by Deirdre Dore
Astonished, Raquel ran forward, stopping abruptly when she saw the size of the hole that had opened between the thick, gnarled roots of the oak. She was surprised the entire tree didn’t sink. It didn’t, though. It swayed but didn’t fall.
Brent and Tavey ran up behind her and she waved them back. “Get back, I’m not sure how stable it is.”
“Here.” Tavey handed her the flashlight. Raquel took it, handing Tavey the gun, and went to her stomach, belly-crawling to the edge of the hole.
She flashed the light around, at first not seeing much except tree roots and hairy-looking dirt, and some thick spiderwebs that glittered with water droplets when she shined the light on them. The water dripping from the exposed roots sounded like it was falling much deeper than Raquel expected.
She pointed the flashlight down between the shallow roots and saw the staring eyes and bloated white face of George Jones. He’d fallen on his back and had broken his neck by the look of it, his head was canted at an awkward angle. Water puddled beneath him in a small pool.
Raquel moved the flashlight around a little more and saw that the box he’d been carrying had spilled its contents: a small doll, some blond hair, and a yellow ribbon. Summer’s things.
Something white caught Raquel’s eye and she shifted the flashlight just a few feet over. The small bones of a child lay there, one delicate arm extended toward the ribbon, as if she were reaching for it, even after all this time.
35
BRENT HELD RAQUEL in his arms as they waited for the cops to arrive. Full dark had fallen and the rain had stopped, but they were all wet, cold, and tired. They’d heard the sirens clearly just after Raquel had relayed what she’d seen in the hole, but it was taking the police a while to make their way through the woods. They had dogs as well. The howls could be heard for miles. In order to help the searchers, Tavey had placed the flashlight on the ground, propped up so that the beam shined on the limbs above them.
Brent just closed his eyes and laid his head on top of Raquel’s. He wanted nothing more than a bath, a steak, and her in bed with him.
“She’s there,” she whispered to him. “She’s been there all this time.”
“I know,” he said, stroking her head. They weren’t even that far from Abraham’s and Tavey’s homes. He’d read the transcripts. Searchers had been all over this area. No one had noticed that there was a hole in between the roots of the tree big enough for a little girl to fall through as she ran, a little girl who’d been scared.
He watched the dark for lights, thinking about it, thinking about all Raquel had done to get here, to find her Summer.
“You’re in trouble, you know,” he told her. “Ryan will have to have you charged for breaking Jane out.”
Raquel nodded. “I know.”
Tavey let out an annoyed snort. “It would serve you right, but I don’t think I’m going to let my best friend go to jail, even if you are an idiot.”
Brent looked at Tavey’s folded arms, at the tilt of her jaw. “He’s FBI. He’ll have to . . .”
Tavey waved one manicured hand. “He’s the agent in charge of this case. Who’s to say Jane didn’t force Raquel to help her escape.”
“No one is going to believe that.” Raquel sighed against Brent’s shoulder.
“We’ll see,” Tavey argued, and Brent didn’t doubt that she’d get her way. He squeezed Raquel, glad of it if it meant that she wouldn’t go to jail, though he didn’t see how she was going to avoid losing her job.
“You can come with me to make documentaries,” he suggested. “I think you’d be great at it.”
“Me?” Raquel pulled back to look at him, her eyes drifting over his face. “You think so, huh?”
“Or you can just hang out,” he suggested. “That sounds nice.”
Raquel snorted and laid her head back on his shoulder. “Actually, I was thinking about working with children whose parents are addicts, helping them somehow.”
“Really?” Tavey sounded curious. “You would be good at that.”
Jane chose that moment to speak, her voice hoarse, like she’d been screaming. “Gloria Belle didn’t want to dump Charlie in the pond,” she said out of nowhere, her voice strangely calm. “Charlie shot Jessop’s son Nick first, but he didn’t kill him. He killed Jessica, but Nick had a gun, and he shot Charlie and killed him. Mark shot Nick.”
Raquel, Brent, and Tavey remained silent, listening to what sounded like a confession. The dark press of night seemed to be easing the story out of Jane a syllable at a time, urging her to release her secrets.
“Mark wanted to dump all the bodies, but Gloria Belle wouldn’t let him. She loved Charlie. We buried Charlie with the money in the old house instead.”
She paused for a moment, and Brent thought he saw the flicker of a flashlight.
“I forgot,” she whispered. “I made myself forget, made myself Circe. She doesn’t feel much, not deeply, and I can hide.”
Raquel didn’t want to ask any questions for fear of stopping the tale, but she wanted to know how George had become involved, how Summer had come to be in a hole in the woods while Chris had escaped.
“What about Summer? How did she end up here, Jane?”
There was a moment of silence, and it seemed to swell, choking off Raquel’s air. She wanted to know how her friend had died, wanted to know so badly.
