Wicked Game

by Lisa Jackson

  But his child—his kid—would be sixteen years old now, nearly graduated from high school, and he and Becca…who knew? It was true that he hadn’t known what he’d wanted at that time in his life; that he was still messed up over Jessie. Still guilt-riddled for wanting Becca when Jessie had seemed to fall off the face of the earth.

  “You were forced off the road, just like we were last night?” he asked.

  “Yes.”

  “You think it’s no coincidence.”

  “No.” She was tense, her jaw tight. “He won’t stop, Hudson. I’m sorry. I should have told you, but he’s—”

  Rap! Rap! Rap!

  Becca turned toward the door just as it swung open and Hudson’s gaze followed. He was frustrated. He needed to talk to her, and his frustration increased when he saw his friends Jarrett and The Third swing into the room.

  “I thought since Scott was in jail all this life-threatening crap would quit,” The Third said. “What the hell happened?”

  “Trying to figure it out,” Hudson said, looking at Becca.

  She knew he needed to talk more to her, but then Zeke entered the room, looking as if he’d lost ten pounds and aged as many years, and the conversation took off.

  Becca took the opportunity to extricate herself from Hudson. She’d given him a hell of a lot to think about, and she wanted to make up her own mind about what to do next without his cynosure. “I’ll be back later,” she said.

  “When?” he demanded.

  “Soon.”

  “And you’re letting McNally handle things, right?”

  “Right.”

  She slipped out of the room before he could protest, leaving him with his friends and a thundercloud of frustration darkening his expression.

  Becca jogged across the parking lot to her beater of a rental car while a million questions chased after her. Jessie’s family had lived here. Jessie had known she was adopted. Jessie’s adoptive parents had owned a second place in Deception Bay. The people at Siren Song resembled her and were secretive. Renee had been killed for what she learned.

  Becca climbed into the rental, jabbed her keys into the ignition, and took off through the puddles of the parking lot. The rain had stopped but clouds covered the sky, melding to the ocean and obscuring the horizon. She drove toward Deception Bay. That’s where all the lies, deceit, and murder began. In a sleepy little coastal village shrouded in secrets and lies.

  She turned off 101 and drove down the desolate main street of town. Could she really have been born here? Even lived here in this tiny fishing village? A part of Siren Song. She’d known it felt familiar.

  She parked not far from the Sands of Thyme bakery, which, like so many of the businesses, was closed. Climbing from the rental, she noticed that for once not a breath of breeze stirred through the streets, and the fog bank sitting out to sea seemed to ride slowly inland on the back of the swells.

  Shivering inside, she pulled her sweatshirt more tightly around her. The calm before the storm.

  Cold dread climbed up her spine and she wondered if she really wanted to uncover the truth, to pick apart its onion-skin thin layers of lies. How many people had tried to keep her from knowing the circumstances of her birth, and why had it inflamed one maniac enough that he would kill and kill again?

  Was she related to him? Was he after both her and Jessie? Were they both the spawn of Satan?

  She walked toward the ocean and felt the oozing sensation of déjà vu slither through her mind. Could she really have lived here?

  That’s where the answers lay: Siren Song.

  That’s where she needed to go for answers.

  She felt a sudden breath of icy air upon the back of her neck and turned to look over her shoulder.

  He was there.

  Dark, hidden in shadows, he stood with feet wide spread and looked into her mind.

  “Hey!” a man’s voice yelled and she turned. “Watch out!” A pickup was stopped at an intersection, ready to move forward, except that she was standing in the middle of the street, blocking the road. “Lady, are you okay?”

  Her head cleared. “Sorry.”

  “Friggin’ locals. All a bunch of whack jobs,” the guy in the pickup said under his breath as he drove past.

  If you only knew, Becca thought, still quaking inside as she looked toward the corner and the spruce tree where she’d seen the man she was certain had tried to take her life. “Brother,” she said, and the word tasted foul.

  Had she seen him? Had she? She’d certainly sensed his presence, but did that mean he was actually here?

