Echoes of Evil Read online

  Something lurks beneath the surface...

  Brodie McFadden is supposed to be on vacation, getting some sunshine and deciding if he wants to join his brothers in the Krewe of Hunters, a special paranormal investigation unit of the FBI. But a diving excursion with an old navy buddy to a historic shipwreck uncovers a crime scene—and the corpse is new.

  Museum curator Dakota “Kody” McCoy just wants her Key West culture festival to succeed. She’s always had a deep connection to her home, including being regularly haunted by some of the resident ghosts. Then, in the middle of a performance, a beloved local musician drops dead. It seems accidental, but Kody isn’t so sure.

  Brodie thinks the recent deaths are linked, and he needs help from Kody. Something about her festival is dangerous. And the threat is creeping ever closer. Has she uncovered a treasure from the past that someone will kill for?

  Praise for the novels of

  New York Times bestselling author

  Heather Graham

  “Graham is a master at writing stories that weave the paranormal with the everyday.... This book was a great read with twists and turns on every page that is classic Graham style.”

  —RT Book Reviews on Wicked Deeds

  “Immediately entertaining and engrossing... Graham provides plenty of face time and intimate connection, all lightened with humor, to reassure and satisfy romance readers.”

  —Publishers Weekly on A Dangerous Game

  “A thrilling, suspenseful plot that starts on the very first page and keeps you guessing until the very end! ...An amazing crime-solving couple written with keen intelligence and sharp instincts.”

  —RT Book Reviews on A Dangerous Game

  “Graham has an amazing way of bringing her worlds to life, and the inclusion of historical lore emphasizes the already exceptional writing.”

  —RT Book Reviews on A Perfect Obsession

  “Intricate, fast-paced, and intense, this riveting thriller blends romance and suspense in perfect combination and keeps readers guessing and the tension taut until the very end.”

  —Library Journal on Flawless

  “Graham is the queen of romantic suspense, and her latest is proof that she deserves the title. What makes this story more fun than most is the relationship.... Sparks fly, and it’s electric.”

  —RT Book Reviews on Flawless

  “Graham is a master at world building and her latest is a thrilling, dark, and deadly tale of romantic suspense.”

  —Booklist, starred review, on Haunted Destiny

  Also by New York Times bestselling author HEATHER GRAHAM

  PALE AS DEATH

  FADE TO BLACK

  A DANGEROUS GAME

  WICKED DEEDS

  DARK RITES

  DYING BREATH

  A PERFECT OBSESSION

  DARKEST JOURNEY

  DEADLY FATE

  HAUNTED DESTINY

  FLAWLESS

  THE HIDDEN

  THE FORGOTTEN

  THE SILENCED

  THE DEAD PLAY ON

  THE BETRAYED

  THE HEXED

  THE CURSED

  WAKING THE DEAD

  THE NIGHT IS FOREVER

  THE NIGHT IS ALIVE

  THE NIGHT IS WATCHING

  LET THE DEAD SLEEP

  THE UNINVITED

  THE UNSPOKEN

  THE UNHOLY

  THE UNSEEN

  AN ANGEL FOR CHRISTMAS

  THE EVIL INSIDE

  SACRED EVIL

  HEART OF EVIL

  PHANTOM EVIL

  NIGHT OF THE VAMPIRES

  THE KEEPERS

  GHOST MOON

  GHOST NIGHT

  GHOST SHADOW

  THE KILLING EDGE

  NIGHT OF THE WOLVES

  HOME IN TIME FOR CHRISTMAS

  UNHALLOWED GROUND

  DUST TO DUST

  NIGHTWALKER

  DEADLY GIFT

  DEADLY HARVEST

  DEADLY NIGHT

  THE DEATH DEALER

  THE LAST NOEL

  THE SÉANCE

  BLOOD RED

  THE DEAD ROOM

  KISS OF DARKNESS

  THE VISION

  THE ISLAND

  GHOST WALK

  KILLING KELLY

  THE PRESENCE

  DEAD ON THE DANCE FLOOR

  PICTURE ME DEAD

  HAUNTED

  HURRICANE BAY

  A SEASON OF MIRACLES

  NIGHT OF THE BLACKBIRD

  NEVER SLEEP WITH STRANGERS

  EYES OF FIRE

  SLOW BURN

  NIGHT HEAT

  * * * * *

  Look for Heather Graham’s next novel

  A LETHAL LEGACY

  available soon from MIRA Books.

