by Jen Blood
“It’s at the end of the peninsula. Another ten miles, maybe,” she said without looking at him. “You really think this is what he’s planning?”
“I do,” he said without question. It was the first certainty he’d felt since this whole thing began. “If Laurie’s father owned the place, she would have access to the trucks. Nate would know that. It’s the only thing that makes sense.”
“As much as any of this makes sense,” Jamie murmured.
They hit a patch of ice; the SUV shimmied to the right. Jamie just barely touched the wheel, no tension visible on her face as she maneuvered. A split second later, they were moving forward again. Jack noted that her hands clenched a little more tightly around the steering wheel when they were on their way again, though.
“Can I ask you a question?” he asked.
“Go ahead.”
“Why are you here?”
She smiled, just barely. “Here with you, you mean.” It wasn’t a question.
“Yes. Here with me. You risked your life for me in Coba. Allowed us to stay on the island here with you. And now, you’ve come back here in a blizzard to… I don’t understand.”
“I told you: I don’t like running from a fight. And these are bad people.”
“They are bad people,” he agreed. But there are other bad people in the world. Coming back here makes no sense to me. We barely know each other.”
“No,” she said. Her mouth tightened. Her knuckles flexed. She said nothing more. Up ahead, he could just make out headlights headed toward them. He curled his fingers around the handle above the door.
“I see it,” Jamie said. She edged the SUV over to the side infinitesimally as the headlights neared. Her windshield wipers beat faster, trying to keep the snow at bay. The wind roared outside as snow pelted the steel body that separated them from the elements.
Jamie’s hands were clenched around the wheel. If it was Nate and Laurie driving a tractor trailer, Jack wondered what the hell he and Jamie were supposed to do. It wasn’t like they could stop him in this thing.
The headlights drew closer.
“It’s just a car,” Jamie said two seconds later. He took in a breath, and watched the vehicle creep past. There was a moment when he wondered if the car could still belong to Nate, but then he saw the headlights turn into a driveway they had just passed.
Jamie released a long, slow breath.
“You okay?” he asked.
“Somehow I feel like I age faster around you. I don’t think that’s a good thing.”
“Which begs the question…” he said.
She glanced in the rearview, then up ahead again. “We’ve got another five minutes before we get there, probably. You want to call Finnegan?”
“He said he’ll call if anything’s happening,” Jack said. “He has enough going on without having to update me every two minutes.”
“Right,” she said.
He studied her profile as they drove on in silence. Sometimes when a woman is quiet, she’s just quiet, he remembered Lucia telling him once. That wasn’t this, though. Jamie was quiet, certainly, but there was something she wasn’t saying.
“Look…” he began.
She glanced at him. He could just see the intensity in her eyes.
“Let it go,” she said. Something else Lucia used to say to him, often. He’d never been very good at letting things go, though.
“Whatever it is…” he began.
“Oh, for crying out loud, Jack,” she said. “It’s not something I can explain, okay? It’s just a…feeling I got, when we met in Black Falls. And then somehow you keep showing up, and the feeling gets stronger.”
He wasn’t a man prone to blushing, but he felt his cheeks heat regardless. “Oh.” Silence fell. He tried again. “It’s not that I don’t find you attractive—”
“Not that feeling!” she said. He couldn’t tell if she was embarrassed herself, or laughing at him. “God, Jack. I just… I get feelings sometimes—you know that, right? Not emotions, but…”
“Premonitions,” he said.
“You said it, not me,” she said.
“And you had a premonition about me,” he clarified. With someone else, he would be skeptical. Jamie wasn’t a woman who invited skepticism, however.
Up ahead, headlights appeared on the horizon again. He tensed, recalling why they were here.
“What is the premonition?” he asked.
“Hang on,” she said, her voice suddenly tight. “This is it—those aren’t a car’s headlights. This is a truck. A big one.”
