The guy lost it. “Hugo! I’m Hugo! Can you tell me about the ghost? I feel like she might be here still. It’s crazy, I know it’s crazy, but I had a dream, and heaven was loud. And hell was hot under my feet. Horns. Horns. Horns. The horns of devils. My mother worked here. Her ghost called to me. She’s here.”
Hugo’s hand went into the pocket of his army jacket, grabbing something there, and Jack’s adrenal system went right to fucking eleven. He grabbed the guy’s arm at the wrist and elbow and stopped him from pulling out whatever was in his pocket. “Let’s take this outside, sir.”
Hugo’s eyes were wide. That one hand was in his pocket, possibly around a weapon. It didn’t look like a gun, but stabbed to death was just as bad as shot. He was breathing hard. Jack didn’t want to beat his ass, not if the guy was just a heartbroken idiot who’d gone off his meds, but if he struggled, Jack was going to fuck his shit up. He addressed Annie in a firm voice. “Call Kyle. He can cover your station. Then me, you, and Mr. Hugo—”
“Just Hugo,” Sweaty said.
Jack took it in stride. “We’ll go outside and talk with Hugo about the ghost.”
Annie picked up her phone, and Kyle came out in a suit too big for him, a pencil-neck with a bad complexion at forty. Kyle wasn’t happy, but he took over for Annie, and Jack got Hugo Mundi out the door and onto the sidewalk before letting him go.
Rocky Mountain Bank was up on Viewtop Mountain, along with the rest of the main street of Plum Creek, a town not exactly in the Denver suburbs but still close enough to the big city to get a few homeless guys coming down. It was a little bedroom community, a little ranching, a little agriculture, a little mountain town. In Jack’s mind, Plum Creek was the perfect mix of every town in Colorado, and that included Denver.
The RMB and the Big Boy Café fronted the shopping center. Back across the parking lot were a King Soopers, a Subway, a Tamale Kitchen, and Jack’s gym.
Hugo had stopped breathing so hard. Being outside made him feel better. He still kept his hand in his pocket, though.
Two guys were talking down by the Big Boy Café, which probably had the best breakfast on the Front Range. Those two guys were leaning in close and glancing at Jack, and he didn’t like their looks either. But one problem at a time.
“Are you going to tell me about the ghost now?” Hugo asked.
Annie frowned but remained sweet. Damn, she was sweet, and kind, and she smelled how girls should smell—a perfume that wasn’t trying too hard, a little fabric softener, and just herself.
“There’s not much to tell, Hugo,” Annie said. “All we really hear is crying sometimes, at night, in the far corner. It’s faint. It might not be anything.”
Hugo gulped. “She worked there. My dad said she said that there was something watching her. But my dad isn’t alive anymore. She said the Horns was watching her. I don’t...I don’t know what that means. Horns, Horns, Horns.”
Jack had a definite vision of a ghost. He wanted to make a joke about heavy metal, or Satanic rituals, but he was old enough to know not to say stupid shit, especially since he’d de-escalated the situation. Not that Kyle would say anything positive about him. Kyle would probably complain that he’d had to help Annie.
“Does any of that mean anything to you, Ms. Blackburn?” Hugo asked.
“Annie is fine.” Her eyes softened more, turning gentle. “Hugo, I don’t know anything about horns. I did see a woman in the corner one night, oh, about six months ago. We were working late, and she was faint. It was strange. A second later, she was gone. That was it.”
“What did she look like?” Hugo asked.
“Big blond hair, lots of hairspray,” Annie replied. “Old-fashioned dress and some very blue eye makeup. But again, it was indistinct. Could that be her?”
Hugo’s eyes filled with tears. “I don’t...I don’t know.”
Jack was on edge, waiting for that hand to come out of his pocket, and when it did, he cocked back a fist to knock Sweaty Hugo into next week.
In the end, he didn’t need to. Hugo held a toy soldier, made of metal, with a little key in his back. You wound the key, and the soldier’s feet marched, and he drummed on a little tin drum. Hugo pushed that into Jack’s hand. “You are a soldier. Here is a soldier. Soldier. Soldier. Soldier.”
Hugo didn’t say goodbye. He just walked off, muttering to himself. He walked past those two goons by the Big Boy Café and then turned right and was gone—probably headed to the King Soopers.
Annie let out a shaky breath. “Gosh, Jack. I hope he’s going to be okay. I mean, I kind of lied.”
Jack laughed. “So you say ‘gosh,’ but you lie to the crazy homeless guy?”
Annie playfully slapped his arm. “Just because I don’t curse doesn’t mean I’m a goody two shoes. It’s just...he wanted me to tell him about the ghost. He was missing his mom. I can relate.”
“Your mom pass?” Jack asked.
She nodded. “What about you?”
Jack shook his head. “No, I still have Moms and her sister. Lost all my brothers and my dad, but still have my mom. I keep her out of trouble, and that’s a full-time job.”
“How many jobs do you have?” she asked.
He shrugged and with his hands held out to the side. “I lost count. I do the security guard thing, but I do a lot of side gigs
