CHAPTER
37
THE WASHCLOTH FELT good, warm, but not too wet. Like the tongue of a big dog lapping at her cheek. Then her ear.
Caitlin hadn’t had a pet since high school, and even then it wasn’t hers. She and her dad had watched a golden Lab for a month. Another pity case. Someone on the force had been shot and the dog needed to be walked and fed. Matthew Bergman never turned down a misfit in need of a home.
She turned her head to the side, and another warm lash scrubbed her cheek.
Of course, once she’d become a journalist, she hadn’t had the time to care for an animal. Not even a cat. She barely remembered to feed herself.
Still, nothing beat the feeling of unconditional love. She opened her eyes, expecting a giant tongue and a case of puppy breath. Instead she saw a gun.
“Hold on,” she said, trying to focus.
A scared young brunette in a gray T-shirt and jeans, maybe in her teens, backed away from Caitlin with a washcloth in one hand and a pistol in the other.
Same brown wood paneling on the walls, probably the same girl she’d seen earlier.
Caitlin sat up. “Where am I?”
Right, she’d vomited and a girl had been there to save her from choking.
“Don’t move,” the teen said, her hand shaking slightly under the weight of the gun.
“Where?” Caitlin squinted against the light streaming in from the corner of a window covered with flattened cardboard boxes.
“You’re safe.” The girl dropped the washcloth and reached behind her for a doorknob. “I thought you were dead.”
Caitlin shook her head and noticed her senses fighting to keep up. “They drugged me and I puked.”
The girl turned the knob, and the door opened an inch. “I didn’t know how much to give you.”
Caitlin pushed off the mattress with one hand. “You drugged me?”
Standing would be hard, but she was able to get one foot on the ground, the other knee on the mattress.
“Sorry,” the girl said, then stepped aside enough to slip out the door and lock it behind her.
“Wait.” Caitlin’s dream from before suddenly made sense. “Promise, I’m not going to hurt you. I’m not a Daughter of God.”
That brought no response other than footsteps on wooden flooring walking away.
Great, trapped behind another locked door.
First there’d been Johnny Larsen pounding on her hotel room door. Then there were the Dayans and their magnetic locks. Now a thirteen-year-old with a gun.
Dizzy or not, this shit was getting old.
Caitlin got to her feet—bare, she noticed—and stepped toward the door. The knob was nothing special, just a simple thumb-turn lock that someone had turned around. Fully sober, she’d have the strength to break out. She followed the doorjamb up and found a light switch, but no light appeared.
The window was next.
Caitlin shuffled to the corner of light and pulled on the cardboard duct-taped to the window frame. A rectangle folded up and revealed a sheet of plate glass divided into eight sections by wooden lattice. She let the rectangle fall back down, then struck the cardboard with her palm.
The first section of glass tinkled out of the frame, and fresh air found its way into the room.
“Hey,” the girl yelled from the other side of the door. “What are you doing?”
Caitlin moved her hand up a section and struck a second time. Again, the sound of broken glass meant success. She bent down and peeled the cardboard up. Wherever she was, it wasn’t God’s Hill. Bright sunshine showed over a grassy lawn that looked crisp and weeks past cutting. Either way, two or three more panels and she’d be able to crawl out.
She pulled back to strike again, but the doorknob rattled behind her.
“Stop it,” Promise said through the door. “Don’t you know we’re hiding?”
“You might be hiding. I’m locked in a freaking closet.” Caitlin turned, expecting the barrel of a gun.
Instead, the girl let the door open all the way. “Fine, come out or whatever. Just be quiet.”
Caitlin followed her out into what looked like a storeroom. Trinkets, bottles of lotion, and stacks of homemade clothing lined shelves. An open doorway revealed a single bathroom and a second door that looked like it led outside.
“Is this Daya’s Gifts?”
“No, that’s in Coos Bay.” Promise walked through the shelves and peered between two curtains before turning back to Caitlin. “There’s food on the counter. I’ve got to check the front.”
