Held, p.9
Flash, Ghost, Gone: A Ghost Photographer Paranormal Cozy Mystery, page 9
It didn’t look like he’d left at all.
Unless he’d gone on foot…into Fairwyck? The villagers would’ve noticed. Into the surrounding countryside, then? The inn backed straight onto fields and woods…
What if he’d panicked—fled—and gotten hurt? A twisted ankle, a fall down an embankment? Farrow was wrong to wait. Someone should be searching.
I checked the time. I needed to get home. Steven could not be trusted to stay hidden for long.
But the thought of finding Drake and ending this mess before it spiraled further was too tempting.
Five minutes. A quick look. Just in case.
So I headed across the field toward the tree line.
Two hours later, I emerged scratched, exhausted, and empty-handed. No sign of Malcolm Drake—no trail, no dropped equipment, not even a footprint. Just mud on my boots and a rip in my trousers where a thornbush had attacked me.
I reached my car, careful to avoid toppling into the ditch again, and tossed my bag onto the passenger seat. I stretched, back aching.
The inn loomed against the slate-gray sky—crooked, ancient, watching. A shiver crawled up my spine.
Movement flickered behind one of the upstairs windows.
I squinted. A figure stood half-hidden by the old lace curtains. Shorter than Emerald. Squarer build. A head full of dark curls. Not Gina—her hair was teased and bottle-blond. Not Drake—wrong height, wrong posture.
A woman, then.
But no other cars were around.
I stared harder. Blinked.
The figure vanished.
Had I actually seen someone? Or was my mind playing tricks?
There was another possibility—one that sat directly between the rational and the absurd.
It might not have been a living person at all.
It could have been a ghost.
CHAPTER TWELVE
The woman in the window had spooked me, and when I got home, I didn’t even look at the pictures on my camera.
I grabbed some food, double-checked that Esme wasn’t around, then slipped over to the cottage next door.
Steven was watching TV with the curtains drawn, clearly bored out of his skull. He lit up at the sight of me—and the bag of food.
When I asked whether he’d contacted his lawyer, he pulled out an ancient flip phone—definitely a burner—and checked the blank screen. “Still waiting for a call back.”
“Okay.” I didn’t want to get into everything again until I had a legal opinion. Turning himself in was nonnegotiable. And I wasn’t pretending when I told him I was going back home, because I needed a nap. Between the early wake-up call and the hours stumbling around the woods, I was exhausted.
Steven looked disappointed. “I’m getting a bit lonely here, babe. What am I supposed to do all day?”
“I’m figuring it out, all right?” I snapped. “This isn’t easy for any of us, and I have other problems too. You can’t expect to slide neatly back into our lives. You dropped in unannounced and completely unexpected. I need time to process and figure stuff out.”
Steven held up his hands. “All right, all right. I get that. But you said yourself—it’s risky for me to stay here.”
I rubbed my eyes. “Yes. That reminds me. I got a message from my boss asking me to get the cottage ready for the renters who are arriving tomorrow afternoon. You can only stay here one more night. I’m working on a plan to get you somewhere safer, to buy us time to sort this out. Or you can look for different accommodations yourself, if that doesn’t suit you.” My voice was tight.
He gave me puppy-dog eyes. “I don’t want to be elsewhere. I want to be with you and the girls.”
“Children,” I corrected automatically.
“Whatever. I want to be with my family.”
I pressed my palms over my eyes, bone-deep tired. “We’re going to have to see about that. Now please stay here and keep your head down. Let me work on this.”
I didn’t look back as I walked out.
At home, I went straight to my bedroom, peeled off my torn trousers, and slid under the covers. Despite the storm of worries ping-ponging around my brain, I must have fallen asleep instantly—because the next thing I knew, Blake’s voice cut through my dreams.
“Mom, wake up.”
I jerked upright and squinted at the alarm clock. I’d slept for hours. The kids were home from school.
“Are you all right?” Blake asked, brown eyes wide with concern.
