by Nancy Bush
“Rita! She’s the recent hire at Halo Valley!” Claire quickly brought him up to date on what Gibby had said. “I’ve seen her around and she would never meet my eyes. Like she was hiding something. Oh, God. I think she’s been terrorizing Tasha.”
“Well, she’s safe now, whatever happened.”
“It must have been Rita’s keycard that Tasha used to get away.” Claire suddenly shivered. “Where is Rita now?”
“Good question. She wasn’t at the site. We’ve got a team doing an ongoing search at her mother’s house, where Rita lives. Clausen’s waiting for a call.”
“Leesha told me it was a nurse who said she knew her,” Claire murmured. “I should have checked.”
“You’re not blaming yourself,” Lang told her sternly. “We don’t know anything for sure yet.”
“I wish Tasha could say something.”
“She said ‘she stabbed me,’” he reminded. “Probably meant Rita.”
“Where could she have gone?”
He shook his head. “Detectives practically beat down her mother’s front door, were about to break it in rather than wait for a warrant, when the mom, Delores Feather, finally answered. She was using a walker and a bit confused, but she’s allowing the search.”
“No Rita so far.”
“No Rita so far,” he agreed. “If she’s our would-be baby stealer, she killed Rafe and now Cade, too.”
“Why?”
“Because they got in her way?”
“Lang.” It was Clausen, calling him over.
Claire listened from afar and heard that they’d found nothing at Delores Feather’s house, but that Rita’s mother’s car was discovered on the block behind Cade’s house.
“She has to be close by,” Lang said.
“We’ll keep looking,” Clausen answered.
One of the nurses wheeled Tasha from behind the cubicle curtain and into the main emergency room area. A young doctor followed them, his expression serious.
Claire stepped forward. “I’m Dr. Claire Norris of Halo Valley Security Hospital. Tasha’s been a patient there.”
“She seems fine, physically. Baby’s fine, too, according to Eugenie.”
At that moment the midwife stepped out and, seeing Claire, came their way. “I think she should be kept overnight, just to be safe.”
“Is she about to have this baby?” Claire asked.
“Sometime in the next several days. She came to a little bit while I was examining her, but now she’s faded back.”
“You want to put her in a room?” the young doctor asked and Eugenie nodded.
Claire said, “I think I’ll stay with her.” She thought about getting a message to Catherine, but how? It was dark and wet and stormy and she didn’t feel like standing outside the gates and shouting. Tomorrow. When it was light.
“This Rita still has a keycard to Halo Valley,” Lang said, thinking aloud.
“We’ll change her code,” Claire answered. “She can’t get in without both. And if by some chance this is all a big mistake, we can figure it out when she shows up for work.”
“I’m going back over to the mother’s place. I want to talk to Delores myself.”
“And maybe check the house for yourself?” Claire guessed.
“Something like that.” His hand touched hers surreptitiously. “You’re staying here all night?”
“I plan to.”
He nodded. “Okay.”
They looked at each other, the moment suspended. “I don’t know where this is going,” Claire said. “But it’s good, isn’t it?”
“It’s good,” he agreed.
Delores Feather was tired of the policemen stomping through her home. Tired and scared. One had posted himself in the living room in case Rita showed up, and it was a nuisance that made Delores want to scream.
What had Rita done?
She’d hobbled back to her bedroom but she couldn’t stand the not knowing. They’d come in when she was barely dressed! Didn’t they know how to treat a woman? Brutes, all of them!
Looking at herself in the mirror, she tucked an untidy strand of steel gray hair behind her ear and then examined her nightgown. Embarrassing to be caught like this. Carefully, not trusting her damn, fragile, arthritic legs, she moved to the closet, pulling out a decent enough looking robe. If she was going to entertain male visitors, she was going to do it properly. She wasn’t that old. Her hair wasn’t all gray and her face was relatively unlined. She’d just been unlucky health-wise, but she was still a looker, in her way. Rita was a handsome woman herself, and she was not like Angela! She had not taken that path.
