Wicked Lies (20 page)

“You sound impatient,” she said suddenly.

“I am impatient,” Harrison responded right back. “If he’s killed someone, you bet I’m impatient!”

Her blue eyes assessed him, charged him with lying. “You don’t believe me. Not really. You just want information and you think I’m an idiot!”

When she turned, he grabbed her arm, and she jerked back as if he’d burned her. “You called me,” he reminded her.

“And I thought you’d be a better choice than the police. Am I wrong?”

She was half turned away and gave him only her face in profile. He noticed her lips and chin and the curve of her cheek. The downy softness of the hairs at her temple. The wing of her brow, many shades lighter than her hair color.

“I don’t know what I’m doing,” she said to the room at large, as if it were an awakening. She walked through an archway.

“You’ve got a killer after you,” he stated bluntly, following her into the living room with its rock fireplace and furniture that had seen better days. “That, I believe, is fact. I don’t know about all your communication with him and your family, but I don’t really care. You’re not safe. A lot of people aren’t, like maybe this woman he let you know about.”

She shrugged and shook her head, her arms wrapped around her torso, as she stared through the window facing the street and driveway. His Impala, parked in the drive, was visible, as was a house, a similar bungalow, across the street.

“If you had something more concrete, I’d tell you to call the cops.”

“I don’t want to talk to the authorities,” she stated quickly.

“I know. And I get why you don’t. Hey, I’ve had my own problems with them, and sometimes they’re just too damn difficult to deal with. Take Detective Fred Clausen, for instance, at the TCSD. I was looking into some unsavory behavior on the part of the deputies there, and he barely contained himself from physically throwing me into the street.” She didn’t seem to hear him, but he soldiered on. “’Course, I was . . . inferring . . . that the guy had looked the other way when his brother had sex with an underage high school student, and that didn’t go over so well.”

“Inferring?”

“Okay, accusing. I wasn’t wrong about the bastard, but nobody wanted to hear it, especially Clausen. I ran the piece anyway, though my editor was quivering in his boots.”

“What happened?” she asked, turning slightly so he could see her profile again. There was something sinuous in her movements that she was completely unaware of.

“Guy got fired from his coaching position at the school for some ‘other’ reason,” he said. “Then the girl turned eighteen and they took off together. Everybody was pissed at me, even her parents. They didn’t like the affair, but they didn’t like publicity even more. No charges were filed. But the story was true. It happened when I first got to the
Breeze
and I was getting over a few image problems of my own at the time.”

“Such as?” Now she turned all the way to face him.

In for a penny, in for a pound. He didn’t like talking about what had happened to Manny, but she’d opened up to him. Now it was his turn. Tit, as they say, for tat. “I accused my brother-in-law’s business partner of setting up his murder and making it look like an accident.”

Recognition lit her eyes. “Now I remember you. I saw you on television in conjunction with that shooting outside the nightclub. You thought there was more to it.”

Harrison snorted. “I’m a conspiracy theorist, if you believe Bill Koontz’s lawyers and the implication of Pauline Kirby and her news crew.”

“Koontz was your brother-in-law’s business partner?” she clarified, her eyebrows pulling together as she pieced together what she’d heard.

He nodded. “He’s sole proprietor of Boozehound now. Manny’s dead. And my sister and niece got next to nothing.”

“You believe Koontz set up your brother-in-law to be murdered.”

“You got it. I can’t prove it. Yet. But I will.” He added, “I lost my job at the
Portland Ledger
over the way I handled the story, but again, I wasn’t wrong.”

She thought that over. Opened her mouth several times to say something, then closed it again. Finally, she said carefully, “If you stay ahead of the police on this story . . . if you could find Justice first, or a lead to him . . . that would go a long ways to reestablishing your credibility, wouldn’t it?”

“Well. Yes. Of course.” He gazed at her seriously.

“Okay,” she said and inhaled a long, shivery breath as she dropped onto the couch.

“Okay?”

“I want you to help me. Really help me, and my family. I want you to keep us safe from Justice, and in return I’ll try to lead you to him, or, more accurately, allow him to be led to me.” She shivered as she spoke, as if she felt she were treading on the graves of the undead.

