Wicked Game

by Lisa Jackson

  “I told you I was going to the beach.”

  “Well, what the hell are you doing there? I’ve left messages.”

  “I’ve been really buried in my story.” Her voice came and went, as cell phone reception was spotty along the coast. But he could hear an element of excitement in her voice. Or was it fear?

  “The Jessie story?”

  “Do you ever think this is the end of the…” She disappeared for a sentence or two.

  “Renee? Can you hear me?”

  “…and people formed colonies along the cliffs that became towns, mostly. It’s like a history lesson. But very weird. I’ve been interviewing…”

  “Interviewing?” Hudson listened hard, but he heard only fuzz on the line. “Renee? Renee?”

  “…you there?”

  “Yes, yes, I’m here.”

  “Remember? Jessie…all about justice?…Now I know…”

  “Know what?”

  “…Jessie…I’ll talk to you when I…Be there soon, okay? On my way back. If you can hear me, good-bye! Love you!”

  “Renee!” Hudson heard the distinct sound of his phone disconnecting. He ended his call and made a sound of frustration. Well, at least she was coming back. He was determined to get to the bottom of what was driving her, be it a story or some inner worry or fear that she’d been reluctant to name so far.

  On bare feet he climbed back up the stairs to check on Becca. He peeked into the room and saw her eyes were open. A soft, sexy smile caressed her lips and she lifted her arms to him. Thoughts of Renee drifted away and he quickly stripped naked and came to bed once more.

  Renee tossed her cell phone into her purse as she drove north. The damned thing would be useless for a few more miles. There were stretches on the coast where there was poor service and then a place in the mountains where there was no connection at all. But she’d be home in a couple of hours.

  Good! She’d had it with the beach. Even the tidy little hotel where she’d rented a room in Pacific Beach, ten miles north of Deception Bay, had become tiresome. She hadn’t gone back to the cabin where she’d thought she’d seen a man with dead eyes outside the window, a place where she’d “misplaced” a butcher knife. No way. She wasn’t that secure. No, she’d rented a room at the hotel ten miles away, a place she could write her story and sleep in peace.

  Now she flexed her fingers on the steering wheel of her Camry, a hard smile crossing her face. She’d known something was wrong. Off. But she hadn’t known exactly what.

  Nor all of the implications.

  Now she did. And it was a story and a half. So much more than what she could have ever anticipated. She, and all her friends, had only seen the tip of the iceberg, not the bulk of secrets and deceptions that floated beneath. But she’d followed Jessie’s path and she was pretty sure she’d now learned what Jessie had.

  “Justice,” she said aloud, feeling a familiar frisson slide down her back.

  There was danger because she’d learned enough to put the pieces of the puzzle together. She knew the who and, sort of, the why. She was certain that those bones in the maze belonged to Jessie, but she didn’t understand what Glenn’s death had to do with anything. She was still working that angle, needed to figure out if he’d been murdered or had just been an innocent victim in a tragic accident.

  And she needed more information about Siren Song, though it was hard to come by.

  Cults, she thought. This one was steeped in mystery and lore. Just the kind of thing readers loved!

  But Jessie had died because of what she’d learned. Renee was certain of it.

  And Madame Madeline—Mad Maddie—had warned Renee that she, too, was in danger.

  She clamped her emotions down hard. She wouldn’t think of that as she drove away from Deception Bay. Nor would she think about that stranger with the icy eyes staring at her. It had chilled her soul but good.

  But now…now she had the story, at least a good part of it.

  “My God,” she whispered as she followed Highway 101 north along the Pacific coast, the ocean appearing gray and restless, its surface far below the cliffs on her left lit by streaks of sunlight and shrouded by dark clouds. She was glad the southbound lane was a barrier between her and the edge as she headed on her way to the turn-off to Highway 26, which led east to Laurelton and Portland. She felt the need to stay safe. To keep herself from danger of any kind, because she’d prodded the monster with a stick and it had lifted cold eyes and stared her down.

  Another quiver swept through her body.

  All she had to do was get home. Back. To Hudson and sanity.

  Her toe touched the accelerator a bit harder.