It was clear as the lights drew closer that she was right. It was likewise clear that whoever was driving the vehicle wasn’t completely in control. It barreled toward them, driving straight across the center line. The massive trailer behind the cab swayed dangerously in the wind.
“Jamie—” Jack warned.
“I know.” She eased as far to the side as she could. Just as she’d gotten to the far right, her tires hit another ice patch. The truck tore closer, faster, seeming to gain speed with every second, while Jamie’s SUV careened toward it. Locked in the skid, Jamie fought to regain control of the SUV as the truck’s horn blared.
At the last second, the SUV’s tires once more hit bare road. Jamie spun the wheel to the right, out of harm’s way. The truck barreled past.
When they were clear, she stopped the car. They sat there for a split second of silence, both regaining their breath.
“You should call the sheriff,” she said.
Jack already had his phone out. Jamie put the SUV in drive again, and pulled a U-turn in the road.
Finnegan didn’t answer when Jack called. Jack left a voicemail message, then tried Monty. It took five rings before he finally picked up, static making it nearly impossible to understand him. Jack gave him the latest, and advised him of what was on the way toward them.
“Any news there?” he asked. “Are the others there yet?”
“No,” Monty said. A pause followed. “But we’ve got a problem.”
“Of course we do,” Jack said. Up ahead, the truck appeared once again on the horizon. Jamie got closer. Jack watched with every muscle tensed as the trailer swayed with every reckless weave of the truck’s tires. “What is it?” he pressed Monty.
“Diggs and Erin never showed up here.” More static. Jack had to have him repeat the rest of the story. Finally, he got the gist of it: They weren’t answering their texts. And gunshots had been reported coming from the Trib.
A wave of nausea ran through him. “Can you go there?” Jack asked. “I’ll get there as fast as I can. We have to take care of this first.”
“I’ll meet you there,” Monty said. He hung up. Jamie didn’t ask for details, her focus entirely on the road ahead—and the truck now in clear view of them.
Another half mile down the road, Jack remembered a hairpin turn they’d barely cleared on the way here. Jamie tapped the brake. Clearly, she remembered it too.
He waited to see brake lights flash on the truck. None did.
“He’s going to—”
“I know,” Jamie cut him off. She slowed further. There was a house directly on the left-hand side of the curve. Jack could see the lights on. A white picket fence out front. A decorated Christmas tree in the yard.
There was no doubt this time: the driver wouldn’t be able to recover from this. Jack got on the phone a millisecond before the truck lost control.
There were no screeching brakes, no blaring horns. The whole event was strangely silent—surreal, with the blowing snow and the darkness and the Christmas lights in the distance. Jack saw the moment the truck’s tires hit the ice: the driver must have panicked, because the vehicle jerked to the right only briefly before they lost control completely. The trailer swayed so far to the left that for a moment it was traveling at a forty-five degree angle.
“Where are we?” Jack shouted to Jamie as 911 dispatch answered.
“Route 97,” she said. “Just past Cross Road.”
He repeated the address to the 911 operator just as the truck briefly, miraculously, righted itself. The skid was too severe, though, the ice too thick, the driver far too erratic. An instant later, still trying to navigate the sharp curve, the vehicle jerked to the right. The trailer swayed. Picked up speed. Sparks flew up off the road.
Both truck and trailer up-ended and hit the snowy pavement, then continued moving. The sound of metal on ice was a primal scream that tore the night in two.
Jamie stopped the SUV. She and Jack sat there frozen for the next horrifying seconds as the vehicle hurtled forward. It mowed through the picket fence, wood flying like shrapnel. The truck kept going, headed directly for the farmhouse.
Jack got out, head ducked against the wind. Jamie did the same, the two of them standing together—waiting, impotent, for the final impact.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
I heard the word “No” trip off my tongue half a dozen times as I pulled Diggs up, back to his feet.
“You have to keep going,” I said.
“It’s bad, isn’t it?” he said. I hated the fear on his face—it was terrifying. I shook my head, but I could feel the tears in my eyes. I brushed them away.
