Infamous (54 page)

“But Brian saw you, too,” Alison pointed out. “He shot at you instead of me because he saw your gun.”

I shrugged again. “I guess I fooled him into thinking I was real.”

“You are real,” she said. She laughed as she shook her head. “I still don’t completely believe it, but you’re really real, aren’t you?”

It felt odd. I’d studied Alison’s face well over a hundred times, but I’d never before seen her looking directly back at me.

A.J. was right. She did have beautiful eyes.

“I don’t suppose this part of the mine has a secret back
door,” she said, pushing herself to her feet and wincing as she put weight on her right leg.

I shook my head. “Why don’t you sit tight?” I suggested. “I’ll go tell A.J. you’re alive, and trapped in here. I’m sure he’s fretting about that.”

She flashed that light around us again, limping as she moved about the space, and I knew that she was trying to calculate how long it would take to dig her out—if digging her out were even possible—and how much air she had left.

I’m not real good at mathematical equations, but like I already said, the odds didn’t appear to be in her favor. Unless we could get her an outside source of air, she was going to run out of oxygen long before she was unburied.

“If I don’t make it out of here, I need you to tell A.J. something for me,” she said, turning to look at me.

“You’ll get out,” I told her. “Even if the kid has to dig with his bare hands.”

She nodded, and I knew she didn’t believe me. “But if I don’t, I need you to tell him something for me,” she said again. “Promise me you will?”

“I promise,” I said. “And I know the drill, dear. You’ve already said it. You love him, you’re sorry. I got it. You’re going to be able to tell him that yourself. Hang tight, I’ll be right back.”

And with that, I popped away, because it had been awhile since I’d played a hand of poker and my ability to bluff wasn’t what it had once been. I could tell that Alison wasn’t fooled by my bravado, because this time I wasn’t even able to fool myself.

“Come on, Jamie,” A.J. said. “Damn it!”

There was only one reason A.J. could think of why Jamie wasn’t answering him, and it was because the ghost couldn’t face him. And if Jamie couldn’t face him, it was because Alison was dead.

But then, from behind him, he heard a voice—“Gallagher?”—and A.J. spun around, raising the handgun he’d found just lying in the dust.

His first thought was that now he truly did see dead people and that Hugh Darcy’s ghost was approaching him.

But the man staggered slightly, his hand against a gash in his head that was still bleeding, his other hand out and up to show he was unarmed. A.J. lowered his weapon, and moved to help the other man. Who was solid and living, thank you, Jesus.

“What happened?” Hugh asked as A.J. helped him sit on the ground. “Alison and Jamie and I—we jumped that man, Brian. He’d just killed Skip and that other guy Gene, and …”

“Alison must’ve gone into the mine to try to get away from him,” A.J. told him, unable to keep the anguish from his voice, “but there was a cave-in.”

“Oh, God,” Hugh said. He pointed back at one of the trucks. “There’s a shovel.…”

“We’re going to need more than a shovel,” A.J. said, although it was definitely a start. He strode toward the truck, trying not to look at the bodies on the ground, and there absolutely was a shovel in the back. He grabbed it, but then looked at the hillside, uncertain as to where to start digging.

But then Hugh said, “What about dynamite?”

And A.J. turned to look at him.

“Skip said he put some at the entrance to the mine,” Hugh told him. “I think they were going to kill us in there, and then blow the mine shut.”

A.J. looked, and there it was—half-buried in the dirt—what looked like a full case of explosives.

“At least that was Skip’s plan,” Hugh said. “Brian had a different agenda. I think his plan was to kill everyone. You know, maybe we should call for help.”

Call. Yes.

A.J. pulled his cell phone out of his pocket, but he had no reception, no ability to call anyone. Except what was it that Jamie had told him? Brian was using another jammer, and he strode over to Hugh’s Jeep, and then the other truck, the one with the cover on the bed, and yes, there it was, sitting right on the front seat.

He pulled the gizmo out of the truck and threw it on the
ground and hit it again and again with that shovel until it was a pile of circuit plates, and wires, and smashed metal casing.

And this time? When he opened the cell phone his mother had given him, he had service. So he used it—to call Alison, praying that she’d pick up.

But he was sent straight to her voicemail.

And enough was enough. “Jamie,” A.J. said. “Where the
hell
are you?”

