“Ladies, I’ll meet you outside.”
Ruth nodded slowly. “We’ll be waiting for you.”
Alice whispered in my ear not too quietly, “Whoever she is, give her hell. She looks like she needs it.”
I pursed my lips so that I wouldn’t laugh and waited until Ruth and Alice had gone.
Anita flashed a printed copy of the online version of the local paper.
Wow. Apparently the local news didn’t waste time running a story.
Anita glared at me. “I got an alert about this a few hours ago and hopped on the quickest flight here. What is this? Local ghost hunter uncovers writer’s betrayal? Have you seen this?”
I stared at it. It looked like something straight off a tabloid press. On the front page was a six-inch picture of Birda Grice. My picture had been spliced beside hers. It was obviously a photo taken when I was walking down the street.
“They could’ve found a better picture of me,” I mused.
Anita’s face turned bright crimson. “A better picture! Blissful, you’re supposed to be undercover. Under cover! Looking for Lucky Strike,” she hissed. “And here it shows that you’re a ghost hunter?” She smacked her thighs. “This is just great. By tomorrow morning half the country is going to know who you are. Your face will be everywhere, and we’ll have lost our shot at catching Lucky.”
She snapped her fingers. “It’ll be gone. Just like that! Vanished.”
My head suddenly throbbed. Anita Tucker, a woman whom I initially despised because I thought she’d stolen the job I should’ve been granted, was someone I had duped.
I’d lied to her, plain and simple. Anita had lied to me, too. But two wrongs didn’t make anything close to right.
“Lucky Strike is gone,” I said.
Anita gaped at me in wonder. “Do you think? Really,” she said sarcastically, “of course he’s gone. He saw this!” She tapped the paper with a long red fingernail.
I shook my head. Ugh. How I was going to hate this conversation. I would rather let a raccoon walk up and down my spine than deal with this.
“That’s not what I mean. I sent Lucky into the afterlife ages ago. He’s in the light.”
The shock on Anita’s face was something I wished I could’ve bottled for eternity. Just one of those perfect moments when you know you’ve seriously wreaked havoc on someone.
“You’re fired,” Anita said.
“I was already suspended.”
“I want my equipment back.”
“No way.” I stamped my foot. “I have evidence in the packet of information you sent me that my father used Lucky Strike to keep the Ghost Team viable.”
She gasped.
I smiled. “Yep, you missed a note stuck to the back of one of the documents you sent me. It gets better, Anita. On that note is proof you knew about my dad’s scheme and that’s why you sent me to capture Lucky, so you’d have control of him. You’d then force him to cause chaos, which would mean you’d send the Ghost Team to rein him in. More chaos equaled more money.”
Anita lifted her nose in the air. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“You do and this is what you’re going to do about it. You are going to leave me alone. You’re going to allow me to keep the equipment and stop bothering me. If you want to make the Ghost Team viable, figure it out for yourself. Don’t use a spirit who wanted to be sent into the afterlife as your pawn.
“You’re a big girl, Anita.” My gaze accidentally drifted to her fake boobs. “You can do it.”
Anita stared at me for a good long moment.
“If you have any doubts,” I added, “don’t. You don’t need Lucky. If the Ghost Team dies, then it dies. Boo-hoo. You’ll survive. You’re the sort who will. I can tell.”
Anita inhaled a deep breath. “Wow. This is not how I expected this conversation to go.”
