by Sheila Lowe
“It’s no better than he deserves, considering what he’s done,” said Sage. “Jess, if he is dead, what about Ethan?”
Jessica was asking herself the same question. The sensation of being Ethan, terrified and running away—she shuddered. Earlier, he had said he was alone. What was he running from? If Trey was dead and she had literally inhabited Trey’s spirit in his version of hell…
“I’ve got to call Zach,” she said, already swinging her legs over the side of the futon and reaching for her phone.
Sage got up, too, and handed her the clothes she had discarded the night before. The mood had been far different then, so charged with passion and anticipation before she had gone off into another world again. Now, with Ethan Starkey still missing and the possibility that she had the means to help locate him, Jessica told herself, she had no right to pursue those feelings.
“Answer the phone, Zach,” she muttered as it went to voicemail. She left an urgent message for him to call and started dressing.
Sage, already in his Levis and cashmere sweater, shot her a troubled glance. “Do you think maybe he’s blocked you?”
Jessica stopped zipping up her jeans and frowned, not comprehending his meaning. “Blocked me?”
“He told you not to call him.”
“Zach wouldn’t do that to me.” Sounding more confident than she felt, she grabbed the phone back and keyed in a text, deflating at the words “not delivered” that appeared on the screen.
“We have to do something.”
“You don’t believe Ethan is at the marsh now?”
“I have a strong feeling that he’s not—he was, but—I can’t tell where he is now.”
“Zach said they’ve already stopped looking there. What can we do if we don’t have any clues?”
Before he had finished speaking, Jessica was already shaking her head no. It didn’t matter if there were no clues, she would find some. She had to focus on locating the missing child, not spend her time reliving how Sage’s hands felt, exploring her body. She loved how those hands…
Stop it. Keep your head in the right place.
She was zipping up her second boot when her phone rang. She snatched it up without looking. “Zach—”
An unfamiliar female voice cut her off. “Is this Jessica Mack?”
“Who’s this?”
“Hi, Jessica, this is Mercedes Thompson from Eyewitness News L.A. I wondered if I might get a statement from—”
“No, you might not,” Jessica snapped, wishing she could slam the phone down like an old-fashioned landline. As soon as she set it down, it chirped again. Then again, six more times. One reporter after the other asking the new question: “Are you Jessica, the psychic?” She powered down the phone and stuffed it in her pocket. “Let’s hit the road before they start showing up here.”
Sage put up a restraining hand. “Okay, fine. But Jess, before we go anywhere, I have a question. You said when you woke up you were at your worktable. Why? What was there?”
Her gaze flicked in that direction and back to him. “Honestly? After the whole Finley Hunter crime scene monstrosity, I was afraid to look.”
“Shall I check?”
She scrunched up her face. “Wouldn’t that make me a total chicken?”
The ghost of a smile flitted across Sage’s lips. “How about we look together?”
The suggestion stippled her skin with a rush of heat but she heard herself say “Okay,” in a voice not quite her own.
He held out a hand and she took it. Bigger, stronger, it swallowed hers up. Was it pathetic to be this needy? The fact that he was so willing to accept all the crazy she had dumped on him made him a star in her book.
“You’re just curious to see what kind of mess I’ve made this time,” she said, trying for lighthearted and not quite making it.
“Yeah, you caught me.” He squeezed her hand. “Gotta admit, you’re nothing like other women I’ve met.”
“I bet,” she said darkly, then stopped short, pulling Sage back. “What’s that doing there?”
She pointed to a cardboard shipping box and die-cut foam liners littering the area next to her worktable.
“You didn’t leave it there?” said Sage.
“No.”
The mess on the floor must have been there when she awoke, but Jessica had not noticed it. Hardly surprising, given the trauma she had gone through in the hellish dream. Her heart was hammering as they approached it, knowing there was no way to escape whatever was on her worktable.
She had left her sketchbook out, and some pieces of charcoal. Not her sculpting tools and the lump of drying clay, which were now on the tabletop, too.
For sure, she had not placed a log cabin there. Her stomach sank.
Around five by seven inches, it rested in a nest of delicate green cloth, which had been artfully arranged so that it appeared surrounded by shrubbery. An oval mirror lay on the desktop near the cabin, creating the illusion of a body of water.
“A log cabin,” said Sage, stating the obvious. He let go of her hand and leaned down to inspect the primitive building. It was constructed of three long logs on each side, broken by closed shutters. The ends were made of shorter logs with a single door at one end.
Jessica stared at it. “It’s a kit I bought a while back in case I needed it for some future project. It’s been on the top shelf for months. I’d forgotten about it.”
“That’s quite a coincidence.” Sage gazed at her with an expression that was hard to interpret.
Malignant vibes seemed to radiate from the little cabin. It was not her fault that she had unwittingly created what Jessica instinctively knew was another crime scene, but it might as well have been. If it was possible, she would back away from the worktable right now. She would run all the way out to the street and keep running.
“Is this connected to the dream?” Sage had echoed her thoughts as eerily as if he read her mind.
“I guess we’d better find out.” Afraid she would lose her nerve if she delayed, Jessica took a step toward it and lifted the slanted roof.