“I’m
right
here,” I said. “Jeez, kid, don’t you see me?”

But he didn’t. A.J. didn’t see me. Or rather, he
couldn’t
see me. This was one hell of a time for the rules of the spirit game to start changing. But then I realized that I’d probably changed the rules myself back in the mine, when I’d somehow managed to appear to both Brian and Alison.

I tried shouting in his ear. “I’m right here, A.J.!”

He didn’t even flinch.

I snapped my fingers in front of redheaded Hugh’s face, too. He was trying to convince A.J. that it was time to call the local authorities for help—or at least to call his uncle Henry.

But Hugh didn’t see me either, so my theory that everyone
except
A.J. could see and hear me wasn’t a viable one.

A.J., meanwhile, scrambled around, looking at the mine entrance from all angles. I followed him as he went to the other side of the hill. What was he looking for?

He went back to the entrance and began moving the rocks and rubble with that shovel he must’ve gotten from one of the trucks.

“Come on, Jamie,” he muttered. “Please tell me she’s still alive.”

“She’s still alive,” I said, but he couldn’t hear me.

He couldn’t see me, he couldn’t hear me, but he
could
feel me. I closed my eyes and walked into him, praying he’d remember what I’d told him about my method of communicating with Alison.

He straightened up, and swept the air around him with his arms. “Jamie?” he said. I didn’t move and he found me. “What happened?” he asked. “Why can’t I see you?”

He realized instantly that I couldn’t answer those questions. “Okay,” he said, holding out both of his hands, palms up, about two feet apart. “My right hand is
yes
, my left hand is
no
. Okay?”

I touched his right hand.

“Is Alison …?” He closed his eyes and took a deep breath, afraid of the answer. “Is she alive, Gramps?”

Yes.

“Thank you, God.” A.J. took another deep breath, but he wasn’t able to stop the flood of emotion that filled his eyes with tears. “Thank you.”

I touched his right hand again. Thank you, indeed.

“Is she hurt?” he asked me.

Yes.

His shoulders tightened as he braced himself. “Badly?”

No.

He started breathing again. “Have you been able to find any access to fresh air?”

No.

“Have you looked?”

Yes.

“Shit.”

Yes, sir. Big shit.

“Where is she?” he asked me. “How far from the entrance? And yeah, I know you can’t answer that with a yes or a no. But Alison told me that the mine runs relatively close to the surface of the hill line for about an eighth of a mile before angling down, and that there’s a second entrance not too far from here. What I want you to do is go find her—” He stopped himself. “Can you still walk through walls?”

Yes.

“Rock walls?”

Yes. That was not a problem. Besides, the walls of this mine were mostly rubble and dirt.

“Can he?” Hugh asked, and A.J. nodded.

“Okay, Gramps,” he said. “Find Alison and take the shortest distance from her up to the surface and make note of where you end up. Then come back to me and we’re going to use yes and no until I reach that same spot. Got it?”

Yes.

“Tell him to take a measurement while he’s at it,” Hugh suggested. “Let us know how many feet or yards we’re going to have to dig through to reach her.”

“Blast,” A.J. said. “Not dig. We’ve got dynamite, we’re going to use it. Got that, Gramps?”

Yes. Dynamite? For the first time, I actually had hope. Provided, of course, that we did it right, and didn’t bring Alison’s part of the mine down on top of her. But A.J. was clearly aware of that danger.

“I also need to know the exact size and location of the area where she’s trapped,” A.J. told me, “so while you’re down there, walk it with your feet, okay?”

Yes.

I popped away, but quickly came back and we went through some speed rounds of both the hot-and-cold game and Twenty Questions. It was tiresome and frustrating, and all the time we were doing this, I knew Alison was down there alone, thinking she’d been buried alive. But after we were done, A.J. was able to estimate accurately where in the mine Alison was, and how much time she’d have before the air ran out.

We didn’t have an awful lot of time.

Whenever A.J. stopped to think, he shoveled and moved rocks and earth from the hillside beneath which Alison was buried. By the time he finished with his calculations, his hands were raw and bleeding.

But I knew he wasn’t going to stop until he got his woman out of there.

A.J. turned back to where he’d last felt my presence. “Okay, Gramps,” he said, wiping the sweat from his forehead with the sleeve of his T-shirt. “Here’s what we’re going to do.”

