by Lisa Jackson
“Job site?”
“I own Bancroft Development with my grandfather, Declan Bancroft, and the Carmichaels’ house is scheduled to be demoed and rebuilt. Kristina went there for some reason.”
“Do you know what your wife was doing at the site?”
“Not a clue.”
“Could she have been meeting someone?”
Hale just stared at the deputy, who looked to be somewhere in his late forties. “I don’t know who that would be.”
“Excuse me . . .” The nurse who had given him the admissions documents had returned. “Have you filled out the forms?”
“Um . . . yeah . . . mostly.” Hale handed her the clipboard, and she took it away.
“What are the names of the people who own the house?” Burghsmith asked after she disappeared.
“Ian and Astrid Carmichael.”
“Did your wife know them?”
“Only by sight. But she knew of the project.”
A doctor crossed the area behind Deputy Burghsmith, and Hale jumped up and caught up with him. “Excuse me. My wife is . . . having tests . . . ?”
“Dr. Mellon will be out to talk to you,” he said brusquely, moving on by.
The deputy was still standing near Hale’s chair, and Hale didn’t want to talk to anyone but the medical staff. When he didn’t return to his chair, Burghsmith went to him. Before he could ask another question, Hale preempted with, “Am I going to have to go through this with the Seaside police, too?”
“One of their detectives will want to talk to you.”
Which made him think of Savannah. Off in Portland. “Excuse me,” Hale said and then walked away from Burghsmith, sliding his thumb across the screen of his phone to unlock it.
Then another doctor came into the room, his gaze searching the occupants and falling on Hale. Hale immediately locked the phone again, put it in his pocket, and stalked quickly toward the doctor, who extended his hand as he drew near.
“I’m Dr. Mellon,” he said, introducing himself.
“Hale St. Cloud. My wife, Kristina . . . Are you her doctor?”
“Dr. Oberon will be doing the surgery, Mr. St. Cloud. We need to relieve the pressure on her brain. She has a subdural hematoma and—”
“Subdural hematoma?”
“She’s bleeding into her brain.”
Hale stared at the man, cottony with shock. “Will she be all right?”
“We’re taking her into surgery.”
“That’s no answer.”
“We won’t know anything until after surgery,” the doctor said firmly.
“Tell me something, goddamnit!”
“Mr. St. Cloud, if you could just be a little patient. We’re doing everything we can—”
“How severe is it?” he interrupted.
“Severe enough to require surgery,” Mellon answered after a moment, his expression neutral. Then he was called away.
Hale stared after him. He guessed the doctor hadn’t given him anything because the injury was bad. Bad enough that loved ones had to be kept in the dark.
God, Kristina. What were you doing there? he thought.
Charlie expelled air through his teeth, frustrated as hell. The bitch wouldn’t die. Just wouldn’t die. She had lain there, staring into space, and had just gone on breathing and breathing and wouldn’t die! He’d tried to wait her out, but she’d won in the end. He had to leave her before he was discovered, and it really pissed him off.
It had been nearly a day and still no report. At least he’d gotten back to his apartment and seen the news before he went to bed. It was all about the murders in the truck at the steak house. Ha, ha, ha. That, at least, had made him feel good. They could speculate all they wanted, but none of them knew his power. He recalled staring at Tammie and Garth as they each died, and that made him feel even better about Mrs. Kristina St. Cloud, who just wouldn’t die.
He went to the refrigerator and pulled out a Guinness, popping the top and drinking it down in long, thirsty gulps.
He needed to see that last look in their eyes before the light seemed to get pulled back inside them and they were gone. Blink, blink. Gone.
But that was all yesterday, and today some things had happened that made him forget his disappointment with Kristina and remember the highlights with her instead. Man, could that St. Cloud bitch shriek. She would buck and wail and damn near climax before he hardly did anything. She was that susceptible to his power. Made him want to masturbate right now just thinking about it, but alas, he had a date that just couldn’t wait.
