Darkest Journey (Krewe of Hunters #20)(91)

And from somewhere in the trees and the shadows and the darkness, she heard a voice.

She recognized it clearly.

“Charlie, how good of you to join us.”

*

Ethan knew immediately that something was wrong. Jude was in the hallway, knocking on the door to the cabin Ethan and Charlie had shared.

“Charlie, you all right in there?”

Ethan stared at him, frowning, and stepped past him, sliding his key into the door. He pushed the door open and stepped inside, looked briefly around the small space and headed into the bathroom.

No Charlie.

“I stood out in the hall and watched. I was gone for about sixty seconds when she asked me to tell Clara and Alexi she was fine and just needed a few more minutes. Ethan, she purposely eluded me.”

Fear streaked through Ethan like a violent stab of lightning. He wanted to jump on Jude, wanted to shake him. How could he have let Charlie outsmart him like that?

But he knew Charlie, too. Knew how good an actor she was. She had probably been able to make Jude think she was fine without breaking a sweat. But she would never do anything to put herself into actual danger, not when she had people to protect her. Would she?

“All right, she eluded you. So now we’re looking for Jonathan and Charlie.”

“I’ll try her father’s cabin, see if she went back there to talk to Jennie McPherson for some reason. Maybe she thinks Jennie was lying, and she knows something.”

“I’ll head to the departure checkpoint, see if she’s tried to leave the Journey,” Ethan said.

“Call her,” Jude suggested. “You never know.”

Ethan pulled out his phone, and just as he finished punching in her number, his caller ID registered an unknown caller. While his phone connected to Charlie’s, he answered the incoming call.

“Delaney,” he said curtly.

“Ethan?”

It was a woman’s voice, but not Charlie’s.

“Yes? Who is this?”

“It’s Nancy. Nancy Deauville Camp.”

“Nancy, this isn’t a good time.” As he spoke, he heard a soft buzzing sound, a phone vibrating somewhere nearby.

In the room.

“Ethan, I know, I’m sorry. I’m closing up at Mrs. Mama’s, and I just gave a cabdriver a last cup of coffee. We should have been closed, but he came just before I locked the door, and I felt sorry for him.”

“Okay?”

Jude had found the ringing phone and held it up. It was Charlie’s, and it had been lying on the bed.

“Nancy, I have to go.”

“Sorry. Anyway, the driver just took someone who sounded like Charlie out to Grace Church. He was going on about crazy women wanting to go ghost hunting all alone, and I just wanted to call and make sure everything was okay.”

As Nancy finished speaking, Jude showed Ethan Charlie’s phone.

The last message she’d received was a picture.

A picture of her father.

Tied to a tombstone.

He barely managed to grunt out a thank-you to Nancy before he hung up.

“Let’s go,” he told Jude.

He was already headed out the cabin door.

He stopped short the second he stepped out into the hall. Ellsworth Derue was there. “Come on,” he urged Ethan. “Hurry!”

“I’m way ahead of you,” Ethan said softly.

*

“Charlie,” Jonathan said when she reached him at a run. “Charlie, you shouldn’t have come. Go, run—please, get out of here!”

“I can’t, Dad,” she said, bending down to study the ropes that bound him to the tombstone. They were tied tight—very tight—but she found an end and started working at the knot, which began to give. “Almost got it, Dad, almost got it,” she murmured.

Too late. She heard a rustling, the killers in the bushes behind them, waiting to spring at her.

She turned and drew the Smith & Wesson from her waistband, then aimed it at the man coming toward them.

She’d known the voice, because she knew the man.

And it wasn’t Jimmy.

It was Grant Ferguson. Another friend—or so she had thought.

He smiled at her. He was in full uniform, as if he’d just finished filming. And he was carrying the Enfield, bayonet attached.

“Don’t come any nearer,” she warned.

“Why, look at you, Charlie, toting a big mean gun. I’d never have figured.”

“Just because I don’t particularly like guns doesn’t mean I don’t respect them and know how to use them,” Charlie said, surprised that her voice was so cool and calm. “Why are you doing this?”

“Come on, don’t play dumb. Your dad here was about to figure it out. And of course you did see me trying to cover up the corpse.”

“What?” she asked.

“You were there, the day we filmed. Right when the ghost army was rising. I saw you look at me. I was shifting dirt around, trying to cover up the body more thoroughly. Sooner or later you’d remember what you saw and start wondering what I was doing.”

“You idiot! She didn’t know anything until you just went and told her,” Jonathan said, tugging at the ropes. “None of us had a clue, so why the hell did you have to kill anyone in the first place?”