by Nancy Bush
Closing her eyes, Tasha remembered all the times she’d tried to escape herself, and all the punishments she’d endured for her attempts. Oh, how she hated Catherine. How she hated all of them!
Cade left and was gone for several hours and finally, in the late afternoon, she heard the rumble of a vehicle that proved to be a black Jeep Wrangler with flaps for windows and doors.
“Come on,” Cade said hurriedly. “We gotta get outta here before somebody notices.”
“Whose is this?”
“A guy I know.” He tried to toss it off.
“You stole it?”
“Get in.”
The vehicle was old and had been hard used, and the seat Tasha sat on was split down the center. She suffered another several contractions; every time she moved too sharply or felt too much anxiety, her whole body clenched. This baby was going to come. She had to get somewhere safe, and soon.
Rita cruised through the Foothillers’ community in Delores’s rusted Chevy, keeping a sharp eye on Cade’s place. There wasn’t much happening there, but then Cade was a night owl. A thief with thieves’ hours. He was handsome enough, though. If she’d been in the mood she might have tried to seduce him. He wasn’t as sexually attractive as Rafe, but then who was? Not Paolo Avanti, for certain, but he, at least, was a doctor. Somebody smart, which really couldn’t be said about Cade.
She waited outside his house but a couple of blocks north, near the field, hoping he didn’t recognize her parked car if he came out the door. She’d pulled in behind the Blackburns’ RV, angled slightly so she had a line of sight to Cade’s place without being too conspicuous. If he looked her way he wouldn’t see more than a front fender of her car.
So he surprised her when he suddenly drove up in a dilapidated Wrangler. Roberto’s car, by the look of it, she realized. She hadn’t seen Cade sneak out the back, which he must have done, because there he was, big as life.
And then the bastard was bringing Tasha out the front door!
Her hand clung to his arm like the piece-of-shit damsel in distress she pretended to be. Out of the corner of her eye, Rita caught the twitch of curtain from the Blackburns’ front window. Damn the old busybody, Portia. She and her husband Cliff were nosy-nosy. They’d stared through a telescope across the field from their big house to her aunt’s smaller place, spying on Angela and her two sons, gleefully making up stories about what they saw. They’d even gone as far as labeling her a witch and a whore, convincing the dumb-ass Foothillers that Angela was somehow involved with Tasha’s people! That she possessed special, evil powers because of it!
All lies, but it didn’t matter. The lies had been believed by many.
Rita hated the Blackburns almost as much as she hated Tasha. Their nasty, flapping tongues had sealed Angela’s fate and she’d been killed as a result, the field torched behind her place.
Now Rita sank down in the seat and willed herself to be invisible.
Cade and Tasha climbed into the Wrangler and Cade tried to back it out and it just stopped, the engine whining and whining. Rita watched curiously as Cade got out and opened the hood. He pretended to look under it but instead just waited a minute or two. Then he returned to Tasha’s side of the vehicle, shaking his head.
What’s he doing? Rita wondered.
He opened the passenger door and helped Tasha back out, though she clearly didn’t want to come. She wanted to stay in the car, wanted to leave. There was something of an argument. Then hurrying, surreptitiously looking around, Cade urged her back up the front steps and into the house.
Shenanigans, Rita thought, trying to make sense of it. She knew Roberto, knew how he valued and loved his cars. Cade had either borrowed or stolen Roberto’s Wrangler, and Rita would bet there was nothing wrong with it.
Cade’s reasons escaped her but she didn’t care. As long as he kept Tasha at his home, that’s all that mattered.
She checked once again to make certain her knife was in the side pocket of the car, an obsessive search of her fingers that she performed without thinking.
Tonight, she would need to have it near.
She glanced back up at the Blackburns’ house, but the curtain was still.
Claire felt as if she’d stepped back in time to another century. The lodge was all wood, rough-hewn and hand-carved, she suspected. The furniture was the same and the oak table was a slab of wood, the breadth of which made her lips part.
