Wicked Game (39 page)

“Anything that would send him to seek medical attention?” the woman detective posed hopefully.

“No.”

“Doesn’t sound like that kind of guy, even if he needed it,” Clausen agreed.

After a few more questions about her confrontation, hoping to learn something more about her attacker, anything that might help, they gave up. Clausen promised to return to speak with Hudson when he awoke. “If you think of anything else, call,” Clausen insisted and handed her his card.

“I think you’d better see this.” Gretchen, subdued for her, waved Mac over to her desk.

“Just a sec.” He headed for the break room and a cup of coffee before wending his way back to Gretchen through the maze of desks where cops were already on phones, booking suspects, going over notes, and shuffling paperwork.

Even the Homicide Department was cranking it up. Aside from the regular caseload there had been a fight in one of the local watering holes. Another drug deal gone bad, and one twenty-three-year-old had been stabbed and died on the way to the hospital. Another couple of kids had been drag racing on 26. A bad accident, one kid in the hospital, not expected to make it, another dead. The driver, of course, suffered a few cuts and a broken leg.

Gretchen was seated at her desk, printouts spread upon the neat surface, her computer screen glowing.

“I’m not here long,” he said, yawning, stopping close enough to look over her shoulder. He was driving back to the beach after a perfunctory appearance at the station. He’d been up half the night after dealing with Hudson and Becca’s accident, and he’d been back and forth on the phone with the Tillamook County Sheriff’s Department and rereading the notes he’d taken.

He’d dropped off Levi and Ringo with Connie on his way to work this morning and Connie, in her gracious way, had said, “This is emotional blackmail, telling Levi that he can keep the dog here when you know I’ll be the one taking care of it.”

“For a day. I should be back tonight.”

“Should,” she repeated. “I know you, Sam. You’ll get caught up in this case, this same damned case involving that Brentwood girl, and you’ll lose track of time, or have to go…investigate something somewhere and you’ll leave me holding the bag again.”

“One. One day. That’s all.” Over her shoulder he saw into her house, warm light glowing softly, the corner of a modern green couch, the smell of cinnamon and some other spices wafting from the kitchen. “You just have to keep the dog one day. He belongs to a victim. As soon as she’s out of the hospital she’ll want him back.”

“Haven’t you ever heard of the damned pound? Isn’t that where strays are usually kept?”

“He’s not a stray.” Mac’s patience was thinning.

“And one way or the other, I end up the bad guy. Damned if I do, damned if I don’t.” Connie’s face was getting redder by the second.

“I’ll be back tonight.”

“Tom’s allergic,” she said, folding her arms under her breasts and looking imperiously down from the doorway, but Mac was already halfway to his Jeep.

He’d known she would keep the dog. Not for him. But for Levi.

Now Gretchen pointed to one of the copies of documents she’d dug up. “You tell Rebecca Sutcliff that Jessie Brentwood’s her sister?”

“Haven’t had a chance yet.”

She snorted. “Look at this. Rebecca Sutcliff…I’ve done a little digging on her. Remember that bone spur we found on Jezebel Brentwood’s skeleton?”

“Yeah.” He was interested.

“Rebecca Sutcliff has one, too.”

“You have her medical records?”

“Ummm. You heard her tell the paramedics she was in an accident sixteen years ago. Same kind of thing, run off the road. Guess which road.” She looked up at him.

He was lifting his cup to his lips but hesitated. “You’re shittin’ me.” He knew what she was going to say before the words crossed her lips.

“I’m definitely not. She was run off the road not far from Elsie on Highway 26, but taken to a hospital in Portland.”

“Ocean Park wasn’t much then,” he said, wired by the new information and looking closer as she moved from one computer screen to the next.

“Anyway, I got the medical report. She was relatively unhurt, but pregnant and lost the baby.”

“Shit.”

“And there was a report of a bone spur…same spot as Jezebel Brentwood’s. And so I did a little more checking, pulled military records on her father, medical records on her mother, and here’s the kicker. They both have O positive blood; Rebecca Ryan is B neg.”

“They aren’t her parents,” he said flatly.

“Not biologically.”

“So she and Jessie have the same parents, but they’re not the Ryans.”

“Both of ’em must have come through the same adoption agency, or attorney, or whatever.”

“In Portland? How’d they both end up at St. Elizabeth’s?” Mac wondered.

“Coincidence, maybe. Jessie was a runaway and had burned through a lot of schools by the time she was sent to St. Lizzie’s.”

“The Brentwoods don’t like to talk about her. Don’t want to mention her adoption or anything about it.”

