Free Lunatic Revenge by Sharon Sala Page B

aren’t you?”
    Tara nodded.
    “I helped dig up that body in your back yard. I get where you’re coming from, kid. Just point the way. We’ll do the rest.”
    “What are you talking about?” Joe asked.
    “Trust me. She’s the real deal,” the man said. “So we need to start looking. If she says someone is alive in this mess, then it’s true.”
    They began moving through the debris, looking under collapsed walls, behind an overturned vehicle, everywhere there was a place to look, and then all of a sudden someone shouted.
    “I’ve got her! She’s in a bathtub underneath this wall and mattress.”
    Tara backed off. She was done here.
    Nate put a hand on her arm. “Can I please take you home now?”
    Tara shook her head and walked away, already locked onto a faint cry for help that only she could hear.
    Hours had passed since Tara had found Gracie Littlehorse. The search crew her uncle was with caught up with her before noon and was now following her as she marked locations where bodies would be found and radioing in for help when more than manpower was needed to get to trapped victims. No one questioned the reason they were following the directions of a kid any longer. She’d made a believer out of all of them after the third hit.
    They had just pulled a teenager and his little sister from a closet where they’d been trapped when Nate turned to look for Tara and saw her sitting on the curb.
    “Tara?”
    She didn’t answer him, and when he touched her shoulder, she shuddered and moaned.
    “That does it,” he muttered. “You’re going home. I gotta find your uncle.”
    Tara didn’t hear him. She was tired—so tired, and the voices were all too loud for her to block any longer.
    A passing police car came to an abrupt stop beside her and Detective Allen jumped out.
    “Hey kid, are you alright?” he asked, looking around for her uncle when she didn’t answer. When he saw them coming, he waited.
    “Is she hurt? Do I need to call an ambulance? What happened here?” he asked.
    “She’s been helping locate victims for the past seven hours and she’s hit a wall. We need to get her out of here now,” Nate said.
    “I’ll take her home,” Allen said.
    “Can you drop me off at the City Barn on your way?” Pat asked. “That’s where my car is parked.”
    “Hop in,” Allen said.
    But Tara wasn’t hopping. In fact, she was past walking. When Pat started to help her up, her legs went out from under her. It was Nate who carried her to the police car, and it was Nate who quietly watched them drive away.

Chapter Five
     
    Detective Allen pulled up in Tara’s drive.
    “We’re here, kid. Just hang on. Your uncle is right behind us.”
    Tara blinked. She was home. She stared at Detective Allen without a single memory of how she’d come to be in this car, which was weird. The last thing she remembered was the rescue team finding that teenager and his little sister in a closet, hearing the boy asking if they’d found his mom and dad, and knowing their parents were alive and already in the hospital. She had tried to find the words to say it, but the ability to communicate with the living was momentarily gone.
    Allen repeated himself. “Your uncle is on the way.”
    That’s when she realized she needed to get out of the car.
    “I have a key,” she mumbled, opened the door and was out and stumbling up on the porch before he could help.
    “Dang hard-headed kid,” Allen muttered. After his last visit here when her ghost had gotten all mad at him and Rutherford, he was afraid to go into the house with her. But his conscience wouldn’t let him drive off, so he waited until Pat Carmichael got home before he left.
    Inside, Tara was bent on only one thing. She stripped off her filthy clothes and then stood naked in her room, shaking with exhaustion as she dug through her jewelry box for her necklace with the St. Benedict’s medal. Her fingers were trembling as she put it on, and then stumbled across the