CHAPTER 16
The hospital’s van was winched from the gully by
its back axle. Once at the top of the mesa, it was given a cursory
examination by the detectives before being loaded onto a flatbed
and hauled to the department for forensic scrutiny.
Langdon Stone walked to his Jeep and
waited for Savvy Dunbar, who’d accompanied him after she’d gotten
back from visiting Mad Maddie at Seagull Pointe. Savvy wasn’t known
for idle chitchat, but she’d been dead quiet the whole trip.
“What’s eating you?” he asked as Savvy approached.
“I was thinking about whom he found to
give him a ride.”
Lang nodded. The thought had been
circling his mind as well. “Whoever it is, if they’re still alive,
they’re in danger.”
“Big-time,” she said, staring at the
road where the tow truck with its cargo of a mangled hospital van
had disappeared. “What time do you think they picked him
up?”
“You mean, they probably weren’t
listening to the news and/or hadn’t had time to talk to anyone to
be warned about Justice.”
Nodding thoughtfully, she tucked an
errant strand of reddish-brown hair behind her ear. She was too
pretty to be a cop, in Lang’s opinion, not that he hadn’t seen his
share of lookers on the force, but for one reason or another they
seemed to move on quickly. He expected Savvy to last another six
months at the most.
“He drove off from Halo Valley around
six or six thirty,” Lang said, going through the timeline. “Headed
west. Got to the turnoff and drove through the chain around
sevenish? Had ditched the van by seven fifteen or seven thirty.
Walked back to the road and waited. Somebody came along and he
flagged them down.”
“He would have been in his inmate
clothes,” Savvy said.
“A woman wouldn’t have stopped for him,
most likely.”
“Not a man, either. Not dressed the way
he was.”
Lang thought that over. “If he was on
foot, we’d have found him by now.”
“Is there anyone he could have
contacted to help him?”
“Not that we know of.” Lang grimaced.
“The man had no friends, and he tried to kill all his relatives.
Even his mother.”
Savvy opened the passenger door to
Lang’s Jeep and climbed inside. Lang slid into the driver’s seat
and gave her a sideways look. “There something you’re not telling
me about her?”
“I hope we find him soon,” was her only
answer.
Laura felt almost ill with worry.
Promising was one thing; following through was quite another. She’d
said she would let down her guard. Allow Justice into her thoughts.
She’d promised; then she’d backed off.
But it wasn’t just herself she was
thinking of: it was her baby, too. Justice wanted to harm them
both. And that was how he’d found her. Something to do with the
baby she didn’t really understand, but that was why she was in his
crosshairs now.
Harrison, after convincing her that he
was really on her side, had then brought his laptop into her house
and was currently balanced on one of her kitchen café chairs,
typing across the keyboard with surprising alacrity. When she’d
started waffling about “calling” Justice, he’d simply made himself
comfortable and mumbled something about catching up on his
notes.
Laura had tried not to pace. She’d
tried not to think too much about the baby growing inside her and
the fate of Catherine and her sisters should Justice actually get
past their defenses. She knew she was the most vulnerable, because
she seemed to be the one he’d most zeroed in on. Because she was
outside the gates? Because she was pregnant? Maybe
both?
Maybe she should go to the police. Lay
it all out and take her chances with them. But the explanations
would be so messy, and she knew she would be believed even less by
them than Harrison Frost.
Could she really count on Harrison to
be her ally? It seemed kind of unlikely except that he had
something to gain, too. And so far he was the only one who knew she
was related to the women at Siren Song.
And, well, she liked him.
Laura ran her hands through her hair,
closed her eyes, shook her head at herself. She dragged her gaze
from Harrison’s shoulders as he bent over the laptop and
concentrated instead on her own relationship with the man who
wanted to take her life, Justice Turnbull.
When she was younger, she had sensed
Justice but hadn’t been fully aware of what his voice was trying to
say, what he was planning. Her gift hadn’t been as refined then,
and she’d only been interested in the messages that crossed her
mind in a mild eavesdropping way. She hadn’t understood that he was
a killer until he began his rampage two years earlier, and then,
just as his voice had crystallized in her consciousness, he’d been
captured and incarcerated, his sibilant, hissing tones disappearing
with him inside the walls of Halo Valley Security
Hospital.
Thank God.
But then, yesterday . . . was it just
yesterday? . . . his voice had suddenly blasted into her head
again. Louder. Persistent. Boiling over with his hateful need to
hurt them all!
She’d slammed the door down but good,
and still he managed to penetrate if she wasn’t completely
vigilant.
And now she was thinking of cracking
open that door?
She looked over at Harrison again. He
was raring to go, ready to contact Justice through Laura, find out
where he was, and go after him. Was that the way to handle this?
Would she help capture him again, or would playing a game of cat
and mouse only do worse harm?
