Ashley Ridge (Haunted Hearts Series Book 3) Read online

  “I thought I was going to see Dr. Phelps.”

  Ashley waited a few seconds before responding, giving her irritation a chance to calm. “I’m Ashley Rivers, his nurse practitioner. I work with Dr. Phelps. I can do most of what he could do for you.”

  The woman squinted and turned her head to the side as if to study Ashley. “So you’re gonna doctor me today? Is that legal?”

  Ashley fixed her best reassuring smile on her face. “Yes, it is. Perfectly legal. I’m almost like a doctor, except not a medical doctor. I’ve had a lot of the same type of training. I can do most of what a doctor can do. Now… What’s been going on with you?” She winced. Her cheerfulness sounded stilted.

  According to the nurse’s notes, the patient presented with symptoms of bronchitis. It was late in the season, but some people were susceptible to respiratory distress all year long. One more perusal of the patient’s history, and Ashley had ascertained bronchitis was a chronic problem for the woman.

  The woman blinked and then pressed a blue-veined hand against her chest. “My lungs are popping again.”

  Ashley nodded. “Are you coughing a lot?”

  Mrs. Preston erupted with a seal-like bark and kept the hacking up for a good half-minute before she calmed.

  “Sounds like bronchitis again. Let’s get an X-ray.” She scribbled the order in the file and closed the folder. “It looks like you’ve—”

  The door popped open and Terrance’s tall frame filled the doorway. He glanced at Ashley and then at Mrs. Preston before addressing the patient with a warm smile. “Would you excuse us a moment? Ashley will be right back. I promise.”

  Always polite, Terrance had a charming bedside manner.

  He yanked Ashley by her elbow and pulled her into the hallway. “Where have you been?”

  The calm demeanor he presented to the patient had dissolved into molten anger, his neck and lower jaw flushing crimson, his eyes spitting fire at her.

  Ashley refused to cringe, as she usually did in anticipation of his verbal abuse. “I had a long night. I needed some sleep.”

  “I bet you did.” His fingers tightened around her arm. “Did you stay with him all night?”

  She wanted to stay at Josh’s bedside, but he had insisted that she leave. He said something silly like he didn’t want her to see him in pain. Too late for that. Over the years, she’d seen Josh at his best and at his worst.

  She twisted, trying to loosen Terrance’s grip. “Let go. You’re hurting me.”

  He glanced up and down the hall, tightened his hold, and then shook her. “Did you?”

  Pain shot up her arm into her shoulder. He’d never manhandled her like this before. The thought of her staying with Josh obviously brought out a violent streak in him. It was a new low in their relationship.

  “No, I went home and got some sleep. Just like I said.” Why did she have to sound so defensive? She was a grown woman. She could do whatever she wanted, whenever she wanted.

  “You ignored my calls.”

  She couldn’t handle talking to him the previous night after she’d finally fallen into bed. Her emotions had been too close to the surface. “I wasn’t on call, so I turned my ringer off.”

  He released her elbow. “You and I have some things we need to discuss.”

  She backed away from him, suddenly determined to put some physical distance between them. “There’s nothing to discuss.”

  His jaw muscles tensed. “I told you to stay away from Josh McCord.”

  She wanted to shout that he didn’t own her, but in a way, he did. “I have to get back to Mrs. Preston.” She turned and placed her hand on the doorknob.

  As she entered the exam room, he tossed out one more demand. “We will talk about this, Ashley. Tonight.”

  ****

  Shaw Bennett’s cell phone vibrated in his pocket. When he glanced at the Caller ID, he was surprised to see Tori Downing’s name. Hers was the last voice he’d expected to hear. It had been over a year since he’d seen her, but the memory of their last argument was still fresh.

  She’d processed the evidence from the Lipton case in Little Rock, a murder investigation that had been conducted without finding the body until Tori had experienced something paranormal in Lipton’s house and led the prosecutor to Lipton’s shallow grave. She hadn’t lied when she claimed the house had told her where to find the body, but the revelation initiated the chain of events that had ended her career at the Arkansas State Crime Lab, had almost ended Shaw’s with the State Police.

