Page 26

Dakota

I was panicking. There was nothing I could do about it, either. My breaths were coming in sharp, short pants, and I was unable to suck in enough air to actually breathe. My chest was constricting, my lungs seizing on the inside, and a cold sweat had broken out all over, drenching me and sticking my clothes to my skin.

Fuck, this was too much. Too much to process, too much that I didn’t understand…

The note fell from my hand, my fingers too weak to even hold it up when the words finally hit. They weren’t even bad, but I had never felt so abandoned before in my entire life. Where was my husband when I needed him? When I was scared and confused, and in desperate need of a fucking hug? Oh, right. Gone.

Kota,

My head is a mess, and I need to clear it.

Gone fishing for a few days to process.

I love you, I just need some time.

My parents and Chance are there if you need anything.

I’ll be back soon.

-Blake

He fucking left me.

I was pissed . Understanding and compassion could only go so far. I had given him everything I could, pushed aside my own wants and needs in favour of support him, but I needed him now more than ever and where the fuck was he? Fucking fishing.

I released a scream of frustration, pushing my fear and loneliness into it as well in an attempt to relieve myself of their weight. What was I supposed to do now, just sit back and wait for a ghost to keep me company? And not just any ghost, either. From what I’d gathered, my only choices were a potential murderer or my husband’s dead wife.

Fuck!

My hands were in my hair before I could stop them, tugging and yanking painfully at the strands in an attempt to drag me out of this pit of emotional torment. It was the method I had used as a kid when my parents brought the bad men around. Bad men who were now in prison for a colourful array of crimes, such as assault and battery, rape, money laundering, drugs, and kidnapping. You know, just to name a few.

My mind took me back to when I hid in the bathroom, inside the cabinet beneath the sink. How I’d folded my small body to squeeze in the tiny space, my hands covering my ears and my eyes squeezed shut. How my breathing would pick up when I heard footsteps outside, or when one of them would come in to use the toilet. Sometimes they would stay, and I’d hear chopping sounds followed by snorts. I hadn’t learned until much later what they were doing.

But that little cabinet had become my safe place. No one ever found me there, wedged between the bottles of cleaning supplies. Now, whenever I began to feel myself start to panic, I would crave a small, cramped space to hide inside. That had translated to hugs when I’d grown up and gone through countless therapists, but in times like this, it wasn’t enough.

Which was why I crawled beneath the cot and curled up into a ball, desperate to make myself as small and hidden as possible. My carefully curated mask of healthy coping mechanisms fell away, revealing the lost and broken girl I truly was inside.

My eyes were focused on the crumpled-up piece of paper lying on the floor where I’d dropped it as my breathing became too shallow, too strained, and I finally passed out from the lack of oxygen.

∞∞∞

‘Dakota? Sweetheart? Oh, dear. Dakota, honey? Can you hear me?’

Mallory’s voice cut through the peaceful darkness of unconsciousness, her tone lighter and gentler than I had ever heard it before. For a moment, I wondered if I was making it up, like a dream or a hallucination, because Mallory Dodd was many things, but maternal wasn’t one of them.

‘What’s wrong with her?’ My father-in-law’s voice was harsh and cutting, slicing through the softness Mallory was trying to exude. That was what made me realise that this was real and not a figment of my imagination. Mallory truly was trying to be kind right now.

How odd.

‘Dakota, dear. Are you okay?’ she asked again. ‘Can you come out?’

‘Why is she under there in the first place?’ Calvin snapped. ‘She’s behaving like a child.’

‘If you’re not going to help, Cal, then get out. Something must have happened, and you’re not helping things by snapping at her like that.’

He huffed, but he made no noise. He wasn’t speaking, and he wasn’t walking away, which meant he was listening to his wife. Also odd.

My eyes cracked open as confusion took over, my body aching from being curled up on a cold, hard, lumpy surface for who knew how long, but I couldn’t remember how I got here. I stretched out my limbs to shake out the ache, only to find them blocked by something on top of me. When my head cleared enough to process what I was seeing, I realised I was under a cot. My cot, from my tent, which I shared with Blake.

Who wasn’t here.

My gaze darted to the note that was still on the floor, crumpled and dirty and stuck beneath Mallory’s shoe, and it all came rushing back.

Waking up without Blake. Kali. Chance, and his ghost hunting gear going off like crazy to prove the presence of an entity. Blake’s note.

