The Third Sister

by Sara Blaedel

Her father nodded and told her to tell Dorothy why he hadn’t come along.

  Ilka stopped herself from passing on what Lydia had just told her. “Okay.”

  He had enough to do; there was no reason to burden him more before they knew why Jennings hadn’t shown up.

  The moment Ilka got behind the wheel, she called the number Jennings had given her. No one answered, and a few minutes later she stopped in front of the hotel entrance in a no-parking zone and hopped out. She’d parked there before, thinking that allowances would be made for a hearse. Today she didn’t care. The oversized coffin would draw attention, no doubt, but she slammed the door shut and ran inside anyway.

  Lydia stood at the window, but she turned when Ilka walked in. She looked worried to Ilka, nervous, as they approached each other. The only other people in the foyer were a couple with two small children at the reception desk and an elderly woman sitting on a sofa, studying a city map.

  “Come on.” Ilka reached for Lydia. She recognized the receptionist, who’d been on duty when Jette had asked for an extra bed. She told the woman she had Jennings’s phone, that he’d forgotten it at the funeral home the evening before. “What room is he in?”

  “Room One Fourteen.” The receptionist pointed down the hallway.

  “His car is in the parking lot,” Ilka said as they passed an ice machine set back in a shallow niche. All she could hear in the dark hallway was the machine’s growl, drowning out the sound of her nervous breathing.

  They stopped and pounded on his door. No answer. Ilka pounded several times again, then she pulled her phone out of her pocket to see if Jennings had texted her.

  Lydia paced the hall, checking her watch as if time were running out for her. “Jane-Maya.”

  Ilka spoke quietly, hoping to calm her down. “Don’t worry, I’ll get them to Detroit. We’ll just have to drop one of the stops I planned on. But first we have to get you on your way.”

  Lydia took a deep breath. Ilka knocked again then put her ear to the door. Silence.

  “He’s not in there,” she whispered. “Wait here.”

  Ilka ran back to the reception desk. The family and the elderly woman were gone, and the foyer was empty. The receptionist looked up from her phone under the counter and asked if she could be of help.

  “I’m wondering if Calvin Jennings has checked out?”

  The girl shook her head as she peered at the hotel’s computer. “No. Mr. Jennings is checking out today, I see, but he hasn’t left yet.”

  She was a young, plump girl who looked as if she should still be in school instead of playing Bejeweled on her phone, but she was on the ball enough to call his room. Ilka heard the phone ringing; two rings were enough for her to know he wasn’t going to answer.

  “May I have a key?” She was about to explain why she had the authority to enter the man’s hotel room, but before she could get started, Lydia marched in from the hallway and pulled her away. Without a word she led Ilka back to Room 114. The door was open a crack. She glanced at Ilka, then she pushed the door open.

  Jennings was hanging from a ceiling pipe to the left of the window. A floor lamp had been knocked over, and his things were scattered on the floor. For a second Ilka stood frozen, staring at him, then she pushed Lydia away from the door and jumped over to him.

  “He’s dead,” Lydia mumbled. Ilka turned; her eyes looked empty as she pointed at his open shirt. That’s when the stench hit her.

  Charred skin, sweat. She didn’t need to open his shirt, but she did anyway. The brand was identical to Ethan’s, only deeper. As if the branding iron had been pressed harder into his flesh.

  “They took the papers,” Lydia said. “All the evidence.”

  She’d already picked the empty briefcase up from the floor. The dark-brown leather case had been cut open lengthwise, a contemptuous message: They’d gotten what they’d come for.

  Ilka’s knees buckled. She doubled over, and a croaking sound shot out of her throat, as if the air had been knocked out of her. She knelt and hid her face in her hands, her stomach cramping at the sight of Jennings’s dead body.

  Lydia closed the door behind them. “Jennings was ready to leave, he’d already packed.”

  Ilka peered at the overturned suitcase on the floor by the desk. Neatly folded pants and shirts. Socks and sweat suits.

  Ilka slowly got to her feet and sat on the bed. She told Lydia about Ethan. “My father will take him to the hospital. But we’re going to have to call the police.”