“You’re okay. We’re going next door. We’ll go to the clinic. Kat will fix you—she’ll fix this.”
Behind us, Jenny was still trying to knock the door down. She would come to her senses in a second and come out the front door—I steered Diggs toward the street. He staggered. Leaned on me more heavily. I fought to stay up as I skidded across the snowy ground. I’d never known panic like this. Fear gripped me in a steel-plated fist.
Halfway across the road, Diggs’ legs buckled. He almost took me down with him.
“You have to keep going,” I said. “Please.”
Somehow, he managed to stay on his feet. I felt him draw from whatever well it is that has kept Diggs going through shit that would have dropped other men years ago. He pushed himself forward.
We crossed the street.
Jenny still hadn’t emerged from the Trib.
We reached the wheelchair ramp into the clinic. Diggs’ blood had drenched my jacket. This time when he sagged, there was no getting him back up. He fell to his knees. I looked back across the street, squinting through the snow and the darkness.
I could see no sign of Jenny.
I eased Diggs back so he was leaning against the railing of the wheelchair ramp. “I’ll be right back,” I said. There was no time for pep talks—I ran the last few feet to the clinic and pounded on the front door.
No one answered.
I reached into my pocket so I could call Kat, but my phone must have fallen out of my pocket when we were running.
I pounded harder on the door.
Across the street, I saw Jenny emerge from the Trib. I kicked the door. Screamed for Kat to open up.
At last, she opened the door.
“What the hell—”
She stopped at sight of the blood drenching the front of my jacket.
“It’s Diggs,” I said. “I need help.”
She looked down at the bottom of the ramp. Called for Maya.
Jenny limped across the street toward us, moving slowly. Diggs had gotten her—she was obviously hurt. It was impossible to tell how badly from here, though.
Kat and I got Diggs back on his feet. We half dragged him up the ramp. Through the door.
I saw Jenny watching from the curb just before I slammed the door behind us.
We got Diggs into an exam room, and hefted him onto a table. His fingers were tight around my bicep, digging into me. His eyes were dark with fear, his breath coming hard.
“You’re okay,” I said. I smoothed his hair back while Kat cut away his jacket and shirt.
“This isn’t the way it’s supposed to happen,” he whispered to me. His breath rattled in his chest.
“I think she nicked his lung,” I said.
“You need to get out of the way,” Kat said.
Diggs hand tightened around my arm. “Don’t go.”
At the front of the clinic, someone pounded on the front door. We’d locked it; I knew that wouldn’t help, though.
“I called the police,” Maya said.
By the time they got here, it would be too late.
Jenny kicked the front door. Maya looked almost as terrified as Diggs. She’d locked us in the exam room, a chair stuck under the doorknob as a barricade. There was no way in hell it was enough to stop Jenny. I was beginning to think the bitch wasn’t human.
I heard the door burst open when Jenny got through.
Kat had gotten Diggs’ shirt off. I fought to keep the terror from my own face at sight of the blood—or the bullet hole in his upper chest… If it had missed his heart, it would be nothing short of a miracle.
Jenny rapped lightly on the door. “Time to go, Erin.”
Diggs still had my arm, his eyes locked on mine. He’s been reading me since I was fifteen years old—the talent didn’t fail him now. “Please don’t,” he whispered.
“You want answers, right?” Jenny said through the door. She didn’t sound great herself, but her voice was still strong. “You want to know what happened that night, when the Payson Church went up. You want to know what your sniveling, weak-kneed daddy had to do with any of it.”
“I know what happened that night,” I said—loud enough for her to hear.
Kat was trying to stop Diggs from bleeding out. She and Maya turned him on his side to check the exit wound—he gasped at the pain, his face paler than I’d ever seen it.
The exit was clean, just below his right shoulder blade. It would leave a hell of a scar—another one—but at least the bullet wasn’t still inside.
