Ghost of lies medium tro.., p.1
Ghost of Lies (Medium Trouble Book 1), page 1
Ghost of Lies
Medium Trouble Book 1
Alice Winters
Copyright © 2021 by Alice Winters
All rights reserved.
Editing by: Courtney Bassett
Proofreading by: Lori Parks
Cover design by: Natasha Snow Designs
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Author’s Note
Acknowledgments
Also by Alice Winters
Chapter One
HIRO
The body is lying feet from me.
I can hear the sound of sirens filling the air as if frantically attempting to find and save the woman. But it’s too late, and now that she’s dead, I can’t let them find her yet.
The issue is, with the sirens growing closer every minute, I’m running out of time before they find me standing here in the woods, smack-dab in the middle of a crime scene, looming over a body they’re struggling to find.
Looks a wee bit suspicious.
But I can’t leave yet because just beyond the woman’s body, where she likely died before being dragged a foot or two, sits a young woman wearing the exact same clothes as the body on the ground. There’s a peculiar glow around her, but besides that, she looks the same as the body.
“Can you hear me?” I ask the woman.
She’s sobbing as she sits on the ground, knees pulled up to her chest as she rocks, and the sound is heart-wrenching, but if she won’t talk to me, there’s little I can do for her, so I have to keep trying.
As the darkness of the woods surrounds me, I walk over to her before kneeling down, knowing slow, steady movements are best when they’re in this state of mind. I reach out to touch her face, but she isn’t old enough for me to be able to feel. Instead, my hand passes through her.
“Can you hear me?” I ask again, voice gentle in hopes of reaching her.
She doesn’t act as if she can, even though I know my words can find her. The issue is that the ghost of the woman is too new. After a person dies, if their ghost is left behind, it’s generally inconsolable, unreachable, and fixated on their recent death. I know that better than damn near anyone, but I also know that right now, I need her to snap out of it because if she wants me to find who killed her, she needs to start helping me.
The sirens haven’t gotten any closer, telling me they’re probably on foot by now, searching the thick trees for the woman they’ll be unable to save.
“Ma’am, I need you to talk to me,” I urge.
She slowly looks up at me. “Did you kill me?”
I shake my head. “I didn’t kill you.”
“You killed me,” she says, sounding convinced.
It’s still too early for her to even comprehend what’s going on, so I don’t blame her for the wild accusations.
“You killed me, you killed me, you killed me.” She’s growing hysterical as she shakes her head and then begins to scream. The noise is tearing into my ears, making it hard to hear much else.
Shit.
“You better start running,” another voice cuts in.
I turn to look behind me and catch a different woman watching me. The glow around her is similar to the woman I’m kneeling in front of, but she looks more real and far more familiar. And I know if I reached out to her, I could touch her, even though no one else can.
“I can’t leave yet, Natalie,” I tell her. “She just died.”
“I didn’t want to die,” the wailing woman says.
I turn my attention back to her now that she’s stopped screaming. “I know. Where did he go?”
Her hollow eyes lock on to mine. “Why’d you kill me?”
They’re getting close now. Were they able to track her phone? Do they know the exact location? Think, think, think. “After I killed you, where did I go?” I ask, having found that sometimes if I just give the dead what they want, they’re more likely to work with me.
The ghost is quiet for a moment before pointing to her left, away from the noises, and deeper into the woods.
Quickly, I’m on my feet and running. I might be leaving prints behind, but if I can find the location of the killer before they get away, her ghost could pass on. She could be at peace and not stuck roaming the area where she died, begging to move on.
“Hiro, he’s here,” Natalie says, and I turn just as a man slips out from behind a tree and pummels into me. He drives a knife toward my face that I quickly dodge, but his weight is enough to throw me back, causing me to hit my head on the ground. He drops down onto me, planning to use his weight to keep me down.
Shit, shit, shit.
This wasn’t part of the plan. My plan was to find the location the guy went to, tip off the police, and send them over to do the dirty work. My plan wasn’t to be stabbed in the middle of the woods by a guy who smells like he basked in a barrel of alcohol and has a mullet. I turn my head fast, trying to pull away, but I feel the blade of the knife whiz by me.
I always knew being nosy was going to get me killed one day…
I really didn’t think today would be that day.
Twisting hard, I try to get my leg up and knee him in the back, but he’s using his weight to hold me down.
“I didn’t mean to kill her,” he says, which really seems like a weak statement as he’s trying to cut my face off.
“Then why are you trying to murder me?” I pant, trying my hardest to protect myself from his knife. “If you didn’t mean to hurt her, you can fix this. We can figure out what happened.”
