Darkest Journey (Krewe of Hunters #20)(32)

“Seems unlikely. I’m an all-American mutt,” he told her. “But I did look him up back then,” he said softly. “He left behind one son and a wife he apparently loved with his whole heart. No evidence that he was messing around and might have produced an unknown bastard to procreate into the twenty-first century. As I recall, he was killed in the fighting in this area, right before Vicksburg fell.”

Just then Brad summoned Charlie and her coactors for the scene. She excused herself and hurried over.

They were going to film uncomfortably close to where she had found the dead man, though Brad had been careful to avoid the exact location.

She was to come up a path, hear her boss and the senator speaking, and duck behind one of the crooked stones half-hidden in the tangle of overgrowth filling the abandoned unhallowed graveyard.

A sad place, she thought. Whoever lay there had been buried outside the bounds of the church’s protection.

She pushed her thoughts aside, and smiled and waved to Brad, then started up the path, concentrating on her work.

She’d thought it would be so easy to work here, in her home. And it should have been. St. Francisville was normally a peaceful city, not the kind of place where people tripped over bodies every day. Except for her, apparently.

She neared the place she was to stop and listened while the two men said their lines, then slipped into hiding behind the gravestone. At the proper point in the script she moved—Brad would insert the sound of a twig snapping when he got to postproduction—and the men all turned to discover her. She leaped to her feet, told them the world was going to know about what they were doing and then turned to run.

“Cut!” Brad called. “Great—we need the opposite POV now, please. Once more—” he said, pausing to chuckle softly “—with feeling!”

And so they repeated the action for another camera angle. And then another.

Finally Brad was pleased with the results, and Charlie was free to watch as he called on his Confederate ghosts so he could film individual shots of them rising from the ground.

After watching for a while, she grew restless and found herself walking through to the church, out of range of the cameras. She wandered into the graveyard and searched until she found the grave of Confederate Cavalry Captain Anson McKee. She pulled weeds from the ground around his headstone and spoke aloud. “I don’t know why you’re still here. I don’t know why Ethan looks so much like you. I don’t know why people kill other people. I wish I could help you, because you certainly helped me.”

She felt his presence the minute he came to stand beside her. She rose, stumbling a little in the ridiculously high heels. There was a solemn expression on his face as he reached out to her and said urgently, “Go. Go!”

She shook her head. “Go where? Please, tell me what’s happening. Please....”

“Go!”

“The murders have something to do with the Journey, right? With what happened on the Journey?”

“Go!” he said again, and reached out as if he would shove her if he could, force her to move.

She nodded and turned to head back toward where Brad was filming.

As she turned, she felt a rush of air as something flew by her cheek.

She caught a glimpse of it in her peripheral vision. It was shiny.

She started to run, her mind struggling to process what she’d seen.

Only one object made sense, as much as she tried to deny it.

A knife.





6

“Look like a hero.”

“Pardon?” Ethan said, jolted by a voice from behind. He was standing out on the bluff, along with Brad, Mike, Grant and Jimmy. Barry Seymour was also there, holding a light reflector, and Luke Mayfield was positioning the microphones.

“Dammit, Chance!” Brad exploded, turning to the man who had just arrived, balancing a camera and a gear bag. “When you told me Ethan had asked you out here, I said you could take still shots as long as we could use them. I didn’t say you could plow into the middle of a scene.”

“Sorry, sorry,” the newcomer said earnestly. Then he turned to Ethan. “Man, you really look the part. You have to be Agent Delaney, right? Nice to meet you. You certainly look different from anything I’ve seen on TV, and not only because of the uniform.”

Chance Morgan industriously pumped Ethan’s hand. The photographer was a thin, wiry man of about forty, with sparse wheat-colored hair that grew long and scraggly. His smile and eagerness reminded Ethan of a puppy who expected nothing but fun and kindness from the world.

“Thanks for coming out here,” Ethan said to the man.

“You two have to talk, I get it,” Brad said. “Just take it off to the side somewhere, so I can shoot Grant and Jimmy.”

“Thanks,” Ethan said.

Brad shrugged off his irritation, then grinned. “You do look the part of a hero.”

“That’s the FBI for you,” Barry said.

Ethan just nodded as he carefully unclipped the tiny mic he’d been wearing and handed it to Luke. “These are great,” he commented.

“Easy on, easy off,” Luke agreed.

Ethan set a hand on Chance’s shoulder and led him across the field as he spoke. “So you knew both the dead men?”

“Knew them because of the show they did aboard the Journey. I got tons of great shots that day. Asked them if they wanted private sessions to get some shots they could use for PR, maybe to get more jobs. They both said yes but that they’d have to get back to me to schedule something. Needless to say, they never did.”