a lot of my friends worked as extras and made nice money at it.â
âRight. So we need to find out who has a grudge against one or both men, who else was on the ship when the victims were, who might have been fighting with whom....â He sighed. âHell, maybe some idiot just decided to refight the Civil War.â
âItâs not some idiot refighting the war. The victims represented both sides of the conflict. If you were a bitter Confederate, youâd kill Union men. And if you lost a relative fighting for the Union during the war, youâd want to bring down the Confederates.â
âItâs not race. One man was half black, and the other one was white,â Ethan said. âBut they were both in that reenactment on the Journey , so my gut tells me it has to go back to that somehow.â
âMaybe someone on the Journey had a fight with both of them,â Charlie said.
Ethan shrugged. He still had a lot of investigating ahead of him. It was much too early to settle on any one theory. Heâd just gotten to townâand heâd headed straight out to see Charlie. He didnât ask himself why that had seemed like the most important thing to do.
Now heâd seen her.
And while so much was different after a decade had passed, everything he felt about her was just the same.
âI have to meet with the police and find out what they know,â he said.
âCan I go with you?â
âNo, not this time, anyway. Besides, when I was headed up here, I overheard you telling your father you were going straight home.â When she looked as if she might object, he added, âCharlie, this doesnât really involve you, you know.â
âNeither did the last murder,â she said sharply.
Once again they looked at one another in silence, and he thought back to that night in the graveyard.
Sheâd found the bracelet; heâd called the police. Heâd known it would be important for them to know exactly where the bracelet had been found, so heâd insisted on waiting there until the cops arrived.
Restless, Charlie had gotten up and perched on a headstone, while heâd walked off and leaned against a tree. Neither one of them had seen the killer when heâd come, searching for the bracelet, his trophy from his last victim. Then something, a rustle, a whisper, a movementâmaybe even the Confederate officer who had led him to Charlieâhad alerted him, and heâd turned just in time to see a man bearing down on Charlie with a raised butcher knife.
Luckily for him, the killer was nothing but a coward with a knifeâa sick little bastard who didnât even put up a fight when Ethan tackled him. He screamed and cried like a baby when Ethan brought him down, knocking the knife from his hand.
By the time the police arrived, the killer had been caught.
He and Charlie had been credited with bringing him down.
Charlie had quit the Cherubs and sworn she would never have anything to do with such a ridiculous organization again.
And Jonathan Moreau had despised Ethan ever since. He said a real man would have gotten Charlie to safety, not made her stay anywhere near the site of a murder when the killer could return at any moment. Charlie had almost been killed, and as far as he was concerned, that was entirely Ethanâs fault.
Charlieâs mother, on the other hand, had applauded the fact that his quick thinking and determination had saved Charlie.
And Charlie herself...
Sheâd visited him once after heâd gone back to college. Theyâd talked a lot about seeing the dead. Theyâd wondered why some spirits stayed and others didnât, wondered why, when loved ones died, the living rarely got to speak with them. They agreed that they would never fathom it, not while they were here on earth. Theyâd come so close....
And then heâd made her leave.
He hadnât wanted to. Even at sixteen, she was already elegant
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