He shakes his head vehemently. “I can’t!” he yells, which I think is a bit of a lie, telling me that maybe it wasn’t such an accident after all. I mean… who accidentally stabs someone to death?
He swings the knife hard as I duck down and throw my arm up to protect my face. It catches on my jacket as I hear a noise to my left.
“Police, drop the weapon and put your hands up!”
I turn to look at my savior and immediately sour.
He’s not really the man I was hoping would come save me, but this is how fate works… especially for me. I guess if my options are between being stabbed by the killer or being saved by Detective Stick-Up-His-Ass, I find myself slightly—ever so slightly—leaning toward the detective.
“No! Please!” the man says as he chucks the weapon, like he can suddenly become innocent by flinging the murder weapon where he thinks they might not see. He puts his hands up and I shimmy out from under him.
If all goes right, the detective will be horribly preoccupied with the guy, and I will just waltz on out of here and run as fast as my legs can carry me back to my car and pretend that I had never set foot in this patch of trees in my life. I crawl a few feet before slowly rising up, like the slower I move, the sneakier I might be. I can simply slip behind a tree until the detective forgets about me.
“Mr. Moore, you are also under arrest,” the detective says as someone else handles the killer.
Now that startles me. “Wait, what?” I ask as he comes toward me.
“Ooh snap,” Natalie says, the ghost equivalent of the least helpful person around. Thankfully, no one else can see or hear her.
Detective Maddox Booker comes around the tree to face me. “You’re not supposed to be here.”
“I think he just wants to see you in handcuffs,” Natalie says, and at this very moment, I’m thrilled Detective Booker can’t hear her.
“I think you’re confused,” I decide as I give him a warm smile that does nothing to lighten the expression on his handsome scowling face. “I was helping you, see?”
“No, you were destroying the crime scene again,” he growls.
I… might have fucked up.
Detective Booker and I have run into each other more than once, but we rarely share words as I’m usually running as fast as I can back to my car and refusing to answer what I was truthfully doing. The last time he arrived at a crime scene that I’d beaten him to, he’d taken it upon himself to decide that I was the enemy and became a royal pain in my ass. Okay… maybe I’m also a pain in his ass by disrupting his crime scene, but I’m trying to help.
I keep smiling, even though it feels quite awkward at this point.
“Why’s your face look like that?” Natalie asks. “You look constipated. You never want to look constipated i n front of sexy Booker.”
I ignore her but also drop the look, which makes her grin. “I was helping find the guy because you guys weren’t here yet,” I explain. “And aren’t you homicide? Why are you here? How did you know there was going to be a body?” I try to glance beyond him to what they’re doing with the killer, but Booker body blocks me before I can do anything.
“What’s it matter to you?” he asks as he sets a hand on my back and starts directing me away from the scene.
I can hear Natalie giggle, like she thinks this is hilarious. “If you’re lucky, he’ll handcuff you. I wouldn’t mind if he slapped some handcuffs on me,” she says.
I ignore her, as I usually do in the presence of others. When you’re facing the possibility of being arrested, the last thing you want to do is start talking to dead people that no one else can see. “I was helping.”
Detective Booker marches me into the clearing where I see his brother Ben, a police officer who is much nicer, arresting the guy. That must be why someone from homicide was here. Were they together when his brother got the call?
“Maddox, what are you doing?” Ben asks as backup begins to flood the scene.
“Isn’t it clear?” Booker says, like he’s rather proud of what he’s done as he orders me to stay right there for a moment as he turns to the other officers. As he talks to them, Ben walks up to me and smiles.
“Hiro, right?”
I nod, feeling more than a little defeated. “Yeah. I think I’m getting arrested.”
Ben shakes his head. “Maddox isn’t going to arrest you. He just shouted it in the heat of the moment. You’re fine.”
I eye him suspiciously. I know Maddox probably shouldn’t arrest me but I’m pretty sure his pettiness alone will spur him to do it anyway.
“What the hell are you doing here?” Ben asks with a quizzical look. He’s always been rather nice to me whenever I run into him, unlike his brother who thinks I’ve crawled out of hell just to irritate him.
The shrug I give is the least convincing thing I’ve ever done. “Just… you know…” I’m not sure how to explain this when the truth rarely does me any good. People don’t react well to being told that you were trying to deal with ghosts.
Speaking of which, I look around until I see the ghost watching them deal with her killer. She’s calmed down, already at peace, telling me she’ll be able to move on as soon as the scene quiets down. So arrested or not, I’m happy to have been able to help her with that.
