The Blake Ghost Read online

  A few more steps and they had a better glimpse of what must have once been a very comfortable farmhouse. A veranda ran the length of the front, and a small balcony had been built over it, opening out from one of the upstairs rooms. Tiny windows beneath the gables suggested a usable attic space, although the basement—if one existed—didn’t boast any windows or access points.

  Eva tugged Sully toward the trees. “Let’s hold here a minute and watch. We don’t know what we’re walking into.”

  Though Sully was eager to move, Eva was a trained police officer. If she wanted to scope out the situation for a minute, she had her reasons. He stood next to her and waited.

  “No board over the front door,” she observed. “He must have pried it off. If all the windows have been boarded up, the door probably was too.”

  True. “Guess we’ll have to go the same way.”

  “What I’m trying to decide is whether there might be any firearms or other weapons inside. I’m sure Cecilia would have removed any guns after her father’s death, but the land’s rented out. Do you see any signs the farmyard is used by anyone on a regular basis? Any outbuildings look newer? Quonsets or shops?”

  Sully scanned the area as Eva did. “Nope. Just one run-down barn and a few smaller buildings that look as old as the house.”

  Eva nodded. “That’s what I’m seeing too.” She met Sully’s eye and offered an encouraging smile. “Guess there’s no way to know what we’re facing if we don’t go in there, huh?”

  Sully shook his head, saying nothing, and waited for Eva to make a move. Finally, she stepped from behind the tree and started toward the house.

  Sully stayed at her side but took the lead as they reached the veranda.

  He studied the snow-covered steps. Bootprints, one wooden stair snapped in the middle beneath someone’s weight.

  Yeah, Dez had been here, all right.

  “One set of prints going in,” Eva said. “Unless he went out the back, he should still be inside.”

  That might be a comforting thought. Or it might not, depending on what they were about to find.

  Sully stepped cautiously over the broken stair and climbed onto the veranda. The wood creaked beneath his weight but held.

  “Guess there’s no way to sneak up on him, huh?” he said as Eva’s approach behind him made the same noise.

  She grimaced but said nothing.

  Sully turned back to the door. He drew in a deep breath and released it before grasping the knob and turning slowly.

  His mind flashed to the household items he and Eva had discussed between the trees and the house, ones that could potentially act as weapons—knives, fireplace implements, gardening tools. Though guns were quicker and more efficient, makeshift weapons could be equally as deadly. In Jim Blake’s hands, anything could be a serious problem.

  Sully stepped inside.

  Unchecked weather damage had left the floors in the inner porch rotting and worn. Best he could tell, using the light filtering in from outside the open door, the brick walls and largely protected windows on this floor had kept out the worst of the damage. Nonetheless, several winters without heat had taken their toll.

  He checked over his shoulder. Once they entered the house more fully, they’d be left with only what light the spaces between the boards on the windows would provide.

  “Do you hear anything?” Eva’s voice was a whisper in his ear.

  He shook his head. Nor did he see anything to suggest where Dez might be. A dull glow came from the top of the stairs before them. Even from this vantage point, a couple of the stairs appeared ready to collapse. No way Dez could have made it up there without crashing through.

  He had to be close.

  Sully settled his nerves and took another step inside.

  Clear of the interior porch, he saw more light ahead and to the right—as if someone had pried off a board or two at the back of the house as well.

  Damn.

  Sully pointed for Eva’s benefit, but her eyes had already found the same thing.

  “Let’s go,” she suggested from the back of his right shoulder. “Could be he saw us coming and took off out the back.”

  The thought got Sully moving. The temperatures both in the house and out were well below freezing. Jim Blake couldn’t die twice, but Dez had been forced to spend a lot of time outdoors already.

  The lit room ahead proved to be a kitchen, the cupboards visible through the doorway still in good shape. Sully stood there a moment, this side of the open door, listening. No sound—no creaking floors, no rustle of clothing, no breathing—reached his ears. Sully feared Blake had already taken Dez somewhere else.

