Ominous

by Lisa Jackson

  That had been the plan.

  Ruthie’s choice.

  And Shiloh had honored it. No matter how many nights she’d woken up in a cold sweat, reliving the terror, seeing the blade of a knife slashing in the night, sensing the monster’s presence, haunted by the fact that she felt as if she should have known him, that, if given the chance, she could even have ID’d the son of a bitch, that even now he’d still be behind bars—

  Beep! A sharp honk woke her out of her reverie. In the rearview mirror, she saw the driver of the pickup behind her lift his hands in a “What’re-ya-thinking?” gesture. “Cram it,” she muttered as she drove through the intersection.

  She hadn’t even realized she’d been daydreaming.

  Not a good sign.

  Hitting the gas, she refused to dwell on the concussion she’d suffered less than a month ago when she’d taken a spill. It still galled her to think that she, a horsewoman by trade, a woman who some had actually referred to as a “horse whisperer” because of her seeming intellectual link to all beasts equine, had actually been scraped off by a lowlying limb when Ike, the most stubborn sorrel she’d ever met, took a notion to empty the saddle. Of her.

  She was still burned when she considered it.

  Another glance in the mirror, and she saw that the old pickup was following her. No big deal, right? Small town, not a lot of streets, but as she passed the police station and the largest grocery store in town, the truck was still right behind her.

  Get over it. You’re jumping at shadows because you’re anxious about being back. He just honked because you idled at the light.

  But she couldn’t shake her case of nerves. Being back here would take some explaining. Some major explaining. To the cops. To her friends. To … everyone she’d allowed to think she was missing. She hadn’t even called her mother for a month, had let the woman worry and suffer, thinking her daughter, like the three girls who’d gone missing before her, might be kidnapped or wounded or dead.

  Shiloh still felt guilty about that.

  But really, hadn’t Mom been the one who had let Larimer Tate beat the crap out of her when he’d discovered Shiloh had rolled his pickup out of the driveway? At the time, Shiloh had figured it served Faye right to be worried about her because her mother hadn’t stepped in and stopped Tate from using the belt on her.

  “Bastard,” she muttered and would spit on the old man’s grave if she got the chance. Not that she’d take a step near the cemetery.

  Past the post office and veterinary clinic she drove, and the damned truck was right on her ass. Really? Was the guy pissed enough to chase her down? Road rage in Prairie Creek? On the far side of town, she picked up the pace, driving five miles over the speed limit, then ten. The damned truck didn’t let up, and her heart froze a little.

  What if the driver was the maniac from that night fifteen years before? What if he’d gleaned that she was returning? What if he’d been lying in wait? She’d had the eerie feeling that night that she’d known him. What if he was still here? Oh. Dear. God!

  No. He was dead. He had to be. Right? Just because a body had never been found didn’t mean he’d survived. All these years she’d believed the unnamed psycho was dead, and she wasn’t going to let some testosterone-driving, macho pickup driver freak her out now. At the far edge of town, she hit the gas, glanced in the rearview and saw that the driver was now backing off, a cell phone to his ear. Well, good. She put some distance between her and the dented rig, then squinted through the Explorer’s bug-spattered windshield as she closed in on the ramshackle ranch where she’d grown up. Her insides tensed, and the hunger she’d felt for the past two hours dissipated as her hands sweated over the wheel.

  Her mother’s last phone call had been the impetus that had forced her to pack an overnight bag and hit the road.

  Shiloh had been working with a particularly ornery gelding, and afterward, dusty and parched, she had walked into the house and noticed that Mom had called three times in an hour. Seized with trepidation, Shiloh had taken a deep breath and phoned back.

  Faye hadn’t even greeted her. “You need to come back. Come home,” she’d rasped in a barely recognizable whisper.

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Now.” There was a new urgency in Faye’s weak voice.

