Nightwalker by Heather Graham Read Free Book Online Page B

whispered, “No, this is not the way. Only time and the true path to peace will ease the bleeding in the soul.”
    And ever since then…
    Ever since then he’d seen the dead.
    Usually they just passed through his life because they needed something, and once they got it, they moved on. He’d learned that through Adam Harrison and Harrison Investigations. Adam had taken him and turned him from a rebellious and bitter half-breed to a man with a calling. Adam had taught him about life and death, and how to value himself as a human being.
    He owed Adam. Not only that, he liked the man.
    So the ghosts came, he helped them…
    And the ghosts left.
    Except for Ringo Murphy. The problem was, Ringo himself didn’t know why he was sticking around.
    He’d lived by the gun, and then he’d died by it, and there had been nothing in his life or death to indicate why he was still here.
    Dillon shifted around, longing for even an hour’s sleep.
    He closed his eyes tightly.
    And then, in that state between wakefulness and sleep, in a netherworld between conscious thought and oblivion, he saw the maiden, felt her gentle hand on his face.
    “Yes,” she whispered to him. “It is the beginning, the beginning—and the end.”

3
    “I see them dancing in the sky,” Timothy told Jessy.
    She was driving him back to the home, and she felt torn. Worried about leaving him alone, she’d had Sandra come over to watch him this morning while she’d returned to the casino to turn her chips into cash—later exchanged for a cashier’s check made out to the home—and fill out the IRS forms. She’d never had to fill them out before, because her winnings—the few times she’d played a few dollars for fun—had never been close to enough to report to the government.
    She didn’t mind. The government was welcome to its share.
    She was concerned now because she had to work that afternoon, and even her sizable winnings weren’t enough to keep her job from being very important to her ongoing well-being. But Sandra had met her at the door whenshe’d returned and suggested she might want to talk to someone at the home before she left Timothy there.
    “Why?” she’d asked.
    “Maybe it’s not as bad as I think, but…” Sandra hesitated. “He’s having conversations with imaginary people. And when I asked him who he was talking to, he gave me a sly look and said they were people in the walls, and that they were his friends and they made him happy, so I shouldn’t worry. And maybe, if he’s happy…”
    Now it seemed that his friends were in the sky.
    Maybe she was just nervous because she’d woken up in the night, certain that someone was watching her again. That kind of feeling usually vanished with the coming of day, though, and this time it hadn’t…. This morning, as she’d been brewing coffee and tossing raisin bread into the toaster, she’d paused again, feeling eyes on her before telling herself that you couldn’t feel someone watching you. Except that you could . Somehow people knew when they were being observed. Maybe it had to do with that huge part of the brain scientists said went unused.
    But there hadn’t been anyone there. Not last night, and not this morning.
    But this morning Timothy had been talking to people in the walls, and now he was seeing dancers in the sky.
    Which one of us is actually going crazy here? she asked herself.
    The Hawthorne Home was just outside Las Vegas proper. She parked in front of the administration building, and Timothy frowned. She usually parked byBuilding A, his building, when she was bringing him back from a visit or an outing.
    “I have to go in and pay Mr. Hoskins,” she told him.
    “Pay him?” Timothy asked indignantly.
    She patted his hand. “Yeah, that’s life, Timothy,” she said, and leaned over to kiss his cheek. Once upon a time he’d been the best guardian in the world, and she still loved him so much.
    “We all have to pay the rent, you know,” she said.
    “Not in