Page 8 of Mend My Soul (Shattered Hearts of Carolina Ghost Psychic Mystery Romance #2)

Chapter Eight

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ANSON

The hair on the back of my neck prickles. I look up from scrolling the restaurant menu, and Rae Lee’s gone.

Getting out of the car, I hustle into the service station with the sinking sensation she shouldn’t have gone in there alone. The glass door hits something solid, but I squeeze inside.

My heart comes to a screeching halt. My mouth is so dry, I can’t swallow.

Rae Lee is unconscious in front of the counter. Brown liquid soaks the side of her light blue t-shirt and khaki linen shorts. The coffee paper cup and the darker lid have rolled away separately. Coins litter the floor. The register is open with dollar bills scattered over the till.

“Oh my God, wake up, Amara! Help! Somebody do something!” The young man I saw walking in a few minutes ago is squatting behind the register, holding onto the young girl who was working here last week.

His external freak-out mirrors my internal one.

“What the hell happened?” I yell to get his attention.

I hit my knees and the emergency button on my cell phone in unison.

“I don’t know. She just passed out.” His only concern is the pregnant clerk. I don’t even think he realizes anyone else collapsed.

Certain speakerphone is on, I let my phone clatter to the floor. I try to rouse my fiancé, careful not to move her in case she’s injured.

“Rae Lee, Rae—Raleigh?”

I rub a hand over her hair. Blood covers it. My pulse speeds up. The instinct to protect someone I love wars with my training. I have to stop myself from dragging her lax body off the shitty waxed tiles and cradling her in my lap.

“911. What’s your emergency?” The operator comes on the line.

“This is Detective Anson Ames.” I begin by identifying myself and the location of the gas station. “Two women have collapsed inside the store. One has a head injury. The other is pregnant.”

“I’m alerting the local authorities, Detective Ames. Are you able to stay on the line until the units arrive?”

“Yes,” I bark, unintentionally.

Adrenaline courses through my veins.

“Are you safe where you are, detective? Do you smell gas?” they ask.

I sniff the air. “No. I’m inside with one more person, so I don’t think it is carbon monoxide.”

The guy holding the pregnant clerk has been in here long enough that any odorless leak causing the women to collapse should have affected him, too.

I don’t get it. Nothing about the scene makes sense.

“Please don’t move anyone unless you have to,” the operator says.

Sirens fill the air, coming from the volunteer fire department we drove past a mile or so back. A firetruck with an ambulance on its heels turns into the parking lot. The crews are inside, assessing the situation, when a police cruiser circumvents another driver, pulling around the pumps.

“Everyone’s here.” I end the call with the 911 operator, easing out of the way for the paramedics to get to Rae Lee.

An EMT flashes a penlight in Amara’s eyes. Like she hadn’t wanted to awaken from a nap, she groggily comes to.

Rae Lee’s reactions are slower. She moans, trying to lift her arm to touch the bloody mess in her hair. A wince. She blanches. If her face could lose any more color, it has. The EMT grabs hold of her arm, crossing it over her chest.

I overhear the radio squawk, asking for a second ambulance to take them to the county hospital. The grumpy gas station owner storms out of the office, grousing about the commotion. He and the kid bicker.

“Figures you’re more fucking concerned about whether a customer will sue you or if this stops Amara from showing up for work tomorrow than you are about your daughter or grandchild.” The younger man tells the older to fuck off and not to bother showing up at the hospital.

When the paramedics load Rae Lee onto a stretcher and move her toward the ambulance, her eyelids finally flutter. She pulls in a deep breath. It doesn’t match the barely audible sound slipping from her lips.

“Moira.”

I knock lightly on the hospital room door in the maternity ward. When a male voice tells us to come in, I push it open, letting Agent Reed proceed first. Moira’s dressed in uniform, whereas the light gray shorts and white polo I’m wearing are coffee-stained.

“Don’t say anything,” Sidney grunts under his breath to the young woman reclining in the bed.

The same girl who waited on me last week behind the counter at the gas station has the covers pulled up to her middle. One arm rests protectively over her protruding stomach. Sidney has his index finger linked with hers on the other hand. She snatches it away, wiping tears from her ruddy face.

“Amara Henderson?” Agent Reed pulls out her notepad. “We’d like to talk to you about the event that happened at your father’s gas station earlier this afternoon.”

“Now’s not a good time,” Sidney interjects. Amara tries to hush him, but he continues, focused on her well-being. “The doctor said.”

“Any contractions I have are Braxton Hicks.”

“It doesn’t matter. You passed out when that other lady hit the ground, and I’m the one who caught you. Letting them question you when you should be resting is foolish.”

The way Amara looks at Sidney, it’s obvious she cares about him. But I doubt she loves him, and I didn’t need either Amara or Rae Lee carried away by an ambulance to help me figure that out.

Amara lets go of Sidney’s hand. “Is that woman okay?” she asks.

Moira turns to me to explain.

“Miss Chatham is resting downstairs,” I say.

The doctor is keeping her overnight for observation.

We won’t be cheering on Grant’s team this afternoon, and I’m not sure which of us blames themselves more.

Rae Lee has a fractured elbow. She burned her hand from tightening her grip around the paper coffee cup and crushing it.

The ER doctor placed six stitches in her scalp, and she has a concussion.

But in the ER—when she opened her eyes and painfully whispered, “Moira” for a second time—I was never happier to brush the swoop of hair that stuck out of the bandage covering her head, and follow her lead, contacting Agent Reed immediately.

Deep down, I knew Rae Lee had to have had pieces of the puzzle. Like Moira Reed, she just didn’t have the one that fit them together and made them make sense.