“Okay,” he repeated.

They looked at each other.

After a moment, Harrison asked, “So, how exactly do you call Justice?”

“If I drop the wall down for a moment, he’ll sense me.” She glanced away, as if embarrassed at how silly it sounded.

“So . . .” He lifted his palms, silently asking what she wanted to do next.

“I don’t . . . I just can’t do it yet. I’m afraid,” she admitted.

He nodded, watching her. “Got any kind of timeline on that?”

She half laughed but still worried her hands. “No. I’ve just got to work up my courage. It’s . . . it’s not that easy.”

“Okay. Yeah. I see. I’ll wait till you’re ready.” And in truth, he wasn’t too thrilled about the prospects of her communicating with Turnbull. If there were another way, if he could hunt down the bastard personally, or find a way to sic the police onto him, that would be better. But, for now, there weren’t any other options.

She gazed at him through wide, soulful eyes. “Thanks. I’m just . . . I need . . . to know that my sisters are all going to be safe. I don’t want to make things worse.” She closed her eyes for a second, buried her face in her hands. “If I did anything to hurt any one of them, I don’t think I could live with myself.”

“I’m not going to let him hurt you,” he said, meaning it.

“Us,” she said softly.

“All of you,” he said. “Catherine. Your sisters. But no one’s safe while he’s on the loose. Trust me, Lorelei, I just want to get him.”

“And write about it.” She lifted her head and smiled then, without a trace of humor. He felt a small twinge of conscience at using her for his own purposes, but he meant to keep her safe. He’d promised himself.

“And write about it,” he admitted.

CHAPTER 16

T
he hospital’s van was winched from the gully by its back axle. Once at the top of the mesa, it was given a cursory examination by the detectives before being loaded onto a flatbed and hauled to the department for forensic scrutiny.

Langdon Stone walked to his Jeep and waited for Savvy Dunbar, who’d accompanied him after she’d gotten back from visiting Mad Maddie at Seagull Pointe. Savvy wasn’t known for idle chitchat, but she’d been dead quiet the whole trip. “What’s eating you?” he asked as Savvy approached.

“I was thinking about whom he found to give him a ride.”

Lang nodded. The thought had been circling his mind as well. “Whoever it is, if they’re still alive, they’re in danger.”

“Big-time,” she said, staring at the road where the tow truck with its cargo of a mangled hospital van had disappeared. “What time do you think they picked him up?”

“You mean, they probably weren’t listening to the news and/or hadn’t had time to talk to anyone to be warned about Justice.”

Nodding thoughtfully, she tucked an errant strand of reddish-brown hair behind her ear. She was too pretty to be a cop, in Lang’s opinion, not that he hadn’t seen his share of lookers on the force, but for one reason or another they seemed to move on quickly. He expected Savvy to last another six months at the most.

“He drove off from Halo Valley around six or six thirty,” Lang said, going through the timeline. “Headed west. Got to the turnoff and drove through the chain around sevenish? Had ditched the van by seven fifteen or seven thirty. Walked back to the road and waited. Somebody came along and he flagged them down.”

“He would have been in his inmate clothes,” Savvy said.

“A woman wouldn’t have stopped for him, most likely.”

“Not a man, either. Not dressed the way he was.”

Lang thought that over. “If he was on foot, we’d have found him by now.”

“Is there anyone he could have contacted to help him?”

“Not that we know of.” Lang grimaced. “The man had no friends, and he tried to kill all his relatives. Even his mother.”

Savvy opened the passenger door to Lang’s Jeep and climbed inside. Lang slid into the driver’s seat and gave her a sideways look. “There something you’re not telling me about her?”

“I hope we find him soon,” was her only answer.

Laura felt almost ill with worry. Promising was one thing; following through was quite another. She’d said she would let down her guard. Allow Justice into her thoughts. She’d promised; then she’d backed off.

But it wasn’t just herself she was thinking of: it was her baby, too. Justice wanted to harm them both. And that was how he’d found her. Something to do with the baby she didn’t really understand, but that was why she was in his crosshairs now.

