Free Ghost Walk by Cassandra Gannon

he could
write his own name, let alone an actual book.  And he certainly wasn’t a
hero at Yorktown.  He ran at the first sign of battle.  Believe me, I was
there.”
    “I’ve
read that book at least a dozen times.”  Grace insisted.  “It lays out all the
evidence against you in a very convincing way.”
    “If
it was even halfway comprehensible, then someone ghostwrote the damn thing for
him.”  Jamie sighed and got to his feet, again.  “No pun intended.”  What could
he say to persuade her to help?  Nothing brilliant popped to mind, so he went
with the truth.  “Look, whoever killed those girls put a great deal of effort into
the crimes and it netted him nothing but blood.  I am not a fellow who puts a great
deal of effort into my crimes, unless I’m going to gain a great deal of coin .” 
Jamie arched a brow.  “I was business man .  I cared about money and all
the nice things it bought me.”
    He
cared about having enough that no one would even hold him prisoner, again.  For
thirteen years, he’d been a hostage to his father’s hatred and the memories of
it still shook him to the core.  Ian Riordan had been a righteous and
God-fearing pastor, with a dark hatred for his only child.  Jamie’s twinkle of
knowing had damned him forever in his father’s eyes.  He was an odd-duck, when
Ian wanted a swan.  Nothing could have convinced him than Jamie wasn’t the
devil, so “spare the rod” hadn’t even been an option.  He’d been determined to
beat the magic right out of him, the way he had with Jamie’s mother.
    Fiona
Riordan had been a shell of a woman by the time Jamie came along.  Once she’d
been pretty and lighthearted and saw fairies dancing in the hills, but those
parts of her died in Ian’s captivity.  For so long, Jamie had been angry at his
mother.  With no way to support herself or her son, she’d squandered her life
on that sadistic bastard.  She’d stayed with Ian until she finally escaped into
death.  Maybe his mother was just afraid to leave her comfortable house and
servants.  Or maybe she’d made the right choice and saved them from dying on
the streets.  Either way, money had killed her.  The lack of it, anyway.
    Jamie
had left Scotland the day she died, determined that he would somehow acquire
enough gold to keep himself free forever.  And he had … for all the good
it did him.  Damn treasure was lost, now.  Buried with no map to find it,
again.  Stuck in the darkness.
    Just
like Jamie.
    “You
were a pirate.”  Grace corrected.  “Not a businessman.”
    True
enough, but he’d rather she not focus on that part of his biography.  It
wouldn’t help to convince her he wasn’t a criminal, if she knew he stole for a
living.  “I prefer the term ‘privateer.’”
    “Except
you weren’t a privateer.  You were a pirate.  Granted, you missed the
Golden Age of Piracy by about fifty years, but you made up for that in the
sheer amount of stuff you stole.  You got rich by robbing merchants up and down
the Eastern seaboard.  And the rest of Harrisonburg thought you were guilty of
far worse.”
    Lord,
she could be a stern little thing.  “They also burned a few midwives at
witches.  Harrisonburg’s justice system wasn’t exactly foolproof.”
    One
black eyebrow arched.  “No one was burned as a witch in Virginia.”
    He
made a face, because she was technically right.  “Well, it wasn’t for lack of
trying, I assure you.  The people of this town would’ve convicted a melon of a
crime, if it came from the wrong family.  All they cared about was having a respectable
name.”
    Grace
rolled her eyes.  “Tell me about it.”  She muttered.  “Still, Horror in
Harrisonburg points out there was overwhelming evidence against you.”
    “So
you said in that slanderous Ghost Walk you gave.  But the evidence was wrong .”
    She
kept talking.  “You romanced all three of the victims, and you couldn’t give an
alibi for any of the