Then Jane continued. “George made the plans. He spoke to Jessop for us; he arranged the drops and the meets. He was easy to miss—no one would ever think he could be a drug dealer, so he was perfect. Even Mark thought he was stupid and useless. I knew he couldn’t be that stupid. He was part Haven. He’d chosen the paper mill because he’d known about it when he was a kid. Abraham’s father, George’s father, had worked there. George had arranged for Charlie to fake his own death, to work for Jessop.
“It doesn’t matter now,” she continued, “but it makes sense, you see. He was a boy no one wanted, an invisible person. Jessop had given him a purpose, and he didn’t see that it wasn’t good.”
The light flashed again, and Brent thought that the cops were getting closer, only it hadn’t looked like a flashlight, not exactly. It had looked more like the flicker of a star.
“Mark told him that Nick and Jessica had never arrived and that Charlie had run off with the money, and George said he believed him, but he didn’t, not really. The next day, the day that Chris and Summer decided to go for a walk in the woods, George came to see the mill. He caught me there. I was going to get some of the money. Just a little . . .”
Her voice had dropped to a low whisper, as if she didn’t want to say the next part, but she couldn’t seem to help herself.
“I ran, and he chased me here. Summer liked this tree. She liked to hide in it. She liked the way the rain sounded when it hit the leaves.”
Brent felt Raquel’s tears on his shoulder and looked to see that Tavey was crying as well.
“She brought me here once,” Raquel said softly. “I didn’t remember until today. We were hiding from Gloria Belle. She’d come to take me again.”
Brent tightened his arms around her. He hadn’t known that, didn’t want to think about the implications of Raquel at the mercy of her mother, who had cared about only one thing, in the end.
“I guess she’d decided to show Chris,” Jane continued, “but George caught me, and he held a gun to my head, and the girls saw. Chris saw,” she clarified, “and he tried to catch her.”
“Summer told her to run, didn’t she?” Raquel asked.
“She did,” Jane agreed.
Brent looked up, over Raquel’s head, and saw a woman, outlined by starlight, dressed in the clothing of someone who made her life in the woods, some kind of skins, and her face looked a great deal like Jane’s. Her hair was down but small braids had been woven into it with some kind of string. A long, wicked-looking knife was belt
ed at her waist. She met his eyes and smiled at him.
He blinked, and she was gone.
Brent started to ask if anyone else had seen her, but Jane kept talking.
“George grabbed at her, but she pulled away, running into the fog. At the time, I thought she was hiding. I told George to go, that she would be fine, but she never came back, so I left, too. I stayed Circe, because Circe didn’t care. It’s much easier to be Circe,” she concluded, and stopped talking.
Epilogue
THREE MONTHS LATER, on a Sunday morning in early fall, the Mistresses of Fate and their men gathered around the tree in the small cemetery in the center of Fate, where they’d had the bones of Summer Breen Haven officially interred. A headstone marked her grave now, but they’d left the small cross they’d made so long ago, curling new ribbons around it, three ribbons, one blue, one red, one yellow.
“It seems right,” Chris said, looking around at all of them. “She belongs here, where we’ve visited her so long.”
Raquel nodded and squeezed Brent around his waist. They’d told Chris the story that Jane had shared with them while they’d been waiting, about how George had chased Chris, but Summer had stepped between them and told her to run.
Chris had shaken her head, tears dripping down her face. “I still don’t remember anything except the fog. I remember that.”
Raquel didn’t think that Jane would ever speak again. After Ryan and the rest of the FBI and local authorities arrived on the scene, she’d been taken back to the psychiatric ward of the hospital where she’d been kept before, but they hadn’t needed her testimony after all. George had kept meticulous records of the gang’s activities, and all the houses where missing children were being kept had been raided and the girls rescued.
Ninny was released in spite of her role in breaking Jane out, and Raquel, although she lost her job, was not officially charged.
“Well,” Tavey said briskly, sliding her arm through Tyler’s elbow. “I know that I for one will be glad to know that when we visit her now, we’ll actually be visiting her grave. She’s here.”
Raquel glanced up at Brent, a small smile on her face. He’d told her what he’d seen that night in the woods. She didn’t doubt it. If anyone could move between worlds, between life and death, hunting like a wild girl in the forest, it would be Summer, for whom nothing had ever seemed impossible, and for whom the world had never held any fear. She’d always been there, the thread connecting all of them together, the string that had made them all who they were.
Raquel planned to live her life without fear now, with Brent, wherever he happened to go, helping kids who needed it whenever she could, in honor of Summer, and herself. The love that tied her here to Fate would always remain, and she would always come back.
“Summer has always been here,” she said simply, and it was the truth.
About the Author
Deirdre Dore began writing in second grade, when she was told to create a story about the Trail of Tears, and has never stopped. She has worked as an assistant editor, an English teacher, and a software trainer, among various other careers, but becoming a full-time author has always been her end goal. She lives near her family in Houston, Texas, with her husband and two dogs.
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Also by Deirdre Dore
Whispers of Fate
Strings of Fate
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This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and events are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2014 by Deirdre Dore
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First Pocket Star Books ebook edition September 2014
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ISBN 978-1-4767-2772-1