The girl disappeared through the curtains. Caitlin looked around, saw a half-eaten pack of peanut butter crackers on a counter, and stuffed one in her mouth.
“God, these are good,” she said, more crumbs than intelligible words.
Promise answered with a shush from the other room.
“Seriously,” Caitlin continued. “I’m gonna finish these. How is this happening? How did I get here?”
The curtains moved and Promise backed through, the gun in her hand once again.
“There’s a truck outside,” she whispered.
Caitlin moved toward her and matched her volume. “That’s okay, right? This is a store.”
Promise shook her head. “It’s been closed for a month. No one should be here.”
She crouched, her eyes still on the front of the shop. Caitlin followed her down to the floor, more sober every second. “But you have? Is this where you’ve been hiding? Who’s been helping you?”
“Back door,” Promise said, a command, not an answer.
Caitlin nodded and they backed up, eyes still toward the front, then Promise turned and tiptoed the other way. At the end of the first row of shelves, something tripped her and she sprawled out on the floor, the gun tumbling to her side.
Caitlin stepped closer but was caught by a hand on her shoulder. She spun fast and whipped her forehead forward.
Bone met bone and Caitlin saw stars.
“Butts,” she said, falling back onto her ass like a toddler. She squinted the pain away and looked up at a carnival mirror image.
A woman roughly her own size and shape sat gripping her forehead under a mess of long gray hair. She lowered her hands to reveal a pair of brown eyes that might as well have been taken out of Caitlin’s own skull.
“Didn’t anyone ever tell you that head butts hurt, Caitlin?”
Caitlin wiped her own forehead, aware of a warm rush of blood staining her fingertips.
“Mama Maya?”
CHAPTER
38
MAMA MAYA ARONSON, rocking full-on Linda Hamilton–in–Terminator 2 arms, left Caitlin sitting in place and went over to check on Promise.
“I’m sorry I tripped you. I saw the broken glass and assumed the worst.”
Promise got to her feet and cast a sulky look Caitlin’s way. “She freaked out.”
Caitlin got up on her own, only slightly irritated that the woman seemed more concerned about Promise Larsen than for her own daughter. “You drugged me and locked me in a closet.”
“So my dad wouldn’t find us,” Promise answered, bending to retrieve the handgun and stuffing it into the waistband of her jeans.
“Girls, calm down. No harm done.”
Promise crossed her arms.
Caitlin caught herself mirroring the teenager’s pout. “Wait, what the living hell?”
She dropped her arms, reached up to wipe another streak of blood from her forehead, and tried to take in the moment. After all this time, her mother was alive and right in front of her. How many days had it been since she’d stood in the medical examiner’s office, ready to give the speech she’d been planning since her thirteenth birthday? Five, six? Here was Maya Aronson, Mama-freaking-Maya, very much not dead. Any part of Caitlin that had been buzzed now sizzled like a downed power line.
She held out her bloody hand and let her words run free. “Hi, by the way. I’m Caitlin Bergman, you know, the baby you abandoned forty years a
go. What’s your name? Maya? Magda? Sharon Sugar? I’ve only ever heard from you from a note in a bank vault. Nice invite, by the way, that key up a dead woman’s butthole? Classy. Made my bat mitzvah invites look like they were glued together by a lonely thirteen-year-old raised by a single cop.”
The words hung in the air, a challenge to be answered.
Mama Maya turned and walked down the row of shelving. “We don’t have time for this.”
“We don’t?” Caitlin followed hot on her heels. “I thought you were freaking dead. Like, isn’t that the reason I’m here in the first place, because the mother I never had dropped dead? Don’t the dead have eternity?”
Maya turned quickly enough that Caitlin flinched and brought her hands up in defense. The woman only held up a scarf, then used it to dab the blood on Caitlin’s forehead. “I go by Magda now.”
