Devil May Ride Read online

“I guess since it doesn’t interfere with her work, I’m not comfortable asking.”

  “Then I’ll tell you. A few years ago she had a gambling problem. Owed debts to the wrong people. They pinched off a couple fingers with gardening shears to teach her a lesson.”

  “Holy crap!” Sadie gasped.

  “She doesn’t gamble anymore.”

  “Wow.” Sadie shook her head. “That’s what you’d call an extreme twelve-step program.”

  Jackie still hadn’t noticed they were standing beside her car, so Sadie walked up to the driver’s side and rapped loudly on the window. Jackie jumped and cursed before she turned off her vehicle and opened her door.

  “We ready to go?”

  “As long as your ears aren’t still ringing,” Sadie replied snarkily.

  “I’m good.” She smiled behind Sadie. “Hi, Zack,” she added, batting her eyelashes.

  Oh, give me a break, Sadie thought. She walked away before rolling her eyes.

  There was a carport attached to the small Craftsman home and Sadie designated that area as their safe zone, where they would don and doff gear and store supplies. Together they unloaded the van and brought their equipment to the carport area. Since Sadie had already been inside to take pictures for the insurance company and her own records, she filled them in as they went.

  “Basic body decomp. Big guy shot in the chest and left to rot in the kitchen.”

  “Place has had a few transformations,” Zack said. “Seattle’s reigning biker gang, Fierce Force, rented the house and used it as a meeting place for a couple months. Then they used it to make meth.”

  “So are we dealing with both a meth-clean and decomp scene?” Jackie asked.

  Sadie shook her head.

  “David Egan’s company, Scour Power, got the call to clean up the meth lab. It was pronounced clean, but then a guy got shot here and was left to rot, so now it’s our turn.”

  “The body was lying around in this heat?” Jackie let out a low whistle. “They probably had to pop his bloated body just to get him through the doorway. I’ve always been curious about guys who choose to get involved in bike gangs. Seems like such a loser thing to do.”

  Sadie was still thinking about Jackie losing a couple fingers for a gambling bet and figured Jackie knew a thing or two about being a loser. She cleared her throat roughly.

  “Yeah, well, he was somebody’s son and maybe somebody’s brother,” Sadie said more harshly than she intended. “Let’s just get in and get the job done.”

  She didn’t like to talk about the victims before a job. It made closing herself off emotionally a lot more difficult. Jackie, on the other hand, loved to chat and give opinions on the people who passed. It was one of the little things that bugged Sadie about her employee. She watched Jackie bend over in her short-shorts, exposing part of her perfect ass as she slipped her feet into her hazmat suit. That was another thing that bugged Sadie, but she wasn’t quite ready to admit it.

  Wordlessly the three suited up in the disposable Tyvek suits, goggles, shoe covers, cotton glove liners under their latex gloves, and full-face respirators with P100 cartridges because it was a body-decomp scene.

  Sadie unlocked the house and was first to step inside. She shooed away the flurry of flies that greeted her, and looked around. Zack followed, but Jackie stayed outside the doorway and handed supplies from the safe zone into the house until they had everything they needed.

  Even without the stench of decomp the house would never have made the cover of House Beautiful. Instead of the usual window coverings, all the windows were covered with tinfoil. However, the tacky choice in home decor provided them with a working area that was probably fifteen degrees cooler than the ninety degrees outside. Still, it wasn’t long before Sadie, suited up to the gills, felt like her shoes were filled with sweat.

  The medical examiner had ruled the cause of death a bullet to the heart. Sadie looked at the man’s ghost and had a hard time believing he hadn’t died of an ink overdose. The burly biker dude’s arms and chest were completely covered in tattoos. He had a gaping hole where the bullet entered, but the rest was pure ink. In the center of his chest, buried in a forest of black, springy chest hair, was a large flaming O surrounding a double F, the emblem for the Fierce Force biker gang.

  The ghost sat with his butt perched on the kitchen counter, wearing nothing but an ugly pair of puke green boxer shorts. Sadie would’ve loved to deal with him and send him on his way to the next dimension, but she couldn’t approach him in front of Jackie. Instead, she tried to ignore the man as she worked at scrubbing his sloughed skin and liquefied remains off the faded linoleum.

