“I have a feeling…” But now it seemed stupid.
“I’ve looked in all the other rooms,” said Simon. He strode toward the closet, which Lorelei now realized was on the same wall as the door. She reached out and grabbed his arm. “Simon.”
He turned to her, clearly annoyed. “What?”
“Let me do it.” She moved forward, putting herself between Simon and the door to the closet.
“No, if Jordan sees me—”
“I don’t think Jordan is the one in there,” she snapped.
“Who else could it be?”
She shook her head. If it was Ross, he was in there listening to everything he said. He was preparing for the door to open, probably brandishing a knife or something. She could just see him in there, those same curious, empty eyes that had looked at her through the window. He’d stab and stab, his movement robotic, his face expressionless.
She shuddered.
Suddenly, the closet door opened.
Lorelei let out a little noise, something halfway to a scream.
“Mom,” said Simon, annoyed.
Because it was Jordan coming out of the closet. Just Jordan and no one else.
Lorelei squared her shoulders. “I want to get out of here.”
Simon moved around his mother to intercept Jordan. “You can’t. You see that storm outside?”
“She’s going to find out everything,” said Jordan. “And when she does…” She trailed off, looking terrified.
“Who’s going to find out what?” said Lorelei.
Simon and Jordan both ignored her.
Simon put a hand on Jordan’s shoulder, bracing her the way a guy might touch a buddy. “Listen, she’s your mom. She loves you.”
“You don’t know her like I do.” Jordan was starting to cry. She wiped at her eye with the heel of her hand.
The wind outside whistled around the house and the lights flickered. Then they went out again.
Lorelei was focused on Jordan’s face, on her cheek, and the light was bright for a moment. The brillance illuminated Jordan’s cheek, Jordan’s skin.
Jordan’s stubble.
Lorelei lurched forward. Her hand shot out and she ran her fingers over Jordan’s jaw. It wasn’t thick, but there was a hint of bristle there, facial hair that had been shaved.
Jordan leaped back as if she’d been burned.
No, as if he had been burned.
“You really are a boy,” Lorelei whispered.
CHAPTER FORTY-THREE
“I tried to tell you,” said Simon. “But you were on this transgender kick, and I didn’t know what you’d do if you knew just how crazy—”
“You did it, Jordan,” said Lorelei, furrowing her brow. “It all makes sense. You killed the girls. It wasn’t ever Dylan Wayne Ross, was it?”
“What are you talking about?” said Jordan, taking a step back. “No. No, you’ve got it all wrong.”
“You let Ross out to be your alibi,” said Lorelei. “Of course. Let him out, knowing that he’s harmless and that he won’t kill again, that he’s a vegetable. And then kill using his profile. And no one would suspect you. It’s like writing yourself a blank check for murder.”
“I didn’t do anything like that,” said Jordan.
Simon spoke up. “Mom, there’s no way—”
“She—he—was at the photography sessions with you, sweetheart. He was in touch with the victims. As for why he did it, I don’t know. Maybe he hates women. Maybe dressing up like a woman—” She stopped cold. Why was Jordan dressing up like a girl when he was actually male?
It didn’t matter. Everything else fit. She could figure out the whys and wherefores later.
She grabbed Simon by the arm. “Let’s get out of here, Simon. Right now.”
“Mom, there’s a storm,” said Simon.
“Come on!” she shrieked, and using all her strength, she pulled Simon out of the room and down the stairs.
They stumbled down the stairs, barely keeping their balance.
Then she tripped, lost her footing somehow, and she went down on her back, skidding down one step after another on her tailbone. She yelled out in pain. When she reached the bottom, it was radiating through her. She lay on the steps, gasping for breath.
Simon scrambled down next to her. “Mom? Mom, you okay?”
She gulped air and made herself stand up, even though it hurt like hell. “Fine.” She grabbed Simon’s hand. “We need to go.”
Jordan appeared at the top of the steps, a dark shadow. His hair fanned out behind him as he began to descend the steps.
