Something Wicked (24 page)

“Back to the lodge,” he told her. “Climb in beside Rand, if you're coming.”

Ravinia followed them outside and toward the truck. The truck's bed was covered by a bright blue tarp, which was now almost obliterated by snow. “What the hell?” she demanded as Earl got behind the wheel and Rand yanked open the passenger-side door, which screeched in protest.

“We're going to see that Catherine's okay. You can come or not.” Earl clearly didn't care what she did. She turned from him to the younger man, who was holding the door open for her. Too relieved that help had come for her aunt to object, she simply climbed into the cab and Rand squeezed in beside her.

For a moment she narrowed her eyes at Rand as they sat there nose to nose, and then he said, “Ravinia. You should have black hair with that name.”

“Yeah, well, we're all blond. Mine's the darkest.”

Earl pulled onto the highway, his chains
ching-ching-chinging
as the truck lumbered down the road.

“You're the one that escapes all the time,” the younger man said.

“Rand,” Earl admonished as he fiddled with the truck's heater and stared through the windshield to where the wipers were fighting with the ever-falling snow.

“Who the hell are you?” Ravinia demanded.

“I'm Earl's son. We're related, you and I. Somebody in the past that—”

“Rand,” Earl barked with more heat, and the younger man desisted.

But Ravinia was having none of it. Her mother's journal—the treasure she'd stolen from Catherine's room—felt hard against the small of her back. “Somebody in the past that what?”

“One of your kind that fooled around with mine.” Rand stared past her at Earl. A challenge.

She'd heard the tales, of course, but now maybe this man had some real information. “Who?” Ravinia asked as Earl turned onto the main highway. The old truck shuddered, its wheels catching.

“Your mom,” Rand said, with a “Duh, stupid” hiding in his words.

Earl growled low in his throat, whether from frustration or anger, she couldn't tell. But Ravinia was through asking Rand questions, anyway. She found she didn't like talking to someone who obviously knew so much more about her ancestry than she did.

But Rand's comments made her all the more determined to learn some home truths about her family.

 

 

“You okay there?” Hale asked Savannah, staring down at her in the backseat.

“Just drive,” she gritted. Despite the cold, her hair was damp, her face warm. “Fast as you dare.” The contractions were coming more rapidly and hard—so hard she could barely breathe.

He nodded, then climbed behind the wheel. She waited impatiently for him to get the engine going and hit the accelerator. She wanted to
go.

But the deputy was standing outside the TrailBlazer, and Savannah chafed at the delay. “The ambulance should get here soon,” he said as Hale cracked his window.

“No time!” Savannah yelled again. “Let's go!”

“Drive ahead of us, and make sure we can get through,” Hale ordered him. The sheriff's man was so damn dense, Savvy wanted to scream.

“I don't know. The roads are worse and—”

“If you won't do it, get out of the way!” she yelled, just managing not to scream at him.

He stepped back, unsure. But when Hale switched on the engine, he turned and raced, sliding mostly, as fast as he dared back to his Jeep. Once in his vehicle, he hit the lights, eased the Jeep around, and started west. Hale touched his accelerator, and they began to move, following after him.

Pain ripped through Savannah, and she bit down hard so as not to groan. She was in trouble. “Wait . . . wait.... We have to stop!” Then another, deeper spasm dug into her, and she let out a low cry.

“Savannah?” Hale glanced over his shoulder, his face white with concern, then stared forward again, his jaw taut. Braking slowly, he threw the SUV in park and slip-slid out the door, opening the backseat driver's door and looking in on her. Outside, the deputy's car had gone around a corner, its red taillights winking out.

The contraction was harder. Took her breath away. She lay her cheek on the window and felt the weight in the small of her back and her limbs, like something shifting, a gravitational pull that made her lower half feel twice as heavy.

“We're not going to make it to the hospital.”

Hale's breath was near her, warming her ear. “Okay.”

And then another gush of something warm down her leg. Blood. Fluid. Delivery time.

“Help me get my pants off,” she said as she lay down.

 

 

Earl's truck tried to stall out on the hill up to Siren Song, and Ravinia had tensed, ready to jump out. But the old pickup's wheels caught and inched forward again, and Ravinia clenched her teeth and waited. The drive seemed to take forever. Finally, they reached the lane to the lodge, and through the darkness and snow she caught sight of the ambulance's white and red lights. As they pulled to a stop behind the emergency vehicle, she heard the
bang, bang
as the EMTs slammed the rear doors shut. Two figures walked toward their respective doors.