“Fuck me,” murmured Sage. His mouth kept moving, but ten thousand bees droned in Jessica’s head, drowning out his voice.
Inside the log cabin were two rudimentary cots. A clay figure clad lay on one of them. Clad in a plaid shirt and denim pants, its head was a black lump, oozing a sticky red substance onto the pillow. An impossibly tiny handgun, also fashioned from clay, lay on the cabin floor.
Making a supreme effort, Jessica silenced the bees and asked Sage to repeat what he had said.
“There’s no Ethan.”
“What do you mean?”
“In the scene. There’s one figure, not two, and it doesn’t look like a child.”
Jessica’s mouth was as dry as if she’d eaten a spoonful of talc. “He’s got to be here. If Trey killed him, he would be in the cabin, wouldn’t he? He’s gotta be here somewhere. Where is he? Oh, Ethan, where—”
The one-room cabin had no place to hide. Jessica switched on the desk lamp and began frantically picking through everything on the worktop. She picked up the cabin and set it aside, shook out the green cloth, swept aside tools and paints. There was no second, smaller figure hidden anywhere on the desk.
If what the Trey figure depicted was true, what if she sculpted the little boy and placed him far away from the cabin and the terrors it held? Would that make it true?
She picked up the lump of clay and studied it. Twisting off a small piece, she rolled it between her palms, forming it into a ball the size of a grape. Next, she took up a wire end modeling tool and began to meticulously shave the clay. Within seconds it had taken the shape of a head with rough features. She squinted at it briefly before selecting a detailing tool.
“Where the hell is he?” she murmured absently, going to work on the face, using minute, delicate strokes to sculpt eyes, nose, and sweet bow lips from what she remembered of the photos of Ethan. The features began to take shape.
She felt the light touch of Sage’s hand to her back.
“Do you think this is for real, the cabin?” he said. “That he really shot himself?”
Jessica closed her hand around the clay head and squashed it back into a formless lump. She dropped it onto the table and smashed it flat with her fist. “How the fuck do I know?”
The look of stunned surprise on Sage’s face brought her back to reality and she heaved a big sigh. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to yell at you. I’m not always a crazy person. I’m just scared out of my wits for that boy.”
He squeezed her shoulder. “You don’t have to be sorry. Let’s just figure out what to do next.”
“If we’re going to find him, we have to talk to Abby. You drive. I’ll call her and arrange a place to meet.”
His keys were in his hand before she finished her sentence. “Let’s go.”
They narrowly escaped the media vans, which were cruising the street, looking for places to park. With no sidewalks in the neighborhood they were out of luck. Homeowners parked in their own driveways, the streets to narrow to allow much visitor parking.
“I bet they’ll offer the neighbors a bundle to park in their driveways,” said Sage, as two of them parked illegally in front of homes. His own car was around the corner, where some street parking was permitted.
The gathering darkness made it easy to slip unnoticed past the TV crews setting up their equipment in front of the Victorian. Jessica had wound a scarf high around the lower half of her face as they walked away. “Imelda’s gonna have a fit if they start ringing her bell,” she said, fastening her seatbelt.
“Who’s Imelda?”
“One temperamental landlady.”
“We can worry about her later.” Sage turned north onto Victoria and headed in the direction of the 101. “First things first.”
Jessica switched on her phone. Of the dozen voicemails, none were from Zach. She tapped in Abby’s number, worried that he might have told her to block Jessica, too.
She need not have been concerned. Ethan’s mother answered right away.
“Oh, Jessica, I’m so sorry about my mom. I never thought she would—”
“Hi, Abby. Can you talk?”
“Not privately.” She was half-whispering. “Listen, I saw her talking to those creeps and tried to stop her, but she was loaded for bear. I still can’t believe she did that.”
“Forget it; we have more important things to think about. Can you leave the house? I don’t want the media to see us there. They’re already camping out around my place.”
“Okay, sure. Where should we meet?”
“Thousand Oaks Mall? That’s close to you. We can sit in the parking lot and figure things out.”
“Let’s meet at the Hillcrest Drive entrance of Macy’s by the road. I’ll watch for your car.”
“I’m not in my car. I’m with my—friend.” She darted a look at Sage. One night of fantastic sex might not make him her boyfriend, but he was more than a friend-friend. She turned away from his amused glance as she described his car to Abby.
“We can be there in thirty minutes if traffic is okay.”
“See you then.”
They made it in forty. Ethan’s mother, wearing a pink knit hat and puffy down parka, was waiting under a lamppost next to her car. Sage parked in the space beside her.
Jessica rolled down the window and waved.
Sage went around to open the back door and introduce himself. Even under the stressful circumstances Jessica caught Abby looking at him with a bemused stare. Something she was going to have to get used to. The good thing was, Sage wasn’t a jerk, flaunting his good looks the way Greg had. He didn’t seem to notice.
“It’s so great to be outside and nobody knows who I am,” said Abby, climbing into the backseat. “Nobody chasing me for a comment.”
“You’re sure you weren’t followed?” Jessica asked, as if Abby were a spy who had successfully dodged the bad guys and made it to the secret rendezvous.
