The girl Ivy is long dead. Sixteen years ago Cara avenged her, killing her torturer, and had helped her die. But her ghost, the skeleton girl, is back, and has been an almost constant companion for the last month.
At night Cara curls by the fire and dreams, and the skeleton girl crawls into her bed and lies against her, just as she had that night, all those many years ago.
And now, she is here in the daytime as well.
For what?
Cara straightens with her armful of kindling, and stands still, willing her to speak, to step forward, to give her some sign.
But Ivy stands without moving, and when the molten sun drops behind the rim of the canyon, she is gone.
Chapter Seven
Roarke stood looking out the tall windows of his living room at the lights going on all over his city.
He and Epps would head down to Santa Barbara in the morning. Roarke hated having to waste precious time, but he was resigned to it. If this was the hurdle he had to jump over to get the task force, it was better to get to it.
He turned from the windows, sat down in front of his computer at the dining table he never used for dining.
He avoided looking at the news updates. It was nothing but bad. The constant state of unreality was exhausting.
But as he had done every night for the last two weeks, he logged on to the online “men’s rights” forums.
Of course tonight the forums were buzzing with talk about the Santa Muerte campus attacks. The meninists were having as much trouble as the media trying to find words to describe the action. But instead of phrases that the media used, like “coordinated protest” and “nationwide anonymous demonstration,” in these forums the word that came up over and over was “terrorism.” And the ever-popular “feminazi terrorism.”
If the feminazis want a war, they’re gonna get a war.
A rape war. Hell fucken yeah.
Rape the bitches.
And on, and on, and on.
A large number of the protesters thought that Cara was behind the protests.
This is Lindstrom and those bitches.
Rape the Lindstrom bitches.
Roarke felt helpless anger rising.
Tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of these monsters out there. Threatening real crimes.
And we’re supposed to clamp down on protests about unprosecuted criminals? What kind of world is this?
What are we heading into?
He ordered himself not to read any more. Instead he skimmed through the forums for the names he knew to be handles used by Detective Gilbert Ortiz.
Ortiz. A demon from Cara’s past who had followed her into the present. A supposed lawman who’d been peripherally involved in the manhunt for the vicious pair of serial rapists who had attacked Ivy Barnes at Cara’s high school, and raped dozens of other high school girls, in dozens of different states, over dozens of years.
Instead of pursuing this unholy pair of predators, Ortiz had abused his power to stalk fourteen-year-old Cara. And even now, sixteen years later, he was creating whole forums like these. Forums with titles like “Rape Cara Lindstrom” and “Kill That Lindstrom Bitch.”
Roarke’s long experience, as a profiler and as a man, was that no one talks about doing sexual violence to a woman without being a sexually violent person.
He had seen Ortiz’s anger up close. Ortiz’s old partner had called him a wife batterer. And Roarke thought there was even more to it than that.
Ortiz knew that Cara recognized what he was. She’d seen what she called It in him. She had seen evil.
Face-to-face with Roarke, not only had Ortiz not denied it—he’d almost admitted it.
So Roarke clenched his jaw and scrolled through the cesspool of posts.
He made himself do it because Ortiz had put a bounty on Cara’s head. He was offering to pay for “any verified Lindstrom sightings.” There was an email address attached to these posts, which Roarke was constantly tempted to ask Singh to hack.
But he hadn’t. The fact that Ortiz kept posting variations of that same message, periodically, meant that he probably, probably hadn’t gotten any useful tips.
Yet.
Cara had been off the radar for nearly two months now. Roarke hoped to God she had the sense to stay off the radar.
He had his own guess where she might be.
It had come to him during his month out in the desert, as he drove the state roads crossing in and out of Indian reservations.
He didn’t know exactly where, not even exactly which state. But he was pretty sure how one would start looking for her, if one were inclined to find her.
But he wasn’t.
Cara was not his case anymore. She’d jumped bail, which made her the jurisdiction and responsibility of the US Marshals Service, Northern District of California.