Harrison, after convincing her that he was really on her side, had then brought his laptop into her house and was currently balanced on one of her kitchen café chairs, typing across the keyboard with surprising alacrity. When she’d started waffling about “calling” Justice, he’d simply made himself comfortable and mumbled something about catching up on his notes.

Laura had tried not to pace. She’d tried not to think too much about the baby growing inside her and the fate of Catherine and her sisters should Justice actually get past their defenses. She knew she was the most vulnerable, because she seemed to be the one he’d most zeroed in on. Because she was outside the gates? Because she was pregnant? Maybe both?

Maybe she should go to the police. Lay it all out and take her chances with them. But the explanations would be so messy, and she knew she would be believed even less by them than Harrison Frost.

Could she really count on Harrison to be her ally? It seemed kind of unlikely except that he had something to gain, too. And so far he was the only one who knew she was related to the women at Siren Song.

And, well, she liked him.

Laura ran her hands through her hair, closed her eyes, shook her head at herself. She dragged her gaze from Harrison’s shoulders as he bent over the laptop and concentrated instead on her own relationship with the man who wanted to take her life, Justice Turnbull.

When she was younger, she had sensed Justice but hadn’t been fully aware of what his voice was trying to say, what he was planning. Her gift hadn’t been as refined then, and she’d only been interested in the messages that crossed her mind in a mild eavesdropping way. She hadn’t understood that he was a killer until he began his rampage two years earlier, and then, just as his voice had crystallized in her consciousness, he’d been captured and incarcerated, his sibilant, hissing tones disappearing with him inside the walls of Halo Valley Security Hospital.

Thank God.

But then, yesterday . . . was it just yesterday? . . . his voice had suddenly blasted into her head again. Louder. Persistent. Boiling over with his hateful need to hurt them all!

She’d slammed the door down but good, and still he managed to penetrate if she wasn’t completely vigilant.

And now she was thinking of cracking open that door?

She looked over at Harrison again. He was raring to go, ready to contact Justice through Laura, find out where he was, and go after him. Was that the way to handle this? Would she help capture him again, or would playing a game of cat and mouse only do worse harm?

As she watched, Harrison ran his hands through his hair, much as she just had, but then he pulled on the longish strands at his nape. His gaze was glued to the words on the laptop, but she sensed his sideways interest. It was a kind of radar reserved for people who knew each other well. She’d seen it in people in love. Had experienced it a bit with Byron, though he’d been one of those people hard to understand at any real level. It was a silent communication that spoke volumes. Harrison was tuned in to her, but she was currently shuttered, powered down.

She was afraid.

“Wanna talk about the Colony?” he asked casually, his gaze still on his laptop.

“No.” She’d already told him more than she’d intended.

“Maybe some of the past history, long before you and your sisters?”

“There’s a book with the Deception Bay Historical Society that lists my ancestors,” she told him. “It was written by a doctor who attended us when we were younger, I think, and Catherine considers it a violation of ethics and our privacy.”

“She might be right. Where’s this doctor?”

“Dead. Fell off the jetty into the Pacific a long time ago.”

“Is that so? You know, a lot of people associated with the Colony wind up dead.”

“Every living thing dies, eventually, Harrison,” she said.

“I know. But some of the people at Siren Song seem to have died before their time.” He set the laptop aside and looked up at her as she stood near the sink. “Take Mary, your mother, for example. I found no record of her, no birth or death certificates. Kinda odd, don’t you think?”

“I don’t know what to think anymore,” she admitted. And that was true. No matter how hard she tried to gain some “normalcy” in her life, it never happened. Her youth had been centered at the lodge, and yeah, the people within, her relatives, were strange by anyone’s standards. She’d escaped and gone on to nursing school, but even there she had been isolated, hadn’t made many friends, and then there had been Byron . . . and now she was pregnant by a man from whom she was divorced. “A lot of what goes on at the lodge is ‘odd,’” she said, making finger quotes.

“So, you’re telling me I should look up this book if I want to know about your family?”

“It’s like a family tree, I understand.” She thought a moment, then added, “I just worry that something might end up in print that I never meant to broadcast. If you check the history, that’s all available information. I don’t want my family to think I’m a traitor.”