by Nancy Bush
But instead, she had this darkness that crept around her consciousness. She didn’t really understand it, didn’t want it half the time, but there it was.
She was still silently lamenting her lack of special gifts when the air pressure changed, someone coming up behind her.
“Hello, Cat,” a female voice purred in her ear.
With an effort Tasha stayed staring straight ahead. She wanted to twist around and see who’d spoken.
And then the dark-haired nurse walked into her line of vision, and Tasha’s pulse rocketed. She’d seen her upon occasion the last couple of weeks, had thought she recognized her, had hoped, prayed, that it was her imagination.
But it wasn’t.
Rita!
Now the witch gazed down at her hard. It was all Tasha could do to keep up her act. Rita the nurse. Rafe’s Rita. Rita, who’d chased them down to the rest stop. Tasha had thought that’s who it was, but she hadn’t believed her bad luck. It couldn’t be. Just couldn’t be! But it was. Rita had been hovering around for days, but this was the first time she’d actually spoken to Tasha directly.
“She doan talk ’cept to me,” Gibby said, smiling widely at Tasha.
Rita gazed at him hard. “What does she say?”
“Oh, she needs help. Lots of help.”
“What kind of help?”
“She needs to get away.”
Tasha wanted to kick Gibby but remained frozen, staying put in her distant twilight.
Then Rita’s gaze dropped to Tasha’s protruding belly and Tasha felt an inner horror and a need to squirm away as the woman placed her hand atop the mound and said, “My baby.”
She was ready to throw off her deception and attack her, but then Rita let her hand slide possessively along Tasha’s rounded belly before walking away. Tasha automatically touched the stab wounds at her shoulders. Rita had stabbed her hard. Deep.
She needed clothes now!
“I doan like her,” Gibby said.
“She wants to hurt me,” Tasha said.
His eyes rounded. “She does?”
“I don’t have any clothes. Can you get me some of yours? Pants. And a shirt?” They wouldn’t fit well. Gibby was shorter and rounder than Tasha, but it was better than these gowns the hospital supplied. Tasha had never worn a pair of pants. She hoped she could anchor the waistline somehow beneath her baby.
“You has no clothes?”
“No. And you have to bring them to me in secret. I have to make sure she doesn’t find out.” Tasha’s voice was a harsh whisper.
“That bad nurse woman?”
“That bad nurse woman.”
“Okay….”
“Tonight. After dinner.”
“Okay!” He was growing excited, bouncing in his chair.
“Shhh,” she warned. “Settle down. Don’t let them know or they could take you back to your room.”
He glanced around, his head swiveling hard from side to side. “No!”
“Let’s watch TV,” she said to distract him.
“They gots the controller.” But he was already signaling one of the apelike orderlies. It was Greg who came to see what he wanted. He threw a glance at Tasha, who blinked slowly and dully, and soon the television was softly squawking away and Gibby settled into his chair. She would have to remind him again, just before dinner, but if all went well she could be out by tonight.
She just needed a distraction to get past the woman manning the front door. A distraction and a keycard. Maybe she could steal one, somehow. She needed to escape. Today.
Rita had quickly grown accustomed to her job at Halo Valley. She’d been there for over a week and had seamlessly fit herself in with the staff, though it was with an effort, as Rita wasn’t one to warm up to people. Normally careful and spare in her words around women, she’d gone out of her way to be friendly to the staff, especially Lori at the front desk and Darlene, one of the floor nurses. She was working on Maria, one of the night nurses, though she wasn’t sure she’d had as much success with her yet.
It was all an acting job for Rita. Her emotions were only engaged around babies and certain men. Paolo Avanti definitely engaged her, though not in the same way as Rafe.
But now she was here. She’d managed it, with the help of Dr. Avanti’s good word—reluctantly given as it had been, the bastard. He’d been nervous about having his lover on staff, but she’d managed to convince him it would be to the benefit of both of them.