Roarke hadn’t been following the marshals’ activity—not entirely. But he knew the division hadn’t made any progress in locating her.
And what he’d learned about her childhood made him the last possible person to want to catch her.
But he combed the men’s forums every night, to make sure that Ortiz wasn’t on his way to kill her.
DAY TWO
Chapter Eight
She rode through the fog, up over the mountains, galloping under the canopy of ancient oaks, splashing across streams. Feeling the horse’s gleaming flanks heaving with muscle underneath her, the heavy hooves trampling everything in her path. Melded to the horse, she was huge, powerful, invincible. No one could touch her when she was riding.
On the ridge, she dismounted, feeling her thighs shaking. But her stance was strong, her legs like roots, tree trunks, an extension of the earth.
Jade stood, panting, and leaned against Christobel, and looked out over the valley, through the sunlight just piercing the mist. It was stunningly beautiful, so quiet and deserted, with sleepy ranches tucked away in the folds of the hills. Coyotes roamed by day and night, and deer, in pairs and trios and whole herds. There were hawks and owls, rabbits and raccoons and squirrels, lizards and hummingbirds.
And almost never any people. They were just an hour and a half north of Los Angeles, half an hour inland from the beaches of Santa Barbara, and there were towns within riding distance nearby, touristy wine towns like Los Olivos and Santa Ynez, with their quaint main streets of Old West storefronts, craft breweries, outdoor wine-tasting patios.
But here, in the valley, so many of the ranches were uninhabited. Vacation homes for their wealthy owners, occasionally rented out through Airbnb or VRBO. So much luxury, untouched, unused.
This, the Santa Ynez Valley, had become Jade’s whole world. The valley, the hills surrounding it, and the ranch.
They’d been keeping her there at the ranch for almost two months now. Elle—Rachel Elliott, the social worker from the Belvedere House. And the women who called themselves Bitch.
They weren’t holding her hostage, exactly. It was their version of inpatient hospitalization. Well, and there was the little matter of the murders.
Last month Jade had killed three people, if you could call a scuzzball pimp and two douchebag johns “human.” Possibly four—it had gotten a little crazy for a while there, what with the meth and the blood, and the blond one, Cara Lindstrom. And the skeleton. Jade had been so fucked up it was hard to tell the memories from the nightmares.
She knew she’d done DeShawn the pimp and that fat fuck monger Goldwyn, or Goldman, or whatever. And Cranston, in Santa Cruz, may he not rest in peace. She sincerely hoped there was an afterlife and that Clyde was down there eternally roasting on a spit. There were a couple of others she wasn’t so sure of. But yeah, enough dead pimps and johns that if she didn’t keep her head down, she’d be thrown into some concrete hole for the rest of her life.
When Elliott had first brought her to the ranch, they’d kept her locked up in a single room. Oh, she’d been fucked up, no doubt. They—mostly Elliott, but others, too—nursed her through meth withdrawal.
Round-the-clock supervision so she’d had no choice but to kick it.
She’d been pretty crazed through that. She didn’t remember a whole lot, but she knew there had been screaming and breaking things, trying to fight people. Maybe hurting them. She wasn’t entirely sure, but she thought she remembered restraints.
Of course that could have been from Before. When she’d first been dragged down into the hell known as “the life.” When there had been the systematic torture pimps called the “seasoning” of a new girl—
She pinched herself hard. Before wasn’t something she needed to think about. Just shut that shit down now.
After those first two weeks of detox . . . the IV hydration, the shakes . . . when she was actually able to walk again . . . she was allowed out of the room into other parts of the ranch house. With supervision, of course. Always with someone watching her.
But this time It, the meth, that ravaging hungry thing, didn’t seem to have its claws so deep inside her. After a month and a half she was clean, cleaner than she’d been in a year, two—she couldn’t even remember, really.
