by Lisa Jackson
She was no one. She had to die.
“Sisssterrr,” he whispered aloud, sending a message to the others like her. This one didn’t matter, but they would know what he’d done and their black souls would shiver.
Shoving her limp body into the passenger seat, he leaned her head back against the headrest. Her eyes were wide open; her tongue protruding a bit. Closing her eyes with his fingers, he gave her a quick consideration. She looked dead. He buckled her in, then carefully turned her face toward him, arranging it so that it looked as if she were nodding forward in sleep.
Then he adjusted the driver’s seat to give himself some legroom and backed carefully onto the highway, heading into the fog-shrouded day.
Sissstterrr . . .
The message sizzled beneath Laura’s skin, and she straightened with a jerk from where she’d laid her head on the table and fallen asleep.
She blinked several times, coming back to the moment with difficulty. She was home. Dozing in a chair. Memories crashed through her brain. In the parking lot at Davy Jones’s Locker she’d managed to convince Harrison Frost that she would contact him immediately should Justice contact her, and so they’d parted ways. And now this—Justice’s mental assault.
Fully awake, she mentally castigated herself for talking so freely to Frost, wondering what it was about him that had made her want to trust him so much, envelop him, drag him into her world. And him, being a reporter, no less.
This dozing . . . this lapse in concentration had cost her. She’d inadvertently released her grip on her mental wall, and Justice had slipped his message inside.
Sissterrr . . . His hiss curled through her brain.
Her heart shuddered. Oh, God, no!
Though Laura had almost instantly slammed her wall against him, she’d received a backwash of information that left her quivering with fear.
He’s killed someone. A woman. Someone in his way.
An innocent!
Climbing unsteadily to her feet, she walked to the window and stared out the panes, her fingers trailing on the sill. She realized Justice wanted her to know. Wanted them all to know. She wasn’t even sure what he’d thrown out to the mental airwaves was true, but he certainly wanted her to think so. To terrify her.
“Bastard!” she muttered.
She shouldn’t have let Harrison go, she thought now, grabbing for her purse and digging for his card and her cell phone. With shaking hands she first inputted his cell number into her call log. Then she held her thumb over the green button, ready to place the call.
But . . . was this the right thing to do? He wanted her to signal Justice herself, and she wasn’t certain she could.
But what if Justice really had killed someone? Should she call the police? Someone?
Pressing her hand to her mouth, she counted her heartbeats and sank into one of the living room chairs by the small fireplace. Justice wanted her to believe the woman was dead. If she was, then she was no longer in danger; Justice had taken care of that. And if it were an untruth, then if she called the police or Harrison, for that matter, they would want to know where she’d gotten her information and it would all be a mess for nothing.
Harrison would believe her more than the authorities, but it was risky to alert him, too.
But what else could she do? What should she do?
Staring down at the phone, she let her poised thumb descend to the green call button and dial through to his cell.
Saturday afternoon, with threatening fog like a gray fur coat hanging on the mountains and down the beach to the south, but not yet covering the city of Seaside. Harrison was seated at the table outside the coffee and ice cream shop, this time without Chico’s company, thank God.
He’d ordered a coffee, which he’d left untouched. His mind was full of his morning with Laura—make that Lorelei—Adderley. Ex–Mrs. Byron Adderley. A member of the cult itself and a onetime resident at Siren Song.
That, in itself, was a story. Not one she was willing to broadcast, yet, but a story worth cultivating.
However, it was only a part of the Justice Turnbull saga, he thought as he watched the pedestrians and motorists cruise slowly down the long stretch of Broadway and felt the cool breath of sea air against the back of his neck.
He hadn’t wanted to leave her, yet he couldn’t just demand to be her bodyguard. She wouldn’t stand for it, and anyway, he had things to take care of, too. He didn’t much believe her ability to “talk” to Justice, but it didn’t matter in the least. She was connected to the cult. A card-carrying member. And if by some strange kink in reality, she could sense where the psycho was, well, okay, he’d go with that. All the better.
Didn’t matter. One way or the other, the whole thing was a reporter’s dream. He took a long gulp from his cooling coffee.
“Hey, mister,” a cold female voice said behind his left ear.
It took an effort not to jump at the sound, but Harrison covered up a momentary lapse by stretching and yawning and saying, “Yeah, what?” in a bored tone.
She came around into his view. It was not the girl he’d spoken with the day before. This was the one who worked at the gelato store. The hair at her crown was braided, the rest of her dark tresses falling over her shoulders. A tattoo of some kind of heart shape peeked out of the neckline of her uniform, while several woven bracelets surrounded her left wrist.
And she was pissed, but good.
“What are you doing?” she demanded. “Hanging around here, trying to pick up jailbait? I should call the cops.”
She was pretty, in a kind of pinched way. Suspicion made her seem older than her probably sixteen or seventeen years; it also made her seem harder.
“Can’t a guy just be jobless and aimless without being a pervert?” he snapped back at her. “I’ve got an old lady, okay? She’s about all I can handle, and she’s at least old enough to have some brains!”
She bristled. Surprised. Then quickly armed for a new attack. “What are you saying, mister? That I’m stupid?”
