What are you doing here?” Chandler whispered out of the corner of her mouth as Hank’s shoulder brushed hers. He’d slipped into the tour group silently, unobserved and unquestioned. The man moved like a ninja, regardless of his impressive size.
His hands were jammed into the pockets of his gray pants. The cuffs of his button-up shirt were rolled in a messy haphazard fashion. A leather cord wrapped around his neck, and a gold coin of some foreign exchange hung from it. He’d pulled his unruly dark hair back and tied it with a band.
“Keeping an eye on you,” Hank replied. His voice was so low it sounded like a distant rumble of thunder.
“I don’t need a caregiver,” Chandler hissed between clenched teeth.
“Says the woman who was just in the hospital.”
“The ER,” she corrected.
“Same difference.”
“All the same—” she started.
“You need my protection,” Hank finished.
“Like heck I do!” Chandler’s words were far louder than she’d planned.
Cru glanced up and looked between Chandler and Hank. His brows dipped with a concentrated question. Lottie paused mid-sentence. The others in the group stared.
Chandler cleared her throat. “I’m sorry. Please. Continue.”
Lottie grinned an all-too-knowing grin that insinuated everything Chandler wished it didn’t. Cru didn’t appear particularly welcoming toward Hank’s insertion—of course, Hank probably hadn’t paid for the tour.
“Are you stalking me?” Chandler muttered as the tour moved on.
Hank cleared his throat as though coughing and then grunted out, “Hardly.”
“Crashing my date with Cru Dobson?” she countered in a wicked whisper. Baiting him, though she didn’t understand why.
An ironic smile tilted the corner of his mouth. “You’re on a date?”
“No,” Chandler admitted honestly. At least she didn’t think she was. She glanced at Cru, who walked a bit ahead of her, contributing to the tour’s narration with the skilled practice of someone who’d recited it many times before. Sure he’d invited her, but just to be nice. Right?
Hank smelled spicy. He wasn’t supposed to smell this good, especially since they were outside where the air was crisp and energizing. The spice only added to the delectable warmth an evening like this one could create. Tall oak and maple trees lined the street, their leaves occasionally floating down like miniature orange-and-yellow ghosts haunting the air. On either side, old houses stood, some ill-kept, some restored, but most looking lonelier the more south they walked. South. Toward the train depot. Toward the old circus grounds.
A warmth encased her hand, and Chandler stumbled. She righted herself as they kept moving, but every sense in her was wide awake. Hank’s callused hand had encompassed hers, like he had a right to it. She tugged, but he didn’t release her.
“On cold winter nights,” Lottie was saying, “sightseers will spot the shadowy form of a wolf prancing on the riverbank. A memorial to the people who once settled here.”
“Give me my hand back.” Chandler was fast losing her patience with Hank. He was a presumptuous walking Bigfoot.
He didn’t reply, only his fingers began to maneuver between hers, linking and toying as if to tease.
Chandler heard a stick crack beneath her tennis shoe. She glanced down, glad for a reason to be distracted as his fingers wove around hers. Her cheeks were red. She could feel them. The stick broke into three pieces, and one of them jammed between the concrete spacing on the sidewalk.
Something cold pressed against her palm. It was thin and long.
She jerked her head up to meet Hank’s eyes. They were narrowed in caution, and he gave his head a slight shake. The uninvited, warm tumbling of her stomach fled as Chandler realized Hank’s caress was mere subterfuge. His hand left hers, and Chandler gripped whatever he’d so subtly slipped into her palm.
Looking down, whatever warmth his touch had inspired in her quickly fled. A thin gold chain. A necklace? It made little sense. Hardly a romantic gesture, and yet . . .
Chandler was lifting her hand to study the necklace more closely when Hank leaned in and whispered in her ear, “Not now.”
“But—”
“Shhh.”
Chandler narrowed her eyes. Why press it into her hand if he didn’t want questions? Moron.
The group paused in front of a house directly across the street from the back of the train depot. To the right, the old Bluff River Inn rose two stories, its white wooden trim cracked and weathered, its brick walls dull and the mortar a dingy gray.
“In 1897, William Denver commissioned this house to be built for his spinster daughter, Velma. She lived here for over forty years, running it as a guesthouse for travelers who needed to rent a room for a nap, or a night, or perhaps stop for tea.” Cru paused then, and a sly smile dimpled his cheeks. He caught Chandler’s eye, though she wasn’t sure why he singled her out. Especially when he continued. “However, rumors abounded that Velma Denver was running something far more . . . er, lucrative than a mere guesthouse.”
