Wicked Lies

  I want you. All of you. Heart and soul. But the words wouldn’t come. When he didn’t immediately respond, she tossed him a hard, knowing look and ordered again, “Get out of my way.”

  “Laura—”

  “You don’t listen! Get the hell out of my way!”

  All he wanted to do was kiss her. To drag her into his arms and gather her close, press his mouth onto her wet lips, and try to roll back the hours and days, to start over. But she’d lied to him. And it was a big one.

  She pulled on the door handle, and he stepped to the side, watched as she slipped behind the wheel. “Tell Kirsten thanks,” she said, twisting on the ignition and backing up before jamming her Outback into drive and nosing out into the street.

  And then she was gone.

  CHAPTER 43

  She wouldn’t cry.

  Laura drove away from the restaurant and bit her lip, but she wouldn’t cry.

  She’d made a mistake with Harrison Frost, thought he was somehow different from the other men she’d muddled her life with, but, of course, she’d been wrong. She saw the repressed fury in the set of his jaw, the accusations in his eyes as he’d asked her about the pregnancy.

  You should have told him.

  “How?” she asked herself, her gaze flicking to her rearview mirror. “When?” It all would have ended up the same, though it might have ended faster.

  What kind of a fool was she to fall so hard and so fast? “Idiot,” she accused and caught a glimpse of her reflection, shimmery blue eyes from her struggle against tears, brown hair growing out with her lighter blond roots.

  She needed a change. To get away from here. From all the memories of her weird childhood, her disaster of a marriage, the loss of her unborn child, and finally, to get away from Harrison. She thought of their last few nights together, camped out at Kirsten’s or the bed-and-breakfast. . . . It seemed as if they’d shared a lifetime in little over a week.

  Boy, oh boy, was that stupid.

  She flicked on the radio, heard a newscast about the attack at Siren Song, then found a station that played a blend of pop and rock. Not that she really noticed. She was concentrating on her next move. As long as Justice was on the loose, no one was safe. Not her, not her sisters, not anyone close to her. Nor innocent victims that got in his path. Currently, no one could find him.

  She alone could communicate with him.

  She alone would have to find the son of a bitch. She didn’t have to worry about her baby’s life anymore, nor did she really have concern that he would zero in on Harrison now that they had split. Justice would probably know that about her, like he knew everything else.

  She said under her breath, “It’s just you and me.” She wasn’t foolish enough to think she could kill him or try to arrest him, but she might be able to find him or flush him out, and then, once she knew where he was, she planned on calling the police with an anonymous tip, one that had enough information that they would follow up.

  Afterward, once he was no longer a threat to Siren Song and her sisters, Laura would figure out what the hell she planned to do with the rest of her life.

  “Don’t tell me, you screwed it up,” Kirsten said when Harrison walked into the bakery-cum-deli and carried their dirty plates into the back area. “I saw through the window.”

  “She’s mad.”

  Kristen leveled her gaze at her brother. “So apologize.”

  “You don’t even know if the argument was my fault.”

  She took the dishes, placed them into the sink, and began rinsing them with an industrial hose and nozzle. Steam rose as she sprayed the plates. “Sure I do.” Letting the hose retract, she leaned her hips against the stainless-steel counter. “I saw how she looked at you and you looked at her.” A small smile touched her lips. “It was the same way Manny and I used to look at each other, Harrison. She’s a smart, beautiful, funny woman, and you’re letting her slip through your fingers.”

  “You don’t understand.”

  “What I understand is that I would do just about anything to bring him back, to recapture what we had . . . and I never will.” His sister shook her head. “Okay, I get it. Laura didn’t tell you she was pregnant. Big deal.” When he just stared at her, she said, “So I eavesdropped a little.”

  “She lied.”

  “Seriously? That’s what you think? With all the hell you two have been going through? And what does it matter? Even if she was still pregnant now. Does that make her a different person? Well, yeah. She’ll be a mother, and that changes women, usually for the better. But she’s still Laura, and you’re in love with her whether you admit it or not. Do you know what she’s going through? She just lost a baby. Maybe one she didn’t know about for long, didn’t plan, but let me tell you, that woman is hurting, and you, brother dear, only made it worse. I wouldn’t blame her if she never takes you back.”