And then there had been a bit of stickiness when she’d put in her resignation at Ocean Park. Nurse Perez, superior busybody that she was, had been appalled that she’d given such short notice.
“What is it, Rita?” she asked. “Has something happened?”
Rita hadn’t told them she was moving to Halo Valley when she quit. She hadn’t been officially hired at the time she tendered her resignation, and she wouldn’t have cared to let them know anyway. None of them were her friends, though when Jake strolled by she felt a pang of loneliness for Rafe that left her momentarily choked up. That’s what Nina Perez saw and misunderstood.
“Does this have to do with Dr. Loman?” she’d asked quietly, a hand on Rita’s arm, gently steering her away from listening ears in the hallway, guiding her to the employee room. The nosy bitch then looked around, and seeing they were alone, gazed at Rita with fake concern and added, “He was pretty negative about your care for Teresa Warnock.”
Teresa Warnock. The snotty lawyer’s wife who lived in that fancy house where she’d slipped on her marble floors and broken her wrist in two places, coming under Rita’s care at Ocean Park. Teresa Warnock was a friend of Dr. Loman’s, the hospital’s osteopath, who was old, old, old—too old to perform surgery anymore. Teresa had taken offense to the way Rita simply tuned the withered hag out when she blabbered on and on and on about her wrist. The bitch had then complained to Loman, who was basically retired and out of it, but who’d had the nerve to dress Rita down anyway! Rita really hadn’t taken him seriously. He was too ancient. Tall and lean, with a neatly clipped ring of white hair, he’d scowled down at her with what she suspected was his mean look and told her her attitude was unacceptable. Rita had simply listened and thought that he’d probably been handsome as the devil in his youth, though those days were long behind him. And his mind wasn’t what it once was, though nobody at Ocean Park was saying it. She figured he would never remember later whom he’d dressed down anyway, and though she’d seethed about the injustice at the time, Loman really wasn’t worth the energy.
Still, when Perez suggested this was the reason she was leaving, Rita seized on it like a lifeline. “He hurt my feelings, Nina. Mrs. Warnock lied to him about me, but Dr. Loman was good friends with her and he wasn’t about to listen to someone as low as Rita Feather Hawkings.”
“Rita, you know that’s not true.”
“I don’t know. I don’t think I can work here anymore.”
“Dr. Loman is retiring soon. Don’t let this dictate how you feel about Ocean Park Hospital. It’s a good place to work. We need nurses like you.”
Rita was almost swayed. Almost. Even though Nina Perez was a liar and was just trying to get what she wanted. But Rita had a different life for herself in mind, an alternate future.
Carlita had chosen that moment to push into the employee room. She stared hard at Rita and Nurse Perez. “You guys got some kind of powwow going on here?”
“Carlita!” Perez took instant offense to what she believed was Carlita taking a swipe at Rita through her Native American heritage. Rita knew that was just how Carlita talked; she didn’t mean anything by it. But Rita pretended affront as well, glaring hard at her.
“What?” Carlita demanded.
“I gotta go,” Rita said, and walked out. It was a good way to leave things. Clean. Over. No unanswered questions.
And then she’d started at Halo Valley. Of course they’d asked her all kinds of questions to test her psychological health; Rita had been through that a number of times. She knew the answers, though s
ometimes she got called out for not having the correct expression and tone for the words. She just couldn’t muster the big bright smile they seemed to want. They worried she was too serious, a code phrase meaning she might be too emotionally remote. She parried that with a good line about keeping a balance between herself and her patients: she worked hard to keep from caring too much.
One moment it seemed like they were actually going to turn her away, then, after another grab-and-stroke session with Avanti, which set up his recommendation, she was given the job. She actually kind of liked working here. Everyone tried so damn hard with the crazies that they seemed to spend less time trying to tell Rita what to do. If she was there helping, well, that was good enough. No one cared whether she was smiling or not, whether she was emotionally engaged.
Rita wondered if there was a way to keep her job even after she found a way to remove Tasha from the hospital’s guarded walls. She thought she might be able to swing it. She knew a lot of ground along the foothills of the Coast Range where no one ever went.