  Drawing a long breath, Becca shook it off. There was no time to waste. She needed to get to Siren Song and find the answers. Now.

  The doctor wasn’t going to release him, but Hudson couldn’t stay cooped up another minute. He decided that he’d sign whatever releases he needed to, absolve the hospital, doctor, and any damned hospital worker who had stuck his or her head into the room of any liability, and walk out on his own two legs.

  He’d already convinced Zeke to loan him his wheels.

  Zeke had been reluctant, and though Hudson couldn’t blame him, he was on a mission. And yes, he’d played on Zeke’s guilt, so that his one-time friend had handed over the keys to his vintage Mustang to a man with one arm who was sporting a bad attitude and was loaded up on pain meds. The Third had told Zeke he was crazy, but Zeke had snapped back, “Just gimme a ride back, okay?”

  “Vangie waiting for you at home?” Jarrett asked meanly.

  “No.”

  Hudson hadn’t wanted them to disintegrate into high school one-upmanship, so he’d stated firmly, “Zeke and Vangie are through. Nothing more to say about it.”

  And then he’d taken his request one step further, asking for Zeke’s cell phone. “Mine was lost in the accident,” Hudson explained, and Zeke slapped it into his hand, holding his gaze.

  “We square, then?” Zeke asked.

  There were a lot of things Hudson could have said, a lot more recriminations. But like Zeke and Vangie, it was time to simply move on. “We’re good.”

  As soon as they were gone, he climbed from the bed. Pain shot up his arm and his head ached like a hammer was striking an anvil somewhere behind his eyes. Bad idea. And yet, the only idea. He didn’t care how much it cost him, he needed to leave. He needed to find out if Becca was really depending on McNally, or if she’d taken matters into her own hands.

  He was betting on the latter.

  Filthy bitch!

  I see her. Standing in the road. Now she turns away but rage boils my blood!

  She must die. Now! I had planned to wait but that stupid old woman sped up the time line.

  I cannot wait any longer.

  Rebecca…

  My head throbs like a heartbeat from the blow you gave me.

  You will pay for that as well.

  Bitch. Evil mother. I will kill you and your devil spawn.

  I see you get in your car but you cannot escape your destiny.

  But I must lay the trap.

  You will come to me.

  Very, very soon.

  Becca drove toward Siren Song. She didn’t have much of a game plan but seeing her nemesis—whether real or imagined—had spurred her on. She’d face the son of a bitch. Track him down. It was time for the hunter to be the prey.

  If only Hudson were with her—but she didn’t want him to be drawn into her battle. She’d already risked his life. He was lying in a hospital bed because of it.

  The afternoon was dark enough to seem like night. For a moment she considered calling McNally. She reached for her purse and her cell phone, but then hesitated.

  And what’re you going to tell him? That you feel him?

  She would seem as crazy as Mad Maddie. More so.

  Gritting her teeth, Becca bumped up the pothole-riddled land to the gates of Siren Song.

  Where Renee had sought information on Jessie’s past.

  Where it had all begun.

  The
wrought-iron barrier was closed, of course, and, as it was getting dark, she couldn’t see much beyond the outline of the lodge. She climbed out of the rental and stepped to the gates. “Hello?” she yelled. “Anyone there?”

  She waited, yelled again, then waited some more. After twenty minutes, she went back to the rental. There was no daylight left now, so she switched on her headlights, pointing them through the black fencing as the mist rose and swirled in the twin beams that cut through the tall fencing. The side door and a stone path were illuminated and the arms of surrounding trees seemed to reach inward in long fingers.

  She honked the horn of her car, and it sounded like the pathetic bleat of a dying lamb over the dull roar of the Pacific, which could be heard as if it were right next door.

  Should she try and scale the fence with its pointed arrow-like spikes piercing upward? She honked again and this time there was movement, a flash of color in her headlights.

  What if it’s him?

  You didn’t think of that, did you?

  What if you’ve walked into a trap? You have no weapon, nothing to protect yourself.

