CHAPTER 43
She wouldn’t cry.
Laura drove away from the restaurant
and bit her lip, but she wouldn’t cry.
She’d made a mistake with Harrison
Frost, thought he was somehow different from the other men she’d
muddled her life with, but, of course, she’d been wrong. She saw
the repressed fury in the set of his jaw, the accusations in his
eyes as he’d asked her about the pregnancy.
You should have told him.
“How?” she asked herself, her gaze
flicking to her rearview mirror. “When?” It all would have ended up
the same, though it might have ended faster.
What kind of a fool was she to fall so
hard and so fast? “Idiot,” she accused and caught a glimpse of her
reflection, shimmery blue eyes from her struggle against tears,
brown hair growing out with her lighter blond roots.
She needed a change. To get away from
here. From all the memories of her weird childhood, her disaster of
a marriage, the loss of her unborn child, and finally, to get away
from Harrison. She thought of their last few nights together,
camped out at Kirsten’s or the bed-and-breakfast. . . . It seemed
as if they’d shared a lifetime in little over a week.
Boy, oh boy, was that stupid.
She flicked on the radio, heard a
newscast about the attack at Siren Song, then found a station that
played a blend of pop and rock. Not that she really noticed. She
was concentrating on her next move. As long as Justice was on the
loose, no one was safe. Not her, not her sisters, not anyone close
to her. Nor innocent victims that got in his path. Currently, no
one could find him.
She alone could communicate with
him.
She alone would have to find the son of
a bitch. She didn’t have to worry about her baby’s life anymore,
nor did she really have concern that he would zero in on Harrison
now that they had split. Justice would probably know that about
her, like he knew everything else.
She said under her breath, “It’s just
you and me.” She wasn’t foolish enough to think she could kill him
or try to arrest him, but she might be able to find him or flush
him out, and then, once she knew where he was, she planned on
calling the police with an anonymous tip, one that had enough
information that they would follow up.
Afterward, once he was no longer a
threat to Siren Song and her sisters, Laura would figure out what
the hell she planned to do with the rest of her life.
“Don’t tell me, you screwed it up,”
Kirsten said when Harrison walked into the bakery-cum-deli and
carried their dirty plates into the back area. “I saw through the
window.”
“She’s mad.”
Kristen leveled her gaze at her
brother. “So apologize.”
“You don’t even know if the argument
was my fault.”
She took the dishes, placed them into
the sink, and began rinsing them with an industrial hose and
nozzle. Steam rose as she sprayed the plates. “Sure I do.” Letting
the hose retract, she leaned her hips against the stainless-steel
counter. “I saw how she looked at you and you looked at her.” A
small smile touched her lips. “It was the same way Manny and I used
to look at each other, Harrison. She’s a smart, beautiful, funny
woman, and you’re letting her slip through your
fingers.”
“You don’t understand.”
“What I understand is that I would do
just about anything to bring him back, to recapture what we had . .
. and I never will.” His sister shook her head. “Okay, I get it.
Laura didn’t tell you she was pregnant. Big deal.” When he just
stared at her, she said, “So I eavesdropped a little.”
“She lied.”
“Seriously? That’s what you think? With
all the hell you two have been going through? And what does it
matter? Even if she was still pregnant now. Does that make her a
different person? Well, yeah. She’ll be a mother, and that changes
women, usually for the better. But she’s still Laura, and you’re in
love with her whether you admit it or not. Do you know what she’s
going through? She just lost a baby. Maybe one she didn’t know
about for long, didn’t plan, but let me tell you, that woman is
hurting, and you, brother dear, only made it worse. I wouldn’t
blame her if she never takes you back.”
“Hey, whoa . . . we weren’t going
together.”
“Really? You aren’t crazy nuts in love
with her? You don’t fantasize about her day
and night? You haven’t thought about what it would be like to live
with her?” She shot him a glance that accused him of lying to her
and to himself. “And think about it from her point of view. What’s
she going to do the minute she meets you? Say, ‘Hi. I’m Laura, and
I’m pregnant with my ex-husband’s child’? I don’t think so. How did
you find out, anyway? From her ex?”
Harrison didn’t answer.
“It doesn’t matter, anyway,” Kirsten
said, warming to her topic as only she could. “Once Laura didn’t
tell you from the get-go, when would there have been the right
opportunity? And then she loses the baby. . . . God, Harrison, quit
being so tunnel-visioned, such a man, and
think about her, what she’s going through! Take your damned male
ego out of the equation, would you?”