Lorelei started to run. “Jordan’s going to try to stop us, sweetheart. We can’t let that happen.”
But Simon wasn’t moving. “Mom, you have this all wrong.”
She tugged at him. “Simon!” her voice was shrill. “He’s not your friend. He framed you.”
“Mom, it’s not Jordan. I swear it’s not. Look, we left those photography sessions together, and we stayed together. Neither of us did it. We’re each other’s alibi.”
She tugged at him. “Let’s go.”
“It’s not Jordan!” Simon insisted. “I swear.”
“But Jordan’s obviously got some kind of psychosis, some kind of gender identity problems,” said Lorelei. “Trying to sort it out is giving me whiplash.”
“It’s simple, really,” said Jordan, who was now coming down to the bottom of the steps. “My mother always wanted a little girl. And she tried to make me into one.”
Lorelei let go of Simon, taking a step back. “What?”
“I didn’t even know that I wasn’t a girl,” said Jordan, “until I was maybe six or seven and Simon and I were, uh, playing.”
“Jesus, Jordan,” said Simon, his voice pained.
“It’s normal!” Jordan was defensive. “Kids compare parts. Ours were the same. We were smart enough to understand that didn’t make sense.”
Lorelei put a hand to her chest. “Mia wouldn’t do that.”
“She did,” said Simon. “And it gets worse.”
“How could it possibly—”
“The transgender thing?” said Simon. “Ms. Dawson really latched onto it. She forced Jordan to say that he really wanted to be a girl and his mom got doctors to give him this implant.”
“An implant? I don’t understand.”
Jordan rubbed his forehead. “It’s what they give transgender kids. It’s some kind of hormone thing. It blocks puberty from happening, so you get older, but you don’t develop sexually. Then when you’re old enough to decide, you can start taking hormone therapy for the other sex.”
Lorelei gaped. That was the most horrible thing she could possibly think of. What mother would essentially mutilate her own child that way? And then suspicion kicked in. “If you’re not developing sexually, why are you growing hair on your face?”
“Because we dug out the implant,” Simon said fiercely. “I didn’t know about it for a long time. I thought it was weird that I was growing taller and stuff and Jordan wasn’t. Finally, he told me what happened, and I helped him get it out.”
“You did what?”
“I looked up stuff on the Internet,” said Simon. “We did a good job. Nothing bad happened.”
“That’s like a minor surgery,” said Lorelei.
“It’s fine,” said Jordan. “Anyway, after it was out, things started happening to me, like I started growing really tall and… and other things. It’s been hard to hide it from my mother, but I can’t let her find out that I took it out.”
“Well, eventually, it’s going to become obvious,” said Simon. “And now that my mom knows everything, I really think…” He turned to her. “Mom, Jordan could live with us, right? And he could just be a boy. You’re with Isaac now, and he’s got a good job, so there’s no reason to stay at the hotel. We could go somewhere else and start over. No one would ever know that Jordan—”
“Hold on,” Lorelei said. She felt out of breath. What the heck was going on he
re? She felt as if the world had been turned on its side, shaken up and turned again, like rolling a pair of dice. “All right, listen, assuming you’re both telling me the truth—”
“You don’t believe me?” said Simon.
She licked her lips. It was possible that the boys had done the murders together, and that Simon was lying to her about everything and he’d been guilty all along. But she couldn’t believe that about her own son. She knew Simon better than anyone. And despite her flaws as a mother, she hadn’t raised a murderer. Simon was a good kid. He wasn’t lying to her. She sighed. “No, I’m sorry. I believe you. It’s only that everything seems to be happening so fast, and I—”
Her phone was ringing.
She dug it out of her pocket and hit the silent button. “Listen, both of you—”
The phone started ringing again.
She took it out and looked at the number. She didn’t recognize it. She hit the silent button again. She looked back at Simon, completely having lost her train of thought.
A text message came through on her phone. It’s about Isaac Dean. Answer the phone.
