You Will Pay

by Lisa Jackson

  “No.”

  “You don’t think it might be because Kinley Marsh is on the story? That she might be pressuring them for interviews?”

  Lucas shrugged. They reached their vehicles. Maggie glanced at the overcast skies and said, “Well, something’s up. It feels like they’re circling the wagons.”

  “After twenty years.”

  “Their statements were all so much the same that I wondered if they’d come up with one story between them and just stuck to it.”

  “Wouldn’t one of them have broken?”

  “Maybe they were threatened or had something to lose.”

  “All of them?” he said, thinking of the girls, now women, that he’d known. Some of them had pretty strong personalities. “Seems unlikely.”

  “Teenagers run in herds and have an us-against-them mentality. I’m gonna bet there was a ringleader.” She glanced up at him. “Any guesses?”

  He thought. Saw where she was going. “Maybe Reva Mercado.”

  “I’ve dealt with Ms. Vicari née Mercado before.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Umm-hmm. Accident in Clackamas County, a few years ago. Her husband and another woman died and there was always something fishy about it; something that didn’t feel right.”

  “How so?”

  “She claims her husband was driving and the evidence seemed to point that way, but the kid in the other vehicle, the five-year-old who lost her mother in the crash? She swears the driver was a woman. No one really believed the kid because of her age and the trauma of the accident, how everything’s out of kilter when you’re going through it.” Maggie’s face set. “It never felt right to me, but then I was transferred and my replacement bought Reva Vicari’s story. So, I believe she’s conniving, yeah, and a liar, able to cover her own ass and break all the rules, but she never struck me as the type who could influence people.”

  “She influenced your replacement on the job.”

  “But he’s a wuss. And let’s just say an ‘uninspired’ investigator.” She unlocked the door of her car. “You got any other ideas? What about Bernadette Warden? You knew her.”

  “Yeah, but . . . she’s not that . . .”

  “Devious? Ambitious?”

  He shook his head and took one last glance at the aging buildings, with their mossy roofs, boarded windows, and rusted, needle-clogged downspouts.

  “Would she go along with someone else? Maybe her sister?”

  “If you’re looking for a ringleader,” he said, coming to the same conclusion he had when he’d gone over the files, “I’d look at Jo-Beth Chancellor Leroy. My money’s on her.”

  “I’m way ahead of you,” Dobbs admitted as she opened the car door and slipped inside. “I just wanted your take on things. Next up, I’m going to talk to your family, or ex-family. The good preacher, his ex-wife, and all the kids. Unless you want to tag along, be there for the interviews.”

  He didn’t have to think twice. He was heading to his Jeep when his cell phone buzzed and he answered, expecting to hear something from the lab, or an update on the case. Instead a familiar voice said, “Hey, Lucas, sorry to bother you. This is Monty, down at Spike’s. Got a bit of a situation here. It’s Caleb.”

  “Yeah?”

  “He’s, um, had a few and he’s started going all buggy on me, y’know?” There was a bit of worry to Monty’s tone. “Claims he’s seen a ghost. That he was out crabbing and ran into the damned spirit of Eleanor Brady. I don’t want to get him into trouble. Hell, I usually just take his keys from him and serve him coffee until I know he’s sober enough to drive. But, with all that’s been going on, I thought you’d want to know.”

  “I’m on my way.”

  “Oh, and there’s one more thing.”

  “Yeah?” Lucas was already sliding behind the wheel of his Renegade. “What’s that?”

  “There’s a woman down here, hanging out, trying to talk to everyone, and she’s zeroed in on Caleb. Name of Kinley Marsh; I checked her ID. Claims she’s a reporter for one of those online newspapers, this one out of Astoria, and she’s real interested in what Caleb’s sayin’. Real interested.”

  “Got it,” Lucas said, jabbing his keys into the ignition and backing up. Nosy Kinley Marsh. Drunk Caleb Carter. The makings of a lethal combination. “I’ll be there in ten, maybe less.” Then he hung up, rammed the Jeep into drive, and hit the gas.

