by Lisa Jackson
“You know the DNA you got back on the Preppy Pricks? And the girls, too?”
“That proved Zeke’s paternity, yes.” Mac was trying to be patient, but he could hear the edge of annoyance in his voice.
“You only asked to know the baby’s paternity.”
“Yeah?”
“Well, the tech found some other—unexpected—information in that DNA, and he called this morning to give you the news. I took the call.”
“How long is this build-up gonna go?” Mac demanded.
“Ends right here, killjoy. Your little girlfriend’s DNA matches one of the others. They’re full-on siblings.”
“What?”
“Rebecca Ryan Sutcliff is Jezebel Brentwood’s sister,” she said with relish.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Becca stood with Hudson outside their car, the wind slapping her hair around her face. They’d started driving toward the tract of land the locals called Siren Song when Becca had suddenly insisted they head away from Deception Bay and to a neighboring town to the south. Hudson hadn’t asked her why at the time, but when she proceeded to waste away half the afternoon in studied silence, hugging her dog, he’d asked her what was wrong. She’d been incapable of telling him that she didn’t want to go. After all this, she—didn’t—want—to—go. It was laughable, really, as much as she’d insisted on learning the truth, an insistence that had sent them barreling toward the coast. But now, now that she was on the brink of real discovery, she was paralyzed with fear and she didn’t know how to explain it.
“What’s going on?” Hudson had finally asked in frustration when they turned the Jetta back toward Deception Bay. Becca shook her head and kept her eyes on the road, unable to verbalize the feelings tight within her. “Maybe I should drive,” Hudson said, for about the fifth time.
“I’m fine.”
“You’re not acting fine.”
“I’m just—thinking.”
“Care to include me in that thinking?”
He sounded pissed and she didn’t blame him, but she really didn’t get it herself. She was running on emotion and sensation, and a deep fear for her baby’s life that seemed to have taken control.
He wants to kill you. He wants to kill your baby. She’d repressed her last vision, but after learning from the shopkeeper that Renee had asked about Siren Song, it had come to the fore, frightening her anew. She was desperately afraid for her baby. Afraid for Hudson. Afraid for herself.
Now they were at a lookout, gazing over the darkening ocean, gathering their thoughts. The lighthouse sat on its rocky mound to the south, and the murky island beyond had disappeared behind a fog bank. Night would be upon them very soon.
“Madame Madeline knew I was pregnant,” Becca said aloud. She’d said the same thing several times over the course of the afternoon.
“She seemed more like someone suffering from dementia than a ‘seer,’” Hudson answered. He’d also said the same thing over the course of the afternoon.
“I know you want to go to Siren Song.”
“I don’t have any problem seeing Mad Maddie first, but we need to make some kind of decision soon.” His eyes scanned the horizon.
“You don’t think it’s important,” Becca accused him.
“Renee got spooked by her,” Hudson allowed. “But she didn’t really learn anything from her.”
“Except that she was going to die.”
Hudson shook his head, his jaw tight. “Someone killed my sister by running her off the road. Someone I’m going to find. I don’t believe for a minute that Mad Maddie’s prediction had anything to do with it. This was murder, premeditated, because Renee asked questions and somebody didn’t like it.”
Becca closed her eyes and let the wind throw a shiver of rain at her. It was freezing cold but it felt oddly cleansing. She heard Ringo barking from the car, scolding them for leaving him inside. “I don’t want to go to Siren Song,” she admitted.
“What is it that scares you?”
He’s there, she thought. She wanted to say the words but couldn’t form them.
“When Renee called me,” Hudson said, “I think she’d just been there. Maybe she talked to them.”
“The cult members.”
He inclined his head. “She said something about colonies of people. She was excited. She meant Siren Song.”
“And I look like them,” Becca stated flatly.
“Yeah, well, that could mean next to nothing. I just want to talk to them. See if Renee asked them about Jessie, or maybe something else.”
