The Cursed by Heather Graham Read Free Book Online Page B

Rodriguez had been one of the good guys. Florida—especially South Florida and Key West, had a long history of Spanish settlement and Cuban immigration. His family might have been in the area for centuries. But wherever he had grown up, it seemed someone had taught him manners.
    He was knocking. Hoping she would let him in.
    She lowered her head for a minute. No, go away, please, she thought fervently. I don’t want to be ghost central. I don’t want to get involved with your murder.
    She felt immediately embarrassed, because she knew that attitude was wrong. She had to help if she could.
    She opened the door, swallowing hard. “Hello, Jose.”
    At least his apparition wasn’t as bloody in the afterlife as his body had been in death. He looked as he must have soon before death, wearing a typical Cuban guayabera shirt and khaki pants. His hair was sleek, dark and combed back. He was clean shaven, with dark eyes and handsome features.
    “You—you know me?” he asked her.
    His voice was brittle, a little like sandpaper, as if he was just learning to speak.
    She nodded. “I found you.”
    He nodded. “I remember. You tried to help me, but it was too late.”
    “Yes.” She studied him for a minute. “I’m sorry I couldn’t help. I hear that you were an undercover agent, one of the good guys.”
    “Yes.”
    “I guess you know you were murdered. My friend Liam Beckett, a police detective, has had some experience with...the dead. He doesn’t see as easily as I do, though—lucky me,” she couldn’t help but add a little bitterly. “But if you tell me who did it, I can tell him.”
    A grim smile curved his lips. “If only it were that easy.”
    “Your throat was slit. You really don’t know who did it? And you were carrying a knife—a big bowie knife—with blood on it. Of course, it’s gone now. The crime scene techs are still out there looking for it,” Hannah said.
    “Yes, I see them. But they won’t find it,” he said.
    Hannah realized that the techs in the yard could see her through the back window; they probably thought she was standing there talking to herself.
    Maybe she was.
    “May I come in?” Rodriguez asked politely.
    She nodded. “Oh, of course. Please. Let’s move into the parlor.”
    She led the way through to the front, taking an armchair by the fire and curling her legs beneath her. The ghost took a seat across from her on the sofa.
    “I’m so sorry,” she said aloud. It seemed lame. He should have had a lifetime ahead of him. She took a breath. “I want to help you. But...how can you not know what happened?”
    “Because whoever got me came up behind me. We—I was with a bunch of guys—had just turned the corner from Duval and I heard someone behind us. He grabbed me, and the other guys saw. One of them screamed ‘Run!’ and we all took off. I think the other guys had to be in on it—either that or they’re running scared, thinking they’re about to get the same,” Rodriguez told her. He stared at her for a moment. She thought he was assessing her. Perhaps he was deciding if she could be of any help.
    “Anyway, like I said, we all took off,” Jose went on. “I threw the guy off me and crashed through the yard next to yours. That’s when he caught up with me. I didn’t have a gun on me, only my knife. I got a slice of him, but since I couldn’t see anything, I don’t even know where I cut him, but I know he...he got me. Slit my throat. I kept running, and that’s when I scared your guests. But I heard him coming after me. I knew I didn’t have a chance, and I didn’t want him to kill anyone else, so I kept running. I ended up in the alley, tried to write...” He trailed to a stop. “And then I...died. He followed me—must have, if the knife is gone. But he couldn’t leave it. They would have gotten his blood off it.”
    Hannah found herself suddenly fighting tears. Even as he was dying, he had thought to save others.
    “You’ve heard of Los Lobos?” he