Page 56 of Deceiving Grier

I had called Jett before leaving for the hospital and told him what had happened, so he could meet me there. At the hospital, he’d been unusually quiet and thoughtful. Even after Grier’s fractured arm had been set and cast and he’d been set up in a room—he had a concussion, and doctors wanted to monitor him overnight—Jett had still been uncharacteristically subdued.

Grier had looked exhausted, pale, with dark circles shadowing the thin skin under his eyes. The nurse had given him something for the pain, but the thin line between his furrowed brows made me think it hadn’t kicked in or wasn’t strong enough. Either way, he needed to rest, and I could see him struggling to stay awake while we were there.

I squeezed his good hand lightly from my seat next to his bed. He turned to look at me and winced from the movement.

“You need to rest,” I told him, getting to my feet and leaning over him. “We’re going to go so you can sleep. Unless you want me to stay.”

“I’ll be okay. I don’t think I can stay awake.”

While the painkillers might not have knocked out his discomfort entirely, they definitely made him groggy and muddled-headed if his heavy-lidded, unfocused gaze was any indication.

I leaned closer and brushed my lips over. “I’ll be back first thing tomorrow. Do you want me to bring you anything?”

“Going home tomorrow,” he murmured, eyes closed. He was pretty much out. I kissed him lightly once more and straightened.

“I guess now that you guys aren’t keeping it a secret anymore, these PDAs are just going to be a thing?” Jett smirked.

“Better get used to it,” I told him. “We should go.”

“Yeah.”

Together, we walked through the quiet hospital corridors making our way to the parking lot. Outside, the cold and damp November night seeped through my clothes, chilling me inside and out. I bent my head against the frigid wind and started towards my car, but Jett stopped walking, forcing me to stop and turn towards him. “What’s wrong?”

“Do you think it was the ghost that pushed Grier? Maybe whatever is haunting our house is getting stronger.”

“There’snoghost.” But there was something—or, more accurately, someone. I hadn’t been exaggerating when I told Officer Robot and his silent partner that Grier was one of the most down-to-earth people I’d ever met. If he said he saw someone in the house, then he saw someone. “Let’s go home, and we’ll figure it out then.”

Back at the house, despite the late hour—or early, depending on how you looked at it—Jett and I decided to do a sweep of the house, just to make sure the police didn’t miss anything. After all, they hadn’t exactly been subtle when implying they didn’t buy the possibility of an intruder. They’d pretty much come right out and said Grier had probably imagined seeing someone in the shadows or thatI’dsomething to do with it.

We climbed the stairs to the second floor together, intending to make our way up to the attic, but he stopped just outside his room.

“Did Grier go into my room for something?”

I shrugged. “Don’t know.”

“My door was closed when I left for work,” he said, moving to stand in the opening.

“The police searched the place. Maybe they left your door open,” I countered, standing behind him.

“Maybe,” Jett contemplated, sounding anything but unconvinced. “But Grier’s door is closed, and so is the bathroom.”

I guessed it would be unlikely the police would close all the other doors up here except Jett’s, especially if they’d found it closed in the first place. So, what did that mean? That the police had found it open when they’d searched and left it that way? That whoever Grier had seen had been in Jett’s room? Even if Grier had been in Jett’s room—though I couldn’t think of a reasonwhyhe would have been—he would have closed the door behind him.

Unless someone had been in the house since we left.

My insides turned cold. My stomach sank to my shoes in a cold, oily swoop. “Is anything missing?”

I looked past his shoulder into his room. It looked the same as it usually did—a chaotic mess. I could be a slob, but the clutter in Jett’s room—between the unmade bed, laundry carpeting the floor to the crap cluttering his dresser and desk and nightstand—made me look like a neat freak.

“I’m not sure.”

That didn’t surprise me. Unless he was looking for something specific, I doubted he could tell if anyone had taken something from his room or not.

He turned and looked at me. “We need to make sure no one is in this housenow.”

Obviously, his thoughts had followed the same track as mine. I nodded, and together we began in the attic and worked our way down to the first floor. We checked every room, every closet and looked behind every piece of furniture and window covering. Aside from Jett’s bedroom door—which wasn’t exactly a smoking gun—we didn’t find anything to convince us someone had been in the house.

I’d almost thought that maybe we were wrong, and there really hadn’t been anyone—or maybe Jett had been right about his ghost all along. Until Jett pointed to the door in the kitchen that led to the basement.

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