Gretchen gazed at him through her narrowed Siamese cat eyes. “Think the asswipe that ran Sutcliff and Walker off the road last night knows something about this?”

Mac actually grinned at her. “You’re starting to think like me, Sandler. Making connections out of nothing.”

“Not such a leap. You think he’s the same guy who stabbed Jessie.”

“He’s certainly a person of interest.”

As he headed for the door, she yelled, “Bring me back some saltwater taffy this time, cheap ass.”

Becca hung around the hospital and waited. She’d just grabbed a cup of decaf tea and a newspaper at a kiosk in the lobby when her phone rang. She caught the glare of an older woman with a fluff of white hair piled high on her head who silently dared her to answer. The woman’s gaze moved to a sign stating the hospital was a “cell phone free zone” and Becca took the hint as she checked Caller ID. Seeing the number was Sam McNally’s, she answered as she walked across a carpeted hall and through the automatic doors of the main entrance to the outside.

She wasn’t alone. Another man was nearly yelling into his phone while he paced back and forth and smoked.

“Hello?” she said. “Detective.”

“How are you doing?”

“Okay, everything considered.”

“And Hudson?”

“He’s going to be fine. How’s Ringo? And your son?”

McNally brought her up to date quickly on where Ringo was and how Levi had surprised him by rising to the “animal responsibility” level so fast. They were both with his ex-wife for the day. At least Ringo was safe, she thought as the rain slowly let up and the guy who’d been nearly screaming into his phone had walked back inside.

“Where are you?”

“Still at the hospital.”

“Wait for me. Coming your direction. It won’t be more than fifteen minutes.”

“Sure.”

She hung up and walked back in to check on Hudson, who was groggily coming to. He managed a faint grin at the sight of her. “You’re okay?”

“Yeah.”

“And—?” His gaze drifted to her abdomen.

“Baby’s fine.”

Some of the tension left his face and she wondered how she’d have broken the news to him if she’d lost their unborn child.
Like before. How will you ever tell him about the first baby? About the accident, so like this most recent one, that caused the miscarriage?

She looked into his eyes, heavy with pain and medication, the scruffy stubble on his chin barely hiding bruises already forming. Today wasn’t the day to bring up an old sadness.

“Hey,” she said, leaning over and brushing her lips across his forehead.

Hudson reached a hand up and kept her close to him. “Did they find him?”

“I don’t think so. Not yet. McNally was there.”

“Where?”

“He was coming from the beach, and if he hadn’t shown up, I don’t know what would have happened.” She filled him in on the events of the night before that he’d missed, brushing over some of her own terror, though the way his blue eyes bored into hers, she didn’t think she was fooling him.

“I’m going to kill that son of a bitch. The next time he messes with us, I’m going to rip his damned head off.”

“I think Jessie would agree with you,” Becca said lightly. “That’s what she’s been trying to tell me: justice. She wants justice.”

“You saw her?”

“And so did he. He called us by name, Jezebel and Rebecca.”

“What the hell does that mean?”

She heard a soft cough behind her and turned to find the two detectives from the sheriff’s department in the doorway. “Looks like you’re wanted,” she whispered. “I’ll be back later.”

While the detectives entered the room, she headed down the stairs. Her cell phone jangled and she picked up to hear Tamara’s worried voice on the other end of the wireless connection.

“Are you all right? What about Hudson? O-my-gawd, I just heard about your accident on the news. That you were forced off the road. Just like Renee!”

“We’re okay,” Becca assured her and lingered in the hallway near a side door. “I mean, I am. Hudson’s going to be out of commission for a bit.” She sketched out the details of the last twenty-four hours, but she omitted the part about Siren Song; no need to go into that. She didn’t even know what it meant yet herself.

Her one-sided conversation was interjected with Tamara’s remarks. “Are you kidding me…But who’s after you…Do you think it has anything to do with Jessie…You know, she was right, there does seem to be a damned curse…Don’t you need, like, police protection or something?”

“I just need to figure out what’s going on,” Rebecca said and thought about Siren Song. Her earlier fear and aversion to the place had been replaced by an overriding anger. Like Hudson, she wanted to nail the son of a bitch.

“Don’t you think you should come back home?”

“Not without Hudson,” she said and left it at that. She couldn’t confide in Tamara, couldn’t confide in anyone. Not until she had more answers.

She stepped through a side door where the wind tugged at her new hooded sweatshirt and the air was heavy with moisture. She was just wondering what was holding up McNally when she saw the detective heading toward the front door of the hospital. He veered toward her and they met on a cement path that led to an adjoining building that housed other clinics.

