Page 50 of A Step You Shouldn't Take

The only person I knew in Falls Church was Wyatt Banks’s cousin, and I didn’t relish the thought of calling him. But since I wanted to solve this mystery before Kim woke up, I didn’t have much choice. Trent had been a reasonable guy on the dozen or so occasions we’d met; I just had to hope he hadn’t turned into a dick like my former best friend.

“Reed Cullen?” he asked when I introduced myself. “Reed Cullen who used to be friends with Wyatt?”

“That’s me.”

“Gotta say, I’m surprised to get a call from you.”

“That makes two of us, but I have a question on one of your local cases.”

“Ask away. Always felt bad about what happened between you and my cousin. He can be pig-headed when he wants to be. Say, did your sister ever come back?”

“No, she never did.” And talking about her hurt. “Anyhow, I’m calling regarding the disappearance of Jacqueline Springer.”

“The pastor’s daughter?”

“That’s her. Rumour says there haven’t been any further developments?”

“Not a thing, but that case always did bug the hell out of me. Nobody heard her scream, and nobody saw her struggle. What made a conservative twenty-three-year-old get into a car with a man rather than going back to her friends? Because that’s the only thing that could have happened. She didn’t walk anywhere from the club—her girlfriends said her shoes were pinching and she’d already sat out most of the dancing.”

“Did you trace all the cars parked nearby?”

“Not all of them. A half dozen are still on the query list from what I know.”

“Any of them a black Mercedes?”

“Not sure. Why? You got a lead?”

“Right now? I’ve got a whole lot of pieces I can’t fit together. But if you could check on the car, I’d appreciate it.”

“Give me half an hour.”

I may have accused Kimberly of being absurd, but at that moment, I felt like the lunatic. Asking questions of law enforcement officers based on a ghost story? Had I lost my damn mind?

Maybe so, but Kim had seemed so matter-of-fact in what she was saying, even while drunk. And what reason did she have to lie?

Back when I was a kid, I used to loveThe X-Files. Aliens, ghosts, conspiracy theories… I even had a poster of a spaceship above my bed. Only as I got older did I stop believing in the supernatural as grown-ups and the mainstream media taught me their view of our planet. There was no evidence for the spirit world, so how could it exist? But there’d been no proof of radiation either until William Herschel’s experiments in the early nineteenth century. I’d claimed earlier to be open-minded, but in truth, I’d become closed off to anything I couldn’t see, hear, taste, touch, or smell since my teens.

But what if ten-year-old me had been right? That there was a whole other universe out there that we didn’t know about? My mind teemed with questions as I lay back on Kim’s sofa. Were ghosts real or all in her head? Had science been missing a trick for years? And worst of all, was there a serial killer out there, lurking behind a devilish smile and diplomatic immunity?

CHAPTER 15 - KIMBERLY

“HEY.”

THE FIRST thing I heard when I rejoined the land of the living was Reed’s voice.

“You’re awake?” he asked.

Yes, but I didn’t want to be. Little snippets of my antics last night flittered back to me—my stupid confession about Georgette, the vodka, Reed carrying me upstairs to bed. What was he still doing here? Tell me he didn’t plan on having me committed.

“I have a headache.”

A glass of water and two pills appeared beside me, as if by magic.

“Try these.”

“Thanks, but the issue is more fundamental.”

A ghost-induced headache. Or perhaps a tumour. What if I pretended to have a tumour? That could explain my outburst yesterday in a much more believable way.

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