Harrison had heard enough. “Thanks for
all the sisterly advice.”
“Anytime. It’s free. Oh, and another
thing, you weren’t seeing someone else, were you? Some
blonde?”
He shook his head. “What are you
talking about? I’m not seeing anyone. I met Geena Cho for a drink
the other day, but that was really about work.”
“Is Cho Asian? ’Cause this one’s
definitely not. She came in today, ordered coffee. Asked if I was
Kirsten Rojas and my brother was Harrison Frost. When I said yeah,
she asked where you lived. I didn’t tell her, just directed her
skinny ass to the Breeze.” She leveled her
gaze at her brother. “But she’s not worth losing Laura
over.”
“I don’t know what the hell you’re
talking about,” he muttered again.
She cupped her hands around her mouth.
“I’m saying don’t lose Laura.”
He shook his head and walked out the
door again, skirting mud puddles on the way to his car. His head
felt heavy with unwanted information, and Kirsten’s voice echoed
through his brain. You aren’t crazy nuts in love
with her? “Hell,” he muttered and climbed into his Impala.
He needed to think things through, and he usually did it best when
he worked. He had an inside look at Turnbull’s last rampage, so
he’d start there. He had direct quotes from the maniac and could
use the phone calls as his hook into his piece.
He cut through the back roads of town
and hit the main road as his cell phone rang. Hoping that Laura was
calling him, he glanced at the display. Not Laura. Not Justice. But
a number he recognized as belonging to the cell phone of Pauline
Kirby. She’d probably heard of his involvement at the Zellman
murder scene.
He wasn’t in the mood to talk to her
and instead let her leave a message.
On the drive to Ocean Park he tried to
dismiss all of Kirsten’s pointed remarks.
You don’t fantasize
about her day and night? You haven’t thought about what it would be
like to live with her?
How did you find out,
anyway? From her ex?
The words kept turning over in his
mind.
You aren’t crazy nuts
in love with her?
How did you find out,
anyway? From her ex?
Well, yeah, but the more he thought
about it, the more it bothered him that he’d really twigged to her
pregnancy thanks to Zellman. Despite patient/doctor privilege, the
psychiatrist had let it slip that pregnant women from the Colony
were Justice’s primary targets. At the time, Harrison thought
Zellman was just showing off, trying to impress him with his
knowledge of the maniac.
The maniac who he’d
unintentionally helped set free.
His thoughts took a dark turn, his
fingers tightening over the steering wheel.
It was almost as if Zellman had seeded
the information about the pregnancies to him. Had the doctor
slipped it in on purpose? But why? Zellman couldn’t have known
Laura was pregnant. Only she knew. And
Justice.
What the hell was Zellman’s game?
Harrison felt that same old distrust for the man again as he took a
corner a little too fast and corrected, the Chevy’s tires sliding a
bit.
Had it really been Justice on the phone
to him?
With that disturbing thought gnawing at
him, he pulled into the lot at Ocean Park Hospital and remembered
the last time he’d been here, to pick up Laura, to see that jerk of
an ex-husband accost her before driving off in his Corvette. It had
only been one day.
One helluva day.
Inside the hospital, he inquired about
Brandt Zellman and was told only that he was “stable.” He asked
about the patient’s father, but the information desk had no
information about Zellman, and in a quick scan of the partially
full lot, he didn’t see the black Lexus. He tried another tack and
asked if Conrad Weiser was well enough to have visitors, but was
met with a stony glance and a shake of the receptionist’s
head.
He wanted to see Laura but she wasn’t
here. With an effort, he shoved thoughts of her aside and
concentrated on Zellman. So where would the doctor go? Either to
his home or his office.
Climbing back in his car, he headed
toward the Breeze offices, a place where he
could do some research. Then he was going to find Zellman and
confront him. Something was very, very off with the
guy.
“I knew I’d find you here, stupid ass!”
James eyed his brother with pure disgust. Mike had been searching
the cabins again and had come back to the manager’s unit to have
another granola bar, the only thing he’d taken from the house
before he’d snuck out.
“You didn’t have to come after
me.”
“Of course I did! Mom and Dad are gonna
murder us when they find out!”
James was really mad, his jaw working
just like Dad’s when he was about to hit the roof, his eyes
glittering, as if it was all he could do not to take a swing at his
little brother right here and now. So let him.
“Let’s go,” James ordered.
“No.”
