The Cursed. Heather Graham
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.
“Hannah called me immediately,” Liam said, frowning. “And, I assure you, it’s the first time she’s ever called me about a body.”
“Of course,” Dallas said. “Sorry. So, you knew he was here because—” he paused, looking at Liam “—because he was in your yard—and still alive—last night?” He realized the implication that she might have saved him was in his voice. He hadn’t meant it to be, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t true.
He looked around and noticed that there was a lot of confusion at the scene. A couple of uniformed officers had been first on the scene, followed by Liam—and he’d been right behind. Now techs were dusting and setting out numbers by everything they found, and looking for evidence, and the medical examiner was with the body. She had touched the body, trying to see what she could do for him before realizing he was dead. If she’d been a screaming basket case, he would probably be having an easier time dealing with her. But though she was calm now, she had been screaming when she’d dialed 911. The uniformed officers had probably arrived within seconds—they were just down the street from Duval, because the department always patrolled the bar and club scene there, no matter how late—or early—that was.
“I never saw him in my yard. Two of my guests—former guests—saw him. But they didn’t realize he was real. They thought they were seeing a ghost.”
The young woman—Liam had introduced her as Hannah O’Brien—seemed to be growing aggravated with him. He didn’t really blame her. He was usually a lot better at a crime scene.
“They thought a real man—mortally injured and bleeding—was a ghost?” Dallas demanded.
“Yes.”
“How the hell...?” he muttered.
“I can’t read their minds,” she said sharply. There was something almost regal about her. Maybe that was what bugged him. It compelled him, and that irritated him. He took a breath and tried to regain a professional calm.
“All right. Can you start at the beginning for me?” he asked.
“I was sound asleep. I heard a scream and came running downstairs—they were in back of the house by the pool. I looked out and saw two of my guests. One of them was insisting she’d seen a ghost in my yard,” Hannah explained. “She—her name’s Shelly Nicholson—had been on my ghost tour. She and her boyfriend, Stuart Bell, were absolutely convinced they’d seen a homicidal ghost. But there was nothing there.
“I tried to calm them down. I told them...I told them that ghosts weren’t real, and even if they were, it wasn’t likely they’d be able to kill anyone. I got them to quit screaming and talk it through. Nothing budged them. They insisted they’d seen a bloody ghost holding a bowie knife. By then, everyone in the place was out there and freaking out. So I got everyone checked out and sent them down to the Westin, and then, when it was light, came back out to look around.” She hesitated for a long moment, glancing at Liam. “I don’t even know of any Key West ghosts that supposedly run around bleeding and carrying a bowie knife.” She stopped, struck by the thought that the man on the ground was now eligible to be a Key West ghost legend.
“A bowie knife?” Dallas demanded.
She nodded. “That’s what Stuart said. He was one of the people who saw the...ghost.”
“How did he know it was a bowie knife?” Dallas demanded.
“How do I know? Maybe he saw The Alamo a zillion times!” she snapped back, her irritation showing.
“He doesn’t have a knife now,” Dallas pointed out.
“No. He wasn’t holding it when I found him,” she said. “I looked around, and I didn’t see a knife anywhere. But if you looked at his hand...”
“Yes,” Dallas said. “It does look as if he’d been holding something. You touched the body. Are you sure you didn’t move his hand? Even by accident?”
“No, I definitely didn’t move his hand. I was kneeling on his other side, and I was still there when Officer Mann got here and told me to move away carefully so I didn’t contaminate the crime scene. I did not touch his hand.”
Dirk Mendini, the medical examiner down from the coroner’s office in Marathon, rose and walked over to them just then. He indicated his wish to speak with the detectives by angling his head.
“Excuse