  CHAPTER 25

  Camp Horseshoe

  Annette

  Then

  This was crazy, Annette thought as she snuck into her cabin. She hadn’t seen a ghost. Had not viewed any kind of apparition. Nor had she caught a glimpse of Elle in the flesh. Her mind was just playing tricks on her, that had to be it.

  But no matter how she tried to convince herself that she’d dreamed up the image of Elle on the cliff, she knew in her heart she’d seen something . . . something that she shouldn’t have.

  Trying to calm herself, she slid into her bunk and noticed that Nell appeared to be sleeping, one pajama-clad arm hanging down from the top bunk. Nell, the junior counselor, hadn’t been invited to the meeting tonight, as if she were insignificant.

  “Why not make her come?” Annette had asked earlier in the day when she’d caught up with Jo-Beth hurrying out of the rec center.

  “Someone’s got to stay for the girls, and besides, she’s not trustworthy,” Jo-Beth had snapped. Annette hadn’t argued. Jo-Beth had obviously been on edge, spoiling for a fight, and Annette knew Jo-Beth thought she was just Bernadette’s nerdy little sister, someone to be tolerated, but never accepted. Someone so immature that she had to be saddled with a secondary counselor.

  Well, they’d find out differently, because she knew all their secrets, had worked to find out exactly what made each of them tick—their strengths, their weaknesses, and most especially their lies.

  After freaking out about seeing what she’d thought was a ghost, Annette had ditched the others and headed back to camp. She’d slunk quietly into Monica’s cabin to find that Monica wasn’t in her bunk, her girls left unattended.

  Where was she?

  More jittery than ever, Annette had returned to her own cabin and had tried to calm herself, telling herself that everything was going to be all right. She was letting her imagination get the better of her, but the night had seemed to close in on her, and the dying embers of the campfire, a few sparse glowing coals, had pulsed like red, ghoulish eyes.

  Stop it! For God’s sake, pull yourself together!

  Letting her breath out slowly, she did a quick bed check to see that all of her charges, those quirky, well, let’s be honest, nerdy, little eleven-year-olds were still sleeping in their bunks. Once satisfied that all were safe, she kicked off her boots and slid into her open sleeping bag, where she listened to the sounds of the summer night and wondered about the events of the last couple of days. First Elle going missing and now Monica . . . not in her bed? Was she with Tyler? Someone else? Or had something happened to her?

  Don’t go there. She’s fine. Just because Elle is missing . . . She swallowed hard. There had been talk of a murderer on the loose, an escaped prisoner. Could he have sneaked into the camp and kidnapped the girls? Could he even now be waiting outside one of the unlocked cabins, waiting to pounce again?

  Her heart drummed wildly and she thought of all the murder mysteries she devoured, the cable TV channels devoted to true crimes that she watched. Her imagination ran wild and she wondered if, even now, Waldo Grimes was lurking near the doorway to this very cabin.

  She clutched the edge of the sleeping bag with sweaty fingers.

  Ears straining, she listened for any sound that was out of the ordinary. Above the rush of the wind and the ever-present roar of the ocean, crickets chirped, frogs croaked, and far in the distance a coyote gave off a plaintive howl.

  Her mind was whirling and she knew that sleep would be elusive, if not impossible. A counselor had gone missing and might be dead, for God’s sake. Geez, what were the others thinkin
g with their stupid deception? And why were Jo-Beth and Reva, who came late to their own meeting, so adamant about it? What did they have to hide, and what did it have to do with Elle? With Monica? Could they have done something to the missing girls?

  Monica’s not missing! You know how everyone leaves their bunks at night. Don’t jump to conclusions!

  She forced herself to calm down by reminding herself how stupid the other girls were. Things would work out. They always did. No matter what bossy Jo-Beth ordered, they couldn’t very well just lie to the police about a girl gone missing and everything would be fine. No freaking way. They should all tell the truth, no matter how hard it was or what the consequences were.