“Enter Patty Luchent.” Lottie flared her arm wide and spread it toward the east and the costume house, whose green roof peeked just a bit above the roof of the elephant house beyond the hotel. “Patty Luchent is known as Bluff River’s first recorded murder victim.”
A ripple of interested surprise ran through the group, but Chandler couldn’t ignore the necklace clenched in her palm. She tried to catch Hank’s eye, question him with a stark stare. His attention was casually leveled on Lottie and her story about the fabled ghost that haunted Chandler’s office.
“She worked by day for the circus, sewing costumes and other etceteras.” Lottie winked at Dereck, who looked uncomfortable as he edged closer to his wife. “But by night it was said that Patty was engaged in . . . shall we say for the younger ears here, other pursuits. It was a perfect career to carry out on the side, considering she traveled with the circus on the train during the spring and summer. There were many opportunities to . . . branch out.”
Lottie’s laugh was charming. She knew they were all getting squirmy. She had the grace to move on to the part that better suited the ghost tour.
“But in 1928 it came to a screeching halt when Patty’s body was discovered in the costume house. Which we shall see shortly.”
They would? Chandler eyed Lottie. She’d not been told that her office was a part of the ghost tour. No one had asked her permission. But then it was a sidewalk tour, and sidewalks were public.
The necklace chain bit into her skin as Chandler squeezed her hand tighter. Cru skirted the group and led the way across the street toward the train depot. If she were superstitious, Chandler would have sworn the necklace in her palm grew warmer. Alive. Singeing her senses as if the piece of jewelry were nearing a place that meant something to it.
A distant scream rent the air.
“No! Oh dear God! Stop—noooo!”
The atmosphere flipped from a lulling ghost story to instant panic. Dereck’s wife grabbed at his arm even as he tried to free himself to run toward the scream. Hank sprang forward, charging up the hill toward the brick monstrosity of the train depot with its cemented windows and tilting chimneys. A few of the kids in the company instantly hurled themselves into their parents’ arms.
“No one do anything!” Cru shouted, fast on Hank’s heels.
Dusk setting in made it difficult to see, but the entire group moved at various paces up the hill. A streetlight flickered, buzzed, then flickered again. A bat swooped in its shadow, and the teenage girl from earlier screamed.
“Shhh!” her father barked.
Chandler tried to gain speed and get out ahead of the others. Wicked imagery of the murdered Patty Luchent’s corpse flashed like a black-and-white silent film in her mind. Staccato and jerky. Slow motion yet hyperspeed.
They rounded the corner of the depot. The street was deserted, now serving the town only as a ramshackle side road toward the abandoned rail yards and the farmers’ old feed mill. Chandler could make out the forms of Cru and Hank. They’d both stopped at the depot’s main entrance.
“Does anyone have a flashlight?” hissed Dereck’s wife, her voice quavering with undisguised fear.
“I do.” Dereck fumbled for his phone.
“No, no.” Lottie waved it away. “Wait.”
“Shouldn’t we call the cops?” The teenager was probably the most sensible of them all.
Cru waved them over, his arm a black silhouette against the navy-blue sky. Stars were beginning to pop out and twinkle in a mocking merriness. Chandler couldn’t make out his expression, but he didn’t seem as urgent as before. Hank was tense still, she could tell by his body posture. She guessed if she could see his face, it would look menacing and severe, like the day she’d first met him.
“Was it her?” Lottie’s shoulders were hunched a bit as she half tiptoed toward the men.
“Shh!” Cru waved at them again.
The group huddled together, like a horror-filled audience should while on a ghost tour. The door to the depot stood wide open. The innards of the building as dark as night, with whispers of echoes coming from its interior. Fluttering. A chortle. A pigeon flapped its wings in a frantic escape from the inside tomb of memories and long-dead voices.
Chandler felt for her keys in her pocket. They were there. She vividly recalled having chained and locked the padlock on the depot door.
“This is crazy. I’m callin’ the cops.” Dereck lifted his phone, and the LED illuminated his face. His eyes were wide and stern. He’d had enough of whatever messing around was happening.
Hank held up his hand. In that one motion, his imposing figure somehow silenced them all. He crept stealthily toward the open door, tugging at something hooked to his pocket. It must have been a flashlight, for he flicked it on just before entering the cavernous building.