But then she was kind of a shrieker, too, he thought with a slow grin.
He wondered briefly, foolishly, if he could kill her while they were having sex and watch the light blink out. In his mind’s eye he saw the arch of her throat and himself drawing a knife across it, a thin scarlet line of blood rising against her white flesh.
Man, oh, man.
With an effort, he tamped down his thoughts. He had to wait. Had to wait for the perfect time. Then he would slice her lovely throat. He would kill her . . . and like he’d told his mother, he would kill them all.
“They’re taking her into the OR,” a voice said, and Hale stopped staring into the middle distance to look up and see that the same nurse was talking to him. “There’s a waiting room through here.”
He followed after her, feeling helpless and lost. As soon as he was seated in the smaller room with the blue and gray molded plastic chairs, he pulled out his cell again. He stared at it a moment before punching in Savannah’s cell number.
CHAPTER 15
She knew she was dreaming, but she couldn’t wake up. Kristina was there, dressed in white, beckoning her silently toward a building covered by dense shrubbery. Savannah tried to talk to her, but she couldn’t form the words. They were stuck in her throat, and every effort to speak failed her. “I’m not going,” she tried to tell the wraithlike Kristina. “I’m not going!”
But it was useless and the screen of bushes seemed to fall away and there was the lodge, Siren Song, only bigger and darker. And there was a light in the third-floor window that shouldn’t have been there, Savvy was pretty sure. The gates were open, and she followed Kristina, only it wasn’t Kristina anymore. It was someone else. Someone older and old-fashioned, with a cameo brooch at her neck depicting an even older woman, a relative, she knew. Mary? No, someone older. Sarah? That was a name from the book. One of the women from the past who had powers . . . no, a gift. That was what they all had, all the women, but it was the men . . . the boys . . . whose gifts were more intense, more deadly.
In front of her eyes floated Xs and Ys, and she heard Catherine’s voice saying, “It goes deeper and darker with them. Can you feel it? Can you feel it?”
And Savvy was suddenly drenched with a desire so hot and angry that she felt her body shudder and explode into a climax that had her arching upward. A man was crooning to her, telling her she was his, and she saw that it was Hale St. Cloud.
I’m dreaming. Stop, she told herself. Stop! Wake up!
Kristina’s eyes were staring into Savvy’s accusingly. “I wasn’t with Hale. I wasn’t!” she wanted to scream, but Kristina couldn’t seem to hear her.
And then Joyce Powell-Pritchett was there, peering at Savannah through her narrow-lensed glasses, saying in her schoolteacher’s voice, “It’s all in the history. If you would just look deeper, you would see.”
“Who’s the older lady?” Savvy struggled to ask, and she must have been heard, because Catherine turned slowly to see where she was looking and said in her crisp tones, “That’s no lady. Look. Look.”
Before Savvy’s eyes the woman with the cameo turned into a man wearing a fedora dipped over one eye and a brown suit. He lifted the brim of his hat with one finger, and his eyes burned like hot coals.
Savannah screamed loud enough to wake the dead, and she sat bolt upright in bed.
She was awake, quivering all over, still propped up on the motel room bed. She could feel th
e faint remnants of her climax and was slightly embarrassed. What the hell?
And then Baby St. Cloud rolled over once, and Savvy clutched the covers, seized by a stronger Braxton Hicks as her cell phone shattered the stillness and caused her to gasp, her heart lurching.
“God,” she muttered, annoyed at herself, feeling cold sweat on her skin. She searched around for her phone and found it tangled in the covers of the bed. “Hello?” she answered. “Hello?”
“Savvy? It’s Hale.”
Her sex dream about him momentarily came back, and she pushed it aside with revulsion. She realized she was breathing hard and swallowed once, trying to shake the remnants of the dream. “Hey, there,” she said. Then, “Have you talked to Kristina?”
“That’s why I’m calling you. There’s been an accident.”
