Wicked Game

Chapter Seventeen

She knows!

As our eyes meet, I see the recognition, the understanding.

My heart is thundering, pounding, full of excitement, my fingers clutching the steering wheel as I step on the accelerator.

Her face is a mask of horror and I can almost hear her screams.

God has given me her as a gift. She is not Rebecca. She is not Jezebel. She is not one of them. She is just a stupid woman who threatens the mission.

I cannot smell her, only the heady scent of the sea crashing on the rocks far below.

Yet she must die because she knows.

Bam! My truck’s grill guard hits the car hard a last time and the Camry slams into the weakened guardrail to plummet over the edge, spinning and toppling as it dives into the sea.

Trembling, I back up quickly, throw the truck into Drive, and make good my escape. Though this is a lonely stretch of road at this hour in this late part of winter, I must be careful.

If anyone were to see, my mission, my life’s work, would be destroyed.

There is still so much to do and there is a scent in the air, the hint of an odor that I haven’t smelled in a long, long while.

I smile to myself as I drive northward before heading east.

To her.

Hudson swept his cell phone from the kitchen table as he and Becca headed out to his truck, Ringo on his leash zigzagging across the gravel drive. Becca climbed inside, helping the dog onto her lap as Hudson dug his keys from his pocket.

It was early afternoon. They’d spent the morning at his house, waking late, drinking coffee, tending to the livestock, eating a leisurely brunch at a diner in Laurelton before returning to the farm. The day had been clear and the horses had stretched their legs, trotting, tails lifted around the pasture. Boston, the Appaloosa, her belly large with the foal she carried, rubbed her side against the rough bark of an oak tree, snorting in contentment, her breath two cloudy bursts from her nostrils, and Becca stroked her neck and murmured to her.

Now Hudson smiled to himself. Who would have thought that he would feel such a sense of contentment here, a peace he’d never experienced in his days of selling, brokering, and investing in commercial real estate? He’d done well enough, but he’d always been restless.

You’re too damned young to retire, he’d told himself often enough, but he’d ended up here anyway, working on the farm, managing the properties he owned at a distance, and satisfied, if not happy with his life.

From the moment he’d seen her at Blue Note he’d known he’d never gotten over her.

And Jessie had brought them together, which made him feel almost guilty about falling in love again.

He caught himself up short-Love? Jesus, you’re an idiot. Love? Ridiculous. But glancing at Becca as she climbed into his truck made him quiet that nagging little insistence. And the restlessness that had been with him for years was sliding away.

The phone rang as they were bumping down the gravel drive. He examined the Caller ID. “Tillamook County?” he read, then punched the talk button. “Hello?”

Becca gave him a shrug as he said, “Yeah, Tim. What’s up?” In an instant his face turned to stone. “Wait a minute…Slow down. Where?…Yeah, I know Renee went to the beach. What?”

Becca’s heart froze.

“Wait…which hospital?”

Hospital? Becca’s fingers tightened over the handle of her purse. Her blood turned to ice. “Hudson?”

All color drained from Hudson’s face. He stopped the truck at the end of the drive, his fingers crushing the phone.

“Hudson?” she repeated, her mind racing.

“She’s alive?” he said into the phone.

Becca’s hand flew to her throat.

“I’m on my way.” He clicked off, breathing shallowly. “That was Tim. Renee’s been in an accident. The sheriff’s department called him, told him she’s at Ocean Park Hospital.”

“Is she all right?”

“I don’t know. Shit!” He threw the truck into gear again.

“But she’s alive.”

“I think so.”

Becca was trembling inside, her blood turning to ice. Another “accident,” so soon after Glenn’s death. What were the chances of that happening? “I can’t believe it,” she whispered, but that was a lie. Fleetingly she thought of Renee’s sense of persecution-Renee, with her need to return to Deception Bay, her determination to find out what happened to Jessie, her yearning to write her story.

“I’m going straight to the hospital after I drop you off.”

“I’m coming with you,” she said. No way was he leaving her behind.

“It’s at-”

“-the coast. Ocean Park. I heard.”

“What about the dog?” Hudson asked.

“He’ll come, too. Ringo loves to ride in the car.” To the dog, she said, “Lie down, Ringo.”

“Are you sure about this?” They were at the end of the lane waiting for a truck towing a fifth wheeler to pass. “It doesn’t look good, Becca.”

“I want to be with you.”

“The hospital is a good two hours away.” He glanced through the windshield to the fields beyond, not, she suspected, seeing the stubble of bent yellow grass in the fields.

“Then we’d better not waste any time.”

