Virtue Falls

  She tugged at his jeans.

  He lifted his rear, let her slide them down and off.

  She eased her hand under the elastic of his boxers. “What do you want?”

  He wanted to tell her to hurry.

  He needed to warn her what would happen if she—

  She grasped his dick, slid her fingers up and down. “Do you know what I’m doing?” she murmured.

  He could barely form the words. “Killing me slowly.”

  She tsked like a displeased schoolteacher. But she did not look like any kind of schoolteacher he’d ever had.

  Well, except for the middle school fantasy …

  She said, “No. I’m relearning the contours of your body.”

  “Learn faster.”

  She chuckled. “I find I learn better if I avail myself of all the methods at my disposal. Touch. And—” Putting her head in his lap, she sucked him into her mouth.

  He tensed, lifted himself about an inch off the chair, remained there, blind and deaf, while she sipped and suckled, circled the head with her tongue, and drove him nearly to the brink. He hovered there, in torment, until she released him and sat back on her heels.

  He looked at her, and he would have sworn even his eyes were swollen.

  Standing up, she parted her legs a little, enough to tease. With one red-tipped fingernail, she circled a button on her shirt, over and over, a slow, sensuous circle. And in a spuriously innocent tone, she asked, “Did you like that?”

  He surged to his feet, picked her up, sat her on the desk, stepped back, and dropped his shorts.

  Abruptly, her smile vanished. She was serious, intense … needy.

  “You shouldn’t trust me and my patience so much,” he said. “I’m going to make you scream.”

  Her blue eyes grew wide. Her tongue massaged her lower lip. “You, first.”

  CHAPTER FIFTY-EIGHT

  Yvonne stepped out of the Honor Mountain Memory Care Facility and paused, waiting to hear the door shut with a solid thunk behind her.

  The night was cool, like every night on the Washington coast. Midnight was quiet, the parking lot almost empty, the light over the entrance an island in the forest dark.

  She walked toward her Ford Bronco, parked in its usual place, six spaces out and two lanes to the right.

  She was exhausted. Her feet hurt. Her back hurt. Even her emotions hurt. And she was so very, very glad to be going home at last.

  She was about halfway to her vehicle when her cell phone rang. She pulled it out of her purse, stared at the number, answered it with a glad cry. “Sweetheart. You got through to me!”

  John laughed, deep and low in his chest. “I’ve been trying every hour. How are you?”

  “So good. Now.” She stopped walking, and smiled into the darkness. “I’m going home for a whole twelve hours for the first time since the earthquake hit. How are you?”

  “No problemo. I delivered my load in Salt Lake, got the money wired to our account, and we’re in the black, baby.” He sounded so proud.

  “I’m glad. So glad. Because”—she hated to tell him—“there’s some damage to the house.”

  “I figured there had to be.” She could almost see his face as he sobered. “Bad?”

  “Nothing you can’t handle yourself.” He knew his way around construction, thank God. “All you’ll need is electricity to charge your cordless drill and some two-by-fours … which I hope you bring with you, because at this rate it’s going to be a long time before Virtue Falls gets any supplies.”

  “I’ll bring whatever you tell me to bring.” He didn’t sound happy. “I just can’t get there right away. Every trucker who wants to drive Highway One-oh-one is lined up at the truck stops, waiting for the DOT to clean it up so we can go home. Baby, it’s a mess.”

  “I know. You can’t do anything about it.” But her voice betrayed her loneliness, and quivered and broke.

  “I could leave the truck and get home.”

  That offer snapped her out of her self-pity. “Have you lost your mind? If you abandoned the truck and someone took it, or vandalized it, what would we do? We need that truck!”

  “I know.” Now he sounded wretched. “But what about you?”

  “I’m fine. Don’t I sound fine?” She made a concerted effort to sound fine. “I’m going home now, I’m going to sleep for twelve hours straight, then I’m coming back to work—”

  “What about the crazy people you’ve got at that place?”

  “They’re not crazy. Not that kind of crazy.”

  “Oh, yeah? How did they take that earthquake?”

