Ravinia made a leap of consciousness about the same time Elizabeth did.
“Are you saying Lost Baby Girl was Nadia?” Ravinia asked. “She’s from around here?”
“That’s what I believe. The child’s mother was a young woman whose father was considered a shaman in our nearest neighboring community.”
“Those are the Foothillers,” Ravinia said for Elizabeth’s benefit. “I told you about them.”
Elizabeth nodded. Though some of Ravinia’s convoluted tale from the night they’d met had been lost to her, she remembered the Foothillers who lived in the unincorporated town next to Siren Song and were mainly of Native American descent.
Catherine went on, “This young mother had been involved with a man whom we all thought was long dead, but suddenly he was back and . . . creating havoc.”
“Who was he?” Ravinia interrupted. Catherine gazed at her hard and Ravinia lifted her hands in surrender. “I just want to know.”
“He was a very bad man. An evil man. What his relationship with the child’s mother was . . . I don’t know. I don’t know if anyone really knew.” Catherine’s tone suggested it could be nothing good. “He was already gone when the baby was stolen, and he wouldn’t have cared, anyway. The child’s mother wouldn’t admit that she’d put the baby up for adoption. It was rumored the shaman prohibited her from even claiming the child as hers. So, after a short, fruitless search, the whole thing was dropped as if it never happened. The local police did what they could, but the shaman and his daughter would not help them. Both of them died years ago, and the story died with them.”
“What happened to the father?” Elizabeth asked.
“He’s dead,” Catherine answered with such finality that Elizabeth could tell there was far more to that story.
Thinking about it, she asked, “Was he related to . . . us?”
A long moment passed and then Catherine said, “Yes,” adding quietly, “I’m going to tell you something I’ve never told anyone before.”
Ravinia’s head snapped around as if pulled by strings. Clearly, this was way out of character for her aunt. Elizabeth waited expectantly.
“About ten years ago, a woman from Deception Bay was dying of breast cancer and she asked to speak to me. Sheriff O’Halloran came to the lodge and wanted to know if I would go to her. I didn’t know who she was, but I went to her at the hospital and she reached for my hand. She had the idea that I could help her. Not save her life, but maybe her soul. I tried to tell her that, whatever she’d heard about us, we weren’t priestesses, but she didn’t care. She wanted to confess, and she wanted to confess to me, so I let her.
Her name was Lena and she and her boyfriend of the time were the ones who’d stolen Lost Baby Girl. They’d used a lawyer in Southern California, much like my adoption broker did, only the lawyer Lena used didn’t require as much in the way of documentation, apparently, and so the deal was done. Much later, Lena learned that the child she’d stolen was the shaman’s granddaughter, and though she wasn’t Native American herself, she wanted to be absolved by this shaman before she died. She didn’t know he’d predeceased her, but when she learned, she then turned to ‘the witches of Siren Song’ for absolution. When she asked me to help her, she didn’t know Lost Baby Girl was related to us through the father. No one did . . . and they still don’t know.”
“Did you give her absolution?” Ravinia asked curiously.
“I said a few words and told her she was forgiven and she relaxed and died several minutes later.” Catherine made a face. “It made me wish I’d done more to help seek out the child, but truthfully, because of her father, I didn’t want to find her.”
“What was wrong with this man?” Elizabeth asked, even though she could tell Catherine didn’t want to talk about him.
“He was my sister Mary’s father, Thomas Durant, and he’d been missing for years, so when he showed up, we didn’t immediately know who he was. Mary even invited him to the house as a guest, like she did with lots of men, and, one thing led to another. It was after that, that I closed the gates. . . .”
“He was my grandfather,” Ravinia said.
Catherine nodded and there was silence for awhile.
Then Ravinia asked carefully, “Please don’t tell me he was my father, too.”
“No.” Catherine was positive on that. “And he’s not yours, either, Elizabeth. I know you have questions about your father, but I don’t really want to talk about him right now. He was a good man, though.”