“Back up, Earl,” she urged. “Quick. They're taking her to the hospital.”

Earl said, “We need to tell Isadora.”

“We need to go!”

But Earl wasn't about to be bullied. He moved his truck to one side and then climbed out, heading toward the gates of Siren Song. Ravinia scrambled out after him, as did Rand, and they all ended up hurrying through the gate into the lodge grounds, a place where men, apart from Earl, were rarely allowed.
Five minutes
, Ravinia told herself. Then she was going to get Earl to follow after the ambulance, or she was going to try to drive his damn truck herself.

 

 

Savannah bore down with all her strength. Pinpoints of light exploded behind her eyelids from the effort. She was drenched in sweat. She'd wrestled out of her jacket, but her shirt and bra were almost too much. Hale hovered somewhere in her nether regions, blocking the weather with his body as he stood in the open back door. Her entire body seemed intent on turning itself inside out. She couldn't believe this was happening to her. Could. Not. Believe. It.

Still . . . she was excited. She was having a baby. A baby. And her body was doing everything it should, even though conditions weren't ideal. Very much less than ideal, actually. It was just . . .

Another contraction started, like a grip of huge, monster hands squeezing and forcing her insides down, down, down. She was holding her breath and forced herself to breathe, to pant.

Hale said in a tight voice, “I see the head.”

“Is he okay? It's all right?”

“Yeah.”

She barked out a laugh and stared at the ceiling of the vehicle. “I'm going to push,” she said, feeling the desire come like a hard wave. “I'm gonna push. I'm gonna push. I'm pushing!
Aaaahhhhhh
.”

“Okay, okay, okay.”

“Okay?” she gasped.

“Yes, okay.”

“Hale, can you do this?”

“He's coming. Yes.”

“Okay . . . okay . . .”

A moment later. Tersely. “Push again.”

Savvy wanted to argue. What the hell did he know? But she wanted to push. It was coming on her again.

And then she was pushing and there was sharp pain and yet she couldn't stop and he was saying, “Wait, wait, wait!” but she couldn't, and she yelled, “No, no! I can't!”

“It's okay. It's all okay. He's here. He's here!”

“Have you got him? You've got him?”

“I've got him. He's . . . It's okay. . . . It's all just fine. . . .”

And then the wail. The beautiful spiraling wail of the newborn in the cold night, and Savvy laid her head back while tears ran down her temples toward her ears.

H
ale came upon the deputy's vehicle stalled out in a pile of snow about a mile and a half ahead of them. He slowed his already slowly moving SUV down to a crawl, seeing the man had tried to turn the Jeep around when he'd realized Hale and Savannah weren't directly behind him. But now Hale wasn't going to stop if he didn't have to, unsure he would get moving again. He rolled his window down, ready to yell that message to the deputy, but as soon as the window was down, he heard in the stillness of the night a grinding engine coming toward them from the west.

“Snowplow,” the deputy yelled.

Relieved, Hale gave the man a thumbs-up of understanding. All he had to do was reach the plow and the roads behind it should be clear of drifts. Glancing in the rearview, he saw Savannah sitting with a seat belt strapped across her, swaddled beneath her coat and his; she was wearing her own, and his was the blanket covering her legs. Her eyes were closed, and his son, held to her chest, was invisible from this angle. Was it the safest means of travel? Not by a long shot. Did he see any way around it? No.

He drove with extreme caution, however. Steady and slow. Sweat beaded on his forehead.

My God
, he thought.
My God . . . my God.

Kristina crossed his thoughts, as she had off and on all night. The baby was her son, too.

The baby . . .

His last conversation with Kristina over the baby's name hadn't gone well. “What do you think about Declan?” Hale had suggested, half in jest, half seriously. He wasn't really sure what Kristina's feelings were about his grandfather and thought she might object.

Her reply had offered more questions than answers. “Names are just a way to hide your real identity, so it doesn't really matter.”

“What the hell does that mean?” he'd demanded, but she'd simply shrugged and said, “Declan it is.”

They'd never had another conversation on the subject.

“Declan it is,” he said aloud now, his attention zeroed in on the road ahead of him.

The snowplow came chugging uphill, shooting snow in either direction from its front blade. An ambulance was caught behind it, its lights flashing. Hale tried to flag it down, but the ambulance driver rolled down his window and yelled at him, “Accident just over the summit. Several cars. Trying to get there. There's a pregnant woman on the—”

“She's with me. I'm the one who called.”