  She thought about the general hysteria every time they had another aftershock, about Mr. Banner and his enthusiasm, about Mr. Cook who had been smashed by the ceiling and who was still unconscious. “Really, babe, hearing your voice is the best thing that could have happened to me.” She almost cried with sincerity. “Promise me you’ll take care of yourself.”

  “You know I will. We’re having a card game at the rest stop tonight.”

  “Don’t lose the farm.” She wasn’t really worried. He was cautious, and he had a poker face that revealed nothing.

  “Are you kidding? I could win us all of eastern Washington.”

  She laughed. “But who wants eastern Washington?” She didn’t say it often, but she hadn’t talked to him in so long, and he was her guy. “I love you.”

  He never could say it, and it always made him uncomfortable when she did. But she understood, and she didn’t mind.

  “I know,” he said. “Gotta go. Game’s gonna start in ten minutes.” Then he yanked his attention back to her. “Listen. You be careful. Promise me.”

  “I promise. I’ll see you when you get home.” She said it again. She had to. “I love you.”

  He grunted.

  She hung up. She smiled at her phone. She slipped it into her purse and started toward her Bronco again. She got within five steps when she heard a whisper of sound from the edge of the trees. She turned fast, but a blow knocked her to her hands and knees. The torn asphalt ripped her palms; she screamed.

  Her attacker landed on her, slamming her flat on her face, knocking the wind out of her. The man grunted, then flipped her over. He knelt on her chest, on her boob, leaning so hard the agony almost made her black out.

  But he pressed his knife to her throat, and terror kept her conscious.

  The point pricked her skin right over her carotid artery.

  No one knew better than her; one firm slash, and her life was over.

  Her heart beat hard. Desperate with fear and pain, she gasped for breath, but his knee, his weight, made it impossible to draw a full breath.

  A knit ski mask covered his face. His mouth was a round hole in the weave. His eyes blazed from the two holes above. “Where are your keys?” His voice was hoarse, a whispered threat.

  “What keys?” Stupid question. “Oh. To the care facility.”

  Drugs. He wanted drugs.

  She couldn’t give him access to the hospital filled with vulnerable patients and weary medical staff, not even to save her life. “My keys are in my purse.”

  He groped on the ground, found her purse, dumped it out. She heard the phone hit the pavement. Wallet. Lipstick. Keys.

  He reached for them. But he never took his gaze away from hers. He watched her as if he wanted to kill her, and all the time, the point of the knife pressed against her skin.

  Please, God, no. No, please, God, I don’t want to die.

  The keys jingled by her ear. “Which one?” he asked.

  “The brass one with the red plastic cap.”

  He bent his head close to her ear. “If you are lying to me, I will get you.”

  Did this mean he wasn’t going to kill her … now? “I’m not lying.” She wasn’t. That had been the key to the facility … a year ago, before they went digital.

  Her breath wheezed in her throat. He pulled his knee out of her chest. The point of the knife disappeared from her throat
.

  She took her first, full, unobstructed-by-fear-and-pain breath.

  And the blade settled onto her upper cheekbone.

  Beneath the ski mask, his eyes glittered with sick excitement. He pressed the point on the skin.

  She pushed her head against the pavement. Useless. She couldn’t back away. The tip pierced her flesh, slid toward her eye—and at last she gave into terror. She didn’t know where she got the air; she must have brought it from the depths of her being, and screamed, loud and shrill.

  He looked up, across the parking lot. He looked down at her again, and his eyes were now cold, pitiless, bleak. “Bitch!” He gave the knife a spiteful twist, then he was gone, racing across the parking lot toward the forest.

  She sat up. Scrambled to her feet. Couldn’t stop screaming. She held her face, pressing hard, trying to fit her skin back in place, to mold it to the bone. Blood filled her palm and ran down her arm to her elbow.

  A man ran up.

  She flinched back, throwing out her free hand to fend him off.

  But it wasn’t ski mask guy. It was Mr. Villalobos; his father was a patient, and he must have left the facility soon after she did.

