Chapter 1

The first rule on my JD Wolfe Survival List was don’t trust The Woman because this ghost wouldn’t leave anything alone, not when you were awake, not when you were asleep, not when you were haunted, not when the only surprise you received for your eighth birthday—other than the death of your mom in a fire—was for the ghost who tormented her to transfer to you and torment you.

Torment you forever.

Instead of playing patty cake and singing nursery rhymes, I learned how to survive living with a not-so-dearly departed. I didn’t care how she died, only that she stuck to my mom like a nasty rash instead of going to hell.

Most people would call the ghost a spirit or specter, but I preferred The Woman. Or Soul Sucker.

The second rule I learned—never tell anyone about the ghost. Otherwise, they’ll think you’re crazy and lock you up. The third—if you keep everything important safe in your boots, everything important will keep you safe.

During the thirteen years since the fire, I went from homeless to orphan to Private Eye. I reinvented myself. I became stronger. Life did that to you when you didn’t have anyone to protect you. I took my adopted family’s surname and changed my name from Diamond, the girl with no last name, to Justyne Diamond Wolfe, or JD for short. I haven’t forgotten my survival rules; I just added more to the list.

Well past midnight, I sat hunched at the counter and scrolling through my phone in one of those diners you see in the movies, wide windows, cushy booths, long counter, pictures of All-American Little League baseball teams lining the walls. You expected to see couples snuggled in the booths and a clean-cut, milkshake-melt-in-your-mouth kind of guy in a starched button-down shirt.

But, I was alone with Creepy Diner Guy working the counter. His hair slicked back, his shirt a stain-spattered rendering of a Jackson Pollock painting, his buttons playing hopscotch, missing every other hole.

He wiped a dirty rag around a glass jar with a MISSING flier taped to the front. A pretty, fresh-faced, elementary-school-age girl smiled for the camera wearing decades-old clothes and a Hello Kitty backpack. The change and dollar bills stuffed in the jar showed hope was alive.

I wasn’t so sure. From my experience, hope was for suckers.

“Get you another coffee, Red?” His nasty meth-smile was busted and blackened.

“Still struggling with this one.” I swirled the sludge he called coffee in the bottom of my cup. It had created a tar pit inside my gut. I decided to check in with the office before the coffee killed me.

On the stool at my nine, a ball of light appeared, flickered and sparked in shades between blue and violet and eye piercing white. The air snapped. The skin on my arms tingled and puckered like a plucked goose’s butt.

The light shifted from a pixilated pattern into a semi-transparent woman, all monochrome and shades of gray. Stringy hair stuck to her face and hid her features. Only her silver eyes and charcoal lips showed through. A dingy nightgown hung from her shoulders and fluttered in shreds around her bare feet.

Home, home, home, the ghost whispered in my brain, where the thoughts were supposed to be mine, not hers. This was one of many things about The Woman that ticked me off.

Creepy Diner Guy didn’t react to his supernatural guest. He walked past and wiped down tables. I wasn’t shocked. My mom was the only other living person I’d known who could see or hear or smell The Woman.

If The Woman didn’t appear, I knew she watched. Listened. Waited for a way to interfere. It was inevitable.

I lived with the dead.

The stink of lavender swirled around The Woman. I gulped and gagged on the disgusting sweetness. My hand tugged at the collar of my leather jacket and the t-shirt beneath. “Why can’t you give me one day?” I whispered. “One day without your lavender stench coating my lungs, without your annoying voice talking in my head, without your bony butt in my way.”

S, s, sorry, s, s, sorry, sorry. She repeated.

“Yeah, right. If you were sorry, you’d go back to hell.”

La, la, la, la, late. The staccato beat of her words pounded against my temples. What did the ghost care if she didn’t get forty winks?

“I’m on a job. Go away.” I worked in the family’s business, White Wolfe Investigations. Today’s job was more a payback than a paycheck. My adopted father, Milt Wolfe, whom I liked to call Fixer Geezer in my head, owed a lifelong favor to his old Navy buddy, Master Chief Jimmy Palmer. I didn’t know why Master Chief bought a 24-hour diner right off I-95. Maybe he was going senile.

I did know that this kind of debt could never be paid off. How could you put a price on someone saving your life?

