Hush Little Girl

by Lisa Regan

  “I’ll bet,” Josie muttered.

  Adam Long told the same story, Mettner related. Tom Booth admitted that many years ago he had spied on Lorelei after Celeste told him about her, especially given that her twenty acres stood in the way of them expanding the resort, but said he’d never officially met her and since he’d only followed her to and from the produce market once, he’d had no idea that she had had children. The three of them had given alibis for one another—they were all at the resort on Friday morning. Celeste said she had seen both Adam and Tom that morning. All three of them had been released. Back to square one.

  Unless Josie could find Rory.

  She was still in her driveway. She looked up at her dark house, knowing she should go back inside and get back into bed with her husband and her dog. Let someone else solve the case, get the bad guy. Sawyer’s words haunted her. The great Josie Quinn had to have the spotlight. But that wasn’t it. It wasn’t that she wanted or needed the spotlight. Like Emily, she had compulsions when it came to her work. The worst case of her life was the missing girls’ case from six years ago, and it hadn’t even been her case. She’d been on suspension, but she’d pushed the envelope. All these years later, she was appalled at the behavior of that rash, brazen woman. Josie knew how important it was to follow all the rules and to not make things personal.

  But she was still going to go get Rory.

  Not as a police officer. She didn’t even have her gun. She didn’t need it. She would never use it on him. She was going because she had to. Because his mother had once rescued her from a snow and sleet storm. Because his mother had spent fifteen years trying to protect him, and now he was out there, alone, vulnerable, being hunted. A killer hunting a killer, she thought. It was fitting. Sad, but fitting. She was doing this as a concerned civilian, a friend of his little sister’s. That’s what she told herself. Once she found him, she’d deliver him safely to her team and let them do the rest. Let them arrest Lorelei and Holly’s killer.

  Josie knew that despite all her internal justifications, she was in the wrong. Otherwise, she wouldn’t be doing this in the dark without telling anyone. She picked up her phone. Her finger lingered over Mettner’s name. But she tossed it aside, popped her emergency brake and let her car roll silently out of the driveway. Once she was in the street, she turned it on and started driving.

  It was five a.m. by the time Josie arrived at Harper’s Peak. The sky was still an inky black. She knew she had about an hour and a half before sunrise. The grounds and parking lots were silent and still. Josie found a spot in the lot of the main building and left her car there. She was far enough from the lobby doors that no one at the front desk would notice her skulking around. Tucking her hands into her jacket pockets, she strode across the grounds like she belonged there. There was no rule against guests being outside during the night. There were several asphalt paths lit with tiny lanterns staked into the ground. She stayed off the paths but close enough to them to take advantage of their light. When she got near Griffin Hall, she veered off into the grass. Overhead, clouds covered the moon. Once she lost the light, she stopped and took out her night vision goggles, fixing them onto her head, and taking a look around. Satisfied that she wasn’t going to unknowingly bump into any creatures or inanimate objects, she carried on. The walk took longer than she anticipated, but Josie wanted to approach the tiny church from the back. Once she reached the ridge, the moon emerged from the clouds, bathing everything in a silver light. She took off her goggles and pocketed them. Once her eyes adjusted, she skulked closer to the church. There was a door at the back. As she got closer to it, she saw the latch was broken.

  Josie pushed the door open as slowly as possible, not wanting to make any noise. As she stepped inside, her eyes adjusted once more. The altar stone and pulpit cast large shadows against a flickering light in the center of the church. Four strides brought her to the edge of the altar. There, between the two rows of pews, on the floor, was Rory. He lay curled on his side on top of a sleeping bag. Next to him was a large duffel bag. Josie could see a piece of clothing sticking out of it. His personal belongings, she thought. He stared at a candle on the floor, its flame dancing.

  “Rory,” Josie whispered.

  He jumped up, hands held out in front of him, searching all around. “Who is it?” he hissed.

  Josie stepped closer, into the light. She held her hands out as well, to show him she was unarmed. “Josie Quinn,” she said. “I talked to your sister, Emily, tonight.”

