Wicked Lies (25 page)

Just within the double doors sat several wheelchairs. Justice noted them as Gerald and the woman moved from the glass-fronted reception area and out of sight. A moment later he climbed from the car, then strode, head bent, toward the entry doors, sliding a look around the building. There were no security cameras, as far as he could tell. Seagull Pointe looked as if it had been built fifty years earlier and hadn’t done much in the way of upgrading. It was a low, cinder-brick building, painted white, with jutting wings that had probably been added on as need be.

Touching in the code, Justice waited impatiently as the doors slid open again. He quickly grabbed one of the wheelchairs, then raced it outside to his Nissan compact. Opening the passenger door, he lifted his companion’s lax body into his arms; her head lolled toward him, and she glared at him with that fixed stare.

He barely noticed. What had bothered him earlier no longer did. Situating her in the wheelchair, he then pushed her back toward the building, feeling as if unseen eyes were watching him. Shaking that off, he punched in the code once again and entered with no fanfare. He could hear faint noise emanating from down one hallway, a television, and he avoided that direction, turning to the right.

To his happy surprise the rooms had not only numbers but names listed on plaques outside their doors. It took less than three minutes to find Madeline Turnbull, and he wheeled his companion’s chair into the darkened room, letting his eyes adjust to the dim light.

The old hag herself lay in the bed, eyes pointed toward the ceiling, as if she were praying to the Lord himself.

“Mother,” he snarled.

The eyes blinked but didn’t stop their staring upward.

He wanted to gouge them out! Was consumed with the thought. His fingers flexed. But then his sensitive nose caught the whiff of death. She was almost gone, too.

Almost of their own volition, his gloved hands moved upward and he stepped toward her. His hands were claws but they aimed for her throat, not her eyes. Suddenly those eyes opened and snapped sideways. Gleaming in the light from the window. She cackled, a noise that rattled in her chest and shook her frame. “You are doomed,” she whispered on an exhale of breath.

“Shut up, whore!” he hissed.

“
You
are the true devil’s spawn.”

“Shut up!”

“You know it. He’s inside you,” she said with relish. “You . . .”

His hands clamped lightly on her throat. He wanted a knife. Needed a knife. Needed to
cut her dead!
Or burn her. Watch her flesh turn black and melt!

“Burn in hell!” he cried softly.

“Are . . . doomed . . .” The words were more mouthed than spoken, but he heard them as if they echoed and echoed through a canyon of granite, bouncing off ridges, gaining strength, resounding, blasting his eardrums.

His hands shook, clamped lightly. He wanted to squeeze with all his might. Tight. Tighter.
Squeeze!

But no . . . he couldn’t. Didn’t want his handprints on her throat. He needed time . . . a way to make them think her death had occurred naturally . . . at least for him to make his escape.

Yanking the pillow from beneath her head, he placed it over her face and pressed down. Garbled noises sounded. She thrashed around, one clawlike hand scrabbling at his arm just where the other woman had scratched him. He pressed harder.
Harder!

Minutes later . . . she fought him with more strength than he’d believed possible. Her thin body humping upward, faint mewling noises sounding.

Slowly he surfaced. It felt like eons had passed. There was pain in his cramped fingers from the grip of the pillowcase crushed between his hands. Releasing his clutched fingers was a superhuman effort.

He turned, breathing hard.

His companion in the wheelchair was staring at him from her lopsided head. Was she
smiling?

He raised his arm to backhand her with all his strength just as her head dropped forward to her chest and she exhaled a last breath. Staring at her a moment, he waited, but this time she was truly gone.

He went back to the bed, removed the pillow from the old hag’s face, and placed it under her head once more.

His mother. Gone. Finally gone.

For good.

Closing his eyes, he reached into the netherworld, where thoughts moved like rivers.

I’m coming for you, bitch.

You . . .

Lorelei.

CHAPTER 20

L
aura opened her eyes with a jolt.

A shadow chased across the wall.

Justice?

She nearly screamed, then realized it was a branch swaying outside her bedroom window.
Her
bedroom. She was safe. . . . For the moment.

