Page 28 of Dead Vengeance

Not on my watch.

“Liam, excuse me.” The urge to squeeze his arm comes as naturally as breathing, so I do. But when his gaze lands on my hand again, I feel kind of bad. Maybe I shouldn’t have done that?

I try to slip away super casually, like it was nothing, but he calls out, “Mr Gravely. You’re… You’re leaving?”

It strikes me then just how lost he looks. This poor man. Everything he’s just been through, and he’s stuck here in this depressing, overcrowded emergency room, waiting god knows how long by himself to see if this guy he doesn’t even know will pull through. (Spoiler: he will.)

“No. I’m not leaving. I just want to speak with Gerald. I’ll be right back. Okay?”

Maybe I was too forthright there. Because the embarrassment is written in his pink cheeks and lowered eyes. But the smile he gives me after that… it slams straight into my heart…

Wait, are we doing this?

Is he…

Does Liam like me?

“And then I’ll give you a lift home,” I throw out, words faster than brain, still stumbling over the chances this walking daydream could possibly have anything but fear of me and my house after the sort of day we’ve had.

“I couldn’t ask you to do that,” he says softly, but with a manner that seems very much like he is asking me, very sweetly, to do that.

“I’m doing that,” I declare, also because I had planned to anyway, but after that smile, I’m especially doing that. “Mind my seat while I’m gone.”

This whole time, in the back of my mind, I know Gerald’s scuttling away somewhere, so I’m fast, turning, searching, moving down the corridor. He’s just stepping back from the information desk when I spot him, so I hurry down the end of the hallway to catch him before he disappears.

“Gerald!”

He freezes like a kid caught stealing candy. The lights flicker overhead, but I barely notice them, even if Gerald’s gaze shoots up to the ceiling with an oddly concerned look.

“I’m not done talking to you.”

“Mr Gravely, I’m a very busy man—”

“Busy doing what, exactly?” I come to a stop right in front of him, and again the lights flicker, casting shadows over his face. “Finding more inexperienced people to send to their deaths?”

“No one died,” he spits back. “Look, I’m just giving these people a leg up in life. It’s up to them if they want to take it. And you said you were happy with Liam.”

“I am happy with Liam!” I argue, even though Liam should, by rights, be snuggled up in bed with hot soup and an electric blanket. Preferably with me. Yes, I just thought that, and I’m not taking it back. “The point is, you sent two inexperienced men into a dangerous situation—”

“Raul is one of my most experienced men.”

The repeated comment throws me so much it takes me too long to answer, and when I do, all I have is, “Are you actually joking?”

Again the lights, but this time slower, longer pulses. Gerald’s eyes run across the ceiling, to the nurse at the information desk, who’s looking confused, as opposed to his wary estimation.

It is odd, come to think of it, the lights. In my irritation, I hadn’t really noticed, but…

“I’m going home, actually,” Gerald announces, a strangled tremor in his voice. “I’ll have new men for you tomorrow.”

He tries to walk past me, but I side-step to keep in front of him. “I’m sorry, what? New men?”

“You’re not happy, so I’ll send Liam somewhere else.” The lights again. Gerald’s frantic eyes again. “I really have to leave right now.”

“No, no. Liam has absolutely no experience with ghosts. You can’t send him off into the jaws of death at some other haunting.”

“He’ll be fine.”

“He won’t be fine! You know what happened to Raul today. If I hadn’t been there…”