  He groaned and answered the call. “Why are you calling me? We don’t have anything to talk about. We’ve said it all. I get it. You’re angry with me. I ruined your life. I don’t need to be reminded. Unless you actually have some law enforcement business to discuss—”

  “Will you shut up for a minute?” Her voice wobbled over the airwaves.

  She was obviously in some sort of trouble again. He had never been able to refuse a person in distress, especially a woman. “I’m listening.”

  “You know Mitchell Grayson, right?”

  “Of course, I know him. We’ve known each other a very long time. He’s a lieutenant with the Hill County Sheriff’s Department.” He turned onto his street. Almost home. His house was only yards away.

  “Yes, I know. He’s here with me now. Look, he... No, we need your help. We’re at Victoria House on Lake Jefferson. Do you know where I’m talking about?”

  Shaw knew about Victoria House. He and Grayson had discussed the possibility of a joint ghost hunt when Grayson had first asked for permission to enter the house to do an investigation. The new owner of the property had denied the request. “Sure, I know the place. The house was owned by Alfred Hamilton and from what I’ve heard one of his descendants took possession of the property. It’s supposed to be haunted by the ghost of Victoria Hamilton. Is that why you’re calling me? I’m not doing another paranormal investigation for you.”

  After a long pause, she finally spoke again. “Okay, thanks for the history lesson, but I know all that. I’m Alfred Hamilton’s great-granddaughter.”

  He clicked the remote and raised his garage door. “You’re what? No way. Do you mean—”

  “Hold up...I’m still talking. We just found Caroline in Victoria’s bedroom. Her throat’s been cut.”

  Caroline? Grayson’s ex-wife?

  Tori sniffed hard and Shaw allowed a moment of pity for her. She was probably freaking out. And Grayson? First on the scene at two recent homicides, the man would have some explaining to do, and he most definitely needed help. No matter. Shaw was already up to his eyeballs in Grayson’s problems. He couldn’t get involved in another catastrophe, especially if Tori Downing was mixed up in the mess. Her presence was like poison to his career. Association with her had nearly ruined him.

  “It’s bad. We can’t let the locals here handle it.”

  He rubbed his tired eyes. “I’m not doing this for you again. I know you blame me for everything, but the truth is you couldn’t keep your mouth shut—”

  Her voice exploded in his ear. “This isn’t about me or you or what happened in Little Rock. It doesn’t matter what I said or what I did. I was wrong. You were wrong. We both were wrong. The whole freaking world was wrong. Okay? Just get over it. This isn’t about us. It’s about Gray. I’m calling you because I know you’ve worked with him in the past when there were paranormal implications. I know about Laurel Heights.”

  Her final sentence sucked any objection he’d had right out of him.

  Shaw had finally finished what he’d had to do at Laurel Heights and left another investigator to wrap it up and tape off the crime scene before he’d rushed back home to Little Rock to get some much needed rest. Now, it appeared he’d have to turn around and head back to Hill County.

  ****

  Ashley pulled her car to a stop behind a stand of trees at the top of a hill. She often drove up the dirt road to the lookout point just so she could view the spot on the highway below where J
eremy Haskins had died. The road wound through the valley on its way to a low notch between two hills the locals laughingly called Duncan’s Pass. The two mounds of dirt were not mountains and the break in between them was hardly a mountain pass.

  The Pass was actually miles away from any property ever owned by a Duncan, on the other side of the county seat of Fairview from the Duncan’s farm near the Missouri state line. Why it was named for the Duncan clan remained a mystery that had never been solved throughout the decades since the area was settled.

  Her cell phone vibrated in the console next to her. Ashley ignored the call. Terrance had been calling her every fifteen minutes since she left the clinic for the day. Eventually, she’d have to face him again, but for a few precious moments, she could pretend he didn’t exist.

  Ashley hated Terrance Phelps with every fiber of her being, hated him almost as much as he hated Josh McCord.