Now when she looked in the mirror, she had to stare hard to find herself in the reflection. Her wild and heavy hair had been cut to a bob and dyed a dark brown, along with her carefully reshaped eyebrows. She never stepped outside without a long-sleeved, flesh-toned bodysuit under anything else she wore, to conceal the art that covered pretty much her entire body. The Bitches weren’t taking any chances. Jade wasn’t on the Most Wanted list or anything, but she was pretty sure a couple of San Francisco cops wanted a word or two with her.
Of course the Bitches had a lot to lose from being discovered, themselves. Jade got that, right enough. Illegal shit was going down here for sure, beyond hiding a murderer. Or “harboring a victim of the patriarchy.” However they wanted to say it.
She was shocked that they let her out at all.
But it wasn’t prison. She could have run, by now. She could run anytime.
The real reason she didn’t was the horses.
They’d started her on the horses after those first gnarly weeks—the raging and shaking and vomiting, the out-of-her-fucking-mind withdrawal.
She knew how the positive reinforcement shit worked—it was to get her in line. But. But. When they started letting her ride the horses as a reward, it kept her mind off the crystal.
And then she’d fallen in love. Gotten completely hooked on the wild beauty of them and the speed—they were so fast—and the awesome power. Christobel—any one of those massive animals—could crush her to death without a thought. Crush her, or anyone.
They belonged to the wild. They let themselves be enclosed in the barn, where they were groomed and fed and sheltered. Who wouldn’t want someone catering to your needs like that? But behind all of their huge, liquid eyes was the knowledge that on any ride, they could throw their rider, trample them, and take off, never to be found.
From the beginning, Elle had made her groom and feed and water them, too. No riding without brushing down the horses, and mucking out the stalls. Saying “thank you” by keeping their stalls clean.
But that was as good as the riding, somehow. Lifting one of those legs and having that huge beast trust you to clean her hooves.
Even pitching out horseshit felt like . . . somehow felt like . . . like pitching shit out of her own soul. Emptying herself of every drop of spunk from those pathetic losers. Every foul touch, every swallow. Getting cleaner with every mucking out.
It was as good as counseling, although there was plenty of that, too. Elliott had started that and the detox even before the ranch, when Jade had been in the Belvedere House in San Francisco for those few days after the blond one, Lindstrom, offed Danny right in front of her—
Danny.
For one shuddering second she was back in the dark, stinking tunnel . . .
The pimp’s body at her feet in a pool of his own blood.
She pinched herself hard again, banished the image.
Beside her, Christobel nickered in her ear, and Jade turned automatically to pet her.
“There now. There,” she crooned, nuzzling the horse’s nose with her own.
Lindstrom had killed Danny and freed her. But Jade had turned around and freed Lindstrom right back, hadn’t she? Planting the razor Lindstrom had used to kill Danny at the scene of DeShawn’s murder. That had been a stroke of genius, no doubt. Exculpatory evidence, they called it, and it made them give Lindstrom bail. Get out of jail free.
Lindstrom was back on the street, probably killing the shit out of more scumbags.
That’s how come sometimes Jade wasn’t even entirely sure she’d done it, the other pimps and the mongers. ’Cause for sure Lindstrom was out there doing her thing.
And then . . . well, yeah. There was the skeleton that she saw sometimes. She didn’t know if that was the meth, or her brain, or what. Sometimes it was just hard to tell reality from the drug fugues and the detox hallucinations and the crazy freaking flashbacks.
The skeleton had been there, too, when Danny died. And that fat fuck monger.
So maybe the skeleton did it.
Or maybe I did.
But the main thing was, they were dead. And that felt good.
“How do you like me now?” she whispered.
Chapter Nine
She could groom Christobel in a half hour, but she often took twice that long, just ’cause. It wasn’t a chore at all. And she was in no hurry to get back to the house. It was always so freaking tense. Every day some new drama.
