"How would you know?" Amanda flinched as soon as the words came out of her mouth. She had to stop talking to Charley in front of other people. "I didn"t mean to say that."
Sunny moved closer and tentatively wrapped an arm around Amanda"s shoulders. "I understand. You"re upset and exhausted. You"re allowed to be a little curt under the circ.u.mstances."
With a start, Amanda realized Sunny thought she had been replying to her comment about knowing where Grant wasn"t being held. She didn"t think Amanda was nuts, just rude. Amanda could deal with being thought a little strange, but not with being discourteous to someone she loved. "No," she said. "That"s not-"
"Move closer!" Charley called, hovering a few feet from the shed. "This is as far as I can go."
He was restrained by that invisible leash. She could easily understand why Charley had been kicked out of heaven, but it seemed unfair she should be attached to him.
She moved away from Sunny, stepped a few feet into the field, and Charley disappeared inside the building.
"Amanda, what are you doing?" Sunny"s tone suggested she now thought Amanda was nuts as well as rude. "Why are you walking into those weeds?"
"All clear!" Charley floated out of the structure and across the field.
Amanda turned to Sunny. "Just, uh, checking to see what kind of flower that is." Ouch! Another lie.
"It"s a dandelion."
"Yes, so it is. A dandelion." Amanda gave a brief laugh.
Sunny moved closer, concern creasing her brow. "Are you all right? We"ve been doing a lot of riding in this heat. Maybe we should rest for a while and drink some water. We could be getting dehydrated."
If only Charley could be explained by something as simple as dehydration. "Yes, water would be good. Water"s always a good idea. Especially in the summer when it"s hot." She sounded like a complete idiot!
"Wait in the shade of that tree and I"ll bring you something to drink."
"That sounds good, but I don"t need to wait in the shade. I"m okay. Really."
Sunny lifted a hand to Amanda"s cheek. "You"re flushed and hot. I"ll grab a couple of bottles and we"ll drink them in the shade before we head out. Go on. I"ll be right behind you."
Sunny"s concern touched Amanda. She didn"t hover the way her mother did or make a big production of it, but she was obviously worried about Amanda"s health.
Her daughter"s health.
Not that she had any reason to worry since Amanda was suffering from exposure to Charley rather than from exposure to the heat. Feeling a little pleased and a lot guilty, she obediently walked over to the mottled shade.
Sunny went to her bike, opened her pack and took out two bottles. "These were frozen when we started. They should still be a little cool." She joined Amanda under the tree, opened both and handed one to her.
"Thank you." Amanda took a long drink of the tepid water, trying to swallow her feelings of guilt for accepting Sunny"s concern and care under false pretenses. The water went down nicely, but the guilt stuck halfway. "I have to tell you something," she blurted.
Sunny regarded her curiously. "Okay. I"m listening."
"I haven"t been completely honest with you about some things, like how I knew somebody was following us or why I walked into that field."
"Okay," Sunny repeated, waiting quietly for Amanda to continue, not pressuring her, just waiting.
Amanda moved her bottle of water from one hand to the other, took another drink, looked at Charley hovering beside her and tried to think of what to say next.
I see dead people. Well, not all dead people. Just one dead person.
"What if I told you that Charley"s...um...essence is still around?"
The concern on Sunny"s face intensified. "His essence? What are you saying?"
"His spirit. His soul." She swallowed hard. There was no good way to say it. "His ghost."
Charley scowled. "d.a.m.n it, Amanda, you know it hurts when you call me that!"
"Ghost?" Sunny repeated. "You mean his memory? You"re haunted by his memory? I didn"t think you liked him very much."
Amanda drew in a deep breath and prepared to dive in headfirst. "No, not his memory. I"d happily forget about him if that was it. It"s definitely his ghost."
"I"m not a ghost! I"m me!" he protested.
"You"re a ghost!"
"No," Sunny said quietly, the concern in her eyes ramping up another level. "I"m not."
Amanda tried to smile. "Of course you"re not. I was talking to him. To Charley. To his ghost. But he doesn"t like being called a ghost."
"I see. Amanda, you"ve had a really stressful day, physically and emotionally. Let"s finish our water and go find something to eat. Your blood sugar"s probably getting low. Did you eat lunch?"
"I skipped lunch and I am hungry, but food isn"t going to change anything. Charley"s ghost is still going to be here."
"He"s here? Right now?"
Amanda nodded. "Standing next to me."
Sunny"s worried gaze flickered from one side of Amanda to the other. "I don"t see anything."
Too late to back down now. "I know you don"t. I"m the only one who can see him. The irony is that I"m the one person in the world who has the least desire to see him."
Charley clutched at his heart as if wounded. "Ouch!"
"Amanda, there"s n.o.body here except the two of us." Sunny moved closer, her tone still calm but the words edged with concern.
"You"re correct. There"s n.o.body except us, but there is also Charley"s spirit. You can"t see him. You can"t hear him. You can"t touch him. The only way you know he"s there is the sensation of cold when he touches you."
Charley shoved his hands in his pockets and looked dejected. "First I"m a ghost, now I"m frigid. Do the insults never stop? Just wait until you try to get to the light. They"ll kick you back too."
"Wave your hand right here." Amanda dragged her fingers through Charley"s chest, shivering at the chill.
Her expression anxious, Sunny reached for the s.p.a.ce Amanda indicated.
