Unholy Ground Page 7

  “He did tell me something,” Audrey replied. “He told me that we needed to research that uniform jacket. Which Michael is doing even as we speak.”

  “Hmm.” Her gaze also seemed to be fixed on the soccer players, but Audrey had a feeling Rosemary wasn’t actually watching them, was instead focused on someplace else very far away. “I’m not sure that’s it. Or at least, not all of it.”

  Only half-joking, Audrey asked, “What, you think he has a crush on me or something?”

  This time, Rosemary actually laughed. “No, I’m pretty sure that’s not it. But there is something about you that draws him in.”

  Great. Now, on top of everything else, she’d apparently become a ghost magnet. As if she didn’t have enough to deal with right now. She supposed she should be glad that Whitcomb only seemed interested in talking to her and nothing more. “Michael thinks it might have something to do with the way my psychic powers have woken up recently.” God, it sounded insane to say that out loud. Right then, Audrey was very glad there was no one around to overhear what she and Rosemary were discussing.

  “Possibly.” The other woman was quiet for a moment as she wrapped up the remaining one-third of her sandwich and put it away, just as Audrey had done a few minutes earlier. She hesitated, then said, “You and Michael are getting pretty serious, aren’t you?”

  Were they? If it had been anyone else, Audrey might have replied that it was none of their business, but she wouldn’t do that to Rosemary, who’d given Audrey shelter when she needed it, had gone out into the snowy Colorado wilderness to help Michael get her away from the demon who’d kidnapped her. The two of them might not have known each other for very long, but Audrey thought of Rosemary as a real friend, someone who deserved the truth.

  “I — I guess so,” she said after a too-long pause. “It’s not like we’ve had discussions about our future together or anything. It feels more like…more like we both just sort of assume that the other person is going to stick around. If he didn’t want me at his place, he’d be pushing me to get my house cleaned up so he could get rid of me. That’s not happening, though.”

  “Do you want to go home?” Rosemary asked. Curiosity was clear in her expression, but Audrey got the feeling that she was curious more about how Audrey would answer rather than what she would say.

  Moment of truth. Honestly, she’d never thought she would get to this place, especially after knowing Michael for such a short time, but…. “Not really,” she confessed. “I’m happy where I am…happy being with Michael. We’re good together, Rosemary. I know that sounds like a cliché, but it’s the truth. And I hope you can be happy for me, even though I know you don’t like him very much.”

  That bald statement only made Rosemary shake her head. “I didn’t like him,” she said frankly. “But I saw how he was when we went to get you out of Colorado. I don’t want to say he was frantic, because he stayed in control of the situation the whole time, but he was also utterly focused. He had a single purpose, and that was to make sure you were safe. It just radiated out of him. I could see how much he cared for you. So…I’m happy you’re happy. And I wish you could just be happy together there in Pasadena, but I think you’ll have to walk a few dark paths before you’re given any peace.”

  Despite the warm breeze that played with her loose hair, Audrey couldn’t help shivering. “Is that a vision?”

  “No,” Rosemary said sadly. “A feeling. But my feelings are usually right.”

  Michael sat at his computer, a browser window open to a YouTube tutorial on colorizing black and white photos, while he had Photoshop open in another window. So far he’d made two stabs at this, and neither of them had yielded satisfactory results. Luckily, he was used to false starts in his admittedly amateurish graphic design attempts, so he hadn’t touched the original scanned file, but just kept making copies until he produced one he was happy with.

  So far, this one was going better. It was a tedious process, to keep making separate passes for each of the four colors he needed to manipulate — cyan, yellow, magenta, black — but this time the hues in the altered photograph were much sharper, weren’t muddy-looking like his previous attempts. A tweak of the curves in the yellow layer, a bit of sharpening of the black, and he thought he might be there.

  For reference, he brought up another browser window, then searched for images of World War II U.S. Army ribbons. Yes, those looked just about spot on. He worried that if he kept fiddling with the image, he might make a change for the worse, and so he exported a copy of the Photoshop file as a .jpeg image, then went ahead and uploaded it to the Dropbox folder he used whenever he wanted to send something to Fred Peñasco but didn’t trust regular email.

  Once that was done, he sent a text. Hey, Fred. I have something else I need you to look at, he typed. I need analysis of the combination of ribbons and rank insignia to see if we can narrow down who was wearing a particular uniform. The image is in our Dropbox.

  He’d made sure to crop the photo so Whitcomb’s head was chopped off. Michael didn’t want even Fred to know that the man he was currently investigating might also have passed himself off as Henry Something-or-Other, who’d served in the Army during the Second World War.

  Just a minute, Fred’s text came back, so quickly that yet again Michael wondered if his researcher friend ever left his computer, but rather sat there ’round the clock, phone close by in case he needed to actually interact with the outer world.

  A brief pause, during which Michael checked his email. Not much to see, since it was Saturday and therefore less business was being handled. He’d already sent a text to Colin, inviting him and Daniela over to dinner the following night, but he hadn’t gotten a reply yet. Maybe Colin was still sulking, or maybe he’d buried himself in his home studio and was running through the footage they’d shot, thinking of the best way to quietly release the choicest bits on YouTube. Or maybe he was making copies of everything in preparation for handing it all off to the cable channel. Either way, Michael figured he’d try calling once he was done dealing with Fred.