  Lydia stared in horror at Ilka. “Is it bad?” she whispered.

  Ilka nodded and turned to Jennings, even though she could hardly stand looking at him. She wanted to cut him down, but she knew they couldn’t touch him before the police came.

  “Ethan has the same brand burned on him, just not as deep.”

  She also had to tell Lydia about Fernanda. “Sit down.”

  Lydia leaned forward and held her head in her hands while she listened. Ilka wanted to put her arm around her shoulder, but she had to call the police. She brought out her phone.

  “Wait,” Lydia said. “If we’re still here when they come, they’ll arrest me. Let me get my sister and the girls out of here before the God Squad finds them. If Burnes manages to stop us, they’ll never be free. And they’ll be punished for leaving him. Severely punished.”

  Ilka understood. It was unbearable watching the woman sitting there, staring up at the man who could have saved her. She stood and slowly walked over to Lydia, folding her arms around her. The frail woman’s body collapsed as she silently sobbed.

  28

  After leaving the hotel, they called the police. Ilka asked for Stan Thomas, and she explained that she had information about a man who had been hanged in Room 114. She gave him Jennings’s name and told the officer what she knew about him: He was in Racine because he and the police in Texas were building a case against Isiah Burnes. She gave him Lydia’s name but didn’t mention that Lydia Rogers was the nun he was familiar with from the funeral home. When Thomas asked what connection Ilka had to this Jennings, she raised her voice, shouted that he was fading out, she couldn’t hear him.

  “I’ll call you back later,” she shouted. She hung up.

  Lydia sat staring out the passenger-side window.

  “Do you think they’re looking for you?” Ilka asked.

  Lydia shook her head. “I think Jane-Maya and the girls are the ones they’re after.” Her voice was still listless, monotone. “Burnes will not tolerate disobedience in his wives, and there’s no limits to what the God Squad will do, when it comes to carrying out his orders. These are boys born into the cult, and they’re given no physical contact whatsoever from the time they’re born. No one holding them, comforting them. When they cry, they’re hosed down with water until they stop. If they get sick, God determines if they’re strong enough to survive. Only the girls get medical help. The men chosen to serve Burnes have no empathy. And their only job is to protect the cult.”

  The crematorium chimney came into view over the fields. Ilka slowed down and once again checked her rearview mirror. She’d kept a close eye on other cars since leaving Racine, but no one seemed to be following them. Before leaving the hotel, she’d thought about calling Jeff and asking for an escort, but they hadn’t spoken since their argument outside Artie’s house.

  She signaled to turn and drove slowly down the gravel lane to Dorothy’s place, then on through the gravel parking lot and around to the back of the house and out of sight. She parked the hearse and Lydia hopped out. Ilka followed her to the back steps. Before opening the door, she turned to Ilka.

  “I’m sorry. Sorry that I let you believe your father was dead. I didn’t know you were in his will, and when I found out it was too late. I didn’t know how to handle the situation, so I just went on with the charade.”

  “But why? Why wasn’t the story about him being in rehab good enough?”

  “I was scared. I knew they’d keep looking until they found him. I care s
o much about your father. He took me in, gave me a life, a place where it felt like I belonged. I had to protect him. I was hoping he’d be safe down there, that the Rodriguez brothers would eventually stop looking for him.”

  Ilka listened, but she couldn’t meet Lydia’s eyes; somehow it all felt too personal.

  “But it was wrong of me to keep you in the dark, and I apologize for that. I’m sorry.”

  “Thank you.” Ilka felt there was nothing more to say. Lydia had put her through so much, and Ilka wouldn’t have believed her own bitter anger could just vanish with a simple apology, but apparently it could. It felt good to know Lydia was aware that she’d been wrong, and the anger just wasn’t there anymore. Strange. Ilka thought it also might have something to do with Jennings’s murder, the shock. Maybe she couldn’t really feel anything.

  They heard a key being turned on the other side of the door, and a moment later Dorothy hugged them both. She whispered to Ilka that her father had called and told her about Ethan.

