Free Deadlocked (The Harry Russo Diaries Book 3) by Lisa Emme Page B

at the bottom of the
stairs in increasing horror.
    “Harry!” Nash took me by the shoulders. “What’s wrong?”
    I shook my head, pulling my gaze back to Nash. “Nash! You’ve got to see this.”
I grabbed his hand in mine and tugged him to
the top of the stairs and pointed down. “Can you see that?”
    Nash gave me a worried look and then turned his gaze to
where I was pointing. “Shit!” He took an involuntary step back. “What is
that?”
    “More like who,” I replied, shaking my head. I had never
seen a ghost like the one I was looking at now. It was a woman. From her
shoes to her clothes to her hair, she looked like your stereotypical soccer
mom. But her face! It was like some sort of macabre mask. Everything looked
completely normal, except the woman’s mouth appeared to be sewn shut with big,
thick, irregular black stitches. “I’ve never seen anything like it.” I turned
to look at Nash. “Have you? I mean, have there been any dead bodies lately
that might have looked like this?”
    Nash shook his head. He took a step down, moving closer to
the ghost. “Hey,” he said, calling out to the grisly spectre. “Who are you?
What do you want?
    The woman looked up at us and then turned away, moving
across the parking lot. I say moving, because she wasn’t really walking or
even floating. It was more like she was winking in and out of sight, each time
moving slightly farther away from us. Nash and I hurried down the stairs after
her.
    “Hey! Come back.” I raised my arm like I was hailing a
cab. I’m not sure what purpose that served, but sometimes you just can’t stop
your muscle memory from kicking in.
    The ghost disappeared and then blinked back about fifty
yards ahead of us. She was leading us down the alley. Nash grabbed my arm
when I made to follow. “Wait Harry. We don’t know what could be waiting for
us.”
    “Well, her body, of course.” I gave him a ‘duh’ look,
holding my hands up in front of me with a shrug.
    “I figured that, but what if her killer is still around?”
Nash looked at me expectantly.
    “Oh yeah, I hadn’t thought of that.” I chewed on my bottom
lip.
    “Let me grab my gun.” He went back to his truck and
unlocked the lock box in the centre console, pulling out his Glock. He clipped
the holster to his belt and then grabbed a flashlight, handing it to me.
“Okay, let’s go. You lead the way.”
    We followed the mute ghost through the alley and out to the
nearby street. Several blocks later, she stopped and turned into another
alley. After a few minutes of searching, we finally found her body stuffed in a
large dumpster.
    “Oh yuck,” I gagged as Nash threw back the lid of the bin.
The woman’s body had been thrown in on top of several bags of trash. The
stench of death was thick, mixed with a retch-worthy combination of rotting
leftovers and coffee grounds. Like the body from the day before, the woman’s
throat had been torn out, but that isn’t what took me by surprise. No, it was
the fact that despite what her ghost looked like, her face was unflawed. There
were no black stitches holding her mouth shut.
    “I don’t get it,” Nash said. “I thought her mouth would be
all…you know, stitched up.”
    “I don’t get it either. I’ve never had a ghost come to me
looking like this. I don’t see ghosts as they are at death.” I shuddered at
the thought. I’d seen some pretty gross dead bodies. I couldn’t imagine what
it would be like if their ghosts walked around looking like bloody, torn
disasters. “They usually look really good, sometimes even better than they did
in real life.”
    It was true. When ghosts manifested, they took on the form
that they perceived they had in real life. Quite often, that meant that they
looked slightly better than they actually did when they were alive. You know
how it is. You see yourself in your mind’s eye as slightly taller, slightly
skinnier, prettier, sexier. Sometimes it works the opposite though. I