The Bitches at the ranch came and went, staying a night or two, or a week. There were some of what they called “survivors.” Jade knew the black wariness in their eyes. Some were counselors like Elliott. Rape crisis, social workers, lawyers. Dykes, trans people, and even some good old-fashioned cis women.
They had secret meetings, and Jade wasn’t allowed in to those. So she knew stuff was up, stuff that she could entirely fuck up if she had a mind to.
The Bitches weren’t out there killing. Not yet, anyway. It was all cyber attacks, so far. There was constant, furious blogging going on. Petitions. Twitter campaigns.
And the cyber storm had stepped up to hurricane level since the election, the hostile takeover of the pussy grabber. Like that was any surprise to anyone? They were fucked, of course, the entire country was entirely fucked—but they always had been.
She took apples from the barrel and fed Christobel, then the other three horses, stroking their long noses, looking into their ancient eyes.
Then she headed for the ranch house.
It was huge. She’d gone around and counted one day: ten bedrooms of different sizes, although a lot of them were always locked. Whoever owned the place had the bucks, obvs, but if that person was ever there, Jade hadn’t sussed her yet.
But it was more homey than fancy. The furniture was old and lived in. It seemed kind of like something out of an old black-and-white movie you’d see on cable at Christmas. Jade had her own room, with a four-poster bed and doilies and shit, like she was a real person.
She came in the front door and dumped her riding boots in the mudroom.
Just walking into the main hall, she knew something was up. First of all, no one was in the great room or the kitchen.
That left the library. But to get there, she had to walk by Her.
There was an alcove in the hall that had been set up as an altar to Santa Muerte, the skeleton woman. Lady Death.
Jade approached, as always, with trepidation and stopped in front of her, staring up at the five-foot-tall idol: A skeleton dressed in purple velvet robes, with a lace shawl over her skull. A cigarette stuck jauntily in her bony jaw.
The altar was covered by a glittering cloth. Fat candles burned on top of it and offerings were piled in front of the saint: coins, flowers, candy, a bottle of tequila.
Her hollow eyes glared out at Jade, and Jade shivered. But she couldn’t look away.
The rest of them, the Bitches, they didn’t
really believe in her. They were using her as a prop, some kind of mascot for their cause. But they hadn’t been out there on the filthy streets of the Tenderloin and International Boulevard. They hadn’t seen the skeleton hovering in the shadows, watching the mongers cruising teenage girls and younger. They hadn’t felt the rage heating the ancient bones as she watched the forced blowjobs in alleys. Hadn’t felt her lust to kill.
The Bitches didn’t believe. But Jade knew that you didn’t have to believe in something for it to be real.
Every gift they put in front of her, every chocolate, every dollar, every cigarette, all of it—was making her more alive.
Alive enough that Jade could see her almost all the time now.
She stared into the hollow eyes and whispered, “What do you want? Just say it.”
The black buzzing thoughts rose, like a swarm of wasps inside her . . .
Voices.
But this time the voices weren’t in her head. They were coming from the library.
She stepped quickly back from the altar and moved down the hall.
The library was the best: a two-story room with shelves of books all around the walls of the first floor and also on the top balcony. The Bitches used it as a conference room. Now the door was closed and she could hear the raised voices behind it. A lot of voices, talking fast over each other. A fight.
She made her steps soft and moved across the floor silently, then hovered outside the door, listening.
“. . . front page news . . .”
“. . . hit before. We’re out ahead of the curve—”
“Barely. It’s going to come any minute.”
“Let it come. Let him announce. We’re ready, now.”
Judging from voices, the layered quality of sound, there were more than two dozen women in the library. Three, maybe. Something big was up.
Jade knew the layout of the room; she could picture it in her head. They were having their meeting around the old oak table on the lower floor. And she knew that she could get onto the balcony through a second-floor door. If she was careful, no one on the ground floor would see her come in.
Hunger Moon (The Huntress/FBI Thrillers Book 5) Page 5