  Of course, things could get pretty damned dicey for some of the girls, but that was just too bad. As Mom always said: “You make your bed, you lie in it.” And there was the sorry fact that Annette herself had done more than her share of things she wasn’t proud of. She’d been snooping and spying on her older sister and the other girls. If she hadn’t heard confessions or seen nefarious deeds, she could hazard a pretty damned good guess as to who was doing what to whom. And she’d kept a little diary of all of it. Why? She didn’t really know, but she considered the information she’d gathered important, even valuable. Who knew when she might need a little help from one of the others?

  You would resort to extortion?

  “Maybe,” she murmured under her breath.

  What about bribery?

  “Definitely.” Then she zipped her lips. No telling what Nell might overhear, or one of the campers; she wouldn’t put it past the little whiners to be feigning sleep.

  Wouldn’t you be? If you were on the other side of this half wall? Come on, Annette, you know yourself too well. You’d be the first in line to stay awake and keep an eye on what’s going on in the dark of night—just like you are now.

  She knew she was an outcast, one of the youngest counselors aside from Nell, only tolerated because she was Bernadette’s little sister, which only served to make Annette feel like a damned albatross around her older sister’s neck.

  But then, Bernadette wasn’t exactly playing by the rules. Annette knew because she’d followed her, seen her meet with Lucas Dalton, watched them doing the nasty even though everyone knew Lucas was Elle’s boyfriend, at least according to Elle. And it broke Annette’s heart to think that Lucas, if he were going to cheat on Elle, would do it with Bernadette, not her.

  She yanked the covers over her head and tried not to think about Lucas. It was stupid, really, the way she felt about him, but she felt it was more than a simple schoolgirl crush. From the second she’d seen him in the office, when she and Bernadette had been dropped off by their mother, Annette had noticed him. How he carried himself, the way his jeans hung low on his hips, and his butt, yes, for the first time ever, she’d observed the fluidity of his movement in those nearly worn-out Levi’s. She’d looked quickly away, hadn’t wanted him to notice how she was staring at him, but in a blink, she had a fantasy, of him on top of her, him pushing into her, her grabbing his butt and—oh, God, now in the dark, alone, she was blushing. Never had she had such a raw and sexual fantasy. She’d kissed a couple of boys in school, even let Anthony Sinclaire touch her breasts, but she’d pushed him and his greedy hands away when he’d gone for the waistband of her skirt. She hadn’t been that into him anyway, and he’d been a fumbler and a groper, so she’d never seen him again, shunned him in school.

  Lucas was a cut above any of the boys she’d dated, more like a man.

  Still, he was out of her league.

  And apparently fit right into Bernadette’s.

  She knew. She’d seen them. Followed them just this past Sunday, in the afternoon, after church services when the campers were busy with projects and the counselors had been given a few hours to themselves, ostensibly for rest and reflection, to get in touch with God or something.

  Lucas and Bernadette had met at an abandoned cabin, one close to the ocean, and their makeout sessions had steadily progressed.

  After following her sister through that part of the forest, Annette had waited until Bernadette had slipped inside, then discovered an open window near the staircase and had climbed up stealthily, then slid across the loft floor to watch the display on the floor below. They’d started out talking and touching, then Lucas had kissed her and when Bernadette hadn’t stopped him, he’d kissed her harder and pushed her onto her back. His hands had slid under her sweatshirt and Bernadette had moaned as he’d kissed her.

  Annette had felt her own pulse quicken and her blood heat watching them. She’d wondered what it would feel like to have a man kiss her so passionately, to press his knee between hers, to fondle her breasts. She’d swallowed hard at the thought, felt a little ache deep within and told herself to quit watching, but she was transfixed at the sight of lovemaking.

  Bernadette’s hair had been pulled back and banded at the back of her neck, but now was escaping, framing her head. Her eyes had been closed and she’d moaned as he’d kissed her neck, then moved lower, unzipping the sweatshirt and pushing up Bernadette’s pink T-shirt.