“Glad you showed up last night,” she said seriously.

His hands were in his pockets and he looked as if he’d aged ten years in as many hours. Unshaven and rumpled, a bit of gray showing in his hair, dark smudges under his eyes—clearly he hadn’t slept much. But then, neither had she. She wasn’t too interested in holding a mirror up to her face.

“Look,” he said, “is there somewhere we could go and talk privately?”

“There’s a coffee kiosk in the lobby and some tables. I don’t know how private it is…”

“It’ll do.”

They walked through a set of automatic glass doors behind a couple of nurses, heads bent against the wind, their uniforms visible beneath their coats, who were deep in conversation. “I’ll buy,” McNally said, and Becca asked for decaf black coffee.

A few minutes later he joined Becca at a table she’d chosen because it sat away from the rest a little bit. He handed her one of the paper cups and gazed at her soberly.

“What do you want to tell me?” she asked, suddenly scared. “Oh, God, did someone die? Another wreck?”

“Nothing like that, trust me, and your dog is fine. Getting excellent care.” He paused, then said, “Tell me about your parents.”

“My parents,” she said blankly. “What do you want to know?”

He frowned. Hesitated, then looked her squarely in the eye. “Your blood type doesn’t match to either Barbara Metzger Ryan or James Ryan. It would be impossible for you to be their biological child.”

Rebecca just stared at him. “Where is this going?”

But she knew. She
knew.
She belonged with those people, as did Jessie. They were connected. Both of them. Connected to
him
!

Her mind spun backward to the night before. “Sister,” the beast had called her.
Sister.
Had he meant it—literally?

She was trembling.

“You look like one of them,” the old lady had said as she’d placed her gnarled fingers over Becca’s flat abdomen. “Siren Song.”

“Ms. Sutcliff? Becca?” McNally asked, seeing her face pale, her attention turn inward.

She pulled herself back with an effort. “You’re saying I’m adopted.”

“Yes.”

She was related to the colony members at Siren Song. Related to that girl who looked so much like Jessie. A question trembled on her tongue. Something so bizarre, and yet it made a peculiar kind of sense.

Before she could ask it, however, McNally gave her the answer. “We have a DNA match,” he said. He told her about the lab results, as well as the bone spur on her rib that was identical to Jessie’s. “You’re Jessie Brentwood’s sister.”

“A DNA match,” she repeated.

“Your parents and Jessie’s were the same two people,” he added for clarification.

“How can this be?” Becca murmured, but the tumblers started clicking into place. She looked like Jessie in some ways. She shared a strange and troubling extra ability with her—her visions; Jessie’s precognition. Jessie came to her in visions that were real enough to make her believe they were a message.

McNally was talking, saying Jessie might have come looking for Becca, that she was a runaway and had attended more schools than not around the Portland area, that she was maybe running to something, rather than away from it.

“No.” Becca cut him off. “She was running from him.”

“Him? The guy who ran you off the road last night?”

“Yes.”

He nodded, watching her closely, as if he expected her to fall apart. “I’ve talked to the Brentwoods several times. They’re not very forthcoming about Jessie’s adoption.”

“My parents never even told me.” She made a sound of disbelief, then sank into another long silence while her mind rearranged pieces of her life like a jigsaw puzzle, trying it this way and that, discarding a piece, picking up another, moving it around.

“You do resemble her,” McNally pointed out.

Is that why Hudson “loves” me? Is that what he sees in me?
She’d always wondered, and now it seemed a likely bet.

DNA was irrefutable. She believed McNally.

She stared into her untouched cup of coffee and felt as if her life, everything she’d ever held to be true, was crumbling at her feet. Why had her parents lied to her?

“Jessie never knew,” she said.
Until after her death
.

McNally nodded.

Becca swallowed. Hadn’t she always known she was different? Suspected that because of her visions, there was something in her past she didn’t know or understand?

Her hand tightened over her cup. Her whole life had been built on lies, and because of it she could not have predicted that this monster would relentlessly chase her down.

“He killed her,” Becca said with certainty. “He had a knife last night. He wanted to kill me but then he saw her and it stopped him.”

“Saw who?”

“Jessie. In a vision. Did I tell you I have visions? That I see Jessie standing on a cliff’s edge, whispering to me? She wants justice, and I think she wants me to end it once and for all with this demon who won’t let us be!”

“Let the police do their job,” McNally said quickly, clearly thinking she was going to charge out on her own.

And wasn’t she? Wasn’t that what she was thinking? Didn’t she feel the urgency inside her breast that was like an angry, living thing?

“We’re looking for him. He drove off, but his vehicle had to sustain damage. I believe you said it was white or tan?”