Charley zipped away. "Bad enough you do things like that to me. I can"t let just anybody reach inside my body."
"He moved." It sounded lame to Amanda even as she said it.
"Of course he did. Let me get you some more water. Dehydration can cause a lot of problems."
"Like hallucinations? You think I"m hallucinating?"
"Yes. Like hallucinations."
"I don"t want any more water. I"m already probably going to have to stop to go to the bathroom before we get to Dallas."
Sunny laughed abruptly, the sound a tinkle of magic in the dusty, mundane countryside. "That sounds more like my daughter."
And Amanda wanted nothing more than to please her, to earn the right to be called her daughter. But she couldn"t do that by being deceitful. "Maybe this will convince you. After he came back as a ghost, Charley told me things. He told me that he broke into your office and found the file cabinet where you had pictures of me and my original birth certificate. Then he came to Dallas to meet me and blackmail my dad."
"Blabbermouth," Charley said.
Sunny paled, licked her lips, opened her mouth as if to say something then closed it again.
"I would have no way of knowing that if Charley hadn"t told me," Amanda said.
"I believe Charley told you, just not his ghost. He told you while you were married to him, before he died."
"If he"d told me that, I"d have known you were my mother when I first met you. He was already dead by that time, remember? I didn"t know. Not until the night you told me. Anyway, if he"d told me about trying to blackmail Dad, I"d have killed him and saved Kimball the trouble." She shoved her helmet on her head, strode to her bike, got on and started it before Charley could protest her statement or she could see Sunny"s reaction.
This confession business was tough.
But she"d made the right decision even if it was going to be difficult to convince Sunny of Charley"s unreal reality. Deceit had no place in a close relationship. And, to her surprise, Amanda found it was a relief to tell somebody else even if that somebody didn"t believe her. Yet.
When they got back to Dallas, they stopped for burgers and Amanda had to spend some time convincing Sunny she was rehydrated with stable blood sugar and could safely be left alone. She didn"t mention Charley again and neither did Sunny, but the subject hung in the air between them, more palpable than Charley himself.
It was almost dark by the time she got to Dawson"s apartment.
"You look like you haven"t slept in a week," she said when he answered the door.
"Yeah? Well, I feel like I haven"t slept in two weeks." He moved aside for her to enter.
Jake sat at the table where the three laptops were up and running. Ross stood just outside Grant"s room, zipping up his backpack.
"See anything today while riding nowhere near Wagon Wheel Park?" Jake asked.
Amanda set her helmet on the sofa and pulled off her jacket. She wanted to be able to tell him they"d learned something, wanted to throw in his face proof that her search had not been completely futile.
"Tell him about the van," Charley urged.
Oh, yeah, she could report the totally boring story of how she and Sunny had pulled off the road and a van with two ordinary people stopped to offer them help.
"No," she said. "I didn"t see anything of interest on my ride. How about you?"
Jake"s lips thinned as if in frustration and he shook his head. "I drove around the area. It"s a big area. Even if we brought in a search team, it would be tough."
"And they"d kill Grant if they saw people searching," Dawson said.
"Heard anything else from them?" she asked.
"No." Dawson sat at the table in front of two of the laptops. "I"ve been going through everything on all our computers again." He no longer sounded panicked. Now he sounded dull, detached, dead inside. "Maybe I could give them all three of these computers and they can find what they want."
That didn"t sound like a very good plan to Amanda but she refrained from saying so. She looked at Jake and then Ross. Neither one of them appeared any more hopeful than she felt.
"We may have some leads," Ross said. "I need to get everything I collected back to the lab."
"What did you find?" Amanda asked, suddenly hopeful. "Fingerprints? DNA? Fibers?"
Ross laughed at her eagerness and hefted the bag onto his back. "Maybe. Among other things, I found some blue fibers that could be from a blanket, and Dawson said he"s never had a blue blanket."
"That blanket in the van was blue!" Charley darted over to stand beside Ross. "Tell him about the beige minivan!"
"A blue blanket?" Amanda repeated. "But there are probably thousands of blue blankets around."
"Yeah," Ross agreed. "But every small piece of information we find narrows the scope and gets us closer to the truth. Add the blue blanket to the beige minivan-"
Amanda"s breath caught in her chest. "Beige minivan? What beige minivan?"
Ross nodded his head toward Jake. "My buddy had a little luck, too."
Amanda looked at Jake. He scowled and shook his head slightly.
"Tell me!" she demanded. "We"ve got to work together on this. You can"t pull that official police business on me. I"m involved too."
"The lady downstairs," Dawson said. "Detective Daggett talked to the people on the first floor and he found somebody who saw a beige minivan leaving early this morning."
She whirled on Jake. "Really? You can tell Dawson but not me? I"m the one who called you!"
"Dawson doesn"t use the information to go out and do crazy things."
"I"m going to do something crazy if you don"t tell me. Dawson will tell me anyway if you don"t."
Jake lifted his hands defensively. "Okay, okay. I talked to an exotic dancer who got home around 3:00 a.m. She said she saw a beige minivan. She only noticed it because it was pulling away from in front of the building at three o"clock in the morning. Not many people out and about at that hour. But she didn"t get a license plate or anything, and there are an awful lot of beige minivans in Dallas."
Charley dropped his head into his hands. "I don"t remember the license plate number!"
"I do."
Chapter Eight.