The Hidden

“That’s what I wondered,” Daniel said. “But then I started drifting, I thought I’d become a snowflake or something, and I began to think he meant the number one. He sounded proud, as if he’d taken the first step on a fantastic adventure or something. Anyway, I’d planned to come here to the ranch the next day. See if there was a room, take a tour of the museum for sure. I’d seen your name and picture in the brochure and recognized it from the ancestry site. After he killed me, I wanted to warn you. I wanted to warn Ben, too, but he didn’t see me. And while I was trying to warn you, that poor couple was being killed. And now he’s just killed number four.”


Scarlet stared at him blankly. “You’re a ghost, and you’re talking to me. Stalking me. And you can’t even help catch your killer,” she said.

“Nice appreciation for me trying to save your life.”

She winced. All this was still so hard to believe.

At least she didn’t have to wonder anymore if she was crazy or not, though crazy might have been easier. But Diego and the Krewe had suspected her stalker was a dead man.

And they’d been right.

“I’m sorry,” she said sincerely. “I just, I wasn’t... I never... I’ve spent half my life in graveyards and I’ve never felt so much as a cold spot, much less talked to a ghost before. Or even really believed that ghosts exist. Thank you for trying to warn me, and I mean that sincerely, but I can’t help but wish you could identify your killer.”

He lowered his head, smiling. “Apology accepted. I wouldn’t have believed in ghosts, either, before I became one.”

“Scarlet?”

Meg’s voice came from the top of the stairs, and Scarlet could hear her footsteps coming up the hall.

Daniel’s image began to disappear. He was almost gone when Meg stepped into the room.

But Scarlet could tell that she saw him immediately.

She stopped just inside the doorway, looking at what was almost thin air by then. “Hello,” she said. “I’m Meg. Meg Murray.”

She sounded so natural that she could have been introducing herself to someone at a party.

Daniel’s image solidified again. “Daniel. Daniel Kendall,” he said. “Pleasure, Miss Murray.”

“You’re a Kendall,” Meg murmured.

“Yes, he’s been trying to warn me,” Scarlet said.

Meg looked at Scarlet. “You’re okay? You’re not going to pass out or anything?”

“No, I’m not going to pass out,” Scarlet said. “I’m fine. Absolutely fine.”

Was she?

Meg turned her attention back to Daniel. “Do you know how you—”

“No, he doesn’t know who killed him. That would be too easy,” Scarlet said drily.

“You don’t know?” Meg asked, shocked.

“He was wearing a bag or something over his head,” Daniel said. “Like he took a potato sack and cut eye holes in it.”

Scarlet gasped. “I can’t believe I didn’t think of it right away! Nathan Kendall wrote in his journal that he and his friends wore hoods when they robbed banks and stagecoaches and things.” She looked at Meg. “The killer has read the diaries. And we know that his friends came here, so maybe that will help us figure out who killed Nathan, too.”

“Hey!” Daniel protested. “Don’t go all history buff on me. You need to find out who killed me. That’s what’s important, Scarlet. Because if you don’t find out who killed me, he’s eventually going to kill you.”





11

“Cassandra had only been here about a month,” Mary Peterson said, sniffling, her eyes welling with tears again. “She came from Kansas City. Kansas City, Kansas,” she said with emphasis, as if that was really important. “Not Missouri. She grew up in different foster homes and finally tracked down one of her grandmothers—her mother’s mother. She was in a nursing home, but she filled Cassandra’s head with stories about the Rockies and how she was related to Nathan Kendall. She couldn’t wait to come here, and she got a job right away at the Moose Pot Pie here in town. That’s where we met. I work there, too. She was so pretty and so nice, and all the guys liked her. But she wasn’t a flirt! She was a hard worker and a good roommate, and she planned to go back to school and get a good education. She had such a tough life...and now this.”

Their victim was Cassandra Wells, and she was local.

Diego was sorry that he’d been right.