The Ex Who Glowed in the Dark (Charley's Ghost) Read Online Free Page B

sense of order. The fact that he didn’t argue about riding in the truck or leaving his bike at the shop said a lot about how upset he was.
    “I’m going too. You shouldn’t be alone with him.” Charley made it sound as if he had a choice of whether or not to go along when the reality was that he couldn’t get more than a few hundred feet away from her. They were bound by some invisible tether which neither seemed able to break. When she’d filed for divorce while he was still alive, he’d told her he was never going to let her go. It appeared for once he hadn’t lied. “I’ll ride in the back of the truck,” he said. “You might want to think about riding back there too just in case Dawson loses it and attacks you with a thumb drive or a CD or something.”
    Amanda shot him an irritated glance. Whether or not Dawson really had a brother, he was suffering. Charley had not been a compassionate person when he was alive, and dying had improved him only marginally. Amanda could understand why that white light had been snatched away from him, and he didn’t seem to making much progress toward reaching it.
    *~*~*
    As Dawson directed Amanda to his apartment building, she realized she had only a vague idea of where he lived. In their two year association, he had kept secrets, and she’d been so involved in her own problems, she’d never even noticed.
    A few miles from her office, they pulled up to a run-down red brick apartment building. Their dilapidated truck fit right in with the other vehicles in the small, badly maintained parking lot behind the building. 
    Amanda, Dawson and Charley walked around the side of the building and along the cracked walk to the front door. Actually, Charley floated, but he liked to go through the motions of walking. He said it made him feel more normal. Not that he’d ever been normal even when he had a body to walk with.
    “This place sucks,” Charley said. “You need to pay crazy boy more money.” 
    Sometimes Amanda wished Charley wasn’t already dead so she could kill him or at least torture him for a few hours. So far she hadn’t been able to figure out a way to torture a ghost but she hadn’t given up on the idea.
    They walked inside the building and were greeted with the smells of moldy carpet and stale cigarette smoke. Maybe she should be paying Dawson more.
    Wordlessly he moved to the staircase and started to climb.
    Amanda followed.
    “I’ll take the elevator.” Charley shot upward, laughing.
    Since he was only energy in his current state, maybe she could zap him with a battery charger and cause an overload.  Or suck him into a rechargeable battery then put that battery in a flashlight and leave it on until the charge was exhausted.
    Upon reaching the third floor, Dawson led her to a door marked 3D in black metal digits, unlocked two deadbolts, and opened the door.
    The apartment was old but immaculate. No surprise there. Dawson regularly created order from Amanda’s chaos at the shop. The furniture was minimal with little of a personal nature. No paintings decorated the walls, no vases or candles sat on the dust-free coffee table, no sign that people lived there.
    Dawson set the laptop on a small kitchen table off to one side of the living room. Two more laptops were already on the table. Dawson had mentioned three laptops, his, Grant’s and their father’s. One checkmark in the sanity column.
    “Where’s Grant’s bedroom?” she asked.
    “Over here.” Dawson crossed the faded but clean tan carpet to a short hallway and opened the first door.
    The change was radical. Dallas Cowboys and Texas Rangers posters covered the walls. An MP3 player with headphones sat on the small desk. Rumpled sheets and a colorful spread draped half on and half off the twin size bed. An eleven year old boy could live in this room, an eleven year old boy who’d been taken from that very bed during the night. Dawson’s story was becoming more credible.
    He walked over to the bed