“Call Justice . . . in your way?” he asked, a bit surprised by her sudden capitulation after the seesawing indecision that had plagued her throughout the day.
She swallowed hard, then pushed open the passenger door and felt the cold, damp night press against her face. She slid out, slammed the door behind her, and said over her shoulder, “That’s right, Frost. And you’d better damn well be ready to take this investigation to the next level, because I guarantee you, he’s going to be pissed.”
CHAPTER 19
The sea calls to me.
The lighthouse is my sanctuary in God’s mansion of many rooms.
I belong at the lighthouse, and my soul flies there even when I am not able. But now it is guarded closely by the robotic members of the sheriff’s department. Guarded against me. Yet, it is my place to stand at the edge of the world. My place on the small island where the lighthouse stands, an island accessed only by boat or the arched pedestrian bridge available at low tide whose braces and beams have been worm-eaten and waterworn, condemning it for public use.
This has always worked in my favor, but even I cannot reach it now.
Until I find a way to shake loose those who would capture me. Evade them. Misdirect them. Send them away.
My mission cannot fail this time. I will get them all. All those blond, vile witches with their taunting, smirking lips and their condescending blue eyes. Fling their black souls into the dark pit where there is no escape. Leave them forever. I smile when I contemplate their misery.
“Well deserved,” I whisper and realize I’ve been caught in my own fantasy. Driving by rote. With a start, I drive by the entrance to the lighthouse, a worn track that is weed-choked down the middle. I can see the dark hump of the patrol car. A man is smoking inside. He is bored. Waiting. Cursing this detail that has forced him to sit while others frantically seek me like dogs chasing their own tails. Another one sits beside him, hat down low over his eyes. Or is it a woman? I can’t tell, but I mustn’t slow down and stare.
If I must, I will kill the deputies inside the vehicle, but I will need to lure them away first.
First . . .
I glance at the dead woman beside me. She is a nuisance, but I need her vehicle.
I have people to meet.
Her head lolls forward, and I push her cheek to the passenger side window. She looks asleep.
Justice . . .
My name hurtles through the atmosphere.
What! I gasp. Justice. The sound rings in my ears, deafening, stunning.
She is calling me?
No . . . never! But there it is again. Jusssstice! shivers through the air, a hissing sibilant sound, as if she is mocking me.
“Bitch!” I yell, jerking on the wheel, my view out of the windshield lost as her face fills my mind. I nearly drive into the oncoming lane.
“Satan’s whore!” I shout aloud, wrenching the wheel.
Come and get me, you bastard.
Abruptly I pull to the side of the road, wrenching the wheel, spraying gravel as the vehicle slides into the shoulder. A horn blasts behind me, and the driver of a pickup with monster wheels, the cab jacked to the sky, throws up a middle finger.
My companion keels forward and nearly slides to the floor, but I hold her in place with a hand that fills me with rage when I see it quiver.
With fear?
Never!
Just a seething, burning rage. Oh, this one who’s called me is destined for the flames of hell!
Lorelei. Her face comes to me again as the car shudders to a stop and the mist rises in the surrounding forest. How she needs to be tortured. Burned.
But then they all must be destroyed, I think again. All of them, burned . . . burned.
“I will rip your black heart from your chest, bitch!” I say it aloud as I toss it into the airwaves, forcing it into her mind.
No sound. No ripple. No word.
She is afraid now. I feel myself smile in the gloom of the obscuring fog. She is pregnant, and the last one outside.
The easiest to smell.
The easiest to find.
The easiest to kill.
A new surge of adrenaline races through my bloodstream. Soon . . . I will find her soon. . . . New confidence fills my soul.
“Lorelei,” I say again, sending the message through the dark corridor that reaches into her mind. “I am coming.”
Laura’s face was white as chalk as she sat at her kitchen table, across from Harrison, her eyes focused somewhere in the middle distance.
Jesus, what had he done to her? Suggesting she call a madman.
“Laura!” He reached across the tabletop for her hand.
Her fingers were cold as ice.
Hell!
“Laura!”
She didn’t respond. She was there in the room, but her mind, maybe even her soul, was definitely somewhere else. He’d half laughed at her insistence that she and Justice could communicate, but now he had a glimmer of something he didn’t understand, thought there was something to her claims.
This wasn’t right.
“Lorelei,” he said, squeezing lifeless fingers with his own. “Okay, you win. You’re scaring me.”
Nothing.
“Laura!” He was on his feet now, rounding the table.
She came back with a sharp gasping inhale of breath, tears filling her eyes. “Oh, God . . .”
“You okay?” he asked, not liking the fear that was inching up his spine. What the hell had just happened? “Jesus. You really had me going.”
“After today . . . I . . . I almost forgot how evil Justice is.” Her shoulders sagged and she closed her eyes tightly, only to blink them open.
“After today?” He frowned.
“Being with you in Seaside was . . .” She stopped herself for a moment, then let out a long breath. Finally, her eyes were clear again, warmth returning to her fingers. “Being in your world, even with its own dangers, was . . . I don’t know . . . a relief.” Her eyes searched his as she looked up at him. “It was . . . normal, I guess, in its way. Teenagers seeking a thrill, or revenge, high drama, whatever, but this . . . it’s really vile.”
