Free Steele by Kathi S. Barton Page A

aren’t ready yet.”
    “Aren’t ready? Aren’t ready for what? Or do I want to know?” He shook his head. “I’m not sure what you mean, Steele. I don’t want to know, or you don’t know. Not ready to be taken from this place? Do they know it’s set to be torn down?”
    “They do.” He looked at Nick. “The woman you’ve been talking to, she said she has something to show you. She seems to think that you can find it, but she wants me to help you talk to her. Is that all right?”
    Nick nodded, and Steele touched his hand to Nick’s. The contact had them both moaning, and Nick dropped to the floor. Ray started to help him up and give Steele a piece of his mind when Nick said he was fine. When he stood up, Ray took two steps back.
    “Christ love a joke.” The woman was there. Her body, though it was transparent for the most part, was veiled over Nick’s. And when she moved so did Nick, or vice versa. When she smiled, Ray had a feeling she knew she was making him feel a little off, but she wanted to reassure him. As the Nick/Woman person moved out of the room, they all followed.
    The stairs they were going up were not that safe. They’d been warned, several times as a matter of fact, to confine themselves to this floor and no other. That rule had been shot all to hell the moment Nick/Woman started up them. Ray was right behind him and the rest, with Steele on the end, were right behind them.
    She led them to a room in the very back of the building. Ray tried to figure out just where they were, but all he could think was that they were right over the boiler room about fifty feet below. Nick, with the woman in tow, took them to the wall that faced the back and right out over the parking lot. She pointed to the wall and then stepped back.
    “What now?” Ray thought the same thing and looked at Landon when he continued. “Do you break the window? Take down the wall? Is there something below this floor board?”
    Steele moved to the wall, then walked into the closet that was just to the left of where they were. He came out, then back in twice before he seemed to come to a conclusion.
    “It’s a fake wall.” Each of them entered the smallish room only to come out and compare it as Steele had done. It wasn’t that big of a difference from the wall in the closet, about two feet, but enough, he supposed, to do something terrible with. As they pulled out their pick-axes and sledge hammers, Ray stepped back. He was no longer able to help with this part due to a bad ticker.
    The wall came down quickly under their combined strength. When Nick collapsed, no one moved to touch him. The woman had left him. Ray supposed that she went back to the other floor, but looked around all the same. When the dust cleared up, Nick stood up and walked to the wall. His cursing had them all going to look.
    There were two bodies that they could see, and they were both wrapped in clear plastic. Neither of them appeared to have been there long, but with a body in a dark place, it was hard to tell. Alongside of them was a trunk about the size of a bread box. No one moved to get the police involved as they pulled the trunk free. Mitch reached down and opened it.
    Ray had no idea what he had expected. Money was his first thought, but then he dismissed that. Money was not something that was left with the dead. He thought of clothing, like the trunk had been used as a sort of suitcase to hide some evidence or something. But that wasn’t what it was either. Ray felt his belly turn up when it finally occurred to him what it was.
    “Christ, are those what I think they are?” No one touched the stuff with their bare fingers but did move a few with a pen. There were hundreds of plastic Baggies filled with hair. And each of them had a name and a date on them. “Mother cock sucker, this is someone’s souvenirs, isn’t it?”
    “It looks like it.” Hugh looked at the hole in the wall then back at the trunk before continuing. “Do you