Betrayal (21 page)

“Come on,” he said, leading her to the door. “I told you this was my hangout with my boys.”

He twisted the lock and opened the old paneled door, sending the sound of its squeaking hinges through the night air.

“We won't be here long,” he said. “I'll get you out of here. Promise.”

Brianna was tired and she had no phone, no connection to the world. She doubted the house had a TV. She was totally and unnervingly unplugged.

“How long?”

“Only long enough.” He put his fingers to his lips. “We have to be quiet. Quiet as mice.”

SUNDAY MORNING, ALL OF THE LOCAL NEWSCASTS led with the story of Brianna Connors and Drew Marcello sightings—as everyone tried to find the pair of renegade, murderous teens that the media was now calling “Brianna and Clyde” after the famous outlaw duo from the 1930s. A woman at a gas station in Portland, a couple hundred miles south of Port Gamble, insisted she was absolutely sure she'd seen them the week before.

“Yeah,” she said, tapping her fingertip on a photo of the pair printed from the “Find Bree & Drew” Facebook page that had two hundred “fans” since its launch the previous day. “Those are the ones I saw here yesterday. That girl from TV, the one with the thongs, was buying cigarettes, and her boyfriend was hanging around waiting to use the bathroom. I wanted to say something to the girl about smoking being bad for you, but for some reason, I didn't. Looking back now, I guess I didn't want her to go off on me. She just looked so cold. So evil. No telling what she would have done. I think I'm lucky to be alive.”

Chapter 21

WHAT WAS IT THAT SHE WAS MISSING? Taylor returned to her parents' bedroom closet and pulled out one of the Nike shoe boxes that held bits and pieces of her life, her sister's, and, of course, their parents'. With her dad working on his book, her mom reading the Sunday edition of the
Kitsap Sun,
and her sister standing guard in the hallway, Taylor fanned the contents out on the bed.

She returned to the letter that had been sent from the University of Washington in Seattle. The name typed above the university's printed return address was
S. OSTEEN.

Savannah Osteen was the linguistics researcher who had videotaped the girls when they were infants. Savannah was conducting a study about the secret language twins purportedly share when something very unexpected occurred. The Ryan twins had spelled out a message in alphabet pasta on their highchair trays. It was a warning to Savannah that her sister, Serena, was in grave danger:

The camera had caught it all on tape—including the twins' mom, Valerie, who clearly saw the message and then inexplicably wiped the trays clean.

The video that Savannah had recorded was what had gotten reporter Moira Windsor all riled up and ready to expose Hayley and Taylor's “gift” the night that she died in the waters of Paradise Bay.

The night that Colton's mom ran her into the bay and killed her.

Taylor looked over at Hayley, who was standing in the doorway, ping-ponging between watching her sister and the hallway.

“Let's ask Dad if we can borrow the car,” she said.

“You want to go back to Savannah's?”

“Yup.”

WHEN HAYLEY AND TAYLOR PULLED INTO the tree-shrouded driveway leading to Savannah Osteen's cabin, it was apparent that something beyond terrible had occurred. The first indication was the driveway itself. It had been deeply rutted by several large vehicles. Hayley had to maneuver along the outer edge of the driveway, hoping that the winter-tough sword ferns and vine maples didn't scratch the paint on their dad's car.

As they drew closer, the twins almost stopped breathing. The log cabin that the former researcher from the University of Washington had lovingly restored and made her home had been obliterated. In its place was a pile of burned-out rubble and charred logs, a portion of which resembled the remains of a mammoth campfire. The only survivor, the only real proof that a house had once been there, was the river rock chimney and fireplace that stood abandoned, reaching toward the drizzly sky.

Yellow police tape wrapped around the charred remains of Savannah's house. A red-and-white sign hung from a shriveled cedar tree:

DANGER! CRIME SCENE! DO NOT ENTER!
Contact Kitsap County Sheriff or Fire Marshal with any information.

Hayley looked at Taylor, but said nothing. There was nothing that could be said. Not really. What had happened was clear. An enormous fire had consumed everything in one big, hot, flaming gulp.

A woman in gray sweatpants and a navy-blue down vest was picking up bits and pieces of debris that had been blown from the house by the fury of the fire hoses. She had a large plastic bag slung over her sagging shoulder and a ski pole at the ready.

The twins, stunned by the sight, jumped out of the car.

“What's going on here?” Taylor called over to the woman.

The scavenger paused mid-stab at the ground and leaned on her pole, looking over at the girls. “You related to the lady that lived here? I'm not taking anything of value. Just bits of metal that'll rust out here in the elements anyway.”

“No, we're not,” Hayley said.

“We know her, though,” Taylor added. “Where is she?”

The woman shifted her weight and aimed the grimy tip of her pole in the direction of the cabin.

“There,” she said. “They found her there.”

“Is she at the hospital?” Hayley asked, sensing that the question was going to bring only grief.

The woman, who seemed standoffish at first, now softened a little.

“She was practically a briquette, dear. Deader than a doornail. You said you knew her?”

A plane from the little airport next door buzzed overhead.

Taylor nodded. “Yeah, we did.”

The kind look she had disappeared. “You must not have known her well. She was a cooker.”

“A cooker?” asked Hayley, totally confused.

