Final Words (6 page)

He lifted a visitor’s card key. “Your receptionist gave this
to me when I told her I was your husband.”

Emma frowned. “
Ex
-husband. I’ll make a note to let
the receptionist know that additional piece of information.”

Alan perched on a corner of her desk, his eyes glimmering
beneath pale lashes. He was apparently unaffected by the curtness of her tone. “I
haven’t seen you in months. Since that day before the judge.”

“You’ve called me almost every night.”

“I’ve spoken to your machine almost every night. I’ve spoken
to your parents. I haven’t spoken to you.” He leaned one hand on the center of
her desk, staking a claim on her territory, bringing himself close enough that
she caught another whiff of his cologne. “I’ve been worried about you, Emma.”

She put down the folder, picked up a pen and twirled it
through her fingers, determined not to back away. His nearness made her nervous
but only because she remembered how he had made her doubt herself with his
lies. At least, that was what she wanted to believe.

Those charming blue eyes dipped, focusing on her lips. “Can’t
we at least talk, babe?”

Her abdominal muscles tightened and her ribs began to ache
with the effort of holding her ground. “I don’t see that we have anything to
talk about. And I wish you’d get off my desk.”

He ignored her wish. “Can’t you forgive me for a little
mistake?”

She shot to her feet. “A mistake? You cheated on me several
times—”

“Only twice.”

“And then lied even after I caught you in the act.” Emma
took a deep breath. She would
not
be drawn into an argument over how
many affairs he’d had.

“I lied because I love you, Emma and because I hated to see
you hurting.” He tilted his head as he looked up at her, his expression a
combination of boyish hope and a cad’s confidence. “Honey, you wanted to
believe me. You wanted to believe in our marriage.”

The truth in his words had her face heating. “I wanted to
believe in myself too and you took that away from me.”

“I don’t blame you for still being angry.” Moving back at
last, he clasped his hands behind his back. But the gleam in his eyes belied
his almost penitent stance. “I was a rat and I don’t deserve you. But I do
worry about you, especially since your accident.”

Holding the pen against her aching ribs, she glared at him. “I’m
fine. And I’m very busy, so if you don’t mind…”

Alan leaned forward again, resting both palms flat on the
top of her desk. “I still love you, Emma.”

It hurt but she maintained eye contact with him. “You should
have thought of that before you cheated on me.”

The smile in his eyes melted into something softer as he
focused on her lips. “I wish you would believe that I’ve changed my ways. Oh,
baby, I want to kiss you.”

Feeling the weight of his gaze upon her lips again, Emma
remembered their last kiss—remembered how she could smell the woman he’d made
out with less than twenty minutes earlier—and her spine went rigid. “Go away,
Alan.”

He blinked as if he didn’t understand. “But you love me too.”

“Your infidelity killed my love.”

Shadows flashed through his eyes and he slammed one fist
against the desk. “It takes two to ruin a marriage, Emma!”

Emma’s entire body trembled but not with old passion or
guilt or any sense of loss. This was fury. “Go away now, Alan, or I
will
call Security.”

Hands raised, he backed away from the desk, his manner
suddenly contrite again, his face relaxing into a pleasant expression that didn’t
fool her for a second. “I’m going. We’ll talk again later.”

She reached for her telephone. “Alan—”

“I’ll call you.”

As she started to call building security, Alan slipped out
the door. Still shaking, Emma hung up the phone and fumbled her way back into
her chair. Lowering her face into her hands, she gave in to tears for the first
time since her accident.

* * * * *

“Do you see him?” Charlie murmured over the radio.

“Not yet,” Jason whispered back. He crouched between two
trash dumpsters in the shadow of an old warehouse on Dowling Street. Clouds
deepened the night, weighing down the summer air. Scents of old oil, grease and
rust hung in the humidity and the only sound came from the waves lapping in the
bay.

Jason knew that inside the dark warehouse at his back at
least ten men gathered. So far Jaime Campanero had not joined them. But Jason’s
system of snitches had revealed that the illegal alien was a regular visitor to
this weekly distribution by one of the city’s smaller drug suppliers.

Leaning back against the cool concrete wall, Jason waited.
He and his team were here partly because Emma St. Clair had suggested that
Amalia Campanero had a brother. He imagined she’d be pleased when he told her
they’d found the man.

Scowling at the distracting image of Emma smiling, he tried
to focus on the moment. Narrowing his eyes, he visually canvassed the street.
The dozen men he and Charlie had brought along were invisible. Tonight’s raid
would be a piece of cake.

If only Jaime Campanero would show up.

