Bitter Moon (The Huntress/FBI Thrillers Book 4)

by Alexandra Sokoloff

  Time seemed to stop and a silence fell, in which Roarke felt the abyss open underneath him.

  I don’t know if I can handle any more of this darkness.

  A voice was speaking from far away, and he realized it was his own. “That may be the worst story I’ve ever heard.”

  Mother Doctor’s face didn’t change. “There’s always worse,” she said, and stood to pour the coffee. She handed a large mug across to Roarke without asking him if he wanted cream or sugar, and took a deep swallow of her own.

  Roarke lifted his mug. The brew was thick and scalding. They drank in silence, then Mother Doctor spoke again.

  “She lived for seven months. No one expected it. She was blind. No vocal cords. No fingers. She was very strong.”

  Roarke couldn’t begin to imagine.

  “She was in a burn unit in San Diego for six months before she was transferred here. It was clear there was no point in putting her through the pain of further surgery, and a surgeon colleague of mine was on the case who thought I might be better able to treat her. You see, she had no parents to speak of. She was a ward of the court, taken away from her addict mother. There had never been any conclusive father.”

  Roarke felt a different stab of unease. “She was a foster child?”

  “She lived in a group home.”

  A group home kid. Like Cara. Now Roarke was afraid he would be sick. “A group home—”

  The nun looked at him. “Not Ms. Lewis’s.”

  He wasn’t sure why that was such a relief, but it was. Still, a group home child viciously attacked . . . by a man who was obviously trolling the high school . . .

  He felt a cold rush of fear for young Cara.

  It’s done, he reminded himself. Whatever happened, it’s done. Sixteen years in the past.

  “How did Ivy die?” he asked.

  Mother Doctor shook her head. “The real question is, how did she live? It shouldn’t have been possible at all. But—she died in her bed, here. She went to sleep one night and didn’t wake up.”

  “What about the rapist?”

  “What about him?”

  “Who was it?”

  Her mouth twisted in something that was not a smile. “Who knows?”

  Roarke stared at her. His voice sounded hollow in the room. “He was never caught?”

  “No arrests, no suspects. The case is open. It was never solved.” She stood abruptly, with a swish of cardigan that sounded like robes. “Come back tomorrow.”

  Roarke stood with her, disoriented. “Why?”

  “Because we’re done for now. And I think you will want to come back tomorrow.”

  Her voice brooked no argument. Roarke moved for the door. And then a hunch made him turn back to her.

  “Just one more thing. Did a girl named Laura Huell ever visit Ivy here?”

  There was a long silence and he thought she would not respond. Then her voice came softly.

  “Yes. Yes, she did.”

  He opened his mouth to speak and she shook her head, holding up a hand.

  “Come back tomorrow, Roarke.”

  CARA

  Chapter Fourteen

  Years of practice has made her adept at sneaking in and out of places.

  There is a high stone wall to the side of the building, with an immense arched wooden gate, and a skull and crossbones embedded in the mortar above the gate.

  She flinches at the sight of the skull, the hollow eye sockets, the long chipped bones. She forces herself to look away, steps forward to the gate and tries the handle. Locked. But the wall is rough, lumpy. She walks along the side of it toward a thick oak tree growing close to the wall and slips between the trunk and the wall, bracing her back flat against the wall, and uses her feet against the tree and her hands against the wall to walk herself slowly up the coarse surface.

  At the top of the wall, she throws a leg over and straddles the top, looking over to survey what’s behind.

  There is a rectangular plaza crisscrossed by paths, surrounded by plots of gardens, with lots of big, shady oak and olive trees. She can’t see anyone outside, and the whole secluded space is quiet, no sound but the rush of water from some fountain. She can already feel the cool air from the garden on her face. The place feels old, and peaceful.

  She drops from the top of the wall to the soft ground below, landing on her feet in a crouch, balancing with her hands and arms.

  She stands upright and moves, staying along the periphery of the plaza, darting between trees and shrubs, to keep as concealed as she can be. Children’s voices drift from another part of the plaza, but the bushes serve as a wall.

  The side of the building has a covered outdoor corridor, with Spanish-style arches. She heads for those, in the direction of the window where she saw the skeleton figure.

  There is a back door of heavy wood, and this one is unlocked. She listens at the crack of the door for any sound inside and hears nothing, though the walls and door are so thick that it would be hard to imagine any sound escaping.

  She steels herself, and pulls the door open a few inches to peer inside.

  Ahead of her is a long, dim, empty corridor. It takes her eyes a moment to adjust to the dark, but she can see the walls are the same whitewashed plaster as the outside of the building. The floor tiles are gleaming adobe and seem centuries old. There is a line of doors along the inside wall, all closed.

  One of the doors opens, and Laura Huell steps out. She is pale as glass, with that unfocused look in her eyes.

  She stands there, swaying, and the blood runs down her arms, dripping down her fingers into red pools on the floor.

  And Cara knows that whatever she needs to know is inside that room.