As she watched, Harrison ran his hands
through his hair, much as she just had, but then he pulled on the
longish strands at his nape. His gaze was glued to the words on the
laptop, but she sensed his sideways interest. It was a kind of
radar reserved for people who knew each other well. She’d seen it
in people in love. Had experienced it a bit with Byron, though he’d
been one of those people hard to understand at any real level. It
was a silent communication that spoke volumes. Harrison was tuned
in to her, but she was currently shuttered, powered
down.
She was afraid.
“Wanna talk about the Colony?” he asked
casually, his gaze still on his laptop.
“No.” She’d already told him more than
she’d intended.
“Maybe some of the past history, long
before you and your sisters?”
“There’s a book with the Deception Bay
Historical Society that lists my ancestors,” she told him. “It was
written by a doctor who attended us when we were younger, I think,
and Catherine considers it a violation of ethics and our
privacy.”
“She might be right. Where’s this
doctor?”
“Dead. Fell off the jetty into the
Pacific a long time ago.”
“Is that so? You know, a lot of people
associated with the Colony wind up dead.”
“Every living thing dies, eventually,
Harrison,” she said.
“I know. But some of the people at
Siren Song seem to have died before their time.” He set the laptop
aside and looked up at her as she stood near the sink. “Take Mary,
your mother, for example. I found no record of her, no birth or
death certificates. Kinda odd, don’t you think?”
“I don’t know what to think anymore,”
she admitted. And that was true. No matter how hard she tried to
gain some “normalcy” in her life, it never happened. Her youth had
been centered at the lodge, and yeah, the people within, her
relatives, were strange by anyone’s standards. She’d escaped and
gone on to nursing school, but even there she had been isolated,
hadn’t made many friends, and then there had been Byron . . . and
now she was pregnant by a man from whom she was divorced. “A lot of
what goes on at the lodge is ‘odd,’” she said, making finger
quotes.
“So, you’re telling me I should look up
this book if I want to know about your family?”
“It’s like a family tree, I
understand.” She thought a moment, then added, “I just worry that
something might end up in print that I never meant to broadcast. If
you check the history, that’s all available information. I don’t
want my family to think I’m a traitor.”
“I don’t want to hurt you,” he said
seriously, his gaze touching hers through the wire-rimmed glasses
he wore while working on the computer. Oh, God, how she wanted to
believe him, to trust him, but he really didn’t understand about
Justice’s sense of injustice, his need for revenge, how deep the
seeds of evil had been planted in his heart.
She licked her lips nervously and
walked to the small pantry near the back door, to search for tea .
. . to do something, anything to keep busy.
“I told you I won’t write anything you
don’t want me to.” He turned all the way around in the chair and
looked at her with such honesty that she believed him. Sort
of.
“Thanks.”
“Can you tell me a little more how
Justice fits in, though?”
She snagged a bag of herbal tea,
something called Calm, and closed the cupboard door. “All I know is
that Madeline Turnbull is a cousin to my aunt and mother. So
Justice is some kind of distant cousin to me.”
“But you’ve met him? He was part of
your . . . clan?”
She tried to roll back the years, the
memories that for so long she’d kept at bay. “Yeah, I’ve met him.
When I was a kid. He used to come to the lodge when he was younger,
I think.” She found a cup and filled it with water.
“You were how old then?”
“Six, maybe?” In reality she wasn’t
completely certain. There were secrets within secrets between
Catherine and Mary, and Catherine never felt compelled to bring
them to the light of day unless it was absolutely necessary, even
to Laura and her sisters.
“Around Justice’s age?”
“I guess.” She placed the cup in the
microwave and set the timer before hitting the START button. “You want some tea . . . or coffee or . .
. ?”
He shook his head, intent on his
questions. “And your mom died when you were around
ten?”
“That’s what I said,” Laura said
stiffly. He’d hit a nerve again. Because she just didn’t know, and
really, she should. But the details around her mother’s death were
hazy, and Laura was almost embarrassed that she knew so
little.
“And she’s buried in the graveyard on
the property?”
“I think I already told you
that.”
He took off his glasses and set them on
the table. Lacing his fingers on the crown of his head, he looked
over at her. “What happened to her? I mean, what killed
her?”
“Catherine said she died of a broken
heart. I know that sounds . . . unreal.” The microwave bell dinged
and she grabbed the cup, then dunked the tea bag into the steaming
water.
Harrison skewered her with a look.
“What does that mean, exactly? ‘Died of a broken heart’? People say
that all the time, but what does it really mean? She wasted away
after being rejected by her lover?”
Laura shrugged and shook her head. “I
think there wasn’t any one particular cause. She just died.” She
hesitated, stared at the darkening blossom of water from the bag,
then added, “She had a number of lovers, apparently.”
“You all have different
fathers.”
“Yes . . .”
“It must have been before they closed
and locked the gates.”
“Not funny.”
“A little funny,” he argued, one side
of his mouth lifting. “I was just trying to lighten things
up.”
“Sure.”
“Really. I’m sorry,” he said, but the
glimmer in his eyes told her otherwise. “So, how many sisters do
you have?”
Back to business. Of course. “There are
seven living at the lodge,” Laura admitted.
“How much do you remember of your
mother?”
