Wrong Turn

by Catie Rhodes

  I squinted at the address. It had shown up because it was part of an announcement of a writers group meeting three months earlier. The internet was a great way to stay connected, but it was also a scary motherfucker for people who might not want to be found.

  "Think we should barge in on this guy tonight?" I glanced at the time on my phone and saw it was headed toward midnight. One more full day, and then I faced Mohawk. I wasn’t going to find the book in time.

  "I'd say we need to think about what we hope to get from Linus Bramwell before we waste precious time on him." Tanner put his hands on my cheeks and caressed my face with his thumbs as though we weren’t standing a few yards away from a dead body and a world of trouble if the cops barged in. Much as I hated to admit it, he had a good point.

  "Aside from maybe seeing a recent picture of Shawn Grimes so we'd know who to watch out for…" I trailed off, mind working. "We're going to have to get that key from him. Mohawk won't give us a pass on it."

  Tanner nodded. "Bramwell might also be able to offer insight into Shawn Grimes. Sometimes knowing about someone helps you anticipate what they'll do next."

  "Let's go see Bramwell," I said with fake enthusiasm and pumped my fist for emphasis.

  Instead of answering, Tanner pulled me to him. "Stop worrying. We are going to make it," he whispered.

  I hugged him hard, not because I believed him, but because I needed the comfort right then.

  "I’ve got an idea," I said without letting go. "Let’s get out of town before they find Aaron’s body. We’ll find somewhere to sleep on the way."

  "That’s a bad idea." Tanner followed me back into the house and watched me wipe the doorknobs with the hem of my shirt. "The Pughs know you were headed over here. That neighbor, Mr. Nosyheimer, got a great look at you this morning and knew you were asking about Aaron Todd. Cops are going to be looking for you."

  I stopped in front of Tanner and put my hands on his shoulders. "Baby, don’t you think Sanctuary can disappear like they never existed?"

  "But…" Tanner shook his head and said no more. He followed my pass through the house, face stiff with disapproval.

  We drove back to the motel. Some kids were having a party and had their door open, blasting music for the entire motel to enjoy. Tanner and I exchanged an eye roll, and things were okay between us again. He’d been involved in the paranormal all his life. Surely he’d walked away from sticky situations from time to time.

  Fifteen minutes later, we’d loaded our vehicles. I dropped the keys to our room into Dwight’s overnight slot. However things turned out, we wouldn’t be needing them anymore.

  "Leaving like thieves in the night?" said a voice behind me.

  I jumped and spun around, expecting to see a cop with his gun in one hand and handcuffs in the other. When I saw it was Dwight, I laughed to cover my fright.

  "Yeah. The book’s a loss." No way I’d tell him we might be back. If we did come back, I wanted to sneak in and out of town as quietly as I could. "I’m paid up, right?"

  "Sure. Y’all didn’t buy any porn, and you didn’t use the phone. We’re square." He laughed.

  Tanner stood a short distance away. "You ready?"

  I walked away from Dwight and patted Tanner on the chest on my way past. He stared at Dwight a few more seconds, got into his truck, and followed me out of the parking lot. I turned on my truck’s radio and listened to the voices fading in and out of the static most of the way to Austin. My truck was new enough to have satellite radio, but I liked the static and the way music and voices came and went. It reminded me of life.

  I chased Tanner’s taillights back to the outskirts of Austin. We stopped at a huge truck stop and parked far away from the building.

  Without a word, we crawled into the back of my truck, curled together, and slept with the windows down. The sound of tapping on metal invaded my dreams a few hours later. I jerked awake to see a golden strip of dawn on the horizon.

  A cop stared into the window, shining his flashlight on us. "Sir? Ma'am? This is private property, and the manager would like you to hit the road."

  Tanner and I dragged ourselves to a sitting position. Heart hammering, doing everything I could to look normal, I gave the cop a nod.

  The Devil's Rest police might have already found Aaron Todd's body. They might be looking for us right now. Sleeping in this parking lot had drawn attention and had been foolish. Cecil would have bawled me out for it.

  "Sorry about that." I prayed my voice sounded normal.

  "Y'all get going, okay?" The cop clicked off his light and walked away.