But it wasn’t the lodge that amazed her the most. It was the women. All of them with blond or light brown hair, blue or green or hazel eyes, printed floor-length dresses, black walking shoes like Tasha’s, serious expressions, silence as their universal greeting. One was in a wheelchair, but she looked exactly the same as the rest.
Everyone looked like Tasha.
Only Isadora spoke. “My sisters,” she said.
Catherine stood to one side and up close Claire could see she, too, was older than she’d first thought. Somewhere in her midsixties, she thought, though her face was remarkably unlined. She wondered if any of them ever went out in the sun.
The resemblance among them was deep. Once Claire had gone with a friend to a dog breeder’s home where the breeder had raised pugs. When Claire walked by their pens, she was slightly unnerved by all those look-alike black faces silently following her every move, the way their heads turned in unison as she passed. These women were like that, their eyes watching her every move. She had the same eerie feeling now.
Catherine said, “We didn’t know that Rafe was dead.”
The one in the wheelchair asked, “Did Natasha kill him?”
Claire stared at her and she seemed to realize she’d said something wrong, for she pushed herself to Catherine’s side for protection. Claire sensed that her mental development might not be as advanced as expected for someone her age.
“Lillibeth,” Catherine said, by way of introduction.
“Is Natasha sometimes called Tasha?” Claire asked.
One of the youngest ones piped up. “That’s what she calls herself.”
“Ophelia,” Catherine snapped, and Ophelia’s lips tightened for a moment but she dropped her gaze.
“Why don’t you come in and sit down,” Catherine said to Claire, motioning for the other women to move aside. They scattered from the room by some prearranged command, Claire guessed.
Claire took a seat at the long end of the table and Catherine sat at the head. “I went to see the sheriff this morning,” she said. “He told me about Rafe. We didn’t know.”
Claire nodded, waiting. She knew, from long practice as a therapist, that Catherine was trying to decide just how much to tell. Sometimes it was best to just stay quiet.
“I had no intention of discussing Natasha with him,” she said, her lips tight. “But like Ophelia said, she likes to call herself Tasha.”
“She is from here. Why have you been so reluctant to claim her?” Claire asked when Catherine didn’t continue.
“She doesn’t want to be a part of us.”
“You know she’s pregnant.”
“She didn’t try to hide it,” Catherine stated flatly.
“You knew Rafe was the father?”
“There really could be no one else. We don’t allow many men inside the gates, as a rule.”
“Any longer,” Claire said. When Catherine stared at her questioningly, she said, “The women—the sisters—each have a father or fathers. I’m assuming that at some point he or they had access to your lodge.”
“Whom have you been talking to?” she demanded.
Claire had a feeling she was about to be thrown out. “I don’t mean to pry and make you uncomfortable. The reason I’m here is that I’m interested in Tasha’s welfare, and her baby’s. She’s missing from the hospital.”
“The sheriff mentioned that,” she said carefully. “She walked out?”
“She couldn’t have.” Claire explained the locked doors. “Someone may have helped her. Someone she knew?”
“If you’r
e thinking it’s one of us, you’re wrong. I’m the only one in the house who drives our car, and that’s very rarely. From what you’ve said, it’s someone who works there. Someone with a key. Unless Natasha stole it.”
She said it so matter-of-factly that Claire sensed something similar might have happened before. “You think that’s possible? That she would steal it?”
“You don’t know Natasha, Doctor.”
“Then tell me about her. Let me help her. We need to find her.”
Catherine seemed to struggle with herself, finally saying, “I’m worried about the coming child.”
“We all are. That’s why we need to find Tasha.”
“She won’t be able to take care of it. She has…an affliction she cannot control.”
“What do you mean?”
Catherine hesitated, then said, “She has spells. She retreats to another world and is uninvolved in this one.”
“Catatonic states,” Claire said. “She’s had them before?”