  “What? Why?” Geez, it had been a decade and a half, and though Faye had often asked to see Shiloh, it had never happened. She just hadn’t wanted to return to the scene of the crime. Even when Faye had wheedled and begged—tossing out the guilt trip that Faye wanted to see her and that it was way past time she met her sister—Shiloh had resisted. Sure, she’d been tempted, but of course, Larimer Tate had always been around. Shiloh had declined, even when her mother had used her favorite ploy: “The police still don’t believe me that you’re okay.”

  “After all these years?” Shiloh had snorted her disbelief. Faye had been known to use any angle available to get her prodigal daughter to return home. Okay, so it was true that Shiloh had never officially checked in with the authorities, but she just didn’t want to open that particularly distasteful can of worms.

  “Yes. They think you might be … well, like those other girls who went missing.” Shiloh had heard it then, that little telltale lisp that indicated Faye had drunk more than a couple of glasses of wine.

  “Maybe I am like them. They probably all just ran away.”

  “They’ve never turned up, and, God, what those poor parents have gone through, worrying and not knowing.”

  “Well, at least you don’t have that. You know.”

  “Oh, for the love of God. Please, Shiloh, come back. I, we, could use the help around here. You’re so good with the livest … livest … the oh, you know, the horses and cows.”

  “No, Mom. Not happening. Not now.”

  “Your sister needs you.”

  That whispered phrase had caused something inside her to break, her conviction to erode. It happened whenever she thought of the girl who was so much younger than her, her half sibling.

  The sister you’ve never met … never wanted to meet.

  Shiloh swallowed hard and remembered another phone call, the fateful one that had once, years before, nearly caused her to return.

  Faye had been pleading with Shiloh to return when she’d dropped the bomb.

  “Your sister needs you.”

  “My sister?” she’d repeated in shock.

  “Her name is Morgan,” her mother had said twelve years ago, and there had been a swell of pride in her voice as she’d told her eldest of the pregnancy and birth, while Shiloh, for once, had been silent, dumbfounded, and more than a little horrified that at thirty-eight, Faye had been pregnant with Larimer Tate’s child. The thought had sickened her. And if she did the math, that meant that the girl was twenty years her junior. Hell, Shiloh was old enough that Morgan, age-wise, could have been her own kid.

  “Are you still with Tate?” she’d asked when she’d finally found her tongue.

  “He’s my husband.” Again that ring of false pride.

  “Then you’ve made your choice,” Shiloh had declared and clicked off, refusing to answer when her mother had called back not once, but six more times that evening.

  Now Shiloh felt heartless. She’d made a mistake. She should’ve returned to Prairie Creek before it was too late. She was an adult. Strong. Knew her rights. Tate couldn’t hurt her.

  But what about Morgan? His own kid? Would he have used that skinny little leather belt on her?

  She’d asked, of course, several times over the years, and after each inquiry her mother had sounded horrified at the thought, that no way would the little girl’s father do anything the least bit harsh to the girl. They were, after all, a loving family.

  “Yeah, right,” she muttered now as she spied the end of the lane with the mailbox, bashed in on one side, the letters reading L. TA E, as it had for years. She suspected no one had bothered to find another “t” to make it read TATE. Clearly no one cared enough
to pound out the dent.

  Dry grass and weeds grew tall around the fence post supporting the mailbox, and the curving lane leading to the ranch house was in serious need of fresh gravel to fill the potholes and combat the pigweed and thistle that grew in abundance.

  Shiloh’s insides tightened at the sight of the house: a long, low structure built on a rise and surrounded by outbuildings, most of which were going to seed. The house itself was in sad shape, as it had always been, though a few fresh shingles appeared in the roof and the sagging porch had been shored up, propped by fresh 2x4s, and a few new floorboards were visible against the weathered original planks.

  That surprised her.

  She cut the engine and sat behind the wheel for a second, needing to brace herself. She’d never met her half sister, so there would be that emotional ride, and then there was Mom, her time running out, no longer a vital woman, now a sorry case. Guilt consumed her, and she silently berated herself for her own stupid pride, her stubborn self-righteous streak when it came to returning to these weedy acres. Her hatred of Larimer Tate had overridden her love for her mother or even her curiosity about her half sister.

