by Lisa Jackson
Sissterr . . . How he’d given the word a horrid sound. Her flesh crawled as she remembered the sibilant sound of his voice, a hiss that grated, like talons running down a blackboard.
Justice was bent on destruction and chaos and killing, and though she hadn’t been before, Laura, within the sterile hospital walls, sensed she was definitely in his sights now.
Mrs. Shields was sitting up in bed, her beady, dark eyes regarding Laura with avid curiosity as she walked into the room. She was in her fifties and had been through knee replacement surgery. “How many times do I have to push this button?” she demanded. “I need painkillers, Nurse Adderley. Where’s your husband?”
“My ex-husband,” Laura said for about the tenth time.
“I need more pain medication. I’m supposed to keep ‘on top of the pain,’ that’s what I was told, to not be at a ‘ten on the chart,’ right?” She was referring to the pain management chart that had been pinned to her wall, a row of smiley faces where the smile disintegrated to a frown as the level of pain increased. Zero was pain free; ten was excruciating, the face on the chart twisted in serious agony, a far cry from Mrs. Shields’s primarily ticked-off expression. “Right now, I’m at about a level twenty!” she insisted and, when Laura didn’t respond quickly enough, added, “I need Dr. Adderley . . . stat!”
“You’re on the medication levels he prescribed,” Laura said calmly as she tried to take the woman’s temperature.
“It’s not enough!” Mrs. Sheilds said, around the thermometer.
Her voice had risen, and it brought Nurse Nina Perez to the doorway. Nina, an attractive woman in her forties, was Laura’s immediate boss, and she was fiercely devoted to her job. She also was fair and could assess a situation quickly. “Everything all right in here?”
“No!” Mrs. Shields had been scheduled to leave earlier in the day, but she was one of those rare patients who wanted to stay in the hospital as long as possible. She was an attention seeker who had bullied her husband for so long that he seemed to have no identity and no ability to make decisions.
“I need more painkillers,” Mrs. Shields declared as Laura removed the thermometer and noted a reading of 98.6. Perfectly normal. “And here. Fill this up.” Mrs. Shields thrust her water glass at Laura, who took it from her hand. Laura’s fingers brushed hers, and a tingle fled up Laura’s nerves to her brain.
Pancreas.
The word pulsed across her mind. Vivid. Red.
She nearly dropped the glass.
Laura knew, with certainty, that Mrs. Shields would contract pancreatic cancer at some future point and that the disease would ultimately lead to her death. Laura received these messages from time to time when she touched another human’s flesh, and it was this odd ability that had first steered her toward a career in medicine. She couldn’t tell anyone about it, just as she couldn’t tell anyone about her private communication with Justice Turnbull, but she trusted it implicitly.
“Let me see,” Nurse Perez said. She turned toward the woman’s IV and examined the drip. Laura suspected that it was all an act for the bristling Mrs. Shields. The woman was being given the proper amount of medication.
Laura asked her casually, “Does cancer run in your family?”
“No. Why?” She was suspicious.
“I thought I saw it in your medical file.” She poured water into the glass from a near empty pitcher on Mrs. Shields’s tray near her bed, then noted how much fluid the patient was taking in.
The older woman harrumphed, then admitted, “My father had cancer of the pancreas. Killed him in his fifties.”
Nina Perez gave Laura a searching look; it wasn’t usual for the floor nurses to pore over their patients’ medical history. The doctors ordered the protocol, and the nurses followed through.
Laura, offering a smile she didn’t really feel, said, “With all the tests you’ve had for this surgery, I’m sure you’ve checked that, too.”
“I’m not sure of anything!” Mrs. Shields declared. Her nostrils flared slightly, and there was a definite purse to her lips. “Tell your husband to check on that, too!”
