by Lisa Jackson
Not a great start for that new beginning she was hoping to find.
Traffic was practically nonexistent as she pulled from under the awning and into the side street. The fog was thinning a bit, and she caught a glimpse of Jade sitting behind the wheel of her parked Civic as they passed the open gates of the area where the cars that were finished were kept. Sarah waved, but Jade, concentrating on her cell phone, didn’t bother looking up.
Some things never change, she thought, starting the drive home. There was still a party to attend tonight, she thought, and inwardly groaned. She had no costume, and unless she wanted to rustle through some of her mother’s, and probably grandmother’s old trunks in the attic to come up with something, she’d have to attend without so much as a mask.
Which was just fine. As she understood it, costumes were “optional,” though it was obvious that Dee Linn was hoping everyone would dress up.
Too bad, she thought, driving past the animal shelter where they’d adopted Xena, then turning up the hill. She’d attend Dee’s party, fine, even put up with the insufferable Walter and their friends, along with the rest of the family, but she’d go as herself, the harried, single mother.
And you’ll see Clint there.
Perfect, she thought, and held back a long-suffering sigh.
Clint’s jaw grew rock-hard as he flipped on the local news. The reporter, a thin woman with a wide smile and impossibly white teeth, was standing on a tree-lined street he recognized and pointing out that there weren’t many streetlights in that particular area of town.
“. . . though the police aren’t confirming, we believe this is the most likely spot where Candice Fowler was abducted.”
He listened to the rest of the newscast and the serious discussion between the reporter and anchor on a split screen, in which the reporter hesitated before answering the slick-haired anchor’s questions because of a delay in the audio feed. What Clint learned chilled him to the bone. Another girl missing, possibly taken. Worse yet, the anchor mentioned that there were “unconfirmed” reports of two other girls who hadn’t come home, though the police and FBI weren’t commenting.
He stared at the screen.
What the hell was going on in his sleepy little town?
He thought of Jade, his newfound daughter, and Gracie, the younger one. Were they safe? Probably not. Even Sarah. No one was secure when a freak was loose. He picked up the phone to call Sarah, then thought better of it and decided to visit her face-to-face. Maybe he was overreacting, but he’d rather err on the side of caution in this case.
Tex whined to go outside, so Clint walked through the back door to the porch and, leaning against a post supporting the overhang, peered through the fog in the direction of Blue Peacock Manor as the dog hurried down the steps.
From this vantage point on a clear day in winter, he could look across the sprawling acres of his property, to the forest separating his land from the Stewarts’. After the leaves fell and left the branches bare, he could glimpse the old house with its widow’s walk and cupola.
Today, the air was thick and soupy, the low clouds obscuring any visibility. He’d always liked the change of seasons, the different weather patterns that were a part of the gorge, but he was rapidly changing his opinion. He felt a need to see Sarah’s house, to catch a peek at a window burning in the night, to know that she and the girls were safe.
Besides that, he rationalized, it was his right.
All the way home, Sarah’s thoughts were jumbled. While Gracie was content to play whatever game had caught her fascination on her iPhone, Sarah drove and considered the fact that the new life she’d envisioned, her fresh start in Stewart’s Crossing, was a complete and utter disaster.
Little more than a week ago, she was worried about renovating the old house, about relocating away from Evan and Tolliver Construction, and about settling her girls into a new life here in Stewart’s Crossing.
Now, those considerations seemed small. She had Clint to deal with, a man whom she still found attractive, a man she also wanted to keep at arm’s length, one who’d lost his son and now realized he had a teenaged daughter. Complicated.
And that wasn’t the end of it. Sarah had to somehow deal with the recent soul-jarring discoveries about her family. What she’d thought was her heritage, her beliefs about her ancestral line, had turned out to be false, with possible incest and murder, and maybe suicide, in the mix. This was her family’s legacy, if Helen’s journal could be believed.
