The Lost Sister

by Megan Kelley Hall

  “Don’t worry, Mrs. Crane. I’m going to watch out for these girls,” Finn said staunchly.

  Abigail gave him a sharp look. “And who is going to look out for you, Finn?” She smiled for the briefest moment and then headed upstairs, leaving the three of them to return to their discussion.

  “You don’t really think we’re at risk, do you, Finn?” Maddie asked. All of it seemed surreal. Darcy’s death and then Bronwyn’s kidnapping and murder. The fire at Ravenswood. There had to be a connection to it all. Who was doing this and why?

  “Well, you all realize that I’m the main suspect,” Cordelia said dryly. “I’m the one who disappeared for a year. I’m the one that people think is crazy. I’m the one that drove my mom into a nuthouse. And all of this insanity started right when I got back to town.”

  “Plus, the tarot cards,” Finn said to no one in particular.

  “What did you just say?” Cordelia asked, her voice suddenly shaky. “Who said anything about tarot cards?”

  Finn looked back and forth between Maddie and Cordelia. They both were staring at him strangely. This was the first time that tarot cards had ever been mentioned among the three of them.

  “I—uh—I thought you guys knew,” Finn stammered. “When Reed and I were being held as suspects, he told me that Darcy and the rest of the Sisters of Misery got some weird tarot cards. And then he mentioned that Bronwyn got one, too. And you,” he said to Maddie. “He said you got one up at school. I found one with my name on it shoved into the stone wall with faces of the Pickering sisters.”

  Cordelia’s eyes glazed over. “I got one up in Maine. I didn’t know how anyone found me. I’d been hiding for a year and all of a sudden, the same day I read the paper about the mess I’d left behind here—all of the craziness that happened at Ravenswood, Tess’s passing…” She stopped talking, her eyes welling up with tears. “Someone knew where I was. I got a tarot card. The Death card. I thought it was some kind of message from the Sisters of Misery. That they found me or something. That they’d been watching me the whole time. That’s when I knew I had to come back here. Not only to clear Finn and Reed as suspects, but also to find out who had been keeping tabs on me for all that time.”

  “Who do you think they’re from?” Maddie asked quickly.

  Finn answered solemnly, “Whoever sent those cards is probably the same person responsible for all the recent tragedies.” He paused and looked at the girls with a mixture of fear and anger. “And that person is giving us a warning.”

  “What kind of warning?” Maddie asked, afraid that she already knew the answer.

  “That one of us is next.”

  Chapter 27

  THE WORLD

  A culmination of events. A sense of repleteness. Frustration. Completion delayed. Inability to bring something to a satisfactory end. Resistance to change. Lack of trust. Hesitation. Despite appearances to the contrary, an indication that events have not yet come to a conclusion, but are nearing completion.

  T he phone rang at 3:00 a.m.

  Finn lunged for it and instantly regretted it when the searing pain went up his back. He remembered the last time he got one of those 3:00 a.m. calls, and how that night ended up.

  The voice on the phone was barely a whisper. “I know what you found and I think we need to talk.”

  Finn didn’t recognize the voice right away, but when he did, a sickening feeling fell across his body. It felt even worse than all the bruises and cuts on his body from his near-death experience off the shore of Misery Island.

  “What the hell do you want?” he growled.

  “You wouldn’t want to live with the fact that you could have saved Cordelia and Maddie’s lives, and you did nothing to stop it, would you?” the voice hissed. Finn could picture the person and the bile rose up in the back of his throat. How could this be possible?

  “Like I said, what do you want?” he said in a resigned manner.

  “Meet me at Ravenswood. You know where.”

  Click . The phone line went dead. He stared at the receiver for a minute and then slowly lowered the phone back onto his nightstand. He felt winded, like he’d had his last breath punched out of him.

  Jesus Christ , he thought, what the hell am I going to do?

  The haunting voice stuck with him as he drove to Ravenswood. He debated about calling Maddie and Cordelia, just in case something happened. He knew that if he called them right now, they’d want to go with him, which was the last thing he needed. So instead, he sent an e-mail that they’d get in the morning. That way, if he never made it home, at least they’d have a place to start looking.

  Maddie was lying in bed, trying to process everything that had gone on in the past few weeks. It seemed like such a short time ago that she was up at school—her only concern was that Cordelia was out there somewhere lost. Every night before she went to bed she had the same wish, to find Cordelia. And now she had gotten exactly what she had been praying for. But at what cost? Darcy and Bronwyn were killed—the killer still at large and most likely someone she knew well. The fire at Ravenswood. The threats on all of their lives. The tarot cards. Finn almost drowning. Malcolm Crane returning to Hawthorne just to make things even more insane.

  But then there were the good parts. Getting Finn and Reed off the hook and removing any suspicion that they were involved with the disappearance of the girls. Cordelia and Rebecca reuniting. Abigail’s cancer going into remission. Luke checking in on her and making her feel like despite all the craziness in her life, he would remain a constant—he’d look out for her.