My ex, Laura thought, but nodded on her way out. She was grateful to Nina Perez for not questioning her too closely, but now that she’d “heard” this information, she wanted to follow through. So thinking, she had to search out Byron, catching him coming out of the staff room. That boyish smile she’d once found charming curved his lips, and his eyes definitely sparked as he joked with one of the nurse’s aides—a girl with round doe eyes, pert nose, and was probably just into her twenties. Her face was bright and flushed as she looked up at him with an adoration she didn’t bother to hide.
Laura didn’t know whether she was disgusted or amused.
Byron’s latest woman—definitely not this girl—wasn’t the kind to take his flirting with a forgiving attitude.
Spying his ex-wife out of the corner of his eye, Byron stopped short, as if caught in a nefarious act.
Serves you right, Laura thought as the clueless aide wandered away, gazing back at Byron longingly and even waving her fingers coquettishly before catching a glimpse of Laura, frowning slightly, then rounding the corner to disappear.
A ninny, Laura thought, but bit her tongue. Who cared?
It was surprising to find that she didn’t.
But you’re pregnant. With his child.
Ignoring that persistent and irritating voice in her head, she said, “I was checking on Mrs. Shields. She told me her father died of pancreatic cancer in his fifties, about the age she is now.”
“I know her history,” he bit out, obviously irritated. “Why?”
“I don’t know. I just thought maybe it was something to recheck.”
“What? Why?” he demanded, affronted.
“Due diligence.”
“So now you’re the doctor?”
She wasn’t going there, wasn’t going to be drawn into a no-win discussion, and Byron’s pager erupted, anyway, and he stormed off. Fortunately, in the direction of Mrs. Shields’s room. Good. He could deal with her.
She walked the other direction but felt him glance over his shoulder and give her an assessing look. The way he always did when she became a puzzle, something he couldn’t begin to understand. His ex-wife just wasn’t a square peg that fit snugly into the square hole he’d wanted to force her into.
Not that it mattered any longer.
Laura pushed aside all thoughts of him and, for now, her unexpected pregnancy. For now, she concentrated on doing her job and keeping Justice, the monster, at bay.
Thankfully, the rest of her shift was uneventful, but as she was driving to her house, her senses were on high alert. She hoped to hell they’d caught Justice already, but she suspected that hope was unlikely. If he were captured, she believed he would blast out a raging message to her, and since that last sibilant ssssisterrrr, he’d been quiet.
The house she and Byron had rented was a two-bedroom with white trim and gray shingles. One bathroom. Built in the fifties, renovated in the seventies, left to disintegrate over time. She and Byron had bought a condo in downtown Portland, and then the housing market had tumbled and they’d sold for a small loss. It had soured Byron on real estate; he hated losing anything. So, they’d chosen this rental for its proximity to the hospital and signed a six-month lease, which had turned into month-to-month as time had marched on. Once Byron had moved out, Laura was grateful for the cheap rent, even if it did come with a leaky bathroom faucet.
Pulling up to the back porch, she cut the engine and climbed from her Subaru. Byron drove a black Porsche, but Laura had preferred her dark green Outback. The Porsche was leased and Byron’s affair; Laura owned the Outback in her own name. Another blessing.
Hurrying past the rhododendrons long past blooming, she heard the rumble of the Pacific Ocean and smelled the thick, damp scent of the sea as she walked along the cement walk to her porch. The neighbor’s black cat slid under the porch as she climbed the two steps and unlocked the
back door.
Once inside the small kitchen, she snapped on the lights, then dropped her purse and coat on the counter. Its chipped Formica had been scrubbed to a shine when Laura moved in, and she’d repainted all the interior cabinets, trim, and walls herself. Tired it might be, but it was bright and white.
And home.
Her sanctuary.
She’d thought that she might feel a bit of nostalgia, a loss, when Byron had moved out, but all she’d really experienced was relief, a quiet peace.
Until today.
When Justice had reached out to her and reminded her that she was different. Growing up at Siren Song had made her so. Now she was vulnerable . . . so very vulnerable. Sighing, she sat down in one of the two café chairs surrounding the small glass table, put her elbows against the surface, and buried her face in her hands.