  Thank God. Thank God. His arrival had chased away ski mask guy.

  She could see Mr. Villalobos’s lips moving. He was talking to her, although she couldn’t hear him over her own shrieks. He showed her his phone, dialed, spoke into it.

  Tears welled in her eyes. John. She wanted John.

  Across the parking lot, the door to the nursing home slammed open. Orderlies and nurses ran out.

  Sirens sounded in the distance.

  Yvonne’s screams became sobs. She sank to her knees.

  Voices. A lot of voices now. Safety in numbers.

  He couldn’t get her now.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-NINE

  This morning Garik couldn’t stop smiling.

  He had had a very good night. Not much sleep, but a very good night. There had been screaming. And as promised, some of it had been by him.

  Now he walked into the dining room, pressed a kiss on Margaret’s forehead, pressed a kiss on Elizabeth’s forehead, and seated himself. “How are my favorite ladies this morning?”

  “I would sleep better if fewer earthquakes rattled the hotel,” Margaret said.

  We’re almost sure the aftershock last night wasn’t our fault! But he didn’t say that. Instead, he helped himself to two pitted prunes from the bowl in the middle of the table. And smirked.

  “Prunes,” Margaret muttered. “In August. When it should be fresh peaches. We have indeed fallen far.”

  Elizabeth sprinkled brown sugar over her oatmeal. “It could be months, years, before the earth settles down again.”

  Margaret’s eyes narrowed. “I’m ninety-one years old. I would hope that the earth stops this infernal shaking before I go to meet my maker. I want to rest easy and not have my bones rattle out of my—” She stopped, and looked guilty.

  Because Elizabeth’s mother had not rested easy in her grave; in fact the earthquake and tsunami brought her out of the ground.

  An awkward silence settled over the breakfast table.

  Margaret patted Elizabeth’s arm. “I’m sorry, that was thoughtless of me.”

  “It’s fine. You didn’t mean … and I think my mother will rest easier now, don’t you?” Elizabeth looked hopefully from Garik to Margaret and back to Garik.

  “Indeed I do,” Margaret said warmly, “when she’s had a proper burial with proper rites said over the grave. Prayers, I mean. That will set everyone’s mind and heart to rest.”

  Elizabeth’s phone sat by her elbow, and when it rang, she looked surprised and then complacent. “Some of us obviously deserve phone service. Like me. Like Margaret.”

  The two women nodded at each other.

  “Garik, have you got phone service yet?” Elizabeth sounded prosaic, but she looked at him with (he thought) affection.

  He glanced at his phone. “No. Are you going to answer, or are you going to gloat?”

  Elizabeth picked it up—and paled. She read the screen, THE HONOR MOUNTAIN MEMORY CARE FACILITY, and answered. She listened. Her mouth turned down. She blinked and frowned. She exclaimed in horror.

  Garik and Margaret exchanged concerned glances.

  Elizabeth said, “Okay, I understand. I’ll come by later to see my father. Thank you for letting me know.” She hung up, and stared at the phone as if it had bit her.

  Garik’s gut stirred.

  Margaret placed her cup of tea precisely on her saucer. “What?”

  “Last night, Yvonne Rudda—”

  “The nurse at the care facility?” Margaret asked.

  “Yes. Yvonne. She was attacked in the parking lot by some guy with a knife. He knocked her down, put the point to her throat, and got her keys to the facility. Then he cut her face.” Elizabeth touched her cheek.

  “How badly was she hurt?” Margaret asked.

  “I don’t know, but she’s in the hospital. Someone chased him off … she was finally going home, and someone attacked her?” Elizabeth’s eyes kindled. “That’s bullshit.”

  “Life’s bullshit.” But Garik took her hand and laced their fingers together. “What happened with the keys?”

  “While the police and EMTs were helping Yvonne, the guy went around to the far door and tried to break into the facility. That’s why they called me. They’re calling all the relatives of the patients to assure them everyone’s fine.” Elizabeth wet her lips. “My father’s fine. The burglar didn’t get in.”