“Not much.” There were a few memories,
of course. Mary smiling rarely at her daughter, even laughing on a
rare occasion. She’d spent hours braiding her daughters’ hair, or
looking wistfully in a mirror at her own image. Laura remembered
Mary taking long walks, toward the sea, always alone, never letting
any of her children tag after her. They’d followed, of course, and
found her standing upon a cliff, staring down at the crashing waves
far below. In those moments, she’d seemed lost to Laura and her
sisters. As they stood under the canopy of shivering firs, rain
plopping along the forest floor, Mary had seemed unconscious of the
weather.
She blinked, chasing away the blurry
images and finding Harrison Frost sitting in her cozy, if worn
little kitchen, staring up at her so intently, her heart
kick-started. “It’s Catherine who’s forefront in my mind. She was
the one who was with us. She might have been my aunt, but she was
available . . . she was there . . . when my real mother
wasn’t.”
“Where was Mary?”
“Oh, she was around.” Laura set the wet
tea bag on a saucer near the faucet. “Just living her own life. I
remember different men coming from her wing of the house, where we
weren’t allowed,” Laura admitted uncomfortably. “And then they
stopped coming, and for a while we didn’t realize she was gone,
until Catherine showed us the headstone.”
Harrison got to his feet and leaned
back against the table, his fingers curling over its edge. “That’s
some story. It’s strangely fable-like.”
“This is still off the record, right?”
She blew across the hot, fragrant water.
He lifted a hand of surrender. “Until
you give me a signal, I’m just gathering information.”
She wouldn’t meet his eyes, felt
slightly panicky. She had set this in motion but still wanted to
put on the brakes. She buried her nose in her teacup and took a
long swallow of a blend of jasmine and spice, trying to calm
herself. She was a jangle of nerves, as much from Harrison Frost as
Justice. Maybe it was because her hormones were out of whack from
the pregnancy, or maybe it was the race of adrenaline through her
blood at the thought of Justice free and stalking her, but she
found it difficult to stay calm. Despite the name of the damned
tea.
“Your mother named you?”
“Yes.”
“You know, Lorelei had an unfaithful
lover and threw herself to her death into the Rhine River. Sailors
were lured by her voice from the large rock where she drowned and
to their own death. There is a real voice-like sound that spawned
the fable, apparently, an auditory trick of nature around that area
that’s been smothered now by the sounds of modern
urbanization.”
“You have a good memory,” she
said.
He smiled and threw a glance at the
computer. “I have the Internet.” He pointed to the device sticking
out from the side of his laptop; his wireless connection enabled
him to pick up the Internet anywhere.
“Ahh . . .”
“Have you ever wanted to find out more?
About your father, for instance?” he asked curiously.
“Mostly I’ve tried to blank it all out.
It’s always seemed . . . safer. I didn’t want to move back here at
all. That was my ex’s idea.”
“But now you’re divorced, and still
you’ve stayed.”
She nodded slowly.
“And you’re not leaving, even though
Justice is out there, because you want to help protect your
family?” he guessed, having been around her enough, she supposed,
to read her.
“Yes.” She looked past him, then said,
“What if I call him and it just spurs him to come after us? Speeds
up the timetable.”
“That’s a risk.”
“I don’t know if I can do it,” she
admitted.
Harrison looked at her. Really looked
at her. As a man eyes a woman. She felt a blush start beneath her
skin. Embarrassed, she turned away. What was wrong with her? Good
Lord. She’d met him yesterday, the day she’d learned she was
pregnant, and she was thinking these kinds of
thoughts?
It wasn’t right. It was downright
wrong.
There was an awkward silence between
them. Then he said, “Tell you what. Let’s take five. I’ve got
another story I’m working on. One that’s popping. You want to help
me with that one tonight?”
“What story?”
“It’s a project I’ve been working on
for a couple of weeks. In Seaside. My Deadly Sinners.”
“Your what?”
“Get your coat. I’ll tell you on the
way.”
“So now you’re cryptic.”
“So now I think we need to get going.”
Glancing outside, he added, “This damn fog’s making everything hazy
and cold, but it’s perfect for their purposes. It’s probably
reached Seaside.”
She looked at him,
mystified.
“Come on. It’ll get you away from
Deception Bay for a few hours,” he went on. “Give you some time to
think about what to do about Justice. Grab your hoodie. It’s bound
to get colder tonight.”
“Okay,” she said
uncertainly.
“You help me, and I’ll help you,” he
said. “Maybe all the stars will align and we’ll get my Deadly
Sinners tonight, and Justice Turnbull tomorrow.”
She snagged her coat from a hook by the
back door. “Dreamer!”
“Always,” he said, his gaze searching
her, and ridiculously, Laura’s heart did another little
flip.
She walked to the back door and told
herself that Harrison Frost was trouble.
Right now she had more than
enough.
The last thing she needed was this
reporter with his strong jaw, knowing eyes, and quick wit. But like
it or not, for the rest of the day, it seemed, she was stuck with
him.
The problem was, she did like it. She
liked it far more than she should.