How hard would it be to hide a body, once the baby was taken?
No one ever had to know.
Chapter 14
As Lang pulled into the parking lot of Halo Valley Security Hospital, his cell phone went off. He didn’t recognize the number, so he answered, “Langdon Stone.”
“It’s Fred Clausen. O’Halloran said you wanted to talk to me.”
Detective Fred Clausen. Lang’s soon-to-be partner with the Tillamook County Sheriff’s Department, most probably. “Hey, thanks. Have you learned anything more about Rafe Worster?”
“Pretty much what you found out. Turns out he lived in an RV camper that’s on blocks down the street from his cousin. Not a lot of belongings. Worked as a gardener and handyman around Deception Bay and the Foothillers’ community. The last year or so, he’s been doing work at Siren Song.”
“Think that had anything to do with his homicide?”
“I don’t know. Maybe. More likely it’s something he got caught up in outside of the cult. His cousin’s a thief. From what I’ve learned, Rafe didn’t have any problem with that. He pretty much took Tim Rooney’s truck from Cade for himself. People liked him. But nobody’s acted like he was Mr. Responsibility. Kinda lived day-to-day. Had a lot of different girlfriends. Pretty much what Cade told you.”
“You heard we think the girl might have come from Siren Song?” Lang asked.
“Yeah.” Clausen sounded skeptical.
“You don’t think so?”
“Sheriff said she’s pregnant. That would be unusual from what I know of the place, which isn’t much.”
“What can you tell me?” Lang asked.
“Well, I worked a case, almost two years ago now. Caught the tail end of it with Kirkpatrick, but the detective in charge was Sam McNally, out of Laurelton P.D. Case started there and wound its way to the coast.”
“Kinda like this one has,” Lang observed.
“Yeah, kinda like it.” Clausen snorted. “Anyway, we caught this guy and he was squirrel nutty. He’s at Halo Valley and he ain’t coming out anytime soon. This nutcase thought the Siren Song women were the devil’s daughters or something. He was targeting anyone he thought was connected with them. After he was caught, O’Halloran met with Catherine, the girls’ leader, about it. She allowed him inside the gate but not into the lodge. She said she didn’t know anything about the crimes, but the sheriff thought she was holding back.”
“The sheriff acted like he and Catherine stay out of each other’s way.”
“Yeah, well…she’s not a woman with a lot of warmth.”
“You’ve met her?”
“I’ve seen her around Deception Bay a time or two. She reminds me of one of those really mean nuns who rap you on your knuckles or get out the cane and whup your ass. But she’s more than that, too. She’s…” He searched around for a bit, then said, “Otherworldly.”
Otherworldly. It sounded strange in Clausen’s gravelly voice.
“Catherine and Siren Song are just part of the landscape around here,” Clausen went on. “Everybody’s got a story about them.”
“So, what do I have to do to reach them? Catherine? I want to talk to her about Cat, the Jane Doe who was attacked at the rest stop, and see if she knows her. That’s all.”
“Did I hear you left her a note?”
“Yeah. Threw it through the bars.”
“What did it say?”
“Just told her to call me. I said I was a detective with the TCSD, which is only a lie for the time being, and I left my cell number.”
“Well, don’t expect miracles.” Clausen was dry.
“Why?”
“You didn’t give her any information. She’s not going to bother with you.”
“I didn’t really want to go into the whole thing in a note.”
“I hear you. I’m just saying.”
“Are the women always locked away inside there? Don’t they ever come out?” Lang couldn’t believe how he was stymied.
“They used to. A couple of ’em left or were adopted out, early on. One of ’em worked at the Drift In Market for a while. They’re not prisoners, though sometimes it seems that way.”
“What happened to the one who worked at the market?”
“You’d have to ask them. I don’t know.”