“Yes, I was just really tired. I’ll take a shower and start dinner.”
After cooking, doing homework, and cleaning up, I sent the kids upstairs. I was done with Audrey’s nonstop pleading to see her father.
“I’m sorry, but I need to sort out the legal stuff first. I don’t want to drag you into any trouble because we harbored a fugitive.”
Audrey opened her mouth to argue, but I cut her off. “You are not to go over there or talk to him. That’s final.”
Eyes filling with tears, she stomped upstairs behind her sibling.
“You can watch something or read, but lights out at eight,” I called after them.
Perfect. Another day of Steven, another disappointment waiting to happen. The sooner this ended the better, for Audrey’s sake.
I called Jamie to ask for an update on Drake.
“No sign of him yet,” he said. “Nobody’s heard from him.”
I hadn’t expected good news—Gina and Emerald would have called—but I’d hoped Jamie might have something.
“You’re still going with Farrow’s theory?” I asked.
“For now.”
“Shouldn’t you do more? Track his phone records, at least?”
Jamie hesitated. “I probably shouldn’t tell you this, but…we did. No calls or texts. The only outgoing ones were to his production team—just like the producer said.”
“So he definitely wasn’t picked up, was he?”
“We haven’t checked whether he contacted someone online—social media, forums. That’ll be harder. And his laptop’s still at the inn.”
“Then shouldn’t you process the crime scene before it’s contaminated? Clear out Drake’s stuff in case any of it is evidence?”
“Crime scene? We don’t know that it is one. There’s no sign of a struggle. You saw the room—Emerald and Gina searched the whole inn. Nothing indicates foul play. Sure, the laptop might be useful. But the rest? What evidence could we possibly collect?”
“Then the production company should just clear it all out. Why leave the cameras running? Whatever happened to Drake—and clearly something did—surely it’s in bad taste to keep filming.”
“That’s up to the production company. Why do you care so much about Drake’s stuff?”
“I don’t,” I said too defensively. “I don’t want attention on the inn. Or on my family. If anyone had asked me, I would’ve told them that filming Ghost Hunter UK here was a terrible idea. Now it’s going to be even worse. I just want this shut down as fast as possible.”
“Attention on your family’s psychic abilities, you mean?”
“Yes,” I muttered, annoyed.
“You seem stressed. I’m sure it’ll be fine and sort itself out. Why don’t I come over with a bottle of wine? I’ll give you a nice relaxing neck massage—”
“No!”
“…Hmm?”
“I mean—tonight’s not good. I’m helping Blake cram for a test they haven’t studied for.”
“Oh. What subject? Maybe I can help.”
“That’s all right. Thanks, though. I’ve gotta go. Talk to you tomorrow!” I hung up.
Jamie had accidentally given me an idea. I wanted to go back to the inn and get Drake’s laptop. It had all the recorded videos on it—and possibly his internet search history. Maybe I could speed things up a bit.
I dashed upstairs to tell the kids I’d be popping over to Gina’s for a short while.
Audrey barely grunted in reply, but Blake was in charge anyway. “I should be back within half an hour,” I said to them. “Just make sure Audrey doesn’t get any bright ideas and wander next door.”
Downstairs, I grabbed my bag and keys and drove back to the inn.
It was dark—but the almost-full moon lit everything in stark silver. The inn looked even spookier in that light, its Victorian annex like a pale, crooked limb stretching out.
Gina had asked me to investigate. I hadn’t looked at the photos yet, but I figured gathering real evidence would be a better place to start. No need to tell Gina I wasn’t planning on interrogating ghostly witnesses just yet.
To my surprise, I had to ring the doorbell and knock at least ten times before Gina finally answered. And she didn’t remove the security chain—just cracked the door barely wide enough for one blue eye.
“Yes?” she whispered.
“It’s me, Gina!” I said, more exasperated than I meant to sound. “I want to go into the inn, remember?”