  Hurry, she told herself.

  She glanced at her rearview and saw the vehicle approaching fast from behind. A truck of some kind. Where had it come from? She’d been alone on the road as the sun rose.

  Not to worry. It’s just another driver.

  Still, Renee pressed her toes to the accelerator some more, just a bit, though the road wound around sheer dun-colored cliffs on her right, cliffs that would turn to the rolling foothills of the fir-choked Coast Range when she turned east. To the left, across the opposite lane, was the low metal guardrail, no serious barrier to the edge that dropped to the boiling surf, far below.

  The truck, its front end protected by some kind of metal bars, closed the gap, alarming Renee. Maybe she should slow down, let him pass. She wished she’d decided to make this trip later in the day, when more traffic was about.

  Ahead were tricky turns. An outcropping of rock on the Pacific side humped upward. A last barrier before the road snaked into two hairpin turns with just the guardrail as a barrier. No turnout to pull into. No shoulder.

  Renee lightly touched the brake as the outcropping flashed by and she headed into the first turn. Rays of light shone through the boiling clouds like a message from heaven, sparkling on the surf.

  Ram!

  Renee’s head snapped back and her grip on the wheel loosened. Frantically she tried to regain control. The truck had slammed into her.

  And he was coming back. Full speed!

  “Stop!” she cried. “Stop!”

  She punched the accelerator.

  Her car leapt forward.

  Too late!

  Bam!

  The truck shot into her car again, spinning the Toyota from her control. She yanked hard, turning the car toward the cliffs. Ram!

  With a shriek of metal, the Camry spun around, glancing off the cliffs to her right, careening toward the guardrail. Heart pounding, fear shrieking through her body, Renee yanked on the steering wheel and her compact shimmied around, its rear end facing the guardrail, its front staring into the face of the pale-colored truck.

  And then the truck crept forward, its front end bearing against hers, pushing her toward the edge.

  “No!” Oh, God, no!

  Screaming, terror shooting through her, she slammed her foot onto the accelerator, her wheels spinning madly but gaining nothing as the SUV forced her backward. Closer and closer to the edge of the cliff, where the guardrail was but a small strip of steel.

  “Please, God, no. Not now.”

  She looked through her windshield and saw the face of the driver.

  It was him!

  The man she’d seen in the window.

  Him!

  Oh, God, those dead, flat eyes!

  The truck’s engine roared, pushing forward, a beast of a machine.

  Her Toyota was no match and slid ever backward, smoke coming out from the tires, gravel spitting.

  Renee jerked on the wheel.

  Too late.

  With a shriek of metal, the car’s rear end broke through the guardrail and the Camry was forced over the edge.

  Renee stared upward in horror as her car slid into space. Her scream tore from her throat and echoed off the sheer cliffs as the Camry then spun end over end into a greedy, reaching sea far below.

  Chapter Seventeen

  She knows
!

  As our eyes meet, I see the recognition, the understanding.

  My heart is thundering, pounding, full of excitement, my fingers clutching the steering wheel as I step on the accelerator.

  Her face is a mask of horror and I can almost hear her screams.

  God has given me her as a gift. She is not Rebecca. She is not Jezebel. She is not one of them. She is just a stupid woman who threatens the mission.

  I cannot smell her, only the heady scent of the sea crashing on the rocks far below.

  Yet she must die because she knows.

  Bam! My truck’s grill guard hits the car hard a last time and the Camry slams into the weakened guardrail to plummet over the edge, spinning and toppling as it dives into the sea.

  Trembling, I back up quickly, throw the truck into Drive, and make good my escape. Though this is a lonely stretch of road at this hour in this late part of winter, I must be careful.

  If anyone were to see, my mission, my life’s work, would be destroyed.

  There is still so much to do and there is a scent in the air, the hint of an odor that I haven’t smelled in a long, long while.

  I smile to myself as I drive northward before heading east.

  To her.

  Hudson swept his cell phone from the kitchen table as he and Becca headed out to his truck, Ringo on his leash zigzagging across the gravel drive. Becca climbed inside, helping the dog onto her lap as Hudson dug his keys from his pocket.

