by Karen Rose
Deacon ceased paying attention to the woman when the man approached. It was Jordan O’Bannion, but not. Jeremy and Jordan looked alike. Moved alike. Except for the mustache that this man wore, they were the same. Twins.
‘Did we know they were twins?’ Deacon murmured so that only Bishop could hear.
‘I didn’t,’ Bishop murmured back. ‘Faith didn’t think to mention it?’
Deacon thought back to that conversation next to the family cemetery. Right before he’d held her against him for the first time. Twins, actually. Jordan and Jeremy. ‘She did, but she didn’t say they were identical.’
Jeremy stopped in the doorway, his left hand on the young woman’s shoulder in a gesture that was more fatherly than romantic. ‘What seems to be the problem, Detectives?’
Deacon’s gaze dropped from the man’s face to his hands. Gloves. Jeremy wore skin-colored gloves that appeared to be made of thin leather.
‘He’s a special agent,’ Hailey said softly, pointing to Deacon.
‘I see,’ Jeremy said in a way that told Deacon he was being actively appreciated. A tactic to throw him off his game, he was certain.
‘I called yesterday,’ Deacon said. ‘We’d like to talk to you about a situation that’s arisen.’
‘Oh. Well I have to confess that I didn’t get your message myself. My partner gets my voicemail for me. What’s happened?’
Deacon wanted to frown but did not. Jeremy had not only received his message, he’d returned it. ‘May we come in? I’d rather not have this kind of conversation on your doorstep.’
‘Show them into the parlor, Hailey. Perhaps they’d like some refreshment.’
They were escorted through the foyer, in which Deacon immediately recognized both the curving staircase in the entryway and the design of the wallpaper. The interior of the house had been modeled after the house in Mount Carmel. A glance at Bishop confirmed that she’d seen the resemblance as well.
Jeremy sat in an overstuffed chair and gestured to the sofa with his left hand. He slipped his right hand – also gloved – in his pocket. ‘You mentioned a situation?’
‘Yes, one that revolves around your family home in Mount Carmel,’ Deacon said, pasting a pleasant expression on his face as he and Bishop sat.
Jeremy’s eyes grew instantly frosty. ‘You’re mistaken. This is my family home. Right here.’
‘Jeremy? Is everything all right?’ The question came from a man in his early forties who rushed into the room looking as if he expected to have to save Jeremy, presumably from Deacon and Bishop.
Deacon swallowed his sigh. While this man’s face looked nothing like Peter Combs’s, he was built like him. Same size and shape. One more bruiser to add to the possible suspect list.
‘I’m fine, Keith. Please join us.’ Jeremy patted the arm of his chair. ‘These officers have come to ask me questions about the old O’Bannion homestead.’
Keith fixed his gaze on Deacon’s face. ‘You’re the one who called last night. I expected you to call for an appointment. Dr O’Bannion is a busy man.’
It was Keith who had left the voicemail, Deacon realized. ‘I expected that my message would have been returned by Dr O’Bannion himself, as it regarded the safety of his niece.’
‘Faith? What’s happened to her?’ Jeremy looked up at Keith. ‘Why didn’t you tell me?’
‘Because I don’t care about Faith or any of that group of bottom-feeders that call themselves your family,’ Keith gritted out. ‘I didn’t realize it was urgent.’
‘I believe I used the word “urgent” in my message,’ Deacon said mildly.
Keith’s cheeks turned a dull, angry red. ‘I’m sorry, Jeremy. I’d hoped I could deal with the detectives for you.’
He has a temper, Deacon thought. Good to know.
‘Well, we’re here now,’ Bishop said, her tone neutral. ‘I didn’t get your name, sir?’
Jeremy’s chin lifted a fraction. ‘This is my partner, Keith O’Bannion. He’s privy to all my business. He can hear whatever you have to say to me. What’s this about Faith’s safety?’
‘She’s not your family,’ Keith hissed and Jeremy patted his knee.
‘I know, I know,’ he murmured soothingly. ‘But she was just a child when all of that happened. She had nothing to do with any of it.’
‘She got the house, Jeremy,’ Keith protested under his breath. ‘It should have been yours.’