Inches from her mother, Caitlin stared at the deep lines cut in the woman’s tan face and saw more of herself than the twenty-year-old porn star she’d imagined for years. She reached up and met Magda’s hand, taking possession of the scarf. The anger she still wanted to unleash suddenly checked itself. Beyond the physical appearance, something else messed with her senses: a smell, primal and familiar. She tried to place it but only came up with her own apartment.
As if she sensed the moment of détente, Magda turned and tossed a key ring to Promise. “I was followed but lost them at Bullards Beach. Get the rifle while I move the truck.”
Promise caught the key with ease. “Is it him?”
Magda moved around Caitlin and headed for the front room. “One of the others, but you can bet he’ll be here soon.”
Caitlin had gone from inconvenient to invisible. “Hold on,” she said, seconds behind the action.
Promise opened the back door and ran outside, her heels digging hard into a crushed-stone driveway. Caitlin followed Magda in the opposite direction into the main room, where a bright-green pickup truck sat visible through the front window.
“That’s my rental car,” she said. “What is happening right now?”
“I checked you out of your hotel.” Magda held out a key fob. “Pull the truck around. We’ve got to leave.”
CHAPTER
39
JOHNNY HAMMERED ON his truck’s horn, then tore onto the right shoulder to pass some slow asshole.
The speed limit was fifty-five.
He pushed eighty.
He had fifteen minutes to make up.
Tom’s cousin had walked them up to the room, only to find a housekeeping cart in the doorway. Johnny’d sent Tom to the parking lot while he and the cousin checked out the computer. It took another ten minutes for the cousin to convince security to rewind the external cameras and see the green truck turn left out of the main entrance.
On Johnny’s command, Stupid Tom tore ass in that direction, leaving Johnny to sprint through the casino to his own truck to play catch-up.
In classic Stupid Tom fashion, he’d found the truck a mile south of the casino only to lose her when she looped through an RV campground. Instead of using his brain, he’d spent another ten minutes checking the parking lots down by the lighthouse.
Johnny didn’t need to search the park to know where to look. The Dayans had a gift shop in Bandon.
He sent Tom in the right direction and hauled ass to catch up.
By the time he rolled into town, he was five minutes behind Tom, and Tom was pulling into the shop’s parking lot. If the women were there, they were in for some trouble. If not, Johnny’d put the word out. The Proud Sons didn’t have many core members yet, but they had like-minded friends in the county who would look out for that green truck.
CHAPTER
40
SAFE AT A stoplight three miles away, Caitlin checked the rearview again, then reached down to squeeze her right heel into her canvas tennis shoe. Promise held the left in the back seat, next to Caitlin’s open suitcase. Magda, assault rifle in her lap in the passenger seat, looked side to side.
“Run the light.”
Caitlin laughed. The events of the last fifteen minutes had driven any drug-induced sluggishness from her system. “Sure, let’s attract attention. Between the firearms, the teen runaway, and the dead woman, a traffic stop will make everything better.” She looked back at Promise. “Gimme that one.”
The girl complied, and Caitlin leaned over to put her other shoe on.
“Green light,” Magda said.
“Yeah, yeah.”
“Caitlin, we need—”
“Don’t.” Caitlin sat up, hit the gas, and drove through the light. “You didn’t teach me how to drive, you don’t get to tell me how now. Where’s my phone?”
Promise held up Caitlin’s iPhone. “It’s dead.”
“Then we charge it. Give me my bag.”
Promise sent Caitlin’s laptop bag forward. Magda intercepted the satchel. “I’ll do it. Take the next right.”
To Caitlin’s surprise, Magda connected the correct cable to the truck’s console. “No calls.”
“Bullshit.”
She grabbed the phone and unlocked the screen. The truck’s console connected via Bluetooth immediately, and a series of chimes came through the speakers.
Magda sat back with the shock of a caveman who’d just seen a time traveler appear in the middle of the hunt. “What’s happening?”
Apparently, the charging cable was the extent of her technical knowledge.