“So, you . . . reached him?” Harrison asked, dropping her hand but still standing over her. She made a sound of acquiescence that was almost a sob. She was having trouble talking to him, and though Harrison understood she was emotionally wrenched, he needed to know what had happened in those few moments when she was staring blankly into space. “And?”
“I challenged him,” she said in a small voice. “I told him to come and get me.”
“Oh, for the love of God.”
“Isn’t that what you wanted?”
“I want us, make that me and the police, to find him. I didn’t want to put you in harm’s way.”
“I’m already there,” she admitted. “You had nothing to do with it. Calling to him might have forced the issue, but trust me, it was already there.” Her lips twisted wryly. “At least it gave him a little of his own back.”
“So he responded?”
“Oh, yeah. He responded.” Her smile fell away. “He said . . . and I quote”—her voice lowered—“ ‘I will rip your black heart from your chest, bitch.’ ”
Christ!
Harrison nearly recoiled. Her voice wasn’t her own. It sounded nothing like Laura herself, and he could almost be swept up in this strange scenario where Laura and her ilk apparently talked to each other without speaking.
When she looked up at him almost coyly, he wondered if he was seeing Lorelei or one of the others, even Justice himself.
He’d pretended to believe. Hell, he kinda wanted to. He liked Lorelei. A lot. He could imagine sleeping with her, being with her, maybe even loving her a little.
But he couldn’t quite make that leap into believing in this communication. Yes, she feared Justice and she had reason to, since she was part of the cult family, but really? Mental communication? Couldn’t it just be more a form of fear and suggestion?
I will rip your black heart from your chest, bitch.
No, this was real. At least to her.
“I just shut myself off then,” she said, unaware of Harrison’s inner dialogue, her face relaxing into that of the woman he found so fascinating. “But it’s clear he got the message, and now . . . he’s going to come straight for me.” She said it with surprising calm, as if she were finally ready for the showdown she’d expected all her life.
“He has to find you first,” Harrison reminded firmly.
“He knows where I am. He can sense me.”
“Sensing someone and really knowing where they are, are two separate things, right?”
“Not with Justice.”
“Well, I’m not leaving you alone, in any case,” he stated positively, even though a rational part of him, the journalist in his soul, still said this was some weird, dark fantasy brought on by Justice Turnbull’s escape. Nonetheless, Laura believed it. “Look, I’ll be your bodyguard, for better or worse. I can’t believe I’m going to say this, but maybe we should call the sheriff’s department and talk to them.”
Laura looked at the clock, and Harrison noted it was going on eleven. “I’ve got work tomorrow,” she said, practical again. “I don’t want to call the police and make this night any longer.”
“You have work in the afternoon,” he reminded her. “See. I listen.”
“I’m not calling them tonight and trying to explain this thing I’ve got with Justice. They’d talk to me for hours, then chalk me up as just one more of the . . . Let’s see, the kind word for it would be ‘eccentric’ women of Siren Song. Not a lot of people know I’m from there, and I’d like to keep it that way for as long as I can.”
“That’s going to be impossible.”
“I know, but I’m dead on my feet. Really. No police. Not tonight.”
Her face had regained most of its color, and he recognized the stubborn set of her chin. She had a faint resemblance to his niece, Didi, at that moment, and he felt a stab of protectiveness meant for both of them.
“Okay,” he said.
Laura got up from the table and seemed lost on how to proceed. After a moment, she stuck out her hand. “Well, then, good night . . . Mr. Frost.”
“Mr. Frost. Really?”
She looked away, and he could almost swear she almost smiled. “Harrison,” she said, scraping her chair back and getting to her feet.
“Good night, Lorelei.”
“You know, no one calls me that except my family.”
As she stood in profile, her hair sweeping her shoulders, her full lips curving into a shadow of a smile, he was reminded of their kiss. Oh, he knew she’d looked at him, and he suspected she wondered if he wasn’t affected somewhat. The truth was, yes.
And he wanted to kiss her again. Right now.
“I like Lorelei,” he said, both of them aware of the double meaning.
He half reached for her again, but she was already moving away, toward the bedroom. “There are blankets and a pillow on the couch,” she said, her voice drifting toward him. “Help yourself.”
He took one step after her, toward the bedroom, then thought better of it. What the hell had he gotten himself into?
Justice pulled into the parking lot of the nursing home, gazing at all the blank windows that faced into the night. Most of the lights were off. It was after 10:00 p.m. and the patients, those he thought of as inmates, were asleep.
He sat in the car for long minutes, still reeling a bit from the challenge that slithery bitch had sent him. Lorelei . . . oh, he knew her well. She could block him at will, but he could always find a way back in. She was the one he could communicate with the easiest, for reasons he didn’t fully understand or care about. It just was.
And now that she had the filth growing inside her, he could smell her. Over the damp scent of the surrounding forest and a hint of wood smoke.
His sense of smell was refined.
His nostrils twitched. He could almost pinpoint her. Somewhere to his south. Close to the sea.
Nearby.
But first . . .