But what had happened? Why were the police here?
Where was Rita?
Delores shuffled with her walker into the bathroom, opened a drawer, and eyed her makeup collection critically. She needed something to make her eyes pop; they were sunken into their sockets.
She worked carefully, making sure she neatly outlined the orbs. She’d just finished when she heard someone else arrive. Her heart clutched in fear. Not Rita. Don’t let it be Rita.
But it wasn’t.
Delores stumped her way into the living room to encounter a tall, handsome man in a beat-up black leather jacket and mud-spattered jeans and cowboy boots. The latest spate of rain had found him, and drops of water were coalescing in his dark hair.
My, my, my, Delores thought.
“I’m Langdon Stone,” he said. “Has anyone told you why we’re looking for your daughter, Rita?”
“No one’s told me anything other than they think I’m hiding her!” She glared at the other sheriff’s deputy, who pretended not to hear.
“There’s been a homicide,” he said, to which Delores’s mouth dropped open.
“My Rita couldn’t possibly be involved in that!” she declared, to which he told her the events that had brought him to her door.
What Delores heard was baby. Pregnant. Knife. Her eyes strayed of their own volition to one of the pictures on the little corner hutch. Langdon Stone followed her gaze with his own eyes and moved toward the collection of photographs. He picked up the one she’d been looking at and said, “Is one of these women Rita?”
The picture was of Delores, Rita, and Rita’s good friend Vonda.
Delores unconsciously licked her lips. “Rita’s the taller one.” He nodded, staring at her in a way that made color creep up her neck in spite of herself. Don’t ask, she thought. Don’t ask.
“Who’s the other woman?”
“Vonda. She doesn’t live here anymore.” Delores clamped her lips together.
“She a friend of Rita’s?”
“No.”
“A relative?”
Why was he persisting? Delores didn’t want to look at him anymore. He was attractive, but he was digging, digging, digging. “Just some people we know. Not very well.” She flapped a hand at him.
“They live in the community?”
“Not Vonda. She left.”
“But her family’s still here.”
“Rita isn’t like Angela!” Delores burst out. “Angela was a whore! But Rita’s nothing like her. Rita’s a good, decent woman with a job. A career! You can’t listen to what people say. They’re jealous!”
Lang suggested softly, “Would Rita turn to Vonda’s family if she needed help?”
“No. Oh, no.” She shook her head.
“I’d like to talk to them anyway. Could you give me their address?”
Delores didn’t want to. She wanted to help Rita. But she needed Rita home, too, so she gave the handsome detective the address and wondered if she’d done the right thing.
Claire sat in a chair in Tasha’s hospital room, her mind full of the images from the last few days: Herm Smythe and his odd recital about the women of Siren Song and his written history; Catherine and her reluctance to talk about Tasha and the Colony; Gibby and the way he wanted to abet Tasha’s escape and rose to protect her honor against Thomas’s slander; Rita, the nurse who they tho
ught was tracking Tasha, trying to steal her baby; Cade Worster’s murder.
She wanted Lang to call and update her on his search for Rita.
She wished she could just ask Tasha the right questions and finally get some answers.
As if reading her thoughts, Tasha stirred in the bed, opened her eyes, blinked twice, then focused on Claire.
“I saw Catherine today,” Claire told her quietly. “She let me inside the gates of Siren Song. She confirmed that you’re from their family.”
Tasha stared. Claire stared right back.
“And I spoke with a man named Herman Smythe who wrote an account of the Colony, some of it more lore than truth, I suspect,” Claire went on. “You’ve led a sheltered life. I think maybe Rafe was handsome and attentive and you wanted to leave with him. He offered you…a way out.”
Now Tasha was fully listening; Claire could tell.
“Langdon Stone found you at Cade Worster’s house. Do you remember what happened there?”
Her lips quivered and fear settled in her eyes.
“He said you spoke to him,” Claire urged gently.
