The Devil's Cauldron (24 page)

They’d come back searching again. With no muddy prints to follow, it would surely occur to Kaitlyn that Eric had taken Meggie off the trail. They’d backtrack to this point. And find them.

Eric took her hand and turned her so the moonlight was on their faces. He looked into her eyes. “What do I do? You’re smart, you can think of something.”

Meggie didn’t want to start blinking. That would only confuse him as he tried to decipher her signals.

He looked so earnest, staring into her eyes. Vulnerable, yet determined. She wished she could move and speak, if only this once, so she could put her hand on his cheek and thank him. Even if Kaitlyn caught them, this moment of kindness, this helping hand freely offered, meant so much. Seven years since someone cared. Seven long years of crushing loneliness.

Thank you, Eric. Thank you for trying.

“I’m sorry, Meggie. I did my best. I tried to be like the knight in Wesley’s story and carry you out of the witch’s dungeon.” He shook his head. “Everything falls out of my head. It won’t stick there. And now I can’t think. Please don’t be angry.”

He gave her such an anguished look that her heart broke for him. Tears welled in her eyes.

“Don’t cry, pretty lady. I’m sorry.”

She tapped her finger on his palm. It was the only way she could touch him and let him know it was all right.

He looked down and something flickered in his eyes. “When Uncle Davis’s computer broke,” he said, “Wes and Becca had him blink his answers. He can only blink one eye. You have two. Could you send me a message if I ask you a question?”

Yes! Give me instructions.

He stared at her, confused, then brightened again. “Wait. I remember how they did it. Blink your eyes once for yes and twice for no.”

She blinked once.

“Yes, like that. Yes! You understand.” He was so excited that he looked like he was going to kiss her. He stopped just in time and pulled back with a horrified expression.

When he got over that, he scrunched his face in another look of intense concentration. “Do I go to the hot springs or should I go back to Foggy Hill? And should I take you with me or try to find help?”

She stared back in frustration. Begging him to try harder. Her finger tapped frantically.

“Yes or no?”

She blinked twice.
No.
 

“No? Which one? Oh! One question at a time. Should I go to the hot springs?”

She hesitated, weighing her decision. She should send him back to the care center. Then, hopefully Eric would ask if he should take her or leave her, and she could tell him to go on without her, to run down and get help. They’d never make it together. And yes, there were risks that way, but better than stumbling into Kaitlyn with her gun and her little minion.

A shot split the air from the trail ahead. A woman screamed. Kaitlyn? Had Benjamin finally snapped? Good Lord, what was going on up there?

Eric whipped his head toward the gunshot, alarm spreading on his face. “What was that? A gun? What should I do? Should I go up there?”

It was a hunch. Meggie blinked once.
Yes. Go.
 

But Eric wasn’t looking at her. His head cocked and the alarm turned to horror. Becca heard it then, a woman’s cry. And a man’s angry shouts.

Eric sprang to his feet. “It’s Becca! And Wesley!”

Another gunshot.

Eric sprinted off and left Meggie with her back propped against the rock. Watching him disappear around the corner as he ran toward the hot springs.

He’d forgotten all about her, bless him. In his alarm at the gunshot and the shouted voices and realizing that somehow Kaitlyn must have come across his brother and his sister-in-law, every other thought seemed to have vanished from his mind except to help them.

Meggie was glad. She was terrified to be left behind in the dark, waiting for someone or something to find her, and knowing that no matter what happened she couldn’t defend herself. But more than that, she was afraid for Eric. She needed them not to kill him like they had killed Diego. If her enemies came back for her, to torture her one last time before they snuffed her out forever, knowing that they had murdered her protector would be more than she could bear.

Her eyes followed up the trail in the direction he had disappeared and she cast all her hopes, all her strength in his direction.

Be safe, my knight.

Wes and Becca had been waiting for almost an hour. The rain had stopped briefly, but now picked up again. The canopy channeled away some of the water, but then it would collect on a broad leaf far overhead, suddenly giving way in a cascade that dumped on someone’s head. Becca huddled within her poncho, and Wes tried to do the same with his garbage sack, but it was a poor substitute for the real thing.

Where the devil was Diego Palomar? He hadn’t equivocated in his email; he’d been insistent he’d film Meggie after dinner, then hike up here and leave the phone. Something must have happened. Had he spotted Kaitlyn lurking on the grounds and called it off?