Becca felt ridiculous, being so stubborn, when she’d been so gung-ho earlier. But it was like Jessie’s warning was playing over and over again in her head, an endless reel. Had that been what Jessie had been trying to tell her? Siren Song? But there were too many syllables in that message. Three, instead of two. So Jessie had to be trying to tell her something else, and Becca was sure it had to do with him.
Hudson pulled her into his arms. “I can go see them by myself.”
She shook her head, unable to explain the depths of her fear. She wanted answers as much as he did, yet now, suddenly, she couldn’t take the last few steps. She was profoundly frightened in a visceral, nonsensical way.
“I don’t want anything to happen to our baby,” she whispered.
“I won’t let anything happen.”
She didn’t say it, but she wasn’t sure he would be able to stop the cataclysm she sensed was coming for her.
Hudson suggested, “Let’s get another night at the B and B. I’ll take you there, then go see the people at Siren Song.”
“No, I’m staying with you. Don’t leave me.”
“Would you feel safer back in Portland, or Laurelton?”
“Yes. No. I don’t know.” She turned toward him, burying her face in his jacket, clutching its leather folds with tense fingers. “I’ll go,” she said in a muffled voice against his chest. “I want to know, too. I’ll go.”
“What is it?” he asked again, holding her close. “Why now?”
“I can’t explain it.” She was torn between laughter and tears. “If I didn’t already know I was pregnant I’d be wondering, because my emotions are all over the place. I just feel something bad is going to happen. Like we’re prodding the beast. And though I want answers as much as you do, I’m afraid.”
“Maybe we should just forget about this for now.”
“No, you need to find out about Renee,” she said, steeling her courage. “And I want to know if Jessie met with them, and if Renee followed her path.”
He pulled back to look into her face, sweeping her wind-tossed hair from her eyes. “You sure?”
She nodded.
“Then we’ll drive over there and see how it goes. If you don’t feel safe, we’ll leave.”
“Okay.”
“Want me to drive?”
“No, I’m okay,” she said, turning toward the car. Ringo was standing on the front seat, his paws on the dashboard. He yipped at her and scratched at the dash.
“Sure?” Hudson asked.
She nodded tautly. “Sure.”
Mac shoved his cell phone into his pocket and made a sound of frustration.
“Still can’t get hold of her?” Levi asked.
Mac had made a half dozen calls to Becca’s cell and home phone numbers, but there was no answer anywhere. Levi only knew that Mac was anxious to connect with the woman he’d been dialing for the past hour because of something that had come up at work. “I was hoping to get an answer before we start heading over the mountains and I lose the signal completely,” Mac muttered.
Levi looked long-suffering. “I’m hungry. Is there anywhere to eat here? They got a Subway?”
“I doubt it.”
“McDonald’s?”
“We’d have to go to a bigger town.”
“Then let’s do it.”
Mac considered. They could drive to Seaside, which had any number of fast-food restaurants, but it would be a good half hour out of th
eir way. Still, it might give him just enough time to connect with Rebecca Sutcliff before he headed over the mountains.
And what was he going to tell her? By the way, Becca, did you know that Jezebel Brentwood was your sister? Either good old Mom and Dad gave her up for adoption and kept you, or you were adopted out, too. Was that the kind of news—the kind that created more questions than answered them—that you delivered over the phone?
“Let’s go to Seaside,” he said gruffly, and they both got into his Jeep.
Becca found the turnoff to Siren Song after passing the entrance twice. It was little more than an opening between hedges of laurel and sturdy grasses that led to two lines of gravel whose center was a tall strip of weeds. Rain drizzled down to be flung in sheets by sharp puffs of wind, making the entry look desolate and cold. Anyone could believe this road hadn’t been driven on for months. Maybe Renee had been the colony’s last visitor.
