Dead to Rights Read online

  The insistent blast of a car horn, followed at once by another coming in pumping beats, jolted Elizabeth awake. The sun rose over the building across the street and directly into her eyes. She squinted and raised a hand in time to see one motorist flip off another as he passed illegally, using lanes of oncoming traffic to do so. Cars swerved to miss the vehicle.

  She jumped off the ground, and her normal morning grogginess made her dizzy for a moment. Going on her toes, she looked for the plate number, but the vehicle had gone too far. Instead, she got the make and model, then reached for her cell phone. She’d call it in and give dispatch the location.

  Reaching into her front pockets, she found nothing, so she felt her back pockets. No phone. “Just great.” She’d lost it. She glanced around for it and froze.

  Where am I? None of this looked familiar. She stood in a lovely residential business area—elms lined the road on either side, a cute little park sat directly across the street, and a little market and diner sat on the corner of the block.

  What on earth am I doing here? And more importantly, how did she get here?

  She racked her brain for the last thing she remembered. She’d been in a meeting at work. They’d been preparing the sting on the Tourneaus, and then nothing. No, there’d been more. They’d definitely gone to a building last night. Quick flashes of climbing a ladder, the cool sensation of metal against her palms, and stepping through a window with large shards of broken glass came back.

  A sudden terror gripped her. Had she been kidnapped? She glanced around the neighborhood and dismissed the idea. Why would cartel members kidnap her and drop her off here, off all places? If she wasn’t mistaken, she couldn’t have been more than a five- or ten-minute drive from downtown Sacramento in a neighborhood with apartments whose monthly rent would probably take double her monthly salary.

  The building she stood in front of had a doorman. He sat inside the lobby behind a small desk, reading a magazine. Why hadn’t he woken her, or called the police?

  Oh no, Lee! He was probably freaking out; wondering what had happened to her and if she was safe. She marched to the building and grabbed at the handle but missed. She stared at her hand and shook her head to clear the haze.

  Man, maybe I’m not okay. Her depth perception was off. She reached for the handle again, but her hand passed right through it. Her jaw dropped. What on earth? Was she drugged? She had to be because she was seeing things. She tried with her other hand, but it went right through as well.

  Okay, she was definitely drugged. What had they given her? She closed her eyes for a moment, trying to calm herself, then faced at the doorman.

  “Excuse me, sir.” He didn’t look up from the magazine, so she yelled. “Hello! Can you let me in?”

  No response whatsoever. Wow, that’s some intense soundproof glass. Or maybe there was something wrong with her voice as well. It sounded fine, but she hadn’t noticed anything wrong with her depth perception, so maybe it wasn’t. She jumped up and down, waving her arms over her head and yelling out, but still no response.

  Pointless. She turned and looked for a pedestrian. A woman jogged up the street with a Doberman. Elizabeth rushed over to her. “Excuse me, ma’am. I’m a police officer. Can I borrow your cell phone?”

  The woman ran past, and the Doberman veered right at Elizabeth in a trot. She tried to jump back, but he was too close. Elizabeth braced for a collision as the dog trotted through her. A warbling sensation shot up her legs, icy cold.

  As she stood motionlessly, someone walked through her from behind, and her entire body prickled with cold. She sucked in a gasp and backed off the sidewalk toward the building. She stared at her hands, lifting them to the light, and then she saw it—her near transparency that seemed to solidify before she could really focus on it.

  Everything stopped as horror overtook her. She turned to the glass and searched for her reflection but there was none.

  Was she… dead?

  “No, no, no!” she cried, shaking her head. This can’t be happening. Who would take care of her brothers? Luke wasn’t even supposed to graduate high school for another two and a half months. Her brothers. Who would look after them, if not her?

  She fell to her knees as great racking sobs pierced her. She wasn’t ready. She just wasn’t ready.