He stopped himself and asked, “She okay?”

“Yes. I'm taking her to the hospital,” Hale yelled back.

The man lifted a hand as they drove past them. Too many other emergencies still out there to help those who could help themselves. Hale eased onto the packed snow the plow had left in its wake, even though now he was essentially driving on the wrong side of the road. But his window was cracked, and he could hear if there was an approaching engine. If he needed to shift over to the deep snow of the westbound lane, so be it. He would have time.

Listening carefully, all he heard were the sounds of his own vehicle and the rapid beating of his heart inside his ears. He stayed close to the centerline, which was buried beneath the snowpack, ready to drive into the deeper snow at the sound of an approaching engine.

“How're we doing?” Savannah asked.

“I'm taking you and Declan straight to the hospital.”

“Declan?”

“Yeah.”

“Kristina's hospital?” She said it quietly, but he knew it was a request.

Ocean Park might be a little farther than Seaside Hospital from where they were, but not by much. “Yeah,” he agreed, and they drove in silence for several more miles. His thoughts random, he said into the quiet, “We need a car seat.”

She made a hiccuping sound that could have been a laugh. “We need a lot of things.”

“You okay?” he asked, suddenly worried she meant something specific.

“I'm fine.” A pause. “We're both okay.”

Their eyes met briefly in the rearview mirror. “You warm enough?” he asked.

“More than enough.”

“It won't be long.”

Savvy nodded and closed her eyes again. Hale returned his concentration solely to the road ahead, pushing aside all the clamoring thoughts of his son's birth, his critically injured wife, and the fact that he was a new father driving along a road made helllishly treacherous by snow and ice.

As soon as she entered Ocean Park Hospital, Ravinia wrinkled her nose at the smell of some tangy disinfectant with a sweeter scent beneath it that she couldn't quite identify but thought could be something gross. She'd never been inside a hospital before, and she didn't like it much. And tonight it was full of people who'd been cold and stranded and injured. The staff seemed a bit overwhelmed. The emergency room was filled not only with people waiting to be attended to, but also with others, like herself, who were just waiting. A wet puddle of melting snow near the doors grew larger every time someone tromped in from outside.

She sucked at her lower lip, half wishing Earl and Rand would just evaporate and leave her to her own devices, half wishing she could lean on one or the other or both of them for support. She paced around the room like a caged lion, irritated that Earl and Rand had seated themselves and seemed to be ready for the long haul. She asked about Catherine and was assured by the staff that someone would be out to give her a report very soon. She was starting to believe they were all a bunch of liars, and she'd come to the conclusion that nurses were trained to be impatient, rude, and dismissive.

After long minutes of pacing with no success, she took a seat across from Earl and Rand, one with a view of the exterior emergency room sliding glass doors and the portico beyond. Her sister Lorelei, one of the few who had escaped Siren Song before Catherine closed the gates, had worked at Ocean Park Hospital as a nurse, and Ravinia had liked her, so maybe they all weren't entirely bad. She wished Lorelei were here now, but she'd quit the spring before, when she'd met the love of her life, a reporter, Harrison Frost, who'd been following after Justice once he escaped from Halo Valley Security Hospital. Lorelei had fallen hard for the reporter, and after Justice's death, with nothing keeping them apart, they'd moved together to Portland when Frost was offered a job there. Again, so said Catherine, although her reports were sketchy at best.

Catherine had added that Lorelei was working at a Portland area hospital now, peacefully and happily, which had prompted Lillibeth to ask her breathlessly, “Are they getting married?” Catherine had muttered something disparaging under her breath, which none of them had caught, but it served to remind Ravinia that, for all her rigidity, her belief in protocol—her decision for all of them to live life in a simpler time—Aunt Catherine sure didn't think much of the institution of marriage. Maybe because she'd never been married herself? Maybe something else? Whatever the case, in this one area, Ravinia actually agreed with her: True love was a myth. It didn't exist, no matter how many books her sisters read on the subject, no matter how many old romantic movies they caught on their dinosaur of a television set.

“Miss Beeman?”

Ravinia looked up. “Yes?”

A doctor was walking toward her. Finally. She flicked a glance toward Earl, who half stood, as well. He'd wanted to bring Isadora, of course, but Lillibeth and Cassandra had both gone into conniptions at the thought of Isadora abandoning them, so Isadora was forced to stay. Ophelia had been Earl's second choice, but she'd said it was Ravinia who should go, for reasons yet to be determined. Whatever the case, she was here, and though she wasn't Catherine's favorite and vice versa, she was currently the chosen decision maker.