  Whipping around, he stared at her. His face was streaked with dirt. Locks of his thick brown hair stuck up on one side of his head. The single white forelock in the center of his forehead glowed in the candlelight. He wore a black sweatshirt and jeans streaked with dried blood. Josie guessed the blood belonged to Reed Bryan. A fetid combination of smells surrounded him—body odor, the coppery scent of blood, and something earthy. He froze in place but Josie noticed his knees were bent, the heels of his feet slightly off the floor. He was ready to pounce.

  “I’m not going to hurt you,” she said. “I just want to talk. Please.”

  “Is Emily all right?”

  “Yes. She’s fine.”

  His posture relaxed slightly. His hands dropped to his sides. “How did you find me?”

  “You brought Holly here.”

  “Yeah, so?”

  “A dead body in front of a church? No one is coming out here for at least a couple of weeks.”

  A hint of a smile crossed his face. “Hiding in plain sight.”

  “Rory, I came to ask you to come with me.”

  “Where?”

  “To the police station.”

  He motioned to the altar behind her. “Are there a bunch of police outside?”

  Josie shook her head. She took a step closer to him even though doing so made her heart tick faster. He was only fifteen, but he was taller than her. Although he was thin and wiry, Josie remembered well how quickly and brutally he had overcome her before. “No,” she answered. “It’s just me, and I’m not here as a police officer. I don’t even have my gun. I’m not a threat to you—or to the creature.”

  “Pax told you that, didn’t he?”

  “Yes.”

  “The creature didn’t kill my family. Neither did I.”

  “I know that,” Josie said.

  “How do you know?”

  “I figured it out,” Josie said.

  “No one is going to believe me,” he muttered, his voice growing small.

  Josie took a step closer to him, arms still out, her shoulders aching. “I believe you.”

  “I brought Holly here so he would see what he had done, and so he would know that I wasn’t going to let him get away with what he did, but I didn’t kill that other lady. The one you were with that night. I didn’t shoot at you.”

  “I know.”

  “I don’t even have a gun. I never had a gun. That was my mom’s. She kept it in the truck. It was for deer and bear and coyote. I was never allowed to touch it. Ever. I got real mad once and tried to get it out of the safe in the truck, but I couldn’t. I didn’t have the strength—even when I was most mad.”

  “I know,” Josie said.

  “But that doesn’t matter,” he insisted. “It doesn’t matter if you don’t believe me ’cause no one else will, and now I killed Pax’s dad. I didn’t mean it. I didn’t want to, but the creature… I got so mad. I don’t even remember…”

  “I don’t want to talk about that,” Josie said. “No matter what happens right now, tonight you’re going to have to go to the police. Do you understand that?”

  “I know. It’s exactly what my mom didn’t want.”

  “I’m sorry, Rory. I truly am, but right now I need you to help me. We both know who killed your mom and sister, and the first step to getting him put away is for you to come with me and tell my team everything you know.”

  “I don’t want to turn him in,” Rory said, an edge to his voice. “I want him to die. I w
ant to kill him. I want to smash his face into a million pieces.”

  Josie sensed an amorphous tension around him, and she didn’t want it to escalate. “I understand,” she said.

  He stopped talking. His dark eyes flashed in the candlelight. “Do you?”

  “He killed my grandmother,” Josie said. “The way you felt about your mom—that’s how I felt about my grandmother. She raised me, protected me, tried to keep me out of trouble, tried to do her best for me even when it wasn’t the best thing to do.”

  “That sounds like my mom.”

  Josie nodded. “I met your mom. You weren’t in the house that day. She helped me. Now let me help you.”

  Before he could respond, there was a creaking noise. Then a gust of air blew through the small room. The candle was extinguished. Rory slammed into her, pushing her toward the altar. “We have to go,” he said. He practically lifted her off her feet and threw her out the back door. She spun, disoriented, but then felt his hand in hers, tugging.

  “Run,” he said.

  Forty-One

  Rory pulled her along as her eyes tried once more to adjust to the moonlight. The sky had lightened somewhat but it was still very dark, especially in the woods. Pretty soon, tree branches whipped across her face, and she stumbled over a gnarled root and fell. Rory lifted her to her feet and kept pulling her. “Run!” he commanded. “He’ll kill us both.”