  Chapter Three

  Beginning of May

  Patrick shook the sugar packet, then ripped it open and poured it into his mug of steaming hot chocolate. As much as he liked his friendly little neighborhood diner with its checkered floor, red booth seats, and jukebox, their hot chocolate left a lot to be desired. Too bitter.

  His friend, Zak, sat across the booth and cleared his throat. “It’s hot chocolate. Do you really need more sugar?”

  Patrick grabbed his spoon from the table, never removing his eyes from his cup, and stirred. “Do you really need more neon-colored shirts?”

  Zak fiddled with the collar of his coral-colored button-up, then pulled on the lapels of his dark suit coat. “Shnazzy, huh? I’ll take as many as I can get my hands on. I want to stand out in the crowd of stuffy art dealers here in Sacramento.”

  “Tell your clients your art comes from the black market. That should do the trick.”

  Zak flipped his head back lightly, sending a loose lock of his dirty blond quiff haircut back into place. He grinned and lifted his coffee for a sip. “You think that’d help?”

  Patrick scrunched his nose at the bitter smell of his friend’s drink. “What was it you wanted to see me about?”

  “Your birthday.” Zak rubbed at his slightly curved nose with his thumb. He’d gotten the curve years ago after being caught selling a fake Rembrandt to a shady Russian ambassador with diplomatic immunity. Zak wore it as a badge.

  Their server came and dropped off an egg sandwich for Patrick and a bloody steak for Zak.

  Ever since Patrick lost the contents of his stomach on that fateful night, he’d decided he needed to make more of an effort to eat properly—fill his stomach before he drank his sorrows away. He could get another six-pack of Bloody Marys from the store next to the diner, and so he dug into his sandwich with gusto. As soon as he was done here, he could go home and pass out on his couch again. Like he’d done every day of the last month—since he lost his ring.

  “What about my birthday?” Patrick asked.

  “It’s in a week.”

  Patrick took a big bite and chewed. He needed to relax. Sure, he didn’t want to be around anyone right now, but he’d already alienated Rafferty, who hadn’t spoken to him in a month after his no-show with SacPD. Zak was a safe bet, a good friend who required little effort from him. And this little meeting had nothing to do with his birthday. In fact, it had the makings of an intervention. “May seventh like every year, only last year you didn’t feel the need to have a meeting about it.”

  “Last year, you were more fun.”

  Sadly, that was true. He shrugged.

  “Look, I hoped to avoid telling you this, but you need a kick in the pants.” Zak glanced around as though looking for spies.

  Patrick raised his brows. Oh, yeah, this was going to be good.

  “The Swans called me. They want to throw you a huge surprise party.”

  Oh no. It was as he feared: Tilde and Jay were planning an intervention—and using Zak as their liaison. And worse, one with a big cake with candles he’d have to blow out, and people with presents he’d have to pretend to be happy about, and toasts to a life he was mostly definitely not living well. “I can’t believe this.”

  Tilde and Jay had been a part of the circus he was raised in for decades. They weren’t much older than him, Tilde at thirty-five years and Jay at thirty-eight, but they’d kept an eye on him since he was a newly minted teenager. They’d even taken over responsibility for him when his father split when he was seventeen. Tilde treated him like he was her own.

  “Can’t you?” Zak sniffed, and to Patrick, it almost sounded amused. “And so you know, they’re inviti
ng a whole slew of single women.”

  Patrick dropped his sandwich. “What?”

  “I told you, man. You got to get out there again. If you don’t, they’ll have you on blind dates from now until the cataclysm.”

  He’d take the cataclysm. He leaned back in the booth, and the leather squeaked under him. “I can’t… I can’t do that.” He stirred his hot chocolate.

  “It’s been two and a half years, Paddy. Look at you; you’re a mess.” Zak cut a big chunk of steak and pointed it and his fork at him. “When was the last time you took a shower? Or went farther than the diner ten feet out your apartment door?”

  “This place is a classic!” Patrick pointed his spoon at the table.

  “Katelyn wouldn’t have wanted you—”

  “Stop.”

