Nightwalker

“You’ve got to do something, and you’ve got to do it quickly,” Landon said.

“I can still use more help from you,” Dillon said.

Landon looked as if he wanted to explode at Dillon again, but though he wasn’t a genius, he wasn’t stupid, either. “I’ll think back and come up with whatever I can,” he acknowledged.

Dillon left. As he rode down on Landon’s private elevator and strode out onto the main casino floor, he appreciated the fact that Landon had found the right business managers and builders. The Big Easy was going to do well. He wasn’t too sure that he would choose Vegas for a family vacation himself, but plenty of people did, and Landon had made sure to cater to them as well as the hard-core gamblers. The Big Easy offered an entire floor of arcades, character restaurants, toddler rides and one huge roller coaster. There was a Western show aimed just at kids and a room reserved for “young’uns’” birthday parties.

As he headed over to the elevators to the parking garage, his eye was caught by an advertisement for the party room. It showed two Old West gunslingers with a pretty saloon maid between them. The picture was pure PG, but the face of the woman grabbed his attention and stabbed oddly at his heart.

It was Jessy Sparhawk. Smiling, her beautiful red hair twisted up on her head and topped with a saloon-girl hat. The costume she was wearing was almost prim, and yet he didn’t think he’d ever seen a picture of such an arresting woman.

He headed down to the parking lot, his mind still full of Jessy, so lost in thought that it took him a moment to recognize the presence at his side.

“Brilliant, just brilliant,” Ringo said, keeping pace with Dillon Wolf’s strong and determined walk. The folds of his long railway jacket made a slight rustling sound, but nothing compared to his spurs ringing against the ground.

Every now and then Dillon saw a head turn. Someone out there, someone who couldn’t quite see Ringo, was still aware that something, someone, was in the area. They heard the sound of his passing on some distant level.

“What?” Dillon asked impatiently.

Ringo cleared his throat. “The most beautiful creature in the world holds court at the craps table, I perform amazing tricks—and you let her get away. Brilliant. I may be deceased, but you’re the one who’s really dead, my friend.”

“Excuse me, my friend,” Dillon said. “But I have work to do. Tanner Green was murdered and Emil Landon is getting restless—and working for the man, I might remind you, is something you pushed me into.”

Ringo ignored him and stuck with his original topic. “I saw the way you smiled at her. Take a minute to smell the roses or you’ll be dead a whole hell of a lot sooner than you think,” he said knowingly.

“The way I hear it, you stopped to smell the roses and wound up smelling a dung heap,” Dillon said curtly.

“Ouch! Not kind at all,” Ringo said. “And may I remind you, I died because I was caught up in someone’s grudge against one of your ancestors.”

“Ringo, I’m sorry, but that was more than a hundred years ago, and there’s not a damn thing I can do about it now. I’m sure he appreciated your help.”

“Probably. I was good back then. Damn good.”

A woman walked by, frowning nervously as she stared at him. He lowered his head, wincing. Usually Ringo refrained from speaking to him when they were in public, because usually he didn’t reply. What the hell was up with him tonight? A man had been killed, of course. But it went beyond that. Something felt off. Felt…

Felt urgent.

It was as if he was facing the onset of something critical. Something that might end in death.

“You are going to ask her out, right?” Ringo said.

“I tried to drive her home. She isn’t interested.”

“A man had just died on top of her. You need to give it another go.”

“Look, Ringo, you and Adam got me into this mess with Emil Landon, so let’s deal with that first, huh?” He put aside the fact that Jessy Sparhawk had affected him more deeply than he could possibly have expected, but there had just been something about her. She wasn’t some hustler hanging on to the money men, wasn’t a wild-eyed party child out to prove the truth of the slogan “What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas.” She was different. She lived here, worked here. She knew the city. Knew the pitfalls to be found in a place where every business in town was out to separate you from your money.

So it was interesting that she had been playing high-stakes craps.

“Are you paying any attention to me?” Ringo demanded.

He felt himself flushing, because the fact was, he was completely intrigued by the woman. So why was he embarrassed around Ringo? Maybe precisely because he was so fascinated by her. But his life didn’t allow for emotional intimacy, at least right now, and business had to come first. “Ringo, I’m looking for a killer. Don’t you think I ought to find out what the hell is going on before I drag someone else into my life?”

Ringo didn’t have an answer for that. He followed Dillon to his car, seeping through the passenger door, though he could have opened it. He sat silently throughout the ride to Dillon’s house, just on the outskirts of the Strip.

Clancy, Dillon’s huge Belgian shepherd, was wagging her tail at the door. She knew Ringo was there. At first she had hated him. She had barked up a storm whenever he was around, and it had all but driven Dillon crazy. But then, to his huge relief, she hadn’t just accepted Ringo’s ghostly presence, she had decided that she liked him. And when Dillon could get Ringo to stay home, rather than trailing after him, he was great, letting the dog in and out, and playing with her.

“So what now?” Ringo asked. “Shouldn’t we be off somewhere, doing something?”

“I don’t know what you’re doing, but I’m getting some sleep.”

Ringo cursed as Dillon headed for his room. Feeling completely worn-out, he stripped down and slipped between the sheets. They were into the wee hours of the morning, and he wanted a nap, at least, before heading to the police station.

But instead he lay awake. And when he closed his eyes, he could hear the drums of his childhood. He could hear the chants, see the warriors in the circle at the dance. A Paiute chief had been the one to develop the Ghost Dance, which had been picked up by many western tribes. The chief had envisioned casting the white men from the land, leading to a return of tribal power.

It hadn’t happened. Not by a long shot.

He’d been to dozens of Ghost Dances as a child, but he’d never seen a single ghost at any of them. It had been at his parents’ funeral, when he’d been a bitter young idiot, that he’d first seen the maiden in white.

It was rumored among the Indian nations that she was the guardian of the white buffalo, a mythical heroine who knew the hearts and minds of both the living and the dead. She was beautiful and wise, and she could read a man’s soul.

She had never been anything but a myth to him, a beautiful story told by his people.

Until that day at the funeral, when he looked up and she was just…there. She couldn’t be real, he had told himself. She was a figment of his imagination, dredged up by the pain in his heart, and the fury against God and fate that burned so savagely inside him.

She had stared at him across the open graves. Then, later, when he’d been about to get involved in an idiotic fight at the bar, she had stepped in between him and the man he had intentionally insulted. Apparently he’d wanted to get his face smashed in, had wanted to feel the physical pain to ease the deeper pain that tore at his soul.

But she had stopped him. He had felt her hand on his shoulder, and when he’d turned to face her, her eyes had locked with his and she had whispered, “No, this is not the way. Only time and the true path to peace will ease the bleeding in the soul.”

And ever since then…

Ever since then he’d seen the dead.

Usually they just passed through his life because they needed something, and once they got it, they moved on. He’d learned that through Adam Harrison and Harrison Investigations. Adam had taken him and turned him from a rebellious and bitter half-breed to a man with a calling. Adam had taught him about life and death, and how to value himself as a human being.

He owed Adam. Not only that, he liked the man.

So the ghosts came, he helped them…

And the ghosts left.

Except for Ringo Murphy. The problem was, Ringo himself didn’t know why he was sticking around.

He’d lived by the gun, and then he’d died by it, and there had been nothing in his life or death to indicate why he was still here.

Dillon shifted around, longing for even an hour’s sleep.

He closed his eyes tightly.