  As Josie stumbled through the forest behind him, she felt the sweat forming on his palm. Every so often a shaft of moonlight sliced through the trees. As they passed through one, Rory looked over his shoulder, beyond her, and she saw the fear in his wide eyes. He looked like a little boy. Gone was the monster who had attacked her in the Mitchell house. Gone was the monster who had beaten Reed Bryan with a shovel. This was the boy Lorelei saw—always—when she had looked at her son.

  They ran until a stitch developed in Josie’s side. Huffing, Rory stopped and leaned over, trying to catch his breath. Josie patted her pockets, looking for her night vision goggles, but they were gone. They must have fallen out. She still had her flashlight, though. When it appeared in her hand, Rory took it from her. “Don’t,” he said. “You’ll lead him right to us.”

  “You already did, you little bastard.”

  The sound of the unfamiliar voice in the dark made them both jump. Josie moved closer to Rory and they pressed their backs together, both searching the darkness for the man.

  “You ran in a circle, you idiots.” The voice came again, this time from a different direction. Overhead, the trees kept much of the dusky light of the approaching dawn out, although Josie could still see some shadows. One in particular morphed into a man as it drew closer. A sliver of light revealed the face of Adam Long. A sinister smile curled his lips. His white hair was in disarray. He wore a T-shirt, and when he lifted the shotgun in his hands, Josie saw what looked like a deep, festering stab wound on the inside of his forearm.

  Immediately she thought of the bloody handprint on Lorelei’s truck. “Lorelei called you,” Josie blurted, knowing from experience that more talking usually led to less shooting. Plus, if she could distract him, she could get the flashlight back from Rory, blind Adam with it and disarm him.

  Adam said nothing, so Josie kept going. “You’re their father. Rory and Holly.”

  “Is that what this little shit told you? I screwed my sister-in-law a few times, and he’s telling you we had babies? This kid lives in a fantasyland.”

  “He didn’t tell me,” Josie said. “You’ve got poliosis. So did Holly, so does Rory. It’s genetic. The white forelock.”

  Adam took one hand off the gun to tousle his hair. “My whole head is white, honey. Don’t mean shit.”

  “I saw your wedding photo,” Josie said. “It wasn’t easy to find online but I did. Back then you had black hair. Except for one lock of white hair in the front. When Emily was at your house, she saw your wedding photo, but she didn’t realize it was you. She thought it was Rory. She thought it was a photo of Celeste and Rory.”

  “So what? That kid’s just as nutty as this one. All Lorelei did was screw and spit out messed-up kids.”

  “You’re the one who’s messed-up!” Rory shouted.

  Josie snaked a hand behind her and grasped his arm. She didn’t want him rushing Adam. He would get shot.

  “Holly and Rory were yours,” Josie said. “Emily was not. Lorelei tried to raise them on her own but as Rory got older and bigger, she couldn’t control him. She wrote to you.”

  “No,” Adam said.

  “Yes,” Josie insisted. “I have part of the letter.”

  “I burned that letter. I brought it back and gave it back to her. Then after—I burned it. I burned everything. Every photo. Every document. Her laptop and phone. Every shred of evidence that she could have used to claim her spawn were mine.”

  Josie continued, wanting to keep him distracted. “She wanted you to come clean, to tell Celeste the truth, and to help her with Rory. The day of the murders, Rory got violent, very violent, and she called you on her cell phone. You went there. I don’t know why.”

  “I went there to tell her once and for all that I was not ever going to be her… whatever she wanted me to be. A dad. Whatever. You know I didn’t even know who the hell she was when I first met her? We ran into each other at the produce market. I was checking stuff out for the menu. Here was this hippie chick with a hot ass. Lived in the woods. Would screw anytime I showed up. It was the perfect situation. I didn’t find out who she was till I’d been married a year already. Found the paperwork in Celeste’s things. The whole story came out. But it was okay because Lorelei didn’t care. We were still going hot and heavy. Until she went and got knocked up. Even then, it wasn’t so bad at first. She didn’t care that I wasn’t part of the kid’s life. Until she got pregnant again, and this one started trying to kill his sister.”

