of fire. He caught Mariah in a tackle and brought her down, rolling with her.
She was strong; they fought for the gun.
A shot went off and Mariah screamed in agony. Dustin tried to wrench her gun from her but it eluded them both and landed several feet away. But the woman had been shot—and he realized that Olivia had recovered her own gun and managed to fire off a round.
Despite the fact that she was bleeding, Mariah strained to reach her weapon. Yet she suddenly went still and Dustin struggled with her weight, trying to move around her. And then he saw what she saw.
The general had come. He stood with his foot on the gun.
“Not on this land!” he said. “Not on this land. Cruelty and murder will not happen, not on my land.”
Dustin inched forward; his fingers grasped the weapon and he threw Mariah off him. She huddled in a ball, sobbing.
Malachi burst into the cemetery with Abby at his side.
“It’s done,” the general said.
And he faded away. The ghost of Marcus Danby grinned and saluted Dustin, then faded, too.
Aaron, also, was gone. Malachi had rushed to his cousin’s side, while Abby assessed Mariah’s injuries.
Dustin turned quickly to reach Olivia. She was hugging Malachi, but she pulled away and smiled tremulously at him.
“You’d make a horrible reenactor,” she said.
“Yeah, I know. I’m sorry. You, uh, need to learn how to shoot,” he told her.
She nodded. “I guess I do.”
She was shaking, but she appeared to be all right. She didn’t even seem traumatized. “The others?” she asked.
“Ambulances came pretty quickly to the Horse Farm. Sloan and Jane were already up. You managed to get the darts out of them?” he asked her.
She nodded. She started to take a step, but she wasn’t walking very well. He stopped her, looked into her eyes and muttered, “Oh, the hell with it.”
Then he swept her into his arms and headed out on the trail, leaving the shadows of the dead behind—and Malachi and Abby to deal with Mariah.
Epilogue
Mariah Naughton proved to be full of surprises—and her last surprise was especially dramatic.
She never reached a hospital, and she never explained her entire story. They had to piece together what they could from Jimmy Callahan, who’d been dating Mariah, and from Sandra Cheever, who was willing to do anything to get the D.A. to deal with her as leniently as possible.