You Will Pay

by Lisa Jackson

  “Maybe it’s a false alarm. Maybe you’re just late.”

  Monica rolled her eyes expressively. “I’m like clockwork, okay? My cycle is twenty-seven days on the dot. Usually starts in the morning. So, yeah, I’m sure, but if you mean have I taken a pregnancy test? Then, no. It’s not like I can walk into the infirmary and ask Mrs. Dalton for one, can I?”

  Mrs. Dalton, “Mother Naomi,” was the reverend’s wife, a pretty woman whose interpretation of the camp’s rules and her Christian duty usually pinched her otherwise even features.

  “No, guess not.”

  “Since we’re trapped here in this”—she’d glanced around the area again, then leaned her head back as if to observe the stars winking high in the heavens—“this place I haven’t been able to get to a pharmacy, but it doesn’t matter. I know.”

  The fire forgotten, Bernadette stood up and stuffed her work gloves into the back pocket of her jeans. If Monica was only as far along as she claimed, obviously she’d gotten pregnant at the camp. They’d all arrived on the first of June and now it was mid-August. “So what happened?”

  “You mean how did I get pregnant?”

  “Yeah.”

  “One-night stand. I was stupid and careless.”

  “And the father?”

  “He, um, I told him.”

  “And?”

  “He’s not exactly into being a daddy, if you know what I mean.”

  “So who is he?”

  She’d opened her mouth, as if to tell Bernadette everything, then had thought better of it. “Doesn’t matter.” Bernadette’s mind flashed through the faces of the males around the camp—eight counselors and various workmen who kept the place running, Lucas Dalton and his two stepbrothers, David and Ryan Tremaine, along with a few others including Tyler Quade and Demarco Lewis.

  Monica sank onto one of the benches surrounding the fire. “What am I going to do?” Her voice was a whisper. She dropped her face into her hands. “My dad will kill me.”

  “I thought your parents were divorced,” Bernadette said.

  She shook her head. “Separated. Some of the time. She gets mad, throws him out, and he comes crawling back with candy and flowers and good intentions or whatever. Breaks her down and then for a while they’re all lovey-dovey, like thirteen-year-olds all giggly and sweet. They even go out on dates until he weasels his way back into the house. It’s sickening. Maybe worse than when they’re fighting. Oh, I don’t know. But they’re together right now. Or at least they were when I left, so, trust me, he’s gonna hit the roof when he finds out.” She shook her head, ponytail swinging, as she thought of the upcoming scene.

  “But you’re nineteen.”

  “Big deal. It doesn’t matter. His roof, his rules.” She kicked at the soft dirt in front of one of the benches. “Look, I shouldn’t have said anything. Don’t worry about it, okay? I-I’ll figure it out.” Then, as if regretting she’d confided in Bernadette, she’d added, “Don’t tell anyone, okay? No one.”

  “I won’t,” Bernadette had promised.

  “Not even your sister.” Her voice had been a warning.

  “No, no, of course not.” But Bernadette had glanced over her shoulder to make certain Annette wasn’t lurking nearby, hiding in the shadows, eavesdropping.

  “Good.” Monica had then taken off at a jog toward her cabin, leaving Bernadette to deal with the remains of the damned fire.

  Now, Bernadette replayed the scene in her mind. Since that confession, Monica had avoided her. Bernadette needed to talk to her, tell her that her secret was safe, that she hadn’t told a soul and wouldn’t. Maybe tonight she’d get a chance to talk to Monica alone.

  Glancing at her watch, she knew she was late, was supposed to meet the others at the cove, but they would have to wait. For how long, she didn’t know, but time was running out here at the camp, summer nearly over and soon she’d leave, not just Cape Horseshoe and this camp, but also Lucas Dalton.

  At that thought, she flung herself back onto her bed. It was crazy. She knew it. She had a boyfriend back in Seattle, but this summer, away from the city, trapped with a bunch of kids she’d never met before, something had changed.

  And of course she’d met Lucas.

  The minister’s son.

  You’ll leave on Saturday and never think of him again, her mind insisted, but her heart just didn’t believe it. How could she forget the boy, well, almost a man, at eighteen, with wheat-blond hair, sharp features, and hazel eyes that seemed to pierce into hers and see her soul?