Savvy sat up straighter, the hairs on the back of her neck lifting. “What kind of accident?”
“At one of our construction sites. She was hit with a beam, it looks like it fell on her, and she’s at the hospital, in surgery.”
Savannah was on her feet. “What?” When he hesitated, Savannah felt like screaming. “Damn it, Hale. What?”
“They’re saying subdural hematoma.” Another profound hesitation. “She’s bleeding into her brain.”
“Oh, God . . . How? How did this happen?” Her eyes were searching for her shoes, sturdy black slip-ons, but she needed something else. She’d packed her sneakers. Boots with traction would have been better, but sneakers would work. She had her ski jacket. She hadn’t unpacked.
“I don’t know.”
He sounded tired, but Savannah felt wide awake now with every nerve fiber singing. She took two steps to the window and pulled back the curtain. Snow was falling fast and hard. The rail outside her window had an inch on it already.
“I’m coming back,” she said.
“No,” he said. “The pass is going to be a mess.”
“I have four-wheel drive. I have chains in the back. I’m coming back, Hale.”
“No, Savannah. I’m here with her! How are you going to put those chains on?”
“If it gets really bad, I’ll figure it out.”
“You’re . . . too . . . pregnant,” he stated flatly.
“They’re the snap-on kind. I can do it,” she flared. “My sister’s hurt. What did you think I would do? Sit and wait in a motel room?”
“I’ve got this handled. No matter what you think, you’re not bulletproof, Savannah. And you’re—”
Savannah cut him off with one click. To hell with Hale St. Cloud. She grabbed her sneakers, smashed them on her feet, and tied them with the effort of bending over. Snatching up her overnight bag, her messenger bag, and her gun, which she’d laid on the nightstand, she headed outside.
The snow made everything unnaturally light, and its beauty as it fell would have been magical at another time. Now Savvy felt a clock ticking in her head. The same clock that reset and marked off the seconds every time she was in a dangerous situation.
Getting down the stairs and into the Escape took longer than she wanted, but there was no way in hell she was going to slip.
“Hang in there,” she said, placing a hand on her belly, though she meant both the baby and her sister. The two-hour trip would be three hours or longer in this weather, but she’d be damned if she’d stay in Portland.
Her mind touched on the dream, and an uneasy feeling spread through her.
She didn’t believe in dreams, but then she didn’t believe in people with otherworldly gifts, either, or at least she hadn’t.
Gritting her teeth, she put a call in to Lang’s cell, which, like every call today, went straight to voice mail. She told him she was on her way; then she pulled out of the parking lot and began the long journey back.
“Aunt Catherine?”
Catherine awoke with a start. She’d drifted off in the living room chair, while reading by a strong electric light. Now she glanced quickly down at the journal, which was still open in her lap, and she closed it as Lillibeth wheeled through the doorway from her short hallway and bedroom.
“Someone’s here,” Lillibeth said, heading toward the door.
“At the gate?” Catherine stirred herself and got to her feet. The fire had died down, and there was a distinct chill in the room, or maybe it was her soul.
“It’s Earl.”
Catherine gave her a long look. Lillibeth didn’t possess Cassandra’s gift of seeing the future, but she did have a trace of precognition, as did Catherine, as did, maybe, all of them. “How do you know?”
Lillibeth shrugged. “He told me.”
Her head squeezed. “He who?” Catherine demanded. “Don’t talk in riddles.”
“I think it was Earl.”
Catherine found that mildly alarming. She looked around as she headed for the back door to fetch her cloak before returning to the front of the house, where Lillibeth still waited. “Where’s everyone else? Still upstairs?” The girls had been quiet at dinner, almost plotting, Catherine thought, and then had all returned to the second floor and their rooms.
“I think so.”
“Stay inside,” Catherine ordered, then pulled her hood over her head, tightened the cloak at her neck, and stepped into a swirl of dancing snow and rain. The mixed precipitation landed on her face and melted and ran cold.