  HEATHER GRAHAM

  Echoes of Evil

  For Aaron Priest, Lucy Childs and the Aaron Priest Agency—making my life better for years and years

  CAST OF CHARACTERS

  Dakota (Kody) McCoy—she’s a native Key Westerner, or “conch,” and curator of a new local museum and festival

  Brodie McFadden—the youngest of the McFadden brothers is in Key West to clear his head and plan his future

  Cliff Bullard—this middle-aged musician is an old friend of Dakota’s family, and is beloved on the island by locals and tourists alike

  Ewan Keegan—a retired navy SEAL who works for Sea Life, a nonprofit organization committed to the presevation of sea mammals and the history of the sea

  Sonny Atherton—Miami artist helping Kody with her festival

  Emory Clayton—runs a research facility

  Bill Worth—“conch” who writes historical nonfiction

  Rosy Bullard—Cliff’s wife is a retired schoolteacher and a visual artist

  Liam Beckett—a detective on the Key West police force

  Kelsey Beckett—Liam’s wife and Kody’s good friend

  Colleen Bellamy—Kody’s assistant at the museum; very shy

  Contents

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Excerpt from Undercover Connection by Heather Graham

  Prologue

  The rhythmic sound of his own breathing through his regulator was, to Brodie McFadden, the sweetest music; there simply was nothing like diving. The light he carried, attached to his buoyancy control device, illuminated the world of darkness around him.

  His dive partner for the day, Ewan Keegan, motioned to him that he was moving up to the next deck; Brodie motioned back that he would continue where they were, here, deep in the hold, where the tragic “cargo” of the ship had been “contained.”

  He was getting an early peek at a historic discovery and was now in the bowels of the wreck of the Victoria Elizabeth. Even here, though, fish darted about. The Victoria Elizabeth was yet to become a fine reef home; eventually, she might well be so. Barnacles covered much of her wood, even within the ship. In the cargo hold, very little light filtered down. He was careful. He
’d already discovered a moray eel had made itself a home in what had been a cupboard.

  Brodie had come down to Florida for a vacation—and to mull his future. But he had wound up on this dive because his old friend Ewan Keegan, who had been a Navy SEAL, asked him to come along. Ewan was fifty, with steel-gray hair and still in rock-solid shape. Brodie was a good diver himself, but Ewan knew the waters here like few other men did. He was also one of the finest divers Brodie had ever known, but then, not many were as skilled and experienced as navy divers. Ewan had retired and gone to work for an amazing salvage company and had been part of the crew that had finally discovered the Victoria Elizabeth, a ship that had gone down in the Florida Straits, just southwest of Key West, in 1827.

  The Victoria Elizabeth, out of England, had not been high on the list for most treasure-seeking divers; she had not carried gold and riches, but rather an entirely horrible and cruel cargo: she had been a slave ship. Her value was historic rather than monetary; in Brodie’s mind, she was an important monument to the concept spoken once by the great philosopher, George Santayana—Those who cannot remember the past are doomed to repeat it.

  The ship wasn’t on any of the tourist dive books yet. Ewan’s company, Sea Life, was still charting and exploring the find. Bit by bit—and with the help of the proprietor—they intended to sponsor a room in a new museum that had just opened in the island tourist town that focused on both local history and the legends and stories that arose from that history. Ewan had told him about it before they’d gone down that day.

  There would be artifacts found that would be fascinating, though not a treasure by standards set by such ships as the Mel Fisher discovery, the Atocha. Gold and jewels would likely not be discovered. They had, however, found trinkets that allowed them to trace the human cargo held so cruelly in the hold—and some owned by the crew who had manned the ship.

