Hostage by Kay Hooper

for your sake,” Hollis said grudgingly.
    Jamie smiled for the first time.
Thank you. He really was the only thing keeping me here. My family and friends moved on a long, long time ago. They let go. But he never could. Never could forgive himself. Tell him he can, please.
    “I’ll tell him.” Hollis was about to ask if there was anything else she could do for Jamie when she found herself suddenly almost flinching back as she blinked at the extraordinarily bright light that had appeared from nowhere. It seemed to have no distinct source, and yet it enveloped Jamie, leaving her in silhouette. The “floating” strands of hair that had been one indication to Hollis that she was looking at something otherworldly settled about her shoulders, and then she took a step forward, smiling at Hollis. For that moment, she looked flesh-and-blood real.
    Thank you.
    “You’re welcome,” Hollis said slowly, watching as the light brightened even more, completely enveloping Jamie—and then dimmed, shrank, and vanished within seconds.
    “Well, what do you know.” Hollis blinked and looked at Reese. “There is a light, after all. This time, at least.”
    “You reacted physically,” Reese told her, calm. “Your pupils contracted.”
    “They did?”
    “Definitely.”
    Hollis thought about that, then nodded. “I’m not surprised. It was a very bright light, and appeared suddenly.”
    “So you know something you didn’t know yesterday,” he responded. “Worth the trip just for that.”
    Anna asked eagerly, “What did you see? Who was it?”
    Hollis returned her attention to her supposed client. “Not your husband, I’m afraid. I’m sorry. This spirit was here for your brother-in-law.”
    Owen said harshly, “I don’t believe in that bullshit.”
    Remaining calm, Hollis said, “Suit yourself. But my job is to pass on messages, and I just got one for you. Jamie Bell says you have to forgive yourself for what happened to her.”
    “I don’t know what you—”
    “She drowned. You were driving, you lost control and missed a curve, and the car went into the river. The water was deep, the current fast. You managed to get out, but she didn’t.”
    If Owen had been pale before, he was sheet-white now.
    Anna, clearly bewildered, said, “I’ve never heard anything about a car accident. Owen—”
    “It was a long time ago,” he said slowly. “Over forty years, long before you met Daniel. I wasn’t much more than a kid myself, and scared half out of my mind. When I made it back here, Dad and Daniel went back to the river with me. We tried, but . . . we couldn’t even find the car. The current had already taken it. There was no rail on that curve, no visible signs of damage on or near the road.”
    Neutral, DeMarco said, “I gather there was no police report.”
    “No.” He at least had the grace to look guilty, and avoid the steady gazes of the others. “No, Dad— The family decided against it. I was only eighteen, headed for college in the fall. Jamie was . . . a girl I met in Nashville. She didn’t even tell her roommate she was leaving the city with anyone.”
    Hollis wanted to be angry, to demand to know whether it had ever occurred to him that Jamie’s family and friends had never known what had happened to her, had never been granted any sense of closure.
    But then he looked at her, finally, with haunted eyes, and Hollis felt her anger dim. Whatever mistakes this man had made, whatever sins he had committed, they clearly had affected his life.
    “She forgave me?” he asked, something in his voice ample evidence that he was still struggling to come up with a rational explanation as to how Hollis had known what she knew.
    Owen Alexander still didn’t believe in spirits.
    “She needed you to know that. So she could move on. You’re the only one left who even knew what happened to her.”
    “You’re trying to tell me she’s been here, in this house, all these years?”
    “Not in the way you mean.