  The police must be at the hotel room now, Ilka thought. She owed Thomas an explanation about how she knew Jennings, but that would have to wait until they left.

  “I haven’t said anything to Jane-Maya, she doesn’t know yet that Burnes has uncovered the escape route. I think it’s best this way. She’s so happy about getting back together with her sister in Canada, and the girls are excited about the trip. I just didn’t want to make them nervous.”

  They stood in a small back hallway, which had several pairs of rubber boots lined against the wall. Ilka could see Jane-Maya and the girls through the kitchen door, waiting on the sofa with three small travel bags in front of them. Each girl had a book on her lap, but they looked up when Ilka and Lydia walked in. The fright in their eyes was gone; now they were curious and eager.

  Ilka smiled at them, even though she felt shattered inside. To counter the image of Jennings’s body that kept flashing through her mind, she tried to focus on the long drive in front of her. She’d already ignored three calls from Thomas, and now he was calling again, but instead of answering she texted her father that they were at Dorothy’s and would be leaving soon.

  Lydia had gone upstairs, and now she came down carrying a stack of bills.

  “Come with us,” Ilka said as she stuck the money in a black billfold. “You have to leave, it’s too dangerous for you here.”

  Lydia shook her head. “I’m not leaving Ethan. I’m staying until he’s well enough for us to leave together.”

  Since finding the boy at the funeral home, Ilka had felt an odd fluttering anxiety in her chest, but now it was a knot of pure fear. “You can’t stay! You have to come with us to Canada. We’ll take care of Ethan, he’s safe with my father, and we’ll bring him to you when he’s well enough to travel.”

  Lydia considered that for a moment, but then she shook her head again. “If it wasn’t for Ethan, I’d turn myself over to the police and get it over with. But I’m the only family he has left. I thought it was too dangerous for him to live with me, I knew someone might track me down someday, so I made the deal with Fernanda back then. So he’d be safe, somewhere far away. But he wasn’t anyway. I didn’t take good enough care of him.”

  Her eyes were tearing up.

  It was hard for Ilka to see Lydia so emotional.

  “I’m staying with him until we can leave together,” Lydia repeated.

  She walked over to the bureau between the windows facing Dorothy’s parking plot and took out a plastic folder. She handed it to Ilka and explained that they were the papers she’d need for the trip. A transit permit for the fictional corpse in the coffin, the black billfold with the money, and a death certificate. Plus, a visa that she had procured via the internet.

  “And you have your passport?” she said.

  Ilka nodded and looked over the fake documents. Through the haze of thoughts in her head she heard Jane-Maya ask her girls if they needed to pee before they left.

  She looked up and saw Lydia in the kitchen now with Dorothy, who was dabbing her eyes with a white handkerchief. Dorothy walked into the living room to say goodbye.

  Jane-Maya was standing at the staircase. “Someone’s coming.”

  Lydia stiffened, then quick as a flash she was at the window. Ilka looked past her at a car roaring down the driveway and recognized it at once: Jeff’s black BMW X5, the one she’d ridden in out to Artie’s house.

  “It’s Jeff,” she said, then walked out into the kitchen. “I’m the one he wants to talk to.”

  Ilka explained that she owed him money for helping find her. “It was about the money for Artie, I had to find you.”

  “But he didn’t find me.” Lydia seemed more annoyed than worried that someone was showing up just as they were about to leave.

  “In a way he did. He knew you were staying in Artie’s house. We just got there too late.”

  Lydia brought out a bundle of money; it was clear she wanted him out of the way, and as soon as possible. “How much do you owe him?”

  “Ten thousand dollars.”

  He could forget about the bonus, she decided. Had the present situation been different, she’d have told him he hadn’t done what he promised, and he wouldn’t get a cent. But like Lydia, she just wanted him gone.

  Out of the corner of her eye, she noticed Jeff getting out of his car and staring up at the house for a moment before turning back to the lane. Lydia handed her the money, and she strode over and opened the front door. “You didn’t find her,” she said, before he could say a word.

  He seemed surprised to see her. His eyes moved down to the roll of bills in her hand. “What are you doing here?”

