Bitter Moon (The Huntress/FBI Thrillers Book 4)

by Alexandra Sokoloff

The bus stops to pick up kids from two other group homes before heading for the high school. Cara surveys everyone that boards, without seeming to look at them. And they watch her, too. The eyes, always the eyes on her. The newbie. The pumpkin. The fish. Fresh meat.

  But there is no immediate, conscious threat.

  She watches every turn the bus makes, memorizing the route. The town is nestled in the desert mountains. It is not big. The bus passes blocks and blocks of long white posts, beyond which are the Indian lands.

  The minibus makes a turn into a residential neighborhood with public bus stops on every block, and Cara gets her first look at Las Piedras High.

  The buildings are sand-colored brick, the same pink and tan as the scattered boulders on the hills, pale against the sage green scrub. A tall, plain chain link fence surrounds the athletic fields. On the main building, HOME OF THE WOLFPACK is painted in huge red cursive letters.

  It is a medium-sized school, which is good. It is big enough that she can be relatively anonymous. She can do her work and keep to herself, not attract attention. And there is another good thing about the school. The hills. They are right there, dull green, dry and beautiful, with those strange and mesmerizing rock formations. She can breathe better, just being able to see them.

  If only she has been put in real classes, something that can keep her mind occupied, keep the monsters at bay . . .

  The minibus pulls up in the teacher’s parking lot in front of the school and disgorges its passengers.

  Cara steps off the bus into the strong, warm wind. The Santa Anas. She remembers them from before The Night. They were a constant, live thing, sweeping through the desert day and night, sometimes comforting, sometimes exciting, sometimes ominous.

  She looks around her and sees nudges and knowing looks from the milling students on the front lawn. The minibus is a dead giveaway that they are group home wards. The other kids split up immediately and Cara moves away from them, too, walking as if she knows exactly where she is and exactly where she is going. Eyes straight ahead. No faltering. No weakness.

  She walks up the path, steps through the steel front gate . . . and is startled by the image of a snarling wolf, a larger-than-life mural painted on the building beside her. It freezes her for a moment, then she forces herself to walk forward. Her hands are sweating and she hates herself for it.

  Ahead is a plaza with scattered stone planters where students sit and stand in groups. There are rows of picnic tables under metal roofing, to keep the tables shaded in the intense heat that must come in the spring. Rows of lockers surround the quad at sidewalk level.

  It is so strange to see kids walking around free. Sitting where they want, how they want, on the picnic tables and benches and brick planters. People slouching, play-fighting, sprawling on the grass. There are no lines. No COs. Instead of the prison uniform of blue jeans and gray sweatshirts, there are so many styles, so many colors. So much skin.

  And there is a surprise. In The Cage she was the youngest, smallest. But she is not the smallest here. She has stretched in The Cage. She is not small, now.

  She identifies the administration building and stops into the office for her schedule, as Ms. Sharonda instructed. Beyond the front counter there is an office with an open door. A tall man sitting behind a desk looks out at her with a sudden sharp interest, a look she knows too well. She stiffens and turns away, reaching across the counter for the schedule the secretary is handing her.

  Outside again, she quickly assesses the layout of the quad, scans the hierarchy. The school yard is not much different from a jail yard: there is always a pecking order. The center quad has four square center planters with low bench-like walls all taken by the obvious jocks and cheerleaders, other less dominant cliques shunted off to the sides.

  She passes along the periphery, keeping her face a mask as her eyes skim the crowd. The Cage has made her an expert in seeing without being seen.

  Don’t let them know what you’re thinking. Don’t look into the corners.

  Despite her best vigilance, she draws attention almost immediately.

  There is a cluster of letter-jacketed jocks ahead and she gives them a wide berth, but not wide enough. A mock-fight breaks out, the biggest one shoves someone to the side of him, and the momentum sends the big one stumbling backward into her path. She freezes in her tracks but he collides with her anyway, and twists around in surprise and instant, blustery rage.

