The cry of the banshee.
And rushing to join them, he saw they were both standing over the coffin.
The coffin with the girl with the ink dark hair, her features obscured by the thin veil of gray material that had been lain over her.
Angela didn’t wail. She screamed for someone to call 911, they needed medics fast.
When he reached her side, Angela was ripping the veil off the body, and was checking for the girl’s pulse, then her respiration.
“She’s breathing, barely, and she has a pulse, but it’s so weak, Jackson—”
He was on the phone himself. Someone might have dialed 911; and then again, they might not have done so.
“Nothing broken; I think it’s drugs,” Angela said. “Maybe—”
“We should get her the hell out of here!” Jackson said, lifting the young woman from the coffin.
There had been screaming all around, battling the sound of Deidre’s keening.
But the banshee fell silent, looking at Jackson worriedly.
“She’s alive and we’re going to keep her that way!” Jackson told the banshee.
Of course, by then, the ride had stopped. And as Jackson carried the young woman out, he saw that emergency personnel were already there.
He spoke quickly with a young paramedic, and in seconds the young woman was whisked onto a gurney and rushed to an ambulance.
“I’ll go with her,” Angela said.
“As will I, lass!” Deidre said.
Of course. Deidre had truly cared, all the while. And somehow . . .
Somehow, she had known Colleen Donegal had been drugged to complete silence and lain in the coffin! How? And of course . . .
He felt like an idiot; he should have suspected such a ploy by someone working as a leprechaun with access to the haunted house.
Security and officers had arrived on the scene, but along with them was Conor Murphy. He already knew that it had bizarrely turned out that Elizabeth Fitzgerald was the
“leprechaun” who had kidnapped Colleen Donegal and had been on his way to meet Zach and Skye at the clearing behind the haunted house when he’d heard the hysteria happening in the haunted house.
Angela was off in the ambulance, which was good. Hopefully, the young woman would come to and do so soon. Angela was always an amazing people person; she would be able to give the young woman both the empathy and the understanding she was going to need.
And while confusion was still reigning by the haunted house, he and Conor Murphy flashed their badges and said that they were working with a suspect. They needed to move on to back; and yes, the attraction needed to be closed for the evening, and the rest of the “corpses” needed to be checked on immediately.
Medical personnel had arrived with the kind of help quickly needed. Jackson and Conor could leave the area and join Zach and Skye without worrying that the haunted house wouldn’t be thoroughly investigated.
“Why?” Conor murmured as they walked back through the trees. “Why would Elizabeth want to harm Colleen Donegal? It makes no sense.”
“From what I’ve gathered, jealousy. Jealousy was the entire motive. Elizabeth believes that if Colleen is out of the picture, Sean will love her above all others. We never figured out if she wanted a May/December marriage or if she wanted Sean to adopt her. Though she did say that the former was filthy when Skye suggested it. I just don’t know,” Jackson said.
“So bizarre,” Conor said. “A little woman. What? Maybe five-foot-even. How on earth did she manage to drag Colleen through an old tunnel and get her into the haunted house, get rid of a mannequin in a coffin and get Colleen into it?”
“Security cameras—” Jackson began.
“Not in the woods. And one of the officers was saying that there’s a back door to the haunted house thing—all the buildings here are temporary. At Christmas, they bring in Santa’s house at the North Pole, the elves’ workshop . . . entertainment companies are great at all this. And to keep their insurance, they have safety nets, emergency exit doors, things like that. I believe there are a few security cameras, but only at certain twist and turns in the ride.”
“Where there’s a will there’s a way,” Jackson murmured.