“Okay.” He accelerated onto Highway 26, heading west where the sun, sheltered by thin clouds, was already lowering behind the ridge of mountains separating the Willamette Valley from the Pacific Ocean.

Becca sent a prayer toward the gauzy heavens. Renee couldn’t die. She just couldn’t. They’d lost too many already.

But as she stared ahead, she thought about Jessie and her warning…

What was it she’d tried to tell her? Two syllables? Maybe one word?

As Hudson’s truck roared upward into the foothills and the towering fir and oak obliterated the sun, Becca felt a cold chill settle in her spine.

Ocean Park Hospital was known for the twisted pine trees that flanked its blacktopped entrance. The pines, their trunks and limbs tortured over the years by blasting gusts of wind, shivered and bent their heads as Hudson’s truck barreled between them on his way to the low-rise concrete hospital that had been constructed for function, not beauty.

Hudson had placed a call to the sheriff’s department and gotten nowhere. A return call to Tim had found him despondent. Renee’s soon-to-be-ex-husband, who too was driving to the hospital, had sounded slow and perplexed, as if he had no idea what his role was in this event.

For her part, Becca just felt still inside. A forced stillness. A way to insulate herself from whatever was coming next. She had burning questions about Renee’s accident, but neither she nor Hudson knew much more when they arrived than when they’d started.

Ringo barked at them as they left him in the truck.

“You’ll be okay,” Becca said to the dog automatically, though her mind was elsewhere and she wasn’t sure that any of them would ever be “okay” again. Even the dog.

Hudson, his expression calm but worried, clasped Becca’s hand and they entered through the emergency room’s automatic sliding doors together.

“Renee Trudeau?” Hudson said to a clerk behind an admitting window. “I was told she was admitted earlier today. Victim of an automobile accident. I’m her brother, Hudson Walker.”

“Could you wait a moment,” she said, inclining a hand toward the adjacent waiting room with its fake ficus tree and row of tired-looking chairs. Dog-eared, tattered magazines littered an old coffee table and an elderly man sat with his elbows resting on his knees, his gnarled hands tented under his unshaven chin. “I’ll let the doctor know you’re here.”

“I’d like to see my sister.” Hudson looked past the clerk to the line of doors beyond.

“I’ll let him know.” The woman, probably fifty though she sported new braces, smiled patiently, but there was something in her gaze that warned things might not be as bright as her grin suggested.

Becca perched on the edge of her seat but Hudson paced like a caged lion, glancing out the window, then at the rooms behind the glass partition and admitting desk, then Becca, then back again.

It wasn’t the doctor who approached them but a man in a crisp tan uniform with badges on his chest and upper arms. Deputy Warren Burghsmith of the Tillamook County Sheriff’s Department introduced himself to Hudson, who had been pointed out by the clerk in braces.

Becca steeled herself. This couldn’t be good news.

“You’re Renee Trudeau’s brother?” he asked.

“That’s right. How’s my sister?”

“Still alive, but barely. Lucky she didn’t die on impact.” He explained how Renee’s car had plunged through a guardrail and into the ocean, how someone had called in the accident, and how the Coast Guard had retrieved Hudson’s sister from the wreckage. The deputy was calm, grim, and careful. He asked Hudson a few questions, mostly about where Renee was going and what she’d been doing. It didn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out something about the accident had alerted the authorities, though what that could be wasn’t apparent until the deputy admitted that Renee’s Toyota appeared to have been pushed-thrust-over the cliff.

“On purpose?” Hudson demanded.

“We don’t know.”

“When can I see her?”

“That’s up to Dr. Millay, but I’ll see what I can do.” The deputy walked through a pair of swinging doors marked No Admittance.

Minutes later a doctor in pale green surgical scrubs pushed through those same doors and while the elderly man looked up expectantly, the doctor, who had removed his gloves, headed straight for Hudson and Becca. “I’m Dr. Millay,” he introduced himself. He was tall, somewhere in his sixties, with the build of a runner. “I understand you’re Renee Trudeau’s brother?”

“Hudson Walker. Yes. How is she?” he asked, but the doctor’s somber expression said it all.

“I’m sorry. We did everything we could.”

Becca’s knees nearly buckled. What? What was he saying?

The blood drained from Hudson’s face as the doctor went on, “Your sister’s injuries were extensive. Broken clavicles, ribs, crushed pelvis, perforated lung…” In medical terms he described a body crushed from impact, but only a few of the phrases stuck in Becca’s brain. “…deep trauma to the chest and abdomen…heart and liver damage…unable to stop the internal bleeding…unconscious throughout…little or no pain…no response…” then finished with, “Ms. Trudeau died on the operating table. We called her time of death at 9:23 am.”

Hudson continued to stare at him. “Time of death?”