  “Out of my way.”

  She looks at him, keeping her posture neutral, while inside she tenses to fight. She knows she should step aside; he isn’t worth the hassle, not on her first day. But the words come out of her mouth anyway. “Your way?”

  There’s an instant hush from the jocks and other students around them, people suddenly tuning in, greedy for blood.

  The big jock’s eyes flare. Cara can see the anger build in him, slow realization that he is being defied, that he will need to assert himself—against a girl.

  She fingers the pen in her pocket, fixes on his neck, the smooth tube of the carotid, now bulging slightly with his anger. She pictures the pen driving into the soft flesh, the spurt of crimson it will be—

  Someone bursts out laughing. “Burned you, Martell.”

  It’s another of the lettermen who has spoken. Cara refocuses, takes him in quickly, standing behind the angry one. He is slimmer, easygoing, with longish blond hair and surfer looks. The stitching on his jacket reads Devlin. The stitching on the big one’s reads Martell.

  Devlin’s eyes flicker over her and she tenses, then he smiles at her briefly and shoves his friend back. “Quit yer trippin’, dude.”

  They start to spar, throwing fake punches, no threat involved. While the one called Martell is distracted, Cara moves on quickly. No one follows her. But she hears Devlin call after her, “Welcome to Las Piedras.”

  And then there is class.

  English Lit. Ms. Brooke. A stern African-American woman who sits at her desk for ten minutes after the bell rings, working on something of her own without even looking at the class. Good, Cara thinks. She’ll be able to read this period.

  Gym. Ms. Brand, a stocky and militant jock. A clique of cheerleaders who have obviously all signed up for the same period because they can’t do anything on their own. Brand starts the class off with three laps around the track. The running is agonizingly good; the first freedom Cara has had in ages. She has to force herself to hold back so that the teacher doesn’t get any ideas about signing her up for team sports, which she loathes. But she feels her whole body working as it’s meant to, strong, lithe, unstoppable.

  Spanish. Señor Aceves. He speaks nothing but Spanish to the class and they are to speak nothing but Spanish in class, and this is good. Languages are power. Languages are freedom.

  Chemistry. Mr. Pring. A boyishly enthusiastic man who greets everyone effusively as they wander in. The lab cabinets on the walls hold a treasure house of chemicals. She can’t believe all of this is simply available. The potential for lethal destruction is staggering.

  The blond jock from this morning, Devlin, sits in the front in a group of his friends. Cara sees him look up as she steps through the door, feels his eyes follow her as she takes a seat in the back. He is still looking at her when she finally glances his way. He smiles, easy, friendly.

  She turns her eyes away and focuses on the chalkboard, the teacher. Like Spanish, chemistry is practical. She doesn’t want to miss anything.

  Lunch she eats alone, sitting in the almost forgotten pleasure of the sun, and no one bothers her.

  The last class of the day is Social Studies. When Cara walks in, the teacher, Mr. Easel, is standing at the front, a clean-cut, square-jawed man in white shirtsleeves and blue trousers. An American flag droops behind him in the high corner of the room.

  But Cara barely registers any of this. She has stopped still, staring toward the third row.

  A girl with short, curly brown hair sits at the second desk. She is pale, freckled. There are deep
, ugly scratches down her face, her neck, her bare arms. She is bleeding from the scratches.

  The floor below her desk is pooled with violent red blood.

  Cara is frozen in her tracks. The fear is a wave of nausea . . . her legs are jelly and she can’t move, can’t breathe, can barely stand . . .

  Through the blackness and the screaming in her ears, she hears a voice. Someone calling her name. The new name.

  And then there are hands on her, holding her up; someone speaking into her face. The teacher.

  The brown-haired girl is staring at her, as is everyone else in the class.

  There are no scratches. There is no blood.

  The tall man who scrutinized her from his office this morning is the vice-principal. The name plaque on his desk reads Mr. Lethbridge.