Tasha suddenly drew in a sharp breath and her eyes fluttered closed. Claire realized she was having a contraction and came and took her hand. “You’re in labor,” she said.
Tasha, after holding her breath for as long as she could stand, let out a long, low moan.
“I’ll get the nurse,” Claire said, nearly cannoning into one in the doorway.
“We’ll get her hooked up to an IV and fetal monitor,” the middle-aged woman said crisply.
“Thank you,” Claire answered gratefully.
“Are you family?”
“No.”
“Then please step out of the room.”
She was all brisk efficiency, and rather than argue, Claire did as she was told, watching from the hallway as more hospital staff entered and the requisite equipment for the impending birth was wheeled into the room.
Tasha was screaming inside. The low moan that issued from her mouth was nothing compared to the raging shrieks ricocheting through her brain. IV? Fetal monitor? What did they mean?
And then they all came in with that rattling machinery! She wanted to fight them. Yanked her arm back when they pulled out a needle and tubing and a hanging bag that swayed menacingly.
“Ma’am!” one of the nurses admonished, surprised.
She wasn’t going to let them do it. She wouldn’t allow it. She’d been strapped to a bed before and she would never be again!
“What’s your name?” the first nurse asked, then swiveled to look out the door to where the doctor from Halo Valley had gone.
“Tasha,” Claire said from beyond the door.
The nurse’s lips were tight. Her manner was too much like Catherine’s for Tasha to want to comply. “Well, Tasha, stop flailing around,” she ordered. “The baby will be fine, but dramatics will only get in the way. Understand?”
She was starting to feel a familiar panic. The same one that crept in and smothered her. For an answer she threw herself out of the bed, knocking the head nurse aside.
“For God’s sake,” the nurse sputtered, stepping back as Tasha stumbled into the hallway.
“Tasha!” Claire called, scared, and Tasha, unable to stop the creeping shadows coming up through the corners of her eyes, overtaking her, simply said, “Help me,” throwing a hand against the wall to break her fall as she crumpled downward.
Vonda Youngley’s family lived outside of the Foothillers’ community and on the southern side of Deception Bay. Lang found it without too much difficulty and was glad to see that their power was restored, if it had gone out earlier.
He pulled into their driveway, wondering what they would think about having a stranger knock on their door so late in this stormy evening. But Cade Worster was dead and Rita Feather Hawkings, their most likely suspect, was at large, and these people’s daughter had once been Rita’s friend.
The Glock was once again in his waistband at his back, tucked beneath his jacket. He didn’t want to freak them out, but he also didn’t want to meet up with Rita unarmed.
He rang the bell and heard it make a buzzing sound inside the sixties ranch with the sagging carport. Fingers spread the living room window blinds and a face scowled between them at him.
The porch light flashed on. One of those curly fluorescents.
The door cracked open an inch. “Can I help you?” a man’s voice asked in a tone that said clearly that he wasn’t planning to no matter what Lang said.
“Mr. Youngley, I’m with the Tillamook County Sheriff’s Department,” Lang said, “and I would like to ask you a few questions.”
“Show me your I.D.,” he demanded before Lang could further explain.
“I don’t have it with me, but you can call the department for verification. My name’s Langdon Stone. I would like to know if you’ve seen Rita Feather Hawkings this evening, or anytime recently.”
The door shut with a slam. Lang waited patiently, and when finally it opened again, Lang found himself looking at a woman in her late twenties or early thirties. She had short brown hair and wore a sweatshirt and jeans, and she swung the door open and motioned him inside.
“Vonda!” the older man yelled.
“Dad, he wants to know about Rita. I’m only too happy to tell.” She eyed him critically as he crossed the threshold. “You don’t look like a crazed sexual predator or anything. What do you want to know?”
“You’re Vonda, Rita’s friend?” Lang asked.
“Was,” she stressed. “Was her friend. Not anymore.” She closed the door and crossed her arms, looking Lang up and down. “What’s the deal?”
“Vonda,” her father said again.