  Okay, got it, came a text. This isn’t my field of expertise, but I know a guy. I’ll send this over to him and have him look at it. What’s the context?

  Not much, Michael typed back. I think the photo was taken in 1943 at a semiformal sort of occasion. It’s a dress uniform, isn’t it?

  Looks that way, but Nate will know for sure. It might take him a bit, though. You in a hurry with this?

  Of course Michael was, but he didn’t see the point in admitting to that. He’d learned from experience that with these experts, you just had to wait and let them do things in their own time. Rushing either irritated them or made them back off from a project altogether.

  No real hurry, he replied. But sooner is better than later.

  Isn’t it always? I’ll let him know. Another text bubble popped up immediately under the previous one. I’m still working on that other thing. I think I’ve found some connections in Connecticut, but I need to do some double-checking to make sure.

  Where in Connecticut?

  Like I said, still working on it. When I know, you’ll know. And I’ll contact you when I’ve heard back from Nate.

  Okay, Michael texted back, knowing he had to leave it there. He trusted Fred implicitly; when he said he’d be in touch, he would, but not before he had something worthwhile to share. I’ll wait to hear from you.

  After that, Michael set his iPhone down on his desk, then closed the Photoshop files he’d been working on and minimized the application’s window. For the first time, he thought about how quiet the house was, how empty it felt with Audrey gone for most of the day. He’d never really considered having someone move in with him before this, but now that she’d been here for nearly two weeks, he couldn’t imagine his home without her.

  His life without her.

  Not that he really had to worry about such a thing, because she seemed perfectly happy here as well. Losing the show was a bump in the road, but o
ne they could weather easily enough. Actually, once the Whitcomb investigation was put to bed, they should collaborate on something else. A book about awakening psychic powers, possibly — Audrey’s personal and professional experience could be put to good use in something like that. And once Colin’s bootleg videos started circulating on YouTube, Michael had a feeling all three of them could line up an impressive roster of speaking engagements without much trouble at all. The NDA Audrey had signed had only been to prevent her from discussing the show during production. Well, now Project Demon Hunters was out of production, so there wasn’t anything to prevent her — or him or Colin — from talking openly on the subject.

  There was a psychic cruise coming up next September. He’d been asked to be one of the speakers but had turned it down because, frankly, at the time he hadn’t been interested. Now, though, he wondered if he might be able to wheedle his way back in as a guest. Being stuck on a cruise ship for five days on his own hadn’t sounded very appealing, but if he had Audrey with him….

  His phone rang, and Michael picked it up. Colin’s number.

  He spoke before Michael had a chance to say hello. “What’s this dinner thing? Trying to have a pity party?”

  “No,” Michael said evenly, reminding himself that Colin had just suffered a serious professional blow and didn’t have the same fallbacks he had. “I just thought it would be nice for the four of us to get together and have a relaxing evening.”

  Colin let out a huff of a breath. “Well, it would just be the three of us, because Daniela bailed.”

  Ouch. Talk about pouring salt on a wound. “I’m sorry to hear that.”

  “I get it. She still has to work in this town. She probably didn’t want any more of my stink on her than she already had.”

  What the hell was he supposed to say to that? Michael had only floated around the periphery of the entertainment industry, but he’d seen enough to know that it was a true shark tank. One whiff of blood in the water, and your career could disappear faster than the chum they were throwing off the back of the boat in Jaws. Colin had been around and would probably weather this storm, but it wasn’t going to be pretty. Most likely, Daniela’s defection was only the beginning.

  Before Michael could begin to formulate a reply, Colin went on, “It’s all right. I wasn’t looking for a love for the ages or anything. Daniela and I had some fun. Time to move on. Anyway,” he continued, his tone even brisker, “you and I need to get together sometime and go through this footage. I uploaded the originals to the network’s servers, so that’s handled and they should stay off our backs, but I’ve got the duplicates stored on an external drive.”

  “Bring it with you to dinner tomorrow,” Michael said, thinking quickly. He knew he needed to see what they’d shot, but he still thought it would be a good idea to get Colin out of the house and around other people.

  “We’ve got hours of video to look at — ”

  “Well, come over a few hours early. Say around four? We’ll have some drinks, watch what you’ve got. I know Audrey will want to see it, too.” Or at least, Michael hoped she would be interested. Some people had problems with watching themselves on video. And there was also the possibility that she wouldn’t want to relive those admittedly terrifying moments. However, she would have had to see the final cut of the show at some point…if the network had allowed them to continue filming.

  A long pause. Then Colin said in grudging tones, “All right. No seafood.”

  As accepting invitations went, that wasn’t exactly the most polite way to do it. However, Michael guessed his producer was still smarting from Daniela’s defection and was therefore being even more abrupt than usual. “Not a problem. The weather’s good — I thought we’d barbecue some steaks.”

  “I can do steaks. Four?”

  “Yes, four.”

  “See you then.”