“The grill guard,” Becca said suddenly. “His truck had a grill guard.”

“A grill guard,” he repeated. “Maybe detachable, if he used the same vehicle to push Renee Trudeau’s off the road.”

“It was damaged. It was scraped.”

“Do you remember anything else? Something else that might help? Any little thing?”

She gazed at him a long time. McNally waited, wondering what was coming down the pike now. At length, she said, “I think the answer is in Deception Bay. I think he lives there.”

“Any particular reason?”

She almost told him about Siren Song. He hadn’t blinked when she’d mentioned her visions, but that only meant he was just taking in information, it wasn’t proof that he believed her. He could think she was the biggest nutcase in the world.

“There’s one more thing,” Mac said, drawing her back to the here and now. “You said this has happened before to you. That you were run off the road the last time you were pregnant.”

Her head snapped up. He
knew
?

“You told the paramedics and I overheard,” he explained, correctly guessing her feelings. “That accident was about sixteen years ago on the same stretch of road. My partner looked it up. Was Walker the father?”

She felt as if the life had been squeezed out of her. “Yes,” she whispered, nodding, “but I’ve never told him. If you plan on breaking that news, I should do it first.”

“If there’s a pattern, he needs to know.”

“There’s a pattern.”

“Then you need to tell him now.”

Becca couldn’t move for a moment. Every ache and pain sustained from the night before seemed to manifest itself ten times over. With the low-level energy of the elderly, she rose from her chair and headed back to Hudson’s room.

Hudson ached all over.

When he shifted in the bed, there didn’t seem to be an inch on his body that wasn’t in pain. He looked at the chart next to his bed, a sequence of “happy” and “not-so-happy” faces indicating where his pain medications should keep him. He was supposed to be in the kinda happy zone, and he definitely was not. But the nurse had just been in and adjusted his IV drip, so things would improve. The detectives from the sheriff’s department had already taken off as well.

It had been a frustrating interrogation. He’d learned little, and, he suspected, they’d learned less from him. A no-win/no-win situation, leaving both the cops and him discouraged.

He itched to get out of this place, to start looking for that unhinged jerk who had run them off the road and most probably killed Renee. But try as he might, he couldn’t convince the doctor to release him. Whenever he asked a nurse or physician when he could be released, he’d been met with a “soon” or “possibly later today” or “probably tomorrow.” He wanted out and he wanted out now. It worried him that Becca was still hanging out here, where all the trouble had started, where Renee had been investigating before she’d been killed, where the attacker had already tried once to kill them. What was to stop him now?

And what did it mean that both Becca
and
her attacker had seen a vision of Jessie?

Hudson cursed his luck, tried to move and felt another sharp pain slice through his shoulder. He forced his eyes closed so that he could think and plan. Somehow he had to nail the son of a bitch who’d attacked them before the lunatic got another shot.

The medication had just started to kick in when the door to his room opened and Becca let herself inside. He’d never been so glad to see anyone in his life. “Hey,” he said, sliding over as best he could. “I think there’s room for two up here.”

“Yeah, right,” she said and managed a bit of a smile.

“I’d make it worth your while.”

“Must be the pain meds talking.”

“Seriously.”

“Well, that’s just it,” she said, her smile sliding away. “I do want to talk to you. Seriously.”

He saw a shadow cross her eyes and wondered what was coming now. Something else had happened! Another one of their friends killed? Someone they knew?

Reading the alarm in his eyes, she grabbed his good hand and said, “It’s not that bad. Relax.” And then she told him about bone spurs and DNA and the fact that it looked like she’d been adopted, had never been told the truth, and had no idea who her biological parents were.

And she told him she and Jessie were sisters.

“What?” Hudson was stunned.

“We’re both from Siren Song,” she said. “Both of us. Those are our people, and they’re his.”

“I don’t believe you,” he declared, but he was lying.

“There’s something else.”

“Something else?” he asked in disbelief.

She took in a deep breath. “Something I should have told you a long, long time ago.”

“Okay…” Her tone sharpened his attention.

“Remember the last time we were together? After high school?”

“Yeah,” he said.

She was nodding and he saw a sheen in her eyes. Tears?

“We were together all the time,” she said thickly.

He nodded.

She hesitated.

The hospital room seemed to close in on him and the noises from the hallway outside receded. “What, Becca?” he asked and realized she was squeezing his hand so hard he felt it through the smooth haze of whatever painkiller was seeping into his IV.

“I was pregnant,” she said, her face white and twisted.

“What?”