“I’m just sitting here, okay?”
“Like you’ve been for days and days.”
“Hey, I buy coffee. It’s a free country. Go be miserable around somebody else.” He waved his hand, shooing her away.
“I saw you talking to Lana. Asking all kinds of questions that are none of your business!”
He gave her a hard stare, like he was totally annoyed at her for getting in his space. “Well, Jenny, I don’t know any Lana,” he snarled. “So, why don’t you just go back to your job and leave me alone?”
Her eyes widened a bit, and then she clapped her hand over the built-in name tag on her red-and-white-striped uniform top.
“You . . . stay away from us!” she sputtered and then stalked back to the flip-up counter that was her entry to her side of the shop.
“Gladly,” he muttered, stretching out in the chair and throwing her a dark look of pure disgust.
Inside, he was jubilant. He’d already known Jenny’s name from reading it on her name tag, but he hadn’t known Lana’s. Now he had two of the seven members of the Deadly Sinners, and Lana had alluded to N.V., which made three. And these kids weren’t exactly hiding their exploits and staying under the radar. They were entitled and angry and looking for attention. It wouldn’t be hard to figure out the whole lot of them.
Idly, he wondered when Jenny got off work. He thought it would be a simple matter to trail her. He’d bet she and Lana would get together and meet the others. Down on the beach. With all these damn cleanup people swarming across the sand, they would be just another group among many.
And it was Saturday. To date, their burglaries had all been on Saturday nights.
His cell phone rang and he didn’t recognize the number. Second time in two days, he thought, annoyed. “Frost.”
“Hi, it’s Laura Adderley. I . . . I’m calling you . . . because . . .” She trailed off on an intake of breath.
He was surprised. Pleasantly surprised. The way she’d
shut down this morning, after their huevos, hadn’t boded well for her calling him with information anytime soon. As it stood, she’d phoned within a matter of a couple hours. “Because?” he coaxed.
“I think Justice may have killed someone.”
CHAPTER 15
Harrison was stunned.
Had he heard right? Justice Turnbull had killed someone, and Laura knew about it? All his attention was now on the conversation, the sounds of Seaside in June fading.
“You’re sure about this?” he said into his cell.
“Yes. No. Maybe. But . . . yeah, I’m sure,” she said, and he heard the tremor in Laura’s voice. “It’s a woman. Not one of my family, I’m pretty sure. Someone else.” He heard the panic rising in her voice.
“Hey, slow down. Are you okay?”
“No. I’m definitely not okay. Oh, God.”
Frowning, thinking hard, he kicked out his chair, climbed to his feet. “How do you know?”
“You know how I know. I explained.”
He glanced over at Jenny, who was standing behind the counter, her arms crossed under her breasts as she glared suspiciously at him. Giving her his shoulder, he asked, “He called you? Telepathically?”
A pause. “Well . . . yes.”
“And . . . ?”
“He wanted me to know . . . he’d killed someone. Oh, God I . . . I don’t know who. I know I sound like a freak but—”
“You don’t. Not to me.” He tried to cut her off before she really lost it.
“This has never happened before.”
“Try to calm down.”
“Are you nuts? Calm down? Did you hear me? He just murdered someone!”
“Okay,” he said, pulling out one hand and splaying his fingers as if she could see him.
“Hey, buddy! Watch it.” A woman jogging past nearly ran into his arm. He ignored her.
“Okay. Where are you?”
“At my house.”
“Where’s that?”
She hesitated.
He couldn’t blame her. He was virtually a stranger.
“I want to help.” He didn’t remind her that she had called him.
She let out a long breath, then, with a “What does it matter, anyway?” rattled off her address. Quickly. As if the longer the words stayed in her throat, they might choke her.
“Got it. I’ll see you in about half an hour,” he told her, calculating the drive without traffic and fog. Inaccurate for a Saturday afternoon on any day in June, worse today because of the fog that was between Seaside and Deception Bay, and the extra cars driven over to the coast for the beach cleanup, but he didn’t want her to think it would take him as long as it really would. She might regret everything and try to back out of seeing him.
Glancing back once to Jenny, he saw she was helping a customer, her attention on scooping up some pink-tinged ice cream into a waffle cone, while the woman counted out bills from her wallet and a toddler clung to her leg. He knew that he was leaving the robbery story at a critical time, that Jenny might just lead him to the rest of the teen criminals, but he didn’t care.
But Justice Turnbull was the story of the moment.
And Laura might be in danger. Alone. Vulnerable to whatever Turnbull wanted to set into motion. And you were instrumental in this, weren’t you? Encouraged her to “communicate” with a homicidal maniac.
He felt more than a little pang of guilt, but then he hadn’t really bought into the telepathy, or whatever she called it. . . . The lodge, dead mother, creepy aunt, mental communication, and walls she built in her mind all sounded a little paranoid.
Except that Justice Turnbull was on the loose again.
That thought spurred him on.
He hurried to his Chevrolet, jumped in, and drove with repressed urgency, one hand on the horn at the lollygagging weekenders, who were all over the place for the Clean Up The Beach!! event. The miles rolled slowly under the Impala’s wheels, and Harrison was a bundle of nerves, alternately standing on the brakes and willing himself not to pound on his horn at the slow-moving traffic. Vans, SUVs, sedans, pickups . . . a line of summer traffic that stretched along 101.