*  *  *

“Come on, woman,” Jamie said, popping back in and nearly scaring Alison to death. “I need you to move over this way, as far as you can. You have to take cover. A.J.’s gonna blast you out of here.”

She pushed herself up on her hands and knees—that was the best she could manage with her twisted ankle—and crawled toward the ghost. “Blast?” she repeated.

“With dynamite.” Jamie flashed her a grin that made her understand Melody Quinn’s description of him as
pretty
. With his sparkling blue eyes, and his twenty-something appearance, he was a remarkably handsome man. Almost as handsome as his great-grandson. “He’s calling his buddy Lutz right now to make sure he did the math right.”

“What does A.J. know about dynamite?” Alison had to ask.

“Apparently,” Jamie told her, “when you hang around with Navy SEALs, you learn a lot when you, and I quote,
blow shit up for fun.”

“The war,” Alison said.

“Yeah,” Jamie told her, his expression somber. “It’s a case of good coming from bad. A.J. went through hell, but he spent all that time with Craig Lutz. And now he’s going to use what he learned to save your life.”

“May I ask you something?”

“You can ask,” he told her. “I may not be able to answer.”

“Have you seen God?”

He shot her a smile that was loaded with mischief. “I certainly have. Every single time I made love to my beautiful wife.”

“That’s not what I meant,” she said with a laugh, but it made her cough—it was getting harder to breathe in there.

And Jamie knew it. “I’m going to go check on the kid,” he told her. “Sit tight.”

“I’m not going anywhere,” Alison said, but before he popped away, she stopped him, even though her hand passed right through his arm. “Everyone in your family loved you so much. They still love you,” she told him. “A.J. most of all. I’m glad you came back for him.”

“He deserves some happiness,” Jamie told her, “which is why
I’m
so glad that he met
you.”

“Jesus,” Lutz said, on the other end of A.J.’s cell phone. “You don’t do anything halfway, do you?”

“Yes or no,” A.J. said. “I don’t have a lot of time here. Did I use too much, too little …? The fuse is really short, I know I’m going to have to run like hell, but I don’t have a choice about that.”

“A.J.,” Lutz said. “Man, you’re talking about using explosives that are old and unstable. There’s no way that I can—”

“Guess,” A.J. said. “That’s all I really want, Craig. Just please, God, give me your best guess.”

There was silence on the other end of the phone.

And then Lutz sighed. “A.J., if I tell you and I’m wrong, and you kill her—”

“She’s dying,” A.J. said. “Right now. Jamie was just with her and she’s running out of air.” His great-grandfather was walking through him repeatedly. Over and over and over again, in a signal that was impossible to misunderstand. “It’s now or never.”

“Then do it,” Lutz said. “Yes. If I were there, I’d’ve set up the blast exactly as you did. Exactly.”

“Thank you,” A.J. said. He closed his cell phone and turned. “Hugh, I need a match!”

But it wasn’t Hugh behind him. In fact, Hugh was nowhere in sight. Instead, Rob from catering, aka Rob the FBI agent, was standing there, along with a red-haired woman who had to be his partner Charlotte. They both had their weapons drawn and aimed at A.J.

They both looked a little pale—no doubt from seeing the gruesomely murdered bodies of Skip Smith and the man Jamie had known as Gene, that were still lying in the dirt near the trucks.

“I need you to move slowly, Mr. Gallagher,” Rob told him, in that voice A.J. recognized from all those phone calls. “Hands on your head, then lie on the ground.”

*  *  *

Alison was light-headed and dizzy, and she knew that she was out of time and out of air.

God, she was so tired.…

“Don’t you dare go to sleep!”

She opened her eyes to see Jamie standing over her, frowning. For a man who, like A.J., had angelic good looks, he had an impressively dark scowl.

“A.J.’s outside,” he said. “He’s going to get you out of here. Don’t you give up, girl.”

“My mother and my grandmother both,” she told him. “They died of breast cancer. A.J. was right—there’re no guarantees. Not for anyone. I don’t know why I was so afraid.…”

“Good,” Jamie said. “You’re not afraid anymore. That’s great. I want great-great-grandchildren and I want ’em soon. You’re no spring chicken, dear, and A.J.’s not either. After you get out of here, you and the kid should get to it, fast.”