“With your baby, Hudson. Just a few months, but very definitely pregnant.”

He heard the thudding of his own heart and noticed that her fingers, where they were clenched to his, were sweating. “So what happened to the baby?” he asked, but he knew as surely as if he’d heard the words. The baby hadn’t survived. He stared at her and felt a gnawing ache deep in his gut. Not for one second did he disbelieve her—all her raw emotions were etched across her skin.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered, her nose red. “The baby died in a horrible car crash. An attack, really. I miscarried.” She cleared her throat and blinked back tears. “I should have told you,” she said in a whispered rush. “Before. Afterward…there didn’t really seem any reason to.”

“Didn’t you think I’d want to know?”

“I wasn’t sure what you wanted, Hudson,” she admitted, looking toward the ceiling and blinking rapidly. “You were just so…distant. I thought you didn’t want me and I was pretty sure you wouldn’t want a baby.”

Hudson closed his eyes. The roller-coaster ride of the past few months had just taken another dip. He’d thought Jessie had been pregnant with his child, and then that had proved untrue. But now to learn that Becca had been…and she hadn’t trusted him enough to tell him?

You weren’t exactly reliable in those days, Walker.

But his child—his kid—would be sixteen years old now, nearly graduated from high school, and he and Becca…who knew? It was true that he hadn’t known what he’d wanted at that time in his life; that he was still messed up over Jessie. Still guilt-riddled for wanting Becca when Jessie had seemed to fall off the face of the earth.

“You were forced off the road, just like we were last night?” he asked.

“Yes.”

“You think it’s no coincidence.”

“No.” She was tense, her jaw tight. “He won’t stop, Hudson. I’m sorry. I should have told you, but he’s—”

Rap! Rap! Rap!

Becca turned toward the door just as it swung open and Hudson’s gaze followed. He was frustrated. He needed to talk to her, and his frustration increased when he saw his friends Jarrett and The Third swing into the room.

“I thought since Scott was in jail all this life-threatening crap would quit,” The Third said. “What the hell happened?”

“Trying to figure it out,” Hudson said, looking at Becca.

She knew he needed to talk more to her, but then Zeke entered the room, looking as if he’d lost ten pounds and aged as many years, and the conversation took off.

Becca took the opportunity to extricate herself from Hudson. She’d given him a hell of a lot to think about, and she wanted to make up her own mind about what to do next without his cynosure. “I’ll be back later,” she said.

“When?” he demanded.

“Soon.”

“And you’re letting McNally handle things, right?”

“Right.”

She slipped out of the room before he could protest, leaving him with his friends and a thundercloud of frustration darkening his expression.

Becca jogged across the parking lot to her beater of a rental car while a million questions chased after her. Jessie’s family had lived here. Jessie had known she was adopted. Jessie’s adoptive parents had owned a second place in Deception Bay. The people at Siren Song resembled her and were secretive. Renee had been killed for what she learned.

Becca climbed into the rental, jabbed her keys into the ignition, and took off through the puddles of the parking lot. The rain had stopped but clouds covered the sky, melding to the ocean and obscuring the horizon. She drove toward Deception Bay. That’s where all the lies, deceit, and murder began. In a sleepy little coastal village shrouded in secrets and lies.

She turned off 101 and drove down the desolate main street of town. Could she really have been born here? Even lived here in this tiny fishing village? A part of Siren Song. She’d known it felt familiar.

She parked not far from the Sands of Thyme bakery, which, like so many of the businesses, was closed. Climbing from the rental, she noticed that for once not a breath of breeze stirred through the streets, and the fog bank sitting out to sea seemed to ride slowly inland on the back of the swells.

Shivering inside, she pulled her sweatshirt more tightly around her.
The calm before the storm.

Cold dread climbed up her spine and she wondered if she really wanted to uncover the truth, to pick apart its onion-skin thin layers of lies. How many people had tried to keep her from knowing the circumstances of her birth, and why had it inflamed one maniac enough that he would kill and kill again?

Was she related to him? Was he after both her and Jessie? Were they both the spawn of Satan?

She walked toward the ocean and felt the oozing sensation of déjà vu slither through her mind. Could she really have lived here?

That’s where the answers lay: Siren Song.

That’s where she needed to go for answers.

She felt a sudden breath of icy air upon the back of her neck and turned to look over her shoulder.

He
was there.

Dark, hidden in shadows, he stood with feet wide spread and looked into her mind.

“Hey!” a man’s voice yelled and she turned. “Watch out!” A pickup was stopped at an intersection, ready to move forward, except that she was standing in the middle of the street, blocking the road. “Lady, are you okay?”