Wicked Game (34 page)

“Come on,” she said to the dog, and snapped on his leash. It was getting dark, the watery March sunshine fading into twilight. She let Ringo sniff each twig and branch as the sound of rush-hour traffic on the Pacific Highway only blocks from her condo reached her ears.

She gazed back at the condo. Was it all too soon? She’d lived here with Ben, hoped to have a family with him, but then that relationship had been based on lies. She wouldn’t make the same mistake with Hudson. Maybe it was finally time to let go of the past and sell this condo. Time for a fresh start. With Hudson Walker.

He’d told her he loved her. Sure, it was in a moment of joy upon learning they would be new parents, but he’d meant it. And she’d certainly meant it when she’d told him back. And so he hadn’t said it again. He’d shown her in a lot of other ways. And if they could ever learn what really happened to Jessie, she felt the last issues between them would be resolved.

Picking up her mail from the box, a fistful of bills, credit card offers, and advertisements, Becca waited for Ringo to do his business, then headed inside. Not for the first time, she wondered why her visions of Jessie were backdropped by the ocean—a stormy, raging sea where she could hear the roar of the surf, feel the tide pound the shore, taste the brine on her tongue.

The answer was somewhere in the cliffs overlooking the angry ocean, and Jessie was adamant that she tell no one about it. In her recent visions, Jessie had been warning her, shushing her. She wasn’t supposed to tell anyone of her visions, that much was clear. But she’d already confided in Hudson.

That had probably been a mistake. Not only might he think her a nutcase, but she might have inadvertently put his life in danger. There was a chance that Jessie was warning her to be quiet for Hudson’s safety.

Or her child’s.

Either way, she felt, the answers to everything wouldn’t be found in the soil, debris, or bones at St. Elizabeth’s maze. The answers would be found somewhere on the Oregon coast, most likely in the town of Deception Bay.

Becca stood for a moment in the fading light, struck by the thought. What had taken her so long to recognize that? That’s where Renee’s research on Jessie had taken place. That’s where the answers were.

Becca hurried Ringo along, back to the condo. Now that she’d made that decision, she wanted to go. It was early evening and it was a two-hour drive. She could be there by seven, or maybe eight, if it took her a while to pack.

“Ready for a ride?” she said to Ringo, who dogged her anxiously, sensing her new determination. She pulled her cell phone out of its charger and put a call in to Hudson.

As she waited for him to answer, she packed a few things into an overnight bag, then once her call was forwarded to his voicemail, left a quick message that she was heading out of town for the beach.

He called her back almost instantly. “I’m right on the way. Pick me up. I can be ready in twenty minutes.”

“You want to go?”

“I want answers, too, Becca. And you’re right, Renee was researching Jessie, following in her footsteps. Something happened, and I want to know what it was.”

“Well, okay,” she said. “I’m putting Ringo in the car and I’ll be at your place in about half an hour depending on traffic.”

“Lookin’ forward to it.”

I love you
, she thought, but she didn’t say it.

“I’m a coward,” she told the dog as she settled him into his fuzzy car seat.

He looked at her and wagged his tail.

By the time Becca’s car slid into his driveway, Hudson had cared for the horses and few head of cattle, called Emile Rodriguez to come by and feed and water the stock the following day, made arrangements for a place to stay at the beach online, showered and changed. He was just stuffing a change of clothes into an overnight bag when he spied her headlights against the trunks of the oak and fir trees near the mailbox.

He hurried downstairs and locked the door behind him just as she pulled to a stop near the front porch. Ringo, true to form, was barking his fool head off and wasn’t all that happy to be relegated to the backseat as Hudson slid into the passenger seat.

“Sorry, bud,” he said as the dog gave one final bark and settled into a tiny bed Becca had brought for him.

Becca was on the phone and held up a finger when he settled into the seat. “Yeah…sure…I’ll call you if and when I know anything else, but you’re right. It’s a shock.” She looked at Hudson and mouthed, “Tamara.” Hudson nodded. He’d already been fielding calls from The Third and Jarrett about Scott. No one would have pegged him for a murderer. Everyone was shocked. Jarrett wanted to believe that Scott had killed Jessie and Renee as well. Christopher Delacroix III didn’t think so. Otherwise the cops would have booked him for all the murders already.

“It’s a pisser,” The Third had said when he’d called earlier. “A real pisser. Makes you wonder, doesn’t it? How well you really know someone.”

“You can never know everything,” Hudson told him. “You get the public side, not the private.”

“Do you think we’re safe now?” The Third had asked him.

“Safe?”

