by Nancy Bush
Lang stood under the shower for the second time that night. He’d driven home on automatic, thrown off his clothes, headed straight for the shower. The only reason he stopped was because he’d run out of hot water.
After dressing, he’d gotten back in his truck and headed to the nearest fast-food burger joint. He’d gone inside and eaten without tasting, then he’d returned to the house, watched ESPN until his eyes ached, then returned to the shower.
Now it was late and he was spent. He’d dozed and Melody had been with him. Half awake at times, he tried to imagine her goading Heyward Marsdon into slitting her throat, but the image was impossible to grasp.
But the influence of drugs…and Heyward’s mental illness…it was a powerful and deadly combination.
His thoughts drifted to Claire Norris. She was taut and reserved and a psychiatrist. Anathema. She also had flawless skin, large dark eyes with thick lashes, nice ass and legs and breasts.
She tried too hard. Seemed locked in some kind of need to preserve order at all costs. Even when chaos was all there was. Something from her childhood? Job? The result of witnessing a death and having a knife’s blade pressed into her neck enough to draw blood?
That last one would do anyone in.
But who the hell was she to blame Melody for her own murder?
Feeling exhausted, he headed to bed early, expecting to lie awake for hours but falling into his own comalike sleep, flat on his back.
Rita Feather Hawkings arrived at Halo Valley Security Hospital around ten P.M. and determined that the place was situated in a hellhole. In the middle of nowhere, about forty minutes from the coast, and sixty to Salem. There was nothing on this stretch of highway. Nothing. Until you were almost to Salem, and then there was a steakhouse that had exchanged its cowboy-chic decor for something clubbier. Dark, red leather circular booths. Even darker atmosphere only a blind man could travel without knocking a shin. Ice-cold martinis in sweating silver shakers.
Rita rarely drank liquor. Aunt Angela knew how to swill rotgut whiskey, gin, and what have you, then go prowling for a customer. She’d had herself a couple of kids. A little bit younger than Rita. Rita’s cousins, but they were both gone now. Rita’s mom believed it was payback for Aunt Angela’s sins. All Rita knew was that their branch of the tree was withering without new life. New life that needed to be seeded in Rita’s womb.
Tasha had stolen that from her.
Now Rita drove slowly up the long access road to the hospital. More sodium vapor lights. They tried to make the front of the place look like a resort with its tall portico and square columns. But Rita knew about the razor wire around the perimeter of the other side. The place for the real crazies. Killers, too.
Her eyes narrowed and she reached a hand in the side pocket of her driver’s door. Her knife was there. The one she always carried. The one she’d taken to the rest stop. Oh, how she’d wanted to stab that bitch dead. She managed to get her in the shoulders but she’d come back fighting and then they were rolling on the ground. Rita wanted to stab her in the throat. Stab her dead. But she was worried about the baby. How long would it last after Tasha was dead? Rita had hesitated and then, and then…
Oh, Rafe!
A tear trickled down her face from each eye. Rafe, oh, Rafe, oh, Rafe…
It was Tasha’s fault he was dead. Tasha’s fault.
Rita parked away from the portico and adjusted her rearview mirror to see the front doors. There was a woman at the front desk with a small desk light switched on; the only illumination. The glass doors would undoubtedly be locked. She would have to get the woman’s attention for access and she couldn’t think of any kind of plausible reason why she would be there.
There were lights on in some of the rooms; some of the residents were still awake. Rita’s eyes wandered across those rooms, wondering where the blond whore was being kept. She knew she would have to come back. Tomorrow. Her first of two days off.
Rita thought about that for a while, studied on it. A break from her job. A job she plodded through at her mother’s insistence that she have a career. A job close to her home, a home she shared with her mother.
It wasn’t a life she lived. It was a prison sentence. Rafe was all she’d had. Rafe. It should have been Rita running away with him, not that man-stealing bitch!
