Haven of Swans

by Colleen Coble

  He shook his head. “Only you, Bree.” His tone held admiration.

  “You would have stopped too. Anyone would have.”

  The doctor called them from the living room, and they stepped back through the doorway. Elena’s eyes looked a little clearer.

  “Get some rest,” the doctor advised. “I have office hours tomorrow. Stop by and see me when you get up.”

  “I’ll see she does.” Bree ushered him to the door and thanked him. When she returned to the living room, Elena was sitting up, but she was as pale as Bree’s sheer curtains. “I’ve got two spare rooms, but I imagine Terri will feel more secure if she stays with you,” Bree said. “Let me show you.” She carried the backpack up the steps and down the hall to the guest suite at the end. “There’s a bathroom here if you’d like to shower.”

  “I . . . I don’t have any clothes,” Elena said. “I’ve got things for Terri though.”

  “My underwear might fit you, but there’s no way my jeans would fit. You’re so tiny.” Bree tried to think if she knew of any woman as slim as Elena but couldn’t think of any. Her best friend, Naomi, was a little heavier than Bree. “I’ve got a nightgown you can wear. You’ll swim in it, but that’s okay. What are you, about a 2?”

  “I don’t know.” Elena’s gaze darted past Bree to the dark spare room.

  “It’s okay, no one’s here,” Bree said, flipping on the light. The soft overhead light illuminated the queen bed covered with a peach-flowered quilt. White ruffled curtains gave the room a homey feel she hoped would reassure the woman.

  “It’s lovely,” Elena said, stepping through the doorway. “I can’t thank you enough.” Her lids drooped, and her body sagged.

  Terri peeked into the room after them, and Elena called her daughter and began to undress her for bed.

  “You’re exhausted. Let me get the nightgown.” Bree set the backpack on the floor and went to the master suite. She found the smallest nightgown she had in the big dresser just inside the door and grabbed a pair of her panties as well. At least Elena could have clean underwear, even if they were a little big. Tomorrow they’d go find her something to wear.

  When she went back down the hall, she peeked in on Davy and found Kade slipping their son’s pajamas over his head. “Thanks,” she mouthed, then went on to the spare room. Elena had Terri in her pajamas.

  “She’s too sleepy for a bath, and I . . . I think she’s clean.” The woman’s voice quivered.

  “That’s a good idea. You should just fall into bed yourself. Don’t worry about getting the sheets dirty. We can change them tomorrow.”

  Elena nodded. The little girl was asleep when her mother slipped her between the sheets.

  A head injury, a knife wound. Bree had to wonder if whoever had hurt Elena might come looking for her. She leaned against the door frame. “Should I call the sheriff? Are you in danger tonight?”

  “No! No police.”

  “Why? I don’t understand.”

  Elena rubbed her forehead. “I don’t know, but I just know I can’t talk about it.”

  Bree walked to the bedroom window. “I won’t do anything you don’t want. But we need to keep you safe.”

  “I think I’m safe here.” Elena’s voice trembled.

  Her fear was beginning to transfer itself to Bree, and she glanced out over Rock Harbor, peaceful and serene with the village lights twinkling.

  Elena slipped into bed next to Terri. “Thank you so much for your help, Bree. I’ll try not to be a bother.”

  Bree crossed the room and turned off the light. “You’re no bother at all. Get some rest.”

  She was going to have to be patient. Her heart welled at the other woman’s predicament. Whatever it was, it was very bad.

  3

  The smell of stale coffee, sweat, and despair seeped through the Michigan State Police District 3 headquarters like an invisible stain. Captain Nikos Andreakos—Nick to his friends—propped his boots on his desk and stared at a glossy eight-by-ten crime scene photo from yesterday’s sniper attack. His stomach gave a sour rumble from too much caffeine and too little food, and his brain felt about as alert as a turnip at this unreasonably early hour for a Saturday. As the lead in a special violent crimes unit, he saw these types of photos too often to sleep well at night. He hadn’t slept at all in the last twenty-four hours.