“I’m visiting my parents,” Vonda said, by way of explanation to Lang. “I don’t live here anymore, and you know why? Because of Rita. That’s right. Rita Feather Hawkings.”
“Vonda…” her father murmured a third time, long-suffering.
“I don’t come here much,” Vonda said tautly. “And it’s a shame, because it would be nice for Selene to know her grandparents. But that woman—my friend—took Selene from me when she was an infant!”
“She was just babysitting,” her father said weakly.
“The hell she was! She took my baby and didn’t tell me where she was for hours! She stole Selene and she meant to keep her.”
“She stole your child?” Lang asked.
“Rita’s obsessed with having a baby. She would go to any lengths—any lengths!—to have one.” Reaching down, Vonda swept up a well-loved, tattered pink blanket from where it lay over the back of a chair. “Just thinking about it makes me crazy. Rita would never be allowed past our front door. I don’t trust her. She’s sick.” She paused, giving Lang a long look. “So, tell me why you’re here. Why you would even think my family would be seeing Rita again. And then after that, I’m going to go take my daughter her blanket, kiss her, hug her, and just make sure as hell that she’s still in bed where I put her!”
Chapter 23
“She’s out,” the nurse said as Tasha crumpled to the floor. “Get Jake! We need to get her back to bed.”
One of the younger nurses squeezed past the group that had accumulated in the hall while the older nurse, whose name tag read Brenda Baransky, and Claire leaned down in tandem over Tasha’s inert form.
“Tasha’s a patient at Halo Valley Security Hospital,” Claire said tersely to the nurse, then went on to explain that she was a doctor and what her relationship to Tasha was. She’d just finished her quick recap when Jake, apparently, appeared, followed by several more staff members, one pushing a wheelchair, and an older man wearing a white coat. Claire’s gaze swept his name tag: Dr. Dolph Loman.
Momentarily distracted, she was pulled back to the moment when Tasha moaned again.
“She’s going to have this baby on the floor if we don’t move her now,” Nurse Baransky declared, motioning for Jake and another orderly. They picked up Tasha
with practiced efficiency, slipped her into the wheelchair, took her into the room, and transferred her to the bed. Immediately they began hooking her up to the fetal monitor and drew the needle to slip into her wrist for the IV.
“Is she going to start throwing herself around again when she wakes up?” Baransky asked Claire.
“I hope not.”
She snorted. “I don’t want to have to strap her down.”
“I’ll watch her,” Claire said.
When they were finished and Tasha was resting quietly, everyone moved out of the room except Claire and Nurse Baransky. “Our OB-GYN’s on call,” Brenda said.
“I saw Eugenie Ledbetter earlier,” Claire said. “She’s been monitoring the pregnancy. She suggested Tasha spend the night even before the contractions increased.”
“If she’s still here, I won’t call Dr. Gallippo.”
“Thanks.”
She stepped out, but then a long shadow fell over Claire, spooking her to where she jumped.
“I didn’t mean to startle you,” Dr. Dolph Loman said in a brittle voice. “Is this pregnant girl truly from the group known locally as the Colony?”
Claire gave him a long look, taking in his carefully clipped horseshoe of white hair, his stiff back and manner, and his piercing blue eyes under a ridge of thick, white brows. She hadn’t forgotten Herm Smythe’s comments about Dolph Loman, which had been peppered with phrases like “pompous ass” and “cold bastard.” In fact, Herm’s words to Dinah when she’d wanted to know more about the Colony and Catherine’s sister, Mary, had been, “Ask that cold bastard Dolph, then. He’d know.”
Now Dolph gave Claire a harsh look at her hesitation in answering. “Well?” he demanded.
“According to what Catherine said, we believe this is Natasha.”
Now Dolph really looked at her. “Who spoke to Catherine?”
“I did.”
“How did you manage that? They don’t throw out the welcome mat to just anyone.”
Claire was beginning to see what Herm’s objections had been. “Tasha’s been my patient for a while at Halo Valley.”