Page 25 of Spooked (31 Days of Trick or Treat: Biker & Mobster #13)

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

HOUND

Mouse holds me back when we approach the hospital room he’s discovered Maeve is in, as we hear voices from within. He places a finger to his lips.

“Impossible. The place is condemned. You’d risk your life if you stepped inside.

” The speaker’s voice sounds elderly, both sharp and unpleasant.

After a pause, she continues, “This whole trip was a waste of time. Look what happened to you. You should have left well alone and stayed where you came from.”

“I want to see the house, Siobhan,” a decidedly younger voice asks, and one, fuck it, that sounds familiar. My heart pounds. Crazy or clairvoyant? What the hell am I supposed to think? I brush those thoughts aside and concentrate on eavesdropping.

“Why now? You’ve had fifteen years to visit the place, yet you never came home.”

“Why have you held onto it all this time?” she counters. “Why let it fall to ruin, so the only option is to knock it down?”

“You think I haven’t tried to get rid of it before now?

” the old woman hisses. “It’s the only thing of any value my mama left to me, but instead of setting me up for life, it’s been a millstone around my neck.

I’ve tried to sell it, but there have been no buyers.

And all the real estate agents have refused to have it on their books for one reason or another.

” Her voice is getting angrier. “I even tried to burn it down, but the damn fire wouldn’t take. ”

I catch Mouse’s eye and give him a meaningful nod to convey I’d seen the evidence of attempted arson with my own eyes.

“The only option I have is to raze that hateful place to the ground and try to make whatever bank I can on the land.”

“I still want to see it before you pull it down,” Maeve states firmly.

“Well, you can’t. I forbid it. I’m going to the developers’ office now and insist that they start the demolition straight away.”

“Siobhan, Aunt, please. I won’t even go inside. Just let me see it for old time’s sake. I’ve got so many memories there.”

“You’ve had those memories for fifteen years, yet you’ve never come back before. I don’t understand your sudden interest now. I won’t wait. That house is coming down.”

Not if I’ve got anything to do with it. A word in Bullet’s ear will mean the work will go to the back of the queue. Whatever reason Maeve has for wanting to see inside, I won’t let her lose the chance. The old woman’s voice is grating on me. My immediate dislike for her puts me on her niece’s side.

“Siobhan…”

“I wish you well.”

With that blatantly insincere comment, there’s the sound of wood hitting the floor. Mouse and I step back and take poses as if we’ve just closed the door to the next room.

An elderly, well-dressed woman with her nose in the air brushes past us without looking us in the eye. A waft of rose water floats in the air as she turns the corner and disappears out of sight.

Stepping through the door of the hospital room, the words spill out of my mouth.

“If you want to see the Sullivan House, you can. It’s rickety, but if you’re careful, it’s not too dangerous…

” My words trail off as I catch sight of the woman in the bed.

I heard her speak, but seeing her in the flesh?

My voice trembles. “Maeve?” My head starts to spin as a veritable ghost meets my eyes.

I feel Mouse’s hand on my arm, keeping me upright.

“Who the hell are… you?”

Mouse looks from me to her, then steps forward and takes charge. “Maeve, I’m Mouse,” he tells her. “Your name is Irish?”

Politeness wins over the perplexed expression on her face.

“Yes,” she replies to him. Then her eyes narrow on me, her head cocked to one side.

Her brow is furrowed as she takes me in from head to toe, and she swallows with an audible gulp.

I’m thinking she’s recognised me, but then she shakes her head as if to clear it and asks, “Do I know you? There’s something about you that’s familiar. ” There’s a quaver in her voice.

What the hell? Her question makes my palms sweat. She’s been in the hospital ever since I was injured. “We’ve never met,” I refute sharply. That’s the truth. Definitely not in the flesh.

Mouse squeezes his fingers on my arm that he still holds, as he murmurs softly, “You haven’t met in this world.”

Instead of scoffing at his enigmatic statement, Maeve looks bewildered. After examining him carefully, she asks, “You’re Native American?”

“Half-Navajo,” he confirms.

Pressing a button, she raises the top of the bed.

