Ghost Writer - Pandora Pine

PROLOGUE

Jamie

1991…

Click. Click. Click. Ping! Click. Click. Click.

The sound of keys striking thick paper filled the room. Jamie couldn’t think of a sound he liked more than that of his words flowing onto the page.

The typewriter was a beast. Coming off the assembly line prior to World War II, it weighed as much as a Sherman Tank. As a matter of fact, it was one of the last machines assembled before the factory was converted to an ammunition plant to help support the British war effort. Two months later, the ammunition would be used by American soldiers.

When he bought the ancient wordsmith, this was the provenance the antique dealer gave. Jamie wasn’t sure it was the truth, but it would make one hell of a backstory to this great American novel. An amusing anecdote to tell David Letterman and Johnny Carson when the time came.

If the novel ever got written.

Click. Click. Click. Ping!

Jamie had been pounding the keys since sunup. His grumbling stomach had been reminding him for the last hour that his breakfast had only consisted of a boiled egg and a cup of black coffee. Arguably, the worst part of his day was pushing back from his massive oak desk, a family heirloom itself dating back to the World War II era.

It was only natural for Jamie to write this novel, a love story with the upcoming D-Day invasion setting the scene, with a typewriter and a desk from the same time period. The chair, which didn’t come close to matching the finish of the oak, was a cheap knockoff. No one in the family could remember the story behind the mismatched piece of furniture. It was wooden, had wheels, and creaked more than a staircase in a haunted house.

The idea for the novel had come to Jamie, thanks in part, to his third wife leaving him. He would never harm a hair on her cheating, gold digging head, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t going to take a little bit of literary revenge out on her. Usually, these kinds of love stories ended with the hero dying a meaningful death on the battlefield. His book would take a different tack. The heroine would die in a senseless act of violence of her own making and stupidity. The bitch would die well.

Jamie wondered if Katerina would be smart enough to notice the similarities between herself and Molly, his doomed British character. He had absolutely no doubt his ex-wife would read it. He’d made especially sure not to make one note or type even one letter of this novel until the divorce papers had been signed, and she was officially moved out of the Salem mansion his family had occupied for nearly eighty years.

Pushing back from the desk, the chair creaked under his weight. After the divorce, he’d managed to drop thirty pounds, but the chair, being the piece of shit it was, creaked anyway.

He was halfway across the room, thinking about making a sandwich and salad, when his ear caught a truly unexpected sound.

Click. Click. Click.

Jamie would swear his heart stopped beating in his chest. He lived in this house alone. He didn’t have pets and there were no vermin, to the best of his knowledge. Yet here he stood, five feet from his desk and the old Remington, with someone or something pecking away at the keys.

Click. Click. Click. Ping!

The sound of the striker keys pelting the page was frightening enough, but the bell warning he’d reached the edge of the margin quickly followed by the sound of the carriage return, terrified him. If he turned around, what would he see?

Would there be a ghost sitting in his chair adding its own thoughts and opinions to his novel? That would be scary enough. What if he turned around and there was no one in his chair? Jamie had a suspicion that sight could very well drive him mad.

Wiping his sweaty palms against the leg of his corduroys, he took a deep breath and whirled around. His eyes were slammed shut and he could feel every beat of his pounding heart behind his eyes.

“You’re being absolutely absurd,” he said to himself, in a vain effort to bolster his flagging self-confidence. “Just open your eyes and get it over with.” Steeling himself with one final deep breath, Jamie obeyed his own command. His blue eyes popped open and there was no one sitting at his desk. In fact, his chair was exactly where he’d left it, turned to the side parallel