The Departed

doll.
    Except this doll had once been a living, breathing child…and as Dez stared at her, the girl’s eyes opened and life flooded them. She stared at Dez and whispered, “Find me…”
    As the girl’s presence wrapped around Dez, as Dez recognized the presence of one of the departed, some of the terror faded, replaced by rage and misery. Swallowing the scream, she opened her mouth, wondered if she could speak. But this was just a dream and she could do whatever she chose. Swallowing the tears, she said softly, “Tell me what you need me to do.”
    The girl’s eyes closed and tears of blood rolled down her cheeks.
    “Find me,” she whispered plaintively. Then she reached out a hand, thin and frail and streaked with blood. “Just find me…I don’t want to stay lost.”
    Dez reached out. As her fingers brushed the girl’s, the girl’s body began to crumble, first to skeleton, then to dust.
    Then the dream shattered…fell away.
    With a gasp lodged in her throat, Dez jerked awake in the bed. Staring straight ahead, she pressed her fisted hand to her racing heart. “Shit,” she wheezed. “Shit, shit, shit .”
    She wanted to tell herself it was just a dream, one brought on by the day from hell. Who wouldn’t have a nightmare?…Who wouldn’t have a bad dream? And if it had only been about Ivy, she could have even accepted that.
    There was more to it, though.
    A lot more. It just had that feel to it. “Damn it,” she whispered as she huddled under the blankets. “ Damn it.”
    She wouldn’t be leaving French Lick anytime soon, she didn’t think.
    * * *
     
    “SOMEBODY fucking talked,” Beau growled.
    Brendan glanced at him from the corner of his eye and muttered, “Shut the fuck up. We don’t talk about this here.”
    Not here.
    Beau grumbled but went quiet as they jogged down the steps and headed toward Beau’s ’73 Mustang. Once they were inside, though, Beau’s silence shattered and he snarled, “Who in the hell fucking talked?”
    Sitting in the back, Mark and Kyle both said the same crap—it wasn’t them. They didn’t know. Fucking assholes. Somebody had talked, he knew it. He’d figure it out. Brendan leaned back against the leather, his eyes staring out the window. Inside the car, he felt a little less exposed, so he knew he could probably relax a little. But he wasn’t going to—as of now, he trusted nobody but himself. Not Mark, not Kyle. Not even Beau, and normally he’d trust Beau with just about everything. “What did you tell the cops?” he asked.
    “Jack shit. Told them I didn’t know the girl, had no fucking clue what was going on.” Beau started the Mustang and pulled away from Brendan’s house. For a few minutes, silence fell. “What do we do, Brendan? We got to figure it out and figure out what we’re going to do.”
    Brendan knew that, hadn’t slept worth a shit the past night, trying to play things out in his head already. He even had a plan sketched out. But it would take a few days to get it in motion. A few days, some time.
    “Right now, we just shut the fuck up and wait. Nobody talks, you got that?” He shot Kyle and Mark a quick look and then shifted his attention back to the front, staring out the windshield. “See if we can figure out how that bitch figured things out.”
    “Yeah.” Beau frowned. “Where in the hell did she come from, anyway? She’s not from around here.”
    Brendan shook his head. He didn’t know. But she wasn’t the one who had him all that concerned. He was more worried about the blond guy—the one with the cold blue eyes. He’d gotten a name on that one. His name was Jones. As in Taylor Jones—owned the big manor just outside town. Not to mention half the fucking property in the area.
    Brendan knew enough about the Jones family to be worried once he’d heard that name. He wasn’t worried because the family was loaded—his own family wasn’t hurting for money. Wasn’t worried because of the freaky shit that had happened to the family years back.
    No, what had him worried was the rumors that had floated around about the sole surviving Jones. Taylor Jones—he’d joined the FBI out of college, Brendan remembered hearing. The FBI…did a lot of shit with missing children. Runaways, kidnapped kids. That sort of shit.
    And now he was here.
    The bitch didn’t worry him. But Taylor Jones…shit.
    “Kyle. You light up in here and I’m kicking your ass.” Beau glared at Kyle in the mirror as the other boy rolled