Page 11 of Ghost Hunted

But a tiny little pinprick of doubt is starting to rise up in me. A crazy pinprick that I try to stifle as much as possible.

She can’t be alive. It’s not possible. After more than eighteen years… it’s too hard. Too painful. If I let that pinprick grow, it will destroy me, for good.

“Piper, you did the right thing,” I soothe her. “That’s proof she’s not your mother. Lia would never have wanted me not to know. She is… was… in love with me.”

And now, I’m thinking like Piper: what is the correct tense? Is her love in the past, now that she’s dead?

This time, when I turn away from them, it’s to hide my sudden, intense emotion.

“I’m going to get to the bottom of this, Piper,” I tell her.

“How?” she sobs.

“I’ll go to Ireland. I’ll find whoever laid the trap and kill them.”

“That’s what she said.” She sniffs loudly. “She said if you found her, you’d kill her. She said you’d never forgive her. She told me you don’t do forgiveness. You once held her captive, intending to kill her. You forgave her, but she doesn’t believe you have it in you to forgive her twice.”

Fuck. It can’t be. It just can’t be her. Can it?

“Is that true, Logan?” Piper asks in a shaky voice.

I shake my head. Even if I wanted to, there’s no way I could answer that question.

“It’s not Lia,” I say instead. “I’m going to find whoever it is and kill them.”

“But what if it is her?” she insists. “You wouldn’t kill her… would you?”

Again, I don’t answer. How can I? It can’t be Lia. Because if it was, that means she spent eighteen years not contacting me. Letting me suffer more than any one man should ever suffer.

Not even the girl who once called me a loser when she saw how hopelessly in love with her I was could be so cruel.

If it is her… I’ll just have to kill her.

And I can’t do that.

Which means it can’t be her.

“Logan.” Piper’s voice gets more insistent. “I’m coming with you to Ireland.”

“Fuck no,” I say, disbelief making me laugh. “I’m sending you back to Oregon, and this time, it’ll be with a team of armed fucking guards so you can’t escape again.”

“Logan!” Piper disengages herself from Quill and wraps her arms around me instead. I freeze, and Quill looks just as surprised as me.

“Logan,” she murmurs again, squeezing me around the middle. After a beat, I return her hug, allowing myself to enjoy the feel of my little Aurora back in my arms. “You won’t kill her, will you?”

Instead of answering, I bury my face in her curls.

“You know, I used to give you piggyback rides,” I tell her, my voice coming out a little choked. “But you’re too big for that now, aren’t you?”

“Logan. Please. You’re not going to kill her. And I’m coming with you to Ireland. Now.”

She pulls away and stomps her foot again, but I’ve already relented. The moment she hugged me, I relented.

“I guess I can’t really trust you anywhere but with me,” I admit. “Not even in a locked house in the middle of nowhere. You’re very good at getting in trouble, sweetie.”

“I’ve never seen anyone better at it than her,” agrees Quill.

“That’s not true,” she pouts. “Quill, tell him how you’ve been teaching me to shoot a gun and…”