  Ilka was puzzled, but she told him she was visiting one of her father’s friends.

  “You need to leave,” he snapped.

  His animosity confused her. “Here’s your money.”

  Jeff ignored the bills and opened the car door. “Get over here, now!”

  “Why in the world should I do that?”

  “Because I say so!”

  His voice was like a whip, and Ilka noticed his eyes darting around as he reached out to grab her.

  She heard the cars. “What have you done?” she yelled.

  Jeff told her again to come with him.

  Their eyes locked, and she froze when he said, “I find people. That’s what I do. That’s what I’ve done.”

  29

  Three black cars appeared on the lane: Two four-wheel drives in the lead and rear, with an elegant limousine in the middle. Not a stretch, but a large black vehicle with tinted windows. For a few moments it seemed as though all the sounds around Ilka vanished, but then the car engines broke through the silence. It felt as if an army was invading.

  Jeff had started his car and made a quick U-turn, so he was ready to take off when the black armada arrived. He ignored Ilka, who was shouting at him now even as she returned to the house, the money still in her hand. She ran into the kitchen and slammed the door, then looked for Lydia. Jane-Maya rose up from the sofa. A stunned silence had fallen over the house.

  Out in front, the limousine driver got out, walked around to the passenger door, and opened it. Ilka hid behind the window’s long curtain, barely breathing as a tall man wearing a black suit stepped out and surveyed the windows of the house. Immediately she recognized Isiah Burnes from the searches she’d done on the net, but seeing him in person was much more frightening. She heard Jane-Maya let out a long groan behind her, as if the life was seeping out of her. Ilka reached out to her and clasped Jane-Maya’s hand as they watched the old man outside.

  Ilka studied Isiah Burnes. Even though she knew he couldn’t see her, it felt like he could, in a way that sent shivers down her spine. The cult leader folded his hands in front of him and stood majestically, tall and erect, as he waited for his four men from the other cars to assemble behind him. They looked fearsome in a primitive way. There was nothing of the well-groomed, muscle-bound look of Raymond Fletcher’s security people. The men in Is
iah Burnes’s God Squad wore hooded sweatshirts and jeans. Ilka couldn’t see if they were armed, but they looked so threatening that it didn’t matter. Burnes nodded almost imperceptibly at the driver, and one of the backseat windows in the limousine slowly rolled down. A woman leaned out and looked up toward the house.

  Ilka heard a muffled scream and turned; Jane-Maya’s hands had flown up to her mouth in terror at the sight of the woman in the car. Dorothy quickly herded the two girls into the kitchen.

  Lydia joined them in the living room and stopped abruptly, petrified by what she saw. “No,” she whispered. The blood drained out of her face. Jane-Maya stared in wide-eyed shock, her arms now clutching her chest.

  Nobody moved, inside or outside the house. Ilka’s mind raced—was it possible to get everyone into the hearse before the God Squad forced their way inside? But even if she could hide them all in the coffin, it would be impossible to get away.

  Lydia took a deep breath, and before Ilka could react, the short, slight woman was standing in the doorway, her arms folded in front of her. “You’re not welcome here.” Her voice was surprisingly forceful, with no sign of the fear that had to be gripping her.

  “We’re here for my wife and daughters.” Ilka was shaken. Burnes was lean, practically skinny, but the mesmerizing authority in his voice made her step forward for a better look at him.

  Lydia was doing everything she could to appear unruffled, but when Burnes spoke her arms loosened, and she held on to the doorframe as she began shaking her head. Her lips moved, but no words came out. She was struggling to maintain her strength.

  Ilka’s lungs began to sting—from holding her breath, she realized. The tension outside, the electric atmosphere seemed to have penetrated the walls and filled the living room. She should go out and stand behind Lydia, but she couldn’t leave Jane-Maya, whose eyes were locked on the woman in the car.

  “Get in your cars and leave,” Lydia said, her voice acid with hate. “You’re not welcome here. And you,” she shouted, now staring at the woman in the backseat, “you are absolutely not welcome.”