  It was early afternoon. They’d spent the morning at his house, waking late, drinking coffee, tending to the livestock, eating a leisurely brunch at a diner in Laurelton before returning to the farm. The day had been clear and the horses had stretched their legs, trotting, tails lifted around the pasture. Boston, the Appaloosa, her belly large with the foal she carried, rubbed her side against the rough bark of an oak tree, snorting in contentment, her breath two cloudy bursts from her nostrils, and Becca stroked her neck and murmured to her.

  Now Hudson smiled to himself. Who would have thought that he would feel such a sense of contentment here, a peace he’d never experienced in his days of selling, brokering, and investing in commercial real estate? He’d done well enough, but he’d always been restless.

  You’re too damned young to retire, he’d told himself often enough, but he’d ended up here anyway, working on the farm, managing the properties he owned at a distance, and satisfied, if not happy with his life.

  From the moment he’d seen her at Blue Note he’d known he’d never gotten over her.

  And Jessie had brought them together, which made him feel almost guilty about falling in love again.

  He caught himself up short—Love? Jesus, you’re an idiot. Love? Ridiculous. But glancing at Becca as she climbed into his truck made him quiet that nagging little insistence. And the restlessness that had been with him for years was sliding away.

  The phone rang as they were bumping down the gravel drive. He examined the Caller ID. “Tillamook County?” he read, then punched the talk button. “Hello?”

  Becca gave him a shrug as he said, “Yeah, Tim. What’s up?” In an instant his face turned to stone. “Wait a minute…Slow down. Where?…Yeah, I know Renee went to the beach. What?”

  Becca’s heart froze.

  “Wait…which hospital?”

  Hospital? Becca’s fingers tightened over the handle of her purse. Her blood turned to ice. “Hudson?”

  All color drained from Hudson’s face. He stopped the truck at the end of the drive, his fingers crushing the phone.

  “Hudson?” she repeated, her mind racing.

  “She’s alive?” he said into the phone.

  Becca’s hand flew to her throat.

  “I’m on my way.” He clicked off, breathing shallowly. “That was Tim. Renee’s been in an accident. The sheriff’s department called him, told him she’s at Ocean Park Hospital.”

  “Is she all right?”

  “I don’t know. Shit!” He threw the truck into gear again.

  “But she’s alive.”

  “I think so.”

  Becca was trembling inside, her blood turning to ice. Another “accident,” so soon after Glenn’s death. What were the chances of that happening? “I can’t believe it,” she whispered, but that was a lie. Fleetingly she thought of Renee’s sense of persecution—Renee, with her need to return to Deception Bay, her determination to find out what happened to Jessie, her yearning to write her story.

  “I’m going straight to the hospital after I drop you off.”

  “I’m coming with you,” she said. No way was he leaving her behind.

  “It’s at—”

  “—the coast. Ocean Park. I heard.”

  “What about the dog?” Hudson asked.

  “He’ll come, too. Ringo loves to ride in the car.” To the dog, she said, “Lie down, Ringo.”

  “Are you sure about this?” They were at the end of the lane waiting for a truck towing a fifth wheeler to pass. “It doesn’t look good, Becca.”

  “I want to be with you.”

  “The hospital is a good two hours away.” He glanced through the windshield to the fields beyond, not, she suspected, seeing the stubble of bent yellow grass in the fields.

  “Then we’d better not waste any time.”

  “Okay.” He accelerated onto Highway 26, heading west where the sun, sheltered by thin clouds, was already lowering behind the ridge of mountains separating the Willamette Valley from the Pacific Ocean.

  Becca sent a prayer toward the gauzy heavens. Renee couldn’t die. She just couldn’t. They’d lost too many already.

  But as she stared ahead, she thought about Jessie and her warning…

  What was it she’d tried to tell her? Two syllables? Maybe one word?

  As Hudson’s truck roared upward into the foothills and the towering fir and oak obliterated the sun, Becca felt a cold chill settle in her spine.