She accepted that with a nod. Eventually, she would probably get all of her history, but she was willing to wait.
“But you think my mother slept with her father,” Ravinia said.
“She didn’t know who he was, although he knew who she was and didn’t care. I believe he was the main reason your mother lost her mind,” Catherine said to Ravinia. “He came at me a time or two as well. That’s why we had to take care of things.”
“What did you do?” Elizabeth asked.
“Made sure he wouldn’t hurt anyone again,” Catherine said with finality. “He’s dead and his bones are burned now. He won’t come back to haunt us. But he fathered a number of children in his day, and Lost Baby Girl was one of them.”
“Nadia,” Elizabeth said.
Catherine nodded in confirmation.
An hour later, Elizabeth and Ravinia said good-bye to the clan of women and were let through the gate by the eldest cousin at the lodge, Isadora. Rex jumped out of the car at their approach and helped them into their seats.
On the road and away from the lodge, he asked, “How was it?”
“The same,” Ravinia said.
“Interesting,” Elizabeth responded as they turned onto the coast road.
Rex said, “I just got a call from my buddy, Mike Tatum. He says Nadia’s body finally floated into one of the harbors.”
“Good.” Ravinia said. “At least she’s really dead.”
Elizabeth was glad to hear it, too. She hadn’t believed anyone could survive that fall, but when Nadia’s body didn’t turn up, a terrible question had formed in the back of her mind. She still woke up shuddering most nights, remembering how close she’d come to going over the edge. It was a miracle Rex had saved her, and Nadia had tumbled over by herself. The ocean had immediately pulled her body away and it had been missing for over a week.
“She had a bite mark on her hand,” Rex added.
“Chloe,” Elizabeth said.
“And there were canine bites on her body, too.”
Elizabeth looked at him as they turned east off 101 to Highway 26, the road that led through the Coast Range to the Willamette Valley and the Portland airport. “She was bitten by a dog?”
“By a wolf,” Ravinia said, staring out the window pensively.
Epilogue
On Monday, Elizabeth showed Rex Mazie’s house and he pronounced it was where he wanted to move. The fact that it was much closer to Elizabeth’s home may have been a factor, especially since she’d decided to stay in her house for the time being as the real estate market was picking up and lo, and behold, Staffordshire had actually sold to someone who wanted the Hobbit crèche and was in serious negotiations with Elsa Stafford who was hanging onto those Hobbits for dear life.
On Tuesday, Rex came into the Suncrest offices and seated himself in Elizabeth’s client chair. While she laid out the paperwork and showed him where to sign and initial, his hand had a tendency to slide over and touch hers. When he was finished, she threaded her fingers through his and they looked at each other and smiled like idiots. Love was like that, she realized. Glorious and stupid at the same time. When she and Rex walked out hand in hand, Elizabeth sent Pat a beatific smile, causing the receptionist to frown in consternation, which just made it all that much better.
On Wednesday, Rex took Ravinia to his wireless carrier, put her on his plan, and ordered her a smartphone. She was so grateful and touched that she went silent for a full minute. She then pointed out that as sh
e was currently living at his place until she got a job, maybe he could just give her a job, too. That way she could move out and he and Elizabeth could have some time alone.
He told her he would think about it, which sounded like he was finally going to stop being a pain in the ass and actually listen to her.
On Thursday, Chloe came home from school and skipped up the steps to watch Busy Bees and Friends. Before she tuned in completely, she asked her mom if she was going to marry Rex.
Elizabeth asked whatever gave her that idea, and Chloe said she’d gotten a message. This immediately sent Elizabeth into a panic.
Chloe gave her a look. “Not that kind of message. I can just tell.” She then went on to say that it was okay if they wanted to get married as long as they could also get a dog.