Just when Wes was ready to declare it a bust, Becca grabbed his arm and squeezed. A light blinked across the clearing from the trail that led over the hill to Colina Nublosa. It had a bluish tint, and was small, like a penlight, rather than a full-size flashlight.

No wonder it took Diego so long, if that’s all he had to find his way up. It did little to cut the sheets of rain pouring over the open hillside around the hot pots and basins. The light blinked off, then came on again closer.

Wes started to rise, but something made him stop. It might have been nothing more than paranoia, or the long wait in the cold rain, with the smell of sulfur swirling around them. What was therapeutic in the daylight seemed sinister in the dark, like the vapors of hell.

He took hold of Becca’s arm. “Wait. Make sure it’s him.”

The light bobbed along the hillside in their direction. When it drew closer, Wes froze. Two figures, not one. Diego and Eric? Or Kaitlyn and Benjamin Potterman? Voices spoke, and his fears were realized.

“Damn it,” a woman said. “Where the hell is he?”

“He must have gone back for help.”

“Carried her all the way down the hill? I don’t think so. And we would have seen prints. Not to mention he’d have passed us on his way down.” She sounded disgusted. “God, I swear sometimes you should be committed yourself.”

“Stop riding me.”

Becca squeezed Wes’s hand, so tightly the nails dug into his palm. This was them. Kaitlyn and Benjamin. Had to be. So what did that mean? They were chasing Diego, who had hiked up here carrying Meggie? What would possess him to do that?

Kaitlyn came behind the cauldron, her silhouette erect against the sky. Her companion followed, braced against the rain. She ran the blue penlight along the trees. Wes wore a black garbage sack and kept his legs tucked under his body. Becca was behind him in an olive-green poncho. The light passed right over their position.

There were only two people. The man sounded weak, cowardly. The hard, ruthless edge in the woman’s voice gave Wes pause, but he still wanted to spring to his feet and confront them. He was sure Becca would feel the same way. But they were in a foreign country, Becca was pregnant, and what if things turned physical? Even assuming Wes managed to overpower Kaitlyn, they still had no proof.

“Then where are they?” Benjamin asked. He turned on a more powerful light, but he swept it down the hillside instead of searching the woods. The pair were only about ten feet away now. “Did they go down toward the lake? They’d be trapped against the shoreline.”

“That’s a long way down. He’s tired—he has to be exhausted—there’s no way he’d make it to the lake.”

“He’s not so good at planning ahead. Maybe he tried. He might be stuck on the trail. Could be fifty feet from here, for all we know.”

“That’s better—now you’re thinking.” Kaitlyn was quiet for a moment. “Maybe he did that exact thing. Probably we lost his prints and he came right past here. But he might have jumped off the trail behind us and hid. If he did that, he might return home. And then we’re in trouble. We’ll have to deal with Usher, we’ll have even more of a mess to clean up. We’ve got to turn around just in case. If that doesn’t work, we’ll search toward the lake.”

They looked ready to go back and Wes felt his body uncoiling. Kaitlyn had something in her hand. The soft glow of a phone turned on in her palm.

“What’s up with this phone, anyway?” she asked. “Diego had it. The resident must have given it to him. But there’s no signal up here. So what was he doing?”

“Don’t overthink it, Kait. He’s just some brain-damaged reject. What could he possibly do?”

The woman turned off her penlight, shuffling with something else in her hand as she followed the light cast by her companion’s more powerful flashlight.

Wes bristled hearing his brother dismissed in such callous terms. Becca tightened her grip on his hand, as if to keep him from springing to his feet.

Then it struck him. They weren’t looking for Diego, they were looking for Eric. It was Wes’s brother who had left Colina Nublosa carrying Meggie up to the Devil’s Cauldron. He must be coming to look for Wes. And these two were searching for Eric. Then where was Diego? Had they done something to him?

Furious now, he shrugged off Becca’s warning hiss.

“Hey!” he shouted as he rose to his feet. “That’s my brother you’re talking about. And that pisses me off.”

He turned on his flashlight and shone it on the pair, who whirled, blinking as he blasted it in their eyes.

“No, Wes,” Becca said. “She has a gun!”

