“Mr. Fury?”
Expecting to see Finn again, Noah watched the injured man spin around with his gun in hand. Fury? But this wasn’t Finn. Finn’s brother, maybe?
Fury swore and clamped down on his thigh with his free hand. “What the fuck are you followin’ me for?”
The slight woman shivered and held out his hat. “Sorry, Michael. You dropped this.”
Michael? Michael Fury? Or Mike Buckman? The past and the present felt all jumbled up. Noah tried to break free from his vision, concerned because he’d left Lara just as Mike had entered the inn. To his alarm, he couldn’t stop watching history unfold. Stuck with whatever he needed to see, he mentally followed Michael Fury down the street and onto his horse. They rode for what felt like several hours, though he knew only seconds had passed. And all the while, Noah fretted about Lara.
Michael found a drunken doctor on the outskirts of a mining shanty who happily removed the bullet and sewed him up for a few coins. As a reward, Michael shot him between the eyes and took back his money and everything else of the doctor’s he wanted. The few miners yelling for help scattered when Michael put a few bullets in their asses.
He grunted and stared down at his leg. “Fucker.” He took a swig of what the doctor had been drinking. “Little brother thinks he owns her. That he can tell me what to do. Like I’d let that sniveling little pissant run me around the way he does Mama.”
Noah frowned. A family connection between Michael and Finn, and a family tie between Mike and Bill. First brothers, then cousins. Blood. He could feel the answer within reach, but something was still missing. He wanted to see Michael Fury’s face. That he couldn’t bothered him.
“Little brother, I’m comin’ to git ya. You and that whore o’ mine.” Michael took another drink and slumped to the ground, passed out. The bottle emptied into the sandy ground, its contents absorbed in seconds. The sun shone on the glass, and a ray of light lit Michael’s face. In that moment, it wasn’t Mike Buckman Noah saw…but himself.
He blinked and stared once more at the computer monitor. It was all he could do not to throw up. The nausea gripped him and wouldn’t let go. This wasn’t a past like any he’d ever seen. Spurred by a ghost to see the truth, he’d seen something that made no sense. Noah was the danger to Lara? He would rather shoot himself than ever harm her, but what if Lara had been closer to being right than she’d thought?
What if Noah wasn’t possessed by Finnegan Fury, but by Michael Fury, Finn’s brother? That scene in her office might not have been Finn, but Michael whom Cecilia had pleasured. In hindsight, he realized she’d called him Fury, but never by his first name.
Jesus, what a nightmare. Not sure what to do, he stared without seeing at the computer monitor before a name popped out at him from the screen. Knowles Tragedy Kills Two.
Ida Knowles owned the Lady Fine Inn; her nephew Bill remained a top suspect. Or did he?
Stop and focus. Panic later. Follow your gut. He refused to let the vision throw him and read the old news report. Twenty odd years ago, Nancy and Brenda Knowles had perished in a fire. Nancy had died from a fall when she’d jumped to escape the flames. They’d found Brenda’s charred bones days later in her bedroom. Faulty wiring had been the suspected cause, though no one had ever concretely proven what had started the fire.
Noah’s gut churned, his confusion about the past mired with this information. Cecilia flashed in and out of his vision behind the computer, nodding like crazy. He could no longer hear the words coming out of her mouth.
A gasp behind him told him he wasn’t the only one to see her. At least he hadn’t completely lost his mind.
The librarian stuttered and pointed to where Cecilia had been standing. “My God, I saw her. I did! You saw her too, didn’t you? Oh my God!”
The raised voice roused the handful of people in the library, and Noah hurried to close the file he’d been looking at. No need to arouse suspicion about Mike and Bill, not when he had no fucking clue what to do with what he’d just learned.
He darted around the librarian and left the library in a hurry. Needing a shortcut, he used the alley behind the building to return to the inn as fast as he could. Cecilia Fine. Finn Fury. Michael Fury. Lara. What the hell did all of it have to do with him? Noah knew in his bones his history had nothing to do with the Fury brothers. He could trace his lineage back to his Scottish ancestors all the way to the early 1500s, so why the hell had he seen his face where Michael Fury’s had been? Unless Cecilia and Finn weren’t the only ones haunting this town.
He stopped in the middle of the street, shocked at the thought. If Cecilia could overtake Lara the way she had in Lara’s office, might a determined ghost do the same to him? Which would mean that vision of the past could have been manipulated. He’d never run into this before, but that didn’t mean it couldn’t happen. He needed to talk to Chloe again. Maybe her voices could help.
A sound penetrated, but by then, it was too late. In his haste to return to the inn, he hadn’t paid attention to his surroundings. So it was no one’s fault but his own when the truck knocked him from his feet.
Hours later, Chloe sat with Lara by the register. Frank had gone to find Noah, and worry continued to grow as Noah remained absent. Her lover wasn’t the only one not present. At the thought, Lara stilled.
“What’s wrong?” Chloe had kept up a steady stream of chatter that amused and relieved Lara at the same time. A pleasant woman with a keen intelligence, Chloe had shared more than a few humorous stories about Noah and his tendency to zone off into space.
“I just realized I haven’t heard Cecilia in a while.” Ever since Noah had arrived, she’d heard Cecilia’s voice several times a day.
With no one around at present, Lara and Chloe had the downstairs of the inn to themselves. Only the occasional phone call from interested visitors interrupted them.
“How often do you hear her?”
Chloe put her at ease, especially because the woman took for granted that the voices she heard were real. She hadn’t batted an eye about Lara seeing Cecilia.
“It started a month after I first arrived in town. Five months ago, I guess. I’d hear her whisper. Usually bawdy stuff. The woman has a sense of humor and a sex drive, I can tell you that.”
Chloe grinned. “Yeah? My voices aren’t as fun. The stuff they tell me usually leads to a death or an arrest.” At Lara’s look, she added, “I used to be a cop before I joined the PWP. Now I’m a manager for a gym. Very exciting stuff.”
Lara snorted. “Yeah. Your leap from exercise equipment to theft and murder wasn’t as far as you’d imagine.”
“I like you, Lara. You roll with it pretty well.”
“I do?”
“Most people would be sincerely freaked out by all this. Ghosts, voices, Noah and his freaky ability to see the past. You’re taking it all in stride.”
“Not as well as I’d like.” Noah, where are you? “I’m not as comfortable with the voices as you seem to be.”
Chloe shrugged. “Why not? They’re a part of you.”
“A part that made my life hell when I was a kid.”
“Yeah, we all seem to go through that. Me, I didn’t hear them until I was six or seven. They warned me to keep quiet. I tested them by sharing with my brothers, who didn’t believe me. Then I shut my mouth and kept their company a secret.”