She whimpered and held her palms to her abdomen. Why wasn’t Rafe’s child inside her? Why was Tasha carrying it?
She had to have the baby. The baby inside Tasha was Rita’s. Rita Feather Hawkings’s.
She could almost cry over the unfairness of it all. Rita needed that baby! Rafe’s baby. Rafe and Rita’s baby, not that pale little whore who—
A man appeared inside the hospital, heading toward the glass front doors, saying something to the woman at the desk as he reached them. He hesitated and she must have pushed a button that electronically unlocked the doors because he strode outside and the receptionist pushed the button again, the doors sliding shut behind him, shivering a little when they reached their endpoint. Some kind of locking mechanism. Huh.
The man was dark, somewhere in his forties, too old for Rita. He kept on striding to a black Lexus whose surface must’ve been waxed to a high gloss ’cause the rain just ran off it in sheets.
He was a doctor, she realized, though she had no real way of knowing. Just a feeling. And he sure as hell thought he was hot shit. Somebody important? In the overhead light while he fired the engine she examined the back of his head. She liked his neck. Strong.
Maybe he wasn’t too old…maybe…
Switching on her ignition, Rita backed out of her spot slowly, waiting till the man in the Lexus was just a set of red taillights down the entry lane. She nosed along behind him, catching him turning east onto the county highway toward Salem and I-5. Probably lived in the valley. She hesitated. She should really turn right to the coast and her own bed. But he’d looked…important.
Licking her lips, she turned east and followed after him through the drowned night, wipers slapping angrily at the rain, her agile mind working on scenarios. He was someone at Halo Valley. The girl at the desk had practically fallen all over herself trying to get that door open.
She wasn’t surprised when he pulled into the club-type steakhouse, which was still about ten miles away from the interstate. A man like him wanted something good before he went home. A drink. A succulent piece of red meat. Maybe some company.
Rita felt all her hormonal juices slip through her system. Didn’t happen that often with old guys, but once in a while one of ’em could warm her up to a simmer. Once in a great while she could even boil.
The place was called Vandy’s and it let you know in scripted red neon along top its low-peaked shake roof. There was an assortment of pickups and trucks, some Ford and Chevy sedans, and a few expensive foreign cars, her guy’s Lexus, a couple of Mercedes, and a white convertible BMW getting pounded by rain that Rita bet was leaking in under its canvas roof.
Rita parked her rusted bucket of bolts along one side, away from the front, away from the only light in the parking lot. Didn’t want her quarry to see her climbing out of such a sadly cared-for vehicle. She would have liked to have been driving in his polished black Lexus. Looked like a car for a money man. A doctor.
She pulled a tube of frosted pink lipstick out of her purse and ran it over lips that felt fatter than normal, hotter.
She was getting herself all pumpy. Could feel a wetness inside her. The Fertility Goddess sending her a message.
Popping the trunk, Rita climbed outside, into the damned precipitation, and hurried to haul out a suitcase. Quickly, she threw it in the backseat, climbed in after it. Yanking out a black, clingy dress, she shook it free of wrinkles, then ripped off her teal scrubs and changed clothes. The shoes inside the case had four-inch heels. Hooker shoes, Delores would have railed had she seen them, but Rita took care not to have her mother, whose knees were bad and who didn’t move as well as she once had, find her outfits.
She pa
used for a faint moment, thinking of Rafe, broken inside. For him, she’d given up her trolling. He’d been the one. She’d known they were meant for each other, meant to have babies together.
But Rafe had died. His betrayal, his fascination with—Rita would not think of it as love—Tasha had killed him.
Rita had not stabbed him. That wasn’t her. She would never do that. No, his evil whore had killed him. Or maybe Fate had stepped in. It had not been Rita Feather Hawkings. She loved him too much.
Except her body was all loose and hot and willing now and she hurried through the rain, sidestepping puddles, balanced on her heels. She pushed through the doors and smelled the scent of broiled steaks and garlic and heard the sound of country western music, kept low except for some pulse-thumping bass.