Too late, he realized she was right. That was what Becca was trying to warn him about. When Kaitlyn had been putting away the phone, it was to bring out a handgun. They weren’t searching for Eric and Meggie to question them—they were hunting to kill them. The gun now pointed at Wes’s chest as Kaitlyn stepped toward him.

Wes lowered his flashlight to the gun, his anger giving way to fear. For himself, of course, but mostly for Becca, now rising to her feet. And for Eric, hiding somewhere with a paralyzed woman.

“What are you doing here?” Kaitlyn asked.

His mind turned quickly. First, protect his pregnant wife and his brother. Then himself.

“My brother thought someone was trying to kill him. He’s paranoid, he worries about stuff like that, but I agreed to—”

Kaitlyn fired her gun. Wes flinched, anticipating the bullet slamming into his chest. She was only ten feet away and her aim was steady. But nothing hit him.

Someone was screaming behind him, and through the ringing in his ears—mostly caused by fear, not the gunshot—he realized it was Becca.

“I’m okay!” he shouted. “Becca!” Then, to Kaitlyn, he said angrily, “What the hell is wrong with you? Put that down!”

“You had one warning shot,” Kaitlyn said. “That was it. Lie to me again and you will die.”

Tell the truth and I die, too.
 

There was no questioning her intentions. She stared at him coldly through the rain, while Benjamin shone the flashlight in his face. Her gun hand remained steady. As soon as Wes told her the full truth, she would kill him.

“Please don’t,” Becca said. “Please, we’re not your enemies. We—”

“Stand back or I shoot him. Then you.”

Becca had been stepping forward, but now she hesitated. Wes was glad for that. He wasn’t willing to let her be a distraction so he could make a feint, or whatever. He motioned her back.

Kaitlyn fished something out of her pocket. It was Wes’s phone. “You heard what I said, didn’t you? That’s right, I know he was carrying this. Why? What was he doing?”

“Eric was helping us find the patient with locked-in syndrome,” Wes said.

“That’s what I know already.”

“But that’s
all
he was doing. That’s all any of us are doing. It’s our job—we find people who can’t communicate and we help. We want to help Meggie, that’s it.”
 

“Sorry, I can’t let that happen.”

“We don’t care about anything else. Your history with Meggie, any of that. We’re not interested in any sort of vendetta or conflict. We bring help, that’s all. If you’re guilty of any crime, anything at all, it has nothing to do with us.”

“Please, believe us,” Becca said. “If we go to the police, then we stop getting access to people with LIS. So we can’t make too much noise. We have to be discreet.”

Wes glanced at his wife, impressed. Her lie sounded so much more convincing than his version. But it was still a lie. The foundation was all too happy to bring justice to people like Kaitlyn Potterman. Anyone who would abuse, hide, or injure a person incapable of fighting back deserved to be hung, so far as Wes was concerned. No, to rot in solitary confinement for the rest of her life. That was more fitting.

Kaitlyn snorted. “Even if that were true, that doesn’t mean Meggie would feel the same way. What’s to keep
her
from talking?”
 

“We’ll speak with her,” Wes said, lamely. “We’ll explain—”

She pulled out Wes’s cell phone from her pocket. “Why do you have the cell phone?”

Wes shrugged. “If my brother got lonely he could call.”

The gun cracked. A blow slammed into Wes’s leg. He fell to the ground with a cry, then rolled over, writhing in agony. His hands grabbed at the gunshot wound, trying to put out the wildfire burning up his thigh muscle.

Becca dropped to his side. “Wes!”

“Get away from him,” Kaitlyn snarled. “The next bullet goes in his skull.”

Crying and shaking with what Wes knew was anger more than fear, Becca backed away on the wet, muddy ground. She kept moving until she was several feet behind, up near the tree. Wes lay on the ground, teeth clenched, hurt and afraid.

“Now,” Kaitlyn said, “I suppose you could call that a second warning shot. A little more serious than the first. I’d kill you, but somehow I don’t think this other one would cooperate if I did. You were lying again, weren’t you?”

The pain eliminated Wes’s defiance. He nodded.

“There’s no signal at Colina Nublosa.” She flung his phone at him. It bounced off his shoulder and landed on the ground. He didn’t pick it up. “You knew that. There’s no signal anywhere around here. So why did he have it? Why did he pass it to Diego?”