  What would possess a man who had just lost his job to go on a shooting spree? The perp had positioned himself on an overpass and taken potshots at passing vehicles. Three people died in a fiery car crash before he dropped his gun and hightailed it out of the area. It was Nick’s job to track him down. He sighed, dug in his pocket, and pulled out a pack of Rolaids. He thumbed one loose without looking and popped it into his mouth.

  The door to his office burst open, and his father stepped into the room. Colonel Cyril Andreakos stood at Nick’s height of six feet. Their broad shoulders fit the same size shirts, but Cyril’s waist had spread out to about thirty-eight inches. People who saw pictures of Cyril at Nick’s age thought they were looking at Nick.

  “We’ve got a bad one, Nick.”

  Nick thumped his feet back on the floor. “Worse than snipers?” He grabbed a pen and paper.

  “Couple of geocachers found a floater at Wilson’s Pond about an hour ago. Nasty. The perp took her tongue and her face. And here’s something weird—there was a partial peanut butter sandwich tucked inside the corpse’s clothes, next to her skin.”

  Nick’s fatigue fell away as it always did at the prospect of a new case. “Geocachers? What’s that about?”

  “Geocaching. Players use a GPS unit to find stuff other people have hidden. People plant what they call caches, then log the thing onto the site for other people to find.”

  “Kind of a treasure hunt?”

  His father nodded. “Exactly. Thousands are doing it all across the country. Even more thousands in other countries. This body was found at what the geocachers call a benchmark, in this case a historical marker. The GPS coordinates of the benchmark were listed on the geocaching site. When the geocachers got to the marker, they found a white bucket with a logbook and a note inside a plastic bag. The note told them to check the lake. So the perp was clearly having fun with the sport. It wasn’t a fluke.”

  Nick jotted down some notes. “It doesn’t come across like a crime of passion. Too much planning involved. I don’t like the sound of this.”

  “You and me both. Maybe this is a serial killer coming to call in our area. It feels ritualistic. Fraser is looking for similar cases elsewhere in the U.S. Look at the stuff posted at the site.” He handed Nick a paper.

  Nick scanned it. “The first part is what the cache is called?”

  His dad nodded. “‘Abominations will find you.’”

  Nick read on to the clues. “‘Then Musa cast down his staff and lo! it swallowed up the lies they told.’” He looked up. “Do we know where it’s from?”

  “The Koran.”

  “And he took her tongue.” Nick grimaced. “What leads do we have from the post?”

  “The geeks are on it. Give ’em an hour.”

  “Any ID on the vic?”

  Cyril shook his head. “Not yet. The on-site coroner said she’s got the build of a dancer.” His eyes locked with Nick’s for an extra second.

  Nick rubbed his temples.

  “If it pans out, maybe you could ask Eve—”

  Nick gave a short, bitter laugh. “Eve is steamed that I didn’t show last night. She hasn’t returned my messages.”

  His father’s mouth turned down. “I’m sorry, Son. I know it hurts. You thought about asking Evie for one more try?”

  “No.” Nick narrowed his eyes to warn his father to back off.

  “She loves you, and you love her. Work it out.”

  “Drop it, Dad.”

  “Your mother won’t drop it. Expect her to bring it up on Sunday.”

  “Sunday?”

  Cyril sighed. “Her birthday. I won’t tell he
r you forgot. She’s been cooking all week.”

  Nick nodded, suppressing a wince. If there was one thing his Greek family loved, it was a chance to have a big family dinner. His mother’s birthday was something none of them was allowed to miss, though he’d sure like to sidestep her interrogation.

  Eve’s face flashed into his mind, but he refocused on the computer screen and pulled his keyboard toward him.

  “Did anyone check out the abomination angle?” he asked his dad.

  “What abomination angle?”

  “The listing.” Nick pointed. “‘Abominations will find you.’”

  “What kind of angle?”

  “Who uses the word anymore? It’s old-fashioned, kind of literary, religious. Might be a clue.”

  Cyril shrugged.