Promise reached out and touched Magda’s shoulder. “Voice mails and text messages. People have been trying to reach her.”
“I thought you told them she was okay.”
Lost in the list of missed calls popping up on the screen, Caitlin looked back at Promise. “Wait, what did you do?”
“Your face,” Promise said. “I tried to get into your phone for a while but couldn’t get past the pass code. Then I remembered some phones had facial—”
Caitlin swore to herself. Usually she turned off the facial recognition when on assignments in case her phone fell into the wrong hands, but that need hadn’t even occurred to her here. “And you held it in front of my doped-up face. Gross. Then what did you do?”
“I couldn’t get into your email—”
“You’re damned right.” Rather than relying on the standard app, Caitlin used an encrypted program that required a separate password independent of the phone’s standard features.
“—but I was able to send texts, so I sent a few simple messages.”
Caitlin pulled the truck onto the shoulder.
“We can’t stop here,” Magda said.
“Just did, dead woman.” Caitlin looked through her text threads.
Promise had sent five text messages, one to each of the most recently active threads. They all read the same thing: Okay, back in town.
The girl leaned between the front seats. “You don’t seem to have many friends.”
“I’ve got friends, little girl. We’re just too cool for text messages.”
“Please,” Magda interrupted. “We have to get going. There’s only a few ways to get where we’re going, and this truck sticks out.”
“I’m sorry,” Caitlin replied. “Maybe we should rent something more appropriate. Big red limousine, maybe?”
“Drive.”
“Fine.” Caitlin pulled back into traffic. “Where are we going, anyway?”
Magda pointed toward the right. “Back to God’s Hill.”
Promise’s outrage beat Caitlin to the outburst. “What? We can’t.”
“We have to find the Five.”
Caitlin laughed. “No way. I’m driving us straight to Sheriff Martin.”
Magda started to reply, but again Promise’s teenage terror won the race to respond. “He’ll make me go back.”
“Your dad’s a dick,” Caitlin said. “I get it, but Martin will take care of you.”
“Why? He didn’t last time.”
“There’s no time for debate,” Magda said. “If we don’t find
the Five, the Daughters will live in falsehood.”
“What does that even mean?”
Magda ignored the question. “Turn left at the next intersection.”
Caitlin reached a T in the road and, according to a sign, turned left toward Coquille. “What does ‘live in falsehood’ mean?”
Magda shook her head. “To live in falsehood is to follow a false path. To follow a false path means they’ll miss the signs. Those that miss the signs cannot recognize the Cataclysm.”
Caitlin sighed. Whether it was still the effects of whatever they’d drugged her with or just overall confusion, she had no idea what to do.
“Who’s my father?”
Magda slapped the dashboard. “Did you hear what I just said?”
“Yes, you complete fucking stranger. What’s it have to do with me?”
“They’ll all die without the Light. Fifty Daughters will die, lost and wandering, because of Daya. Because of the Five.”
Caitlin’s hands tightened around the steering wheel. Out of all the ways she’d imagined meeting this woman, none of them had included an absurd rant about a phony religion. The same words she’d said on her thirteenth birthday came back to mind. “They can die alone for all I care.”
Magda sat back, her eyes sending fire Caitlin’s way. “I can’t believe Matthew Bergman raised a daughter to say words like that.”
“Maybe it’s genetic and I got it from the mother who abandoned me, or whatever random casting-couch sperm donor happened to knock her up.”
Magda’s anger dropped down a notch. “I don’t know what I expected when I wrote that letter—”
Caitlin laughed. “And shoved a key inside a dead woman—”
“—but I see now that—”
“—and cut off her fingers—”
“—I’ve asked too much—”
“—and the teeth. You knocked the teeth out of a woman’s skull—”
Magda yelled. “Yes, yes I did. I had to. There was no one else. Daya was going to sell this girl.”
“To Johnny Larsen? Her father?”
Sins of the Mother Page 18