Page 46 of Ghost Town Boogie

But that wasn’t going to happen. Life was short, too short, too uncertain. She lifted her head and looked into Colt’s warm brown eyes. “I love you.”

Anna’s unexpected words shocked him. Time and place, Anna, time and place. He didn’t say those words out loud. Instead he said, “You’re in shock.”

Instead of taking offense, she laughed at him. “That might be true, but it doesn’t make what I said any less true. Don’t worry, I don’t expect you to say the words back. Maybe you will one day. Maybe not. We’ve known each other for such a long time, but this is new. We’re new. I have no idea where we go from here so maybe I jumped the gun. And yeah, I might be in shock.”

“Right now I just want to focus on keeping you safe.” Safe and alive. Having Anna’s ghost around would be torture.

He wasn’t ready to confess that he loved her, he wasn’t even sure this was love. But he didn’t want to let her go, and kissing her was easy. More than easy; he needed it.

They had so much to do.

After a too-short kiss, which grounded him more than he’d imagined it would, he disengaged and indicated she should sit on the couch. He took the chair beside it. “Jack and Crystal were pulling some kind of scam, and long story short it came back to bite them on the ass.”

She looked sad, but not surprised. “Who’s Crystal?”

He explained, as simply as he could. The pictures, the list of names and numbers, Crystal’s ghost.

“Do you know who they pissed off badly enough to…?” She couldn’t say the words aloud. To commit murder. To kill her brother. To stab Nicole and burn the Miller home and come after her.

“I have the list, and I know who’s in the picture with Crystal, but I have no idea if the man who killed Jack is there or not.” Anna’s brother had always been on the lookout for the easy way. He’d conned people all his adult life.

He’d even tried to con his old friend. There was never any restaurant deal. Colt had suspected before, but now he knew without doubt.

The easy way had gotten Jack murdered.

“The man in the picture is Walter Wakefield, Sawyer’s dad. I don’t know what it means, that he was with Crystal at The Magnolia. I don’t know that it means anything at all.” Someone else was there, too, the person Crystal had been looking at over her shoulder.

“Why now? How did he know?” Colt whispered, more to himself than Anna. “It’s been five years, but until now…”

“You’ve been talking to people about Jack, and so have I. Who panicked when we started asking questions about my brother?”

Not for the first time Colt asked himself, who took the pictures? Had Jack taken them then run off and left Crystal to deal with the consequences? He didn’t want to think his old friend, imperfect as he was, would do that. To be honest, he didn’t really know the man Jack had become. He wasn’t the same person he’d been as a teenager, either. No adult was.

Colt ran a mental list of those he’d spoken to. It was fairly short. Who among them might've mentioned Jack afterward? To family, to friends. Nicole might’ve told a friend or a customer that she was collecting things from the Miller house to sell. Had that been enough to make the killer panic?

“They must’ve known Jack kept a list, but did they know about the pictures?” Anna asked.

“Knowing Jack, he blackmailed Walter.” Anything for an easy buck. “Walter was with Crystal on what I’m pretty sure was her last night at The Magnolia.” The night she’d been killed.

Anna leapt off the couch, grabbing her cell as she stood. She took the short hallway, calling back, “We’re going to the hospital.”

Colt said, in a voice loud enough for her to hear, “We won’t be able to talk to Emily for…”

Anna reappeared wearing a sweater and carrying her purse. “We’re not going to talk to Emily. We’re going to interrogate Jack.”

CHAPTER 19

He hated hospitals. Miserable ghosts wandered the hallways, crouched in corners, and searched endlessly for family, nurses, maybe even themselves. In most cases, perhaps all, they were looking for answers. At the depot and sometimes on the street he ran into the occasional pleasant spirit, like Maude. Here, every ghost was caught in a loop of sheer torment.

Most ignored him, as he and Anna walked to Emily’s room, but a few realized he could see them. They gathered around, they whispered in his ear and a couple of times into his face.

Somehow Anna realized how hard it was for him to be here. She took his hand and held on tight.

In that moment, he did love her.

“Go away,” she whispered into the air as they reached the door to Emily’s room.

Some of the ghosts obeyed.