Then there was the fact that her own birth had been deliberately omitted from the family Bible’s genealogical records. All her brothers and sisters were listed, so why did the notations stop at her name? Just one more entry? Surely her mother hadn’t been that busy. She understood why Roger and Theresa hadn’t been listed; they hadn’t been Stewarts by blood. Their father was Hugh Anderson. But worse than all of her other worries was the fact that there was a predator on the prowl in Stewart’s Crossing. Two girls were confirmed missing, two more feared abducted, and her older half brother was, at the least, a person of interest and, at the most, the primary suspect.
Roger . . . fathered by Hugh Anderson.
She glanced in her rearview mirror and wished she had insisted Jade come straight home. Maybe she was overreacting about the missing girls and being overprotective—well, tough. Despite Hal’s unsolicited advice, Sarah had to be the best mother she could be, and if she and Jade ended up on separate psychiatrists’ couches one day because of it, so be it.
But she would take her worries down a notch or two. The kid did need her own life. She took the corner into the lane a little too fast and hit the brakes, slowing a little, driving through the mist-shrouded trees and telling herself that things would get better.
They had to.
Got my car back, Jade typed into her phone. I can come to Vanc. Meet at your place? She sent the text to Cody and wondered how she’d convince her mother to let her leave. Sarah would have a fit if she thought Jade was going to stay at Cody’s apartment, so she had to text some of her other friends in Vancouver to see if she could use them as cover.
It’s not like she was going to spend the whole night at Cody’s, though that would be cool, but if her mother ever got wind of it, she’d be dead meat, so she needed Brittany to work it out with her mom, who was single too, but whom Sarah had met a couple of times.
She nosed her Honda onto the street and liked the feel of the steering wheel in her hands, and the return of the familiar sense of freedom. She couldn’t go back to Blue Peacock Manor, that dreary monstrosity of a house. Not quite yet. In fact, she refused to think of the decrepit place as home. She’d drive around a while, then stop by that diner off the freeway, grab some french fries and a Diet Coke, wait there until she heard from Cody and Brittany, figure out exactly what her next move would be, then head up to the Psycho house.
Hopefully, Brittany would text her back quickly. Driving through the center of town, she looked for the road that ran parallel to I-84, but she kept driving in circles. For a small town, Stewart’s Crossing was kind of confusing. Hadn’t she driven by the feed store and The Cavern twice now? Crap. Still thinking about how she could get together with Cody, she found a map app on her phone and typed in the name of the diner. If it turned out she couldn’t stay with Brittany, there was always Plan B, which included sneaking out of the house and just taking off, but she’d rather go the more legit route.
She didn’t really want to go as far as sneaking out if she didn’t have to. And then there was the new wrinkle in the plan, her newfound father. She didn’t know what to think about him. He seemed okay, maybe even could be a little cool, but she didn’t like the idea of another parent butting into her life right now. As much as she’d wanted to know who her real father was, she didn’t need another adult laying down the law. Besides, she had a dad—Noel McAdams, the man who’d adopted her. Oh, crap. Was that even legal? Since Clint Walsh hadn’t known about her, hadn’t given up his parental rights? She’d
read about something like this online, about a celebrity kid whom the mom claimed was the daughter of one dude and it turned out that had been a lie. A big lawsuit had ensued.
Clint had tried to call her, though he hadn’t left a message, maybe showing he cared and giving her some space all at once. She hadn’t responded. Was still deciding what to do. It was all pretty hard to digest. And the fact that he was into Mom—Jade recognized the signs—that was weird. She supposed it was cool, in a way, but she just wasn’t sure. It was all more than she wanted to deal with.
With a voice from the map app guiding her, she was finally able to turn onto the road leading to the diner. She parked outside the long, low building and walked inside to take a corner booth. A waitress with overbleached hair took her order, then left her alone.
