Enzo whined beside her. You wanted him to help you. Big doggie eyes. I’m sorry he won’t.

“Is that allowed, human help?”

Of course. We could take Mrs. Flinton!

“No.”

She blew her nose one last time and started driving. “I can do this myself. I’m just a little unsure.” She was more cowardly than she’d expected but wouldn’t admit that aloud. Even if Enzo could hear her mentally, or peek into her heart, or whatever, she wouldn’t admit her anxiety in words.

Here’s Jack! Enzo enthused.

The specter stood, drifted, just beyond the front of the car.

Swallowing the last of her tears, Clare put her hands on the wheel; the ghost came up to the driver’s window that she’d rolled down. The morning hadn’t been cool until he appeared.

Clare swallowed. “I need to be going. The sooner this is done, the better. So, uh, sit with Enzo—”

I am getting in the backseat for now! Enzo leapt through the passenger seat to sit behind her. Clare’s slight hitting of the brakes and the little jolt didn’t budge him. Jack Slade passed through the door, through her, which nearly had her screaming at the freezing cold, and folded himself in the seat, appearing uncomfortable. The man had managed five hundred miles of stage line, checked on every one of his stations, must have spent hours in a coach, but looked wary about the car. She just wished he’d disappear.

Proceed. He waved his hand.

“I’m not one of your drivers.”

A small smile curved his mouth. You are now. But I can be a gentleman.

“I know that.” Despite all his problems, she still believed he was more sinned against than sinner. He’d been the law, ensuring that the passengers of his division of the stage line, the drivers, his station people, and the mail were safe, and did that mostly by reputation. His death in Montana—vigilante law—had not been just.

He touched her hand with icy fingers and she shuddered. You have a generous nature. I was a good manager but bad when drunk or bored.

“All right,” she said, then cleared her throat. “Traffic isn’t too bad at this time of the morning, but we’re going straight through the city, so please don’t be distracting.” She turned onto a main thoroughfare toward northern Colorado and Virginia Dale.

The little road trip would be interesting. Everyone said Slade had found a gem of a small valley for his headquarters. Again she wished she’d arranged for a guide, but that would entail waiting until the person left before digging around in the earth for an ear.

All right, she was a weenie about that, too. She’d hoped that Zach would handle the ear.

The ear is in a bottle, said Jack Slade. She suppressed a lurch and tightened her fingers on the wheel.

His mouth turned down.

“What?” Then her mind raced, pulling pieces together. “Oh, the station was once a store and later a community center that had dances.” She could see it. Boys joking around, sneaking the ear out of the glass case during a crowded event, seeing if it could fit into the bottle . . . then, perhaps, wondering how to get the thing out and, if they broke the glass, whether it would be damaged.

She’d have to retrieve it. A ratty ear. Maybe nibbled at by shrews or mice or chipmunks or insects . . .

The ear is mostly intact. It remained dry.

“Oh.” Mostly was a very inexact word.

A while back there was another ghost layer who did not help me.

“I’m helping!”

Yes, you are, and I thank you. His head swiveled as cars moved along both sides of them. I will meet you there, at my former home. I know the way there and back better now, in this time.

He vanished and she felt a warm flood of relief, until she wondered how he’d be when she was actually in an area he’d lived for a while.

 • • •

Zach allowed himself some muttering. Damn it, he had been rebuilding his life. He’d gotten a job, hadn’t he? Gotten an apartment.

He’d fallen into the job and apartment.

He’d been working on a case.

That he hadn’t taken very seriously.

He hit his apartment at Mrs. Flinton’s in a foul mood, only to have her knock politely on his door and smile sweetly at him even when he glared at her, guilt that he’d been taking her case easy chomping at him.

“Good morning, Zach!” she chirped, and set her walker too close to him, in his personal space. He knew the ploy but fell back anyway, especially when he smelled bacon and eggs and something wonderful from Mrs. Magee, who stood behind Mrs. Flinton.

“I think he’s had an argument with Ms. Cermak,” Bekka said in her Minnesota accent. “He’s back earlier from her place.”

“And grouchy,” Mrs. Flinton added as she followed him to the breakfast counter separating the Pullman kitchen from the living room. Zach took a barroom stool, nice and plush under his ass. Clare’s breakfast bar had had those high, fancy wooden swivel chairs.

This was so much better. Really.

Mrs. Magee set down the covered dish. “Eat, then rinse off the dish and silverware, leave them in the sink, and I will collect them later.” To his surprise, she kissed his cheek. “I like having you here,” she ended gruffly, then left his apartment.

He looked at Mrs. Flinton. She smiled a too-innocent smile and waved wrinkled-papery-tissue hands. Aged hands. Unlike the callused, strong ones the ghost of Jack Slade had had. A man who’d died at thirty-three. Given his druthers, Zach would like to see his own hands old and wrinkled.

“Go ahead and eat, I know you want to,” she said.

“Impolite when you aren’t eating,” Zach said, raising the cover and setting it aside, trying to discreetly sniff the thick-looking farm bacon and not drool.

“We’ve had breakfast and I’m full; do go ahead and eat, Zachary. But I will put on some tea, thank you.” She went to the electric stove and turned the burner on under the kettle.

He didn’t wait another second and dug into the cheesy scrambled eggs.

A couple of minutes later, he helped Mrs. Flinton onto a stool next to his. She sat with a straight back as she drank some tea she’d taken from his cupboard that smelled floral.

He sipped at the last of the coffee in his go-cup that he’d poured in Clare’s kitchen and frowned.

“It will be all right, dear boy.”

He grunted, then made himself answer in words. “Thank you, Mrs. Flinton.”

“Even though you’ve been spending time with Clare—and I do want to see her new home, it sounds wonderful!—are you happy living here, Zach?”

Forcing himself to focus and ignore a little, niggling worry about Clare in the back of his mind, he met Mrs. Flinton’s blue eyes and said. “Sure.”

She smiled and patted him on the cheek. “Well, we didn’t take much time to become accustomed to each other at all, did we? Just almost a week of little adjustments.” Her pink-lipsticked mouth curved and her blue eyes twinkled at him. “I would very much like you to stay here with me and Bekka.” Mrs. Flinton glanced over her shoulder at the open door leading to the hallway. “She likes you, too, as she showed. You should be honored; she isn’t a demonstrative woman.” Mrs. Flinton laughed. “You can always determine whether you’re in her good graces by the food she gives you.”

Zach had already noticed that. He was getting full and balanced meals, cupcakes for dessert, and good bottles of wine that he wouldn’t mention to Mrs. Flinton. But that wasn’t what had his gut tightening. “Nearly a week?” How could time go that fast? Over the past months, especially when he’d been in the hospital, in a wheelchair, on crutches, the seconds had crawled with near-eternal slowness.

“Yes, dear.” Another pat on the cheek.

Almost a week. That meant at least a week since he’d visited his mother. His belly clenched harder. Acceptable that he didn’t visit often when he didn’t live close, but he was in Denver now and she was in Boulder.