Bitter Moon (The Huntress/FBI Thrillers Book 4)

by Alexandra Sokoloff

  “This is Agent Roarke returning. You can reach me any time.”

  He disconnected. Then he played back the message, to see if he’d been imagining the implied threat. He hadn’t. The menace was clear in the detective’s tone.

  Why? What the hell is that about?

  And that needling insult: “I guess you Feebs really don’t care about catching Cara Lindstrom, do you? No matter how many people have to die.”

  Does Ortiz know where she is?

  Do I want to know?

  He went back to the cottage, and walked a circle around the living room, but he knew he was only postponing the inevitable. Finally, he went into the bedroom, pulled open the bottom drawer of the battered dresser, and took out the file.

  Cara’s history—police, psychiatric, and otherwise. Singh had requested it when the team had first tied Cara’s prints to the murder of a trucker at a rest stop not far from Pismo. The file covered only the early years of her life, since at the age of eighteen she had disappeared from all public record.

  At the top was the photo Roarke had found of her in one of those case files: a slim blond waif in her early teens, with enormous and watching eyes. Too intense to be called beautiful, too mesmerizing to look away from.

  He put it aside.

  There was a document inside the file that was completely unofficial, but Roarke suspected it belonged anyway: an informal written summary by a retired police chief about the Palm Desert murder of a counselor named Clive Pierson, sixteen years ago.

  Pierson had been employed at a group home where Cara had been living. He’d testified that twelve-year-old Cara had beaten an older boy into unconsciousness. She was sent up to the California Youth Authority, juvenile jail for the state’s most violent offenders. Two years later, a week after she was released, Pierson was found dead in his mobile home, his throat slashed. No one had ever been arrested for the murder.

  The retired police chief, Jeffries, was from a different district, and had not been part of that investigation. But he had voiced his suspicions to Roarke that Cara had killed the counselor.

  Roarke put Jeffries’s report aside, opened an envelope, and dumped out a series of crime scene photos.

  The images were as bad as it comes. Blood-drenched sheets. Arcs of arterial spray on the walls.

  From the time Roarke had heard about it, that murder had always been under his skin.

  Did a fourteen-year-old girl do that?

  He smoothed a hand through his hair, reached for his phone, checked for messages. No call back from Detective Ortiz.

  He could call again, yeah, and start the inevitable phone tag that goes along with trying to contact a police detective. He could do that. But it was a lot harder to say no to a flesh-and-blood FBI agent, or whatever Roarke was at the moment, standing in front of you in the office.

  On impulse he checked the distance from Pismo to Palm Desert on Google Maps. Nearly a five-hour drive.

  In the end he couldn’t say what made him go. He could never say why when it came to Cara.

  He got in the car and drove.

  CARA

  Chapter Six

  When she wakes in the morning it takes her a moment to focus on where she is. When she does she is surprised to find the walls of a bedroom rather than of a cell. There is no monster, no blood.

  Just her, and her roommate asleep in the other bed, in the dark blue of predawn.

  She lies still, evaluating the sensations inside her. There is a slight nausea, dizziness. And she can see glimmering around the edges of things.

  She knows what it means. The medication isn’t strong enough.

  She sees it in a flash, so real—

  The girl with the curly brown hair, sitting at her desk with a pool of blood at her feet . . .

  She presses her hands to her head to force the image away. She breathes in. And again. She feels her heart start to beat.

  If her medication isn’t strong enough, is that why she’s seeing these things? Would the blood go away if she just got a stronger prescription?

  She debates telling Ms. Sharonda, or the shrink. But reporting these things can end you up in more trouble. She must appear Normal.

  After a time, she rises, dresses, and eats with the others. And says nothing.

  Today there is a traffic snarl at the high school, a long line of cars waiting to get into the parking lot drop, so the minibus releases the group home kids beside the sidewalk, some distance from the front entrance of the school.

  They step off the bus into the wind, and as yesterday, the kids quickly disperse in different directions, distancing themselves from each other. Cara walks slowly, dropping behind them.

  The wind is strong, huge, billowing gusts: the hot, dry Santa Anas, rattling the palm fronds above. She has to fight to make her way across the sidewalk against the force pushing her backward with every step.

  As she struggles, she becomes aware of something besides the relentless wind. A presence. Her heart is suddenly pounding, a feeling of anxiety and dread.

  She knows the feeling. An early warning.

  Of what?

  With just her eyes, not turning her head, she surveys the sidewalk, the people around her.

  A van is parked at the curb. Not like the school minibus, but another, a white one with no writing on it, no logo from a business. No back windows either. There is a man’s shape at the wheel, obscured by the brightness of the sun.

  She drops her backpack to the ground and crouches, pretending to tie the laces of her Keds. And from that crouch, she looks backward toward the street.

  When she looks back, she sees that the man inside is turned toward her, watching her.

  And there it is: a whispering at the corners of her mind. In her mind, but also outside of it, dark and ominous . . .

  Her heart is suddenly too tight in her chest.

  She twists around and walks straight onto the lawn, where no car can follow.

  She can feel the eyes on the back of her head, following her. An intention.