  Colin ended the call, and Michael looked down at his phone for a moment, then shook his head. For just the briefest moment, he wondered if he should get in touch with Audrey, ask her whether Rosemary might want to come over so they’d have four of them for dinner, before rejecting that notion. He’d gotten the impression that Rosemary didn’t care much for his producer, and the last thing he wanted was to be accused of coordinating a fix-up. Better to let it go.

  Then he realized it was past one o’clock, and he should really scrounge something for lunch. He had leftover Chinese takeout; that should work. A few more hours, and Audrey would be home around four-thirty or so.

  It scared him a little to think of how much he looked forward to seeing her again. In the past, he would have been glad of an open Saturday afternoon. Now it seemed all he could think about was what to do with himself until she returned.

  There were worse problems to have, though. Far, far worse. Some of them would probably intrude sooner than he would like, but in the meantime, he needed to allow himself this breathing space.

  His instincts told him it wouldn’t last very long.

  Chapter 6

  Audrey wasn’t sure how she felt about watching the footage Colin had brought with him. He and Michael were in the process of doing something complicated to hook up his laptop to the TV in the family room, and attaching the external hard drive that held all the video files to that laptop. About all she could do was sit on the couch and wait for them to be done, and to steel herself against what she was about to see. It wasn’t just the idea of having to revisit those horrific scenes, either. She’d always hated to see herself on video, hear herself speak. Her voice sounded higher than it did in real life, and forget about the camera adding ten pounds — it seemed designed to add all those extra pounds directly to her ass.

  But she’d felt sorry for Colin after hearing about Daniela dumping him, and so she hadn’t protested when Michael said he wanted their erstwhile producer to come over and share the footage with them, then stay for dinner. It wouldn’t be much work for her, because they were grilling steaks and doing veggies and fingerling potatoes on skewers that would get grilled along with the meat, so about all she had to do was make a salad and heat up a few rolls. She could tell Michael had come up with that menu specifically to avoid putting any burden on her, and she knew it would be churlish to refuse after he’d already extended the invitation.

  And although Colin wasn’t exactly on his best behavior — he was cursing as he fiddled with the patch cords and connectors — he’d brought over a very nice bottle of Zinfandel and thanked her and Michael for the invitation. He did look kind of droopy compared to his usual high-energy self, so Audrey figured she’d better cut him some slack. He’d seemed excited about the prospect of releasing the tapes, so who was she to protest something as minor as her butt looking too big on camera?

  At last, Colin and Michael seemed to have gotten everything working. Colin set the laptop down on the coffee table, being careful not to jiggle any of the connectors, then took a seat in the armchair, moving it so it more directly faced the TV. Michael came and sat down next to her on the sofa, and picked up the neglected glass of Chardonnay — from a bottle they’d opened to have something to drink during dinner prep — that he’d left sitting on the table next to Audrey’s glass.

  “Okay, I think we’re ready to go,” Colin said.

  Audrey drew in a breath, steeling herself, as he leaned over to press a few keys on his laptop. The television screen came alive, showing an exterior of the Whitcomb mansion, looking ominous against the gray skies from the morning of their first shoot. Fog wisped its way among the pine trees.

  Eyebrows lifted slightly, Michael remarked, “I don’t remember it being that foggy on the grounds.”

  “Adobe After Effects,” Colin said, then took a swallow of his own Chardonnay. “I figured a little poetic license couldn’t hurt.”

  This revelation didn’t appear to impress Michael, and Audrey thought she knew why. They were already taking a risk with this plan to release the unedited files; the last thing Colin should have been doing was doctor
ing them to make things look more dramatic.

  He seemed to correctly interpret his producing partner’s stony silence, because Colin said quickly, “That’s the only thing I touched. I started playing with it after we wrapped the first week’s shoot, but I haven’t altered anything else. I just wanted to see how it would look.”

  “It looks pretty natural,” Michael admitted, then added, “as long as you weren’t actually at the house the day of the shoot to see what it really looked like. But we’re walking a line here.”

  “No worries.” However, from the way Colin was frowning, Audrey guessed he probably was worried. Hopefully, he still had the undoctored footage somewhere on another drive.

  But in the next moment, the problem of the fake fog abruptly left her mind, because now they were watching Michael give his spiel about the Whitcomb mansion and the phenomena that had been reported there. He looked completely comfortable, and almost handsomer on camera than he did in person — no easy feat, since she continued to be struck by his good looks.

  She, on the other hand….

  Well, all right, the wardrobe Kathleen had provided for her was fairly flattering, and Audrey was relieved to see that her hair and makeup did play very well on camera. She looked fine — if you could get past how ill at ease she seemed, as though she was ready to bolt from the house at any minute.

  “I look like a complete amateur,” she said.

  At once, Michael put a hand on hers, squeezing it briefly before he let go. “No, you’re fine,” he told her. “Maybe a little stiff, but that was to be expected. In a way, it’s good — it shows that you’re not some slick TV personality, but a real expert having to contend with real-life phenomena.”

  “If you say so,” she replied, but his words did cheer her up a little…as did the swallow of Chardonnay she had next in order to give herself the courage to keep watching.