  When it was time for a break, Sadie and Zack were first to step outside and doff their gear.

  Sadie quietly told Zack about the resident ghost.

  “Ugly, huh?” Zack joked after hearing Sadie’s description. He hadn’t always accepted Sadie’s talent as fact, but he’d come to the point where he couldn’t deny her gift and had stopped looking at her like she was a total loon. At least most of the time.

  “Ugly is right,” Sadie whispered as she tossed her gear into the waste bin on top of Zack’s. “He’s covered in tats and is as hairy as a gorilla. The tattoo in the middle of his chest is the Fierce Force emblem you told me about before.”

  “The fiery O and two Fs?”

  “Yeah.” She blew out a long breath. “I need a break. It’s the heat. And I can’t take the pressure of him staring at me inside that house with you two there and—” She stopped, frowned, and tilted her head as she stared at the back door of the house.

  “Who the hell is she talking to?” Sadie demanded.

  Before Zack could reply, Jackie opened the door, exiting the house to step into the carport where they waited outside. She had her cell phone pressed to her ear and was just finishing a call.

  “Just a few bucks until payday,” Jackie said into her cell phone.

  She took one look at Sadie’s lethal glare and came to an abrupt stop in the doorway.

  “I’ll call you back,” she told the person on the phone, and clicked her phone off.

  “What the hell do you think you’re doing?” Sadie demanded. “You were on the phone!”

  Jackie shifted uncomfortably from one foot to the other under Sadie’s venomous glare.

  Sadie pointed to Jackie’s hand. “You just used your cell phone in a contaminated area.”

  Jackie looked down at her phone and then up at Sadie.

  “It was just a friend and he—”

  “I don’t care if it was the pope.” Sadie’s voice rose in anger. She pointed to one of the forty-gallon medical waste bins at her feet. “Dump it.”

  “I’ll clean it,” Jackie said, her full lips pinching into a tight line.

  “You handled that phone with your gloved hands. Your gloves that were just touching any number of blood-borne pathogens. The body fluids in that house could be swimming with every kind of disease there is: HIV, hepatitis C, E. coli”—she ticked them off on her fingers—“not to mention salmonella, herpes, and tubercle bacillus and a hundred others. Any of those friggin’ diseases could now be on that phone!”

  “I said, I’ll clean it.”

  “Your cell phone would never survive the kind of cleaning it would need and you know it. This is basic stuff. It’s bio-recovery one-oh-one. Jeez, have you forgotten all of your blood-borne-pathogen training? We shouldn’t need to have this conversation.”

  Jackie opened her mouth to speak, thought better of it, and two-pointed her phone into the red bin. Then she hurriedly stripped down out of the rest of her gear until she was standing in her cutoffs and tight T-shirt. She tossed her gear into the container with her phone.

  “I’m starved. There’s a McDonald’s a couple blocks away. We can take my car,” Jackie said, already walking away.

  “Sounds good,” Zack replied, but his eyes were on Sadie. “She screwed up. We’ve all done it.”

  “Really? You never did. I never
did.”

  “But we could have.” He slipped out of his hazmat suit to his jeans. Sadie had given him a company Scene- 2-Clean T-shirt to wear, but it was too snug. You could count the ripples on his washboard abs. Sadie made a mental note to suggest he wear the company shirts every day.

  “That was a junior mistake.” Sadie realized she was nearly shouting and lowered her voice. “Go with her. Bring me back a burger,” Sadie told him in a softer tone. “I’m going back in to deal with Gorilla Guy.”

  “A minute ago you wanted a break. Now you want to keep on working?”

  “You’d rather I talk to the dead in front of Jackie? You and I both agreed that I should keep that little skill to myself so she doesn’t walk out on Scene-2-Clean like every other employee in the last six years.”

  Not that those others left because of Sadie’s ghost-whispering talents. They mostly couldn’t handle mopping up the dead day after day. Few could.

  Sadie took a calming breath and slipped out of her own gear down to an oversized T-shirt and nylon running shorts.