  She passes quickly through the painted steel gate of the school, past the mural of the snarling wolf, rounds the corner into the quad . . . and nearly runs her over.

  The bleeding girl.

  The girl startles backward and the two of them stare at each other, facing each other.

  Before she knows what she is doing, Cara is speaking. “Did you see It?” she asks, low, so that no one else can hear. Possibly not even the bleeding girl. Her face seems frozen. And then she turns without a word and walks away from Cara.

  Cara watches, with a cold band around her chest.

  As the girl walks though the scattered groups of students in the quad, she leaves a dripping trail of blood on the ground.

  But no one looks. No one sees.

  The girl disappears around a bank of lockers. Cara comes to life and runs after her, past clusters of students who turn to look, whispering.

  She ignores them, tears around the corner of the lockers . . .

  The bleeding girl is gone.

  Cara stops in her tracks. And then beside the row of lockers, she sees the door of the girl’s bathroom just closing on its hydraulic hinge.

  Cara strides forward and slams through the door.

  Inside the dim tiled space, the bleeding girl is there, standing at one of the sinks, just reaching for the faucet.

  She twists around when the door bangs open behind her. She is pale and hollow-eyed, and Cara feels a stab of pain just looking at her.

  “What is it? What’s happening?” Cara demands.

  The girl backs up from her, bewildered. “What?”

  Cara lunges forward, grabs the girl’s hands and turns them palms up. No gashes. No blood.

  The girl pulls away. There is no strength in the move.

  “Who is it?” Cara says harshly.

  “I don’t know . . . what you mean.” It seems to be a great effort for her to talk, and Cara wants to shake her, to wake her up.

  “Yes,
you do. The man in the van.”

  The girl flinches, as if she’s seen a ghost. Cara seizes the girl’s arms and she cries out. “You’re hurting me.”

  “I’m not hurting you—”

  “Let me go—”

  “I know you saw. Who is he? What did he do to you? Tell me.”

  The girl breaks free. They look at each other in the silence of the cold, tiled room. The girl is trembling.

  “Please . . .” Cara whispers.

  The girl’s face crumples. “Leave me alone. You have to leave me alone.” The girl pushes past her and out.

  It takes Cara a moment before she can walk out of the bathroom. She stops beside the lockers, her legs shaky, her head buzzing.

  Am I crazy?

  Maybe. But the bleeding girl’s pain is real. Not just pain. Fear.

  A group of girls passes by her, looking her over surreptitiously, and Cara realizes she is standing still in a thoroughfare, where other people can see her.

  Normal. Must look Normal.

  She starts to walk again, although at the moment she can’t remember what her first class is. She forces her legs to move, hoping her brain will catch up.

  In the center of the quad, the jocks are seated on a concrete wall, legs apart, feet planted on the brick, like young kings. The Wolfpack. She sees Martell look at her and make some comment she can’t hear. The others laugh.

  Don’t look. Don’t react. Don’t feed them.

  Without increasing her pace, she moves toward the periphery of the quad . . . so intent on avoiding Martell and his friends that she nearly collides with the vice-principal, standing at the door of the administration building, arms crossed on his chest, watching the students coming in for school.

  “Whoa, hold on there, Eden.”

  She backs up. Her heart is racing again as she is overcome by the urge to flee.

  But Lethbridge steps toward her, with a wide crocodile smile. “How are you doing this fine day?”

  She mumbles a reply.

  He keeps talking, in that fake sweet voice. “Are you finding all your classes? Any problems with your schedule?”

  She forces herself to speak, to sound Normal. “I’m fine. Everything’s good.”

  “I’ve been looking at your test scores. You’re a very bright girl.”

  She doesn’t trust what he means by that, so she remains silent.

  “We should be thinking about building up your resume for college applications. There are many fine clubs and activities at Las Piedras. I’m thinking particularly of Palmers, which sponsors a number of scholarships for its members.”

  Cara can barely concentrate on what he is saying. All she can see is the shadow in the van. “I don’t . . . know if I’m allowed to.”

  “I’m sure your caseworker would approve. And they’d be lucky to have you. You think about it, talk to her about it.”

  “I will,” Cara says, to end the conversation. “I don’t want to be late to class.”

  “Good girl,” Lethbridge says. She can feel him watching as she walks away. She forces herself not to run.

  At the sound of the bell, she remembers that her first class is English.

  She sits in class, and tries to calm herself.

  The bleeding girl knows something. She has encountered It, and It has scratched her, recently and profoundly, and she is wasting away.

  But the girl is too badly damaged to help herself. Whatever is happening to her, she is denying it with every fiber of her being. Cara knows one thing: if people do not want to see, they will not see.

  All through the school day her thoughts return to the white van, the man watching the school.

  She has seen this kind of thing before. There are often men watching the group homes, parking their cars and vans down the street, looking to swoop in and scoop up the girls who have never heard kind or flattering words, who believe the promises of photo shoots and stardom, who are pathetically eager to believe that a smooth older man could have any interest in a teenage girl other than selling her on the street.

  Is that what this is, now?

  Cara thinks suddenly of Ms. Sharonda.