Jeremy looked up at Keith, speaking to him as if they were the only two in the room. ‘Yes, she did. And yes, it should have been. But if I had gotten it, I would have had to fight Jordan to keep it, so it’s for the best. We don’t need the house, Keith. And we don’t need the money.’
‘That’s not the point,’ Keith insisted. ‘They revile you and mistreat you, but now that your niece needs your help, they come to you.’
Interesting, Deacon thought. Faith had mentioned that Jordan had said he would have to fight Jeremy to keep the house if he’d inherited, and now Jeremy was saying the same. Perhaps Granny O’Bannion had left it to Faith to keep her sons from fighting.
‘What happened to Faith, Agent Novak?’ Jeremy asked. ‘Does she need my help?’
He sounded like he really cared, but in a way that sounded a little too sincere.
‘Last night a young woman was found on the road leading to the old homestead,’ Deacon said, choosing his words carefully. ‘She’d been assaulted and barely escaped with her life.’
The two men stared at him. ‘Faith was assaulted?’ Jeremy asked, quietly horrified.
‘No. Faith found the victim. She was on her way to the house when she saw the woman in the road. She swerved to avoid her, went down an embankment and hit a tree.’
Jeremy paled slightly, a curious response. ‘Is she hurt badly?’
‘No,’ Deacon said. ‘Just a few cuts. She managed to climb the embankment and call 911.’
‘Then why are you here if she’s not hurt?’ Jeremy asked.
Deacon kept his gaze glued to their faces. ‘We found evidence that the young woman had been held prisoner in the basement of your old home.’
Jeremy’s pleasant veneer disappeared to reveal something dark and angry. ‘Why are you telling me this? I walked away from that family and that house almost twenty-five years ago. I never looked back. I’ve made a new home and a new family.’
‘I’m telling you because someone has tried to kill your niece six times in the last month.’
‘The attacks started a week after she inherited the house,’ Bishop added. ‘The latest one was early this morning. A sniper shot at her. Missed her, but injured an innocent man in the process. So we need to know where you were between two and four this morning.’
‘Are you accusing Jeremy?’ Keith asked from behind clenched teeth.
‘No,’ Deacon said. ‘But as you so accurately put it, the house should have been Dr O’Bannion’s. If we didn’t put him on our list of suspects, we wouldn’t be doing our jobs. Dr Bannion, we’re here to get your statement, to eliminate you from the list. May we have your whereabouts?’
‘I was home, asleep in my own bed,’ Jeremy said. ‘With Keith. And no, we can’t prove it.’
The agent outside had said the same, but Jeremy and Keith didn’t need to know that.
‘We’ve also talked to your brother,’ Bishop said to Jeremy.
Jeremy clenched his jaw. ‘I can only imagine what he said.’
‘He gave us his alibi for last night,’ Bishop said. ‘And then he recommended we speak with you.’ She exaggerated a hesitation, looking up at Deacon. He played along, giving her a facial shrug and a tiny nod. ‘He suggested,’ she added, ‘that you might like young women.’
‘That is a lie!’ Keith cried viciously. ‘A dirty lie. Jeremy, call your lawyer.’
‘I certainly intend to,’ Jeremy said evenly, but his hand trembled.
Now’s the time. When they’re both vulnerable and shaking. Deacon slid his sunglasses off and met Jeremy’s eyes, allowin
g his own to communicate the contempt he felt for the man.
Jeremy stiffened and stared, his gaze never flickering away. Beside him, Keith flinched. And then Jeremy surprised Deacon, closing his eyes, his shoulders slumping in weary despair. ‘What exactly did Faith tell you, Agent Novak?’
‘Why do you think she told me anything?’ Deacon asked, intrigued by the man’s response. It wasn’t the color of Deacon’s eyes he had flinched from, but the expression in them.
‘Because you look at me the way her father did. The way all of them did that day. No one has looked at me like that since. Not until today.’
Chapter Twenty-Two
Eastern Kentucky, Tuesday 4 November, 8.45 P.M.
Corinne let the pack slide to the ground and collapsed in a heap next to it. Three feet away Roza was curled into herself, her thin arms pulling her bent knees as close to her body as she could, rocking, rocking.