  She yanked the keys from the ignition. So she’d made mistakes. So what? She couldn’t fix what had happened now, could she? She’d just have to live with the errors, move forward, and count them among the flotsam of faults that was forever flowing under the bridge that was her life.

  She’d expected the place to be run-down; Larimer Tate had never been one for maintaining it, and now that her mother was ill, no way could Faye be repairing roof shingles or setting posts or putting in new floorboards.

  She cut the engine.

  Then she took in several deep breaths. The last time she’d actually seen her mother, Faye had been cowering in a corner, hands over her mouth, appearing horrified as Larimer had slipped his belt from his pant loops with a hissing sssst.

  A cruel grin pinned on his unshaven jaw, he’d jerked on the worn leather.

  The belt had snapped like a bullwhip.

  Crack!

  “Who d’ya think you are?” he’d roared, advancing. “Sneakin’ in here like a damned thief after takin’ my truck?”

  Shiloh had backed up, glanced past him to her mother, still cowering in the doorway to the bedroom she’d shared with this beast.

  “And look at ’cha. Half naked.” His eyes raked over her body. He was right. She was in her cutoffs and a shirt, no bra, no underwear, both items having been lost in her race through the woods. She doubted he could tell she was missing her panties, but her breasts were visible through her T-shirt. “You been out whorin’.”

  “No, we … we just went skinny-dipping.”

  “You and who else? Some horny fuckin’ teenage boy?”

  “Larimer,” her mother whispered, but he paid no attention.

  “No!” Shiloh wasn’t about to give him the names of her friends. Who knew what he’d do?

  “I won’t have it. Not in my house.” Again he cracked the whip, and she witnessed pure evil in his eyes. Her blood pounded through her veins. Given the chance, he would seriously hurt her in as many ways as possible.

  “Larimer, she’s just a girl,” her mother pleaded.

  He turned his head to glare at his wife. “Shut up, bitch,” he growled.

  Shiloh hadn’t waited. As Tate’s focus had shifted, she made a lightning-quick decision. She had to leave. Right then. No turning back. She bolted through the open door and took off, first on foot, racing across the summer-dry fields. Then when she reached the county road, she stuck out her thumb and hitchhiked the rest of the way out of Prairie Creek.

  She might never have come back at all except for the urgency in her mother’s voice last night, and the sound of her cough, a wet rattle that was far worse than the usual dry hack caused by Faye’s cigarettes. “If you won’t come back for me, do it for Morgan.”

  Still, Shiloh had resisted. “I don’t know Morgan.”

  “She’s your blood, Shiloh. Your sister. The only one you’ll ever have. I didn’t tell you, but your father died last year.”

  “What?” Not that it really mattered; she couldn’t remember the bastard who’d sired her, married Faye in a shotgun wedding, and then took off. Still, it was a shock.

  “And I might not be long for this world.”

  “Mom—”

  “Come home, Shiloh. Morgan and I need you.” Another chest-shuddering cough, and Faye, out of character, hung up. When Shiloh had dialed her back, the phone hadn’t connected, a busy signal bleeping in Shiloh’s ear. All night. So she’d packed up the next morning, made arrangements with Carlos to take care of the horses, then hit the road.

  Now she stared at the screen door, and all the old memories washed over her. Of swimming in the pond in the nude, of the old tire swing on the long-downed tree in the backyard, of crushing super hard on Tommy Monroe before he’d moved away, of the first stubborn colt she’d ridden after being scraped or bucked off what had to have been fifty times or more. And then the darker memories of Larimer Tate and the night that had propelled her out of Wyoming, when Ruthie had been assaulted and the three girls had nearly died at the hands of the madman.

  Damn it all, they should never have remained silent, never have agreed to Ruthie’s desperate pleas. They’d been young and foolish and scared.