The phone started ringing again.
She answered it.
CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR
“Who is this?” Her voice came out shrill.
“Lorelei Taylor,” said a male voice on the other end. “I’m glad you picked up. You know me as Rider Holmes, but that’s not my real name.”
“What?” Lorelei clutched the phone, reeling as the world seemed to be tumbling askew again. “Holmes? The librarian? How did you get this number?”
“I’m not a librarian,” said Holmes. “I’m Agent Dan Homer, and I’m OPR.” The Office of Professional Responsibility, a division of the FBI that investigated misconduct amongst FBI agents. “I’ve been watching you for a while.”
“Watching me?” she said. “What? I don’t even work for the FBI anymore.”
“Well, the top brass didn’t want to worry local law enforcement if it was all smoke and no fire,” he said. “If I found evidence that you were guilty, you’d be arrested, but until then, we were keeping this quiet.”
“Guilty of what?”
“Withholding evidence in the Undertaker case,” he said. “We know the nature of your relationship with Crispin Barker.”
Her throat closed over.
“Theory I was working stated that you were privy to what Barker was up to, but that you kept it quiet to try to keep him out of jail.”
“No, that’s not true,” she said. “I had no idea what he was. I was completely blindsided when I—”
“I believe you,” said Homer. “In fact, I had filed my report and was about to leave town when I was told to stick around a little bit to keep an eye on Isaac Dean. Seems that he’s been behaving erratically lately, and there was some genuine worry that he was coming apart at the seams.”
“What? Isaac?”
“He’s on suspension, you know. He’s been calling in requests to a friend at the Bureau, who I’m in contact with. Dean wanted the plates on my car tracked, for instance.”
“I wanted those plates tracked,” she said. “What do you mean, suspension?”
“It’s all about you, from what I understand. He kept coming into work hungover or sleep deprived, looking like death warmed over, and then he wouldn’t do any actual profiling. He’d just request copies of your old profiles and read them all day. Claimed it was research. Eventually, they asked him to take some time off. He went ballistic. But then he suddenly showed up in your neck of the woods.”
Lorelei was starting to shake. “What?”
“I’ve been tailing him all over. He’s been making trips down to Stonebrook Psychiatric Hospital, and then I come to find out that one of the cases you two closed together—the Ross case—that’s wide open again.”
“What are you saying?”
“Are you aware that Dylan Wayne Ross is at large?”
“Actually, I am. That’s why I wanted those plates tracked, because Ross was at my house right before I saw you speed off.”
“I was there watching Dean,” said Homer. “And Dean’s heading your way right now.”
“How do you know where I am?”
“Tracked your cell phone,” said Homer. “I’m a little worried about you, Ms. Taylor. I think that Dean might be, well, dangerous.”
“Dangerous?”
“You’re aware that Ross is at large? You also aware he didn’t get out of that mental facility on his own?”
“Yes,” she said.
“Well, how do you think Ross got out, then?” said Homer.
“Isaac didn’t let him out.”
“You don’t think so?” said Homer.
Lorelei hung up the phone. She put it against her chest and took a shuddering breath.
The phone rang again. She dismissed the call.
The phone rang again.
“Stop calling me,” she muttered at it.
A text message appeared. Watch yourself. You don’t have the best gauge of character when it comes to men, do you?
Her stomach turned over. Augh.
“Mom?” said Simon. “Who was on the phone?”
Lorelei shook her head. She shook it and shook it and shook it. Those thoughts she’d had about how easy it was to be with Isaac, all the while knowing that there had to be a catch, a shoe about to drop? Well, that shoe was coming down hard now.
Mia had known, that was the funny thing. Mia hadn’t trusted Isaac, but Lorelei had been blind to it all.
And now Isaac was headed here.
She turned to Jordan, holding out her phone. “The website. The one that tells whether the bridge is out or not. Do you know it?”
“Sure,” said Jordan, “but what does it matter?”