  And the ship was not in bad shape—not considering the hundred and fifty years plus since she had gone down. The water, and therefore the seabed deep beneath her, constantly shifted. Ewan had only discovered her because a storm had shifted a huge bank that some previous storm had shifted before—the first all but covering, the second clearing a bit of the broken main mast that had led them to the hull.

  The Victoria Elizabeth had once been a cargo ship with four decks; she had carried four-hundred slaves—the British Slave Trade Act of 1788 had decreed that numbers be limited. There had been a time when her decks had carried as many as six hundred. It was believed that there had been a handful of survivors from the wreck—but where those survivors had ended up, no one knew.

  Iron ballast blocks and encrusted shackles had been discovered, along with the remnants of shell necklaces. The ballast blocks had been an emotional find, Ewan had told Brodie—they were the ballast to counter the moving weight of the human cargo. They hadn’t found many remains, but they had found a few partial remains along with the shackles. Ewan had told him, “Not to worry—you won’t come across any skeletons just floating at you through the water.” Ewan had given himself a shake—the discovery of the ship was disturbing. Ewan had been career military; Brodie had served four years. They’d both seen their share of very bad things. Still, it was hard to imagine the terror and misery of the men and women who had perished in the ship, shackled together, one atop of the other, trying to survive in wretched conditions—until a watery death had claimed them.

  And now Brodie was working with Ewan’s company, and so he had free rein to find whatever he might—to be turned over as salvage, of course, and then taken through the maritime courts.

  Something appeared before him, a dark shadow. It was quite possible that a shark had wandered in or even a massive grouper—there were plenty of gaping holes in the wrecked hull. But there was something more familiar about it. The shape looked like the shadow of a man.

  The Sea Life ship Memory was high above them—where it would remain until salvage and discovery on the company’s part were complete—so he and Ewan were the only divers working now, and Ewan was working on the deck above.

  Brodie followed the shadow; it seemed to float to an area of the hold blocked off by a narrow fire door.

  Brodie reached the door and then checked his air; the shadow had disappeared.

  He paused. The shadow, he thought, had not been part of the sea, or anything that belonged in the water. Something akin to resignation and a bit of dread filled him.

  He went on.

  The door was partially open, as it probably had been when the ship had gone down. Brodie doubted he’d be able to move it. Yet, he pulled on it, wondering what lay beyond.

  It was something of a struggle against water and pressure, but then the door gave.

  Brodie had seen a lot in his day, and was an experienced diver. Still, he committed a cardinal sin of diving. For a moment he stopped breathing. He was so stunned.

  There was no skeleton coming at him, but what was there seemed quite impossible.

  There was a man.

  A dead man.

  Eerily facing him, as if he were just suspended in time.

  Barely decomposed; nibbled a bit, perhaps...

  His eyes were open. The cotton of his tourist shirt drifted up a bit, displaying his abdomen. He’d been fit, but his hair, close-cropped to his head, had been graying, and his face was somewhat weathered, suggesting that his age had been mid-forties to mid-fifties.

  Hard to tell precisely with such a corpse.

  He might have been a space-camp participant, just floating.

  Except he was not.

  How the man had been killed, Brodie had no idea.

  And how the hell he had gotten down into the bowels of the Victoria Elizabeth seemed impossible, and yet...there he was.

  Brodie remembered to breathe.

  Then he went in search of Ewan. They’d have to figure out the proper means by which to bring the very recently dead man on the very old ship up to the surface.

  1

  A song ended, and Kody McCoy smiled. She was satisfied with the past few days, and just glad to be listening to the music.

  “That was John Denver, for my fine young friends who might not remember the man—great songwriter and balladeer, gone too soon. A little thing called ‘Annie’s Song.’ And before that, a number by the late great Harry Chapin, and before that, one of my own numbers—I call it ‘Living on the Isle.’ Oh, I see you out there, Marty Madrigal. Fooling around, eh? Oh, wait—sorry! Matilda Madrigal, you’re just looking so good tonight... I thought Marty was with some hot, young chick!”

