CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR

Amanda placed her notebook on the small desk in their hotel room. Began to organize her thoughts for the apprenticeship submission.

A twinge of guilt nagged at her. If only she could do something more to help Declan and the other souls, but she’d done everything in her power. She couldn’t change criminal procedure and have the cops arrest someone when there wasn’t any evidence.

Stop. Focus. Time to get this paper done, once and for all. After making a brief outline, she began to type each module of her analysis. How the carousel needed a more cohesive design. How different types of paints should be used. How her proposed cost analysis would prevent weather damage and other time-related wounds in the future.

Her fingers flew across the keyboard. When she was in her element, thinking about what she loved and talking about it, time seemed to speed up. Not like her day job as an office manager, where the tiny secondhand on every clock dug in its heels and refused to move at a faster pace.

Color suggestions for the horse manes, primer necessities for the poles that centered in each horse’s saddle, and gold leaf uses all came out in a slew of words, tiny black letters filling in—turning a blank page into a flurry of black lettering that could get her the career she yearned for.

When she glanced at the clock, ninety minutes had passed. Wow. She could’ve sworn only ten minutes had gone by. The power of passion.

Now to resize and rename each of the photos she’d taken with her camera. With any luck, she could get most of them done before Jake returned. Digging into her bag, she pulled out her camera. She pressed the button to open so she could connect the SD card to her laptop.

Oh shit. Where was her SD card? The piece that held all the photos she’d taken at Zephyr Land? She yanked open her bag again. Dug and scrambled through all its contents. No card.

The photos were a huge part of her presentation. She had to send them along with the paper. So where the hell had the SD card gone? Had Jake borrowed it when he’d taken photos of the roller coaster? Doubtful. She had used the camera after that to take additional snapshots of the individual pieces of the carousel.

The carousel…

Damn. Now she remembered. She’d removed the SD card when her camera hadn’t functioned correctly. And placed the card on the base of the carousel by the emu. That’s when Declan and Jake decided to have their little shouting match, and she’d forgotten to put the card back into the camera. She hadn’t ended up taking more photos.

So the SD card remained at Zephyr Land. Crap. She and Jake would need to retrieve it at first light so she could modify the images and submit the paper.

Placing her head in her hands, she hoped nothing else would go wrong.

* * *

Twenty minutes later, Amanda heard a knock on the door. She peered through the peephole and saw Jake. Unlatching the door, she let him inside.

“Did you see Mary? What happened?”

He came in and slumped onto the bed. The tiny vein in his neck bulged.

“I talked to both Mary and Randall.”

“Randall?” Amanda sat beside Jake and placed her hand on his knee. “Tell me what happened.”

Jake’s eyes held a sadness, a dark storminess behind those bright blues. “He lied to me.”

“About what?”

“Where he’d been earlier tonight.” Jake stared out the window and then met Amanda’s gaze. “The guy claimed to have painted the town with Mary, only I’d just driven from Mary’s place. She’s the poster child for a flu epidemic. No way could she have gone anywhere.”

“So she didn’t use her car.”

With a heavy sigh, Jake said, “No, she didn’t. But she got real tripped up when I asked if anyone had borrowed it. She clammed up, told me she had to go, and practically threw me out of her house.”

Amanda remembered how frightened Sarah had been of the man who’d poisoned her, the one who had seemed friendly and pretended to be a buddy of her dad’s, but in reality, he had just wanted to kill her.

“Randall’s had some practice with lying,” Amanda whispered. “That’s what the little girl’s ghost told me in the lobby.”

To his credit, Jake didn’t scoff or dismiss her comment. He just sat there, staring at his feet. “Why would Randall lie to me? The only reason would be if he didn’t want us to know where he really was—”

“Like borrowing Mary’s car to run us off the road,” Amanda said.

“Right.” Jake stood up and paced the room. “I’m not even saying he’s the one who tried to hurt us, but I got a weird vibe when I showed up at his house. I kept telling him you and I were leaving tomorrow morning at first light. I made sure he understood that we would no longer be in his way.”

“You know the truth too,” Amanda said. “I hate to say ‘I told you so,’ but in this case, I think Randall is the one trying to get rid of us.”

“I won’t say for certain,” Jake said, but there was a doubt radiating from his eyes that hadn’t been there earlier. “But we can’t rule Randall out either.”

Amanda reached for Jake’s hand when he paced near her. Learning one’s hero had flaws was never easy. Learning one’s hero may have attempted to kill them earlier tonight was a whole other ball game.

Jake shrugged. “At least he knows we’ll be out of here first thing in the morning.”

She bit her lip. “Um, yeah. About that…”

“What?”

“I’m fairly certain I left my SD camera card on the carousel at Zephyr Land. I need it to submit my paper.”

“Are you serious?” He dropped her hand. “I have some important photos on that card too! I didn’t insert a separate card for my roller coaster pics.”

“Afraid so. I looked everywhere. I even thought you might have put it in another spot, but then I remembered taking it out to check my camera earlier. I need us to return to Zephyr Land, just to get the SD card.”

Jake sighed. “Fine. We’ll go first thing in the morning. I would say let’s go now, but with everything that’s happened, I’m not putting us in more jeopardy at this hour.”

“Agreed. We should go when the sun is up tomorrow.”

“Will that give you time to finish your paper submission?” he asked.

“Yes. Everything is done. I’ve already submitted the paper piece online. All I need is to get that SD card, spend about half an hour formatting photo sizes, and then submit them as an appendix item.”

“Do you have to do it here, or can we do it in an Internet café on our way back to Georgia?”

She thought for a moment. Technically, she could use her laptop anywhere with Wi-Fi and upload the photos. The design company knew she would be sending additional information before the noon deadline tomorrow.

“I can do it anywhere, but the photo appendix is due by noon.”

Jake nodded. “Let’s get up, check out, and grab the SD card first thing. No more back roads returning to Georgia. We’ll go north to Mobile, then catch Interstate 65. Mobile is sure to have some Internet cafes. We’ll have breakfast. You work on your photos and submit.”

As much as she’d wanted to hang out and have breakfast and coffee with Pearl before leaving town, Amanda knew this was the better option.

“Sure. As long as we get to Mobile before ten thirty, we should be good,” Amanda said.

Declan and the ghosts would remain stuck in the park, but what could she do? Aside from becoming a cop herself, she could only report her suspicions. She and Jake had already done that, only to fall on the sheriff’s deaf ears.

Perhaps Jake’s position paper focusing on the derailment could eventually bring justice to the victims of the tragedy at Zephyr Land ten years ago. She’d shared her findings with Declan, had done everything in her power to bring those souls a semblance of peace.

She hoped that would be enough.

“Great, then it’s settled,” Jake said. “We wake up at six, get your SD card, and get the hell out of Abandon.”

Before anything else happens hung on the tip of her tongue, but she didn’t say the words out loud. Jake probably thought the words too, and he’d be correct. They both needed to abandon the town of Abandon before someone succeeded in running them off the road—permanently.