Something scuttled through the garbage strewn along the base
of the building. Dank, the atmosphere weighed on him. He considered how Ty had
been standing in an alley like this one when he’d been gunned down. He’d lain
there alone, bleeding in the muck and garbage for a long time before a waitress
from the club had found him during her cigarette break. Of the thirty-two
customers and staff in the club that night, Chief Hosken had interviewed only a
fraction of those that Jason had talked to since he and Charlie had been pulled
off the case. That was more proof that they should still be investigating Ty’s
murder.

Jason’s earpiece crackled again and he heard Charlie
whisper, “Here comes another one.” Two blocks away, Charlie waited in the back
of a catering van that had been outfitted with surveillance equipment. “That’s
him. Get ready.”

Jason huddled further back and tried to focus on the
present. From where he sat between the dumpsters, he couldn’t see up or down
the street and so had to rely on his hearing. After a few seconds, he heard a
splash of water.

He tensed. The newcomer passed the dumpsters. Jason caught only
a quick impression of a tall, lanky figure in dark pants and a pale T-shirt.
Jaime Campanero stood over six feet tall according to INS reports and weighed
less than one-hundred-fifty pounds. Charlie was right. This was their man.

Although he wanted to move, Jason held his position. Getting
Campanero was the ultimate goal of the raid. But if they could nab almost a
dozen drug dealers and their supplier at the same time, victory would be all
the sweeter.

The warehouse door creaked. Slowly, Jason stood up and
lifted his radio to his lips. “MacKenzie here,” he whispered. “Get ready.”

Lowering the radio, he raised his other hand. Silently, he
slid off the safety on his gun. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw two other
figures detach themselves from the shadow of the building across the street. He
saw the sheen of light on their guns and felt the comfort any cop feels in the
presence of fellow officers. He wondered what feelings Tyrone had experienced,
all alone that last night of his life.

Even as that thought occurred to him, Jason heard a shout
from inside the warehouse, followed quickly by a gunshot.

“Officer down!” Static surged with the voice over Jason’s
earpiece and then the night exploded with gunfire.

“Happy Friday, Doc.” Skitch placed a full mug of coffee on
Emma’s desk and then sat across from her with his own foamy cappuccino. He kept
a small machine in his cubicle down the hall, along with a drawer full of
assorted pastries. “You’ve made it almost a week,” he said.

Emma shook her head when he offered her a powdered donut.
But she did pick up the mug and take an appreciative sniff of the steamy
richness. “It feels like I’ve been back a year.”

She was more relaxed now and credited her brief tear-fest.
She had stood up to her ex-husband and Wednesday morning’s strangeness in the
lab seemed a vague memory. She wanted to wait a few more days before trying
another autopsy but was confident she could handle it. She’d taken her
anti-anxiety meds, gotten some good rest and now she was back in the swing of
things. She hadn’t even dreamed about Jason MacKenzie.

That, oddly, was a bit disappointing.

“Did you hear about last night’s big drug bust?” Skitch
licked foam off his upper lip. “Sounds like we’ll be busy today. Your Detective
MacKenzie was involved.”

“He isn’t
my
Detective MacKenzie.” And yet worry
flared. There was something about the man that shot straight to the emotional
core of her, dreams or not. “There were casualties?”

“One of the uniformed cops was wounded. Word is he jumped
the gun. But he’s okay. Two drug pushers were killed, though and—” Skitch
paused. “Well, well, speak of the devil.”

At Skitch’s lighter tone, Emma looked up to find Jason
standing in her office doorway. When he locked those golden-brown eyes on her
and smiled, her face heated and she couldn’t blame it on the steam from the
coffee. She wasn’t even sure she could blame it on Skitch and Marta’s stories
anymore. Or her dreams. No, this attraction definitely came from inside herself
and it was real.

“I’ll just take my coffee and donuts back to my cubicle.”
Skitch bounded to his feet, shedding powdered sugar all over his lab coat as he
did so. “We’ll review those reports later, Doc.”

Panic swept in. “Skitch, you don’t have to lea—”

“Mornin’, Detective MacKenzie,” he said as he ignored Emma’s
pleading glare and headed out the door.

“Good morning, Skitch.” Jason entered her office and dropped
into the chair Skitch had vacated. He smiled at Emma. “I came by to thank you.”

She took a deep breath to calm a pulse that had begun to
flutter in a most annoying way. It was too soon after her divorce for her to be
interested in another man. It was too soon after her trauma.

“I’d have figured it out eventually,” he went on. “But you
got me there faster than I would have on my own.”

Wondering if she’d missed something while staring into his
sexy eyes, she sat up straighter. “What are you talking about?”

“Amalia Campanero. Your sympathy for her got me thinking. I
did some checking and discovered she had a brother. We found the guy last night
and he confessed to killing her.”

Jason’s words streamed into Emma’s ears and down through her
body, landing in the pit of her stomach like a ten-ton weight. “A…brother?”