  But there was something nagging at her. Something just wasn’t right. There was a connection there that she felt should be obvious, but it still eluded her. She heard knocking downstairs and sat up. It was probably just Cordelia getting a glass of water, but it reminded her of the night that Reed showed up. That first night that they went sailing together.

  Reed.

  He was the connection. He was involved with Bronwyn, and yet he obviously didn’t have any real feelings for her, or else he wouldn’t have kissed Maddie that night out on Misery Island. He knew about the tarot cards and gave Finn just enough information about the cards so that Finn could be implicated. He was there that night that Finn was almost killed. Bronwyn was missing and instead of tirelessly looking for her, he was spending his time drinking out on his boat? None of it made sense. And yet—he was there all along in plain sight. Blending in and yet never really proving his innocence. Could he have discovered where Cordelia moved to and sent her that tarot? Or perhaps he was just covering up for his little brother again?

  There was a soft tapping at her door.

  “Oh, good, I’m glad you’re up,” Cordelia said, rushing over to the bed with a glass of water in her hand. “I think I know who is at the center of all this.”

  The girls locked eyes and said at the same time, their voices overlapping:

  “Reed.”

  “Trevor.”

  “What?”

  “No!”

  “How can you possibly think Reed has anything to do with this?” Cordelia asked. “If anyone had a motive it would be Trevor.”

  Maddie considered this for a moment. Trevor had dated Darcy last year and ended things with her abruptly to return to Kate. Maybe Darcy threatened to go public with their affair that
night out on Misery, and that was Trevor’s way of quieting her.

  “Think about it,” Cordelia said. “He raped me and got away with it. Their family is superrich and could have easily tracked me down, making sure that I never came forward to press charges. But instead of silencing me with cash, Trevor sends me a tarot card, knowing that I would see it as a sign—a sign to keep my mouth shut and to stay away.”

  “Why would he burn down Ravenswood? Why kill Bronwyn?”

  “Maybe Bronwyn was onto him about the Darcy thing? Maybe he was jealous that she preferred Reed over him. Who knows? With Trevor, anything is possible. And Ravenswood burning down could have been his way of getting back at Kate and showing her who’s boss. He knew that all the Endicotts’ money was tied up in that place. What better way to take down a rich ex-girlfriend than by hitting her where it hurts the most? The very thing that defines her. Her money.”

  Maddie chewed her fingernail thoughtfully. Cordelia did have a point. It could have been Trevor.

  “Or…” Cordelia’s voice trailed off. “Maybe Reed was just cleaning up after his little brother. Just like last time.”

  There were so many possibilities. But each one seemed to point to the Campbell brothers more and more.

  Just when Maddie was about to agree with Cordelia about her theory on Reed and Trevor, her phone went off.

  “Oh God, another text from lover boy?” Cordelia said, trying to lighten the mood. “Doesn’t he know that booty calls don’t work at three in the morning when you’re separated by an ocean?”

  Maddie flipped open her phone. It wasn’t from Luke. It was an e-mail from Finn. She’d had her e-mails filtered into her phone while she was up at school. It was just easier to keep track of assignments that way. But Finn didn’t know that. Which is probably why he sent it , Maddie thought. Hoping that I wouldn’t get the message until the morning .

  “Oh, crap,” Maddie said, and then said to Cordelia quickly, “Get dressed.”

  “Why? What’s going on? Where are we going?”

  Maddie’s stomach dropped as she said the name. It was just like last year all over again. “Ravenswood.”

  Finn cut across the sloping hill to Ravenswood. He left his car parked far enough away so that no one would know he was there. Granted, no one in their right mind would be out and around Ravenswood in the middle of the night, especially in light of all that had happened there. But Finn knew he was dealing with someone who definitely wasn’t in their right mind.

  As soon as he passed the yellow CAUTION tape that crisscrossed the area surrounding Ravenswood and the charred remains of the newer buildings, it occurred to him that the only reason he was being summoned out here in the middle of the night with no one around for miles was that this person had one goal in mind.

  To kill me , Finn thought as he stopped in his tracks, unsure of what he was getting himself into. He’d brought a knife, just in case, but he was starting to wish that he’d brought additional protection. After last year’s nightmare and having been held as a suspect for both Darcy’s and Bronwyn’s murders, Finn wasn’t allowed to go near a handgun, let alone be in possession of one. And even if the police hadn’t enforced it, his father certainly would have.

  He silently cursed himself as he picked his way along the darkened overgrown path, around the charred remains of brick and mortar—the smell of a dampened fire still clinging to the air, as if the scent had sunk into the trees that surrounded Ravenswood like a fortress.

  The desolate monster lay in front of him. He thought he detected some movement outside the building, but the flashes of light on the main floor let him know that someone was waiting for him. He suddenly wished he’d called someone to go with him. But he knew that Cordelia’s and Maddie’s fate rested in his hands, so he went in alone. It didn’t matter what happened to him; he wouldn’t be able to live with himself if he allowed any harm to come to those girls.