  Every time she hinted she wanted out of her relationship with the man, he’d hinted that Josh might find out she’d killed Jeremy Haskins. Now, Josh knew how Jeremy died. She’d blurted the truth one night, but she hadn’t told Josh why Jeremy had died. Actually, no one knew why, no one except Ashley and her blackmailer. Not even Gray, and he knew just about everything about the night Jeremy died.

  Once she had told Terrance her awful secret, he hadn’t waited a moment to use the knowledge against her. He hadn’t wanted money from her. No, he wanted sex, and not plain, everyday sex. He wanted the kinky stuff. The kink might have been good…if she’d been with someone she cared about. Every time he touched her, she felt dirty. Violated. Just like when Jeremy had raped her.

  Her insides spasmed at the memory. Years later, the pain of what Jeremy had done to her was still fresh as if it had happened just yesterday.

  Gray thought he had saved her from Jeremy’s violence, but the truth was, it was already too late. The night Jeremy died he had tried to attack her a second time. She knew it was dangerous getting into his car with him, but she had something she needed him to know. Hoped what she had to tell him would change him. Change his life. Change who he was. He died before she could tell him anything.

  And she’d learned that night that people don’t change.

  She closed her eyes and reveled in the wind buffeting her, the silkiness of her hair blowing across her face, the cool breeze caressing her hot cheeks. Tears spilled from her eyes, but Ashley refused to wipe them away. She imagined the freedom of jumping over the cliff and falling to the ground. Oblivion seemed like sweet release. Anything was better than the daily torture she endured.

  Time seemed to have stood still and locked her in some sort of perpetual limbo where she relived the night Jeremy died over and over again. Why hadn’t his death released her from her pain? She’d only traded heartache for heartache.

  She straightened her shoulders. No, she wouldn’t give Terrance Phelps the satisfaction of handing him her ultimate defeat. He wasn’t God, and he had no right to condemn her. She wouldn’t destroy herself. She’d find a way out of the trap she was in. Besides, Josh knew half the truth now. If she could just find the strength to finish telling him the whole story, maybe she could unlock time and resume her interrupted life.

  Surely, Terrance had a secret or a weakness. Maybe if she could find something on him, just like he had on her, she could use it to get away from him. It would be difficult. He covered his tracks pretty well from what she’d observed.

  Not far from where she stood, he kept a cabin at the top of a mountain near the southern end of Ashley Ridge. Twice he’d taken her there for a weekend when his wife Cissy was out of town. One time Ashley had asked him if he rented it out to vacationers when he wasn’t using it, and he’d almost bitten her head off.

  There was some reason he didn’t want anyone to know about the cabin. He’d warned her never to reveal its location or even to mention it to anyone. Maybe Cissy didn’t know he owned the place. He probably kept the details of their finances and property ownership from her. He would be that kind of husband.

  When Ashley went there with him, he didn’t want her to tell anyone where she was going. She didn’t like being out of communication with the rest of the world. Didn’t matter anyway. The cell phone signal on the mountain was practically non-existent. She’d come home from those weekends exhausted and then had to dodge questions from well-meaning people who’d tried to call her and had gotten no response.

  What if he was hiding something? Maybe she should go up to the cabin and look around when he wasn’t there. He never let her explore while she was with him. He usually kept her in the bedroom the whole weekend. Every time she returned from one of those trips, she felt like a whore. Long showers were the only thing that made her feel as if she had gotten rid of the stench of being with someone she shouldn’t be with.

  Fifteen minutes later, she’d made the trip down to the valley floor, turned onto Baxter Road, and drove up the mountain. The cabin was just around a curve in the road. She slowed as she neared the drive that led to the front door. Before she got all the way there, she decided she’d better turn around.

  To her dismay, a light glowed from the front window. Although she didn’t see his car, that didn’t mean Terrance wasn’t there. He often parked behind the cabin, out of sight of the gravel-covered road that led up the mountain from the highway.

  She couldn’t let him know she had been to the cabin without him, but she made a mental note to come back when she was certain he wouldn’t be there.

  Chapter Three

  May 2014

  Shaw pushed open the unlocked front door of Victoria House. His chief crime scene investigator, Matt Dickerson, followed close on his heels.