  “Hey, whoa . . . we weren’t going together.”

  “Really? You aren’t crazy nuts in love with her? You don’t fantasize about her day and night? You haven’t thought about what it would be like to live with her?” She shot him a glance that accused him of lying to her and to himself. “And think about it from her point of view. What’s she going to do the minute she meets you? Say, ‘Hi. I’m Laura, and I’m pregnant with my ex-husband’s child’? I don’t think so. How did you find out, anyway? From her ex?”

  Harrison didn’t answer.

  “It doesn’t matter, anyway,” Kirsten said, warming to her topic as only she could. “Once Laura didn’t tell you from the get-go, when would there have been the right opportunity? And then she loses the baby. . . . God, Harrison, quit being so tunnel-visioned, such a man, and think about her, what she’s going through! Take your damned male ego out of the equation, would you?”

  Harrison had heard enough. “Thanks for all the sisterly advice.”

  “Anytime. It’s free. Oh, and another thing, you weren’t seeing someone else, were you? Some blonde?”

  He shook his head. “What are you talking about? I’m not seeing anyone. I met Geena Cho for a drink the other day, but that was really about work.”

  “Is Cho Asian? ’Cause this one’s definitely not. She came in today, ordered coffee. Asked if I was Kirsten Rojas and my brother was Harrison Frost. When I said yeah, she asked where you lived. I didn’t tell her, just directed her skinny ass to the Breeze.” She leveled her gaze at her brother. “But she’s not worth losing Laura over.”

  “I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about,” he muttered again.

  She cupped her hands around her mouth. “I’m saying don’t lose Laura.”

  He shook his head and walked out the door again, skirting mud puddles on the way to his car. His head felt heavy with unwanted information, and Kirsten’s voice echoed through his brain. You aren’t crazy nuts in love with her? “Hell,” he muttered and climbed into his Impala. He needed to think things through, and he usually did it best when he worked. He had an inside look at Turnbull’s last rampage, so he’d start there. He had direct quotes from the maniac and could use the phone calls as his hook into his piece.

  He cut through the back roads of town and hit the main road as his cell phone rang. Hoping that Laura was calling him, he glanced at the display. Not Laura. Not Justice. But a number he recognized as belonging to the cell phone of Pauline Kirby. She’d probably heard of his involvement at the Zellman murder scene.

  He wasn’t in the mood to talk to her and instead let her leave a message.

  On the drive to Ocean Park he tried to dismiss all of Kirsten’s pointed remarks.

  You don’t fantasize about her day and night? You haven’t thought about what it would be like to live with her?

  How did you find out, anyway? From her ex?

  The words kept turning over in his mind.

  You aren’t crazy nuts in love with her?

  How did you find out, anyway? From her ex?

  Well, yeah, but the more he thought about it, the more it bothered
him that he’d really twigged to her pregnancy thanks to Zellman. Despite patient/doctor privilege, the psychiatrist had let it slip that pregnant women from the Colony were Justice’s primary targets. At the time, Harrison thought Zellman was just showing off, trying to impress him with his knowledge of the maniac.

  The maniac who he’d unintentionally helped set free.

  His thoughts took a dark turn, his fingers tightening over the steering wheel.

  It was almost as if Zellman had seeded the information about the pregnancies to him. Had the doctor slipped it in on purpose? But why? Zellman couldn’t have known Laura was pregnant. Only she knew. And Justice.

  What the hell was Zellman’s game? Harrison felt that same old distrust for the man again as he took a corner a little too fast and corrected, the Chevy’s tires sliding a bit.

  Had it really been Justice on the phone to him?

  With that disturbing thought gnawing at him, he pulled into the lot at Ocean Park Hospital and remembered the last time he’d been here, to pick up Laura, to see that jerk of an ex-husband accost her before driving off in his Corvette. It had only been one day.