The baby . . . a baby . . .
She should go to the lodge and talk to Aunt Catherine, tell her that Cassandra’s prediction had come true. But Justice was out there. Loose. Waiting for someone to make a move. And she, being outside the gates, was the logical choice.
Oh, dear God.
She shuddered. She’d never told Byron about her past. She’d simply said she was estranged from her mother and she’d never known her father. She’d been in her second year of nursing at the hospital where he’d been a resident when they met, and he’d just become a full-fledged osteopath when they’d started dating. She’d been starry-eyed and too eager, and he’d been intrigued by her ability to understand, practically diagnose, underlying problems with his patients that had nothing to do with the broken bones he corrected. He called it her instinct, and they both let it be an understood, and basically untouched, thing between them. Now she knew it was what had set her apart from the other young nurses and medical staff that cast admiring glances in his direction. When he’d casually suggested marriage, she’d jumped at the chance. She’d ignored his selfish traits. She simply hadn’t cared. She’d wanted the whole picture: the house with the picket fence, 2.5 children, a dog, and a husband. She’d suspected Byron wasn’t as deep as she was. The fact that he hadn’t been all that interested in her family had been one clue, but she’d thought it wouldn’t matter if she was more in love than he.
On that, she’d been wrong.
So wrong.
He was not only shallow, but he was unfaithful. And uncaring. And unrepentant. He’d wanted her for his wife. He was intrigued with her “instinct,” but he wasn’t going to be monogamous for anyone. That was simply the way it was. She’d tried to accept the rules but been unable. She’d tried once to make believe they could work their way back together, and that was a complete failure, for which she now was pregnant.
With Byron’s child. For so long she’d wanted a baby, hoped for a child, and now . . . oh, God, now she felt a fierce love for this baby but didn’t kid herself that raising the child—Byron’s child—alone would be easy.
She sat at the table a long time, finally got up and heated water in the microwave and, when the timer dinged, dipped a packet of decaf tea into the steaming cup. As the fragrant tea steeped, she turned on the television and caught breaking news.
Her heart nearly stopped.
The narrow face of Channel Seven’s Pauline Kirby, her short, slick dark hair blowing a bit in the evening breeze, was reporting that Justice Turnbull, a known murderer, had escaped from Halo Valley Security Hospital. Two men had been critically injured. One was fighting for his life.
“Oh, dear God.” Laura stared at the screen.
“A madman is loose,” Pauline was saying, and Laura recognized the redwood and stone facade of the mental hospital in the background, filmed earlier this evening, and shivered to her toes.
Her tea forgotten, she watched the rest of the short report while her heart drummed in her chest and her worst fears were confirmed.
She wished suddenly, mightily, that there was someone out there who could find Justice Turnbull, dig him out from under whatever rock he chose to hide, expose him, and make sure he was locked away so deep that he could never hurt her or the new life growing inside her, a life she was already bonding with.
CHAPTER 3
It had been a less than interesting day for Harrison Frost, but then they all were since he’d been fired, let go, canned, kicked in the ass, and ordered ten million miles away from the Portland Ledger and his old job. One day he was a respected investigative reporter; the next he was dog meat. All because he’d tweaked a few tails that didn’t want to be tweaked. And he would do it again. His brother-in-law’s death was a homicide no matter how many people wanted to shriek otherwise, and at some point he was going to prove that fact.
But tonight . . . tonight he was following another story, one with less drama but one that was a fascinating character study nonetheless. He was sitting at an outdoor café table, scrunched down in a half-lounging manner by design, staring across Broadway—Seaside, Oregon’s main drag—toward a waffle cone stand as this surprisingly soft June day faded into night. His right arm was hanging loose, his fingers touching the fur of his sister’s fuzzy mutt, Chico. He’d be lucky if the mean little bastard didn’t turn around and bite him. The beast seemed to have an aversion to men of all kinds, but the dog sure as hell liked the girls, and that was exactly the reason Harrison had deigned to take him out. Harrison was on a story that involved teenagers, and he didn’t want the young girls to think he was some creepy guy, so he kept Chico around to make him seem more approachable.