  “I don’t like this, Bennett.” Maybe Dickerson had heard the rumors about the place and already had the heebie jeebies.

  “Neither do I. But I’m here now and I’m going to deal with whatever I find.”

  “Well, I wish you’d quit dragging me into your paranormal crap.”

  He turned around and hit Dickerson with a hard glare. “I’ve been told there is a dead body in this house. This is a potential crime scene, and you are going to investigate it like the professional you are. Understand?”

  Dickerson nodded, but clearly didn’t appreciate the pressure Shaw had placed on him to be where he didn’t want to be. “Not our jurisdiction.”

  Shaw ignored him. That was about all he could do. Dickerson was a pain, but he was the best.

  “Grayson, where are you?” Shaw’s voice rang around the large front room, rattling the crystals in the chandelier overhead.

  The heavy aura of recent violence hung in the air. After he didn’t get a response, he waited and listened. Low voices filtered from above them. He nodded toward the stairs, motioned for Dickerson to stay behind him, unholstered his service weapon, and began climbing.

  When he spotted the open bedroom door at the end of the upstairs hallway, his instincts screamed at him and he flushed with a fresh rush of adrenaline. He glanced over his shoulder at Dickerson and motioned toward the doorway. Dickerson’s slight nod told him his non-verbal cue to advance with caution had been understood.

  Shaw passed through the doorway gun first, and once he cleared the entrance, his eyes gravitated first to a woman’s body draped over the side of the bed and then traveled to the prone figure of another woman in the middle of the bedroom floor.

  When he spoke with Tori Downing on the phone, she hadn’t mentioned a second victim.

  He lowered his weapon and directed his question to Tori. “What happened?”

  She held out a gun. “It’s been fired once. That’s Deputy Lucy Kimbrough. The bullet is probably still in her head.” She nodded toward the dead woman on the floor.

  Kimbrough still clutched another gun in her fingers.

  Lucy Kimbrough wore a Hill County deputy’s uniform. That meant the woman on the bed was Caroline Grayson. He’d never met Grayson’s ex-wife before, but she was almost as he had described her.

  He
r long blonde hair was spread around her head. Her lifeless blue eyes were wide open. If she had once been petite, she had put on a bit of weight. The ligature marks on her wrists indicated that she’d been bound. The slit across her neck didn’t seem to be bleeding any longer, so the scene wasn’t fresh. No blood in the room except what pooled around the former Hill County deputy. The killer had obviously dumped Caroline Grayson’s dead body in Victoria House.

  Shaw holstered his weapon and motioned for Dickerson to collect the firearm in Tori’s hand. Dickerson pulled a pair of latex gloves from his back pocket, took the gun from Tori with two fingers, and then disappeared into the hall. The unmistakable click of a latch filtered back into the room. The man had lugged his heavy crime scene kit all the way up the stairs, griping and complaining every step.

  A man Shaw recognized as the Sheriff of Hill County seemed to suddenly pull himself together. “You with the State Police?”

  He nodded his head. “Shaw Bennett.”

  The man held up his hands as if in surrender. “Sheriff Halsey. This scene is yours. I officially transfer jurisdiction to the Arkansas State Police.”

  Halsey’s sudden transfer of authority stunned Shaw. The Sheriff of Hill County had a reputation for defending his territory, rather strenuously on occasion.

  “What, Halsey? No argument. That easy?”

  Halsey shuddered once. “I’ve seen something here that... We need someone outside this jurisdiction to investigate this death. Too many of our people are involved.” He seemed to study Shaw for a moment. “Shaw Bennett? You’re one of Gray’s ghost hunting buddies, aren’t you? The one he called out to investigate that weird death at Laurel Heights.” His bright eyes flashed with sudden understanding. “I see why Gray called you in now.”

  Actually Tori had called, but Shaw didn’t correct Halsey.

  Shaw raised an eyebrow. “You do?”

  “I do.”

  Halsey glanced toward Grayson. “What I saw...I’ve never seen anything like it, and if Grayson had told me about it without me seeing it for myself... Well, I would have never believed him. I’ve always thought he was a little off in the head for believing in that stuff, but today... I know what I saw.”