Becca squeezed his hand hard. Her heart started pounding in her ears so loudly she could scarcely hear.

Hudson seemed lost in another world. Becca pulled him unresistingly back to a chair but he sat on its edge, searching Dr. Millay’s craggy face for answers. The surgeon, who’d delivered the news quietly and without emotion, touched a hand to Hudson’s shoulder and said with a measure of kindness, “You can see her when you’re ready.”

Hudson rose to his feet like an automaton. Becca stood up as well, but he turned to her and said, “I want to see her alone.”

“Are you sure?”

He nodded jerkily and left with the doctor and Becca stared after them, feeling caught in a vortex that was pulling her down. Ever since the discovery of the bones at St. Elizabeth’s, death and tragedy had dogged their footsteps. How could this happen? Renee had been so vital. Such a force of nature. And now…and now she was dead?

In her mind’s eye Becca saw Jessie again, standing high on a cliff, near the ocean, the very ocean into which Renee’s car had plunged.

The ocean…

Through glazed eyes she watched as Deputy Burghsmith waited outside the inner sanctum doors. She realized Renee’s body would be moved to the morgue very soon.

A strange sound erupted from her own throat. A cry of anger and disbelief. The deputy came her way. “Are you all right, ma’am?”

“The car went over a cliff,” Becca said, as if committing it to memory. “Renee’s car.”

The deputy frowned. “Yes.”

“On Highway 101, and the car went into the ocean?”

“Yes, ma’am. Your friend was life-flighted to the hospital.”

“She lost control of the car because…someone pushed her over the edge on purpose?”

“We don’t know all the circumstances. The accident scene is still being reconstructed.” He glanced at his watch. “Well, they’ve probably about finished up by now.”

“But you believe someone ran her off the road,” she said again, though whether she was talking to herself or the deputy she wouldn’t have been able to say. She was lost in her own memories of another accident, where she’d been forced off the road by a hit-and-run driver and her car had plunged into a deep ditch, smashing into huge rocks that formed one side, crumpling the front of her car like weak cardboard. She’d been trapped inside for hours. Had to be freed by the Jaws of Life, though she remembered none of it. All she recalled was the horrific awareness that her baby was gone. She was empty. And she cried herself to sleep for weeks afterward and relied on medicine to dope her up and help remove the pain.

And now someone had run Renee off the road and she’d lost her life. She wasn’t alive anymore. Becca couldn’t quite grasp it. Hudson’s sister, the only family he had left, was gone. The vibrant dark-haired reporter with the feeling she was being persecuted was gone.

She was about to follow after Hudson despite what he’d said when he came back through the doors, his face pale. She wanted to gather him in her arms and hold him tightly, but he seemed somewhat distant, clearly still unable to process all that had happened in such a short time.

“I called Zeke,” he said in a strange voice. “He was the only one I could think of to call.”

“I’m so sorry.” Becca’s eyes burned.

“I don’t believe she’s gone, Becca. I saw her. I saw…the body. But I still don’t believe it.”

Then she wrapped her arms around him and he pressed his forehead to hers. She felt the shudder go through him and squeezed her eyes shut on her own teary emotions. She wanted to be strong for him. She wanted to help.

“I’m going to the crash site,” he muttered, pulling away. “I want to see where it happened.”

“You’re sure?”

“Yes.”

Becca followed him out to his truck. “You okay to drive?”

He nodded, got into his cab, pulled back onto Highway 101, and drove south, past the turn to 26 and inland. It was a spot they hadn’t passed on the way to Ocean Park Hospital, but it was definitely on the way to Deception Bay, the small town near where Renee had been staying.

It was a surreal trip. Neither Becca nor Hudson said much. The day had been surprisingly nice with the sun gaining control of the clouds, not the other way around, though now the early evening shadows were stretching inland and the sun was descending toward the sea.

And then they were there. A section of guardrail was twisted back, the metal hanging over the edge of a cliff. A gaping hole. Gravel had been stained with differing colors of spray paint, evidence left from the team reconstructing the accident.

Hudson pulled the truck to a stop, and he and Becca sat and stared at the break in the rusted metal rail far above the ocean. Then they climbed from the vehicle and Hudson walked to the edge, but Becca hung back, feeling queasy and strange. She stayed by the truck, one hand on the front fender, while Hudson went to the rim and looked over, his hair ruffled by spurts of wind, the sleeves of his denim shirt pressed against his arms from its force.

Becca couldn’t move forward. Logically, all she had to do was put one foot in front of the other but there was a barrier she couldn’t see, holding her in place. An oppressive, invisible wall. And then she heard the dull roar that heralded a vision, the sudden blindness, the building headache. “No,” she pleaded, although it could have been in her mind.