  Cara sits in the chair in front of the desk in his office, keeping as still as possible. Her heart is pounding so loudly she is afraid the VP will hear it.

  “So there was a bit of trouble in class?” he asks.

  She fights to calm her heart. She must not let him know what she feels, what she knows.

  “What happened?” he asks, oozing fake sympathy.

  “Nothing.”

  Of all the things she has seen since The Night, she has never so clearly seen blood like that. Whatever has happened to the brown-haired girl is terrible, terrifying.

  She can say none of that. She can’t tell anyone. She can’t let anyone know what she sees. They will put her away again.

  “Car—Eden. We need to know what’s wrong so we can help you.”

  The VP’s gaze on her is like spiders on her skin. She wants to scream, to claw them off, to claw his eyes out to stop the spiders.

  Instead she sits on the edges of her hands and tries to breathe.

  “If there’s a problem with your medication—”

  “No,” she says, too loudly. “No.”

  The vice-principal repeats himself. “What happened in class?”

  “I was just . . . dizzy for a second. I didn’t sleep last night.”

  “Nightmares?” the vice-principal says, fake-sympathetically.

  This is a trap. Admit to a bad dream and she could end up back in Level 14. She shakes her head emphatically.

  “Just a . . . a new place . . .”

  The vice-principal nods. “Of course. It’s hard. Would you like to talk about it?” he asks, so gently hinting.

  Now she is on full guard. She can see the gleam in his eyes, the avid curiosity. He wants to hear about The Night. He wants to know what it’s like to lie in a pool of your own blood while a monster eats your family. He wants to suck her pain out of her marrow like some vampire in an ugly suit.

  There is nothing that she wants to give this man. Nothing.

  She sits back in the chair, and waits.

  The vice-principal waits with her, but when it becomes clear that she is not going to speak, he sighs.

  “Cara . . . Eden, I want you to know that I’m here to help.”

  Black anger buzzes in her head. It always comes to this. People with their fakey kind faces and voices saying they can help, encouraging her to talk. Talking means tests and pills and institutions.

  There will be no talking.

  The vice-principal has flinched back, and she realizes she is on her feet, standing over the desk. She forces something that may pass for a smile. “Thank you.”

  She is released from the office, and walks as calmly as she can out the gates, toward the parking lot.

  Run, her senses are screaming at her. Get away from this place. Get away from whatever is here.

  After the minibus ride, back at the group home, she says nothing to anyone. She goes to her room and lies down, curls up in a ball.

  Her mind goes to the brown-haired girl, the pool of blood.

  She has seen such things since The Night, when the monster disguised as a man slipped into her house and ate her family.

  It scratched her, ripped her throat open, and left her with the other bodies, left her for dead.

  But she didn’t die.

  And since then, she has seen It.

  It hides in people. It sometimes shows her Its face, just for a moment, as if It is laughing at her, taunting her, popping up to remind her that It never goes away.

  She sees It in the crawly looks of men who are too old to be looking at her the way they do. She sees It in teachers and counselors who use their jobs and their power to hurt and torment. She can feel Its presence when the hairs stand up—on her arms, at the back of her neck, a frantic choking feeling that tells her Run.

  And today, in class, the pool of blood around the girl was the same as The Night. The blood that her sister lay in. The blood that Cara lay in.

  She knows only one thing. The monster that killed her family, that tried to kill her, is here, now. It has scratched the brown-haired girl. Not killed her, not yet, but wounded her deeply. There is no other explanation. It is there in the school, somewhere. Cara has been released from The Cage of YA only for this. One day out and It has found her already, or if It hasn’t, It will.

  Underneath the turtleneck, she can feel the throbbing of the scar on her neck where It slashed her that night.

  She goes to the polished steel mirror and pulls the turtleneck down to look at her own scar. She sees the open wound, her own blood running from the deep slash in her neck.

  Help me, she whispers to no one. Help me.

  ROARKE

  Chapter Five

  When Roarke opened his eyes, it was morning, and he was back in bed.