On Friday, Ravinia stopped by the house ostensibly to see Elizabeth, but mostly to see Rex. Given a tiny bit of encouragement, she was relentless in her quest to get him to take her on as an investigative partner. Rex tried to fob her off, but Ravinia was damn near unfob-able. Rex then told Chloe that they didn’t really need a dog as they already had a terrier in their mix, and pointed to Ravinia. This etched a line between Chloe’s brows but didn’t slow down her begging one iota.
On Saturday, Rex and Elizabeth left Ravinia in charge of Chloe for a while. Chloe asked Ravinia if the danger was over, and Ravinia said it was, though in truth, she’d still been getting faint messages off and on, but nothing she could quite grasp. She’d certainly gotten Chloe’s messages loud and clear, so she thought they just might be some kind of aberration. In her heart of hearts, she hoped it was the wolf, somehow trying to communicate, but she thought that was probably a fool’s dream.
When Rex and Elizabeth returned they brought with them a curly, black squirming puppy that Chloe squealed over and promptly named Bentley, the name of the black shepherd from one of her favorite television shows, even though the new puppy was a female.
Ready to leave, Ravinia walked outside, and there he was! A ghostly silver shadow padding across the neighbor’s yard. He turned to stare at her for a moment, his yellow eyes glowing, and then he moved away. She was so overwhelmed with relief she almost cried . . . almost. . . as tears were generally for people who couldn’t contain their emotions and that wasn’t Ravinia.
Rex and Elizabeth walked out together. He kissed her gently on the lips before she stepped back inside her house and waved a good-bye at them. The tender moment made Ravinia uncomfortable and kind of happy, too. She was a third wheel, no doubt about it, but once in the car Rex tossed a small booklet in her lap along with some other papers.
“We start driving lessons tomorrow,” he said, as she clutched the booklet close.
For the first time in her life, Ravinia felt truly positive about the future. She was on the right path and absolutely nothing could go wrong.
On Sunday, under the cover of darkness, his physical scars finally healed, Declan Jr. slipped across the border from the wilds of Canada and into Washington State. With blood on his mind and vengeance in his heart, he picked up the signals, thin and weak, that were coming his way. It wasn’t his bastard brother trying to get inside his head, it was someone else. Someone a thousand miles or more away . . . a woman who might be needing a little bit of what only Good Time Charlie could give. He could see himself mounting her already, pumping hard, making her scream with ecstasy . . . one of those silvery blond bitches he hated so much.
They thought they’d killed him. Damn near had, but he wasn’t done yet. Not by a long shot.
Standing in the center of Podunk, USA, he looked around for any kind of transportation, even a bike would do. Just something that would take him first to Seattle, then Portland, then Sacramento . . . then Los Angeles . . . or maybe San Diego? Somewhere down there she was waiting.
Church bells suddenly rang out, a terrible clanging sound that raked through his brain and made him want to scream. When they finally stopped and he lifted his hands from his ears, he realized that it was Sunday.
Sunday is a day of rest, he thought, then his lips curved into a hard smile.
Or is it?
HOME
Along the shores of Oregon’s wild Columbia River, the Victorian mansion where Sarah McAdams grew up is as foreboding as she remembers. The moment she and her two daughters, Jade and Gracie, pull up the isolated drive, Sarah is beset by uneasy memories—of her cold, distant mother, of the half sister who vanished without a trace, and of a long-ago night when Sarah was found on the widow’s walk, feverish and delirious.
IS WHERE
But Sarah has vowed to make a fresh start and renovate the old place. Between tending to her girls and the run-down property, she has little time to dwell on the past . . . until a new, more urgent menace enters the picture.
THE FEAR IS
One by one, teenage girls are disappearing. Frantic for her daughters’ safety, Sarah feels the house’s walls closing in on her again. Somewhere deep in her memory is the key to a very real and terrifying danger. And only by confronting her most terrifying fears can she stop the nightmare roaring back to life once more . . .
Please turn the page for an exciting sneak peek of
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CLOSE TO HOME,
now on sale wherever print and eBooks are sold!
