Chelsea Lane (Haunted Hearts Series Book 5) Read online

  COPYRIGHT

  This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out or otherwise circulated without the prior consent of the author in any form other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, character, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales, is entirely coincidental. All rights reserved including the right of reproduction, distribution, or transmitted in whole or part in any form or means, or stored in any electronic, mechanical, database or retrieval system, or otherwise, without the written permission of the author.

  Contact information: [email protected]

  CHELSEA LANE

  The Haunted Hearts Series: Book Five

  Copyright © 2015 by Denise Moncrief

  Electronic Edition

  Paranormal Romantic Suspense

  Editor: Linda Pitts

  Cover Design: Keri Neal

  Cover is copyright and trademark of the author, used under license owned.

  CHELSEA LANE

  Searching for a reason to go on living…

  All her life, Chelsea has suffered feelings of worthlessness from being abandoned—time after time—causing a huge pile of hurt to reside in the deeper recesses of her heart. When James Standridge kidnaps her, he gives her a new name and a new reason to exist. The will to survive keeps her going from one day to the next until his death changes everything.

  Fearing freedom after living so long in the shadows…

  After years of being a missing person, Chelsea is suddenly free to reclaim her lost identity, but she doesn’t know where to start rebuilding her interrupted life. Hovering around the fringes of her former existence seems easier than facing the dangers of becoming Cherish Duncan again.

  Finding that hope happens when you least expect it…

  When Chelsea begs him to help her, Jordan Clark can’t resist being Chelsea’s knight in shining armor. After all, he feels deeply the need to make up for the mistakes he’s made in the past. Living with Chelsea in the house she shared with James Standridge ignites more than the promise of romance. Jordan’s presence energizes restless spirits who would prefer their secrets remain buried for eternity.

  Can love conquer fear and free the ghosts haunting the house on Chelsea Lane?

  ACKNOWLEGEMENTS

  Special thanks to my long-suffering family, Larry, Katy, and Eric, who put up with my many writing moods and encourage me to pursue my publishing dreams anyway. I would like to also thank the fabulously talented Keri Neal for the beautiful book covers she has designed for The Haunted Hearts Series. Keri takes my vague ideas and brings the concept for each cover to life.

  I’d also like to acknowledgment all the readers who enjoyed Laurel Heights, Victoria House, Ashley Ridge, and Shaw’s Landing and gave me encouraging feedback. I write because it’s an obsession. I publish because I want someone to read what I write. My readers are why I do what I do. Thank you from the bottom of my heart.

  FOREWORD

  For those of you who know and love the state of Arkansas, I apologize for mangling the geography. Hill County, Ashley Ridge, and the town of Fairview are fictional places and loosely based on multiple locations, a conglomeration of locales woven together to create a setting especially designed for The Haunted Hearts Series.

  Each book in the series is written to stand alone, but together they tell the story of one man’s corrupt influence over an entire county and how one bad decision can affect so many lives. I hope you, the reader, enjoy Chelsea Lane as much as I enjoyed writing it.

  CHELSEA LANE

  CONTENTS

  Acknowledgements

  Foreword

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  About the Author

  Other Titles By Denise Moncrief

  Bonus Material:

  Chapter One of the Haunted Hearts Series Book #5, The Unmistakable Scent of Gardenias

  Chapter One

  Fairview, Arkansas

  May 2011

  Kristie curled into a tight ball in the corner of the room and sucked back a sob. Only moments before, her only friend in the world had taken her last breath. Freaked out, that’s what she was. She’d never before been in the same room with a dead body. At least, not one that had died the way Sharona had.

  She wanted to go home so badly. Had her family finally stopped looking for her? Had they ever searched for her? Filed a missing person’s report? Did they presume she’d run away and left her fiancée at the altar? Maybe they thought she didn’t want to be found, so they figured there was no use looking for her.

  Her eyes shifted toward the slight lump in the middle of the cot. Sharona had lost so much weight before the end. When Kristie recognized the signs of toxic poisoning, she’d begged both James and Zeke to find Sharona a doctor, but they had refused. The panic on their faces when she told them just how sick Sharona was should have been her first clue that they would do nothing to save her life. After all, how would they have explained to the doctor why the woman was dying from ingesting a toxic chemical used in cooking methamphetamine?

  In the three months Kristie had been their prisoner, she’d noticed two other women come and go with no explanation as to why they had disappeared in the middle of the night. Within days, there was always a replacement. Kristie was sure James acquired the new workers the same way he’d recruited her. By kidnapping.

  Her degree in biochemistry had prepared her to take a position in her father’s medical research company, not to diagnosis how a woman was going to die. Knowing how the chemicals would eat Sharona’s body from the inside out had caused Kristie all sorts of nightmares. At least, having the knowledge had kept her out of the labs and in the house for the few days it had taken Sharona to die. They had threatened Kristie. Told her that if she didn’t make Sharona well they’d force her to eat the same toxins that had killed Sharona.