Roza had been so brave – but it had lasted all of ten minutes. For the next four hours Corinne had had to half drag her through the woods. Every gust of wind terrified her. Every shriek of a hawk flying overhead had her ducking, hands clamped over her ears. Every time Corinne had loosed her hold, the girl had gone all potato bug on her, rolling up into that damned ball.
Which Corinne totally understood. She’d like to curl up herself, and poor Roza had been through so much more. But there was a limit to what was humanly possible, and Corinne had hit that wall. I’m done, she thought. I’m all used up. If he comes after me now, I won’t be able to fight. She was hungry. And dehydrated. Poor Roza must be too.
She didn’t even know where they were. It was dark and they were in a huge forest. Miles and miles of forest. They hadn’t seen a single solitary person, or a house, or even another road. She’d steered them west, because that was the way she thought his car had gone when it left the cabin earlier. With no compass, she’d been depending on the sun. But it had set hours ago and there were no stars, so now she was afraid they’d been going in circles.
She pawed at the knot she’d tied in the blanket in which she’d packed their supplies, the joints in her fingers now too swollen to move properly. Each tug brought pain that, exhausted as she was, had become too much to bear.
‘Roza, honey, I can’t drag you any further. I need to eat and so do you. I need your help.’
There was no indication that Roza even heard. Just that horrible rocking, rocking, rocking.
‘I’m serious,’ Corinne snapped, letting her frustration come out. ‘I have only about five good hours that I can use my hands every day before they start to hurt. And that’s with my medicine. Now I can’t even untie this knot. You’re going to have to do this or we’re going to starve. Roza?’ She waited but got no response. ‘Roza with a zed!’
The rocking stopped and Roza lifted her head.
‘Thank you. Now come here. Please.’ Corinne held up her hand, which had locked into a claw long before. ‘I’ve helped you. Now I need your help.’
Slowly Roza uncurled her body, crossing the distance between them by scooting on her butt, her eyes down. ‘What’s wrong with your hand?’ she asked as she picked at the knot.
‘I have a disease. It’s not catching,’ Corinne added when Roza’s head jerked up in alarm. ‘It causes my joints to swell – like my knuckles and my knees.’
Roza went silent, working on the knot until it came loose. She spread the blanket out. ‘What do you want to eat? Give me your knife. I watched you open the last can. I can do it.’
‘The bean soup has protein,’ Corinne said as she handed over the knife, ‘so let’s eat that. And we need to drink some water. But be careful. Drink only a little and don’t spill any. I don’t know when we’ll find a stream to refill our bottles.’
Roza opened a bottle of water. ‘This is our last one.’
‘Thank you,’ Corinne said. ‘You have some too, okay?’
Roza obeyed, then picked up a can of soup, squinting at the label. ‘That says bean.’ She opened the can competently, then folded up the knife and gave it back to Corinne.
‘You’re awfully good at taking care of people,’ Corinne said softly.
A shrug of those frail shoulders. ‘I watched Mama do it. It was her job. Then it was mine.’
Corinne thought about the jars of eyes and swallowed hard. Roza and her mother had cared for the victims. How many had there been? Dozens, at least. ‘Did your mama tell you how she came to be in that . . . awful place?’
‘Home,’ Roza murmured. ‘It was home.’ She handed Corinne the can of soup. ‘I don’t have a spoon. I’m sorry.’
‘It’s all right. I’ve guzzled it down straight from the can before.’
Roza looked up with a slight frown. ‘Why? Didn’t you have a home?’
Corinne noted that the child’s trembling decreased as they spoke. ‘I was in the army out in the desert. Sometimes we had only a few seconds to slurp our supper down.’ She rephrased her earlier question. ‘Did your mama tell you how she came to be in your home?’
‘She said she and her sister were walking outside one night and he . . . took them.’ Roza’s dark eyes were wide. ‘You were really in the army? In the desert?’
‘Before I got sick. Yeah, I was.’ Corinne looked around at the trees, that seemed to go on for ever. ‘I hated the desert because it was hot and dry and there was sand everywhere. At least we have some shade here.’
‘Did you see a tiger?’