  "Think it's too early to visit Linus Bramwell?" I waggled my eyebrows at Tanner.

  He giggled. "Yeah, but it won't be if we go get breakfast." He made no move to get out of the truck.

  "What is it?" I was already lighting a cigarette and wishing for coffee.

  "What do we do if Linus Bramwell's no help?" Tanner swallowed hard.

  "I don't know," I said honestly. "We might be out of plays."

  Tanner got out his phone and found us a place to eat breakfast. We ate our greasy meal talking about everything but what would happen if we couldn't find Shawn Grimes.

  13

  Forty-five minutes later, Tanner and I sat in the parking lot of a shopping center one mile from Linus Bramwell's house. We’d parked Tanner’s truck and driven past Linus’s subdivision.

  A guard shack sat at the entrance. I didn’t need to go talk to them to know they wouldn’t let us in without Linus’s okay. I watched the clock on my phone roll over to seven o’clock.

  "It’s early, but we can’t wait any longer." I glanced at Tanner, looking for approval, but caught him staring at me with the saddest expression on his face. I took his hand and kissed it. Then I dialed the number Linus Bramwell had allowed to be listed online.

  It rang once, twice, three times. A man who sounded ten times more chipper than I felt answered. "Yes?"

  "Linus Bramwell? The one who was writing a book on the Messengers?" Now that I had the guy on the phone, I felt more unsure than ever. There was no way the guy would agree to see us.

  "Who exactly are you, and where did you get my name?" He no longer sounded chipper. He sounded suspicious and a little afraid.

  I gathered my nerve and started talking too fast. "My name is Peri Jean Mace. Mr. Bramwell, I’ve been researching Freddy Stephens’s involvement in what happened with the Messengers, and your name came up. I was wondering…"

  "I’ve never heard of you." He sounded annoyed, and people who felt that way usually hung up.

  I kicked myself into high gear. "I know you suspected Freddy Stephens of some wrongdoing in relation to the Messengers, and I’ve got a file on Shawn Grimes in my hand right now. Freddy Stephens had it prepared."

  Silence met my words.

  I decided to go for broke. "I’m at the shopping center a mile from your house. Call down to the guard shack. Tell them to let me in."

  A silly nursery rhyme played in my head. Little pig, little pig, let me in. I had to stifle hysterical laughter. This earned a raised eyebrow from Tanner. He took my hand again. I drew on his support the same way I’d draw on my magic.

  "Come on, Mr. Bramwell. You know you’re curious. Let’s talk." I spoke with more confidence than I felt.

  He sighed. "What did you say your name was?"

  I repeated it, even spelling it for him.

  "Go to the guard shack, and they’ll be expecting you." He cleared his throat. "But Ms. Mace?"

  "Yes?"

  "I’m armed. Any bullshit, and I’ll kill you." He hung up.

  Tanner and I drove through the subdivision. The robotic voice from my phone giving directions was the only one doing any talking. We found Linus Bramwell’s house and stared in silence. The newly risen sun made the Austin stone, Spanish-style structure glow like all the gold in El Dorado. Tanner pulled into the circular drive and stopped at the front door.

  He tucked a lock of hair behind one ear and tried to smile
at me. "House like this would cost several million back in California. What do you think it costs here?"

  I shrugged. Real estate had never been on my radar. Until the last year or so, I couldn’t have afforded even a plywood shack.

  Tanner ignored my lack of a reaction. "Bet it’s worth at least half a million. Maybe a million."

  I understood his point. "Bramwell may have never written the book about the Messengers, but he must’ve written something that did mighty well."

  "You ready?" He offered me his hand.

  We got out of the truck and walked to the front door. I held the Shawn Grimes file in my free hand and slapped my leg with it. Tanner knocked on the door.

  Little pig, little pig, let me in. I stifled the same crazy giggle from earlier. Facing my own death, I was losing it.

  The door swung open. A white-haired man, face the color of chalk, stepped into the space. He held a handgun pointed right at Tanner and me.

  I stiffened at the sight of the gun, and Tanner’s hand jerked in mine. I squeezed tighter. He squeezed back.

  "Mr. Bramwell, I’m Peri Jean Mace. This is my boyfriend, Tanner Letts." Sweat formed between my hand and Tanner’s. Was this how it ended? Shot to death in some bland Austin subdivision?