I understood my orders from Milt. Sit tight. Observe and report. Master Chief had told him that he thought Creepy Diner Guy was making money on the shady side of life. The side where things slipped from white-lie gray to back-alley black. The side where cops closed your restaurant and carted you off to jail.

My phone buzzed. No doubt it was one of the Geezers. Two brothers I considered my real fathers. And my bosses. “Mommy, I’ll be home as soon.”

“Mommy?” Their voices blended into one. They’d placed me on speaker phone. Great. Two opinionated, life controlling Geezers for the price of one.

I couldn’t bring myself to call Milt dad or daddy or pop. Some things took time and a barge load of counseling. “Is everything okay, MOMMY?”

“Has he passed any packages? Drugs? Money?” Cliff Wolfe, AKA Smarty Pants Geezer and my adopted uncle, was super stinkin’ smart. The type of smart that could send a rocket to the moon but not close the refrigerator door.

“Nope. Only coffee.” I pretended the ghost wasn’t there and monitored Creepy Diner Guy. He’d paused cleaning to pick at a stain on his shirt and popped whatever it was into his mouth.

My stomach revolted.

“Stolen anything?” Street smart and straight to the point, Milt wasn’t one to waste words.

“Nope. Nada. Not cash from the till or a quarter from the floor.”

“Be smart-.” Uncle Cliff’s voice geared up into lecture mode.

I rolled my eyes at his smarty-pants tone. “Yeah, yeah. I’ll be smart.”

“Don’t approach anyone. Don’t draw attention to yourself. Get the intel. Get home. You’re more important than a favor.” Milt, the man who fixed everything with what he had on hand, even if it was only his brute strength or a rubber band, sounded as strong and sure as the day he saved me from the orphanage.

“Please.” Unwanted emotions compressed my chest, and I struggled to keep in character. “I know better than to talk to strangers.”

“She’s lived on the streets, she can handle this,” Cliff’s voice rose and vetoed any worry.

Creepy Diner Guy inched closer with each swipe of his rag.

Unsure what he could hear, I kept my words sweet and soft. “Mommy, don’t worry. I’m a big girl now.”

The Woman leaned in.

And I leaned away. I checked the diner’s clock. “It’s past midnight. Do you need me home?”

“A few more hours. Nothing good happens between midnight and three.” Cliff liked to dole out advice as if he was the love child of Dear Abby and Captain Awkward.

“I don’t like her on her own.” Concern lined the deep timber in Milts’s voice. “We’ll meet you there. Follow orders and stay safe.”

My face burned solar-flare hot. He doesn’t trust me. How can I prove myself if he doesn’t give me a chance? “Sheesh. You don’t need to pick me up. I can drive home. I’m not eleven anymore.”

Back ramrod straight and hands clasped in her lap, The Woman disapproved of my tone. You’d think that after decades of death, she’d have pulled the sequoia-sized tree out of her butt.

“It’s been a long time since you and your mom lived on the streets,” he shouted into the speakerphone. Technology wasn’t one of his strengths.

“Mommy, don’t yell.” A sick part of me enjoyed the charade. “I can hear you. It’s a cellphone, not a handheld radio.”

“Milt’s right. It was too soon to send you in alone.” Cliff’s words were decibels higher than his brother’s.

They’d joined forces and were pulling the plug on my mission. I couldn’t let that happen.

“I’m okay. Worrying is only going to make you grayer.” I kept my voice light and confident, with a hint of humor to ease their angst. Controlling my voice to manipulate adults was something I’d mastered by seven. That was how you survived when you were the proxy adult because your mom had surrendered to another drug-enhanced dream.

Bored with our conversation, The Woman hummed a song. Not a pop or a rap or a country song, but that lullaby. I rubbed my temple, and bit my tongue or I would beg her to stop.

“Keep us posted.” Milt barked out the order as if I was a newbie boot on his ship.

I suppressed an aye, aye, Sir, and replied, “Be home soon.” I hung up and glared at The Woman. “Don’t you start.”

The Woman switched to a jazzy tune.

I passed the time identifying the stains on Creepy Diner Guy’s shirt. Red—ketchup. Yellow—mustard. There was a slick of brown across his midriff. Grease? Gravy?