Clausen didn’t have much more to go on, so he and Lang ended the call. As soon as he was off the phone, Lang looked through his rearview at the front of Halo Valley. The rain was threatening, but there was a slight break. The wind was blowing the maple trees around, waving orange and brown leaves on the end of spindly leaves, daring him to enter.
Early October.
He was in jeans and his black leather jacket, which had survived its drenching. Just. His cowboy boots had been cleaned; no trace of the muck he’d covered them in after chasing Cade across the field.
He strode forward and hit the buzzer at the hospital’s glass doors. The woman at the desk asked his name through the speaker. He gave it and was admitted. Once inside, he wished he could just join the inmates in the morning room. He could see Cat’s blond head, but the front guardian was gazing at him suspiciously.
“Dr. Norris,” he said.
She hesitated, giving him a long look. Lori, her name tag read. He realized she’d witnessed the brouhaha that had ensued the last time he’d been there. She probably also knew something about his feelings for the doctors at Halo Valley, especially Dr. Claire Norris.
He didn’t offer up any further information and Lori touched the intercom button and spoke softly to the person on the other end.
Come on down, Dr. Norris… he thought, girding himself a little for the battle that was sure to follow.
Claire replaced the receiver and paused, wondering if she should call Freeson and tell him Langdon Stone was back in the building. What he would do when he learned Heyward III had been moved was anybody’s guess. He would undoubtedly go to the press and make the decision public, and then there would be hell to pay. Claire knew she could pick up the phone herself at any time and be that teller of tales. Pauline Kirby would be all over the Marsdon story.
But Claire was facing a moral dilemma where Heyward was concerned. She was starting to wonder if he really did belong on Side B. She’d been so sure before, but was that because of her own fear? He wasn’t a psychopath. He was a paranoid schizophrenic who suffered hallucinations and delusions. A sick man who needed professional help. And it wasn’t as if he were allowed to just roam around Side A; so far, he’d been confined to his room. Locked in. Able to page the staff but kept separate from the rest of the patients. Radke, the hospital administrator, might bend to the Marsdons’ wishes, but he wasn’t taking any chances.
Besides, she really thought if anyone should go to the press about Heyward’s transfer, Langdon Stone was the man.
Claire made a face. She wasn’t going to call Freeson. She would never call him. He was worse than useless, in her mind. Let them figure ou
t what to do when Stone exploded. Maybe it wouldn’t happen just yet as Heyward was being kept in his room, unable to enjoy the full privileges of Side A until such time as it was proven he was, in fact, a true Side A candidate.
Glancing at the clock, she mentally logged the time. One thirty. How convenient for him that her three o’clock had canceled and she was free for the day. The man was lucky—if a meeting with her could be considered luck, she supposed.
She headed out, using her keycard and punching in her code to take her from the medical office building to the hospital. Since Heyward’s transfer, they’d increased building security to include all hours of the day.
As she was walking across the gallery she passed the new nurse, Rita, who read her name tag but seemed to turn away rather than engage Claire. She realized this had happened almost every time they’d run across each other and wondered if she intimidated her in some way.
Or maybe she’d already heard that Claire was being blamed for the incident with Melody Stone and had chosen the other side.
“Or maybe you’re being paranoid,” Claire murmured aloud as she descended the steps to the first-floor lobby where Melody Stone’s brother stood, legs apart, eyes serious, waiting for her arrival. She forced herself not to glance down the hall toward Heyward’s room.
“Did you decide our Jane Doe’s abdominal wounds were worth a second trip?” she asked, stopping about two feet away, giving herself ample personal space.
“No…” She nonplused him a little. “I have some information about Jane Doe.”
She nodded. “Okay.”
“It’s not verified, but I’m a little stuck, so I decided to bring it to you now.” He thought a moment while Claire waited, then said, “I think she belongs to this group of women who live together in a lodge at the coast.”
Claire frowned, bringing her thoughts back to the moment with an effort. “You mean Siren Song?”
“You know it?” He was surprised.
“I live in Deception Bay. I’ve only been there a couple of years, but yeah, I know the lodge. You think Cat’s part of the Colony?”