“Yeah. Jaime Campanero.”

That weight intensified, pressing on her diaphragm, making
it difficult for her to draw breath to say, “Jaime?”

“That’s right. He’s an illegal alien who’s been deported on
several occasions over the past twenty years. This time, he was determined to
stay in Texas and so he forced Amalia to let him hide out at her place. She’d
always managed to run him off before. This time, though, he refused to budge.”

The incident in the autopsy suite rushed back to Emma with
startling clarity.

“My brother,”
the vision had said.
“He shot me and
ran out the back.”

And I knew his name was Jaime
, Emma thought.

“They argued.” She felt the cold vinyl of her chair arms
under her elbows and the weight of the ceiling above, pressing down on her
head.

“Emma?”

Blinking, she looked up to see Jason watching her. The
suspicion in his eyes had her breath catching in her chest.

“What makes you think they were arguing?” he asked.

“Oh… I was…just…hypothesizing.” Her stomach churned. Air.
She needed air. Rising, she stepped around her desk. “I have to go.”

Jason stood up too and blocked her escape route. He wasn’t
smiling anymore. “Did someone tell you they argued? Is there a witness I should
know about? Someone you’ve talked to?”

“No, I just…had a feeling.” She pressed a hand against her
roiling stomach. “That’s all. Now I really have to go.”

Brushing past him, she stepped out of her office and ran for
the ladies’ room.

* * * * *

Jason stared at the empty doorway, his stomach sore and
throbbing as if she’d just driven her fist into it.

“Guess I’m not as charming as I thought,” he muttered and
then strode out of her office. The sterile tile hallway stretched away in both
directions, populated with individuals in various colored lab coats. But Emma
had vanished.

Settling his hands on his hips, he stood in the corridor for
a long moment, debating whether or not he should hunt her down. Why had she
run? She’d said she had a feeling. Did she mean an innocent hunch or some kind
of psychic episode?

His stomach clenched again. Psychics…he’d had enough of that
crap after Rose had died. So-called mediums and psychics had plagued him like
cockroaches crawling out of the woodwork of an old house—charlatans claiming to
have messages from his sister that they would pass along for a price.

Yeah, right. As if he’d believe in that stuff.

And Emma was a doctor, a professional. She couldn’t believe
in such nonsense either. He
needed
to know that she didn’t because if
she did believe, it might tempt him to reconsider. And reconsidering could only
lead to painful hope.

He pressed a hand to his stomach and recognized an ache deep
inside, evidence of a different kind of need that he hadn’t felt in a long
time. A need that grew more intense every time he saw Emma, spoke to her,
thought about her. Her expressive blue eyes, the husky purr in her voice… He
couldn’t ignore the effect she had on him. Her apparent disinterest in what he’d
considered his easy charm, her ability to walk out on him without even glancing
back, made him want to find a reason to stay away from her. But he couldn’t.
Emma St. Clair intrigued him far too much for him to just forget about her.

And that annoyed the hell out of him.

“Leave her alone,” he muttered, turning toward the
elevators. “Damned if I will.”

* * * * *

Emma stared at her reflection in the restroom mirror and
tried to see some sign of sanity in it. But her pale cheeks and wide pupils
looked anything but sane. She looked like she felt—terrified and slightly out
of her mind.

And who was to say she wasn’t? The specter in the autopsy
suite had told her things she couldn’t possibly have known on her own.

“I knew she had a brother,” she told her reflection. “I knew
his name. I knew they argued. How?”

Her reflection had no answer. Turning her back on the
mirror, Emma leaned back against the porcelain sink. Closing her eyes, she took
several deep breaths. It didn’t help. There was just no way she should have
known what she’d known.

Unless ghosts really did exist.

* * * * *

Jason was still annoyed three hours later as he stood in the
dark observation room at police headquarters and stared through the two-way
mirror. On the other side of the mirror, Marta Zamora smoothed a hand over her
dark hair as if studying her reflection.

“Look at her left eyebrow.” Charlie stood beside Jason in
the darkness. “See how it tilts? The lady isn’t pleased.”

“Neither is Eddie Gibbs.” Jason inclined his head toward the
court-appointed attorney who sat with Jaime Campanero at the table inside the
cramped, gray interrogation room. The slouchy lawyer wore bags under his eyes
the way other men wore power ties. An accessory of his job, those bags had
grown even heavier in the half-hour since Campanero had recanted his
confession.

Charlie folded his arms across his chest. “I’d say the only
person around here who is pleased is Campanero.”

The accused killer slumped in his chair, long legs splayed
under the table. His lips curled in a smug smile and his dark eyes glittered
beneath hooded lids as he stared at Marta.

