Ghost Shadow

She froze. The voice was near. But from which direction?

She streaked out from the passage beneath the stairway and raced over to the left hall of exhibits where she had left her brother. She burst in on Robert the Doll. In silence, he was jerking back and forth on his stand.

She nearly tripped over a body. She hunched down. It was Sam Barnard. He was wearing handcuffs, and when she gingerly touched him, she discovered a plastic bag wound tightly around his head. With trembling fingers, she ripped it away from him.

“Katie!”

The whisper was Bartholomew’s. His hands were on her shoulders. He motioned her to silence, but beckoned her to follow him.

Her brother was stretched out in the facsimile of the cemetery, where the servicemen from the Maine were buried and honored. A bag was on his head; it wasn’t tightened. She ripped it away from him, and lay against him, desperate to hear his breathing.

He had a pulse. There was a gash on his head; she knew from the stickiness beneath her fingers when she touched him.

“Oh, God!” she prayed in a breath.

“Katie!” Bartholomew warned her again.

“You…you…you…you…you…are dead!” The words were followed by laughter. She tried to rise carefully, to start to move.

“Katie, the other way!” Bartholomew urged her.

Too late. She ducked to avoid a nineteen-twenties flapper, and crashed right into the wall of a big man’s chest.

He reached for her. He was wearing gloves. The gloves he had always known to wear. Diver’s gloves, so plentiful in the Keys!

His hands wound around her neck. She struggled.

He winced and jerked suddenly, as if he’d been hit from behind.

Katie took the moment. She pushed against him and bit his arm, bit as hard as she could. She clawed at his flesh.

If she died, which well she might, the bastard wasn’t getting away with it again.

Nor would he blame David Beckett.

“Bitch!” he roared.

His huge hand came flying across her cheek. The blow was stu

And then a darkness deeper than any she had ever imagined.

David slowed when he reached the lawn of the museum. Any alarm now would cost Katie her life, and he knew it. He had to believe that he had a chance. That the killer was determined to tease and taunt her before ending it. He wondered if she was meant to be his finest work. Katie O’Hara, so well-known and beloved in Key West. Beautiful, and a songstress. With a family as old and renowned as his own.

And Sean was in there, somewhere.

The door hadn’t been locked. It remained open. He couldn’t be sure how the killer would act and react, and he was certain that Liam would turn the house upside down. But he had to hurry-if sirens suddenly riddled the streets, if he knew that time was nearly up, the killer would work faster.

The killer had made a mistake. He wouldn’t be able to cast suspicion on David or anyone else. But David thought that he was so overconfident now in his quest for some kind of belated family vengeance that he wouldn’t believe that. He would still believe himself invincible.

And he would have taken care.

David didn’t enter right away. He stared at the floor behind the doorway. It took him a moment, and then he saw it. A trip wire. Somehow it would alert the killer that he was here.

His eyes had attuned well to darkness. He paused for just a moment at the entry, then leapt the turnstile as silently as he could. He hurried toward the left hall.

There was a body on the floor. Heart in his throat, he hurried to it.

Sam Barnard. David checked for a pulse. The man was breathing.

“Ch-cha-cha-Charleston!” A flapper warbled out in a gritty voice.

David jerked around. There was movement. He hadn’t intended to ever have these robotics work; he’d have brought in some experts and gotten them off to good homes elsewhere.

But tonight, they had a life of their own.

They’d been activated to hide other noises in the museum. They had been turned on to scare and frighten, and distract.

He wouldn’t be distracted. But he had to be very careful. He knew where the killer was. And he knew that the killer would be waiting for him.

Hurriedly, he searched the room, but he could only find Sam Barnard. He silently swore to the unconscious man that he would arrange for an ambulance the second he could. Once he had found Sean. And Katie. Katie…

Alive. She had to be alive!

He thanked God that he was good in darkness, and silence. He started through the museum. The killer would be waiting. He prayed that there was a way to surprise him.

Katie felt a stu

She tried to move, and she could not. She tried to twist around, and she realized that she was strapped to a table.

She was covered in…

White. White. A white wedding dress.

She was wearing a wedding dress and veil, and she was strapped down on the slab that was a bed in the Elena de Hoyos exhibit in the museum.

Terror streaked through her, filling her with horror and panic. She almost squirmed; she would have screamed in hysteria if it hadn’t been for the gag in her mouth and the tape over it.

“Katie, Katie O’Hara!”

She was more horrified as she heard the crooning voice. For a moment, things seemed to jiggle above her, and then come into focus.

Pete. Lieutenant Peter Dryer. Of course. They’d been so stupid.

Who knew the families? Who could get keys to houses and museums? Who could be at any crime scene, and be expected?

Who had been the great-great-great-grandson of a man named Smith, Smith who had left behind a daughter who had married an immigrant named Dryer?

“Oh, Katie, I’ve saved the best for you. There’s a trip cord there, by the door. When David Beckett comes to save you, he’ll pull the wire. So cleverly pla

She shook her head, unable to speak.

He fixed that for her, ripping off the gauze, jerking out the gag. It was horrible. She thought that she would choke.

She opened her mouth to scream, “David! It’s a trap!”

“Ah, loverboy isn’t here yet,” Pete said. “You can scream for a moment. Oh, yes, and it’s so good, so damned good! See what I did for your brother? He is a fine, strapping lad! Had that Sam Barnard down for me, and in a lock. Held him while I handcuffed him. And didn’t blink until I crushed his skull with the butt of my gun! There you go. Even the big and powerful fall to knowledge and careful pla

“You’re a cop!” she told him.

“A good one. But you have to understand, Katie. I thought that maybe you did. My ancestor cursed the Becketts. He was hanged-because of a Beckett.”

“He was guilty!”

Pete shook his head. “Katie! You don’t understand. Some vile pirate had already been hanged, and there was no reason that my ancestor should have died.”