  Ocean Park Hospital was known for the twisted pine trees that flanked its blacktopped entrance. The pines, their trunks and limbs tortured over the years by blasting gusts of wind, shivered and bent their heads as Hudson’s truck barreled between them on his way to the low-rise concrete hospital that had been constructed for function, not beauty.

  Hudson had placed a call to the sheriff’s department and gotten nowhere. A return call to Tim had found him despondent. Renee’s soon-to-be-ex-husband, who too was driving to the hospital, had sounded slow and perplexed, as if he had no idea what his role was in this event.

  For her part, Becca just felt still inside. A forced stillness. A way to insulate herself from whatever was coming next. She had burning questions about Renee’s accident, but neither she nor Hudson knew much more when they arrived than when they’d started.

  Ringo barked at them as they left him in the truck.

  “You’ll be okay,” Becca said to the dog automatically, though her mind was elsewhere and she wasn’t sure that any of them would ever be “okay” again. Even the dog.

  Hudson, his expression calm but worried, clasped Becca’s hand and they entered through the emergency room’s automatic sliding doors together.

  “Renee Trudeau?” Hudson said to a clerk behind an admitting window. “I was told she was admitted earlier today. Victim of an automobile accident. I’m her brother, Hudson Walker.”

  “Could you wait a moment,” she said, inclining a hand toward the adjacent waiting room with its fake ficus tree and row of tired-looking chairs. Dog-eared, tattered magazines littered an old coffee table and an elderly man sat with his elbows resting on his knees, his gnarled hands tented under his unshaven chin. “I’ll let the doctor know you’re here.”

  “I’d like to see my sister.” Hudson looked past the clerk to the line of doors beyond.

  “I’ll let him know.” The woman, probably fifty though she sported new braces, smiled patiently, but there was something in her gaze that warned things might not be as bright as her grin suggested.

  Becca perched on the edge of
her seat but Hudson paced like a caged lion, glancing out the window, then at the rooms behind the glass partition and admitting desk, then Becca, then back again.

  It wasn’t the doctor who approached them but a man in a crisp tan uniform with badges on his chest and upper arms. Deputy Warren Burghsmith of the Tillamook County Sheriff’s Department introduced himself to Hudson, who had been pointed out by the clerk in braces.

  Becca steeled herself. This couldn’t be good news.

  “You’re Renee Trudeau’s brother?” he asked.

  “That’s right. How’s my sister?”

  “Still alive, but barely. Lucky she didn’t die on impact.” He explained how Renee’s car had plunged through a guardrail and into the ocean, how someone had called in the accident, and how the Coast Guard had retrieved Hudson’s sister from the wreckage. The deputy was calm, grim, and careful. He asked Hudson a few questions, mostly about where Renee was going and what she’d been doing. It didn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out something about the accident had alerted the authorities, though what that could be wasn’t apparent until the deputy admitted that Renee’s Toyota appeared to have been pushed—thrust—over the cliff.

  “On purpose?” Hudson demanded.

  “We don’t know.”

  “When can I see her?”

  “That’s up to Dr. Millay, but I’ll see what I can do.” The deputy walked through a pair of swinging doors marked No Admittance.

  Minutes later a doctor in pale green surgical scrubs pushed through those same doors and while the elderly man looked up expectantly, the doctor, who had removed his gloves, headed straight for Hudson and Becca. “I’m Dr. Millay,” he introduced himself. He was tall, somewhere in his sixties, with the build of a runner. “I understand you’re Renee Trudeau’s brother?”

  “Hudson Walker. Yes. How is she?” he asked, but the doctor’s somber expression said it all.

  “I’m sorry. We did everything we could.”

  Becca’s knees nearly buckled. What? What was he saying?

  The blood drained from Hudson’s face as the doctor went on, “Your sister’s injuries were extensive. Broken clavicles, ribs, crushed pelvis, perforated lung…” In medical terms he described a body crushed from impact, but only a few of the phrases stuck in Becca’s brain. “…deep trauma to the chest and abdomen…heart and liver damage…unable to stop the internal bleeding…unconscious throughout…little or no pain…no response…” then finished with, “Ms. Trudeau died on the operating table. We called her time of death at 9:23 am.”