  She wiped her sleeve across her nose. Over time, the cooking process had produced various symptoms in her. Headaches. Nausea. Dizziness. Fatigue. Not to mention the diminishing will to live. She sometimes thought her brain was going to mush. Her usually sharp intellect was being replaced with fuzzy reasoning. It was moments of clarity such as this one that caused her the most anguish. She blocked out thoughts about how long it would take the chemicals to break down her body.

  Now that Sharona was dead, Kristie would be heading back to one of the labs as soon as the sun came up. Would James or Zeke follow through on their threat? Would she be eating something that would quickly destroy her before the day was over?

  Finally, she allowed the tears to spill over her cheeks without trying to wipe them away.

  When she had left New Orleans, she’d taken the nearest on-ramp onto I-10 and headed west, intending to go all the way to California. After graduating from Tulane, h
er boyfriend had started making plans for forever. He wanted to settle down, get married, and have a few children. The night before her wedding, she’d come to the conclusion that she wanted something else. Yeah, she had wanted to start a new life, just not with Brandon.

  She’d wanted adventure. She’d wanted a life that wasn’t mainstream. She loved Brandon, but she didn’t love him enough to give up the freedom to go wherever she wanted and live however she pleased. Marriage had seemed too much like a trap. Too much like the same trap her mother had fallen into. By the time her father had moved on to wife number two, all of her mother’s dreams had died. Vivienne had believed she was too old to pursue what had been lost to her by marrying Charles Godchaux.

  Maybe she was running from her mother’s past as much as she was escaping from her future. Kristie never made it out of Louisiana. To the best of her recollection, she’d been abducted at a truck stop outside Lafayette. When she’d finally come out of a drug-induced sleep in the house on Chelsea Lane, she didn’t even know how she’d been transported there. It was a month before she became aware that the house was somewhere in Arkansas.

  She flinched when someone put a hand on her shoulder and looked up into the glowing eyes of an apparition. A wavy, shimmery bright white image of Sharona hovered beside her. She glanced toward the bed where the lump hadn’t moved even an inch. Kristie scrambled into a seated position and tried to shove her body further into the corner, but there was no room left to maneuver.

  “Sharona?”

  Gratitude and compassion radiated toward her from the light being. “He is coming.”

  She shifted her gaze toward the door, but no sound came down the hallway. Both James and Zeke usually made a lot of noise, their heavy books pounding the wood floorboards of the old house.

  “Who?”

  The ghost of Sharona Adams began to fade.

  Pain ripped through Kristie’s heart. She wasn’t ready to say goodbye. Not yet. “Wait. Don’t go.”

  “I will not forget.”

  The light disappeared and the room darkened. Darker than it had ever been. It mirrored the darkness that had descended on her life. Hope leeched out of her soul as the spirit of her only friend in the world faded. For the first time in her life, Kristie felt utterly alone.

  The door of the bedroom swung open, and Chelsea’s face appeared. Hatred for the woman surged inside her. Her fingers clenched into two tight fists. Did her disgust for James’s girlfriend register on her face? No matter.

  Chelsea’s eyes riveted on Sharona. “She’s gone?”

  She glared at Chelsea in angry silence. She’d give her nothing.

  Chelsea glanced toward the open door. “James will be here any second.” She moved to within inches of Kristie. “Hit me. Hit me hard.”

  She blinked at the woman.

  “He’s in the bathroom, and the back door is unlocked. Run. Get out of here. If you hit me, he’ll believe I fought and you won.”

  She spat her disgust at Chelsea. “I can’t run. I won’t get far before he’s caught up to me.” She pushed up the wall to stare Chelsea in the eye. “I’m dying, Chelsea. I don’t have any strength left to run.”

  “You have to try.”

  Kristie shook her head and a stab of pain pierced her temple. She pressed her hand against the hurt. “You could have helped us before we were too weak to run.”

  The door banged the rest of the way open. Zeke’s tall figure filled the frame. “What’s going on in here?” He glanced toward Sharona and shifted his eyes away quickly. His steely gaze settled on Chelsea. “You know what to do.”

  A single sob escaped Chelsea.

  “Don’t tune up, woman.” He grunted his contempt for her. “I don’t know why James keeps you around. You’re worthless.”

  Chelsea wasn’t afraid of much, but Zeke could back her down. But this time, maybe she’d had enough. “If my brother ever finds out what you’ve done to me, you’re a dead man.”

  Zeke laughed and the sound of his derision swept over Kristie and rolled in her already nauseous stomach.

  “Your brother don’t care what happens to you. He knows where you are. Who do you think gives him drinking money?”

  Chelsea’s face colored pinkish red. “That’s not true. Brett would never give up on me.”

  Zeke grabbed her by the shirtfront, and Chelsea wilted, all of her former defiance seemingly seeping out of her.

  “Do what I tell you to do. If you don’t, I’ll kill James.”