  Laura walks away from her, down the corridor, that same listless tread. Cara waits, watching through the crack in the outside door until the hallway is empty, then slips inside and approaches the door with dread.

  At the door, she looks down at the floor tiles, but of course, the blood is gone.

  She puts her hand to the knob, turns it. It is not locked. She does not know if she is surprised or not.

  She steps through the heavy wooden door.

  A girl turns from the arched window, and with the light behind her, for a moment she is nothing but shadow.

  She comes into focus gradually, which is a kindness, although there is no way to prepare for what Cara is seeing. The girl seems to be a skeleton with no flesh, just melted skin. Cara can see straight through to her bones.

  A torrent of feelings rushes through her. Grief and rage and terror . . . mingled with another, more surprising emotion.

  Relief.

  A relief so profound she feels lightheaded. For the first time since The Night she knows she does not have to pretend. She does not have to lie. She does not have to hide. Because she is with someone who knows everything that she sees. This girl has been face to face with It. She has felt the brutal touch of the monster and lived. She knows everything about It.

  They are the same.

  The skeleton girl knows she is there. She is alert, looking toward her with sightless eye sockets.

  Cara takes a step forward. “I’m Cara,” she says softly.

  Through the open door behind her, she hears voices and steps. Not in the hall, not yet, but approaching.

  She turns, slips back out the doorway.

  At the end of the hallway are two nuns, an older one and a younger one. The older one stops, seeing her. “Why, child. What on earth—”

  Cara turns away and runs, bolting toward the door.

  She bursts out the back door, runs back through the garden, darting through the hedges, past the fountains, her feet muffled by grass. She does not have to climb the wall again; the first door she comes to in the wall opens from the inside. She shoves through it, pulls it shut behind her.

  Outside the shade of the garden, the afternoon sun is roasting, but there is a coldness so deep inside her she can barely move her limbs.

  She drops onto a
stone bench beside the wall, breathless, willing herself not to be sick. The air seems to be pulsing around her. Images come in blinding flashes.

  Her sister in the moonlight, in a puddle of blood. The monster turning with dripping jaws. Mommy screaming, screaming, screaming. Her brothers screaming. Everyone screaming . . .

  And then the screams are coming from her, from deep inside her, screaming in her mother’s voice, her father’s, her sister’s, her brothers’ . . .

  She presses her hands to her ears to shut out the sound and shuts her eyes against the images.

  But she knows what she has seen inside the Mission is not because of medication, or lack of it.

  Now, finally she is clear.

  This is what she has felt at the school. This is what Laura has seen, too.

  It was the watcher in the van who did this to the skeleton girl. This is what he wants. What It wants.

  And one word reverberates in her head.

  Run.

  ROARKE

  Chapter Fifteen

  Roarke walked out through the graceful, timeless front of the Mission, moving blankly toward the parking lot.

  He was suddenly short of breath, on the verge of being sick. He sat abruptly on a stone bench to the side of the gate.

  A teenage girl, burned alive. Her rapist, never caught.

  Two girls from the same high school, dying violently within two weeks of each other.

  Violently because, however Ivy had breathed her last breath, however long past the attack that death was, it was the result of the most unspeakable violence. And Cara had been there when it happened. Right there.

  He had not the slightest doubt that the deaths were connected, and that Cara would have become involved in some way. Because if there was one thing he knew in his gut, it was that Cara would not have been still for this kind of horror.

  And there was a new, nagging unease. A deadly predator had been trolling the school at the same time that Cara had been attending.

  He could not quell the feeling of urgency.

  Ivy had been a ward of the court, a group home kid, just as Cara was at the time. If there was a predator stalking the school, had Cara, or Eden, become a target? It was too easy to picture.

  He remembered something Cara had said to him, three months that seemed like three decades ago: “It plays with me. It lets me see It.”

  Whatever had happened, he couldn’t stop it, sixteen years in the future. And yet the urgency was there.

  He had to know.

  CARA

  Chapter Sixteen

  In the end, she has no choice.

  She knows fully what It is capable of. It is the same. The monster who killed her family. It is there, watching the school, disguised as some man.

  Who, though?

  The counselor. The vice-principal. Whoever It is playing at being now.

  It has been at the skeleton girl, has savaged her, all but destroyed her. It is searching for others.

  But she has nowhere to go. Nothing but the clothes on her back, and a few dollars in her pocket.

  So she takes the bus back to school. There must be a plan.

  As she sits huddled in her seat, watching out the window, her aunt Joan flickers in her mind, followed by the numbing memories. Her strongest recollection of her aunt is of her standing at the door, over and over, different time periods, different dresses, watching Cara being taken away from the house yet again . . .

  No.

  If she runs away, her aunt’s is the first place they will check. They will show up instantly, seize her—if her aunt doesn’t turn her in first.

  But where can she go?

  She rides in a daze, exits the bus a block from the school.

  Her legs are trembling as she steps onto the sidewalk. The rollercoaster inside her makes it difficult to walk in a straight line. The glittering bits of silica in the concrete reflect the sun in shards of light, and she must concentrate to keep upright.