  He got up, pulled on old khakis and a sweatshirt. The clothes were worn, soft on his skin. After the formal tailored suits he’d worn as an agent, it was a feeling almost like being naked.

  He moved out into the living room of the beach house. Through the broad pane of window, the ocean stretched out beyond the sand, a pewter mirror in the dawning light.

  The cottage was simple and functional, an original from 1940, with hardwood floors, a fireplace and built-in shelves in the living room. A bit shabby, but with far more character than one of the ubiquitous condos in town. It had looked out on all kinds of weather and had housed any number of people, and it remained serene and somehow untouched. Seeing the ocean and the strip of sand out the wide front windows was profoundly calming.

  As he did every morning, he made himself coffee, poured it into a metal canister, and zipped up a hoodie to walk on the beach.

  The air was soft and, in mid-January, already warming. There was peace in the glimmering ocean, the tang of salt and sand, the papery yellow flowers on the dunes, the wind, the lulling rumble of waves.

  It made sense, in the midst of emotional turmoil, to seek refuge in such surroundings. But California has over three thousand miles of tidal shoreline. And any number of charming beach towns. So Roarke could give himself all sorts of reasons that he had chosen the central California shore town of Pismo Beach to retreat to and have his quiet meltdown. He could say it had nothing to do with the fact that it was one of the few places he knew that Cara Lindstrom had stayed for any length of time. Length being relative: in Cara’s case, a whopping total of six days in one place. It was not in her nature to stay still.

  But the truth was he looked for her every time he walked on the funky downtown streets, past the beach shops and surfboard shacks and bike rental booths. He looked for her browsing the outdoor racks of batik clothing and shell jewelry, in the lobbies of the much-faded, formerly elegant hotels with original thirties and forties architecture.

  And on the beach. Especially on the beach, and most especially when he crossed under the pier, with its forest of posts, its cathedral-like echoes, and felt the ache of his memories of their night encounter on the sand. What had happened, and what he wished had happened.

  When those memories threatened, there was another to halt them: the one of Cara standing in the wreck of the farmhouse, staring into his eyes with her breath clouding white in the frozen air . . . and blood d
ripping from her hands, just after she’d sliced a razor across Darrell Sawyer’s throat.

  And then there would be the shame . . . the shame of what he’d done as an agent, the overwhelming guilt of destroying evidence, abetting two known criminal fugitives, and perhaps worst of all: creating a third. Rachel Elliott had not been seen or heard from since that night that she’d taken Jade, the sixteen-year-old killer, out of that same farmhouse and presumably hidden her with a shadowy, revolutionary feminist underground that might or might not exist.

  All of his thoughts on that subject were wild speculation on his part, and yet, he knew he might not be that far from right.

  He moved up the stairs and onto the pier.

  A large compass was painted on the planks at the wide entrance, a constant reminder that he had lost his own. Pelicans perched on the wooden railing, in ragged defiance of the DO NOT FEED BIRDS sign beneath their webbed feet.

  He gave them their space, and moved further down the railing to look over the vast and glimmering crescent bay. And as always, his eyes scanned the beach, before he could order himself to stop.

  He knew that Cara was long gone from California, this time. She knew that all of California law enforcement would be watching for her. That he would be watching for her. The media had made her famous again, almost as famous as she had been as a little girl, the “Miracle Girl,” the sole survivor of a psychotic mass murderer—

  And then it clicked.

  He knew who the midnight caller was. It was a detective who had handled the investigation into what Roarke suspected was Cara’s first murder: the homicide of a group home counselor who had been killed in Cara’s signature style, just a week after Cara had been released from juvenile prison.

  Sixteen years ago.

  Not the lead detective, but the junior on the case. Ortiz.

  Why was he calling now?

  Roarke’s pulse was pounding as he fumbled for his phone and hit the callback button. He felt a surge of impatience bordering on anger when all he got was a voice mail message. He composed himself, spoke into the phone.