“Oh dear. Sorry, honey, but I don’t think that’s a good idea right now.”
“What? Why?” My heart dropped. She had asked me to help earlier. And she’d never barred me entry to her home before.
“It just isn’t. Why don’t you come back tomorrow, hmm?”
“Did you hear anything from the police or the production crew about Drake?” I pressed, refusing to be dismissed so easily.
“No. I have to go. I…have a client. Bye.”
She shut the door.
I just stood there, stunned. I called Emerald—but she didn’t pick up.
Lost in thought, I circled the inn back toward my car.
Maybe Gina really did have a client. Maybe it was the woman with the dark curls I’d seen at the window earlier. But why would a client be in the inn? Gina always saw them in the annex. And I’d seen that woman hours ago.
I paused by the front entrance—the one that had been boarded up. New nail heads gleamed from the old slats. Someone had put them back up in a hurry. Gina? The police? I could probably pry them off again without much trouble…if I had the right tool.
Probably not wise to break in right after being turned away.
But maybe later—once Gina and Emerald were asleep—I could slip inside, run upstairs, grab the laptop, and slip out again. Quick. Silent. Done.
No biggie.
Except the thought of entering a severely haunted building at night—a building where someone had vanished—made my skin crawl with goose bumps and my lungs forget how to function.
I told myself I was being ridiculous.
Get in. Grab laptop. Get out.
Worth it. I could know by tomorrow morning what had happened to Dr. Drake.
What could possibly go wrong?
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
The country lane looked different in the middle of the night—emptier, narrower, as if the hedges had crept closer since sunset. I parked far enough down the road that the car wouldn’t be spotted if Gina or Emerald looked out their windows, but that meant walking the rest of the way in darkness. My flashlight stayed off. I gripped it so tightly my knuckles ached.
The Sacred Salmon Inn emerged, hunched against the moonlight. With the clouds shifting, its angles looked even more wrong. One wall leaned so crookedly, I couldn’t believe the timber frame still held it up. As my imagination sprinted ahead of me, I caught myself wondering if something supernatural—something alive—kept it standing. The ivy didn’t help, clinging to the stone like black veins feeding a rotten heart.
I pulled my collar up. A building itself can’t be evil, I told myself. Spirits, yes. Buildings, no.
I’d seen what trauma could twist a spirit into. The theater ghost hadn’t been born vengeful—she had been trapped by the injustice of her death. I’d helped her find the truth and let go, freeing everyone else from her curse. If anything dark lurked here, I’d help it too…eventually.
But not tonight. Tonight I’d just go in, grab Drake’s laptop, get out.
That’s all the courage I could muster.
The hanging sign with the grotesque salmon swayed soundlessly on its rusted chain. Beneath it, the original entrance hid behind the boards I’d seen hastily nailed up earlier. Maybe Drake had needed them open to drag his equipment inside…and then they’d boarded it back up. Or it maybe it had been done after the disappearance of the TV host.
I took the small claw hammer from my tote, praying each pop of metal on wood wouldn’t echo down the lane. One nail, then another, then the stubborn one at the top. The planks loosened with a soft groan. I caught them before they fell.
The door yawned open, dark and cold—the room inside full of that heavy pressure I now recognized as spiritual presence, like deep water forcing its chill into my bones.
I slipped inside and closed the door.
My flashlight cut a narrow, shaky beam through the taproom. Heavy tables loomed like sleeping beasts. Shadows clung to the low ceiling beams—blackened with age, and now blackened with…dread.
I tightened my grip on my tote, feeling the Nikon through the fabric. I wasn’t taking it out. If I started photographing this place now, I’d end up with enough ghosts for a Halloween flash mob.
I swept the light behind the bar—just to prove there was no monster crouched there. The movement triggered a memory: little me, refusing to step near my bed at night, convinced skeletal hands would shoot out and drag me under. Turned out, the ghosts in my childhood room had been real—quiet, watching—making those imagined hands almost quaint.