“Put any name you like to them.”
“Has she seen a doctor about them?”
“When she was young, we asked the shaman to drive the evil spirits away. He was unable to help. And then we had the doctor who tended to Lillibeth. He gave Natasha medicine, but it made no difference. She is what she is.”
“What doctor?”
“He passed away some time ago.”
Claire flashed on Herm Smythe’s recital. “Dr. Loman?”
Catherine met Claire’s gaze with cool suspicion, but admitted, “Yes.”
“Who took his place?”
“No one.”
“None of them have had any medical attention since Dr. Loman’s death?” Horrified, Claire looked around the room, taking in its rustic appointments. “Catherine, that’s not safe.”
“The only way we stay safe is to live the way we do.”
Claire wasn’t sure she agreed with that, but there was no way she was going to convince Catherine otherwise. “What happened to Lillibeth? What was the accident?”
Catherine got up abruptly from her chair. “You came here about Natasha, not Lillibeth. Not any of the rest of us. I will help you as much as I can concerning Natasha and her baby.”
Claire heard the ringing finality in her voice and saw that she was being asked to leave. Reluctantly, she, too, got to her feet. “Do you think she will come back here?” Claire asked.
Catherine’s smile was ironic. “If you find her, please contact me. I would like to know the baby is well. But as for Natasha…we would be the last place she would return.”
Lang drove into Deception Bay and, as if by magnetic force, ended up at the historical society, a freshly painted white building that had once been a church and still had the steeple to prove it.
Inside it was one big reception room, but instead of pews there were glass cases with artifacts and curiosities from the last several centuries. A middle-aged woman with narrow glasses perched on the end of her nose smiled in welcome. “May I help you?” she asked.
Lang was still feeling like a stranger in his own skin. He could hardly reckon the man he’d become—the one who felt anxious, protective and possessive of Claire Norris—to the man he’d been a scant six months earlier.
“I’m looking for a book on the Colony,” he said. “The women who live at the lodge called Siren Song. I understand you have something here. A history?”
“An undocumented history,” she said, eyeing him curiously. “Left by the estate of a local doctor who attended to the women at the lodge before his death.”
Lang nodded. “But written by someone else.”
“Yes…”
She seemed reluctant to show him the book and Lang was about to ask her why when she mentally shrugged and took him to a bookcase where it was tucked between two thicker, hardcover volumes. The account itself looked like an unfinished manuscript with a laminated cardboard cover that had clearly been added later to keep the pages from shredding.
“Do you have a particular interest?” she asked.
“Mostly I’m just passing time.”
“There’s a general interest in the women who live at the lodge. A lot of people describe them as a cult. You don’t seem to fit the image.”
She drifted away and Lang thumbed through the account of the Colony, skimming. Mostly it concerned the relationships of the ancestors of Catherine Rutledge and her sister, Mary Rutledge Beeman, and the suspected intermingling with the local Indians regardless of whom they were married to, especially one very talented shaman. There was mention of dark gifts present in the female offspring.
Dark gifts, huh. Lang wondered what the hell that meant. After about twenty minutes he put the account back in the bookcase, thanked the woman for her help, then left the building. Shocking though it might be to Catherine, Lang thought it a fairly tame account. Mary Rutledge had married a man named Richard Beeman and given birth to several children, unnamed, their sex undocumented. That was where the account ended.
It wasn’t of as much interest as he’d hoped. He’d learned more immediate information from Dinah.
He was heading back to Siren Song, watching the clock, when he caught sight of the sign for the Drift In Market. Turning the wheel sharply, he found a parking spot right in front, then strode up a wooden ramp to a sliding door on rails.
The Drift In Market was cramped, with tall shelves and narrow aisles set on a beat-up wood floor. The one checkout line was attended by a very large woman who wasn’t going to win a record for speed. Several people were waiting patiently to be helped.