And Harrison Frost was probably on her couch.

It was just growing light, a gray dawn casting shadows as the events of the past day and a half flooded back to her. Justice crowded to the forefront of her mind, and she pushed him back, pulling an image of Harrison Frost into the place where his darkness had been. She drew a long breath and exhaled it, feeling her pulse start to slow its rocketing cadence little by little.

Throwing back the covers, she climbed from her bed, tossed on a lightweight robe over her cotton nightgown, and padded down the hall to the bathroom. She could see only an edge of the couch from her angle and caught sight of one bare masculine foot protruding from a blanket. The sight made her feel safe and relieved.

Emotions she’d rarely, if ever, felt with Byron.

In the bathroom she gazed at her reflection.

And a wave of nausea rolled over her.

Stumbling quickly, she ran for the toilet, heaving up the remains of the makeshift meal of leftovers she’d put together for them the night before, just before she’d reached out to Justice.

Pregnancy.

She waited for her jittery stomach to calm down, then flushed the toilet with shaking hands. Turning her face under the faucet, she ran cold water over her cheeks, chin, and mouth. Next, she brushed her teeth for all she was worth and then stood with her hands on the edge of the sink, balancing herself while her whole body quivered.

Was she out of her mind to tweak Justice’s tail? Undoubtedly. But the other option was to just wait and hope the authorities caught him, and that didn’t seem like an option at all.

Maybe the best thing to do was her first inclination: run away. Go back to Portland. Get the hell out of here!

But she’d thought that before the baby was a reality. And before she’d met with Catherine and her sisters.

And before she’d met Harrison Frost.

And before she’d determined she would help get Justice herself.

Now . . . she didn’t know what the right thing to do was. Justice was evil and determined, and she was dancing a very deadly dance with him.

Knock, knock.

She jumped at the sound and stared at the bathroom door panels, a hand to her chest.

“You okay?” Harrison’s muffled voice sounded.

“Oh . . . yeah.”

“It didn’t sound okay.”

She was embarrassed that he’d heard her throwing up. “Just . . . a reaction to everything, you know,” she said lamely. “I—I’m going to take a shower now.”

“Okay.”

She strained her ears and heard his footsteps recede, then stripped off her clothes and jumped beneath a spray of hot water. Ten minutes later, feeling decidedly more human, she returned to her bedroom, exchanging her robe for her uniform. Her hair was wet, and she brushed it in front of her dresser mirror, seeing the edge of her light brown hair peeking out at the middle part on her scalp. She realized she was through dyeing it. It wasn’t much of a disguise in the first place. Certainly not against someone who could reach her by simply using his mind.

And then there was the baby to consider.

Her
baby.

Hers and Byron’s.

Oh, Lord.

She couldn’t go there. Not today.

Harrison was rubbing his growth of beard as she entered the kitchen. Spying her outfit, he said, “Thought you weren’t on duty till later.”

“I’m not but we’re shorthanded. I’m going to go to the hospital and see if they need me.”

“If I didn’t know better, I might get a complex. Sounds like you’re trying to get away from me.”

“No, I’m just . . .”

He waited for her to finish, but she didn’t know where she was going. Her stomach was jumping around as if it were full of grasshoppers. The image almost sent her back to the bathroom, and she swallowed hard.

“I don’t want to leave you,” he said, watching her.

“I’ll be okay at the hospital.”

“Yeah? How do you know that? You said you reached Justice last night. That he was coming for you. And he was pretty graphic. You were freaked.”

“Yeah. Really freaked. I . . . I know.” She frowned. Justice wasn’t going to send her scurrying for cover, and in the light of day she felt more secure. “Look, there are a lot of people at the hospital. I know everyone. Safety in numbers.”

“I could help.”

“Don’t you have to follow up on your story, anyway?” When he didn’t quickly argue, she added, “So you might as well get to it. I don’t want to make you wait around here with me all day.”

“I can do my work from here,” he pointed out.

“No, really. This’ll be okay. I’ll see you . . . later?”

