Bone Island 03 - Ghost Moon by Heather Graham Read Free Book Online

I don’t want half the idiots in this city starting all kinds of rumors about haunted houses and animated suits of armor. Let the paramedics check you out. Just say you crashed into the display shelf, and that’s what I’ll say, too. It’s the truth.”
    He walked out. The paramedics were exiting their ambulance with their cases in their hands.
    “It’s a knock on the head, self-inflicted,” Liam said. “I think he’s fine, but check him out, please.”
    The paramedics nodded and headed for the house. A patrol car came sliding up to park beside the rescue vehicle. He sent the two officers inside, telling them to secure the residence before they left.
    He stepped down to the lawn and looked back at the house. He felt the presence behind him and didn’t turn.
    “Did you see anything?” he asked softly.
    “No, I was with you,” Bartholomew said.
    “Well, what do you think?”
    “I don’t like the place, if that’s what you mean.”
    “Is there anything in it? Anyone?”
    “I sense—something,” Bartholomew said.
    “I’m telling you, this has to do with something human,” Liam said flatly. “Maybe. I’m human, ” Bartholomew protested.
    “You’re a ghost.”
    “But I was human. Evil isn’t…it isn’t necessarily human.”
    Liam groaned softly. “We both know that human beings are the ones who carry out physical cruelty and injury to one another.”
    “Well, we don’t actually know everything,” Bartholomew said.
    “If I were going to be hounded by a ghost,” Liam said, “you’d think it would be one who knew a little more about eternity.”
    “There’s no one in the house now,” Bartholomew told him indignantly. “No one who isn’t supposed to be there. No one human. ”
    “Someone else was in that house tonight,” Liam said with certainty.
    “I think so, too,” Bartholomew said.
    “And now?”
    “Whatever is in there isn’t human,” Bartholomew said quietly. “So, what now?”
    There was nothing else to be done for the night.
    “Now? Hell, I’m heading back for a new batch of fish and chips,” Liam said. But as he walked toward his car, he hesitated. It was dark now on the little peninsula. But there were three acres surrounding the house. There was a strip of beach on the property, and near that there were mangrove swamps and bits of pine and brush on higher ground. The house itself was built up on a large slab of coral and limestone, but surrounding it were dozens of places where someone could conceivably hide, or places where one might stash a small vessel like a canoe, or…
    Hell. A decent swimmer could make it across to the mainland easily.
    In the darkness, someone could hide with little chance of actually being discovered. He would need a helicopter and megalights to find someone in the night.
    He made a mental note to get an electrician out there in the morning.
    When he reached O’Hara’s, he found Katie, David and Jamie at a table, all dining on fish and chips themselves.
    “Well?” David asked curiously.
    “Teenagers,” he said.
    “They mess anything up?” David asked.
    “They were huddled together in the kitchen, terrified,” Liam said. “They thought the shadows were coming after them.”
    Katie laughed. “I can well imagine that place at night. They must have been scared out of their wits.”
    “Hey, that place is frightening to an adult,” Jamie O’Hara said.
    Liam was surprised that Jamie might have ever found anything frightening. He was a solid man with gray hair, bright eyes, and the calm confidence that made him a good man in any situation and—in Key West—a good barkeep. He could stare down any man about to get in a brawl, and if a punch was thrown, he had the brawn to walk an unruly guest right out to the street.
    He’d been both a friend—and something of a parental figure to all of them.
    “Cutter Merlin was born and bred right here, and he was popular with folks when he was a young man. Hewas our version of Indiana Jones, I