Lang walked past them and through the store. A man in his thirties wearing a dark blue apron with the store’s name and logo in white—a piece of driftwood underscoring the market’s name—was cleaning up some spilled grain from one of the plastic bins where you could scoop it yourself, if you were so inclined.
“You work here long?” Lang asked.
“A while.”
“Do you know the woman from the lodge, Siren Song, who used to work here?”
“Uh. No. Heard about her.”
“Did she work here long?”
“You could ask Julie, at the register. She’s been here a long time.”
He believed it. “Thanks.”
He picked up two bottles of wine, one red, one white, thought about adding some beer to the mix and then changed his mind. Then he got in line behind the others at the checkout, waiting somewhat impatiently for his turn.
Finally Julie picked up his first bottle of wine and Lang casually asked her about the woman from Siren Song who had worked there. “She was here for a while,” she said. “Nothing remarkable. She wasn’t weird or anything.”
“I didn’t think they ever left the lodge,” Lang said.
“I asked her about it once. The owner had to tell her to get some different clothes ’cause she looked pretty old-time, y’know? She said she wasn’t forced to stay. It was up to her.”
“Are we talking about the same group? I didn’t get that impression.”
“I know, right? But that’s what she said. Is that all?” she asked, as she’d rung up the wine.
“Yeah.” Lang reached in his wallet for payment. “Do you remember her name?”
“Laura. You a cop, or something?”
“Or something.” He smiled and left.
Back in the truck, he checked his watch and headed back to the lodge in a hurry.
Dark gifts.
“The Wrangler’s beyond broken. Can’t get ’er going,” Cade said regretfully, tossing the keys on the kitchen counter. “You gotta stay here.”
“I have to leave.” Tasha was serious.
“No, now, you gotta take care of yourself. Rafe would want me to keep you and his baby safe. You look like you’re gonna pop.”
Tasha gazed at him squarely. Where was the man who’d been so eager earlier to help her? The one who had warned her about Rita being near? “Are you lying to me about the car?”
“No! Hell,
no.” He ran a hand through his hair, then said, “But I’ve been thinking. You’re gonna have that baby, and you can’t be in a car when you do it.”
“Let me decide what I need to do,” she told him, angry and scared. “She’ll find me if I stay here.”
“I’ll keep you safe.”
As she watched, he pulled a handgun out of a drawer. She’d never seen one before. Knew what they were from books. “Is it loaded?” she asked.
“Well, yeah. I don’t wanna kill Rita if I don’t have to. But I will. You bet I will. She killed my cousin and she attacked you. We’ll stay right here and wait for her. That’s what we’ll do.”
Tasha wondered. Her instinct was to flee, run away, get as far from everything as she could. Freedom. She ached for it.
But Rita would come and find her wherever she went. Rita wanted Rafe’s baby and she would do anything to have it. Confronting Rita, finishing this between them, maybe that was a better plan.
Cade was now looking at her that same way Rafe had, with starry-eyed love and adoration. He wanted to protect her. Thought he could. And was risking her window of escape with his own needs and overprotectiveness.
Tonight Rita would come. And Cade would shoot her dead.
Then Tasha would leave. Away from the sisterhood. Away from the hospital.
Away…
Chapter 20
Claire was escorted to the gate by Isadora, feeling like she knew almost less about the Colony than she had before. Lang’s truck was slotted next to her car and she suddenly felt weak in the knees from emotion. She wanted to throw herself into his arms and damn the consequences.
Pulling herself back to the present, she said to Isadora, “I’m worried about Natasha. She could have her baby at any time, and someone did attack her and kill her companion, Rafe Worster.”
“Catherine doesn’t want us to talk about her,” was her response, but Claire saw some unidentified emotion flit across the other woman’s face.
“Don’t you want her and the baby safe?”
“We’re all extremely worried, too,” she said with feeling.
“Why wouldn’t she come back here to her home? Catherine said she wouldn’t.”