“There’s nobody hounding me for comments, so I’m assuming—”
“You didn’t tell Zach you were meeting me, did you?”
“You’re joking, right? He’s already mad that I let the cat out of the bag with Mom. Have you ever been read the riot act in complete silence? He couldn’t say too much, but I knew he was fuming.”
“It was his idea for us to meet; he can fume as much as he likes.”
“True, but I don’t want him to be in trouble at work.”
If Zach had not blocked her calls, Jessica might have cared more about his work problems. She changed the subject. “What’s the situation with your mom now?”
“When I left, I told her to go home and not come back until I say so. Which you can be sure isn’t gonna be anytime soon. Believe me, I’m not going to tell her about this meeting.”
“Okay, good. Now, let’s talk about Ethan and Trey.”
Abby grabbed onto Jessica’s seat back. “Have you seen Ethan again?”
“Yes, for a quick second.” Abby did not need to hear about her trip to hell or the bloody-headed corpse she had sculpted in her fugue state. Or the fact that her child was nowhere in that scene.
“I’m going to try again to locate him, but I have to find a way to connect with his energy. I was thinking maybe if we talked about the places where Trey might have gone—”
“But I’ve already given all that information to the FBI. If they couldn’t find him, what makes you think you can?”
“I don’t know whether I can or not, but I’m going at it from a totally different angle. If I visited some of those locations, I might get a sense of whether they were there.”
Abby looked dubious. “I guess. But—”
“Someone’s already gone to his parents’ house, right?”
“Yes, they live in Phoenix. He wouldn’t go there anyway. They haven’t talked in years, ever since he conned them out of some money before we got married. They never forgave him. They’ve never even met Ethan.”
“Any siblings or cousins?”
“No, and he doesn’t have any close friends, either. Zach already checked out the women he’s been involved with—the ones I know about, anyway—none were serious enough relationships for them to risk hiding him and Ethan from the feds.”
As Abby spoke, Jessica attempted to tune in to her energy using a method she had read about. Nothing pinged back. “Trey is in real estate, isn’t he?” she asked. “What about his clients?”
“Zach has talked to them, of course. I can’t imagine any one of them would hide Trey. They’re just clients, not close friends.”
“What about vacant properties?”
Abby paused to think about it. “The only one I can think of is a house in Benedict Canyon. Zach already went there.”
Benedict Canyon. The name rang a bell. “He mentioned it the other day. He was going out there on Sunday.”
“The owners are out of the country and not coming back until summer. Zach tracked them down and got permission to go inside and look around. I gave him the key code for the lockbox and the alarm. Trey keeps his files at home, so it was easy enough to find.”
“Did they find anything?”
“Not so much as an eyelash.”
“Does Trey often sell homes that far away?”
“No, Benedict Canyon is definitely out of his usual territory. The listing was a referral from a client whose house he sold. The guy was so thrilled with the deal he got them that when a friend wanted to put his house on the market, he sent them to Trey. He’s a shitty husband but a super realtor.”
Abby talked on about the house and the clients and Trey but Jessica had stopped listening, her attention turned to a familiar tingle on her scalp. The other woman’s voice collapsed, receded. The car’s rich leather interior disappeared, along with its occupants.
Her energy began to expand until it reached to the edges of the universe, lifting higher and higher. For a second, the hazy outline of a large house app
eared to her. Then it was gone; Ethan’s face appeared and was gone. She was back in the car, not fully tethered to reality.
She soundlessly deflected the questions Abby and Sage were hurling at her with their eyes, waiting for the spaciness to dissipate. When it had, she said, “I need to go to that house. Benedict Canyon. The empty one. Do you have the address?”
“Yes, of course, I’ll take you there.”
“That’s not a good idea.”
“Why not? I might be able to help.”
“I don’t mean to sound harsh, Abby, but have you looked in the mirror? You have dark circles under your eyes, you’re exhausted. It won’t help if we end up having to take care of you. You’d be much better off waiting at home in case anything changes and Zach needs to get hold of you.”
She was talking too much, overselling it. The truth was, she didn’t want Abby along in case they came across her husband’s dead body. And she was quite convinced that Trey was dead.
Oh God, I don’t want to see that either.
But Ethan. It always came back to that innocent little lamb, caught up in the mess of his parents’ ugly problem.
“Jessica’s right,” Sage added. “Besides, it gives you plausible deniability. The less you’re aware of what we’re doing, the better off we’ll all be. You’ll have nothing to tell Zach if it goes south. Nothing for the media to grab onto. You’ll be totally out of it.”
“I’m already high on his shit list,” Jessica added. “No reason for you to be, too.”
“I guess.” Abby looked like she might argue with their logic but either she saw the wisdom in what they said or was too exhausted to press the issue. “You have to promise to tell me if you find—even if—”
“We will. Promise.” Jessica reached over the seat to seal the promise with a press of Abby’s hand. “We’ll keep you posted, whatever we find.”
“Thank you, Jess. I know this isn’t your job. You’re not getting paid to do it.”
“I don’t care. Ethan needs to be back with you. The sooner you can get us that address, the sooner we can go look for him.”