Lorelei turned to Simon. She drew in a deep breath and tried to say it calmly. “Sweetie, I think we were wrong about Isaac. The person on the phone said… I don’t totally understand, but I think Isaac might be behind everything.”
“What?” said Simon.
“I can’t believe it,” she whispered. “I just can’t…”
“This doesn’t make sense, Mom,” said Simon. “Who was on the phone?”
“Someone from the FBI,” said Lorelei. “Someone investigating Isaac. Isaac’s been lying to us. He’s on suspension from the FBI. And apparently, he’s been… obsessed with me.”
“But I don’t get it,” said Simon. “Why would he lie? And what do you think he did?”
“I don’t know,” said Lorelei. “But maybe it’s better if we don’t—” She turned to Jordan. “The bridge.”
“It’s out,” said Jordan, turning the phone to face Lorelei.
Lorelei grabbed it. “Oh, thank God. He’s stuck, then. He can’t get through. We’re safe.”
But at that moment, the light of car headlights cut through the windows, reflecting on the back wall. Someone was pulling into the driveway. Lorelei shut her eyes. No, no, no.
“You think that’s Isaac?” said Simon.
“Maybe he made it through before the bridge washed out,” said Jordan. “Or maybe he went through the water. If you have good tires and four-wheel drive, sometimes you can make it.”
“Upstairs,” said Lorelei, pointing. “Go, both of you. I need you to hide. If I don’t come for you in a half hour, you call the police.”
“You think they’ll be able to get over the bridge?” said Simon, eyes wide.
She wrung her hands.
A knock on the door.
She pointed. “Go!” But now her voice was a ferocious whisper. She didn’t want Isaac to hear.
Simon and Jordan exchanged a glance. And then they hurried up the stairs together.
Lorelei still didn’t know where Mia was.
Another knock.
Should she go and look for Mia? What if he hurt Mia?
Her phone rang in her hands.
She jumped.
It was Isaac calling.
Slowly, she put the phone to her e
ar. “Isaac?” she said, struggling to keep her voice steady.
“Hey, Lorelei, I’m at the address you gave me, but the house is dark and no one’s answering when I knock. There’s only one other house on this island, but maybe—”
“How’d you get over the bridge?”
“Well, it wasn’t easy, but I just powered through,” he said. “I don’t think I could get back, though. The water’s rising so fast right now. Am I at the right house? Why aren’t you opening the door?”
“I know, Isaac.”
“You know what?” he said.
“I know everything. I know you’re on suspension.”
“Suspension? What? I took a leave of absence, yeah.”
“I got a call from guy named Dan Homer, in OPR—”
“Homer? That bastard was sending me emails all about your involvement in the Undertaker case. I told him to kiss my ass and I refused to meet with him. I don’t think he likes me very much—”
“He said you were at Stonebrook.”
“I was at Stonebrook,” said Isaac. “You were too.”
She took a shuddering breath.
“Lorelei, come on. Everything is okay. Open the door.”
“Did you let Ross out?”
“What? Me? Why would I do that?”
“I don’t know. Maybe to be my knight in shining armor. Maybe to find some way to seduce me again. Have you really been requesting my old profiles to go through instead of doing your own work?”
He hesitated. “Okay, look, maybe I sort of think about you more often than I indicated, but that doesn’t mean that there’s been anything manipulative—”
“Go away.” A sob was rising in her throat. She hung up on him. The sob came out. It sounded as if something inside her had come dislodged. As if she was breaking somewhere deep down.
He banged on the door. “Lorelei, I can hear you in there.”
She went to the door. “Go away.”
“Go away, where?” he said from the other side of the door. “There’s nowhere to go. Come on, let me in. I’m getting soaked out here.”
She shook her head. He sounded so innocent and good, but she wasn’t falling for it again. She’d fallen for this same song and dance with Cris, and look where it had gotten her. No, no, no. She was staying strong.
Child of Mine: a psychological thriller Page 24