  “Hm.” The stirring in Garik’s gut became a roiling. Elizabeth had discussed the Banner case with a reporter, told him they had been talking about the past with her father, and the news story had made it online. And Charles Banner, after all, was housed in the Honor Mountain Memory Care Facility.

  “They didn’t catch the burglar?” Margaret asked.

  “I don’t know,” Elizabeth said.

  “Is there video?” Garik asked.

  “I don’t know,” Elizabeth said.

  “We’d better go this morning.” So he could view the video, if there was one, Garik meant, and examine any evidence.

  “Do you think Charles is in danger?” Margaret was too sharp not to know what Garik intended.

  “No. The facility is secure. It keeps the patients in, keeps the bad guys out. When we visit, somebody who works there has to buzz us in through the main door, then check us in. The people who work there have to slide an electronic ID so they’re logged in when they’re there.” Garik’s mind clicked through possible criminal types. “Whoever this guy is, breaking and entering isn’t his main occupation, or he’d know that.”

  “The authorities think he was a stray addict who got stranded in the area by the earthquake, and got desperate for drugs.” Elizabeth pushed her oatmeal away.

  Almost at once, Harold appeared in the dining room and picked up her bowl.

  Elizabeth continued, “Although that really doesn’t make me feel any better. He didn’t get any drugs, so he’ll be more desperate. Next time he’ll break a window.”

  Garik watched Harold as he removed more dishes off the table.

  Why was he clearing off? Why not Vicky? Why not Miklós? Had Harold been listening at the door?

  For Elizabeth’s sake, and Harold’s, too, Garik asked, “The facility’s windows are reinforced glass. It has to be, or a resident could bash his way out and escape. No one will come through the window.”

  Harold left carrying a tray full of dirty dishes.

  “Do you think my father will have more stories to tell about my mother?” Elizabeth asked.

  “Have you decided you believe him?” Garik asked.

  Harold was back again with a fresh cup and pot of tea.

  “Yes … it was very weird, but last night I dreamed about my mother. She was talking to my father. I couldn’t see him, but I could see her, and she looked the same as she does in the pictures. I woke up feeling happy. And oddly
enough, reassured that he does remember what really happened.” Elizabeth looked alarmed. “Which isn’t logical at all.”

  “No, not at all,” Garik said firmly.

  “I wonder if that was a memory of her?” Margaret mused. “Or simply your mind building on a photograph?”

  “Probably the photograph.” Garik didn’t need Harold to speculate that Elizabeth’s memory was coming back. Too much publicity had already occurred about her, the Banner case, and her search for the truth. Now violence had occurred, and Harold lingered in the dining room.

  Probably Harold had been working for Margaret long enough that he considered himself one of the family. Or maybe he was carrying gossip back down to the kitchen. But Garik no longer trusted anyone, not even Harold, an elderly veteran with one leg, a man who, even if he had left the resort to attack Yvonne last night, could never have run away fast enough to escape pursuit.

  Because Harold was the right age to have been in love with Misty Banner, and he had been to war. He could have murdered her. He knew how to kill.

  “Harold, could I get a thermos of coffee?” Garik asked.

  Harold nodded and left.

  Elizabeth stood, looked down at the table, and traced the wood grain with her fingertips. “Actually, I do need to drop by the facility every morning for a few minutes to help rebuild my relationship with … well. Margaret, you’re right. If I want to know my father, and hear what he has to say, I need to do it now.”

  “I am very glad you’ve made this decision,” Margaret said.

  “If you’ll excuse me,” Elizabeth said, “I’ll go get ready.”

  Garik and Margaret watched her leave.

  Margaret sighed and pushed her oatmeal away, too. “Do you think it’s a stray drug addict in search of a fix?”

  “I don’t know.” Garik stood, wrapped his arm around her skinny shoulders, and gave her a gentle hug. “I hope so. It beats all other scenarios.”

  “Boyo, what did you get on your jeans?” Margaret craned her neck and looked down at the leg of his jeans. “Paint? Red paint?”