Two of the three people Rae Lee encountered on our first pit stop at the gas station are connected to Amara.

The woman was her mother, and Xavier Martin was the man huddled outside the door.

Having seen my then-girlfriend communicate with Mrs. Henderson, Xavier took advantage of Rae Lee.

Focused on the wedding and her own happiness, her guard was down, and he jumped her.

“Ask me how I feel about that.” I dared Moira when she found out.

As a rookie cop, I got ambushed on patrol.

I’ve never forgotten the experience. It molded me into who I am today.

I suss out the cases Rae Lee consults. I’m strict about anything coming near her I think will come back to haunt her, let alone hurt her.

That a fucking dead man attacked and took over the body of the love of my life?

Right now, everyone should presume Rae Lee’s consulting days are over.

I even hesitated leaving her alone in her hospital room.

While Amara Henderson isn’t a flight risk, she is waiting for discharge papers. Agent Reed preferred questioning Amara before she and Sidney came up with another cover story.

“I’m curious how well you knew Xavier Martin, the man who worked for your father.” Moira speaks after I explain Rae Lee will be fine.

“What does he have to do with that blonde lady passing out?” In for a dime, in for a dollar, Sidney slides his too-close chair closer to the bed.

“The lady is my fiancée. Special Agent Reed enlisted Rae Lee’s help to solve the Martin case.”

“Did you and Xavier often work the same shifts?” Moira asks.

“Yes,” Amara says in an I’ve-told-you-this tone. She did when she mentioned Xavier lived in the teardrop camper to Agent Reed. Otherwise, Amara was tight-lipped with her overbearing father using his surveillance system to observe the interview.

“Were you friendly outside of work?”

“What difference does that make?” The man she’s been passing off as the father of her child interrupts, grabbing back onto her hand.

“We were friends.” Amara cuts Sidney off, shirking his hold.

“Any chance you were more than friends?”

Amara looks out the window at the horizon. “If I told you we were, are you willing to tell me what…what she is?”

“What do you mean, Amara?” Agent Reed plays coy.

Amara’s lip trembles. “I saw everything like a flash before Miss Chatham passed out. Every moment we spent together.” She licks, then bites her lip.

“I thought they were my memories. But they weren’t.

They were his…Xavier’s. Because I also saw him kicking the soccer ball down the field before his mom died.

She was in the stands, and he was…He was so fucking happy because she almost never showed up to a game.

He was so good that he should have gotten a scholarship, did you know that?

” She rubs her belly like a genie, talking more to her stomach than to us.

“If she hadn’t died, we wouldn’t have met.

I’ve been so lost without him. But he’s been waiting outside the store for you to get here, grateful we still had a future.

” Amara glances up, all but ignoring everyone in the room but me.

“Miss Chatham, she’s one of those people, right?

The ones who help people cross over?” Her questions sound like pleas.

“Miss Chatham has a way of connecting with those we’ve lost, yes,” I respond.

“Did she help Xavier cross over?”

“I—I don’t know. I don’t think so.”

“He can’t be stuck there forever, Sid.” Amara’s face crumbles. She uses the butt of her palm to wipe her tears, and I notice the tattoo Rae Lee told Moira about earlier.

“Can I ask when you got that tattoo? Agent Reed mentioned you didn’t have it when she first spoke with you.”

The pattern of hearts is identical to the bracelet found tangled in the weave of Xavier Martin’s sweater.

Amara swallows. “A month or so later.”

“When you found out you were pregnant?”

The young girl nods.

“Xavier Martin is the father of your baby,” I confirm.

Another head shake, though she glances at a crestfallen Sidney.

“You shouldn’t have told them,” he murmurs.

“You shouldn’t have told my dad it was yours to get your parents to back off about why you never brought girls home. Now, none of us are going to Pinewood.”

I use simple logic; two teenagers can’t afford to have a baby their freshman year of college. Whatever Sidney’s parents’ beef is—and I’m not stupid. I can read between the lines—they’re insisting he forgo his studies, step up, and care for the grandchild they think he fathered.

“Not going to college is better than going to jail,” Sidney tells her.

“Amara, what happened to Xavier?” Agent Reed inquires.

“Xavier was sitting on the side of the bridge. It was one of the few secluded places we could go without anyone seeing us and telling my dad. We were talking about Xavier moving along with me when I was supposed to leave for Pinewood. We were just happy, planning our future one minute,” her shoulders pop to her ears, and the smile of the memory playing on her lips fades.

“The next minute, the bracelet he gave me got stuck. When we tried to get it loose, he fell. Everything happened so fast.” She bites her lip, tears spilling from her eyes.

“He disappeared backward over the edge. I looked for him. I really did. But it was so dark. So I ran to Sidney’s, and he drove me back. ”

“We searched the riverbank…A long way…But the closer to daybreak it got, the foggier it was, and he was just…Gone,” the kid adds, staring at the bedsheets.

“My dad was livid when he pulled back the curtain and saw Sidney had drove me home.”

That makes it easy to use her best friend as a cover for the baby daddy.

“You never thought to call 911?” Although the coroner’s report indicated it was unlikely Martin survived the fall, Moira tempers her annoyance.

Hardly.

She’s been working this case for almost a year. She knows that despite the warm night, the water temperature was freezing. A human’s first reaction to icy cold water is to gasp. That’s what Xavier Martin did. Submerged in the river, his reflexes took over. He inhaled, and he drowned.

“Amara, stop talking. You need a lawyer.” Sidney tries to silence her. She wants to argue until he covers her belly with his palm and says, “This baby already lost one parent. They can’t afford to lose two.”