  “—to wither away in self-pity—”

  “I said stop!” Patrick turned his steely gaze on his friend as the rest of the patrons in the restaurant glanced in their direction. Patrick lowered his voice. “You don’t know what Katelyn would’ve wanted.”

  Zak leaned forward. “She was my friend too. I cared about her. I care about you.” He signaled to Patrick with his hand, his fingers together. “Whatever this is, it’s not what she wanted. After you went to that themed resort last year, I thought you were starting to come around. It was like you’d found happiness again. And now, not even a year later, and whatever it was you found—it’s gone again? It doesn’t make sense. I mean, I get it. Katelyn was one in a million. If you need to grieve, then grieve, but don’t wallow in it.”

  Patrick clenched his teeth. Bristle Park had been different. He’d been on a case, and it’d been easy. Being in a make-believe world of the resort had been easy, an escape. A necessary one.

  “Fine.” Zack buttoned his blazer. “I’ll call the party off, on one condition.”

  “What?”

  “Valerie has a friend she wants you to meet. You have to go on a double date.” Zak buttoned his suit coat and stood—his steak now somehow mysteriously gone. He placed a hand on Patrick’s shoulder. “Double date on your birthday or no deal.”

  Patrick shrugged his hand off. “Fine.”

  “Fine. I’ll call you in a few days.” He strutted off, him and his nicely ironed suit.

  Patrick didn’t bother looking at the wrinkles in his own suit and reached for his hot chocolate, then stopped with his hand suspended midair. As irritating as he currently found Zak, he was right. The last thing Patrick needed was Tilde following him around, mothering him.

  When his mom had left when he was a teen, he’d learned to grit his teeth and bear it. When his dad had packed the trailer and driven away without him, Patrick had faked it until he’d made it, and while Katelyn…

  A large lump formed in his throat. He could fake it through a blind date. He’d have to. Pulling two twenties from his wallet, he dropped them on the table and stood. He would need to stop at the grocery store on the way home. After this, a can of Bloody Mary wasn’t going to cut it. He needed straight-up vodka.

  Elizabeth stared at the high-rise apartment as the glare of the sunlight bounced off its glass exterior. It didn’t hurt her eyes as it would have when she’d been alive. A month later and she still wasn’t used to her new reality. She didn’t need sleep or feel hungry. She had no pain, no kind of physical reaction to heat or cold or anything, except for when someone walked through her. But that wasn’t really physical. Her words failed her to describe it as something other than fleeting nausea.

  Also, the movies had been right: you wore what you died in. So, she had on the same red shirt and blue jeans she was dressed in the night she’d been shot. Her dark brown hair was still pulled into a high ponytail. But her mother’s cross—that was gone.

  Everything about being a ghost was limiting. She hadn’t even been able to leave this neighborhood. Try as she might, she couldn’t go more than a block in either direction of this apartment building. She’d learned about the boundary the hard way on her first day like this.

  She was a spiritual person, always had been, and she firmly believed if she was still here, it was because she had some unfinished business. And the only thing important enough to tie her to this plane of existence was her brothers. If God kept her here, He kept her here for them.

  Knowing it impossible to get a cab, she’d resigned herself to run across the city to her home. If she stayed at a decent jog, she could make it home by the end of the day. She’d taken off in a sprint, finding herself desperate to see her brothers and make sure they were okay.

  She’d come to the end of the block, and not bothering to wait for traffic, she’d darted into the road. At least she’d tried.

  Instead, she’d hit an invisible barrier that had thrown her back several feet. And it had hurt. Not the same way it would’ve hurt if she’d had a body and had walked into a glass door. It was a different kind of hurt, one that made her spirit tremble, much like when someone walked through her, only with more force. A lot more force.