Chapter 1
October 15, 2014
Blue Peacock Manor
“God, Mom, you’ve got to be kidding!” Jade said from the passenger seat of the Explorer as Sarah drove along the once-gravel lane.
“Not kidding,” Sarah responded. “You know that.” Winding through thick stands of pine, fir, and cedar, the twin ruts were weed-choked and filled with potholes that had become puddles with the recent rain.
“You can’t actually think that we can live here!” Catching glimpses of the huge house through the trees, Jade, seventeen, was clearly horrified and, as usual, wasn’t afraid to voice her opinion.
“Mom’s serious,” Gracie said from the backseat, where she was crammed between piles of blankets, and mounds of comforters, sleeping bags, and the other bedding they were moving from Vancouver. “She told us.”
Jade shot a glance over her shoulder. “I know. But it’s worse than I thought.”
“That’s impossible,” Gracie said.
“No one asked your opinion!”
Sarah’s hands tightened over the steering wheel. She’d already heard how she was ruining her kids’ lives by packing them up and returning to the old homestead where she’d been born and raised. To hear them tell it, she was the worst mother in the world. The word “hate” had been thrown around, aimed at her, the move, and their miserable lives in general.
Single motherhood. It wasn’t for the faint-hearted, she’d decided long ago. So her kids were still angry with her. Too bad. Sarah needed a fresh start.
And though Jade and Gracie didn’t know it, they did too.
“It’s like we’re in another solar system,” Jade said as the thickets of trees gave way to a wide clearing high above the Columbia River.
Gracie agreed, “In a land, far, far away.”
“Oh, stop it. It’s not that bad,” Sarah said. Her girls had lived most of their lives in Vancouver, Washington, right across the river from Portland, Oregon. Theirs had been a city life. Out here, in Stewart’s Crossing, things would be different, and even more so at Sarah’s childhood home of Blue Peacock Manor.
Perched high on the cliffs overlooking the Columbia River, the massive house where Sarah had been raised rose in three stories of cedar and stone. Built in the Queen Anne style of a Victorian home, its gables and chimneys knifed upward into a somber gray sky, and from her vantage point Sarah could now see the glass cupola that opened onto the widow’s walk. For a second, she felt a frisson of dread slide down her spine, but she pushed it aside.
“Oh. My. God.” Jade’s jaw dropped open as she stared at the house. “It looks like something straight out of The Addams Family.”
“Let m
e see!” In the backseat, Gracie unhooked her seat belt and leaned forward for a better view. “She’s right.” For once Gracie agreed with her older sister.
“Oh, come on,” Sarah said, but Jade’s opinion wasn’t that far off. With a broad, sagging porch and crumbling chimneys, the once-grand house that in the past the locals had called the Jewel of the Columbia was in worse shape than she remembered.
“Are you blind? This place is a disaster!” Jade was staring through the windshield and slowly shaking her head, as if she couldn’t believe the horrid turn her life had just taken. Driving closer to the garage, they passed another building that was falling into total disrepair. “Mom. Seriously. We can’t live here.” She turned her wide, mascara-laden eyes on her mother as if Sarah had gone completely out of her mind.
“We can and we will. Eventually.” Sarah cranked on the wheel to swing the car around and parked near the walkway leading to the entrance of the main house. The decorative rusted gate was falling off its hinges, the arbor long gone, the roses flanking the flagstone path leggy and gone to seed. “We’re going to camp out in the main house until the work on the guesthouse is finished, probably next week. That’s where we’ll hang out until the house is done, but that will take . . . months, maybe up to a year.”
“The guest . . . Oh my God, is that it?” Jade pointed a black-tipped nail at the smaller structure located across a wide stone courtyard from its immense counterpart. The guesthouse was in much the same shape as the main house and outbuildings. Shingles were missing, the gutters were rusted, and most of the downspouts were disconnected or missing altogether. Many of the windows were boarded over as well, and the few that remained were cracked and yellowed.
“Charming.” Jade let out a disgusted breath. “I can’t wait.”