Swearing under his breath, he finally reached the turnoff to her house, a humble cottage with loads of deferred maintenance. It had been over an hour since her call.
“Damn.”
Jumping from the car, he snatched up his laptop from the backseat, then set it back down again, leaving it with his digital recorder. After locking the Impala, he patted his back pocket for the small notebook that always resided there. He didn’t want her to think he was setting up shop, though that was what his half-baked plan was. At least partially.
There were creaky wooden steps that led to an equally creaky front porch, all painted gray, worn through on the treads, listing slightly. He pounded on the door, peering through one of the three diamond window inserts that ran in a diagonal across the top. He watched through the tiny pane as she hurried to answer him, appearing from the back of the house, her darkened hair tucked behind her ears.
When she opened the door, all he saw were her eyes, greenish blue, serious, careful, full of secrets. And scared to death.
For an instant, he wanted to yank her forward and fold her into his arms, to tell her that it would be all right. To even brush his lips over her hair and comfort her.
Holey moley!
He slammed on the mental brakes before he did something stupid and was shocked by his reaction. His arm actually reached out before he caught himself, and he ended up gesturing lamely to cover the lapse. What the hell was wrong with him?
“You okay?” he asked, and she, too, appeared to want to rush into his arms, but she didn’t, just hung onto the side of the door and let out her breath.
“Yeah. I mean, I have to be.” She managed a weak, unhappy smile and nervously peered over his shoulder. “Come on in.” Ushering him inside, she shut the door and shoved the dead bolt into place. Then they stood in the foyer, with the gray light emanating through the three diamond panes. She chewed on a corner of her lip and shook her head. “He’s toying with us,” she said softly. “He wanted me to know what he’d done. That he’d murdered someone.” Her eyes thinned thoughtfully. “He wanted to crow about it.”
“He told you his motives?” Though it still seemed ludicrous, the whole telepathy thing, he let that go. For her, at the very least, it was real.
“I just . . . Oh, God, sometimes it’s like I understand him.” She shivered. “Sick, huh?”
“No judgment calls here,” he said. “So who’s this woman you think he killed?”
She shook her head. “I don’t know.”
“Did you . . . see . . . her?”
“No.”
“Well, what happened? What did he say to you?”
“You sound impatient,” she said suddenly.
“I am impatient,” Harrison responded right back. “If he’s killed someone, you bet I’m impatient!”
Her blue eyes assessed him, charged him with lying. “You don’t believe me. Not really. You just want information and you think I’m an idiot!”
When she turned, he grabbed her arm, and she jerked back as if he’d burned her. “You called me,” he reminded her.
“And I thought you’d be a better choice than the police. Am I wrong?”
She was half turned away and gave him only her face in profile. He noticed her lips and chin and the curve of her cheek. The downy softness of the hairs at her temple. The wing of her brow, many shades lighter than her hair color.
“I don’t know what I’m doing,” she said to the room at large, as if it were an awakening. She walked through an archway.
“You’ve got a killer after you,” he stated bluntly, following her into the living room with its rock fireplace and furniture that had seen better days. “That, I believe, is fact. I don’t know about all your communication with him and your family, but I don’t really care. You’re not safe. A lot of people aren’t, like maybe this woman
he let you know about.”
She shrugged and shook her head, her arms wrapped around her torso, as she stared through the window facing the street and driveway. His Impala, parked in the drive, was visible, as was a house, a similar bungalow, across the street.
“If you had something more concrete, I’d tell you to call the cops.”
“I don’t want to talk to the authorities,” she stated quickly.
“I know. And I get why you don’t. Hey, I’ve had my own problems with them, and sometimes they’re just too damn difficult to deal with. Take Detective Fred Clausen, for instance, at the TCSD. I was looking into some unsavory behavior on the part of the deputies there, and he barely contained himself from physically throwing me into the street.” She didn’t seem to hear him, but he soldiered on. “’Course, I was . . . inferring . . . that the guy had looked the other way when his brother had sex with an underage high school student, and that didn’t go over so well.”
“Inferring?”
“Okay, accusing. I wasn’t wrong about the bastard, but nobody wanted to hear it, especially Clausen. I ran the piece anyway, though my editor was quivering in his boots.”
“What happened?” she asked, turning slightly so he could see her profile again. There was something sinuous in her movements that she was completely unaware of.
“Guy got fired from his coaching position at the school for some ‘other’ reason,” he said. “Then the girl turned eighteen and they took off together. Everybody was pissed at me, even her parents. They didn’t like the affair, but they didn’t like publicity even more. No charges were filed. But the story was true. It happened when I first got to the Breeze and I was getting over a few image problems of my own at the time.”
“Such as?” Now she turned all the way to face him.
In for a penny, in for a pound. He didn’t like talking about what had happened to Manny, but she’d opened up to him. Now it was his turn. Tit, as they say, for tat. “I accused my brother-in-law’s business partner of setting up his murder and making it look like an accident.”