  She knew it was a romantic fantasy. The feelings her mother had called “puppy love” or a “teenage crush” or whatever. Didn’t matter. Bernadette felt it. The pain of knowing she might never see Lucas again, never stare into those knowing eyes, never see his crooked, irreverent smile again, never feel his hands skimming down her skin and causing her to heat from the inside out, was enough to kill her. It was nuts. And stupid. And . . . And she ached inside at the thought of it.

  You’ll get over him. You have to.

  “Hey! Come on!” A whisper pierced the darkness and she recognized her sister’s voice. “Are you coming or what?”

  “Shh!” she hissed back, and rolled off the bed. Snatching her sweatshirt from its hook, she carried her shoes to the doorway and stepped quickly outside. The girls she was supposed to be watching were sleeping; she’d made sure of it. Even Therese McAllister, whose bladder had to be no bigger than a pea, had returned from her eleven-thirty run to the latrine. Therese had shuffled past, probably blushed as she’d said a quick word of explanation to Bernadette, “Gotta go,” before she’d hurried outside and returned within three minutes—fastest tinkler known to man or woman. Now, she was out cold in dreamland and would be until her bladder alerted her to wake up again, probably around 4:30 or 5:00.

  “This is crazy,” she told her sister as she leaned over and pulled on her Nike running shoes.

  “I know.”

  Bernadette wasn’t finished tying the laces when Annette took off at a jog, toward the back of the cabins, away from the glow of the dying campfire to the woods beyond. “Hold up!” Bernadette warned under her breath, but, of course, mule-headed Annette wasn’t listening. Bernadette didn’t dare shout, not with the windows of each of the cabins open. With a final knot of her laces, Bernadette got to her feet and started hurrying after her sister down the trail that was littered with fir needles and rocks. She caught Annette just as she reached a final rise. Here, where the trees gave way to the headland, the path turned, angling steeply downward in a series of sharp switchbacks that led across the cliff face to the sea. Annette was already starting the descent.

  “Wait!” Bernadette caught her sister’s arm. “I don’t know about this. Jo-Beth is going to try to get us to all say that Elle is suicidal, but I’m not sure.”

  “Well, join the party. I’m not sure about anything.” Annette yanked her arm away and threw her sister a wounded look. “I don’t know what this is all about—just that we were supposed to meet down at the cove, so okay, I’m in. But what the hell is going on with Elle?” she demanded. “All I know is that she’s missing and the girls in her cabin have been doled out to everyone else.” Her little chin jutted forward. “No one tells me anything.”

  There was a reason for that, of course. Annette wasn’t known to keep secrets.

  “Why are we meeting at the cavern at midnight? It’s like we’re witches in a coven. It’s stupid. What we should be doing is organizing a search party or something. I mean, she’s been gone a whole day, right? So why haven’t the cops been called? This ‘camp’ is a joke.”

  That much was right. At least in Bernadette’s opinion.

  “Okay, take it down a notch. We’re not, like, witches, for God’s sake. And I don’t know about the cops. Maybe it’s the twenty-four-hour thing? Who knows? But we’ve all got to get our story straight.”

  “Maybe we should all just tell the truth,” Annette argued.

  “You want to do that?”<
br />
  Annette, no matter how she liked to think of herself, was no innocent. None of them were. That was the problem.

  “I don’t know. Yeah, maybe. Oh, crap. Come on!” She pulled away, started descending. The ocean’s roar grew louder, the air smelling of brine. More cautiously, they picked their way down the steep hillside, their feet sliding a bit on the narrow, sandy trail. They didn’t bother with flashlights as moon glow offered a weak, silvery illumination and the path was familiar.

  At the bottom of the steep hill where they came across a band of stumps and branches, driftwood bleached white, Annette started in again. “We didn’t do anything wrong,” she said, as if trying to convince herself. She climbed over the snags and headed to the far end of the crescent-shaped strand that led to the cape, a spiny ridge that curled like a dragon’s tail into the sea. Beneath that long arm of rock and wind-blasted pines was a cavern where all the counselors had agreed to meet.