“Your aunt is in stable condition,” the doctor told her brusquely. He was delivering the information but looking past her; his mind was elsewhere. “We've moved her to a room and are continuing to monitor her.”

“Is she awake?”

“She's unconscious, but her signs are good and—”

“What's wrong with her? Did she have some kind of seizure? What is it?”

The doctor, an older man with a close-cropped gray beard, finally turned his attention fully on her. “She has a contusion near her temple. It appears she fell, possibly slipped, and struck her head from the fall.”

“She fell?”

“The nurse can get you the number of her room. Phyllis?” he called to a harried-looking young woman, who ignored him as she hurried across the room to a set of double doors, which opened with a soft hiss. “Well, when she's back,” he said. “Excuse me.”

Ravinia stared after him. Could it really be that simple? When she'd run past the ambulance into the lodge, she'd been certain from Lillibeth's wailing, Cassandra's dire predictions, and Isadora's and Ophelia's frozen attentiveness that Aunt Catherine was practically done for. Ophelia was the one who'd called 9-1-1. She had a disposable cell phone, apparently, a piece of information that would have helped had Ravinia but known it. It really pissed her off the way her sisters kept secrets, but then they'd learned from the best: Catherine.

Ravinia hadn't waited around. She'd wanted to know how Catherine was for herself, so she'd taken off with Earl and Rand and ended up at the hospital shortly after the ambulance. They had already pulled Aunt Catherine's gurney out of the ambulance and taken her past those double doors by the time Earl had parked and Ravinia had hurried inside. They'd been waiting ever since.

Now she looked through the exterior clear-glass sliding doors as a vehicle approached and pulled to a halt directly in front. A man jumped out and hurriedly opened the back door of his SUV.

Suddenly Earl was blocking her vision. “I'm going back for Isadora.”

“I can take care of things here,” Ravinia said, irked. “My sisters need her at Siren Song.”

Earl hadn't wanted to bring Ravinia even though she was the chosen one, but Rand had muscled past his objections, and Ravinia had simply jumped in the car. But now Earl was apparently having second thoughts. He headed toward the door and shot a look at Rand, who was still slouched in his chair.

“I'll stay,” Rand said.

“You don't have to,” Ravinia told him quickly. She didn't want him expecting something for the favor of helping to convince Earl to bring her here.

He simply shrugged.

Ravinia went to find the nurse who'd ignored the doctor—Phyllis—and found her scurrying toward the group outside. A woman had been helped from the backseat of the SUV to a wheelchair. She was wrapped in coats and was hugging herself closely. The man from the car was talking to the EMT who was pushing the woman inside. The woman wore socks but no shoes, and Ravinia realized with a start that she sure looked a helluva lot like that detective from the sheriff's department. Detective . . . Dunbar. What had happened to her?

She was holding something inside that coat. A baby?
Her baby?
She'd had her baby
in the snow
?

The hissing double doors opened, and Phyllis ushered the detective and her entourage through.

“Excuse me, Phyllis?” Ravinia said.

“I'll be with you in a minute.” She was abrupt.

Ravinia wasn't waiting. “I need the number to Catherine Rutledge's room.”

“I'll get it for you in a minute.”

But she followed the group through the doors. Ravinia sent a look to Rand, then followed after them. As the doors started to close behind her, Ravinia looked around for someone to help her who wasn't busy. There was no such person. Finally, a nurse—her name tag read BARANSKY—appeared, and Ravinia asked her for Catherine's room number, explaining she was her niece. She, too, was hurrying to meet up with the detective, but she hailed another young woman in medical scrubs, who deigned to look up the information.

“Three thirteen,” she said. “Just go back through the double doors and turn right. The elevators will be on your right. Your aunt will be there in about twenty minutes.”

Ravinia headed back toward the double doors, hearing the wail of the new baby behind her. She looked back and saw Nurse Baransky taking the baby into her arms around the edge of the cubicle's half-closed curtain.

Hitting the large square button on the wall, she watched the doors
hiss
open and then close behind her. Rand was scooched down in the brown, squarish chair he'd chosen, dozing. She walked over to him and kicked his boot. His eyes opened, but he didn't lift his head.

“Yeah?” he asked.

“I want to know how you're related to me.”

“I don't know exactly.”