  Bramwell glanced at the file in my hand. "What’s in there?"

  I took out Shawn Grimes’s picture and showed it to him. He nodded and tipped his chin at the file again. I showed Bramwell his letter to Freddy Stephens. He looked like he might throw up.

  "Where’d you get this?" His voice trembled.

  "Freddy Stephens left this to a man named Aaron Todd. He was…"

  "Harris Coates’s bastard son. He dead now too?"

  I jerked in surprise and guilt.

  Bramwell clapped one hand over his mouth and coughed. Between gasps, he said, "Look, I've changed my mind about this..."

  Tanner and I exchanged a glance. Another mistake. More time wasted. I turned to go, pulling Tanner with me.

  "Wait," Bramwell called. "Come in. Damn writer’s curiosity. Gonna be the death of me yet."

  Tanner and I stepped inside and followed Bramwell through the house. I gaped at the exposed beams, stone walls, and stone floors. Though the odor of brand new still hung in the house, it had been made to resemble some rich person’s idea of a Spanish mission.

  We came into a kitchen that could have housed a family of five. Bramwell opened one of the rustic wood cabinets and took out a coffee cup. He turned to speak to me.

  "Can you wait to kill me until I’ve had some coffee?" Without waiting for our answer, he stepped in front of a fancy coffeemaker and filled his cup.

  Tanner prowled into the breakfast nook, put his hand on the rustic wood table, and stared out the wall of windows at Bramwell’s pool and hot tub. I tried to read Tanner’s posture but couldn’t pick up much more than sadness. Had he lived in a place like this with his wife, the beautiful Bea, and his beloved daughters?

  He never went into much detail about his life before he met me. I knew he’d made good money selling arcane items and antiques to rich California people, and he’d lost it all after his wife and daughters died in a car wreck. He caught me watching him and winked. I walked to him and let him fold his arms around me.

  Linus Bramwell spoke from the coffeemaker. "If the two of you hadn’t been holding hands, so obviously in love, I wouldn’t have let you in."

  Cheeks heating, I turned my attention to him but didn’t answer. What do you say to something like that?

  "Do either of you want coffee?" Bramwell gestured at the machine.

  "If you’re going to kill us, I might take a cup before you do it." I was paraphrasing Bramwell’s earlier quip, hoping to break the ice.

  Bramwell didn’t laugh, but he poured me a cup of coffee and brought it and his cup to the table. He spoke to Tanner. "Mr. Letts?"

  Tanner glanced quickly at the gun, still sitting on the counter next to the coffeemaker, and shook his head. Bramwell nodded and sat down at the table, motioning me to do the same. We both took sips of our coffee. It was so good I closed my eyes to savor it.

  Bramwell took another sip before he spoke. "I’m not going to kill either of you."

  "I knew that when you opened the door." I leaned toward him and lowered my voice. "You ain’t got that killer vibe."

  Bramwell blanched and threw a look over his shoulder at the gun he’d left behind. "Before we go any further, I’d like to know what you want out of this conversation."

  I considered giving him a hard time but was too tired and scared. I took the picture of Loretta Nell Grimes holding her book of horrors out of my back pocket and handed it to him.

  "I’ve been tasked with finding this book. It's a matter of life and death for me." The entire story hovered on my lips, right along with the terrible need to cry, but I pushed it down.

  Bramwell nodded and slid the picture back to me. "What makes you think I'd know where to find it?"

  "I don't. But I hope you know where to find Shawn Grimes." Just the mention of Shawn's name brought back the image of Aaron Todd's gutted corpse. The coffee soured on my stomach. If Shawn did that to Aaron, he was a dangerous man, likely a psychopath. And here I was looking for him.

  "What do you want with Shawn?" Linus's eyes had gone flat with some emotion I couldn't quite identify.

  "I think he killed Aaron Todd over the book." I watched Linus carefully. He could be helping Shawn Grimes, even hiding him. If that was the case, we were going to have to fight for our lives in a few seconds.

  "You saying Aaron Todd had the book?" Linus still had that flat look in his eyes, but now something lively danced behind it. Writer's curiosity?