  A thought is flickering at the edge of her mind. Something she must not let get away from her. A connection.

  Laura has been going to visit the other. The skeleton girl. Why? What is there between them?

  She knows that it is key.

  She is so intent on the question that she may have missed the smell at first, but she becomes more and more aware of it. A rotting, dying stench. A smell like burning, like cooked meat. Then she feels the eyes. Crawling on her back. Trying to get into her clothes.

  She turns her head, barely, and sees the white van. Driving in a slow creep behind her.

  The images come all in a rush.

  The following, the quick grab . . . the chains welded into the wall of the van. The duct tape and gasoline. The brutal invasion of her body and the unspeakable pain of burning, her skin, her hair, her eyes on fire . . .

  The stinking malevolence of the man.

  He. It. The monster. The man with the same monster inside.

  There are two things then. A hatred even greater than she knew she was capable of. A desire to kill, hurt, destroy.

  And then fear so encompassing she feels her legs lurch beneath her.

  Then she runs for her life.

  ROARKE

  Chapter Seventeen

  Isolated as it felt, the Mission was just a few minutes’ drive from the high school. Roarke headed straight back there.

  He was aware that he was high on rage when he walked back into the principal’s office.

  Lethbridge’s smile was showing the strain. “Agent Roarke. What can we do for you?” The word now was silent, but obvious in the air.

  Roarke stared down at him. “I asked about unusual incidents involving the students here. Violent or traumatic incidents.” He set his iPad on the desk in front of Lethbridge. On the screen was a news article he’d downloaded about Ivy’s abduction. “Wouldn’t you say this qualifies?”

  The principal looked down at the smiling school photo of Ivy . . . next to the horror of the headline.

  Roarke had read over the articles he could find in an initial online search in the car. The details were even more sickening than from Mother Doctor’s terse report. Then came the reports of press conferences, the tense vows of the Riverside County Sheriff’s Department to hunt the rapist down. Then the follow-up articles on Ivy’s care, dwindling quickly as no new leads were uncovered.

  Roarke watched Lethbridge’s face, but could read nothing in the impassivity. The principal looked up from the tablet screen. “I understood that you were asking about the two weeks that Cara Lindstrom attended this school. This . . . tragedy . . . happened the year before that.”

  “Seven months before.”

  “I meant the school year before. We academics have a slightly different calendar than the rest of the world.” He smiled. Roarke didn’t.

  “Ivy Barnes died the same month that Cara Lindstrom attended the school,” he said.

  The principal’s smile disappeared. “I don’t remember it being the same month.”

  “It was,” Roarke said tightly.

  Lethbridge frowned. “Are you saying Cara Lindstrom had something to do with Ivy Barnes’ death?”

  That stopped Roarke for a moment. Was that what he thought?

  Just what do you think she had to do with Ivy’s death?

  Behind the desk, the principal was watching him warily. Roarke gathered himself. “After the attack on Ivy Barnes, did you do anything to protect the students at Las Piedras?”

  “Do anything to protect them?” the principal repeated stonily.

  Roarke stared at him, incredulous. Was the man unaware that the overwhelming majority of rapists were repeat offenders? That ninety-eight percent of rape victims knew their attacker?

  “Ivy was abducted while walking to school. Did you put extra security on? Provide transportation to students without cars or whose parents couldn’t drive them?”

  “The school left that to the police.”

  “No self-defense classes?” Roarke demanded. “N
o counseling for students who might have been traumatized by the attack on their classmate? Students like Laura Huell, for example?”

  “Agent Roarke—or is it Mr. Roarke?” Lethbridge gave Roarke a thin smile that didn’t conceal his anger. “What is your point, exactly? This is a sixteen-year-old case. I can’t possibly imagine what you think you can do for these girls now.”

  Roarke stared at him. “I want the yearbook from the year Ivy was attacked. And the school newspapers. And if there have been any other similar attacks on students that you haven’t mentioned, I want to hear about it. I hope I don’t have to ask again.”

  But as he walked out of the office with the books, Lethbridge’s words remained in his mind, taunting him. “I can’t possibly imagine what you think you can do for these girls now.”

  His steps slowed, and he looked over the quad, the animated groups of students. The jocks, the cheerleaders, the rebels, the Normals.

  So young. They’re all so young.

  He felt an irrational fear, the sense of someone walking over his grave.

  They’re safe, he told himself.

  But are they?

  Someone had brutalized Ivy, set her on fire, left her to die.

  No suspects, no arrests.

  What if he’s still out there?

  CARA

  Chapter Eighteen

  She runs. She has never been so fast. Terror makes her as swift as the wind.

  She can feel the van speeding up behind her as she pounds down the sidewalk. The school seems miles away and she is running in the sluggish slow motion of a dream.

  She hears Its hoarse, hissing breath behind her, and in her ears is the screaming. Her mother. Her sister. Her brothers . . .

  She reaches the visitor-side bleachers and hurls herself at the chain link fence, clambering up. The metal heaves and clinks under her.