  He stepped through the doorway. And stopped dead.

  Across the room, next to a dusty table, stood Dez, partially empty bottle of whiskey open next to him.

  For a moment—a fleeting couple of seconds—Sully caught a glimpse of Dez, his mouth opening to exhale, brows lifting above his eyes’ inner corners.

  Relief.

  It was gone almost as soon as it had come.

  And so was Dez.

  Narrowed eyes now fixed on Sully, quiet yet heated appraisal. Searching for weakness.

  “You. I thought I dealt with you.” Dez’s voice but not, grating and hateful with none of his warmth.

  “Not quite,” Sully said.

  He stepped forward as Eva pressed on his shoulder to move him. Dez’s eyes tracked to the newcomer. For a moment, his brows again shifted upward and his lips twitched.

  Recognition.

  Dez was still in there, near the surface. Close enough to know what was happening. Close enough to experience the horror of knowing he had no control.

  In a flash, the light in his face was gone.

  “Hi, Dez,” Eva said.

  “I’m not Dez.”

  Sully took a few more steps forward. Far enough to spot an iron fireplace poker clutched in Dez’s left hand.

  Left hand. Blake had been left-handed.

  Sully stopped. Eva, in his peripheral vision, circled to the other side of the room, putting up a front should Blake attempt to go through them.

  “Who the hell are you?” Blake growled, eyes boring into Sully’s. “I know you.”

  “You don’t remember? I thought maybe you’d figured it out back at the house.”

  Blake hefted the poker in Dez’s hand. “Don’t screw with me. Who are you?”

  “I was your foster kid for a while.”

  “I had lots of foster kids.”

  “Sullivan Gray.”

  Eyes flashed open at the name. He remembered. “You. You were there. The fire. My family. You.”

  Blake let loose a wail and charged, fireplace poker raised. The move was quick, far quicker than Sully had anticipated. He ducked at the last second, the air raking his hair as the tool sailed over his head.

  A blur of Eva slammed into Dez’s back as the momentum from the swing turned him. Sully lent his own body weight to the restraint attempt, pressing Dez against the counter while stretching for the poker to disarm him.

  Blake howled and exploded, shoving off from the counter and forcing Sully and Eva back. Lashing out lightning-fast with his right hand, he caught Eva on the side of the head and sent her flying into the side of the table.

  Sully cried out her name, then realized distracted focus was a major error. Blake grabbed him, lifting and propelling him backward until he hit hard against a wall. Sully’s lungs rattled with the impact, drawing a gasp. No time to give in to pain, Sully pushed at Dez’s chest, intending to slip away from him.

  Blake didn’t budge.

  He backhanded Sully hard across the side of the head, snapping his head to the side. Before Sully could recover, a solid, cold and heavy weight pressed against his throat. Twisting his head a little, he saw the poker clutched in both Dez’s hands, a weapon for Blake to pin Sully to the wall by his throat. Dez’s green eyes blazed with a hate unnatural to them as he hefted the poker—and Sully’s body with it.
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  With his throat compressed beneath Dez’s weight, breathing was impossible. He clawed at Dez’s hands, kicking at the wall, at Dez. Blake didn’t stop. Sully’s heart pounded out a mad rhythm as his vision clouded and darkened.

  A flurry of movement and Eva was on Dez’s back, arms wrapped solidly around his neck and head in a sleeper hold. Focused on Eva, Blake released the poker, leaving Sully in a gasping, choking heap on his hands and knees. He forced his eyes up to see Blake slam Eva backward into a wall. She grunted but didn’t let go. Blake repeated the move, into the cupboards, the fridge.

  By then, Sully had managed a good breath, all he’d allow himself before getting back in there to help Eva. He pushed off the floor, springing toward the struggle and catching the side of Dez’s head in a jab. Eva, face registering pain, didn’t let go. While she maintained a grip on Dez’s head and neck, Sully grabbed at Dez’s left arm, twisting out and up. Blake managed a choked gasp of pain as he fell to his knees. Eva rode him down to the floor, not letting up.

