Free Ghost Seer by Robin D. Owens

but her throat was colder.

EIGHT

    N O. THE APPARITION shrugged.
I put a reward, dead or alive, on Beni’s head. The money was considerably more for him alive. My men killed him. He was dead when I got to the Cold Springs stage station.
    “Much of your life is nothing but legend,” Clare murmured, flipping mentally through the facts, trying to figure out what next she’d ask him to satisfy her curiosity.
    You promise you will get the box tonight?
he insisted.
    Her mind went to how much money she had. A fortune. She should easily obtain the box. “Yes.”
    Good. We will talk later, then.
A brief smile from him had her nearly smiling in return. The gunman was not an incredibly handsome man, but not an ugly guy by any means. “There’s no need to bother on my account,” she said.
    But he’d vanished and the cold diminished, and she tilted sideways in her chair. Surely she’d dreamed that visitation? Dreamed them all?
    Maybe.
    She hoped.
     • • • 
    Zach could have stopped the gentle steamrolling of Barbara Flinton, but the old woman was as soothing as Clare Cermak had been exciting—as soon as he’d firmly stopped any talk about woo-woo stuff from Mrs. Flinton.
    As he listened to her stories, her persuasion that she
needed
the antiques that were being offered that night at the auction house, his own past rose. No, he didn’t think he’d ever find out what happened to his brother, Jim, and that would be a continuing ache.
    But he could make sure that no one conned this old lady.
    And he convinced her to listen to him that night at the auction, even as she pressed him to “just take a peek” at the apartment she had vacant. “Perfect for a young man like you, with a separate entrance so you can have private visitors.” She winked at him.
    He figured that Rickman had probably put a security cam over that entrance, especially if no one was using the apartment now.
    When her driver texted that traffic was beginning to pick up and they should end their tea, Zach paid for the meal and helped Mrs. Flinton into the hired Mercedes, then gave in to her entreaties to go home with her. His car was safe in a parking garage, and he sure didn’t want to fight rush hour—rush
three
hours—to head north out of the city, especially since he’d only have to turn right around and come back for the auction.
    The car pulled into a quiet circular drive in Cherry Creek North and parked. Yee came around to help Mrs. Flinton out and hand her the walker, then told her when he’d return to pick her up for the auction.
    Yee met Zach’s eyes above the car when he exited the other side and gave him a brief nod. Apparently this guy, Mrs. Flinton’s regular driver from the hired car company, approved of Zach, too.
    Zach returned the nod, then stilled as he saw the house—the mansion. The rough-cut stone was gray with occasional flecks of silver winking in the sun, and the fence at the side of the house showed silver-tipped iron spears. Something inside him just surrendered and accepted he’d be living here.
    Hunches were one thing—cops and deputies ran on those—but not many of them, including him, believed much in fate.
    He scanned the whole area—the drive that wended between stone pillars, huge front yard, portico porch, front walk, and smooth pathway to a side door under a carriage light. No crows.
    Keeping pace with a spry Mrs. Flinton, he followed her to the portico and they mounted the three steps of the stone porch at the same time and the wide wooden front door opened.
    The woman who looked at Zach might have been as old as Mrs. Flinton, but appeared a lot more solid, muscle and fat. Her gray-shot-with-blond hair lay in a braid around her head; her pale blue gaze lingered on his cane. “Well, come on in, Barbara. Bet you’re pleased with yourself; tea at the Brown Palace!” the woman said in a Minnesota-accented voice.
    “I only had one glass of champagne, Bekka,” said Mrs. Flinton in a virtuous tone.
    It had