Stepping past the maitre d’s stand, she stood at the edge of the main dining area for a moment, taking in the red leather booths, most of them empty. Then she turned toward the bar, which was blocked by a wall of rough-hewn boards, and up two oak steps into a room with more booths tucked into the edges, a grouping of bistro tables on dark carpet ringing an oak dance floor where no one was currently dancing, and a long bar with glittering bottles under soft lights.
Her quarry was seated in the center of the bar. A couple sat on one end, a group of three women on the other. Rita assessed the situation with a predator’s eye. She walked up to the seat next to him and brushed rain from her dress, catching the bartender’s eye. “Rum and Coke,” she told him, then adjusted the line of her dress, making sure her cleavage was at its soft, billowy best, before seating herself beside the dark-haired man.
He was studiously ignoring her, his eyes trained on the bottles in front of him, his and her reflection glowing in the mirror opposite them. She slid a glance across to him, wondering if she could meet his gaze, but he was determined to pretend to ignore her. Because he was pretending. She could feel his attention even though he tried to disguise it.
“Wet night,” she said to the bartender as he brought her drink. Rita smiled and drank lustily. Though she wasn’t fond of alcohol, men at bars were leery of women who completely abstained.
“Really wet,” the bartender agreed, his gaze lingering on her cleavage.
“Like a monsoon.”
The man on the seat beside her was slowly turning his drink around and around on the bar with his right hand. Every so often he would lift it and take a gulp. Though he’d gotten inside the place about ten minutes before her, she suspected it was his second drink. He didn’t want to go home just yet.
Perfect.
Rita closed her eyes and started softly humming to the current song coming through the speakers, something by Garth Brooks, she thought. She slowly opened her eyes and caught him just turning aside. He’d been looking at her.
“You’re a doctor, aren’t you?” she said.
Now he gave her a full-on stare. “Do I know you?”
“I’m a nurse at Ocean Park. But I’ve been to Halo Valley Security Hospital. That’s where you work, right?”
“You’ve been to Halo Valley?”
“Very nice facility.”
“And you’re a nurse.”
Rita Feather Hawkings was both slow and smart. Slow when it came to working in complex social situations—like dealing with women. Smart when it came to sex and men. “Yes,” she said. “I’m Rita.”
“I’m Paolo.” He was reluctant to say it. Reluctant to give away his name. It took an effort. But it was like the first crack in the dike; it would grow faster and easier with time. Very little time by the way his eyes goggled over her boobs.
Rita was feeling very, very wet. “What’s your specialty, Paolo?”
“That’s a leading question, if I’ve ever heard one.” He smiled, showing even, white teeth.
“Are you someone important at Halo Valley? You look important.”
He glanced around. “Want to move to a booth?”
For an answer she slid her drink from the bar and swung ahead of him from her seat.
It was only a matter of time now before she had him inside her.
Bam!
Tasha’s eyes flew open. She was lying in a bed in a strange room, and rain and wind were slamming against her window. The limbs of a hedge were waving madly, as if trying to get her attention.
Bam! Bam! Bam! They slammed against her window.
Where am I? she thought fearfully, her hands clutching the bedsheets.
Her gaze shot to her wrists. No shackles. Her heartbeat was so hard she could see her chest rise and fall.
She’d been dreaming, she realized, recalling fragments. Something bad had happened and she’d been blamed. Again. And instead of listening to her, they’d bound her to the bed with leather straps. They were horrible to her. Jealous. Mean. Her sisters. Catherine. Horrible.
She turned on her side, squeezing her eyes shut, and felt something move inside her. One hand curved over her hospital gown and under her protruding abdomen. A baby?
How?
How long had she been asleep?
What did she last remember?
