Blood Vines

CHAPTER FIFTY

Saturday, March 13

8:00 A.M.

Alex had slept little. She’d tossed and turned, tormented by the events of the previous day-and each day since she had arrived in Sonoma.

And she couldn’t let go of the way Reed had hurt her. She had been on the verge of laying herself bare to him.

As the dark hours ticked past one thing had become brutally clear: she was on her own.

But she wasn’t about to run and hide, the way her mother had. She would face this head-on.

Something terrifying had happened to her, something fighting to be remembered. Dylan had been abducted and most likely murdered. Also murdered, a man with a tattooed image of vines and a snake on the bottom of his foot. Now, Max Cragan was dead. His home burned to the ground.

Why kill Max? Why burn his home to the ground? Each time Alex wondered, she became more certain of the answer: the record of Max’s design creations. And who had commissioned them.

The secrets of the vines and snake.

She was part of those secrets. At the center of everything that was happening. Just as Reed had said. All her life, her dreams had been nudging her, reminding her she had a brother whom she had loved. And lost.

Tim had called it avoidant coping. Memory loss that occurred after a traumatic, life-threatening event. An event so terrible or terrifying, the brain worked to hide it.

But the memory was still there, fighting to get out.

It’d come close twice. Both times, in a wine cave.

Whatever happened to her had happened in that cave.

Alex meant to find out what. The Sommer Winery began tours at 9:00 A.M. and she intended to be in the first group.

At 8:50 A.M., Alex parked her Prius in the winery lot. She saw that a number of other groups had already arrived. A good thing. She’d hoped to be able to blend in. She flipped down her visor to get a last look at herself in the mirror. She wore a baseball cap and dark glasses. She had pulled her hair into a ponytail that stuck out the back of the cap.

She didn’t want the tour guide, if it happened to be the same one as the other day, to immediately recognize her.

And she certainly didn’t want to run into Clark, or any of the other Sommers. To facilitate that, she meant to stay as far away from the tasting room as possible.

Alex bought her ticket and waited in the museum, this time only pretending to study the photographs. When the guide arrived, she was grateful to see it was a different woman.

“Come on then,” the guide said, “let’s begin at the beginning, with the grapes.”

Alex followed the group, hanging back, pretending rapt attention as the woman described the collection and sorting procedure. Instead, what rang in her head was the rapidly increasing beat of her heart. The sound of her own shallow breathing. She wiped her damp palms against the sides of her thighs, acknowledging her anxiety. Determined to roll with it.

You have to do this, Alexandra. It’s only a memory. It can’t hurt you.

“The highest concentration of flavor is in the skins,” the guide was saying. “And this is a major way the fermentation of red and white wines is different. For reds, the skins remain with the juice. Not so for whites.”

They stopped before the row of stainless steel fermenting tanks. “Here at Sommer we make two very good whites, a chardonnay and a pinot grigio, but our big, full-bodied reds are what we’re known for.”

She explained about punching down and the dangers involved; this time, however, Alex kept her mouth shut. The guide also explained that the wine was drained from the top to avoid dirt at the bottom of the tank, and that the spigot and hatch door at the bottom provided a way for the winemaker to check the wine’s progress, and once the wine had been drained, for the tank to be cleaned.

She pointed to their left to a row of four much smaller tanks. “Those are used for some of our small production, reserve wines. We call those our tankquitoes.”

That earned some laughs and a couple hurried across to take a picture. The woman posed by the tanks. “Oh, my gosh, this one’s leaking.”

“Those tanks are empty right now,” the guide said. “Now for the highlight-”

“No, she’s right,” her companion agreed, “it’s open and leaking.”

The group stopped and turned. The guide headed that way. “It might just have been cleaned,” she offered, “so what you’re seeing is probably-”

She bit the rest back.

Alex frowned. The hatch was cracked open and something was dripping from the edge and had formed a small dark puddle on the floor below.

The guide reached the tank. “Cleaning solution, I’m certain.” She grasped the door handle and pulled. It opened. A tiny fist popped out, followed by an arm. The crown of a head, covered in baby fine wisps.

A child. An infant.

Not cleaning solution. Blood.

For one second the silence was complete. Then several screams rent the air. The guide stumbled backward, drawing back her hand, covered in blood.

Chaos ensued. Alex stood as if frozen, unable to drag her eyes away from the gruesome sight, the sounds of hysteria swelling around her.

“Someone get one of the family!”

“Call 911! For God’s sake, someone call-”

“No, wait! It’s a-”

Alex sank to her knees, struggling to breathe. It was so awful. She curved her arms around her middle, rocking. She heard Treven arrive, out of breath from running.

“Oh, dear Jesus!”

Then Rachel. “My God! Has anyone called 911-”

“Sheriff’s on the way. Ambulance, too!”

Clark, Alex recognized, gaze fixed on that tiny fist. So small and helpless. Like Dylan. Small and helpless. Innocent.

“You will not fall apart,” Treven ordered, though whether to Rachel, Clark or someone else under his command was unclear.

“Clark, close the winery for the rest of the day. At least. No more tours. Get these people into the tasting room. Give them whatever it takes to calm them down.”

“What if they want to go?”

“Absolutely not. I’m certain the police will want to talk to them. We need to manage this situation.”

“Call Danny Reed. Let him know what happened. I want the best and I want a friend.”

“Rachel, I do not want my brother down here. Do whatever it takes to keep him away.”

“I agree. He’s been through enough-My God. Alex? Is that you?”

“What’s she doing here?” Clark asked.

Rachel responded by telling him just what she’d like him to do, then squatted beside Alex, laying a hand on her shoulder. “Alex? Honey, it’s me, Rachel.”

With what seemed like monumental effort, Alex dragged her gaze from the tiny fist. She opened her mouth to speak, then shut it when nothing came out.

Rachel frowned. “Are you okay? Can you walk?”

She nodded and Rachel helped her to her feet. “Come on, let’s go to my office.”