Now the dog growled low in its throat, so Harrison carefully removed his hand. No need to risk injury for the sake of his costuming. Chico had snapped at him enough times for him to respect the little bastard’s space. Jesus. The only thing good about this assignment was it didn’t require much in the way of self-realization and reflection. He could just move forward and forget—or at least put aside—the events that had led him here. It was a job. It didn’t require anything from him but to be in the present.
Harrison glanced at his watch. It was 9:00 p.m. The girl Harrison currently had under surveillance was a sixteen-year-old thief with a bad attitude, a habit of chewing gum with her mouth open, and an enormous sense of entitlement. She and her girlfriends and a few guy friends appeared to have banded together and started stealing items from the more affluent families in their neighborhoods or schools. Not that they weren’t affluent themselves. It was a lark, an exercise, a way to kill time. They were giddy and drunk with power and their own secrets. They were zigzagging toward something worse: home invasion. It would take only one time for a home owner to catch them in the act and the situation would turn from burglary to something far worse. The Seaside police weren’t really aware of the crimes yet, as the victims had been unilaterally silent. Maybe they thought their own kids were involved? Maybe they even were. The bottom line was these kids weren’t on anyone’s radar but his, and Harrison had stumbled on the story rather than sought it out.
He’d moved from Portland to the coast, following his sister, Kirsten, and her daughter, Delilah, whom everyone called Didi, after Kirsten’s husband, Manuel Rojas, was gunned down. Harrison hadn’t meant to move with his sister. He’d intended to stay hot on the story and expose Manny’s murderers for the brutal killers they were. But that hadn’t happened; and when Kirsten, sad and broken, quietly asked if he’d come with her, he’d reluctantly done as she suggested; and now, over a year later, he’d just moved from her little bungalow into his own apartment, which was full of unopened boxes, a blow-up double mattress and sleeping bag, and a couple of camping chairs that could fold up into a sling for easy packing. Each sported a black, plastic cup-holder space in the chair’s right arm. He’d set many a beer in that spot and nursed it on the front porch of his sister’s place and now on the miniature side deck of his own.
His sister’s husband, Manny, had been killed in a senseless shooting rampage when a kid opened fire on a group of people waiting to get into a nightclub before turning the gun on himself. Manny was in
that line, trying to stop an argument that had arisen between two men over an anorexically slim blond woman who was smoking a cigarette nearby. Then the kid suddenly pulled out a .38 and sprayed several rounds into a madly fleeing crowd. Manny and one of the men were killed instantly, the other man and a woman and her boyfriend were critically injured and later died in the hospital, and the twenty-year-old shooter, who was underage and had never been allowed into the nightclub, turned the gun on himself and pulled the trigger. He was later found to be an unemployed high school dropout who was also a pharmacological repository. He was filled with enough meds to knock out an elephant. The anorexic blond woman was unhurt and had simply sauntered off. She was only known to exist because of the security cameras.
It was ruled a terrible tragedy. The blame rested entirely on the extremely high and screwed-up kid, who’d been dabbling in drugs since anyone could remember. But he’d never shown suicidal or murderous tendencies. He’d never shown aggression. When Harrison got a look at the security tape of the shooting, he saw the kid had pulled out the weapon and shot Manny point-blank. Then he seemed to wake up and realize what he’d done, and he just sprayed gunfire from left to right and took out whoever was in his arc of fire before he killed himself.
Manny’s partner in the nightspot, Bill Koontz, obtained full ownership of the place, while Kirsten received a small insurance stipend.
Then Harrison got an anonymous tip from a cool female voice that suggested maybe the drugged-up shooter was somehow connected to the business partner.
The blond woman? Maybe. Or maybe someone else. But as soon as Harrison started writing pieces that contained more questions and conjecture about Bill Koontz than cold, hard facts, he was shown the door of the Ledger.