Fucking hell…

‘Blake’s gone,’ was all I said when I met Mallory’s concerned, surprisingly soft eyes. I watched as they widened, shock and then panic replacing the worry for a beat before she locked those emotions down. When she extended her hand to me beneath the cot, I glanced between it and her face.

‘Come on out, sweetheart, and you can explain to me what’s happened.’

I didn’t think much about it when I placed my palm in hers and let her pull me out from beneath the cot. Her nose wrinkled when she saw me properly for the first time since she’d found me, but she quickly smoothed her expression out again as she guided me to sit on the very cot she’d just pulled me out from.

‘Now,’ she said, taking a seat beside me and raising her hands to my hair. She smoothed it down, running her hands through the messy strands to untangle the knots. I was thankful for the short style, because there wasn’t much that needed to be done to fix it. ‘What happened?’

I released a shaky, breathy laugh that was more manic than anything, causing her brows to pull together in a frown. ‘I don’t think you’ll believe me if I told you.’

She pursed her lips together, thinning them into a white line, clearly not liking my attempt at deflection, but her words shocked me. ‘Try me.’

My head shook like I was physically denying what had occurred, what I’d discovered. My mind didn’t want to acknowledge it as truth, but I knew what I saw. I wasn’t crazy. It had happened, and Chance, fuck, even Rhodes could back me up.

When I looked into Mallory’s eyes, I saw a determination there, a strength that I had never seen from her before, and I decided to take the risk by being honest. ‘I don’t know where to begin,’ I admitted.

‘From the start, sweetheart,’ she prompted.

I released a heavy sigh, but started talking. I told her about Rhodes and the description he gave of the mystery girl on his property. I told her how Blake had taken the news and kept disappearing. I told her how I’d woken up this morning to find him still gone, then the cot moving on its own. How I saw Kali in the mirror and discovered she was a ghost, which led me to Chance at Rhodes’ house and the events that happened there, before coming home to find the note, which I gestured to on the floor.

Her expression remained closed off as she listened, and she didn’t even blink when Calvin scoffed and stalked from the room. When I motioned to the note, she bent down and picked it up, smoothing it out to read its contents.

Then, she folded it up neatly and tucked it into the shallow pocket in her cardigan. ‘I think I need to speak with my son.’

I sniffed, suddenly realising that I was crying. When had that happened? ‘Which one?’ I asked her.

‘Both, preferably, but since Blake isn’t here, I shall start with my eldest.’

She stood, brushed off the lint from her skirt, from the blanket she’d been sitting on, and left the tent, leaving me on my own again. That seemed to be a common theme lately, and I was fucking done with it, so I leapt up to follow her, only to stop in my tracks at the piece of paper that floated through the flap of the tent, falling at my feet.

I stared at it for a beat before slowly bending down to pick it up. My fingers were trembling so hard that I couldn’t grasp it properly in my first few attempts, but I eventually managed to get a hold of it. It was no longer folded, but the words written in my husband’s familiar script were the same ones I had read earlier. The same ones that had driven me into a panic.

I breathed in deeply through my nose, shoving down the chill that tried to rise. It was just the wind. Mallory must have dropped it. Her pocket was pretty shallow, and her lightweight cardigan wasn’t exactly sturdy enough to hold anything. Its pockets were merely for decoration, so it was no wonder that it hadn’t stayed put.

I tossed it onto the table, turning my back on it as I moved to follow Mallory again, then changed my mind at the last minute to check my phone. I dug it out of the recesses of my handbag, clicking it on to check if I had received any messages from Blake, but of course, there was nothing but a blank screen. The picture of us from our wedding day smiled up at me, almost tauntingly, especially beneath the time and date. It was morning. I had slept through the night. No wonder I was sore if I’d been curled up on the floor like that all night.

I moved to put the phone back in my bag, but a flash of white caught my eye.

In the mirror.

Like yesterday on repeat, I swivelled around to see who was there, despite already knowing I would see nothing. Trembling, I slowly turned my head to the mirror, and there she was. Kali was standing beside the table where I had tossed the note, a look of severe concentration on her face as she scratched against it with a single fingernail.

I could hear it, too.

Scratch. Scratch. Scratch.