“You said Justice was going to be pissed. You said you challenged him. I—”

“Please. Harrison.”

He gazed at her in frustration. “I thought we were on the same page about him and what to do.” He took a step toward her and Laura shrank back. Her rejection stopped him short.

“You’ve got a big story to finish up,” she reminded him again.

“The Deadly Sinners? Justice is a bigger story. And he’s dangerous to you.” His expression was grim.

“Follow me to the hospital, then. I really feel like I should go there. I need to work and keep busy.” When he hesitated, she laid a hand over his. “Trust me on this, okay?”

“I don’t like it.”

She grinned then, impulsively brushed her lips across his cheek. “I know.”

It clearly went against everything Harrison wanted, but he reluctantly let her have her way.

An hour later Laura was at Ocean Park, asking for extra hours, while Harrison drove back to Seaside. Laura ran into a wrangle with administration over the amount of overtime the hospital was prepared to pay and ended up heading to the staff room to sit down heavily at a table while they worked it out.

After a few moments, she contemplated what, if anything, she could have for breakfast from the vending machines. Her stomach was still sending out ripples of unease, the aftershocks from her bout at the toilet this morning, yet she knew she needed to eat something.

At least she felt safe, for the moment, within the walls of the hospital. She picked at her yogurt, scanned the newspaper scattered across the table, and half listened to the news, the top local story being the burning of an old sawmill, a fire that had kept emergency crews working through the night.

Ten minutes passed, and then Byron strode into the staff room. Spying her sitting alone at the table, he draped himself in a chair opposite her. “What’s going on with you?” he asked.

“What do you mean?”

“You look like death warmed over, and why did you come in early?”

“I thought we were short-staffed, but I haven’t been granted the overtime.”

“So, why are you still here?”

He saw too much. She didn’t want to deal with Byron, and she certainly didn’t want to explain herself.

“I left some things in my locker and decided to just sit down a minute or two,” she lied. “You don’t have to give me the third degree.”

“Don’t I? What was all that mumbo jumbo with Mrs. Shields and her pancreas? You’re making me look bad when you start diagnosing with your laying on of hands, or whatever the hell you do.”

Laura’s interest sharpened. “You found something?”

“Gave her a new blood test just to check. Not a lot of insulin being produced. She was in the lower range before, but nothing to be overly concerned about. But now . . . looks like there’s something going on. Some kind of pancreatic tumor developing, possibly, or not. We’ll check. But you sure as hell got all the little tongues wagging around this place.”

She saw that she’d made him seem a little less godlike in others’ eyes and he didn’t like it one bit. “Her blood levels changed. It’s not your fault.”

“Tell that to her,” he muttered, his jaw tight. “What the fuck, Laura? Where do you get this stuff?”

“I just asked if cancer ran in her family.”

“Bullshit. I know you.” He leaned toward her.

Laura stared back at him.
No, you don’t. You never have.

And then her stomach revolted again, and she jumped up, fighting the heaves. She ran from the room to the bathroom, wishing for all she was worth that she could control this.

Ten minutes later she emerged and found Byron staring at her with his laser look. “You’re pregnant!” he accused.

“Dr. Adderley?”

They both looked up toward the young nurse hovering down the hallway, a nervous smile flitting across her lips. Her eyes were all over Byron.

“You’re way off base,” Laura told him in an intense whisper.

“Am I?”

“Yes.” She met his gaze and lied for all she was worth.

With a last, dark look at her, he turned to the nurse, his broad hand splaying across her lower back as he leaned down to her and guided her toward the ER.

Her stomach momentarily under control, Laura headed for the cafeteria and the faintly appealing thought of dry toast.

Harrison drove to the
Seaside Breeze
offices, which were housed in a flat-roofed, glass-fronted concrete-block building with a stationery/gift store on one side and a place to buy team trophies on the other. Pulling into the front lot, he climbed from the Impala, stretched, ran a hand through his hair, and determined that as soon as he was finished with the follow-up on last night’s story, it was time for a shower. Heading inside, he picked up one of the morning papers, scanned the front page, and smiled.