“Excuse me a moment,” she said, her voice deepened by the
hidden microphone and walked out of the interrogation room. Seconds later, she
joined Jason and Charlie. Leaning back against the closed door, she regarded
them with hopeless eyes. “Give me something to work with, guys.”

“We have his confession on record,” Charlie offered,
although his tone reflected her hopelessness.

Marta’s full lips turned down in a frown. “Which he’s saying
was coerced.”

Jason felt her disappointment. He liked Marta and knew that
she respected him as a cop. She’d made it clear early on, however, that she
disapproved of his personal life. Jason had always accepted that. But now her
disapproval stung because even though his personal life had changed, Marta and
others still believed he was a hound who would chase anything in a skirt. He
could handle that. But had her lowly opinion of his personal life spilled over
to his professional one?

“You know we wouldn’t coerce a suspect,” he said.

“I do know. But since he confessed before his lawyer showed
up, we’ll need some hard evidence if we’re going to convict him.” Marta toyed
with a lock of her black hair. “Something more than a kid with a sketchpad. I’m
thinking the murder weapon would be nice.”

Jason lifted one shoulder. “That gun could be anywhere in
Clear Harbor.”

“A smart man would’ve tossed it in the bay,” Charlie added.

“I need something,” Marta insisted. “We’ve got no gunpowder
residue and our only witness is a kid who didn’t see the actual crime. Three
other guys will swear our man was fishing with them the night Amalia was
murdered.” She fixed a pointed gaze on Jason. “What made you look for him in the
first place?”

Jason thought about Emma. Using her words, he answered, “I
just had a feeling.”

“I hope you get another feeling pretty quickly.” Marta
drummed red-tipped fingernails against the outside of her navy-clad thigh. “You
know, boys, you’ve missed on a couple of cases recently. Tyrone Sharpe. Brian
Reiser. I’d hate to see this Campanero guy get away with murder too.”

“So would we.” Jason’s gut churned. “So would we.”

* * * * *

Emma closed the paperback book with a disappointed sigh and
returned it to the bookstore shelf. Beachview Books was the third bookstore she’d
visited tonight. Even in a mid-sized city like Clear Harbor, she was amazed by
the number of titles she’d found on the subject of ghosts. And yet not one of
the books put forth any solid evidence. Book after book, magazine and newspaper
interviews, internet articles…she’d read a lot of case studies but no real
evidence of ghosts existed.

That left only one option.

If she couldn’t blame what she’d seen on something outside
herself then she would have to look inward. That wasn’t something she was quite
ready to do.

Shifting her purse strap higher on her shoulders, she
reached for the next book. As she moved, her stomach growled, reminding her
that she hadn’t eaten all day.

You’re not eating enough lately.

Brian’s words echoed through her mind—his last words to her
that night—and she felt suddenly lightheaded and warm along her back. It was
difficult not to cast a wary glance over her shoulder, to see if he was
standing behind her.

“Hello.”

The real masculine voice brought her head around with a
start. Jason MacKenzie stood behind her. A different kind of heat swept her as
his eyes locked with hers. Like the flames in her dream…

Her stomach muscles clenched and her mouth went suddenly
dry, arousal forgotten as a more disturbing thought occurred to her. Fearing he
would notice what type of book she was looking at, she shoved the paperback
onto the nearest shelf. Then, gripping the strap of her purse, she took a step
backward, into the cross-aisle. “Hello. I was just…just leaving.” She took
another step backward.

He held up his empty hands as he moved after her. “I guess
you didn’t find what you were looking for, either.”

To her surprise, he didn’t look any happier to see her than
she was to see him. Shadows darkened his eyes and a nerve twitched just above
the left corner of his mouth. Even his upraised fingers seemed tense.

Emma’s gaze drifted over his hands and something tickled the
pit of her stomach as she noticed the roughness of his palms. A man’s roughness
that would feel so right on the silky undersides of her…

“What happened at midnight,” he said.

Emma blushed as she yanked her thoughts back in line. “I’m
sorry?”

“It’s a Hardy Boys’ book.
What Happened at Midnight
.
The bookstore doesn’t have a copy.”

“Oh.” God, she’d thought he knew about her dream the other
night. “That’s too bad.”

Confused, not knowing what else to say, she pulled her gaze
away from his and hurried toward the shop door. She had no intention of telling
him what she had been looking for. He already thought she was some kind of
nutcase.

What would he think if he knew what I was thinking a few
seconds ago? What I’ve been dreaming about?

Before she could touch the door handle, his masculine hand
shot past her to grip it.

“Allow me,” he said and Emma swore she could feel his breath
against her cheek. The heat of it seeped through her skin.

He pushed the door open and she darted outside. An ocean
breeze provided a little relief to her hot face but did nothing to cool the
heat inside her.