“Meth,” she said. “You girls aren't here to get that crap, are you? Because if that's what you're up to, I just want to warn you that you'll end up looking like trash. You know, with the yellow candy-corn teeth of a user.”

Taylor shook her head, a little insulted that the stranger suggested they were druggies. She and her sister were far smarter than that. So was Savannah Osteen. They knew from their first encounter with her last winter that she was a greenie. She raised pheasants just to release them in the wild. It was beyond belief that she was a drug dealer. While Savannah had had problems with substance abuse in the past, Taylor doubted it had changed the pure goodness that was still inside of her. The Savannah she knew would never hurt anyone.

“No,” she said, firmly. “Never. And for your information, Savannah wasn't a ‘cooker' either.”

The woman in the vest shrugged a little and backed off. “I'm telling you what I know. Why are you here, then?”

“We wanted to ask her something . . .” Taylor said, trying not to betray any emotion as she scanned the blackened space beyond the picker.

Hayley added to her sister's story. “About the pheasants. My sister and I were going to raise them this year. Savannah was going to help us.”

“If you knew her so well, why didn't you know about the fire? It was on the news. Twice, I think,” the picker said.

They ignored her and moved toward where the front door had once stood. They thought about the night they'd come to this very spot with Shania and Colton. How they had seen the tape that threatened to expose their gift. How Savannah had seemed genuinely concerned about them. Her letter was proof of that. And now she was dead under suspicious circumstances. Though they didn't know Savannah Osteen well, both girls felt grief seize them. They didn't cry. They simply stood silently mourning her death.

And maybe, just a little, mourning the opportunity to find out more about themselves.

The picker moved on, and the girls got into the car. Hayley put it in gear and drove back to the main road. Taylor kept her eyes on the scorched earth that had been Savannah's home and had become her grave. As the property receded from Taylor's view, her mind wandered to another grave—a much, much older one—in the Port Gamble Cemetery. It was marked with a small, faded plaque:

According to the legend, passed down from generation to generation in Port Gamble, young Peter had died from cholera and his wasted body had been buried in what was later named Port Gamble Bay inside a salt-cod-crate coffin. The coffin had washed up on shore, and was forced open by three curious S'Klallam Indian boys, who found nothing inside except a silver crucifix, a swarm of flies, and a horrible odor of death. Soon after, the story went, the oyster beds died and the seabirds refused to nest there. People were certain the site was cursed. They called the place Memalucet, which means “empty box.” Those with darker minds called it Empty Coffin. Decades later, Port Gamble was founded there.

If only Port Gamble had fewer full coffins,
Taylor thought darkly,
and more
empty
ones.

Hayley's voice brought Taylor back to the present. “Someone killed Savannah because of us,” Hayley said, her eyes fastened to the rearview mirror.

“Yeah,” Taylor said in the softest voice. “I know. I don't care how weirded out Mom is about us and the crash. She knows about our connection. She saw our message to Savannah before Savannah's sister died,” Taylor said. “We have to get her to talk to us. We're her daughters. She owes it to us.”

Hayley understood her sister's feelings completely. Yet, she also felt sorry for her mother. There must be a reason she didn't want to talk about any of it. The reason had to be big.

IT WASN'T EVERY NIGHT, but several times a week Valerie Ryan somehow managed to serve dinner at the table, with the entire family at the same time. Sometimes she served take-out, and occasionally dinner was something she'd tossed together in the Crock-Pot before heading off to work at the hospital. Kevin cooked, too, but his idea of a meal was meat of some kind. No side dishes. No vegetable option.

It was pizza that night—vegetarian “with meat” and a Caesar salad. Taylor's would be served without croutons, which she called “dead bread.”

“How was your day?” Valerie asked no one in particular. It was just a question tossed out into the open. Chicken scratch tossed in the yard.

Kevin answered. “Fair. Having a hard time with the apprehension scene. Tough to make it exciting for the reader when the killer just basically turns himself in.”

She nodded. “I see your point.” She turned toward the girls. “Hayley?”

“Mine sucked.”

Taylor jumped in. “Mine, too.”

Valerie stopped eating, her eyes full of concern. “Why, what happened?”

Taylor put down her fork and stayed riveted to her mother. “We found out that a friend of ours died.”

“Oh no,” Valerie said, looking at Kevin with concern, red flag up. “Was it another kid from school?”

Taylor shook her head. “No. I said a friend of
ours
. Yours, mine, Dad's, Hayley's. All of us.”

“Really? Who?” Valerie asked.

“Yeah, Taylor, who died?” Kevin repeated.

“Savannah,” she said, waiting for a reaction from her parents. None came.

“We don't know anyone named Savannah,” Valerie said carefully, searching her daughters' and husband's eyes. She scooted to the edge of her seat, as if readying herself to make a hasty escape.

“Savannah Osteen,” Hayley said.

Valerie glanced at Kevin nervously.

“Isn't that the name of the researcher from years ago, Val?” Kevin asked. “Wasn't she the one who came out here when the girls were little?”

“I think so,” Valerie said, turning her eyes down to her suddenly very interesting plate.

Both girls felt sick to their stomachs. Their mother knew full well who Savannah Osteen was, and they knew it. The proof was only inches away. Yet there, at the dinner table, Valerie tried to play dumb.