Wicked Lies (11 page)

He left other items in the backpack, planning to examine them more closely later. For now, he needed to sleep, and he lay down on the floor and put his head on the backpack, staring toward the cobwebbed joists above his head. Soon, he would have to get rid of all the rest of the evidence he’d taken from James Cosmo Danielson, deceased.

Then she came to him again, her heavy, vile scent wafting through this dingy room in thin, but distinct waves.

Sissstterr . . . I can smell you. . . .

His nerve endings jangled again. His eyes opened more widely.

She was close. Within a ten-mile radius. Maybe she was even with them at their lodge.

He smiled as he sent the message:
The scent of your devil’s spawn is a beacon. . . . I’m coming for you. . . .

Saturday morning Laura stood motionless under the spray of her shower, her face turned upward into the hot needles, eyes squeezed shut, his words branding across her mind as she slammed the door to him once again.

He could really smell that she was pregnant?

Could that be true?

When she herself barely knew.

It was surreal and disturbing, and as she caught the fury and hatred in his message, her entire body quivered, not just with fear, but a building rage. The only person who knew she was pregnant besides herself was this deadly and strange psychotic who was bent on destruction!

Not on your life, bastard,
she thought, twisting off the taps, then grabbing her towel and drying off. She was dead on her feet, having gotten home at dawn, but she dared not sleep and allow even the small chance that somehow he would find her.

She didn’t doubt he would; she’d grown up understanding that like herself and some of her sisters, Justice had his own special “gift,” what she considered a curse. While others, people who had grown up outside the walls of Siren Song, would find his heightened senses, his ability to communicate his raging thoughts, outrageous and unbelievable, she knew in the darkest part of her heart that he was hunting her down with the guile and patience of a bloodthirsty predator. That he was communicating with her was a gift. Yes, he did it to terrorize her, and it did. Man, oh, man, she was scared to death. But it also gave her a heads-up, made her aware, gave her a chance to be ready for him, time to thwart him.

“Just try it, you bastard,” she muttered under her breath as she wiped the condensation from the medicine cabinet mirror over the sink and saw rage in her own eyes. Before she’d known she was pregnant, she might have felt more bone-numbing terror, but now it wasn’t just she who was in danger. It was the tiny bit of life growing within her. Small as it was, she would protect it.

Justice Turnbull be damned. She slung her towel over the shower door and made her way to her bedroom.

After slipping into jeans and a sweater, she tossed on a Windbreaker, then slipped her feet into socks and sneakers. At the bureau mirror, she combed her hair straight down, seeing the thin line of light blondish brown at her center part, her grow-out. Dyeing her hair had become almost an obsession. As soon as she’d learned she and Byron were leaving Portland for the area around Deception Bay, she’d panicked inside, felt she had to do something, anything to hide her identity. She’d left the coast years before, to forge a new life but also to distance herself from her family in order to keep them all safe. Justice was a real threat, though not the only one, but he was definitely the most dangerous, the most immediate, the most determined. She’d tried to disguise herself physically in an effort to stay under the radar, but now she saw she’d underestimated his methods of finding her.

She walked into the kitchen, undecided about what her next move was, and snagged her keys from a hook near the back door. She was off work until the following evening. She thought of her family. The locals called them the Colony, and their lodge Siren Song. She had lived with them until her teens and had taken a job at a local market for a while, one foot in each world as she determined what she wanted. Two of her sisters had been adopted out when they were children. Another had simply wandered away. Most were still at the lodge, younger than Laura, under Catherine’s able, vigilant, and near paranoid care.

Maybe not so paranoid,
she thought now.

When Justice had gone on his rampage a few years back, the gates, which had already been closed to the outside world, were locked shut. Laura was on her own and with Byron by then. She had sent Catherine a letter, asking if she needed her to come back and batten down the hatches, and had received a note in return that simply said:
Stay away
.

