Free On A White Horse by Katharine Sadler Page A

go and what to do, and that’s the extent
of his contact with Harvest One. All he has is gossip, and the
gossip about Delaney’s partner gave him hope of an early out.
“Delaney wasn’t a surprise to anyone, because there were signs. She
was losing interest in the job and she was fading out when she
shouldn’t have been. No one’s going to buy you crossing over out of
the blue.” I wish I’d talked to him more about the corporation we
work for.
    Tyler stands and paces. I might laugh as I
watch his mannerisms in a woman twice his age, but I’m too
miserable. “They’ll buy it if you’re selling it, Holly. Tell them
there were signs but you covered for me. You didn’t want to lose me
as a partner. Tell them something happened on this case and it
affected me so much I had to go. Tell them anything and they’ll
believe you. You’re the best liar I know.”
    I can’t help but flush with pride. Tyler
doesn’t give compliments easily and in my business, persuasive
lying is considered more of an art than a sin. I enjoy his praise
for only a moment before the sick dread returns. “Why?”
    Tyler sits down and pulls at Mrs. Hunt’s
shirt as though it doesn’t fit him properly. “I miss them, Holly. I
miss my girls and they need me. My sister is taking care of them,
but she works all the time and she doesn’t really want to be
raising two little girls. She’s trying, but…Child Services has
already been by and I’m afraid she’s going to lose them. With Mrs.
Hunt’s money, she won’t have to work so much and can spend more
time with my girls.”
    I feel as if I’ve been punched in the
stomach. “You didn’t tell me.”
    He sits next to me on the couch. “Yeah, I’m
sorry. I didn’t want to get you in trouble. If you knew I was
checking in on them and didn’t tell…”
    “I could have been suspended for months.” The
look in his eyes tells me he understands what a suspension would do
to me. He knows what I do in my downtime. I watch a lot of bad TV
and get sullen and depressed. I don’t have friends or a social
life, and I’m not good at anything but the job. “And what will they
do to me if they find out I helped you reap a client?”
    “They won’t fire you. You’re too good for
them to let you go.”
    “Maybe not, but they can make my life
miserable. I get that your girls trump my job security, Tyler, but
you should have told me. We could have figured something out.
Something that didn’t get anyone killed.”
    “Maybe, but I didn’t.” He looks at his hands
for a long moment. “So I’m offering you a choice. You can keep my
secret and let me live out Mrs. Hunt’s life. She’s already gone.”
He rubs his chin. “Or you can kill me, report me, and let them
destroy me. I’ve already changed Mrs. Hunt’s will and my girls will
get everything she has.”
    When a ghost, or a reaper as we call them,
reaps a living body without permission from the corporation, the
reaper is always destroyed if he or she is caught. The corporation
acts in this way to discourage other reapers from taking over
living bodies and to prevent desperate reapers, like Tyler, from
jumping into the next available body they find. It’s harsh, but
effective.
    “What kind of fucked-up choice is that?” I
walk to the window. Outside, the sun shines off the river with a
glare that hurts my eyes, but I continue to stare at it. All I want
is to have my perfect, heroic day back, but Tyler took that from
me. “I risk my job or I send you to your complete and total
destruction?”
    Tyler steps up behind me and places a hand on
my shoulder. “I’m at peace with my decision, Holly. You do what’s
right for you.”
    I swing around and punch him hard in the gut
with a right uppercut. He doubles over and gasps for breath. “Fuck
you, Tyler.” I shake my hand out and dance back, prepared for
retaliation. “Do you understand the situation you’ve put me in?
You’re an arrogant, insensitive asshole, but I thought you