“From whoever did this. If Scott really didn’t kill your sister and Jessie, then who did? We’re running out of friends. Either way, I’ve got a .357 magnum by my bed. No mother-fucker’s going to mess with me and not know it. I’ll blow his fuckin’ head off. Got another call coming in. Gotta run.”

“Sure, I’ll call,” Becca was winding up her call. She fingered the ignition with her free hand, then cast a glance at Hudson. “Yeah, I know…Weird. When I get back into town, we’ll get together. Bye.” Becca disconnected and slid a glance at Hudson. “Tamara’s having a tough time with this.”

Hudson suddenly leaned over and kissed her, hard, on the lips and smiled at the scent and taste of her. God, he wanted to drag her out of the car this very second and take her upstairs. To lose himself in her for hours. To forget the hell they’d all lived with for the past couple of months. But like Becca, he wanted closure.

Becca wheeled the car around and drove down the lane. At the county road, she turned west toward the foothills of the Coast Range while Hudson fiddled with the radio and found a country station that he knew came in clear through most of the mountain range. A slice of moon was quickly being covered by clouds, only a few stars visible as the night thickened. Hudson leaned back in his seat. “I called the owner of the cabin where Renee usually stayed. It’s owned by a friend of the family. The police are done with it and he said we could spend the night if we wanted. I said thanks, but no thanks.”

Becca shivered.

He drew a long breath. “I made a reservation online for Cliffside, a B&B in Deception Bay. Great view of the ocean and dog-friendly. But I think we should go to Renee’s cabin and look around.”

“Oh, definitely.”

She glanced in the rearview mirror, frowned, then stepped on the accelerator as the road widened to four lanes for a while and she was able to pass a white panel truck that was slowing with the incline.

A few minutes later, she looked in her rearview again, and Hudson twisted in his seat, peering through the foggy back window.

“Something back there?” he asked.

“No.”

“Renee thought she was being followed,” Hudson reminded her.

“And she didn’t even have visions,” Becca murmured.

Hudson gave her a long look. “What did you see? In your last one?”

“I haven’t wanted to talk about it.”

“That, I know.”

Becca wanted to just forget, and he’d let her for a while. She didn’t want to think about what she’d seen—some hooded being with evil intent. She wasn’t convinced it was even real. But they were on the same path Jessie had taken, and Jessie was the reason she’d had the vision. And she was worried about what it meant for herself, for Hudson, and now for their unborn baby.

“I think the visions mean something,” she said. “They may have a physical cause that no one’s found,” she granted, shooting him a look, “but I believe they are some form of communication, even if it’s only with my own subconscious.”

“You saw Glenn’s burning note,” Hudson allowed.

“That’s right. And I’ve had other visions in the past. But the ones that include Jessie? The ones I seem to be having more and more of? They’re a warning. Jessie’s at the beach and she’s trying to warn me about something—or someone—who wants to do me harm. She keeps saying something, then putting her finger over her lips. And in this last vision, there was a being behind her. In a hood. Dark. Angry. I could feel how much he hates me and my baby!” she added, her voice quivering a bit. “It’s—real. I believe it’s real. And Renee ran into him and it’s what got her killed.”

Hudson let that sink in for several miles. “You’re sure it’s a he?”

“Positive.”

He sighed. “Maybe you do see things. Like Jessie, I guess,” he said. “Everyone says she was precognitive.”

“She knew something was after her,” Becca said, with another glance in the rearview. “And I know something’s after me.”

Becca was letting her nerves get the better of her as she made the long drive through the canyons and ridges of the mountains. Tall evergreens, like an army of sentinels, rose into the thick dark sky. Sleet and misting clouds caused the winding, slick road to seem even more isolated and sinister than ever.

Whatever was after her felt very close.

But she was safe.

Hudson was at her side.

Ringo was in the damned car. Sleeping in the backseat.

Nonetheless, despite her internal pep talk, Becca felt the gloom of the night-dark forest closing in on her. And as she drove, listening to some obscure country song riddled with static, she thought of Jessie, who had traveled on this very same road so many times.

It seemed as if Jessie’s spirit had infiltrated this stretch of road.

She told herself she was imagining things, that she couldn’t “feel” Jessie or “sense” her ghost wandering through the rain, mossy, old-growth timber, and sharp canyons. Her mind was playing tricks on her.

She glanced at Hudson, whose eyes were trained on the road. His jaw was set, his expression harsh in the dim glare from the dash lights. He, too, was lost somewhere in his thoughts.