Then Justice had been caught, and Byron, never suspecting his wife had been in any kind of danger or that her roots were centered here, on the Oregon coast, had taken the position at Ocean Park. At first Laura had wondered if there was some connection that had drawn him here, if he’d somehow understood that she was from this part of the world, but she’d come to realize it was just a twist of fate. And though she’d resisted with all her might, driven by fear for her family, a part of her had been seduced by the idea. She’d spun a fantasy to herself whereby she could be part of her family and live a life with Byron outside Siren Song as well. Why couldn’t she have that? she asked herself. It wasn’t even a difficult request. Most everyone detached from their nuclear family to create their own, and yet the new family kept in contact with the old.

But “most everyone” wasn’t her family. They didn’t share her secrets and history.

They weren’t
gifted.

Now she gritted her teeth and headed for the door and her Outback. Gifted. What a joke. Right now she would do a lot to rid herself of this gift.

Except it might be all that stood between her family and total destruction.

CHAPTER 8

H
arrison awoke with a start and wondered where the hell he was in the moment before true wakefulness occurred. Then he saw that he was in his sleeping bag. On the floor of his new apartment. And it was damn cold. Jesus. June could be winter on the Oregon coast. Worse than Portland.

Staggering to his feet, he stumbled into the shower, letting the hot spray rain over his head. He didn’t know how long he stood there. Long enough to make water conservationists shudder the world over, he supposed.

From the shower he threw on some gray sweatpants and a black long-sleeved T-shirt, then padded barefoot to the kitchen, where he stumbled rotely through the steps of making coffee. He was so lost in thought, he was almost surprised when the coffeemaker beeped at him that it was finished brewing.

After pouring himself a cup, he opened the refrigerator, hoping for cream or milk, knowing there was neither. He drank the coffee black and in between gulps took several deep breaths. After ten minutes he felt almost human, and he switched on his television with its DVR—his one indulgence that was critical to his job—and played back Channel Seven’s eleven o’clock news. He had glanced at it when he’d returned the night before, spent a little time on the Internet, researching the escape of Justice Turnbull, then, exhaustion catching up with him, had slid into the sleeping bag. Now he watched the segment that dealt with Justice Turnbull’s escape in more detail, taking mental notes.

First there was a bit with Pauline earlier in the evening, in front of the redwood and brick facade of Halo Valley Security Hospital. Patrol cars were parked every which way, some with their lights flashing. Pauline was explaining about the two sides of the hospital, Side B being the section that housed the criminally insane. In voice overlay she explained where Justice Turnbull had escaped, and the camera caught the portico outside of Side B, which was on the back side of the building, the eastern side, and mirrored Side A, which faced west. More sheriff’s department vehicles stood in attendance. It looked like they’d sent the whole damn force, and maybe they had.

Questions were asked of law enforcement and the Halo Valley staff. The camera zoomed in on Detective Langdon Stone with the Tillamook County Sheriff’s Department. Harrison gave him a hard look as he seemed to be the officer in charge. If he was going to dig into this story, he would undoubtedly butt heads with Stone at some future point, and it was unlikely to be an easy friendship.

Stone wore a black leather jacket, jeans, and cowboy boots, and his brown hair was tossed by an errant breeze. He said, “No comment,” enough times to make it sound like a rap song. Pauline clearly knew him, or thought she did, and her usual brisk, probing tone held a kittenish note of wheedling. Clearly Stone found her excruciating, and when one of the doctors from the hospital, Dr. Claire Norris, stepped into the fray, Harrison didn’t miss the way Stone gazed at her with an unflinching, yet somehow self-conscious, stare.
Something going on between them,
he deduced.

Dr. Norris couldn’t shed much light on Turnbull’s escape; she was on Side A, not B. Pauline abruptly switched from them to Side B’s portico, where she interviewed another woman doctor, Dr. Jean Dayton, who was serious, cautious, and clearly freaked out that Justice was gone. Mention was then made of the Ocean Park security guard who’d been injured, Conrad Weiser, and Justice’s primary physician, Dr. Maurice Zellman, whose condition was listed as stable. Conrad was still in the “serious” category. He’d suffered a head injury that had required surgery. Zellman had been through minor surgery as well, for the damage to his throat and voice box, but he was responsive and alert.