A bitter laugh escaped before I could swallow it. It echoed oddly in the empty tavern.
Focus.
The faint scent of stale beer and sweat—centuries old, but somehow still here—mixed with a metallic tang, like old pennies. My pulse ticked faster.
I hurried to the stairs. Each creak sounded far too loud. At the top, I turned off my flashlight and eased the door open. Darkness greeted me, thick and breathless.
I listened.
Nothing.
I stepped into the corridor.
Drake’s camera was mounted above the doorway. I hugged the wall, stretched up on my toes, and found the switch. A click—the red recording light died.
Good.
In the darkness, no other tiny red lights glowed. No more cameras pointed at the corridor.
Deep breath.
The creak of the warped floorboards under my boots sounded like cracking bones as I crossed to Drake’s room. Another temperature drop kissed my skin—sharp, biting. Ghosts. Lots of them.
Jaw clenched, I switched the flashlight off again, nudged the door open, and reached for the second camera above it. My fingers brushed the switch—
—and the red light flicked on.
I jerked back. Then slid it again. Off. Thank god.
Had it already been off? Had I turned it on by mistake?
No time to unravel that. Move.
Flashlight on, I darted to the wall where the extension hub was plugged in. One angry yank, and the whole cord came free.
The hum from the equipment disappeared, and silence rushed in, like the room was holding its breath.
No cameras. No recordings.
Now I just had to survive long enough to find that laptop.
The beam of my flashlight slid across the room. For a moment, my heart stopped—there was someone lying on Drake’s cot.
I inched closer.
Phew. Just his duffel bag and coat. Someone had neatly piled all his things on the cot. Gina or Emerald must have been in here since Drake vanished. Great—so much for an uncontaminated crime scene. And I was about to make it worse by stealing the laptop.
It sat beside the duffel bag. I grabbed it, then noticed the power cable still plugged in and stuffed that into my tote too. On top of Drake’s clothes: a notebook. Of course—old-school field notes. I wedged it in beside the laptop.
Enough. Time to get out.
As I closed the door behind me, movement flickered at the edge of my vision, from the opposite end of the corridor.
I froze. Breath caught.
Probably imagination. Probably.
Then—a rustle. Fabric against wood.
Against every rational command from my brain, I turned right instead of bolting for the stairs.
My voice came out in a scratchy whisper. “Gina? Is that you?”
No response.
“Dr. Drake?”
What if he had come back? Was this all some elaborate stunt for ratings? If so, he was lucky I didn’t hit him with my flashlight.
Anger gave me courage. I swung the beam ahead of me and rounded the sharp bend.
“Dr. Drake, if this is you—enough already. You owe my aunt an explanation. She’s beside herself—”
Silence. Just the long, empty corridor. I tried a few doors—some locked, some opening into more neglected rooms like Drake’s. No person. No sound.
“Ghosts,” I whispered into the dark.
I’d only really seen spirits through my camera before. But Gina always said the lens was just a tool—I was the medium. And I’d felt them before, the graveyard chill, the sense of a presence. Here more than anywhere else. It wasn’t impossible that I could experience them without a viewfinder between us.
Still, my legs were done arguing with my nerves. I turned back toward the stairs.
The floorboards shrieked under my boots. If Gina heard me and came to investigate, this whole covert mission would be blown.
Then—another flash. Not movement this time…light. A thin bright line under a door.
I squinted. Yes—there was definitely a light on in there.
The same door I’d tried earlier. It had been locked.
Careful not to brush the moldy wallpaper, I crept closer. My pulse hammered against my ribs. By the layout, this had to be the room facing the woods. The room with the window I’d seen someone watching from.
I tried the handle again. Still locked.
Every instinct screamed run, but my knuckles knocked anyway. “Hello? Is someone in there?”
No answer. I pressed my ear to the wood. A creak. A quiet rustle.
“I can hear you,” I called, louder now. “And I see the light under the door. Open up!”