Examining her for a moment, I realise how different she looks from the version of her I met in my dreams. Her face is pale and wan, her hair not so glossy and sleek.

She’s only just out of a coma, I remind myself.

I suspect I looked no better when I first awoke.

A wave of sympathy goes through me. We shouldn’t be here bothering her.

But then, how am I to get the answers to what’s wrong in my head?

Brain damage can’t summon up someone who’s real, can it?

“I don’t understand why you’re here.” Her eyes flit to Mouse, but as they focus on me, I see the tinge of concern.

Uninvited, Mouse pulls up a chair by the bed. “You might think it bizarre that two strangers have come to visit you, but we mean you no harm. Hound,” he points to me, “has visited the Sullivan House.”

His explanation does nothing to reassure her. She turns paler if that’s possible and breathes in a sharp breath. “You were in the house.”

It’s a statement, not a question. Am I not mad? Was she really there too? There’s something about her reaction that makes me believe there’s something she’s not saying.

Mouse continues gently, “Your aunt instructed our club’s construction company to make an assessment of the Sullivan House.

She might try to order us to demolish it, but we make up our own minds about our jobs.

We overheard her talking to you.” He looks completely unashamed at his admission.

“We figured out that a delay, at least, would be beneficial to you.”

Her focus returns to him. “Why would you do that? You don’t know me.”

“I know you’ve got connections to the place. Do you want to tell us why it’s so important that you go back to it?”

Her eyes still fixed on him, her words come out as if in a trance.

“I lived there. I left here when Emerald, my grandmother, died fifteen years back. I couldn’t believe she’d left me nothing, but I couldn’t fight my aunt.

I felt betrayed and never, ever, wanted to return to Tucson.

It was bittersweet. I had good memories of living with my grandmother, but those were overpowered by the resentment I’d felt.

I put it behind me and moved on with my life.

Until I started having dreams. Something was calling me back.

” Her head suddenly shakes. She breaks eye contact, and raises her fingers to her forehead.

“I’m sorry, I’ve no idea why I spilled all that. ”

Mouse leans toward her and pulls her hand away from her eyes. Once he’s again gained her attention, he jerks his head in my direction. “Hound’s had a vision that he met you in that house.”

As she stiffens, Mouse pulls back, putting distance between them.

Maeve moves her head side to side once more.

She opens her mouth, then presses her lips together.

Lips I so fondly remember touching mine.

Her eyes close briefly, then she reopens them.

She takes a deep breath, swallows, but if she was going to say something, the words don’t come out.

Was she there in her dreams, or were they mine?

She looks so damn familiar. She’s definitely the woman I saw in my head.

Could the figment of my brain injury really be lying in front of me?

And I didn’t just see her, I’d fingered her sexually for fuck’s sake.

Felt her orgasm beneath my fingers. Noticing her face has gone from pale to bearing two large patches of red on both cheeks, I wonder if she’s having the same recollection.

Nah, I’m the one suffering hallucinations.

“You couldn’t have seen me,” she dismisses, with a nervous and forced laugh.

“I’ve been unconscious in this bed for weeks.

” But something about the way she says it leaves me with that doubt.

As does the fact that she doesn’t question my sanity.

“Tell me, if you went there, is it as bad as my aunt said? Was it dangerous to visit?”

As an answer, I take out my phone, click on photos, and summon up the recent images. Thank fuck. The pictures appear that I’d taken of the Sullivan House. I’ve proof that I’ve been there, and that at least some of the last couple of days weren’t all imaginings conjured up in my head.

Approaching her, I offer my phone. “I went to the house…” a day ago? A week? I decide to leave the timescale out of it. “This is what it looks like now. Is this what you saw?”

She takes the phone from me. I position myself beside her head so I can watch her reaction to the photos.

The first few she skims through after giving me a curious look, and I wryly indicate the crutches I’m using.

She views the ones approaching the house more slowly, sucking in a breath, halting on the image of the front porch.

For a second, I see her eyes close and she breathes in deeply.

“I never thought I’d come back,” she murmurs.