As soon as they turned off the highway onto its bumpy surface, Becca gripped the steering wheel with white knuckles, easing the Jetta along as its tires dipped and swayed through potholes filled with water. It was not an auspicious first impression, though Siren Song itself, the lodge, loomed large and imposing when viewed from Highway 101. This hidden, dreary access did not do the place justice, but maybe that’s just what the secretive inhabitants within its walls wanted.
“This must be it,” Hudson muttered.
“No other way to get to the lodge as far as I can see.”
“They could use some signage.”
They bumped and swayed along for over a quarter mile before the lane widened to provide a view to a tall stone fence that stretched east and west and a high wrought-iron gate with vicious-looking spikes whose double swinging gates provided a view into a grassy field where Siren Song stood. In the fading light its dark, cedar shakes and darker windows seemed to stare back at them.
Becca pulled to a stop in front of the gates, leaving the engine running. Both she and Hudson peered through the wrought-iron gate in silence. The gloom from the storm had deepened the shadows. Faintly, light shone from several windows on both the first and second floor. From a distance they heard the thud of a closing door.
“Someone’s here,” Hudson observed, reaching for the handle.
Becca began to shiver uncontrollably, but Hudson didn’t notice as he climbed from the Jetta and walked to the gate, peering through the bars. Ringo whined from the backseat.
Who are you? Becca silently asked.
There was no answer. Not even a feeling that someone received her message.
Becca saw Hudson straighten. He glanced her way urgently and she slowly got out of the Jetta, hearing the car’s door-ajar bell ding several times. The sounds were muffled by the wind, which was loudly shaking the trees, and something beyond the gate, maybe an unlatched shutter, was banging with surprising ferocity.
She moved in beside Hudson and with a distinct shock saw what had captured his attention. A young woman in a long dress standing beneath an umbrella. She was staring at them.
They stared back at her, and Becca’s mouth opened in a silent scream.
She looked just like Jessie!
Hudson grabbed Becca by one arm as she started to go down. He caught her before she slid into a dark puddle and pulled her quaking body into his arms. Glancing back, he saw the brush of the woman’s skirt as she entered through a side door of the building, heard the distinct plok of a thrown bolt.
“We have to go,” Becca chattered. “We have to go.”
“Wait.”
“No!”
“Okay, okay.”
“We have to go.”
“Fine. Then I’m driving.”
He helped her into the passenger side, alarmed at how white her face had become. Ringo, now in the back, bounced around wildly, scrabbling to reach Becca, but Hudson held up his hand to the dog. “Stay,” he ordered.
“It was Jessie,” Becca whispered. “You saw. It was Jessie, wasn’t it? She’s our age now.” Becca’s eyes fearfully peered through the windshield at the sudden driving rain. The lodge was barely visible. Faint smearings of light.
“It wasn’t Jessie,” Hudson said, though he’d had a moment of shock himself. “She was younger than we are.”
“Who are these people? I don’t look like them.” She threw Hudson a panicked glance. “Do I?”
“Not—like that,” he said.
“Not like Jessie, you mean?”
“We don’t know what Jessie would look like now.”
“She would look like that!” Becca flailed an arm in the girl’s direction. “Please! I want to go. Now.”
Hudson didn’t hesitate further. He jerked on the wheel, turning the Jetta around in a tight space. Branches scratched against the sides of the car.
“Hurry,” Becca said.
Her attitude worried him; he would have liked to stay and try to ask a few questions. But it was clear the woman in the dress had no interest in talking to them. It was not Jessie. He knew it wasn’t.
But she’d been the spitting image.
The Jetta bumped, shimmied, and jostled as Hudson ran it faster than he should back down the rutted track. When they reached 101, Hudson turned the car’s nose north and the wheels zinged along the wet pavement toward the turnoff to Highway 26.
Becca sat tensely for several miles, then said in a voice so low he could scarcely hear her, “In my vision, he was standing behind Jessie with a knife. He was going to stab her and then he looked at me. Hudson, he knows I’m pregnant!”
“Was he at Siren Song?” he asked carefully. He didn’t know how far he believed in her ability to see the man who intended her harm, but her fear had infected him. She believed it, and that’s what counted right now.