  One helluva day.

  Inside the hospital, he inquired about Brandt Zellman and was told only that he was “stable.” He asked about the patient’s father, but the information desk had no information about Zellman, and in a quick scan of the partially full lot, he didn’t see the black Lexus. He tried another tack and asked if Conrad Weiser was well enough to have visitors, but was met with a stony glance and a shake of the receptionist’s head.

  He wanted to see Laura but she wasn’t here. With an effort, he shoved thoughts of her aside and concentrated on Zellman. So where would the doctor go? Either to his home or his office.

  Climbing back in his car, he headed toward the Breeze offices, a place where he could do some research. Then he was going to find Zellman and confront him. Something was very, very off with the guy.

  “I knew I’d find you here, stupid ass!” James eyed his brother with pure disgust. Mike had been searching the cabins again and had come back to the manager’s unit to have another granola bar, the only thing he’d taken from the house before he’d snuck out.

  “You didn’t have to come after me.”

  “Of course I did! Mom and Dad are gonna murder us when they find out!”

  James was really mad, his jaw working just like Dad’s when he was about to hit the roof, his eyes glittering, as if it was all he could do not to take a swing at his little brother right here and now. So let him.

  “Let’s go,” James ordered.

  “No.”

  “Hey, dickwad, did you hear me? We’re leaving and we’re leaving now.” James glanced around at the rotting boards and crumbling mantel and shook his head. “You can’t really want to stay here.”

  “Just a few more hours. The tide’ll be out around eight . . . at eight eighteen, to be exact, and we can get to the lighthouse easily then. It’s light till nine at this time of year, too.”

  “You’re certifiable!”

  “It would be cool for you, too. Think what your friends would say if you showed, I dunno, something like . . . uh, a shoelace from Justice Turnbull’s boots.”

  “Everyone would laugh their asses off! How could I prove that?”

  “With this?” Mike pulled out his iPhone. “I’ll take pictures.”

  “They’ll all say it was photoshopped, or digitally corrected.”

  “Not if I send ’em to Facebook while we’re still out there . . . you know, a whole series?”

  “It’s a stupid idea.” But he wasn’t as adamant.

  “What’ll it hurt?”

  “What if the dude shows up, eh? What then?”

  “He won’t.”

  “What if we get stuck out there . . . ?”

  “Only if we’re morons.”

  “Well, there’s the question.” James eyed the broken-down couch as if he might sit down, then changed his mind. “We could be. We probably are.”

  At least he’d said “we.” “What if we found something out there that breaks the case wide open and leads the police to Justice Turnbull?”

  James snorted.

  “It could happen!” Mike insisted. “Look. We go out there. Stay only fifteen minutes, or maybe, maybe half an hour. Then we come back, and . . . and I’ll go straight home with you.”

  “Oh, sure.”

  Mike pulled out the ace he had up his sleeve. “I’ll even tell Belinda Mathis that you were the one who made me go out there, that I got chicken at the last minute.”

  “Big deal.”

  “Kara thinks it is and she’s been talking to Belinda. You can see it on my text.” He scrolled through a zillion texts on his phone. “Here.” that’s so cool bring us back something.

  Mike looked up at his brother. “She means her and Belinda.”

  James scowled. “I don’t care what Belinda Mathis thinks.”

  Liar. Mike backed off. The hook was set. Now he just had to reel him in. “Well, okay, but I’m going out there. And then I’ll go home. But not before. And I’ll bring something back.” He didn’t add, “For Belinda,” but he could see that James was already making that leap.

  “Then you won’t put up a fight?” James demanded.

  “Uh-uh.”

  “And you’ll tell Mom and Dad you ran off and I had to come and bring you back?”

  “Yep.”

  James sighed and looked through a dirty pane to the outside, where, Mike knew, he could see the ocean. “I must be nuts,” he muttered. “And I want your Mariners’ tickets!” The Mariners were the Seattle baseball team, and Mike had scored a couple of tickets for his birthday.

  “Deal,” he said quickly. He wasn’t into baseball, anyway.