  His hands had found her bra and he’d skimmed the lacy edges with his lips before somehow unclasping it, allowing Bernadette’s breasts to spill free. They were white beneath her tan line and the nipples dark buttons that Lucas had found fascinating enough to kiss and nip at.

  Annette had bit down on her own lip not to cry out as she watched her sister let this boy she barely knew remove her bra and toss it aside.

  As if he’d done it a hundred times before!

  But what about Bernadette? Was this new to her, or had she done this before with Joel, her boyfriend back in Seattle? Weren’t they practically engaged, and here she was kissing and touching and moaning with this Lucas Dalton?

  As she’d watched, Annette had seen Lucas’s hand move lower, his fingers discovering the button of her jeans. Deftly, he’d slipped the button through its hole, then a second later Annette had heard the soft hiss of a zipper being lowered.

  Bernadette had grabbed his wrist. Stopped him.

  Good. About time!

  “No,” she’d whispered. “I don’t think . . .” she’d said, and as he’d lifted his head and had started to pull back his hand, Bernadette had opened her eyes and looked into his. As if she’d read some unspoken vow in his gaze, she’d wrapped her fingers around his wrist once more, but this time she’d guided him back to her, parting her legs so that he could slip his fingers into the opening of her jeans.

  “You’re sure?” His voice was a whisper.

  She’d nodded and urged softly, breathlessly, “Please.”

  He’d complied, slipping those long, strong fingers into the opening. She gave a soft little cry as he began to touch her. He shifted, moving over her, so that he was half lying atop her while ministering to her with his fingers.

  Annette, her own heart tearing a bit, had watched in fascination as his hips had started to move to the rhythm of his fingers. She’d witnessed the cords in his neck stand out and his jean-clad buttocks flex as if he were straining against the fly of his own jeans.

  Oh. My.

  Her gaze had drifted to his shoulder, where the top half of Bernadette’s face had been visible. Her sister had looked up, her eyes rounding, her breath coming in quick, short pants, her gaze as it had focused, landing in the darkened loft, zeroing in on her sister’s face.

  Shit!

  Annette had frozen. Had Bernadette seen her? Would Bernadette keep letting Lucas touch her so intimately knowing her baby sister was watching?

  Praying her sister hadn’t caught her being a voyeur, Annette had quickly closed her own eyes, hoping to shutter any reflection in them. She’d eased backward very slowly, not making a sound. Holding her breath, she’d pulled away until the toe of her tennis shoe discovered the edge of the staircase; then she’d noiselessly crept down the dusty steps to the open window where she’d slipped through, and silently dropped to the soft earth outside th
e cabin.

  She’d felt a little dirty watching them groping and breathing hard, and told herself she wouldn’t follow Bernadette again. But as she made her way back to the heart of the camp, she felt a new, unfamiliar ache deep inside of her. She’d slipped into her own bunk and, using her flashlight, a pen, and her small notebook, written down what she’d seen. As she’d finished she’d wondered when, if ever, she would meet a man who would touch her as Lucas had Bernadette.

  The thought had been as titillating as it had been worrisome.

  Maybe she’d never meet the right boy. Maybe she’d never lose herself in the throes of passion.

  Then again . . . she’d begun plotting just how to make that happen and had even started spinning a story about her imaginary lover, all of which she’d written in the diary that she kept in a secret little cubby in the wall on the far side of the bed. The niche was hidden by the mattress and springs, and just wide enough for the diary to slip inside.

  Now, as she lay in her bed she closed her mind to the memory of Bernadette and Lucas, wondered what it would have felt like if he’d touched her so intimately. She would be so much better for him than her sister. And why not her? If Elle were gone and her sister as fickle as ever, why not true-blue Annette, the girl who believed in fairy tales and happily-ever-afters? She would do right by Lucas, she would! If given half a chance. But the fates were always against her, it seemed.

  And as much as she would like to fantasize and fall asleep to dream about the feel of Lucas’s work-roughened hands on her body, she had more important things to think about, like what had happened to Elle, what she would tell the police, and how in the world she would live a lie, if that’s what the others wanted.