Booker, seeing that I’m daring to open my mouth, rushes over to make sure I shut it. “Ben, don’t talk to him,” he growls and jerks his head in the direction of the car. I know I need to follow or I really will get arrested.
Ghost Natalie walks beside me for a moment before saying, “I feel like you’re enjoying this. I mean… how could you not be enjoying this?”
I give her a glance because it’s never a good time for that level of stupidity. The looks I get from the other officers as I’m marched over to the police car make me want to announce to everyone that I am not, in fact, the killer, because I’m kind of being treated like I am and see why they might be momentarily confused.
I question whether a plea attempt will work. “Detective, I really… I’m sorry I was here, and I’m sorry that I—”
“Trampled all over the crime scene, ran after a man who had a weapon, put yourself and possibly others in danger, and for what? Just some kicks? Do you watch too many superhero movies?” he asks.
“My name is Hiro,” I joke.
Clearly, I shouldn’t have joked.
The joke falls as flat as I did when the guy pummeled me.
The walk at that point turns awkward for everyone besides Natalie who is ridiculously amused by the whole thing.
“Tell him you did it because you were hoping to see his charming face,” Natalie says. “That’ll help. I know that’ll help.”
I decide that if I don’t want to spend the rest of my years in jail, it’d be best to not do that.
Assuming that he was just trying to scare me turns out to be quite wrong as he opens the back door to the police cruiser. I assume this means “Get in or you’ll be even more arrested,” so I quickly get inside. And without a word, he returns to the scene, leaving me to awkwardly sit there alone. I mean… if it was a real arrest, he’d have frisked me, right? Read me my rights? Done something. He’d have… I don’t know! I’ve never been arrested.
“Don’t say it,” I tell Natalie now that I’m alone with her.
“You realize you literally just jumped in the car to be with him a bit longer,” she says, then giggles. “He didn’t even tell you to get in and you jumped in.”
“You’re not funny,” I grumble as I lean back on the hard seat. “He was going to arrest me if I didn’t comply.”
“Was he?” Natalie sits beside me, able to sort of interact with things or at least appear to since she’s an older ghost. She’s haunted me the longest, and when she’s around me, it seems like she can do more things than when she’s alone.
I know most people wouldn’t use negative words like “haunted” when talking about one of their closest friends, but I sure as hell am going to say haunted when it comes to Natalie. She’s followed me around for most of my life, harassing and judging me and swearing like a sailor, even when I was a child. And still, I put up with it because there’s really nothing else I can do.
When Detective Booker and his brother head over, I realize that maybe now they’ll let me go. They’ll be like “Ha ha, just a joke. Don’t do it again,” and I’ll give them some finger guns or something and run off… maybe you shouldn’t finger gun an officer… thumbs up it is.
“Are you really taking him in to get his statement? You know we could do that right here?” Ben asks as he gets into the driver’s seat.
“Yeah,” Booker says. “He wants to go to the station, don’t you, Hiro?”
“Yes?” I ask, uncertain what the right answer to this is.
“He said he wanted a good tour of the station for his birthday,” Maddox says. “Isn’t that right, Hiro?”
“Um, sure?” What the hell is this? Why am I just agreeing with him?
Ben looks back at me. “Is today your birthday?”
“It is,” I say grudgingly.
He gives his brother a look of pure shock. “You literally looked into him, saw it was his birthday, and still decided that you were going to do this?”
“I sure did,” Booker says, looking awfully smug.
Ben whistles. “Jeezus, Maddox, you’re in a mood today.”
Which is funny when I thought Maddox was born “in a mood.”
Maddox gives no shits as Ben starts driving back to the police station while I awkwardly sit there with Natalie who is now blowing in Booker’s ear. Of course, he doesn’t see it and he definitely doesn’t notice when she climbs onto his lap.
She keeps looking back at me, like she thinks she could get me to say something or laugh. “Come on! It’s funny! It’s like a little lap dance for your birthday, but instead of you getting the sexy guy, I do.” The only way to solve anything here is to flip her off. Of course, that’s the very moment Maddox turns his head to look at me. His eyes narrow as I give him a sheepish smile.
“I wasn’t flipping you off. My finger… is sore. I jammed it. When I fell. Just stretching it.”
“Uh-huh, sure,” he says.
I glare at Natalie who gives me her best look of innocence as she climbs into the back seat with me.
“Maddox, are you going to Dad’s this weekend?” Ben asks.
“I don’t want to. I have that case I’m busy with, and all he wants to do is go fishing.”
“Last time you went out, you vomited all over, didn’t you?” Ben asks with a grin and a playful elbow nudge.