  “It was perfect,” Rory said. “You ruined it.”

  Adam gave a dry laugh. His teeth gleamed, a flash of white. The longer they stood there, the more Josie’s eyes adjusted to the scant light rising in the sky. Sunrise was close. “Kid, you wouldn’t know perfect if it stabbed you in the damn neck. Your mother? She was a manipulative slut. I told her that DNA or no DNA, I was not your father. She was fine with that. Till you went and got all messed-up in the head. Then all of sudden she wanted to play house. When I told her it was never going to happen, she was fine with that, too. Then all of a sudden, one day, she wants me to leave my wife.”

  “You could have left your wife,” Josie pointed out. “There was nothing stopping you.”

  He shook his head, the moonlight casting shadows across his face. “I can’t leave my damn wife. We have a prenup because, as you saw, Celeste is a cold, selfish, bitter, hateful bitch. If she found out about Lorelei, about the kids, I’d be out on the street with nothing. Less than nothing. And if you think I was going to go from the luxury of Harper’s Peak to some shithole halfway house for messed-up kids in the woods without a penny to my name, you’re crazy. Lorelei was crazy ’cause she thought I would. I went there to tell her never to call me again.”

  “You came to the house to kill her!” Rory shouted.

  Josie felt him slip a little from her grasp. She dug her nails into his skin, and he stopped moving.

  Adam said, “No, kid. I never meant to kill her. It’s not my fault you got all psycho. You were going to kill her if I didn’t jump in. That bullet? It was meant for you, you little shit. You stabbed me! With my own damn penknife!”

  Josie thought she heard Rory sob. “What about Holly?” he cried.

  “That’s on you, too, kid. You were the one who tried to strangle her. How is it my fault she died? You’re the one who left her up at the church.”

  Josie said, “Holly died from blunt force trauma to her head, not from strangulation.”

  Rory said, “She was trying to help me. I did strangle her. I couldn’t help it. I got mad—the creature—I just, my hands were around her throa
t. That’s when mom called him. But I didn’t kill her. He came and he tried to kill me—”

  “You smashed your mom’s head off the counter. What did you expect?” Adam said.

  “He came after me, tried to hit me,” Rory explained. “Holly jumped on his back to try to stop him. He threw her off and she hit her head. That’s when I grabbed his penknife from his belt and stabbed him. He went outside. Holly was okay. She got up. She was talking. Then he came back inside with the gun. He shot our mom. Holly and I ran out to the woods to get away.”

  “It was your shoe prints in the kitchen and out back,” Josie said. “Size ten.”

  “Yeah,” Rory said. “I went with her to get away from him. I thought she was okay, but then she fell down and… stopped breathing.”

  “She had a head injury,” Josie said. “I’m sorry.”

  “I’m not,” said Adam. “One down, one to go.”

  “Just one?” Josie asked. “You really didn’t know about Emily?”

  He gave a harsh laugh. “I had no idea. Never saw her. Lorelei was damn good at keeping secrets. But the kid’s eight, and I stopped seeing Lorelei before she was born. I only went over there a few times after that when this monster was out of control.”

  “You were going to kill Emily, too!” Rory accused.

  “Only if she recognized me,” Adam said. “And she didn’t.”

  “Does Celeste know?” Josie asked. “Does she know what you’ve done? She gave you your alibi for Friday morning.”

  Again, he laughed. The sound sent a chill down Josie’s back. “Celeste alibied me because she thought I was at home asleep. I was, when she left to go meet Tom. They’ve been screwing around together for years now. They think I don’t know. She left, Lorelei called, and I knew Celeste would be busy with Tom for a few hours, so I went to settle things with Lorelei once and for all. Celeste never caught on—not to any of it—and I’m keeping it that way. I’ve just got this last bit of clean-up to do.” He lifted his chin in Rory’s direction. “I’ve been looking for this little prick out here in the woods for days. I almost hit you that one day—hit a tree instead. You’re always in the goddamn way.”