She closed her eyes, tried to recall, felt a familiar, age-old blockage to her own thoughts and forced herself to relax. It was better to just let herself go to that twilight place, somewhere between the here and now and the world of dreams. She’d had to escape there ever since she was a little girl. Ever since she was old enough to realize she was in a prison of women.
There was Catherine, of course. She pretended to be your friend, to have your best interests at heart, but she really only wanted control. She’d gotten rid of someone, an evil being, whom she blamed for everything that had gone wrong in their world. Tasha believed it was her real mother, but no one wanted her to know the truth. She was deliberately kept in the dark, deliberately kept away from their secret meetings. Oh, but she’d seen them. Before she was old enough to make them worry, she’d pressed her eyes to a crack in the door and watched them carry candles to the upper attic, wearing their long dresses, their hair swinging to their hips. An army of angels, but they weren’t angels.
Before the evil being was banished, there were different rules. Dangerous behavior that worried Catherine and the disciples. Tasha, too, was a disciple and she went along with them, believed in them, until she saw past the wrought-iron gates to another world. It came as a shock to learn that they were the oddity. Outsiders called them a cult. Some had even named them: The Colony. And the name of their home, their lodge, was Siren Song, though where that came from had never been completely explained.
There were rules everywhere. Rules for waking. Rules for washing. Rules for eating. Talking. Working. Praying.
By the time Tasha was seven she started doubting the rules. Too wise and old to meekly abide, she’d stood against them. Too naive and young to understand there was no other side but theirs, she’d been contained to her room. Shackled. Prayed at. Even by the Indian man considered a shaman by his people and maybe by Catherine and the disciples as well.
He’d scared Tasha. Lying on her bed. Helpless. He’d swept in like a fog and leaned over her, his face lined by age, maybe by a hard life. He mumbled something, maybe in a native tongue, maybe just gibberish. Terrified, she felt him touch her forehead with a cool, dry palm.
Whatever he was supposed to accomplish didn’t happen. Tasha felt the same. Always felt the same. But the one thing she learned was to lie, to pretend. She couldn’t fake an epiphany; she’d never had one. But she could pretend to slowly come about to their way of thinking.
They believed in God. They believed in Indian spirits, later changed to Native American, as Catherine, one of the only ones allowed outside the gates and who was friendly with the Foothillers, became enlightened to a new political correctness. The disciples all followed, but Tasha sensed they were all playing at belief and rightness. They didn’t feel it.
And then there was the other doctor, whose hands had strayed some. She hadn’t told about him. She’d kept her own counsel. And, by b
eing patient and keeping her mouth shut, she gleaned information. She learned by chance that the gates had not always been closed to the disciples. One or two had been given away as babies. One or two had run away. One or two had been allowed to come and go, work in the neighboring town of Deception Bay.
Then the gates had closed. Catherine had disallowed anyone to leave. Tasha did not know why, and none of the disciples seemed to really know, either.
Except dull, wheelchair-bound Lillibeth, who believed they were imprisoned because of their mother, Mary. “Catherine’s worried she’ll put a curse on us,” Lillibeth whispered one night in a squeak of fright. “Another one! Worse than the last one!”
“Catherine’s our mother,” Tasha blurted out without thinking. Her rule was get information, don’t give it out.
But Lillibeth was too alarmed to hold back. “Mary is our mother. Catherine is her sister, our aunt. Mary was cursed with a sickness that made her crazy. She never knew right from wrong. She slept with many men. Catherine is trying to keep us safe. We all are cursed, but Catherine can help us.” Upon which she began ululating like she suffered from the craziness she claimed they all possessed.
Her revelations made Tasha ask questions. Careful questions. She didn’t want to seem too eager to learn. But Catherine saw more than she should. She turned her sharp blue eyes on Tasha, and it felt like a beam of intense heat that burned through the small white lies and down to Tasha’s core truth.
“What are you planning?” Catherine accused.
“I just want to know about my mother,” Tasha answered right back.