“Hey, dickwad, did you hear me? We’re
leaving and we’re leaving now.” James glanced around at the rotting
boards and crumbling mantel and shook his head. “You can’t really
want to stay here.”
“Just a few more hours. The tide’ll be
out around eight . . . at eight eighteen, to be exact, and we can
get to the lighthouse easily then. It’s light till nine at this
time of year, too.”
“You’re certifiable!”
“It would be cool for you, too. Think
what your friends would say if you showed, I dunno, something like
. . . uh, a shoelace from Justice Turnbull’s boots.”
“Everyone would laugh their asses off!
How could I prove that?”
“With this?” Mike pulled out his
iPhone. “I’ll take pictures.”
“They’ll all say it was photoshopped,
or digitally corrected.”
“Not if I send ’em to Facebook while
we’re still out there . . . you know, a whole series?”
“It’s a stupid idea.” But he wasn’t as
adamant.
“What’ll it hurt?”
“What if the dude shows up, eh? What
then?”
“He won’t.”
“What if we get stuck out there . . .
?”
“Only if we’re morons.”
“Well, there’s the question.” James
eyed the broken-down couch as if he might sit down, then changed
his mind. “We could be. We probably are.”
At least he’d said “we.” “What if we
found something out there that breaks the case wide open and leads
the police to Justice Turnbull?”
James snorted.
“It could happen!” Mike insisted.
“Look. We go out there. Stay only fifteen minutes, or maybe, maybe
half an hour. Then we come back, and . . . and I’ll go straight
home with you.”
“Oh, sure.”
Mike pulled out the ace he had up his
sleeve. “I’ll even tell Belinda Mathis that you were the one who
made me go out there, that I got chicken at the last
minute.”
“Big deal.”
“Kara thinks it is and she’s been
talking to Belinda. You can see it on my text.” He scrolled through
a zillion texts on his phone. “Here.” that’s so cool bring us back
something.
Mike looked up at his brother. “She
means her and Belinda.”
James scowled. “I don’t care what
Belinda Mathis thinks.”
Liar. Mike
backed off. The hook was set. Now he just had to reel him in.
“Well, okay, but I’m going out there. And then I’ll go home. But
not before. And I’ll bring something back.”
He didn’t add, “For Belinda,” but he could see that James was
already making that leap.
“Then you won’t put up a fight?” James
demanded.
“Uh-uh.”
“And you’ll tell Mom and Dad you ran
off and I had to come and bring you back?”
“Yep.”
James sighed and looked through a dirty
pane to the outside, where, Mike knew, he could see the ocean. “I
must be nuts,” he muttered. “And I want your Mariners’ tickets!”
The Mariners were the Seattle baseball team, and Mike had scored a
couple of tickets for his birthday.
“Deal,” he said quickly. He wasn’t into
baseball, anyway.
In just a few more hours . . . he’d
finally get to see into Justice Turnbull’s lair.
My head pounds. The
knot on my crown is tender. The pain in my shoulder is
excruciating, burning. . . .
It was all I could do
to drive back to the bait shop, leave the van in its parking place,
and stagger to my room.
How could I have been
so careless?
I remember clearly the
exhilaration of being inside the forbidden walls, of plotting all
their deaths, and then seeing the one out of the corner of my
eye.
Ravinia—horrid,
scurrilous creature—trying to escape.
I smile as I think how
I thwarted her escape, aborted her attempt for freedom. And I would
have killed her, too, slit her fine white throat and watched her
blood spray and pump from her body. I imagined the surprise in her
eyes, the fear, the anguish when she knew she was about to die . .
. and then the other one attacked. Smashed something hard that
nearly cracked my skull. Before I could turn around, another hard
blow. That glanced off my shoulder.
Bitch! You will
pay!
Inside my room, I take
off my jacket gingerly. The pounding in my head throbs, and my
shoulder is nearly useless. But my arm still
works.
I need to heal. To
recuperate.
Food and sleep and the
sea . . . I have to return. . . .
And then, the spawn of
Satan will feel my wrath . . . all of them.
And Lorelei will
understand she cannot save them.
She is weaker now.
Battered from the loss of her child. I sense no wall stopping my
thoughts from reaching her.
It’s your fault, sssisterr, I think. They will all die because of you. . .
.
In a blink, her wall is
up again and I can’t break through. But she saw . . . she witnessed
her doom.
I take great comfort in
the future and will my body to heal.
Lorelei will
die.
Slowly.
Painfully.
Forever
silenced.