  “Some of us . . . make that most of us, you included, haven’t been staying in our bunks,” Bernadette admitted as she caught up with her sister, “and so it looks bad, like maybe we had something to do with Elle’s disappearance.”

  “With Elle’s disapp—are you kidding? That’s crazy! I say we just tell the truth and, you know, let whatever happens happen.”

  “It’s not that simple. Everyone, you included, has broken camp rules, right? And Reverend Dalton won’t take that lightly. If there’s any whiff of scandal or impropriety, he’ll nail our collective hides to the wall, tell our parents, make a stink that might get in the papers, let potential employers know if they get requests for recommendations, and even bring in the police. Who knows?” She grabbed hold of Annette’s elbow and spun her around, saw her dark hair flying around her face as she twirled. “So, let’s just hear what the others have to say, okay. Then we’ll figure out what we’re going to do.”

  Annette hesitated, and no doubt the wheels were turning frantically in her scheming little mind. And it wasn’t as if Bernadette could argue with her. It was true enough that all of the counselors, Annette included, had been breaking all kinds of camp rules that could get them in trouble, not just here at the camp, but also could cause bigger repercussions when they got home. Legal repercussions, the kind that might cause people to lose scholarships or admissions to college or mess up résumés for jobs or, in her case, cost her a boyfriend.

  Which might be okay.

  Or not.

  CHAPTER 6

  Averille, Oregon

  Now

  Lucas

  His phone jangled just as Lucas wheeled his Renegade into the parking lot of the sheriff’s department. Wet leaves littered the asphalt, and the storm drain in the center of the crumbling asphalt was clogged, water standing in an ever-growing puddle. His partner’s name appeared on the small screen and he picked up, then cut the engine.

  “Hey, Mags,” he said, staring through the rain-dappled windshield to the concrete block exterior wall. Gray paint was beginning to peel. “I’m here.”

  “About time.”

  “I’m only a coupla minutes late . . . well, maybe ten.” He climbed out of the Jeep, phone pressed to his ear.

  “Or twenty. Anyway, brace yourself. She’s on the warpath today.”

  She being Sheriff Nina Locklear, his boss.

  “When isn’t she?” he asked, hitting the remote lock on his key chain and hearing the responding chirp from his vehicle. “And I don’t think ‘warpath’ is politically correct.”

  “She’s less than a quarter Native American. Anyway, I’m telling you, she’s on a rampage. Mad as hell,” Maggie warned.

  “About?”

  “About the fact that no more bones have been found, and the skull that you and Caleb discovered can’t yet be ID’ed. The lab can’t even decidedly say whether it’s male or female. Too much degradation.”

  “It hasn’t even been twenty-four hours.” Ducking around a gutter that was overflowing, he said, “The lab will figure it out.”

  “Eventually, yeah. But that’s not good enough. Not fast enough. She’s already pulled all the computer data and physical files of people who’ve gone missing in the last century.”

  He cut through a couple of cars in the lot and headed toward the front steps. “Yeah.”

  “And for some reason, she’s zeroed in on about twenty years ago.”

  His stomach clutched, though he’d been expecting just that news. “That so?”

  “Look, I’ve got another call, but I thought you should know what was up.”

  “Thanks.” He hung up, took the steps two at a time, and opened the front door of the sheriff’s department, then waited while an older woman using a walker made her way outside.

  Winifred Olsen, the local town crier and a parishioner who had sat front and center in the first pew of the First Christian Church for all the years Lucas had attended services, gave him the once-over.

  Her eyes narrowed behind oversize glasses straight out of the eighties. “You’re the preacher’s boy,” she accused as a bit of summer wind swept over the porch.

  “Guilty as charged, Winny.”

  Her thin lips, colored with bright bubble-gum pink lipstick, pursed. “You always were a smart aleck. It’s the mark of the devil, y’know, that snarly sarcasm of yours. I hate to say it, but as wild as you were, I’m surprised you turned out at all.”

  No love lost there. “Ah, c’mon, Winny, you don’t ‘hate to say it’ at all. In fact, you get off reminding me that I don’t quite measure up to your standards.” He offered her a lazy smile that was met with a look of pure venom.