  In just a few more hours . . . he’d finally get to see into Justice Turnbull’s lair.

  My head pounds. The knot on my crown is tender. The pain in my shoulder is excruciating, burning. . . .

  It was all I could do to drive back to the bait shop, leave the van in its parking place, and stagger to my room.

  How could I have been so careless?

  I remember clearly the exhilaration of being inside the forbidden walls, of plotting all their deaths, and then seeing the one out of the corner of my eye.

  Ravinia—horrid, scurrilous creature—trying to escape.

  I smile as I think how I thwarted her escape, aborted her attempt for freedom. And I would have killed her, too, slit her fine white throat and watched her blood spray and pump from her body. I imagined the surprise in her eyes, the fear, the anguish when she knew she was about to die . . . and then the other one attacked. Smashed something hard that nearly cracked my skull. Before I could turn around, another hard blow. That glanced off my shoulder.

  Bitch! You will pay!

  Inside my room, I take off my jacket gingerly. The pounding in my head throbs, and my shoulder is nearly useless. But my arm still works.

  I need to heal. To recuperate.

  Food and sleep and the sea . . . I have to return. . . .

  And then, the spawn of Satan will feel my wrath . . . all of them.

  And Lorelei will understand she cannot save them.

  She is weaker now. Battered from the loss of her child. I sense no wall stopping my thoughts from reaching her.

  It’s your fault, sssisterr, I think. They will all die because of you. . . .

  In a blink, her wall is up again and I can’t break through. But she saw . . . she witnessed her doom.

  I take great comfort in the future and will my body to heal.

  Lorelei will die.

  Slowly.

  Painfully.

  Forever silenced.

  CHAPTER 44

  Harrison leaned back in his desk chair at the Breeze, ignoring its squeaking protests as his mind traveled along several pathways. He had been researching Zellman for about an hour and had developed a very unflattering picture of the man.

  It was weird. He’d le
arned Zellman was in his office right now. Working. As if nothing had happened. As if his son weren’t in the hospital, clinging to his life. As if his wife weren’t dead.

  It didn’t make sense.

  Unless . . . Harrison called Stone, who, for once, picked up.

  “Stone.”

  “It’s Frost. Hey. I’ve got a question for you. The cell phone calls I’ve been getting from Justice Turnbull on Zellman’s phone? Have you tracked that phone down? Made sure it’s in someone else’s possession?”

  “I can’t discuss the details of this investigation with you, Frost. You know that.”

  “Off the record?”

  “Doesn’t matter. Why? You don’t think it was Justice who phoned you?”

  “I don’t know. Look, I’m going to want to ask you a few more questions about what happened at Siren Song for a story. Can we meet?”

  “I’m a little busy right now.” There was an edge to Stone’s words.

  “Will you call me when you locate that phone? I have a personal interest in it, you know, since I’m the one who gets the calls on it.”

  “As I said, I can’t discuss the details of the investigation.”

  “I tipped you to the Zellman house,” Harrison reminded the detective. “Because the lunatic called me.”

  “When we’re ready to go public with everything, you’ll be the first person in the media I contact. Now, I’ve got another call.”

  Stone hung up and Harrison listened to his other messages, both from Pauline Kirby, wanting to interview him as a “witness” to the Zellman murder.

  As he headed out, he lifted a hand in good-bye to Buddy, who yelled at him, “Where you going?”

  “Got an interview,” Harrison said.

  “You got a story for Connolly? ’Cause, man, I’m not staying here all night.”

  “Work it out with the boss.”

  Harrison was out the door, in his car, and on the road to Halo Valley, thinking about the phrase that he’d said to Stone: because the lunatic called me.

  Why was that? Why hadn’t Justice called Laura and harassed her? Why him, one step out? At the time Harrison had thought it was because Justice preferred to contact Laura mentally, throw his taunts out into the atmosphere and scare the bejesus out of her. But she claimed to have shut him down on more than one occasion . . . so why not threaten her on the phone as well? If that was part of his MO, why not call Laura the usual way?