And that’s when she realized just how lonely she really was. In the brightly lit diner, with the lights gleaming off the harsh white walls and black-and-white tiled floor, she was all by herself in a booth that could easily hold four. There were a few other patrons—an old man in a brimmed hat, eating a piece of pie at the counter, and a woman doing a crossword puzzle while she sipped on a soda and ignored her half-eaten burger.
To top it all off, the music coming through the speakers mounted near the ceiling was some old Beatles tune that Cody loved. He liked everything from rap to country to old stuff from the sixties and seventies. “Eleanor Rigby” was one of his favorites.
The haunting lyrics about isolated people resonated with Jade, touched a deep, unhappy part of her soul. She had two fathers now, neither of whom knew her, an overprotective mother who thought she saw ghosts, a sister who was as weird as all get-out but whom she loved, and a boyfriend she felt was slipping away.
Get over yourself, she thought as the song went on. For the love of God, was this the long version? She didn’t need to be reminded that she was by herself.
As the waitress brought her drink, she took a sip and checked her phone. No response from either Brittany or Cody.
“Come on,” she said out loud, then shut up. She thought about texting Cody again, but didn’t want to be that girlfriend, the needy one begging for his attention.
But she was.
Gracie was right. She was obsessed with Cody, and he didn’t care for her. Kind of like Gracie’s damned ghosts, always just out of reach, real or not. Wasn’t that how Cody’s love for her was? Didn’t she know he was really into Sasha, the college girl who probably even had that damned Beatles song, which, thankfully, finally ended, its last note dragging out.
Her fries came, but she wasn’t really hungry and her excitement about getting her car back disintegrated as she stared at her phone and faced the heart-wrenching truth that Cody didn’t love her. Probably never had.
Disconsolate, she dragged a french fry through some ranch dressing and took a bite. She had two choices. Either she could run off to Vancouver to have things out with Cody, meanwhile trying to beg a friend to take her in so she could leave this stupid little town, or she could face the fact that her boyfriend was a jerk-face who didn’t care enough for her and make it official—break up with him and do what Mom wanted: make a new life for herself here with her oddball family, horrible school, and scary, old, supposedly haunted house.
There were some good things about staying. The girl whose locker was next to hers had been friendly, and that Sam dude in Algebra was really kind of funny, and then there was Liam Longstreet. Although his friend was a total dick, Liam was nice enough, had even offered to help her get a new phone, and he would be around at the house while the renovations were being completed. Except that he was going with Mary-Alice, who was a total nightmare.
Her phone buzzed, indicating a text had come in. She read it quickly, her heart doing a quick little kick at the thought that Cody was answering.
Of course she was disappointed.
Again.
It was Mom. Worried about her as usual.
Home soon? was the text.
She responded. Ya. On my way. That was a bit of a lie, but it bought her some time.
“Can I get you anything else?” the waitress asked. Her name tag read “Gloria,” and she seemed worried, for some reason, her eyebrows drawn together, her lips turned downward. Not exactly great for business, Jade thought.
“I’m fine,” she said, not meaning it.
“Well, thanks, then,” Gloria said, and paused as if she were about to add something, then offered an unconvincing smile and headed to the counter, where the man in the hat was starting to put on his jacket.
Jade took another long swallow of soda and looked outside, through the long bank of windows at the parking lot and farther out, to the traffic rushing along the interstate, headlights appearing out of the fog, taillights fading quickly.
Her own reflection was visible, pale and watery, like one of Gracie’s damned ghosts. She did look sad. Troubled. Even haunted.
God, this was ridiculous.
She wasn’t going to let anyone, including Cody Russell, make her feel miserable.
With a newfound insight, she decided no boy was worth all this misery.
She was done with him.
But she couldn’t break up with him in a text. The next time he called, she’d tell him.
And if he didn’t phone her?
His loss.
CHAPTER 33
“You have to calm down! Everyone!” Rosalie was shouting again, her voice raw from screaming over the yelling and crying and shrieking that was happening in the nearby stalls. “Shut up! Everyone!”