  Kristie had heard that before. It was enough to keep Chelsea in line, and Kristie didn’t understand why that particular threat seemed to have such a strong hold on the other woman. As far as Kristie could tell, James wasn’t worth the oxygen he breathed.

  Zeke left the room without a single backward glance, apparently confident in his ability to control Chelsea. She stumbled over to the bed and yanked the sheet off Sharona.

  Kristie watched her movements. “What are you doing?”

  Chelsea turned her teary gaze toward Kristie. “I’m going to roll her in the sheets, and then we’re going to bury her under the basement.”

  “Under the basement?”

  Chelsea’s posture straightened. Determination edged her haggard features. “Shut up and do what I tell you to. We don’t have all day.”

  Once Sharona was wrapped in the bedding, the two women struggled to carry her down the main stairs and then through the kitchen to the basement stairs. Under the house, Chelsea dropped her end of the dead woman and pointed toward a chest of drawers. “Help me move it.”

  Once they had shoved the heavy piece of furniture aside, a trap door appeared in the hard-packed dirt.

  Chelsea pried open the door. “Get down there.”

  “What? There might be bugs and snakes and…” She cringed at what she might encounter in the hole in the ground.

  “There’s nothing down there but dead people. Hurry before Zeke comes to check on us. You don’t want him coming down here.”

  Kristie didn’t move.

  “You want me to call him for help? I will.”

  Chelsea could turn from sympathetic co-conspirator to spiteful prison warden in a matter of seconds. Kristie had witnessed her transformation many times. Never had the sudden change in Chelsea resulted in anything good.

  Kristie glared at the woman, and when it appeared Chelsea was about to open her mouth, she complied, got on her stomach to slide down into the hole, and dropped to the ground. Barely had she managed to get to her feet and survey her surroundings before Sharona’s body fell through the hole on top of her.

  She couldn’t help it. She screamed, trying desperately to shove the dead weight off her.

  Chelsea tossed a shovel through the opening and the tool almost hit Kristie on her head. She glared at Chelsea through the opening above her. The woman’s long hair fell around her anxious face. For a moment, it seemed as if Chelsea was nothing more than a frightened little girl. She raised a finger to her teeth and began to chew on the nail.

  A white light appeared behind Chelsea, glowing around her.

  “Dig,” Chelsea shouted again and the light dissipated.

  Kristie flinched and picked up the shovel. Before she drove the tool into the dirt at her feet, she fired her warning shots at Chelsea. “You could have helped us, but you didn’t. Don’t pretend any longer that you’re one of us. You’re not. You’re just like them.”

  Chelsea’s face hardened, her jaw setting into a rigid line, her eyes narrowing into two slits. “I’ll never be like them.” She knelt and watched Kristie through the opening. “Start digging further back in the basement. There’s already someone buried where you’re standing.”

  Kristie gasped and jumped back a couple of feet.

  “Right there is good. You’d better get started.”

  Kristie forced the shovel into the soil. In her weakened condition, it would take a long time to dig a hole deep enough to cover Sharona. She paused and stared up at Chelsea one more time before
she went back to her chore. “Sharona is going to haunt you for the rest of your life. Until the day you die a miserable death. Yeah, even after you die, she’s going to haunt you. And if she doesn’t…I will.”

  Chapter Two

  Hill County, Arkansas

  May 2014

  Chelsea had just toasted the last piece of bread in the house, buttered it with even strokes of the knife, and then ate it slowly, enjoying every bite. When she finished eating, her stomach grumbled for more, but there was no more.

  Just as she licked the crumbs from the corner of her mouth, her stomach became unsettled, and the edges of her vision began to blur. Cold fingers of dread wiggled through every bone and muscle of her body. Pressing her back against the kitchen wall, she shivered and glanced around the room, waiting for the inevitable.

  Every night she lived through the same wide-awake nightmare.

  Kristie’s taunt rose to the surface of her mind once again. Sharona is going to haunt you for the rest of your life. Until the day you die a miserable death. Yeah, even after you die, she’s going to haunt you. And if she doesn’t…I will. Kristie hadn’t lived much longer than Sharona had.

  The house was haunted. Chelsea didn’t doubt that for a second. But whose ghost harassed her? The spirit might be Sharona or Kristie. Or the haunts could be any of the other women who had lived and died in the house on Chelsea Lane.

  An uneasy feeling of being watched by another presence washed over her. The eerie, nerve-rattling sensation had become familiar over the last few years, increasing in intensity the longer she lived in the house. She closed her eyes, hoping the moment would pass without another intense soul-crushing incident.

  Pressure expanded in her chest as if filling her from the inside out. More weight pressed on her from the outside. She gasped for breath, and her eyes popped open. A thick fog surrounded her as if she was floating in a cloud of bright, white light. Her back arched. Her hands began trembling, and the violent movements spread throughout her body until she thought she was about to shake into a million pieces, all the while the pressure increasing from without and within.