  She started the car, but as she did, she saw the same girl who had been at the gate before appear in her headlights. Tonight she was wearing a long coat with a hood. She stared at Becca with wide eyes. Jessie’s eyes.

  Becca clambered out of the rental and approached the gate.

  “You need to leave,” the girl said in a quiet voice.

  “I can’t.”

  “Drive away. Now.”

  “Jessie Brentwood came here years ago, and someone else just recently, a reporter. With dark, short hair. Renee Trudeau. She wanted information on Jessie.”

  “She did not come in.”

  “You didn’t let her in,” Becca realized.

  “It wasn’t safe.”

  “But she knew this is where Jessie came from. I think I came from here, too.” The girl gazed at Becca soulfully. Becca had no idea what she was thinking. “Can’t I come in?” Becca cajoled. “I just have so many questions.”

  “It’s not safe for you, either.”

  “Do you know who I am?”

  She glanced behind her, then down at her feet. “Rebecca…”

  Becca’s pulse jumped. “Look, I think…I think I might be related to someone here and it’s very important that I find him.”

  Jessie saw the girl’s eyes dilate, the pupils making her eyes two black orbs with the faintest halo of color around them. “You won’t find him here,” she said.

  “You know who I’m talking about?”

  The girl hesitated. “You’ve met Madeline?”

  “Yes,” Becca said, surprised by the non sequitur. “But I’m looking for someone else and it’s really important. People have died. I need to find him.”

  She half turned away.

  “No, wait!” Becca called, but she was already leaving.

  She stopped when she was about thirty feet away. “Whoever you’re looking for is not here.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Because you asked for ‘him,’” she said without inflection. “There are no men at Siren Song.”

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Hudson stared at the pimply-faced clerk on the other side of the faux-wood counter in the lobby of the tired-looking motel where he, Becca, and Ringo had stayed only a few short weeks ago. A striped yellow tabby viewed the interplay with utter disdain from the back of a worn couch as the clerk, who was all of fourteen or so, gazed at him in consternation.

  “I—I—can’t talk about our guests. It’s, um, the privacy policy.” The kid kept looking over his shoulder, hoping someone would come to the rescue while the cat yawned and stretched his legs.

  “I’m her fiancé,” Hudson tried. A stretch maybe, but close enough, and the next time he saw her, he damned well was going to ask her to marry him. He’d spent too many hours in the hospital wondering about her, worrying about her, loving her, to let her go again.

  “Do you, like, have some kind of proof or somethin’?” The kid’s gaze slid to the sling supporting Hudson’s left arm, and Hudson realized he looked like hell in his filthy clothes, disheveled hair, and scruffy beard. He probably appeared to the kid to be one of those loner, killer types from the movies.

  But Hudson was too panicked, too sick with worry to go into it or explain anything. Time was running out. “Just tell me what unit she’s in.”

  “Grandpa?” the boy called nervously over his shoulder to the open door at the back.

  “What?” a male voice bellowed.

  “I, uh, could use a little help out here.”

  With a huge sigh, “Grandpa,” a large man built like Humpty Dumpty, shuffled into view. Suspenders looped from his faded denim pants, doing nothing as they dangled uselessly from his waist. A thin, tank-style T-shirt was half covered by an open flannel shirt. He peered over the tops of half-glasses. “What’s the problem?”

  Irritated, Hudson repeated his request. “My fiancée checked in earlier. I’m supposed to meet her, but I don’t know what room she’s in.”

  The man swiped a hand over the graying stubble on his jaw, started to argue, then said, “Oh, forget it. A woman checked into unit seven today. I can’t let you in, but I can go there myself. You can come along.” He glanced out the window. “But I’d bet Butterfinger over there,” he said, nodding to the orange tabby, “that she’s not in. Her car’s missing. No lights on. No television, either.”

  The kid walked over to pick up the cat, stroking its head.

  Butterfinger snuggled up to the boy, his long tail twitching as he, too, gave Grandpa Humpty the evil eye. Gramps found a baseball cap and jacket, then, with a jangling set of keys, waddled toward unit seven.