He flexed his gloved hands on the wheel, then started to slide from the car. Suddenly he felt eyes on him. Prying, searching eyes! He froze, his gaze delving into the darker shadows along the building’s perimeter. Something by the north side? Something crouching? Something human?
He waited, senses heightened.
No one.
Nothing.
The bitch had really gotten to him, and it was a new, and unpleasant, experience. Pushing the driver’s door open, he glanced back and got a distinct shock. His companion’s eyes were open, and she was staring straight at him!
Alive?
A strange terror welled inside him. He stayed frozen, stock-still, rooted in place.
A slight rise and fall to her chest.
How had he missed it?
Moisture glinted in her eyes from the illumination off the security lights.
Justice stared at her until his own eyeballs were dry and burning, yet she didn’t move, didn’t so much as blink as much as he did.
Alive, but not by much.
He calmed down immediately; she could not hurt him. She was mere breaths from oblivion. Still, she represented a problem.
As he considered throwing her body into the bushes that ran from tended to wild as they fanned out from the sides of the building, an answer presented itself. An older model Ford Taurus wobbled up the drive and slid to a stop beneath the portico that was the front of Seagull Pointe. A gentleman wearing a gray fedora and overcoat climbed out and walked heavily toward the doors. There he punched out a code onto the keypad. His efforts failed him, and after a moment he pushed the bell beside the pad several times in a row, stabbing at the thing in frustration. Finally, a heavyset woman in purple stretch pants and a printed top came to the doors. She pressed a button on the inside, which slid the doors open.
“What’s that code?” he growled, standing outside, refusing to enter.
“You can come in, Gerald,” she invited.
“What’s that damn code?”
“Two-one two-one. We changed it last month, remember?”
Instead of entering, he jammed his finger at the button again, which closed the doors, leaving her on the inside and him on the out. With a huge sigh that Justice could see, she pressed the button one more time and the doors reopened. Only then did the older man deign to walk inside.
Just within the double doors sat several wheelchairs. Justice noted them as Gerald and the woman moved from the glass-fronted reception area and out of sight. A moment later he climbed from the car, then strode, head bent, toward the entry doors, sliding a look around the building. There were no security cameras, as far as he could tell. Seagull Pointe looked as if it had been built fifty years earlier and hadn’t done much in the way of upgrading. It was a low, cinder-brick building, painted white, with jutting wings that had probably been added on as need be.
Touching in the code, Justice waited impatiently as the doors slid open again. He quickly grabbed one of the wheelchairs, then raced it outside to his Nissan compact. Opening the passenger door, he lifted his companion’s lax body into his arms; her head lolled toward him, and she glared at him with that fixed stare.
He barely noticed. What had bothered him earlier no longer did. Situating her in the wheelchair, he then pushed her back toward the building, feeling as if unseen eyes were watching him. Shaking that off, he punched in the code once again and entered with no fanfare. He could hear faint noise emanating from down one hallway, a television, and he avoided that direction, turning to the right.
To his happy surprise the rooms had not only numbers but names listed on plaques outside their doors. It took less than three minutes to find Madeline Turnbull, and he wheeled his companion’s chair into the darkened room, letting his eyes adjust to the dim light.
The old hag herself lay in the bed, eyes pointed toward the ceiling, as if she were praying to the Lord himself
.
“Mother,” he snarled.
The eyes blinked but didn’t stop their staring upward.
He wanted to gouge them out! Was consumed with the thought. His fingers flexed. But then his sensitive nose caught the whiff of death. She was almost gone, too.
Almost of their own volition, his gloved hands moved upward and he stepped toward her. His hands were claws but they aimed for her throat, not her eyes. Suddenly those eyes opened and snapped sideways. Gleaming in the light from the window. She cackled, a noise that rattled in her chest and shook her frame. “You are doomed,” she whispered on an exhale of breath.
“Shut up, whore!” he hissed.
“You are the true devil’s spawn.”
“Shut up!”
“You know it. He’s inside you,” she said with relish. “You . . .”
His hands clamped lightly on her throat. He wanted a knife. Needed a knife. Needed to cut her dead! Or burn her. Watch her flesh turn black and melt!
“Burn in hell!” he cried softly.
“Are . . . doomed . . .” The words were more mouthed than spoken, but he heard them as if they echoed and echoed through a canyon of granite, bouncing off ridges, gaining strength, resounding, blasting his eardrums.
His hands shook, clamped lightly. He wanted to squeeze with all his might. Tight. Tighter. Squeeze!
But no . . . he couldn’t. Didn’t want his handprints on her throat. He needed time . . . a way to make them think her death had occurred naturally . . . at least for him to make his escape.
Yanking the pillow from beneath her head, he placed it over her face and pressed down. Garbled noises sounded. She thrashed around, one clawlike hand scrabbling at his arm just where the other woman had scratched him. He pressed harder. Harder!
Minutes later . . . she fought him with more strength than he’d believed possible. Her thin body humping upward, faint mewling noises sounding.
Slowly he surfaced. It felt like eons had passed. There was pain in his cramped fingers from the grip of the pillowcase crushed between his hands. Releasing his clutched fingers was a superhuman effort.