My breaths started to hitch again, but I forced myself to breathe deeply, refusing to let the fear take hold. It was just Kali. She may have been a ghost, but she was the woman my husband had loved once upon a time, and I feared still did. She was the woman Chance had loved for even longer, even if he refused to admit it, who he had assured me meant me no harm.

But wouldn’t I want to harm me, if I were in her position? This new woman that had taken her place and stolen her man. Or would she be happy that he had moved on, that he had found love again and was living his life?

I couldn’t say, because despite all the stories I’d heard about her, I didn’t actually know her.

When the scratching stopped, I watched her reflection pull back, fatigue clear in the droop of her shoulders and dark bruising beneath her icy blue eyes. Eyes that met mine in the mirror. She pointed a weak finger at the note, then jabbed her finger at it more insistently when I didn’t immediately move. I gulped down my apprehension at moving closer to where I knew she was, but turned to face the seemingly empty space. The knowledge that she was there and that I couldn’t see her was disturbing, but I chose to trust Chance’s assurances and stepped cautiously up to the table and looked down.

She had scratched out Blake’s signature at the bottom of the page, a jagged hole now in its place. What the… Why?

‘Are you… Do you hate me?’ I asked her, my insecurities pushing to the forefront with enough force to knock the breath from my lungs.

I chanced a glance at the mirror to see her reaction, but it was not what I expected. She was looking right at me, close enough that I could feel a chill on my arm raise goosebumps over my flesh, but her expression wasn’t angry. It was kind. Sad. She shook her head slowly, reaching out a hand as if to touch me, but pausing before it could make contact.

Then she pointed at the note again.

I didn’t understand. ‘Are you mad at Blake?’

Her eyes flashed, and she dipped her chin to acknowledge my question.

Oh… Oh.

‘Don’t be mad at him,’ I rushed to his defence. ‘Please don’t hate him. He still loves you. I’m not trying to erase what you had, I swear.’

Her shoulders slumped as if my response wasn’t the one she had hoped for, a deep sadness penetrating the room until I felt like I was going to cry on her behalf. Fuck. This was not what I wanted. I didn’t want to upset her or think she was replaced. That wasn’t the case at all.

But I didn’t get the chance to try to talk about it further. My phone rang inside my purse, as my head snapped around at the sound. I jumped, startled, then decided to ignore it to focus back on Kali. But she was gone. There was no more cold spot. The note sat motionless on the table.

I glared at it, then turned from it with an aggravated huff. The phone was still ringing, and hope lit up inside me like a wildfire at the prospect of talking to Blake, but the number wasn’t his. It wasn’t one I recognised, either.

Tentatively, I answered, bringing it up to my ear. ‘Hello?’

‘Hello,’ a female voice responded on the other end. ‘I’m looking for a Mrs. Dakota Dodd?’

‘Speaking,’ I confirmed, a bad feeling beginning to swirl in my stomach.

‘Mrs. Dodd, my name is Detective Benson. I’m calling from the Klamath County Police Department. I was wondering if I could ask you a few questions about a case I’m working on?’

I blinked, stunned. ‘Uh… sure. What is this about?’

‘It’s not something I feel comfortable speaking about over the phone. Would it be possible to set up a meeting to talk in person?’

‘Um, yeah, that shouldn’t be a problem. Is everything okay?’

‘I’m hoping you can give me an answer to that question, Mrs. Dodd. Would you be able to come into the station?’

‘I… Yes, I can come in. Am I in trouble for something?’

‘No, no, it’s nothing like that. You haven’t done anything wrong. We would just like to ask you a few questions about an individual that has come up in our investigation.’

‘Can I ask who?’

‘Again, I’m sorry, but I would prefer to speak about this in person.’

‘Right. Okay. Sure.’

‘Perfect. Can I schedule you in for tomorrow? Say, around one o’clock?’

I nodded, then realised she couldn’t see me, so I verbalised my agreement.

‘Great. I’ll see you then, Mrs. Dodd. Be safe.’

The dial tone rang out when she hung up, and I stared dumbly down at the screen. Be safe? Was that the normal way the police down here said goodbye? I was probably overthinking it. I tended to overanalyse every small interaction after a panic attack, and my anxiety was already through the roof.

My eyes snagged on the note again, and I studied Blake’s scratched-out name, contemplating what had happened and coming up short. Maybe Chance would have some insight into what this all meant.