Gregg brought her the aspirin, then went into the bathroom and snagged her a glass of water. "Listen, why don't you go back to bed. It's early yet and Stan's no doubt still passed out. "
"What are you going to do. " She yawned as she handed him back the Bayer and the empty glass.
He nodded to his laptop. "I'll take this downstairs to the living room and start going through the footage we captured last night. It should have all uploaded from the remote cameras. "
"Stay here?" she asked as she shifted her manicured toes under the sheets.
"You sure?"
Her smile as she put her head down on the pillow revealed her perfect caps. . . and the sweet side of her personality. "Yes. I'll sleep better, plus you smell nice after your shower. "
Man, she had some kind of way about her: With her looking up from his bed like that, it would have taken an army to drag him out of the room.
"Okay. Go to sleep, Lolli. "
She smiled at the pet name he'd given her after he'd first started sleeping with her. "I will. And thank you for staying with me. "
As she closed her eyes, he went over to the wing chair by the window and fired up his laptop.
The feeds from the tiny cameras they'd hidden out in the hall and downstairs in the living room and outside in the big oak next to the porch had indeed uploaded.
Given what had happened, he wished like hell they'd put a remote in Holly's room, but that was the thing. As ghosts didn't actually exist, why would they have bothered? The shots had been taken just for selling the atmosphere of the place. . . and for doctoring up later when it came time to "call forth the spirits of the house. "
As he started to look through the images that had been captured, he realized he'd been doing this for how long? Two years? And he had yet to actually see anything or hear anything that couldn't be explained.
Which was fine. He wasn't trying to prove the existence of spirits. He was out to sell entertainment.
The only thing he'd learned in the past twenty-four months was that it was a good job lying had never been a problem for him. Matter of fact, his total comfort with falsity was why he was a perfect television producer: It was all about the goal for him and the particulars, whether they were locations, talent, agents, home owners or whatever was on film or tape, were nothing but soup cans in a cupboard to be positioned at his will. To get the job done, he'd lied about contracts and dates and times and images and sounds. He'd fudged and misled and threatened with fallacies.
He'd manufactured and cued up and--
Gregg frowned and leaned into the screen.
Moving the cursor to the rewind button on the Windows Media Player, he replayed the segment that had been recorded in the hallway.
What he saw was a dark shape moving along the corridor outside their bedrooms and. . . disappearing into Holly's. The time on the lower right- hand corner: 12:11 a. m.
Which was just about forty-five minutes before she came to him.
Gregg replayed the segment, watching that huge shadow walk down the center of the dimly lit hallway, blocking the illumination that came in through the window at the far end.
In his mind, he heard Holly's voice: Because I had sex with him.
Anger and anxiety swirling in his head, he let the recording play on, the minutes ticking by in that right-hand corner. And then there it was, someone leaving Holly's room, stepping out, blocking the light, about thirty minutes later.
The figure headed off the opposite way it came almost as if it knew where the camera had been mounted and didn't want to show its face.
Just as Gregg was getting ready to call the local police. . . the damn thing disappeared into thin air.
What. The. Fuck.
Chapter Thirty-two
John Matthew came awake, sensed Xhex beside him, and panicked.
Dream. . . was this a dream?
He sat up slowly, and when he felt her arm slip down his chest to his belly, he caught it before it hit his hips. God, what he held with care was warm and weighted and. . .