She drove across an icy bridge spanning a deep chasm and her heart seized when she recognized the area. Hadn’t she herself been run off the road here on her way from Seaside sixteen years before?

The last time you were pregnant.

She slid another glance at Hudson, then stared through the windshield where condensation was fogging the glass. She felt as cold as death as she passed the mile post marker where her car had been forced off the road.

Nervously, she checked her rearview mirror, but the car that had been behind them for a while had lagged back, no headlights visible. Nothing but the frigid black night. Her teeth chattered and no amount of adjusting the temperature of the Jetta’s heater could warm her.

“Cold?” Hudson asked, rousing from his thoughts.

She offered a weak smile as her fingers clenched the wheel. “It’s supposed to be eighty in here.”

“It is. At least.”

Really? God, she was chilled to the marrow of her bones. “I guess it’s just me.”

“We could turn back,” he said reluctantly.

She shook her head. He wanted to see this through as much as she did.

Should she admit why this stretch of 26 gave her the willies? Point out the place where she, like his sister, had been forced off the road? Admit that she’d been pregnant with his child and hadn’t had the guts to tell him about it?

Now her hands were sweating. Though she felt chilled to her soul, her palms were damp.
You’re a basket case. Just tell him. Let the chips fall where they may.

A flash caught her attention and there in the rearview, she glimpsed twin headlights cutting through the night. Either the car that had been following at a distance had caught up, or someone else had passed the first vehicle and was bearing down on them.

Hudson’s attention was on the radio. “I think we should be able to pick up a decent station from Astoria or Seaside,” he said.

Becca kept her eye on the rearview. Why here? Why after all this time alone on the highway would a vehicle appear at this winding spot in the road, so close to where—

“Is he nuts?” she said as the beams bore down on her.

Just around the next bend, the highway widened, a passing lane over the summit, but the vehicle behind—a truck—didn’t wait. In a rush, it swept by, sliding a little as it flew into the oncoming lane and roared past, no one visible through its foggy windows.

Hudson looked up sharply. “Damn idiot.”

Becca hit the brakes, making room.

The big truck rocked, sliding into the right lane before thundering ahead, rushing into the night, taillights disappearing into the mist.

Becca’s heart was pounding, her lungs tight, her nerves about to shatter.

Hudson glared through the glass. “That son of a bitch could have killed us. You know, it’s one thing if he wants to play Russian roulette with his own damned life, but it’s another thing to screw with my family.”

His family.

From the backseat Ringo gave out a disgruntled woof, then stood on his back legs, nose to the glass of a rear window.

“You tell ’em,” Becca encouraged him, finally relaxing a bit.

Swearing under his breath about brainless jerks with driver’s licenses, Hudson continued his search for a radio station. The choice was a late-night sermon or songs from the “AWESOME sixties, seventies, and eighties.” Hudson chose the music and Gloria Gaynor, in the middle of “I Will Survive,” blasted through the speakers. He turned the volume down, though their conversation disintegrated to a few observations about the condition of the road or the distance left.

Becca hit ice a couple of times at the summit, but the Jetta’s tires grabbed on. Still, as the car wound down the westerly slopes, she couldn’t let go of the tightness in her chest, the eerie and growing sensation of doom chasing after her.

Whoever
he
was, he was sure working on her fears.

And it didn’t ease up when they turned south on Highway 101, following the snakelike coastal highway. Through small towns, over deep chasms, and hugging the cliffs that rose from the ocean, Becca drove on, battling the wind and rain that slanted in from the Pacific.

A few miles north of Deception Bay, Hudson craned to look out the window. It was the cliff edge where Renee’s car went over. “You want to stop?” she asked carefully.

“No. I’ve seen it.”

They drove the remaining miles to Deception Bay in silence. It was dark and a sharp wind blew patchily as they entered the small coastal village that curved along a crescent-shaped shoreline. The town itself was wedged between the ocean and mountains with the highway separating the two. To the south was the bay, a freshwater body of water allowing fishing boats a gateway to the open sea.

Becca’s heart began to race and she felt strange. She knew she’d never set foot in the town before and yet, as she turned one corner after the next, buildings illuminated by the watery glow of a few street lamps, she felt as if she’d walked these narrow streets. An eerie sense of déjà vu so real it chilled her to the bone enveloped her and she had to fight to keep her teeth from chattering. Even with the mist rising, the weathered storefronts and the fishing boats moored in the bay seemed like pictures from her childhood, though, of course, they couldn’t be.

Not your childhood. Jessie’s.

A chill whispered up her spine and she swallowed back her fear.