“I knew my mom was dying when she took me to meet Emerald. At first, I was scared by the reception we received, but it soon emerged that lies had been told, and that Siobhan was behind it. It was in that house that Mom took her last breath. Gramma had arranged for hospice care there. My grandmother regretted the years she’d lost having banished my mother, and tried to make up for it by caring for me.

She was this amazing, larger-than-life person.

I doubt there was anyone else in the world who could have comforted me and seen me through my grief at losing my only parent.

This,” she taps the front porch showing in the photo, “represents some of the worst, and some of the best times of my life.”

She waits for no comment, not indicating that she needs one. She moves on to the next picture, and then the ones that follow. Some make her mouth quirk in a private smile as if remembering words spoken or deeds done in that location.

As she nears the one where, in my dream version of the visit to Bullet’s office, she had identified her grandmother in the frame, I hold my breath, hoping she’ll see nothing and move on.

But she gasps. With a shaking hand, she reaches out a trembling finger.

“That’s her. That’s my grandmother. She’s still in the house. ”

“It’s a figment of the light,” I repeat Bullet’s words to her. “There’s no one there.”

She turns, looks at me, and then places her hand on my arm, grasping it far stronger than a woman just woken from a coma should be able to do. “Can you swear to me you were alone in that house?”

I try to wrench my hand away, but she holds onto it firmly. I tug once more, only serving to make her dig her fingernails into my skin. Before she can draw blood, something breaks inside me, and I vomit out what I believe is the truth.

“Fuck it, Maeve. I’ve got to tell you upfront, I had an accident about the same time as you.

Like you, I ended up in a coma, but came out of it sooner.

I’m suffering from a traumatic brain injury.

I see things, suffer hallucinations.” I take a breath but carry on before she can comment.

“These visions are so fuckin’ real.” I pause to huff a strangled laugh.

“In my head, I’m convinced I showed all these pictures to Bullet, who’s, well, for this purpose, my boss.

While I was in his office, Maeve, you came to meet with him, looked through the photos, and stopped on the very same one.

” Maeve’s sharp inhale doesn’t stop me from continuing to spew out all the rubbish in my head as I tell her how “dream Maeve” insisted she be given access to the house.

Despite my reservations, I had agreed and taken her back.

“I can clearly remember us exploring the house together. And yeah, if you want to know the worst of my fucked-up brain, I believed I saw Emerald as she was when she was younger, along with Bertie, her husband.” I stop talking, not wanting to mention the kiss or the further intimacies either they, or we got up to.

Maeve holds my gaze for a moment, then her head falls back on the pillow, her eyes rolling back until nothing is showing but white. The machines start beeping, and a nurse rushes in, her face contorted in concern.

“Get out of here,” the nurse states, lowering the head of the bed and pushing a big red button on the wall.

Mouse starts toward the door, but I can’t move. I’m frozen to the spot. But as more medical staff rush in, I’m manoeuvred out into the hallway, and the door closes, locking us out.

“What the fuck have I done?” I roar.

Mouse moves fast, his hand gripping my shoulder. “She’s had a bad accident,” he says fast. “I doubt if anything you said caused her to relapse. She’s probably got a ticking time bomb in her head.”

“Like me,” I say self-deprecatingly.

“For fuck’s sake, Hound. You’re still on the mend.”

I look at him incredulously. “You hearing yourself, Brother? You heard the shit I spouted in there. What sane person could listen to that?”

“Me,” he says fiercely. “I’ve seen things, heard things, experienced shit that you’d mock at.”

I grab hold of his arms. “But I’m not you,” I cry out. “I can’t believe anything I’m seeing is real. I’m going out of my fuckin’ mind. Am I even here?” I jerk my head toward the closed door beside us. “And if I am, I might have killed her.”

As I speak, said door opens, and the medical staff start coming out. A nurse pauses beside us. “Family?” she asks.

“Yes,” Mouse says.

“No,” I respond at the same time.

She shakes her head and defers to my companion. “It was a blip. She’ll be fine.”

“Let’s get out of here.” I accompany my words with action, hurrying down the corridor to get out of this place.

“Wait up,” Mouse entreats. “Maeve might want to talk to you again.”

I spin around. “The shit in my fucked-up brain almost killed her! I’m not going near her again.”