  She and Sully held on until Dez’s body went limp in their grasp. Only then did she allow Dez to slip the rest of the way down and let him out of the chokehold. Her breath heaved as she checked Dez’s pulse and dug into her coat pocket.

  “You okay?” Sully asked.

  Eva removed her hand from her pocket, a set of cuffs dangling from her fingers. “Once you get this bastard out of my husband, I will be.”

  Sully helped Eva cuff Dez’s hands behind his back.

  “I don’t know if these will hold him,” she admitted. “I’ve seen you when you’re amped up on the extra energy from ghosts. Dez is strong enough without having a second spirit in there with him.”

  Sully shook his head. “When I do it, I can control them so they don’t take me over—most of the time, anyway. I’ve got more energy because I’m using my own and theirs equally. Dez doesn’t know how to do that, and probably couldn’t even if he wanted to. Blake’s the same. He’s using Dez’s body and strength, not adding to it.”

  “You sure?”

  Sully managed a half-smile. “No. But let’s go with my theory anyway, okay? I like it better than the alternative.”

  Seemingly having decided a handcuffed Dez was still better than his own alternative, Blake—still within Dez when he regained consciousness—stayed where he was. For now, anyway.

  Sully knew it, sensing it as much as seeing it. If Blake didn’t appear back in front of him in his ghost form, Sully would know he remained where he’d need to stay in order for this plan to work. It was possible his theory about it being harder to climb out than in was on the money, and he supposed he could take some comfort in that.

  But very little. No matter which way he thought about it, the situation wasn’t great for Dez.

  Blake wasn’t going to make the walk to the car an easy one. Fully recovered upon regaining consciousness, he tugged futilely at the cuffs as if expecting Dez’s body was large and strong enough to snap metal. It wasn’t. Blake figured it out by the time he’d taken a few steps out the door, signifying the realization by launching back into full-on fight mode.

  He shouldered Eva hard, shoving her away from his right side before turning to Sully.

  Sully shoved back, hard, landing Dez on his ass in the snow.

  “Enough,” Sully snapped. “We need to get something straight, right now. I didn’t burn down your house or kill you or your family. Margaret Parsons. Remember her? I’ll bet your son would remember.”

  Dez’s upper body shot up from the snow, enough heat emanating from his glare to melt ice. “Fuck you.”

  Sully took a step forward. “No, fuck you. You didn’t deserve to die the way you did. I’m not suggesting otherwise. But you should have faced justice for all the things you did. You abused children in your care. Kids who were supposed to be able to trust you to look after them. Kids who had horrible lives and needed someone. You betrayed their trust. You betrayed all of us. Don’t you dare play the victim with me.”

  Blake held Sully’s eye for a moment. Only a moment. Then he ducked his head. Ashamed. “You don’t understand.”

  “You can tell us all about it during the trip.”

  Blake peered back up at him. “Where?”

  Sully crouched in front of him, gazed into the face of the brother he loved and searched for him there. Dez was in there somewhere, behind the loathing and suspicion oozing from the expression. For now, though, it was best to focus on Blake. They had Dez back. Everything else, Sully could deal with, one step at a time.

  The trick was to get Blake to agree to come quietly. Sully and Eva could control him, but not necessarily without a fight. And every fight came with the possibility of someone getting badly hurt. Though the situation was out of their control, it wouldn’t eradicate the pain or guilt if any of them was forced to hurt someone they loved.

  Anyway, between what Cecilia had said and the way Blake was watching him now, Sully had drawn a conclusion—one he’d never expected to make.

  The violence inside Jim Blake had been created, not born. The drunken monster he’d turned into was a construct of his youth. And who knew what sort of childhood his father had endured?

  As Cecilia had said, it wasn’t an excuse, but it was an explanation. And Sully had never been ignorant to what he could have become without the Braddocks.

  One reply to Blake’s question would probably be enough to get Blake to come with them willingly. Maybe it wasn’t exactly justice; maybe it would be a greater gift than this man deserved.