“You don’t know shit about that night,” Jenny said. “Why do you think they let your father live? Hmm? He and Isaac were both guilty of the same sin, weren’t they? They both ran from J. So, why did they burn Isaac alive, and leave your dear old dad to wander around the island, mad as a hatter?”
Against my will, I found myself drawn into her words. “It was to punish him,” I said, reciting the story I’d been told. “To show him what it would cost if he ran—after that, he worked for them again.”
“My father told you that, did he?” Jenny asked. “What bullshit story did he tell you about that night?”
“You need to get out of the way,” Kat said. I stepped aside—close enough to continue holding Diggs’ hand, but my mind was wrapped up in the story. The real story.
I sifted through the muddled accounts I’d gotten of that night, from Matt Perkins, Joe Ashmont, my mother, Noel Hammond… Cameron himself. “A boy was killed,” I said. “Zion Ashmont. And Isaac was shot. Matt Perkins killed them…” Did I really know that, though? The fact was, after all this time I didn’t really know what the hell happened that night. “Cameron let Zion’s mother live, but he locked the rest of the congregation in the church and lit the match.”
Jenny scoffed. “And he had them drink something, right? He gave everybody a special batch of magic Kool-Aid?”
My blood chilled. “Scopolamine,” I said. “From henbane—they grew it in the greenhouse.”
I heard Jenny shift on the other side of the door. “You don’t think it’s weird that my father—a man who barely knew the island or anyone on it—would take time to mix up a batch of herbs? How did he get everyone to drink it? How did he even find it? And how did he get that entire congregation into the church in the first place? Thirty-four people he’d never met just drank some concoction and followed him to the chapel?”
I thought of that night in the motel room with my father. The phone call that came in the middle of the night. My father’s disappearance, late that night until almost eleven the following morning.
He tended the garden.
He knew henbane.
Cameron had said my father was supposed to do it, but he backed out at the last minute.
Why would he lie about that?
Wha
t the hell really happened that night?
“Damn it, Erin,” Kat said. “Stop listening to her—”
“You still really don’t get it, do you?” Jenny said through the door. “Jesus Christ, Erin. It’s right in front of you. Come on out here, and I’ll make sure you get all the answers you can handle. And if the two of us team up, I promise you: J. is going down today.”
“Don’t even think about it,” Kat interrupted. “We need to get Diggs to a hospital. I might be able to stabilize him, but I can’t do much more than that here.”
“You have two choices,” Jenny said. “You can stay in that room—in which case, I’ll burn this place down, come in there, and pull you out by your flaming fucking hair. Or, you and Kat can come out to the island with me, and leave your mom’s carpet-munching BFF to take care of your boyfriend.”
Kat and Maya were both working in tandem, moving easily around each other as they got bandages, checked Diggs’ vitals, did what they do. There was no way in hell Maya could do it alone—no one could.
The truth was within my grasp, after all this time. I could get that…and save the people I loved at the same time. I swallowed past my fear.
“You can’t have Kat,” I shouted through the door.
“Solomon,” Diggs said. His eyes found mine, and held. “Don’t.” Already three steps ahead of me.
“I’ll be okay,” I said. I blinked back a sudden rush of tears and fought to keep my voice steady. “You will too, okay? Maya and Kat will take care of you. You’ll be fine. And I’ll come back to you.” I leaned down and rested my forehead against his. “Please, Diggs.”
“Don’t do this,” he whispered.
“We need to work, Erin,” Kat said. She was focused on the job at hand, but I knew her well enough to know she was fully aware of what was about to happen.
“Just a second,” I said. I refocused on Diggs, shutting everything else out. I looked him in the eye. “Do you know how many times you’ve saved me?” I couldn’t stop the tears now. I brushed them aside. “A thousand times, a thousand ways, you’ve saved my life. Give me a chance to return the favor.”
I kissed him fiercely, my heart shattered in that way you don’t realize a heart can shatter until it already has. “I love you.”