  Moving past, she muttered, “You and your lot should go straight to hell.”

  “Afraid I’m already there, Winny,” he said truthfully, and walked inside to be greeted with the sounds of clicking keyboards, a wheezing air-conditioning unit, and muted conversation. He waited for Dottie at the front desk to buzz him through the interior door leading to the back offices. Behind a huge bulletproof glass window, she heard the alarm indicating the front doors had opened, slid him a look, and simultaneously hit a button that tripped a lock.

  All of which was a pain in the ass, but installed a year or so back when a nutcase named Stubby Hanson, who had a grudge with his neighbor that the department hadn’t resolved, had taken matters into his own hands. One October morning, Stubby had burst through the front doors, chainsaw in hand. Then, hyped up on adrenaline and fueled by Jack Daniel’s, revved up his weapon. With the saw spewing exhaust and roaring loudly, he attacked the office, beginning by taking big gouges out of the front counter. Oak cabinetry topped with ancient Formica had splintered. The glass fronts of the cabinets had shattered, shards spewing into the room, and Dottie had screamed bloody murder as she’d taken refuge behind her secretary’s desk. All the while Stubby continued taking his frustrations out on the department’s furnishings.

  No one had been able to talk him down. Three deputies, one using a Taser, had finally been able to subdue him, though in so doing, his hands had flailed and he’d dropped the still-running saw. The spinning blade had cut through his jeans and taken a piece of flesh out of his thigh, spraying blood before landing on the floor and chopping off the front legs of a nearby chair. One deputy managed to grab the saw and turn it off while the other two wrestled Stubby into cuffs. An EMT had seen to his wound and he’d been hauled off to the nearest hospital.

  All because a neighbor wouldn’t move his tractor six inches.

  Surveying the damage to the reception area afterward, the sheriff had decided that things could have been much worse had Stubby arrived armed with a rifle or sawed-off shotgun rather than the chainsaw. Extra security in the form of the heavy bulletproof glass partition and a locked inner door had been added. After a week’s absence, Dottie Jenkins had decided against quitting the department as she’d threatened and returned to her desk and her drill-sergeant persona.

  “Mornin’,” Lucas said as he filed past what everyone in the station referred to as “Comma
nd Central.”

  “Detective.” Dottie didn’t look away from her computer screen, her nose pressed near the monitor as she was too vain to wear glasses, all of which tended to give her a birdlike posture. Her hair was nearly white and poofed up, cut in layers, and clipped at her neckline. Neat. Tidy. And sharp as a tack. “The sheriff wants to see you.” No inflection—just an order. “She’s in her office.”

  Not good news.

  Lucas braced himself, then walked down the short hallway to Sheriff Nina Locklear’s office. As Dottie had said, the sheriff was seated behind a clean, spacious faux-wood desk. Slim and athletic, a hint of her Native American heritage visible in the height of her cheekbones and the sheen of her black hair, she was around five foot eight and all business. Lucas figured had she not had an all-consuming passion for law enforcement, she might have been a model.

  This morning she wasn’t alone.

  One of the visitor’s chairs was occupied by Ryan Tremaine.

  His stepbrother. Well, once-upon-a-time stepbrother. Since Naomi and Jeremiah Dalton had divorced, the whole stepbrother thing had disintegrated. Their only connection, these days, was Leah, the one remaining connection between Naomi and Jeremiah. Everything had been split—except, of course, Leah.

  What a mess.

  And now Lucas got to deal with Ryan.

  Great.

  Tremaine, a year younger than Lucas, currently worked for the DA’s office. With the build of a baseball player, he was tall and lanky, his short hair dark and trimmed to match his goatee. His eyes, always unreadable, met Lucas’s and he gave a curt nod. Didn’t bother to smile. But then he never did. Not around Lucas when they’d been stepbrothers. Now, they were just two men who lived in the same small town and didn’t much like each other.

  Lucas said to the sheriff, “Dottie said you wanted to see me.”

  “That’s right,” Locklear said. “It’s about the skull found out at the cape.”