A break. They actually stopped making noise to listen.
“Look,” she said desperately, hands against the wall closest to her. “You have to all pull yourselves together. We don’t have a lot of time, and we need to find a way out of here!”
“How?” the girl in the next stall said.
“I’m not sure. But we have to figure it out!”
“Again, I said, ‘how?’ ” A little snobby-sounding. Who cared. “Who are you?”
“I’m Rosalie. The one he calls Star.”
“I knew it!” the girl next door said harshly. “Rosalie Jamison. I thought you were dead!”
“Is that what everyone thinks?” Rosalie asked, panicked. Had her mother given up on her? Candice, of course, started to wail again.
“Do they think I’m dead too?” Candice cried. “I’m Candice . . . Candice Fowler.”
“Not everyone,” Princess clarified. “It’s just that you’ve been gone for so long, it seemed likely. At least to me. I don’t know what they think about you, Candice.”
“I want to go home.” Candice was crying again.
“Oh, God! How do you stand that?” Princess said. “Can she please stop whining!”
Never, Rosalie thought, but yelled in the direction of Candice’s stall. “Cut that crying shit out. Candice, we don’t have a lot of time, so pull yourself together.”
The crying was reduced to an irritating sniveling, but at least Rosalie could hear herself think again. More important, she could communicate with the new girls. “Okay, now that we don’t have to yell. Who are you?” she asked, throwing the question out to both girls.
The two new girls started talking at once.
“Wait. Hold it. One at a time. You, Princess.”
“Don’t call me that! It’s demeaning,” she snapped, and Rosalie wondered if, because of her obviously superior attitude, for once the name was apt. “My name is Mary-Alice Eklund.” She paused, as if the name should mean something. When Rosalie didn’t respond, Mary-Alice—a little miffed, it seemed—explained that she attended the private, Catholic school in town, that her father was some big deal, and she was tricked into thinking she was meeting her boyfriend when she was taken. She sounded like she was holding herself together, but her words trembled a little. Rosalie could hear she was scared, just not falling apart like Candice. “There was this lady walking a little dog at the school where they attacked me. I hoped she would help, and maybe she
did. Maybe she called the police. But I can’t be sure. She was there one minute and gone the next. The same with the man in the bleachers. Oh, God, what if they were all part of the plot.”
Maybe, Rosalie thought. She knew there was someone in the background, someone pulling the strings.
“Maybe the woman will call the police. Maybe she got the license plate of the car,” Candice said. For once she was thinking beyond her own misery. God, was there hope for her?
Mary-Alice continued, “But my mom and dad, they’ll find me.”
Oh, yeah, how? Rosalie thought, but didn’t say it while the second girl, “Whiskey,” said that she was Dana Rickert, also a student at Our Lady of the River. Dana’s story was a little different; she’d been caught at a shopping mall and had thought it was a random abduction until she was driven to the school and Mary-Alice was captured.
“Did anyone see you being forced into the truck in the parking lot of the mall?” Rosalie said, hoping beyond hope.
“There were some people there,” she said, sniffling, as if fighting tears, “but no one close.”
“What about security cameras. At the school? They have them, and at the outlet stores?” Rosalie’s mind was spinning. There was an outside chance that someone had seen it happening, could ID the kidnappers, and would call the police.
“I think so,” Dana said.
Mary-Alice wasn’t so confident. “I know at least one of the cameras is broken. That why Liam and I meet there . . . or did.” A sadness tinged her voice, but Rosalie ignored it. At least both girls seemed to be willing to do something, and though she heard the terror in their voices, neither had fallen into the same emotional, self-pitying puddle as Candice had.
Rosalie grilled them, trying to think of questions that would help.
Neither girl could identify their abductors. Rosalie had had the most personal contact with the big guy, though Dana, who worked part-time at the local pharmacy, thought she’d seen each of the abductors at one time or another in the store, but she wasn’t sure and couldn’t name them.