  Tires crunched against the sparse gravel, jolting her back to the present.

  She looked over her shoulder to see the same beat-up pickup that had been following her driving up the lane. He’d been following her all this time? What kind of small-town road rage was this? Or …

  She was starting to connect the dots when the truck stopped. A tall, rangy man in faded jeans and a ripped T-shirt climbed from the cab. With wide shoulders, slim hips, a hard jaw, and hair that hadn’t met a comb recently, he glared at her as if she were the interloper. A dog that looked part German shepherd hopped to the ground and trotted toward her.

  She braced herself.

  The dog gave her a once-over, then beelined for the front porch.

  He asked, “Can I help you?”

  “Help me? You followed me here.”

  A thin smile stretched over a beard-stubbled jaw. “I think you led me.”

  “Why are you here, and who are you?”

  His eyes narrowed, and that damned good-ol’-boy grin tightened a bit further. “Funny. That’s just what I was gonna ask you.”

  “I live … I used to …” She snorted in annoyance. “My mother lives here,” she finally got out. Something flickered in his eyes. Recognition? But she’d never seen him before. Or? Was she wrong? Had her mother moved? No way. Shiloh had spoken to Faye just yesterday, and there had been no mention of a move.

  Before he could say another word, the screen door banged open, and a girl flew out. Gangly and tanned, with wild, strawberry-blond curls and freckles dusting a tiny nose, the girl, around twelve, stared at Shiloh with wide, suspicious eyes. “You’re Shiloh,” she declared.

  “Uh huh.” Shiloh recognized the kid from a few pictures Faye had sent over the years. “Hi, Morgan,” she said, but the girl didn’t smile, just turned her attention to the man standing next to her.

  “We have to go!” she said tightly. “I called nine-one-one. The ambulance came. They took her to the hospital.” Her eyes dampened as she ran toward the stranger and vaulted into his waiting arms.

  “It’s all right,” he murmured into her hair, his voice rough. He gazed over her shoulder, his intense hazel eyes finding Shiloh’s. “We’ll go there.” Morgan was sobbing now, her shoulders lifting and falling as she buried her face in his neck.

  “Now?” the girl whispered.

  “Yes.” He gently turned her toward his truck, throwing over his shoulder to Shiloh, “You coming?”

  “Who are you?” she asked again, but she knew, deep in her gut, before he could say a word.

  As he helped Morgan into the cab and she scrambled over the driver’s seat and console to the passenger side,
he sent Shiloh another hard look. “I’m Beau.”

  As in Beau Tate, Larimer’s son, whom she’d never met and had only heard mutterings of “that damned no-good kid” from her stepfather before she’d hightailed it out of Prairie Creek. She saw now that Beau resembled his old man, from his sun-streaked brown hair to his deep-set eyes and strong jaw. Yes, he had Larimer Tate stamped all over him.

  He hauled himself behind the wheel and yanked the door shut. The dog whined. Through the open window, Beau said, “Don’t know how long I’ll be, so you’d best stay.”

  Was he talking to her or the dog?

  “Hold on, Tate. What happened? It’s Mom, right? Something happened.”

  His silent stare through the window said it all: Faye was in really bad shape.

  “But she’ll be okay.”

  When he didn’t respond, the breath rushed out of her lungs in a whoosh. It was this serious? As in life and death? “What … what hospital?” As far as she knew, the nearest hospital was hours away.

  “Let’s go!” Morgan cried. “Come on!”

  “It’s in town. North End,” he said to Shiloh. “Where the old video store and the Snow Bird Café used to be. You can’t miss it.” With that, he twisted the key in the ignition. The engine fired, and he backed up, swung his truck around, and hit the gas.

  Her heart was a stone, her legs wooden as she strode to her SUV and slid into the warm interior. By rote she began driving, but she didn’t see the fence posts shooting by, nor the geese flying in formation in a blue Wyoming sky, nor even the back end of Beau Tate’s battered old truck as it kicked up dust before turning onto the county road.