Chandler searched her memory in case somehow she had forgotten to lock up. But no. She knew the door had been closed. She’d locked it. There was no easy way inside without busting the locks, and she’d given a key only to the contractor’s office who had said they wanted to stop by again early tomorrow morning to assess the roof from the inside.
Everything was still. Eerily so.
Chandler pushed through the group and approached Cru. He held his arm out to stop her from following Hank.
“I don’t see anything.” Hank’s growl came from inside the building.
“Man . . .” Cru shook his head, almost in awe. He tugged on the brim of his baseball cap and shot them all an incredulous smile. “I—I—wow.”
“Momma, I’m scared.” The little voice of a child made Chandler irritated that they were all standing here like idiots, unprotected, and annoyed that a parent would bring a young child on a ghost tour to begin with. She thought of Peter and suddenly ached to be with him.
The necklace in her hand slipped. She forgot she’d been holding it.
“Dang,” Chandler muttered under her breath. She squatted to feel the grass in hopes of finding it.
Hank exited the depot just as Chandler’s fingers met with the delicate chain buried among the blades of grass.
“Well, folks,” Lottie said, finally taking charge, “I believe you have all witnessed a phenomenon tonight.”
“A phenomenon?” The frightened child’s mother didn’t sound impressed.
Lottie nodded and glanced at Hank, who drew near again to the group. “In 1928, when Patty Luchent was murdered, there was also the beginning of an investigation into a serial killer who was reported to have followed the circus on the rails, ending here when the train stopped for the winter. Some believe Patty was one of his victims, while others . . . well, no one truly knows whether the Watchman actually existed or not.”
“What does that have to do with tonight?” Chandler finally spoke up. Lottie had about ten more seconds to explain or she was calling the police herself.
Lottie lowered her head, almost as one would at a funeral. That slight nod of sympathy, of recognition. Her voice dropped until they had to strain to hear her.
“The Watchman was merely the whisper of a rumor. But the killer was, in truth, real. As Patty was killed that night, stories have since circulated that shortly after she was last seen at the guesthouse across the street, she indicated she was meeting someone at the depot. Which was odd, since it was already past midnight. No one saw her, but one account says someone heard screaming coming from the depot. A woman, begging for her life. The next morning, some say Patty was found in the costume house, only no one could confirm whether she was killed there—” Lottie stopped abruptly, a pause that was irritatingly and unnervingly dramatic—“or here.”
“Are you saying what we just heard was Patty Luchent’s ghost?” Dereck’s voice rose in question.
Cru nodded behind his mother.
Hank remained motionless.
Lottie also nodded. “People have reported hearing screaming from inside the depot. Personally I never have—until tonight. But the Watchman’s ghost may like to resurrect the cries of his victims. As sobering remembrances.”
“That was no ghost screaming,” another group member argued. “I heard a woman plain as day.”
“I called the police.” Dereck’s wife waved her lit phone in the air. “This is ridiculous, to just stand here and do nothing.”
The sirens in the distance emphasized her point.
Chandler felt Hank brush up against her. “Pocket it.” His whisper was harsh in her ear.
“What?” she asked just as she realized he meant the necklace. Wondering why, Chandler did so.
“There were only two certainties about Patty Luchent and the night she was murdered,” Lottie continued, as though she’d fully expected the cops to have been called and wasn’t bothered by the action. “One, wherever they found her body, the fact she was violently murdered was never disputed.”
“And what else?” The teenager was thoroughly enthralled by the tale now, the shock and terror wearing off in exchange for a spine-tingling story.
“Well . . .” Cru stepped up next to his mother, and Chandler could tell he was once again looking straight at her. “They say she was found wearing a gold necklace with a unique charm of a mermaid with a tiny red ruby for her eye. Twisted into her neck like the angry signature of a violent killer.”
“And,” Lottie picked up, “it was. It was the handiwork of the Watchman. Patty was his last victim. As the story goes, the necklace went missing shortly after her body was discovered. The Watchman came back for the necklace. Or someone stole it from the crime scene. No one knows why it was important to someone. But it was. Just another mystery in the larger scheme of things.”
Chandler gaped at Lottie.
Hank gripped her arm tight, until she was sure her skin would have red marks from his fingers.
She couldn’t believe it. The story. It was too outrageous. Too supernatural. Too . . . awful to justify as real. That the necklace had been taken from Patty’s cold, dead body . . .
And now burned a very real hole in Chandler’s pocket.