  Laughter followed the musician’s words. Marty and Matilda were regulars; now in their fifties; they’d been together since high school.

  Cliff Bullard had broken his string of songs to joke for a minute with the audience, as he often did. He teased his old-timers and new clientele with a gift for saying the right thing to the right people, and he was loved for it. He was a staple on the island of Key West, and many of those who lived there came out especially on the nights he was playing.

  “Say goodbye to my wife, guys! She’s off to paint—I guess she’s heard me sing one time too often.”

  “Never!” Rosy Bullard, his middle-aged blushing bride of one year, called out, waving. The little bar was a friendly place—everyone there waved back to her. Rosy was slim and attractive, with short blond hair and a quick smile. She was also fierce about caring for her husband; she made him eat well and watch his drinking.

  As she left, Cliff began to strum again. He called out, “Hey, Kody, this one is for you.”

  He went into a rendition of a song Dakota McCoy loved and seldom heard. It was called “Seminole Wind.” She’d heard it the first time at a powwow in the Everglades, and had it on a CD she’d bought while staying up at the Seminole Hardrock Hotel in Hollywood. It had been written by country artist John Anderson, and it seemed to convey a lot that was
beautiful about South Florida with some of the errors of history, all with both a nostalgic and rhythmic sound.

  Cliff was doing a great job with the song, and Kody sat back for a minute, just enjoying the tune—and smiling because he had thought to dedicate it to her. Of course, Cliff was a friend, and his wife, Rosy, was a wonderful artist. When the new museum got really underway, Kody intended to feature some of Rosy’s work in the gift shop. Tomorrow would be busy; tail end of closing down the festival, and working out kinks with her staff—consisting of her one assistant. The museum had only been open three weeks now.

  Tonight, she was glad of the breeze, the swaying palms and the music.

  Live music was one of the best things about Key West. There was always somewhere you could go to watch one or two performers, some doing rock, some country and mostly a mix.

  It felt wonderful just to be here tonight—kicking back, as the expression went. The Drunken Pirate was a small bar attached to the Tortuga Shell, a boutique hotel on the water, accessed off Front Street and not far from Sunset Pier. The bar was in the center of the little hut with tables surrounding it, all shaded beneath a roof comprised largely of wood beams and palm fronds, but open to the breeze. Even in summer—when Florida hot became hottest—the little establishment was comfortable. Breezes came in off the water, and when they didn’t, the management had strategically set fans that kept the air moving.

  Trees swayed around the hut, from great banyans to kapoks and gumbo limbo—or “tourist” trees—so nicknamed because they had a reddish bark and peeled, as tourists’ skin was known to do. Boats were clearly visible out on the water, and when sunset came, it did so with colorful brilliance that rivaled any other place on the island—or the world, for that matter.

  The bar was fairly full that night with locals and lingering Sunday-night tourists. Lots of locals: Kody had greeted Captain James Vick—a dive boat operator—and a few of his dive masters; Bev Atkins and her husband, Dan, owners of the Sea Horse bed-and-breakfast; and Liv Jensen and Truman Abernathy, sales personnel at the Wandering Tourist over on Duval.

  “How nice! This place is always just perfect.”

  The words were spoken by Sonny Atherton, a friend of Kody’s, down from Miami. Sonny had been one of the team members who had just put together the first History, Mystery, Art and Music Fest to have taken place in Key West. Sonny was an artist, and while she officially lived in Miami, she might as well have lived in the Keys, she was down so often. She did beautiful watercolors of the boats on the water, the sunset, the trees, the old Victorian homes and the many things that made the place so exotic, unique and wonderful. In her late thirties, Sonny was one of the most striking women Kody had ever seen; her parents had come to the states from Brazil, and her heritage included Portuguese, Kenyan, Chinese and Native American. Her coloring was exquisite; her skin was a café au lait color, her eyes were a crystal green and her hair a deep, dark brown.