  There is something so strong about the director. And she would know about the men in the cars and the vans. She sees things about people, too.

  Can I tell her?

  Does she dare?

  Maybe. Maybe.

  She doesn’t know. But it is the first hope she has felt.

  In Chemistry class, Pring claps his hands and exhorts everyone to “Partner up!” as if that is a normal and everyday occurrence. Cara stands up with the others, holding the work sheet Pring has passed out, but moves on her own to one of the lab tables placed at intervals around the periphery of the room.

  When she turns from the cabinet, he is there. Devlin. Taller than she is, blond hair falling across his blue eyes. He smiles at her, puts his work sheet down on the lab table.

  “Not my best subject but I’m ace at faking it.”

  She tenses, quickly assesses. His intent is not predatory; that, she is too expert at recognizing. But there is intent there. And she is not here to be scrutinized. She turns away from him without speaking, skims the instructions on the work sheet, opens the cabinet behind her to look for the requisite compounds. He doesn’t budge.

  “Are you pissed because of Martell?”

  She gives him a stony look. The brown-haired girl is bleeding to death in full view of the school, and he thinks she cares about his sociopath road dog?

  Devlin laughs, but it’s a pleasant sound, not cutting. “He’s harmless, I swear.”

  She assesses him quickly. This one is not malicious. But she has seen what is crawling behind his friend’s eyes. It is not fully awakened yet. But It is waiting.

  “You think?” she asks flatly. And slowly, the smile dies on Devlin’s face.

  “I’ve known him a long time.” It sounds lame, and he knows it. He shakes his head. “I’ve never seen him—”

  And then he stops, his eyes widening slightly, and he doesn’t finish. Because he realizes he had been about to lie. He has seen. But if you don’t talk about It, It doesn’t exist.

  She turns to the work sheet on the lab table in front of her, focuses on collecting the equipment: beakers, a Bunsen burner. Ignoring him.

  He sees things, this one. That doesn’t change what he is. A good boy. Good family, good grades, good sportsman. Good future.

  Not for her.

  At the end of the school day, she walks out to the minibus, scanning the street for the white van. She doesn’t see it.

  But it was there before. That wasn’t a vision. It was real.

  On the ride home, she rehearses what she will say to Ms. Sharonda. There was a van parked outside the school, with no windows and no writing. A man was watching her from the front seat. He whispered something at her, and she didn’t hear what it was, but she was afraid.

  The last part is not the exact truth, mostly because she doesn’t know what the exact truth is. There was whispering, that’s true. The whispering told her she is in danger. But she doesn’t know where the whispering comes from, only that it is rarely wrong.

  When there is whispering, she knows she must listen.

  The minibus drops the six girls off beside the fountain with the angel. Cara walks with the others into the house, and turns down the hallway toward Ms. Sharonda’s office.

  At the end of the hall, a man walks out of the conference room, heading down the hall toward the front door. Pitted skin. A pudgy roll around his middle. Fat sausage-like fingers.

  Suddenly Cara can’t move. She is shaking. Her hands, her legs . . . even her teeth are chattering.

  She has not seen him in two years. Not since the night he and the boy came into her room. Not since she had to fight for her life.

  It has been so long, she can’t remember his face. But she knows by the smell. Its smell.

  He knows her. She knows he knows her. He looks straight at her and smiles, that horrible,
stretched-mouth smile. She can feel the violation of his hands on her. She is choking on his stinking drunken breath as he holds her pinned to the bed and tries to shove his tongue down her throat, tries to force her legs apart. She feels the icy fear and white-hot rage . . .

  As he walks past her, he whispers, “I’m watching you.”

  She sees jagged teeth.

  When he is out the door, she forces herself to move, runs to the front window, stares out, looking for the white van.

  The counselor is there, getting into a beat-up old dark blue Tercel.

  Not the van.

  She backs away from the window and strides toward the lounge. Three of the girls are already parked on the sagging sofa, watching TV. She stands in the doorway, her heart beating so loudly she is sure the others must hear it.

  “What was he doing here?” Cara asks. She can hear the tremor in her own voice, and digs her nails into her palms to stop it. “The man who just left?”

  “Just some caseload,” Monique says indifferently. Caseload—the system’s weird, ungrammatical slang name for caseworkers.

  “What did he want?”

  “How the shit do I know?” Monique says, not even bothering to look at her this time.

  Cara turns away numbly and goes down the hall to her room.

  She lies on her bed with a book open on her chest as camouflage and tries to think through the waves of confusion and sick apprehension.

  She knows it was the counselor. Pierson. She knows it. She knows It.

  What was he doing here?

  He said he was watching me.

  So has he been watching the school? Is that the man in the van?

  But he wasn’t in a van.

  But he wouldn’t drive his own car for what he wanted to do.

  And what does he have to do with the bleeding girl?

  This is what is confusing. There is never just one. It turns up everywhere.

  But that was Pierson. He’s come looking for me here. He knows where I am.

  And one thing is clear. She cannot tell Ms. Sharonda now. Not about the bleeding girl, not about the van, not about anything. Because a counselor is a counselor. They stick together. It cost her two years in The Cage to find that out.