  But it was Christmas. What better time of year for generosity?

  Sully managed a smile he didn’t feel. “We’re taking you to your family.”

  11

  The trip to the car came with a few challenges of its own, the snow and the darkness tripping them up now and again and Blake tugging against them more than once. But Sully and Eva were far from weak, and while a free Dez was a significant challenge for even the two of them together, a handcuffed Dez was manageable.

  Coaxing him into the car was another story, so Sully resorted to a reminder about the purpose for their trip.

  Blake wasn’t convinced. “How the hell would you know where my family is?”

  “I’m a private investigator.” Sully nodded toward Eva. “She’s a cop. We know how to find them.”

  It was true, in a manner of speaking—just not necessarily the way Blake was meant to read it. It likely spoke more to longing and desperation to find his loved ones and less to trusting them that he finally let them maneuver him into the back seat.

  Sully got in next to him while Eva settled in behind the wheel.

  The mid-winter sun had set, casting them in darkness once the interior light went out with the slam of Eva’s door. Dez’s eyes, a pale glimmer in the glow from the dashboard, had grown large, as if Blake only now felt the full weight of his predicament.

  He turned to Sully. “Where are they?”

  “Not far.”

  “Where?” The question a boom, tearing through the vehicle like a bomb blast.

  “Edge Creek,” Sully said.

  “They’re dead. I know they’re dead. I saw them.”

  Sully had hoped to avoid this. As Eva took them away from the Blake farm, Sully sought to better explain, offering a more accurate picture of the situation.

  “They are. You’re still going to be able to see them.”

  “How the hell would you know that?”

  “I think you know.”

  Blake snorted. “The psychic bullshit you used to pull? All the whining and crying you did about the people in your room at night? You pulling that on me again?”

  Sully sought out Dez’s eye in the shadows. “It wasn’t bullshit. I see the dead. I always have.”

  Another snort. “Then you’re no less a freak now than you were then.”

  “Watch your mouth, you son of a bitch,” Eva growled.

  Dez’s head snapped toward her. “What did you say to me?”

  Sully
sought to deescalate things before they got out of hand. Keep him talking. Just keep him talking, and they’d get to Edge Creek before he knew it.

  “We talked to your sister,” he said.

  Blake’s attention returned to him. “Cecilia? She’s still alive?”

  “Yeah. She lost her eyesight, so she sold her house on Sycamore and move into a place where she can have some care. Were you looking for her when you went to her house and the farm, or were you hoping to find something else?”

  “I want to see her.”

  “You will, eventually. But not tonight.”

  “I want to see her.”

  Sully made his voice firmer as Blake had. “Not tonight. She isn’t interested in seeing you. She’s tried to distance herself from her past. Frankly, I don’t blame her.”

  “Wasn’t my fault. None of it was my fault.”

  “Not when you were a kid. Everything that happened after, that was your fault.”

  Blake turned away. “You don’t understand.” His voice had softened.

  Sully couldn’t help it. He laughed. “I don’t understand? I don’t understand what? What it’s like to suffer abuse? Yeah, you know something, I do. Thanks to you and others like you.”

  Blake’s gaze settled on him again. Though the details of the expression were lost to the darkness, Sully didn’t sense the anger he had earlier.

  “I know this won’t mean much, but it was never my intention to turn out the same as him.” It was all he said, no apologies added. Then again, this was Jim Blake. What he’d said was probably as close to an apology as he’d ever offered anyone.

  The rage had left him, at least temporarily. He was no longer fighting, no longer pulling at the cuffs, no longer searching for an escape. And Sully was no longer seeing the terrifying man of his memories. This was a man missing his family, regretting his past and longing for something better.

  In a police interview situation, this would be a suspect primed to offer up a confession.

  Know thy enemy, Sully had once heard. He’d overcome his fear of ghosts by learning more about the things he saw; he’d use the same tactic now.

  “When you went to the farm tonight, you were looking for your father, weren’t you?”