There was a brief moment with Dr. Byron Adderley, who just managed to look pissed off; then the camera’s eye turned to Nurse Laura Adderley, her face in profile, before Dr. Dolph Loman’s icy blue eyes and white hair filled the screen with a lot of hyperbole about how great Ocean Park Hospital was.

Pauline cut him off quick, then gave a short history of Justice Turnbull’s previous crimes, primarily leveled against women, and without saying the word
cult,
brought in mention of Siren Song and even offered a view of tall wrought-iron gates hidden in the thick old-growth timber.

Harrison found his small notebook and jotted down the names of the victims and the hospital personnel listed on the television screen along with nurses Nina Perez and Carlita Solano. He also added Detective Langdon Stone with the TCSD, and Dr. Claire Norris from Halo Valley, Side A.

He stared down at his scribbled notes and had a piercing moment of insight. The real story wasn’t about Justice’s escape, or the victims at the moment of his escape. The real story was about the past and future victims of his murderous passion.

The cult.

That was where he should start.

Rinsing out his coffee cup, he ran a hand through his drying hair. God, he needed a haircut. Then he changed from his sweats to jeans, T-shirt, and plaid overshirt, his “look” for the teenagers, though he wasn’t planning on following that story until later in the day. This one was a helluva lot more interesting and just heating up.

Throwing a glance around his apartment, he fervently wished he had a bed, a few sticks of decent furniture, and maybe twenty thousand or so in the bank.

He headed downstairs to his Impala, examining the bald tires with a rueful eye. He had to get these stories written and turned in so he could be paid. Was desiring some cold hard cash such a bad thing?

As he turned from his Seaside apartment south, it occurred to him that he’d just encountered the sixth deadly sin: greed.

Lang shared a squad room desk with Detective Savannah Dunbar, who sat in a chair against the wall used for collared perps. She was balancing a laptop on her knees and stared at it in concentration. Lang had tried to tell her he didn’t care if he had a desk; the reason for sharing was a matter of space rather than budget. But Savvy just waved him off. She was a young, attractive, serious woman who listened more than talked. She’d risen to detective with the speed of a comet, coming from the Gresham Police Department, a large urban city that butted up to Portland’s east side, having made a name for herself by her deep dedication and willingness to work the hours and then some. She’d come to the TCSD on the heels of Lang himself, although there was really no place for her on their roster. Lang had wondered about Sheriff O’Halloran’s decision until one of the good old boys at the TCSD who’d outlived their usefulness was gently eased out of the department. Then Savvy’s hiring made sense.

Feeling his gaze on her, Savvy looked up. Her eyes were a crystal blue, her hair a lush auburn shade, though it was currently scraped back into a ponytail.

“It’s Saturday,” he said.

“And?”

“What are we both doing here?”

She smiled faintly. “It’s a shame criminals don’t have regular hours.”

Lang grinned and ran a hand around the stubble on his unshaven jaw. He just couldn’t find the energy to shave this morning. “Find anything on Justice?”

“Nothing we don’t already know. He grew up around Deception Bay. His mother’s name is Madeline Turnbull. She’s known around these parts as Mad Maddie. She made her living managing a fleabag of a motel and as some kind of fortune-teller.” Savvy looked up at him with serious eyes. “I don’t go in for all that mumbo jumbo, but some people swear she was uncannily accurate in her forecasts. Two years ago Justice nearly killed her, though it’s uncertain whether that was by accident or design. She may have just gotten in the way when he was targeting Rebecca Sutcliff. Detective Sam ‘Mac’ McNally was lead on the case from the Laurelton Police Department, and Clausen and Kirkpatrick were on it from the TCSD.”

Lang had taken Kirkpatrick’s place when she’d taken a different job. “Clausen was involved in the capture,” Lang mused. “Maybe I should talk to McNally, catch his thoughts.”

“I’ve got the Laurelton PD’s number.” She rattled it off to him, and Lang wrote it down. “McNally’s retired now,” she added.

“Okay.” At that moment Clausen and Burghsmith clambered into the room, looking dead tired. They shook their heads in unison at his lifted brows.