  “I’ll check it out,” Nick said. Intent on the computer screen, he barely noticed his dad close the door behind him. He typed the word abomination into the search box and watched the results appear. The first result took him to Wikipedia. All sorts of references were listed, so he clicked the first entry, the biblical references. Considering the passage came from the Koran, he figured the perp intended some kind of religious significance.

  He scanned down the list of possibilities. Shepherds were an abomination to Egyptians. That didn’t seem obviously relevant. There was an end-times reference that might be a possibility. Maybe the guy thought he was a prophet.

  He stopped at a reference to Proverbs 6:16. The verse encompassed a whole list of things that were an abomination to God. He read them, then read them again. The woman’s tongue was missing. “A lying tongue,” he said.

  Realizing he was talking to himself, he hit the print button. It was too soon to jump to conclusions, but he could keep the list for reference. His phone rang. He picked up.

  “Andreakos.”

  “We got a name on the geocaching site post, Captain. Guy goes by Gideon..”

  STATE FOREST FRONTED THE COMPLEX ON THE north, making it easy to forget that the city was only an hour away. Gideon rolled the van through the gate under a sign that read “Mount Sinai,” then parked in front of the meetinghouse. The enclave of twenty or so cabins and tents cluttered the clearing around it.

  The white-board structure had once been a Methodist church and still turned blind stained-glass windows toward the road. Gideon nodded to several members as he strode up the steps. Inside, the wooden planks of the church resounded under his heels. He walked tall, knowing those in attendance whispered about him in a respectful tone.

  The church held about forty people. Moses Bechtol, the group leader, rubbed his hands together as he approached the podium. The place quieted. “We’re honored to have our special guest today. Just as Gideon judged the children of Israel and led them into the right worship of God, so our man Gideon has much spiritual wisdom for us today.” He clapped, and the rest of the group joined in.

  Gideon walked to the podium. “Archimedes said, ‘Give me a lever long enough and a fulcrum strong enough, and single-handedly I will move the world.’ We have that lever and fulcrum.”

  “Preach it, brother,” one of the young men on the front row murmured.

  The audience nodded, ready to accept his message. They were worthy vessels. Bechtol had prepared them well. “Most of you are here because you are seeking something more from life than having the best toys, the most expensive TV, the newest phone. Some of you come from painful, even shameful pasts. You think you deserve nothing because of what you’ve done.” He paused to watch some of them avert their eyes and cast their gazes to the floor.

  “Our experiences are the womb—or matrix, if you will—to give birth to all we might become. Pain engenders power. The power to change your life is within you.” He tapped his forehead. “It resides here. You can take your past and use it to shape your future. Let it empower you to change yourself, and then the world.”

  “How do we do that?” a young woman called. Her direct blue eyes challenged him.

  He hesitated, aware that only those who were ready for his message would really accept it. Maybe 5 percent of this motley group. The rest would need more time. More pain. “Relish the trials you’ve been given. See what they have taught you. Embrace what they have made you become. Feed your strengths and ignore your weaknesses.” Satisfied when she dropped her gaze, he went on with his lecture.

  When he ended the speech, he invited any of them who sought more out of life to join him in the group he called Job’s Children. Bechtol nodded his approval. Excitement hummed around the room as the young people discussed his new group. Gideon watched with a satisfied smile. Some might ask why he bothered to show others the way when he himself had so much important work to do, but he knew what it was like to wander on his own, searching for truth. There was much satisfaction in speeding others on their journey.

  When the room emptied, he joined Bechtol for a stroll through the compound. They passed a lake that reflected the few shafts of sunlight piercing the tree cover.

  The chilly wind began to creep into his bones as he followed Bechtol along the path. Gideon started for a small cabin on the other side of the armory, and Bechtol redirected him.

  “This way,” Bechtol said, his dark eyes shifting away from Gideon’s gaze.

  “Why?” Gideon asked, stopping in the middle of the path. He pulled his arm out of Bechtol’s grip and started for the cabin again.

  Bechtol hurried after him. “I have a . . . um . . . a guest.”

  As Gideon neared, he could hear a woman sobbing. He stopped outside the door. “Tell me.”