  “Take her to McDonald’s. Buy her a burger, then take her to the nearest store and buy her a new cell phone. Get her an upgraded phone and put it on your company credit card.”

  He smiled.

  “You’re a good boss.”

  “I guess we’re all entitled to one screwup.” Sadie looked pointedly at Zack. “This one is hers.”

  “I’m sure she gets that.”

  “A little reminder from you wouldn’t hurt. She l-i-i-i-kes you,” Sadie said in a childish singsong voice. “I bet she’s hoping you’ll ask her to the prom.”

  He rolled his eyes and looked embarrassed.

  “See you after lunch.”

  Once Jackie’s Prelude had pulled out of the driveway, Sadie made her way to the company van to get a bottle of water. She climbed into the back of the vehicle, reached into the cooler, and dug out the coldest one from the bottom to take with her. When she stepped out of the van, Sadie nearly walked right into a huge black man dressed in camouflage pants and a stained white T-shirt.

  “Thuggy!” Sadie gasped. Her hand went to her throat, where she could feel the pounding of her pulse against her fingers. She blew out a breath. “Jesus, you scared the crap out of me.”

  “You never called me back,” he said, stepping even closer so she’d have to face him. “You said you’d call when you had another job.”

  “Yeah, well, I don’t need you on this site. How did you even know where to find me?”

  “I helped Egan clean this place before as a meth lab, remember?” Sadie knew that for a big man who looked like he got his clothes out of the bottom of a Dumpster, he could be charming. He blinked at her with eyes that were surprisingly warm and friendly.

  “Nice of Egan to tell you about the job, but did he also tell you that I don’t work with drunks?” Sadie asked stiffly.

  She stepped around the large man and could feel the anger radiate from him.

  “I’m not drunk now. And I wasn’t drunk then. I got into a scuffle and got a beer bottle smashed against me. Got attacked by a crank user on a job.” He pointed to the side of his head. “Got the stitches to prove it. That’s why I smelled like booze when I showed up on the job.”

  “I don’t know. . . .”

  “Talk to Zack. He’ll vouch for me. The only mistake I made was showing up without changing my clothes.”

  “I’ve had enough mistakes today,” Sadie snapped at him over her shoulder.

  “Right. I heard about what happened at the other scene. It’s all over the news. A goat, a baby, and some woman, huh?”

  “Shit. It’s on the news?” Sadie turned to face him.

  He nodded. “Yup, they even showed your faces on a commercial for the six o’clock news.”

  “Whose faces?”

  “Yours and Zack’s. Oh, and I heard Scene-2-Clean mentioned on the radio on the way over when they were talking about the scene.”

  “Great. Just great.” Sadie groaned.

  “It’s publicity. It can’t be all bad.” He smiled. “It’s not like you can take up an ad in the Times saying, ‘Need Uncle Joe’s remains mopped up? Call Scene-2-Clean. ’ ”

  “True.”

  She walked over to the carport area and prepared to suit up. He looked ready to join her.

  “Like I said, Thuggy, sober or not, I don’t need you on this job. Zack and Jackie are already working this one, since we got pulled off that scene this morning.”

  “I really need the work.”

  Sadie heard another voice and glanced over at the door leading from the carport into the kitchen. Gorilla Man was staring out the little window in the door, shouting at the top of his lungs, and waving his fists in the air.

  “Crap,” Sadie muttered.

  “No, really, I need the work,” Thuggy said sincerely. “Egan said you’d keep me on.”

  Thuggy couldn’t hear the ghost freaking out, so he had no idea Sadie wasn’t referring to him.

  “Zack and Jackie have just gone for lunch. I don’t need four people working this one scene,” Sadie said, aware she was raising her voice above Gorilla Man’s, but she couldn’t seem to help herself.

  “Okay, okay,” Thuggy said, holding up his hands. “You don’t have to get pissed.”

  Sadie blew out an exasperated breath.

  “Fine. Call me tomorrow. I’ll see if I can hook you up with something.”

  He looked at her strangely, nodded, and turned away.

  By the time Sadie was suited back up, he was gone. She flung the door open into the kitchen and shouted loudly through her respirator.