“I don’t know,” she said. “I thought so. Before we went. But then we saw the girl…”
“Woman.”
“Yes, woman.” She drew a hard breath. “Jessie was adopted. Are these people…did she come from this cult? If that woman wasn’t her, is she Jessie’s sister?”
“Some kind of relative, maybe.” Hudson didn’t want to jump to conclusions, but Lord, there had been a resemblance.
He shot a glance Becca’s way. In profile, she possessed a striking similarity as well. It had always been there, to some degree, but until he’d seen the Jessie lookalike, he’d never really taken it seriously.
“Jessie came to find them, but then she encountered him,” Becca murmured, watching the rivulets of rain run down her side window.
“Who is he?”
“One of them? I don’t know. But he hates me. I can feel it, and it’s real.”
“We’ll go home,” Hudson said grimly. “Make sure you and the baby are safe.”
Something in his tone cued Becca to his unspoken thoughts. “You’re going to come back here without me!”
“Not tonight. I want to get home. Safe. Have a late dinner. And think about this.”
“I don’t want you to come back here.”
“I need to know what Renee learned.”
“It’s not safe.”
“I don’t believe we’re marked for death,” Hudson told her. “Mad Maddie’s a demented old woman who believes in a psychic ability she doesn’t possess.”
“I know. I know.” But she didn’t sound like she believed it.
“I’ll feel better knowing you’re back in Portland, safe and sound, away from whoever killed my sister.”
Becca didn’t respond. She wanted to get back home and she wanted Hudson and Ringo with her.
They made the turnoff to Highway 26 in relative silence, each absorbed in their own thoughts. As they started into the Coast Range, the light drizzle turned into mixed rain and snow.
“Maybe we should call McNally.” Becca broke into the silence, watching the hypnotizing slap-slap-slap of the wipers. “Send him to Siren Song. Let him take it from here.” Without waiting for a response she dug in her purse for her phone and made a sound of annoyance. “I swi
tched it off last night and never switched it back on.”
“You’re not going to get much reception now,” Hudson observed, but Becca pressed the green On button and hoped for the best. The cell phone went through its waking-up routine, but the words “no service” filled the screen.
“When we get over the mountains,” she said and settled in to wait, her cell phone in her hand.
Snow fell in earnest as they reached the summit and started down the other side, causing Hudson to take the Jetta down to a slow creep. Almost immediately over the pass, however, the snow turned to a mix, then the ever-present drizzle. It was dark as pitch out. No illumination other than their own headlights.
Becca realized they were only a few miles from where she’d had her accident, and her right hand squeezed her cell phone hard. Hudson was concentrating on the road. Visibility was less than perfect.
As they hit a longer, straight stretch, the forest dropping off on either side of the blacktop, headlights came up behind them, bright around a last curve. Their illumination scoured the inside of the Jetta, throwing Hudson’s profile into sharp relief.
Becca half glanced around in fear. It wasn’t him. It wasn’t. It was just her irrational terror. “He’s awful close.”
“For these road conditions, he sure is.”
The vehicle pulled closer. A truck.
“Jesus,” Hudson muttered. There was no shoulder. They were driving on a ridge where the asphalt ended abruptly and the land dropped away. Becca knew this section of the highway well, and her heart began a deep, slow tattoo. “Pass, you idiot!”
The truck rumbled loudly, shattering the night. Hudson yanked the wheel, trying to pull over, but there was nowhere to go. Becca’s phone flew from her hand. She scrambled for a hold.
Ram!
The truck hit them from behind, throwing Becca forward. “Shit!” Hudson yelled. The seat belt jerked Becca back. Ringo yelped and his toes scrabbled for purchase as he slammed into the back of the front seats.
“Christ!” Hudson muttered. He twirled the wheel the other way, turning into the spin, keeping the car on the road with everything he had.
“It’s him,” Becca moaned. “It’s him.”