  “She’s going to be my wife when she’s properly broken.” Bechtol made no apologies for what he’d done.

  “You kidnapped her?”

  “Yes.”

  “You already have two wives,” Gideon pointed out, though he and Bechtol were merely colleagues, and neither claimed the right to pass judgment on the other man’s actions.

  “I desired another one.”

  A face appeared at the window. Straight black hair, sloe-eyed face, olive skin. Gideon covered his surprise by swiping his hair out of his eyes, then decided to say nothing.

  THE SCENT OF SOMETHING SWEET DRIFTED INTO the room. Elena hadn’t thought she would sleep a wink, but her exhaustion and the bed’s comfort sucked her into oblivion. Terri still slept beside her. Her blonde curls lay across the pillow, and her cherubic cheeks were flushed with color.

  Sunshine streamed past the curtains. She didn’t want to move, didn’t want to try to think. Her fingers touched the knot on her head, and she winced. Even the light touch of her fingers caused pain. She was afraid to look at it.

  Her name was Elena . . . Elena what? Surely she could remember the full name this morning. No pictures rose to the surface of the fog that shrouded her memories. Nothing about the home she lived in, the yard, her parents, siblings. Her gaze touched the sleeping child. No memories of Terri’s birth came. No snippets of past events like a first tooth or the day she crawled or walked. Nothing.

  Just an empty blankness. And fear. Terror leaped out of the shadows of her mind, and she bolted upright. Throwing back the bedding, she swung her legs out of bed and stumbled to her feet. She had to get away. Stepping to the window, she looked out on a town worthy of Currier and Ives. An idyllic small town with Victorian storefronts, the blue of a lake on one side, and green forest on the other.

  Her fear began to swirl away as she drank in the peaceful scene. Surely she was safe here. While she had no real idea of where she was, the place seemed remote. Later she would ask Bree to show her the location on a map. The car was gone, sunken in the lake. No one knew where she was.

  Elena turned away from the perfect view and found Terri’s backpack. No phone with information. But even if she’d found it, she would have been afraid to call anyone. What could she say?

  Hello, this is Elena. Who are you, and how do you know me? What’s my last name? Where do I live?

  She sighed and glanced around for her clothes. Gathe
ring them up, she went to the bathroom. It was charming, with a claw-foot tub encircled by a shower curtain that hung from the ceiling. She turned on the water and let it warm. Once she was showered and dressed, she’d figure out what to do.

  A movement to her left caught her eye, and she flinched. A woman she’d never seen stared back at her. She realized it was her own image in the mirror. Long blonde hair, haunted blue eyes, a bruise that covered nearly her entire forehead, and a lump the size of a boulder on her temple. Scrawny too. Her breastbone stuck out of her skin, but her arms and legs were muscular.

  She stepped closer and peered in the mirror. Running her fingers over the planes and angles of her face, she willed herself to remember. Anything, even a single memory would have reassured her. But there was nothing.

  She dropped her hand and went to the tub. Stepping into the flow of water, she flinched when the hot water touched the raw cuts on her head and face. The water at her feet turned pink from the blood in her hair. She had a feeling she was lucky to be alive.

  Someone had tried to kill her. She didn’t know how she knew, but she recognized the seriousness of the attack.

  She scrubbed herself all over, watching the red and brown swirl together down the drain. When she washed her feet, she noticed they were calloused and ugly. The nails were devoid of polish. She was obviously no princess. Her fingers touched the necklace around her neck.

  Ballet slippers. Could that be why her feet were in such rough shape? Maybe she was a dancer. Standing in the shower, she flexed onto the balls of her feet. It felt good to stretch, to use the strong muscles in her legs. Maybe it was a clue.

  Fifteen minutes later, she went in search of the heavenly smell wafting up the steps. Maybe food would help revive her memory. Terri was still sleeping, so she followed the sound of voices.

  Kade’s voice was loudest. “Did you find out anything about our guest?”

  “Not really,” Bree answered. “She’s really scared though, Kade. I wonder if her husband abused her.”