  It was all Hudson could do not to run in front of him. The fact that Becca wasn’t here made him crazy. Where was she? God, what was she doing? He had a deep, driving fear that she might be out baiting the madman. As they crossed the seedy parking lot, he tried her cell phone again.

  Humpty cast him a look. “Cell service ain’t great around here.”

  So get into the twenty-first century! But the man was right. He couldn’t connect. Not with Becca and not with Mac, as he didn’t have the detective’s number on Zeke’s phone.

  The big man knocked on the door, and when no one answered, rapped again and said, “Hello? Ms. Sutcliff?” He opened the door, and the minute it swung inward Hudson could tell that Becca hadn’t been in the room in a while. Packages were strewn on the bed, bags from a local all-in-one market. Her dirty clothes from the night before were stacked on a chair near the television stand. Grandpa Humpty nodded to himself as if he’d been an ace detective. “Whaddid I tell ya?” He looked over his shoulder at Hudson. “Maybe you should find yerself a new fiancée.”

  Hudson didn’t stick around to listen. He was jogging across the parking lot, his shoulder screaming in pain, his jaw set. Once in Zeke’s Mustang, he found his vial of pain pills, tossed a couple into his mouth, and swallowed them whole. He found the card the two detectives from the sheriff’s department had given him, and dialed. They would have Mac’s number or, if not, they could damned well help him themselves.

  He had no proof.

  They would have to take his word for it.

  But Hudson was damned sure Becca was heading for trouble.

  Trouble…Jessie’s word.

  The thought sent ice running through his veins.

  What was Siren Song? Becca asked herself as she drove back toward Deception Bay proper. Her birthplace? A cult?

  She eased the old Chevy through the streets of this sleepy little town where traffic was sparse. The wind, which hadn’t existed a few hours earlier, was beginning to pick up, sharp gusts stirring the branches of trees and pushing litter and debris inland. Night had fallen in earnest and the few streetlights’ bluish lights cast a pool of illumination down the main street.

  But Becca was on her way to see Mad Maddie. The young woman at Siren Song had mentioned her
name, almost like a direction to what Becca sought. And Renee had talked about the sometime psychic who’d warned her that she was marked for death. Becca herself had wanted to see her, but then had gotten sidetracked by the cult at Siren Song.

  She turned her car northward. Driving mostly by instinct, she headed for the cliff area and the area she suspected was the old woman’s home. She’d never been to Maddie’s before but knew it was on the sea, so she only had to follow the road running along the shoreline. The beachfront road turned inland for a bit as it climbed away from the downtown area and the sandy crescent that was connected to the bay at the south end of town.

  She recognized the old motel the minute she turned the corner, so she eased the car onto the pockmarked gravel lot. A few lights were shining on the long, low building, an old motel, situated on a ridge overlooking the dark, whitecapped ocean. Another storm was in full force now, wind screaming, rain on its way.

  Becca wasn’t sure what she was going to say to the old woman. Something about “Mad Maddie” was definitely off. But Mad Maddie had first mentioned Siren Song to Becca, so the connection between her and the cult members existed.

  From one end of the building, a light glowed. Or was it illumination from a television? A silvery blue flickering patch of light came from the window of the end unit. The manager’s home, if the battered vacancy sign was to be believed. The other apartments, eight or ten “homey cottages with cable TV,” were connected by vacant carports that were dilapidated and weathered and worn. Peeling gray paint covered rusted gutters that had worked themselves loose and swung and groaned in the wind that rose above the sea. The motel was untended and unkempt. Tall beach grass and berry vines encroached, the concrete was cracked and fissured, the gravel pounded into potholes, a sorry-looking picket fence undulating and bent from age and rot.

  But it wasn’t the ramshackle buildings that caught Becca’s attention. No. As she sat in the car, her windshield wipers clapping away the gathering mist, she stared through the streaky glass to the cliff beyond.

  So familiar.

  So like that rocky outcropping where she saw Jessie in her visions, where she’d witnessed the embodiment of evil, the murderous bastard who had loomed over Jessie in her visions.