The coffee pit in my belly bubbled. I don’t want to know.

He went into the back and returned with a plate stacked high with raw hamburger patties and a bag of frozen fries. He switched on the grill and tossed on the meat. Dumped the fries into a basket and lowered them into grease, and wiped the grill’s metal front with his rag.

In the mirror above the grills, I kept an eye on the parking lot behind me. Maybe, he’d think I was checking on my jeep that was parked in front of the diner’s gigantic windows.

Through the same mirror, Creepy Diner Guy gave me a hey-baby-I’m-the-answer-to-your-prayers look.

I shot back a don’t-make-me-shove-that-rag-down-your-throat glare. The ghost laughed.

Creepy Diner Guy flipped the hamburgers. Turned and wiped his hands down his shirt. “Waiting for a boyfriend?”

The meat smelled a little off, or maybe it was him. “Expecting a midnight rush?”

“Nonya.”

Was that code for something? “Nonya?”

“None ya business.” His shrill laugh shredded my eardrums. He put his elbows on the counter and leaned in. “Lived in Rubyville long?” His lunch haunted his breath. Hamburger with extra onions.

Home, home, home.

“Kinda.” I replied with my own one-word cryptic answer and snubbed the ghost.

Home, Home, HOME. The Woman didn’t like to be left out or ignored. The longer it went, the more insistent she’d become. At least her humming stopped.

Creepy Diner Guy nodded, turned back to the grill, removed the hamburgers, and lifted the basket of fries from the grease. He came around the counter. Sat on a ripped vinyl stool and sandwiched me between his onion breath and The Woman’s putrid potpourri. He leaned close. “I like green eyes and red hair. You look real good in black.”

As if I cared about what he thought. Ninety percent of my wardrobe was a shade of onyx to ebony. My leather jacket and knee-high boots fell comfortably in the range. Black was easy to accessorize. It went with more black. “Uhuh. Thanks.”

Truck pipes rumbled. I checked the parking lot behind me in the mirror. A baby-blue, nineteen-eighty-two Ford parked out front. I’d love to have a truck like that. All shiny and clean.

HOME, HOME, HOME.

Got movement. I texted the Geezers. Sent the truck’s description and license plate number. In a low voice, I told The Woman to, “Hit the bricks.”

“No need to be like that. I’m not going to hurt you.” Creepy Diner Guy replied, his tone operator smooth. He rubbed a piece of my hair between his fingers. My hair. “Red’s my favorite color.”

My muscles tensed. One swift back punch. That’s all it would take. He could add fresh blood to the stains on his shirt. Bright red would enhance his color palate. Besides, red was his favorite.

But I was on a job. A job that I couldn’t mess up by spilling his blood. “Don’t you have more burgers to flip? Potatoes to peel?”

“You wanna peel my potato?”

The coffee tar backed up into my throat. I palmed the knife from my boot. Showed him the blade. “I can peel more than that. Wanna play?”

Bad, bad, bad, bad, bad, The Woman chanted. The lights in the diner flashed.

I slid the blade of my knife against his jaw, giving him a free shave. “You’re not really bad, are you?”

The door to the diner opened. I shifted and kept my back between the door and the knife. I wouldn’t want to frighten a customer or warn off the pick-up guy.

Creepy Diner Guy’s face went morgue gray. Scared stiff worked for him. He scrambled backward, helter-skelter, and side-slipped from the stool.

“That’s what I thought.”

Like a buck caught in the crosshairs, he froze. But, he wasn’t locked-stared at me or my blade. He gazed over my head, and a tsunami of fear flowed over his face. And it wasn’t The Woman he saw.

Someone scarier than a knife to his throat stood behind me.

Dread dripped down my backbone like bacon grease from a hot pan. Set my nerve endings on fire. I tucked my chin and snuck a peek over my shoulder.

Scary didn’t do him justice. He was a mashup of Godzilla and King Kong—butt ugly and horribly wrong. Massive neck, a monster mama would be proud of, steel studded earlobes, his hair spiky and nuclear-green. This was his cement jungle, and he was a self-declared king.

And I. I was the bug in his way. But I wasn’t Diamond anymore. I was JD Wolfe, Private Eye.