She trudged carefully along the flagstone path, which was nearly buried in snow, toward the gate, where, sure enough, Earl stood in the dark beyond, outlined by the growing field of white surrounding him.
“What is it?” Catherine asked, approaching him.
“There’s a fire on Echo,” he said, to which Catherine whipped around, but from the spot where she stood she couldn’t see over the bushes to the island beyond.
“A fire! There can’t be. No one could be out there in this weather.”
“Someone is.”
“No one knows the island like you do, and you wouldn’t go out there in this.”
“Younger men, younger women, they could get there,” he argued.
“The last time that happened, the fools were killed!” Catherine reminded him.
“They were drunk.”
“I’m not going to stand here in this weather and argue with you,” she said with asperity. “I don’t believe someone’s there.”
“It’s not as secure as you want to believe,” he told her. He’d said it before, but Catherine hadn’t wanted to hear it then, and she certainly didn’t want to hear it now.
“What kind of fire? How big?”
“Big enough to see.”
“The house? The cottage?”
Earl slowly shook his head.
“I’m going back inside. Maybe you just imagined it.”
Earl stood stolidly silent. Catherine waited him out, refusing to give in to his theory, even though she believed it.
He turned back to his truck, and Catherine watched him leave.
The terrible part was, she was pretty sure she knew who was out there, who’d caused the fire. But why? What was he doing there? What did he hope to find?
As Earl backed down the drive and then drove away, Catherine stepped to the edge of the gate, craning her neck to try and glimpse the fire. Unless she went back for the key to unlock the gates her view was limited as it was impossible to see anything from inside the Siren Song grounds.
Was he burning something?
Shivering, she turned back toward the house, sinking with her first step deep into the snow above the flagstone path and slipping . . . slipping....
Savvy drove coolly and carefully, fighting the urge to press her foot to the accelerator. The roads were snow covered, but with her four-wheel drive she felt secure. If there was enough buildup across the Coast Range, she would have to put on her chains, but in the city the snow had been patchy, with stretches of bare pavement where the snow melted as fast as it came down.
She was hungry. Again. Even with the worry gnawing at her insides, she needed to eat. Car
efully, she snapped open her glove box and pulled out an energy bar. She had a bottle of water handy and several more behind her seat, but she wasn’t going to drink more than a few swallows at a time. There was the issue of her bladder.
She exhaled, calming her nerves. She’d banished thoughts of Kristina and what had happened to her to a very distant corner of her mind, the only way she could make this drive safely.
Behind her, to the east, the Cascade Range was getting buried in snow, but she was heading west onto the Coast Range, where the highest point was still lower in altitude than most of the peaks in the Cascades. She was nearing the halfway point, but that didn’t mean this was going to be a picnic. In fact . . .
She swept in a harsh breath, her hands involuntarily squeezing the steering wheel, as a contraction took her over, and for a moment she felt suspended in pain.
So hard! Labor? No.
That wasn’t right . . . was it?
She checked her watch. Eight thirty.
No. She was not in labor. Not yet. Not now.
She waited, half convinced her own anxiety had brought on the contraction. Her mind was just beginning to move away from that fear, her attention back on the road, when another wave rolled through her, hard, wrenching, producing sweat, and she found herself holding her breath, waiting desperately for it to pass. Then her brain clicked in, and she quickly started panting like she’d seen in those natural birth videos and every movie where some woman was having a baby.
“God . . .”
It wasn’t true. It wasn’t true.
Her hands were slick with sweat on the wheel. Timing. Life was all about timing, and this . . . this . . . bad timing couldn’t be happening. No . . . way.
Five minutes later the clench was stronger, her uterus blithely unaware that she could not have a baby now! She knew it for what it was. True labor. Yup. The real thing. This wasn’t like the damn Braxton Hicks contractions. They’d told her and told her that she’d know when it was real, and she’d listened with half an ear. Kind of like she’d treated the whole damn pregnancy: It’s not mine, so it doesn’t really count.