  "No. Look at this picture." I took the picture back out and tapped the book. "Freddy Stephens left Aaron a key to open the book. Aaron was killed last night and the key taken."

  Linus picked up the picture and squinted at it. "What makes you think Shawn had anything to do with Aaron's death?"

  I drew out the letter Freddy Stephens had left for Aaron Todd and passed it to Linus. His eyes, now shining and dancing, moved fast as he read. He raised his head. "Wow. Shawn told me about this—this prophecy. Now it's coming to pass."

  “Prophecy?" Tanner finally turned away from the pool. “I thought it was just revenge."

  Bramwell made a face. "Can't prophecy and revenge go together?"

  Tanner and I both shrugged. I didn't care. I just wanted the craziness to end.

  Linus glanced between us, deflating a little. "The two of you really are in danger, aren't you?"

  Tears welled in my eyes. I cursed my own weakness and swiped at them.

  Linus nodded. "No more games. I'm going to tell you everything I know about this Shawn Grimes business. I'm not sure it's going to help you the way you think, but maybe something..."

  I searched for guile and saw nothing but a man who'd gone from curious to deeply sympathetic in a few seconds. I nodded. "I'd appreciate that."

  "Before we start, answer a question for me. Do you know what I write? Either of you?" Bramwell glanced between Tanner and me.

  Tanner nodded. ”I looked you up. You write books about the occult. Fiction and non-fiction.”

  Tanner’s words surprised me. I turned to stare at him. He hadn’t said a word.

  Linus smiled and nodded. "In the early 2000s, I was researching cult activity in prisons. A young man, who turned out to be Shawn Grimes, approached me. He told me about the book, about his mother's murder. It was from him I first heard of the Serpent God." Bramwell’s eyes had quit twinkling. Fear now darkened them. He got up to get more coffee and could barely hold his cup steady enough to pour. He spoke with his back to us.

  "Shawn's story didn't fit into my current project, and I blew him off. But meeting him haunted me. I looked up the story of the Messengers and became interested in writing a book about occult murderers. I tried to see Shawn in prison but learned he’d been released. I tracked him to a shack, literally a shack, in Austin where he
was living with a woman and her child." Bramwell returned to the table. "Shawn and I became friends. Well, friends as much as anybody can be friends with a human being like him.

  "Now we're back to prophecies," Linus said. "Would you like to hear the one Shawn told me?"

  I didn't want to hear, but I nodded anyway.

  "According to Shawn, the day lawmen came to raid the Messengers’ compound, Loretta Nell knew they were coming. She conjured up this half man, half snake." Linus shivered. "This thing promised Loretta Nell that she'd rise again to continue their work. It promised her that she and Shawn would host a festival of blood and suffering. After that, they would live like gods." Linus raised one trembling hand to his mouth. "It would be many years before this came to pass. Loretta Nell would know it was time because a woman who was also a raven would come."

  My breath caught in my throat. Waves of dizziness filled my head.

  Linus pointed at the raven tattoo on my arm. "That's you, isn't it?"

  Nausea climbing up the back of my throat, I managed to nod.

  "When the woman with the raven came, it would be time for the sacrifice of the last survivor—Aaron Todd—and then the book could be used again." Linus, unable to contain his excitement despite any sympathy he felt for me, leaned forward, a smile hovering on his lips. "Now I see that the last survivor held the key to the book, and it was useless without the key."

  "Let's back up," I said. "I don't understand this thing about Aaron being the last survivor. What about Josie?" I had finally tired of slapping the loose end away.

  Bramwell raised his eyes to mine. The crow’s feet at their corners narrowed, and his blue eyes twinkled. He was loving every second of this. "Josie is not who you think she is. You've been to see her, haven't you?"

  I nodded.

  "I'd be surprised if you hadn't. Those stories about her screaming to be allowed back on the ranch to find the book are pretty compelling." Pushing back his chair, Linus said, "Let me show you something."

  He got up, went into a room off the kitchen, and came back carrying his own file. He took out a picture of a dark-haired man with intense eyes sitting at a metal table with a beer resting between his muscled arms, staring right through the camera at me. The dead-eyed man in the picture could be nobody but Shawn Grimes all grown up.