Page 32 of Last Resort

“We’ve both done worse wrestling for the remote. And you’d only call the cops because you think Hendricks is cute.” Ben gave him the side-eye.

“It’s not my fault that men in uniform are hot,” Sean protested.

“He’s straight as far as I know.”

“As far as you know,leaves a lot of room,” Sean pointed out, arching an eyebrow.

“You’ve been watching too much role-play sexy cop porn again, haven’t you? Don’t answer that.”

Sean gave an evil chuckle in reply.

“Hey—look at the car.” Ben parked, and they walked to Tom’s old junker. “Someone jimmied the locks.” The trunk lid was ajar, and one of the doors had scratches near the handle.

“Do you think they found anything?” Sean walked in a slow circle around the vehicle.

Ben shook his head. “Doubt it. Tom didn’t hide from the Mob for thirty years by being careless. And I think he came to Cape May to find something he didn’t have, not because of something he already owned. Besides, the cops already searched the place.”

“Maybe you can get the ghost to tell you.”

“That’s exactly what I’m hoping to do.” Ben paused at the door to the unit Tom rented, stretching out his senses. He didn’t pick up on ghostly energy, but he knew that sometimes spirits could retreat out of range and still be aware of what was going on.

He and Sean stepped into the apartment. Despite the efforts of the crime scene cleaners, it still didn’t smell right. The scent of blood was gone, but the overly sanitized odor of cleaning products and air fresheners was a giveaway that something worse had been laundered away.

Ben hurried to put down a salt circle around them and reinforced it with a heavier salt-soaked blessed rope. “Hold this.” He handed Sean a crowbar. “If an angry ghost shows up, whack him with it.”

“I thought we wanted the ghost to show?”

“We do—if he’s reasonably friendly.”

Ben finished the protective circle and stood, picking up a second crowbar. “Thomas Raines. Show yourself. We’ve got questions. And for what it cost to clean up your mess, you owe me.”

The room stayed eerily quiet. Then the temperature plunged to freezing, and a gust of wind nearly ripped the curtains from their rods, lashing them like sails in a storm. It carried away some of the loose salt, but the cord held.

The wind swirled like a vortex, sweeping the check-out time tent card and take-out menus off the chest of drawers and rattling the lampshades.

“Do you know who killed you?” Ben yelled above the racket. When no answer came, he tried again. “Did you find your grandfather’s loot? Is that why you came back?”

The wind grew dark like smoke, and a face formed in the billowing clouds. “It’s mine. You can’t have it!”

“Can’t spend money in hell,” Ben observed. “But we can keep your killer from getting away with stealing your stash if you tell us who did it.”

“Leave that to me!” The ghost pressed his smoke face against the energy boundary of the salt circle until the features distorted monstrously.

“He can’t reach us as long as the barrier holds,” Ben warned Sean, who looked wild-eyed.

“Mind your mouth. We have a friend of a friend who’s a necromancer,” Ben told the ghost. “He can send your foggy ass off to the afterlife with a snap of his fingers, and then you won’t get your money or your revenge.”

“Get out!”

“This is my fucking rental that you’re haunting!” Ben shouted back. “Either help us solve your murder or go to hell, but get out of my unit!”

The wind screamed in the confines of the room, battering all but the largest furniture. Then as abruptly as it started, the fury ended, leaving Ben and Sean gripping their crowbars white-knuckled and hunched defensively against another attack.

“Do you think he’s gone?” Sean kept his voice low, as if the ghost might hear.

Ben listened with his ability. “He’s not here right now. No guarantee he won’t come back.”

“Do you really know an exorcist?”

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