  “Shut up!”

  Gorilla Man stopped in the middle of the temper tantrum he was having in the kitchen and he turned to face her.

  “Are you talking to me?”

  Sadie nodded.

  “You can see me?”

  “Yes. And hear you. No more yelling.” Except she had to yell her reply so he could hear her through her respirator.

  “But I thought I was . . .”

  He looked down at the floor where his physical body had lain for two weeks in the heat before the cops broke down the door. A younger officer was still being teased mercilessly about the number of times he’d thrown up in the bushes after just glancing inside from the doorway.

  “Yes, you’re dead,” Sadie said. “I can talk to the dead.”

  One corner of his lip went up in a surly grin.

  “Well, ain’t this my lucky fucking day?”

  “Right. Mine too. So, Mr. . . . ?”

  “Snake.” He nodded as his eyes looked her up and down. “Jake the Snake. It’s kind of hard to hear you with that thing on your face.”

  “Sorry, Mr. Snake, but I can’t take the respirator off. I’ve been hired to clean up what remains of your rotting corpse.”

  “You sure got the short end of the stick.” He laughed. “What did you do wrong to get that job?”

  “It’s what I get paid to do. I run a trauma-cleaning company called Scene-2-Clean. The other thing I do, that’s kind of a bonus for people like you, is that I can help you to move on. Somehow, your spirit has remained here in this place. As pleasant as your home is”—she gazed around at the tinfoiled windows, peeling paint, and faded cabinetry—“it’s time for you to move on.”

  “Hey, this ain’t my house. I was just visiting, so to speak. My buds, the FF, had valuables stashed here. I decided it would be helpful to have a little for myself, since I was planning on defecting. The FF don’t take too kindly to one of their own jumping ship. Especially when they help themselves to some loot. But I had my reasons. Not that it mattered when I got caught. Boom! I was toast.”

  “Right.”

  He folded his arms across his chest and raised his eyebrows at Sadie.

  “Damn. So I’m like a ghost or something?”

  “Yeah.” A big, hairy, tattooed ghost.

  “So if I’m a ghost, how come you can see me?”

  “I do
n’t know the exact answer to that. After my brother ate his gun, I started doing bio-recovery work. I found out the dead could communicate with me.”

  “But nobody else can see me? Not even Thuggy?”

  Sadie narrowed her eyes. “You know Thuggy?”

  “I’m sure he’s the bastard who ratted me out to the FF!” He slammed his fist on the counter, or tried to. He couldn’t connect. “Hey, you know what? You can help me.”

  “That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you.”

  “Not that ghost stuff. Look, do you really have to be dressed like a spaceman? You know they cleaned up all the meth shit here already, right? So you can lose the suit.”

  “Yeah, I know this isn’t a meth lab anymore. I’m dressed like this because I’m a bio-recovery technician and, you know, the blood ’n’ guts cleaning can be a bit . . . risky too.”

  “Huh. You think you’re going to catch something from me?” He looked insulted.

  “Forget that and let’s focus on how I can help you,” Sadie rushed on. She didn’t want to be dealing with this freak when Zack and Jackie got back from their lunch. “I’ll tell you exactly what to do so you can leave this dimension and go to your rest.”

  “Like hell!” he spit. “I’m not going anywhere. The FF is coming back here to get their shit and I’m going to haunt the hell out of them.”

  “But you know they won’t be able to see you.”

  “Why not? I’ve seen all those scary movies. I’m going to be like the poltergeist from hell, man.”

  Oh brother.

  “But you can do something for me anyway. I’m going to tell you where I’ve hidden all my stuff, and you’re going to find my old lady and give it to her. Even if I’m not around to enjoy it, there’s no reason why she can’t have it for herself and our baby when he comes. And you should tell her it’s time for our dog, Brutus, to get his shots next month. I don’t want him to get sick.”

  Sadie felt a little dizzy as a sudden, potent realization hit her. This house was connected to the other scene. The one with the baby. The goat. The dog. And the dead lady with the red eyes.

  “Your girlfriend was pregnant?”

  He nodded, puffing out his beer belly with pride, as if it took more than his bodily fluid to create a child.