  He walked up the snow-covered path, shaking not only from the cold, but from what was about to happen. When he walked in the front door to Ravenswood, which was left ajar, he wasn’t at all surprised to see Kiki Endicott sitting calmly waiting for him, like a spider waiting for its prey. Waiting for him to enter the madhouse to meet his death, so that she could continue her web of lies and deceit. She was dressed for a cocktail party—at complete odds with the crumbling surroundings. She seemed so out of place, her hair perfectly coiffed, strings of expensive pearls wrapped around her neck, a designer coat and dress suited more for an elegant evening out than a night committing murder in an abandoned insane asylum. And yet she seemed oddly calm—comfortable even. It was as if she were preparing for a dinner party, waiting for the guests to arrive. As he moved closer to the ring of light that surrounded her, he noticed her crocodile pumps and was amused by the woman’s serpentlike qualities. It was like being in the presence of the devil—only one that wears thou-sand-dollar shoes.

  What did surprise him was that she was alone…and that she had a gun pointed right at him. When he looked at her hand, he saw the ring. The bloodred ruby ring that he had found near the tent stake that was used to kill Darcy and then hidden in the bracken on Misery Island. The one that he almost lost his life trying to bring back to shore. The piece that tied Kiki Endicott to Darcy’s murder. The ring he thought he had lost when he was trying to keep from drowning in the icy Atlantic Ocean. It was all coming back to him now.

  “So happy that you could come to see me, Finn. You and I have a lot to talk about,” Kiki said with a grin spread wide across her face. The lantern light surrounding her made her face glow eerily, as if she were an escapee from an asylum. Ravenswood was the perfect setting for this meeting. She looked more like one of the inmates than the wealthy matriarch of Hawthorne. And she held the gun unwaveringly at his head, as if she knew exactly how to use it. As if she’d used it before. “And thank you so much for finding my ring! I thought I’d lost it forever.”

  “Mrs. Endicott, please.” Finn edged into the main foyer. The light was playing tricks on his eyes. He kept seeing shadows darting around him, but it was just the flicker of the old kerosene lantern. Yet he couldn’t shake the feeling that there were others around him, watching, waiting. “I don’t know what this is about, but whatever it is, we can fix it. I’ll do whatever you want.”

  “Now you’ll do whatever I want?” she laughed gaily, as if he had just told her a joke at a cocktail party, and not in this scene straight out of a horror movie. “Now? After all of the nonsense that you’ve put me and my family through, you little weasel? Now you want to play nice? I don’t think so.”

  “Honestly, I have no idea what you’re talking about. I had nothing to do with Darcy or Bronwyn or the fire here at Ravenswood. Please, you have to believe me. I—I know that I made it difficult for you to turn Ravenswood into a hotel. And I’m sorry. But you won. There’s no one stopping you from rebuilding this place into the luxury resort that you wanted.”

  “Silly boy,” Kiki said, looking and speaking to him like he was a toddler. “You don’t get it, do you? There’s never going to be a resort. The Endicott was never going to happen. The money is gone.”

  “Mrs. Endicott, I had nothing to do with the fire. Anyway, the money that you lost—it’ll be covered by insurance. You’ll get the money back and you can start over.” He was trying to reason with her, but he was unnerved to see that her hand holding the gun was steady as a rock. She had it pointed directly at his head.

  “The money is gone because we spent it. All of it. All of the hassle that you put us through last year caused us to lose most of our investors—we had
no choice but to live on the money from the few people who stuck with us. The few who wanted to invest in the idea of a beautiful, luxurious resort—the only one of its kind on the North Shore of Boston. And one with stories! So many stories that you and your girlfriend and her family contributed to! I thought that my own family played a big part in Ravenswood. The fact that the Endicott family was responsible for the witch hangings that took place on this very spot—you knew that, didn’t you? That this place was built on top of the graves of so many people accused of witchcraft. Well, it’s true. And all of those thrill seekers who come to New England each year to get a taste of horror, of witchcraft, of evil, they would pay any amount to stay here to relish the ghoulish experience. Don’t you see how what happened last year only added to the deliciously evil story?”

  She was taking care to hold the gun steady on her target as she spoke.

  “But then you and your little friends in the historical society had to come along and tie things up. By the time we cut through all that blasted red tape, the money for the resort was gone. We’d gone through it all.”

  “How?” Finn asked weakly. He thought that if he could keep her talking, he would be able to find a way out of this mess.

  “You have no idea how much it costs to be an Endicott, do you? Of course you don’t. When you have nothing, you don’t realize how much it costs to be rich. It’s a chore, really. Keeping up appearances when you’re flat broke. Ha! So we knew we had to torch this place for the insurance money. It was the only way to avoid getting caught.”

  “You burned this place down?” Finn asked, horrified at what he was hearing.