Corinne blinked at her, then smiled. She’d been so busy thinking of Roza as a victim that she’d forgotten she was still a child. ‘Not in the desert, no. But I did see camels.’
Roza frowned. ‘Camels?’ She shook her head. ‘I don’t know what that is.’
‘You’ve never seen a camel? It’s this . . . um. Well. How do you know what a tiger is?’
‘I saw it in a book. We would take them from the girls’ backpacks sometimes when he wasn’t looking. Mama would hide the books until he left and then we’d look at them together.’
‘Okay. Then do you know what a horse is?’
‘Of course,’ Roza said. ‘Does a camel look like that?’
‘Not exactly. Imagine a horse with really long legs and instead of the back dipping in, it bumps out.’ She drew the shape in the air. ‘They need very little water, which is why they can live in the desert. Because it’s really dry there. You said your mother was with her sister when they were taken? Was your aunt in the basement with you?’
‘For a while. But he killed her, then put her in a wooden box and buried her.’ Roza’s little face pinched. ‘My mama cried for a long, long time. He never let her say goodbye.’
Corinne had to swallow the lump in her throat. ‘I’m so sorry, Roza.’
The girl shrugged. ‘I don’t remember her very well. I was too little.’
‘Do you know how old you are?’
Roza looked offended. ‘Of course. I’m eleven.’
‘I thought so. What was your mama’s name?’
‘Amethyst. It’s a pretty purple rock. But he called her Amy. Did you kill anyone?’
Once again Corinne blinked. ‘Excuse me?’
‘When you were a soldier. Did you kill anybody?’
‘Yes. But I really would rather not talk about it, if you don’t mind.’
‘Were they bad?’
Corinne sighed. ‘Some were very bad. All of them wanted to kill me, so I guess that made them bad enough.’
‘Will you kill him?’
Ah. ‘Do you want me to?’
Roza’s dark eyes flashed hatred, raw and virulent. ‘No, I want to.’
Corinne hesitated, not wanting to say or do the wrong thing, because she believed that Roza was capable of killing the man who’d taken her mother and her aunt, who’d held her as a slave. Who’d killed so many. ‘Did he kill your mama?’
‘Not with his knives. But she got sick and couldn’t get warm. We weren’t allowed to use the stove except to make things for him, but I did anyway. I heated some
water to make her tea, just like I always did for him. But he found out.’ Her lips quivered. ‘He hit her. Again and again. She didn’t get up. I tried to make her get up. But she wouldn’t. I took her to her pallet and tried to take care of her, but she never woke up.’
‘Oh, Roza. You aren’t to blame.’
Her chin came up. ‘I know. He is. That’s why I want to kill him.’
‘We have to get out of here before we even think about that. Can you walk some more?’
A nod of brutal acceptance. ‘If I’m allowed to kill him, I will walk across the desert.’
Cincinnati, Ohio, Tuesday 4 November, 8.45 P.M.
Faith closed her laptop, having checked her email. That there was no reply from her boss to her message about her car accident made her worry. I should have called him. I shouldn’t have emailed. But she’d been so tired and distracted at the time. She’d been shot at, and then had seen a dead body under her grandmother’s basement floor.
No longer tired, she was now restless, edgy. Sitting cross-legged in Deacon’s bed, she wondered if he’d talked to her uncle Jeremy. What he’d found out.
She stretched out on the bed, trying to get the rest Dani had ordered, but a minute later she was up again. She should be exhausted, but she was too wired to sleep. Nerves jangling, she left the quiet of Novak’s bedroom and went downstairs to the living room, where Greg sat on a folding chair, hands gripping a game controller, his attention focused on the big-screen TV on the wall where a virtual battle was raging.
All in total silence. Greg had taken off his hearing aids and set them aside and had muted the television. She wondered if he’d done it because Dani had told him that Faith was supposed to be sleeping, or whether he preferred the silence. She edged into his peripheral vision, waiting until he spied her there.
He paused his game. ‘Am I bothering you?’ he asked politely, his speech a little thick, but understandable.
‘Not at all. Can you read my lips?’
The boy shrugged. ‘Well enough, I guess.’
‘Where is Dani?’ Faith asked.