It’s all in your mind. You’ve never been here before. You’re letting your damned imagination run away with you.

“Becca?” Hudson said and she snapped out of it.

“What? Oh!” She realized she’d slowed to a stop and idled at an intersection controlled by a blinking red light, but she hadn’t resumed driving, despite the fact that no other car was waiting. “Sorry.”

“You were a million miles away,” he said.

“I was thinking about—Jessie—and this town.”

“Deception Bay?”

It’s like I’ve been here before; not once, but several times.
Had she dreamt of this place, had visions of the tiny fishing village that she couldn’t consciously remember?

“Let’s get something to eat before everything shuts down,” he suggested, pointing to an establishment with a glowing “Open” sign in the window, and Becca headed into the parking lot. She had her pick of parking spots in front of a restaurant that still displayed its mid-century façade. The entire building appeared as if it hadn’t been updated much since the early 1930s with its stone façade and rusting anchor mounted over the door.

Inside a heater blasted warm air around a near-empty cavernlike room with plank ceilings to match the floors and fishing nets filled with dusty glass balls and fake fish draped along walls paneled in rough wood. A couple of twentysomethings in stocking caps played pool, an older man in a ski jacket and full graying beard nursed a drink at the end of a long, timeworn bar, and a middle-aged couple sat in a corner, drinking beer and staring at the big screen positioned over an area Becca assumed was sometimes used as a dance floor.

Becca and Hudson took seats opposite each other in a booth near the huge rock fireplace. Kindling had been lit and now hungry flames crackled and hissed over mossy chunks of oak and fir. A fading stuffed marlin leapt over a rough-hewn mantel, and wood smoke covered the scents of frying food and cigarette smoke drifting in whenever a side door opened.

Becca swabbed some crumbs from the table and noticed that it, secured into the wall, listed slightly. Soft music—some kind of nondescript jazz—played from speakers mounted on the walls, pool balls clicked, and the deep fryer sizzled, the scent of oil-fried food rising above the sound emanating from the kitchen.

Hudson ordered a microbrew to go with his Dungeness crab cakes while Becca settled for sparkling water to wash down the spicy clam chowder. They shared a small loaf of sourdough bread and lathered it in garlic butter, but Becca barely tasted any of the food.

What was it about this town that made her feel as if she’d been here before? Certainly not just because Jessie had spent time here. And not because Renee had visited. But something…something she didn’t understand had infected her, made her think she’d peeked around the corners of Deception Bay.

The restaurant was warm enough that she shed her coat, but during the hour they spent over dinner, watching the few people enter and leave, making small talk, Becca never completely lost the chill that had burrowed into her spirit.

Hudson left bills on the table, helped Becca with her coat, then together they dashed the few steps through the lashing rain to the car. She switched on her wipers though they were nearly useless against the downpour and she drove slowly, creeping up the hill to the bed and breakfast, a two-storied rambling hundred-year-old manor with eight bedrooms and a panoramic view of the ocean, now dark as tar.

Hudson carried the bags and she shepherded Ringo into a wide foyer with an antique chandelier suspended from the ceiling that rose high over a sweeping staircase. Hudson had already paid for everything online, and they found their key in a lockbox just inside the door. With Ringo leading the way, they headed to the second floor and a cozy room complete with a glowing gas fireplace, canopied bed, and Victorian antiques. His and Hers robes were draped by a jetted tub behind an obscure shade.

“Nice,” she murmured.

“Only the best.”

“Or the only place available on short notice.”

He smiled and she relaxed a bit as she stood at the window, looking out to where she knew the Pacific should be. With the ocean dark, no moon offering its glow, and rain peppering the glass, she couldn’t see anything but her own pale reflection, a worried woman searching the storm.

As she stared at her own weak image she felt another pair of eyes, not Hudson’s, who had opened his laptop and was struggling with a barely existent wi-fi connection. Nor did she feel Ringo’s dark eyes upon her as he was sniffing the connecting rooms, hardly paying attention to her. Whoever was staring at her, she was certain, was on the other side of the glass, observing her through the shroud of the storm, following her every movement, reading her damned thoughts.

She snapped the blinds shut and turned around.

Hudson abandoned his computer and came around the desk to gather her in his arms. She snuggled into them gratefully. “You make me feel safe.”

He kissed the top of her head. Then he tucked a finger under her chin, turning her face up to his. “You make me feel…something else,” he said suggestively.

“Ahh…” she said, her mood lightening. And when he kissed her again, more passionately, she kissed him back with all her pent-up love and desire.

Nothing could hurt her and her baby as long as she was with Hudson.