  Since then, she’d found that the boundary occasionally moved, usually by a few buildings, but it always returned to this spot. This building. The epicenter of her never-ending nightmare. Who would’ve guessed a luxury apartment building could end up being Hades on earth? She’d tried exploring the boundary and the neighborhood, she tried talking to people as they passed by, and she’d prayed—more than she ever had in her life, and that was saying a lot.

  She sat on the front steps, leaned back, and looked at the clear blue sky. Maybe this time He’d answer. “God, I know you know what you’re doing, and that there’s a greater purpose to all this, but I’m at a loss. I need a clue. Why am I here? What am I supposed to do? Just a little hint would be nice? Hello?”

  She waited.

  And waited.

  And nothing happened.

  She groaned and dropped her chin to her chest, then rubbed her forehead between her brows, not because she had a headache—she wasn’t sure you could get one of those as a spirit—but because it felt natural.

  Coming from the direction of the store, heavy, dragging steps approached. Classy brown dress shoes came into her line of sight and skirted around her.

  “Pardon me,” the man said.

  “Sorry,” she replied.

  He grunted in response, and her head shot up as she spun around to look at him. He wore rumpled suit pants and a white button-up, his curly blond hair was in great need of combing, and he carried a brown paper bag, scrunched at the top around a bottle.

  “Wait!” she cried out.

  He glanced at her over his shoulder, his sea blue-green eyes widening as he hurried to open the door, fumbling with his key card in the process.

  She bounded to her feet. “You can see me!”

  Chapter Four

  Patrick cursed his good English manners bestowed on him by his mother in his formative years. He should’ve kept his mouth shut like he had every other time he’d seen this woman over the last month.

  But he hadn’t known she was crazy. She’d seemed too normal to be crazy. She was clean, well dressed, and always in the same blue jeans and a red button-up blouse that perfectly complemented her skin tone and raven hair. That, mixed with a confidence he had not often encountered in the homeless, nixed that notion. He fumbled with his key card, swiping the non-magnetic side first.

  In fact, her posture was so strong, he wondered briefly if she might be military, but decided it was more likely she was some kind of law enforcement. It made sense, the way she moved around the area and the building as though trying to solve a puzzle, much like a detective might. But these were guesses made on the fly like he made with everyone.

  He’d not given her a second’s thought otherwise. Maybe if he had, he would’ve realized she was clearly insane with her loitering, aimlessness, and her same outfit every day.

  After getting his card to buzz him in, he hurried through the door, irritated when she immediately followed.

  “It’s a miracle,” she sa
id, keeping pace with him as he crossed the lobby to the elevator. “I literally just prayed for answers, and then boom! You appear. It’s such a relief. You have no idea what I’ve been through.”

  Patrick shot a glance toward the doorman, Ryan, begging for help with a look he hoped bordered on distress. Stop the crazy woman!

  “Morning, Mr. Daley. It’s good to see you out and about.” Ryan’s gaze trailed to Patrick’s paper bag and completely ignored the petite package of fruitcake following him. Ryan had to have seen her out front of the building these last weeks; surely he could figure out she wasn’t with him. But no, the man was more concerned with Patrick’s drinking.

  The elevator dinged open, and he hurried inside, turning on the woman and blocking her entrance. “Look, I don’t know what you want, but you can’t come up. Only residents are allowed inside the building. I can’t help you.”

  She titled her head, and her eyes widened in recognition. “You’re that psychic, Patrick Daley. It all makes sense now. Sort of. I mean, I always thought psychics were fake.”

  “They are fake,” he said under his breath.

  She scrunched her nose. “You’re obviously the real deal.”

  “So, you’re a fan?” A crazy fan—it all made sense now. They were always a nightmare to get rid of. The elevator doors shut on Patrick’s shoulders and he winced before sticking his hands out to both doors to hold them open. “I’m not a psychic. Psychics aren’t real.”

  She pulled her chin back. “But you can see me?”

  Ryan peered toward them. “Are you talking to me?”

  Patrick glared at him and pointed to the woman. “Clearly not.”

  Ryan blinked. “Okay.”