Ringo whined at her from the car. One of her hands was still on the hood, and she concentrated on it with all her strength, turning toward the vehicle for support before she was completely taken over by the vision.

She expected to see Jessie but instead she was in a vehicle herself, spinning the steering wheel, screaming, desperately trying to gain control. Trees and brush flashed by as her car plunged off the road and down the embankment. Her car. It was her car! Her accident! Instinctively Becca cradled her abdomen, protecting her baby. She could hear the rush of the engine from the car behind her, the one that had forced hers over the edge. In a panic she glanced back. She saw him driving away, heading like a maniac away from the scene of the crime.

And then blackness. Nothing but blackness.

Hudson scanned the accident scene. He was sick with grief and it had driven weariness into the marrow of his bones, but he couldn’t stop. Couldn’t let this terrible nightmare become a reality.

“Who did this?” he whispered. He didn’t believe it was an accident. Someone had purposely run Renee off the road. And the colored paint on the asphalt road and gravel shoulder told him the sheriff’s department agreed.

Why?

He tore his gaze from the sheer rocks that led to the gray and white plumes of surf far below. He glanced at the ground, saw the tire tracks. He could see where she had stomped on the brakes but had been unable to gain purchase. The tracks just lost their tread as the wheels locked and the car kept moving straight toward the edge and through the guardrail, propelled over the cliff.

Pushed!

Intentionally forced over the edge to her death.

“Goddamned son of a bitch.” His body was freezing. The deputy had alluded to the accident but he’d been holding back information; Hudson had felt it at the hospital but had been too absorbed in his own pain to pick up the signals. Someone had intentionally run Renee off the road.

His chest swelled with misery. He felt incapable of crying and didn’t know why. He wished he could. That there was some way to release the weighty buildup of sorrow that was choking him.

Becca made a strangled sound and Hudson looked her way to see her clinging to the front of his truck just before she slid to the gravel. He raced to her side, covering the ground in four large leaps, grabbing her just as she sprawled in a heap.

“Becca!” He heard the tremor in his voice. The quake of real fear.

She was breathing. Her eyes moving. And he was glad that it was one of her “visions” and not some deadly disaster. There had been too many of those.

He cradled her head and rocked her and his eyes burned, unaware of the crash of the sea and the wind blowing through his hair. Cars traveled past, slowing, then speeding forward in this snaking area of roadway, but he clung to Becca, his thoughts jumbled with fear and fury. Something was happening to their group. Something was after them. Wasn’t that what Renee had said? Or near enough?

What was it?

Several minutes passed while Becca lay in his arms, her body twitching as if she were fighting off an attack. When she slowly opened her eyes, she gazed at him for a moment in bewilderment.

“Jesus, Becca, you scared the hell out of me,” he said.

She blinked several times, then inhaled sharply. “Renee,” she murmured.

“You had another vision.” It wasn’t a question.

“Yeah.” She slowly sat up, feeling weary.

“What did you see?” he asked tautly. “Anything about Renee?”

She looked into his tortured blue eyes. He believed in her visions at some level, but it was small comfort in the face of such loss. “I saw an accident,” she said carefully. “Where a car was run off the road by another driver. But it wasn’t Renee.”

He gazed at her blankly. “What do you mean?”

“I think it was…me. My accident. From my past.”

“Was Jessie any part of it?”

“No…”

“It was more a memory, then?” He held her close and she could feel the pounding of his heart as he struggled to understand. “Someone deliberately killed Renee,” he said tautly. “I don’t know why yet. Or who. But I’m sure as hell going to find out!”

Zeke grabbed for the large bottle of water he’d placed on the kitchen table and took several more long gulps. He was going to drink down the whole damn thing to keep himself from reaching for a bottle of bourbon, which was what he really wanted to do. But now was not the time to get ass-stinking drunk.

Renee was dead.

Jessie had killed her.

He was sure of it.

Evangeline was standing in the archway between the kitchen and hall, shrunken, her arms cradling herself, looking ashen and pale, her entire body shaking. “This is a joke. A cruel joke. Hudson’s trying to get you to say something, to admit to something.”

“Shut up, Vangie!” Zeke grabbed the water bottle, twisted the top, then threw it forcefully against the wall. The plastic bottle hit the ground and water gurgled onto the floor in a spreading pool. “Stop saying that!”

“Renee’s not dead. It’s not true.”

“It is true! Hudson doesn’t play sick games like that. It’s his sister. His twin. What the fuck’s wrong with you?”

“It’s just not true. Don’t be so mean. You’re so hurtful.” She folded in on herself even more, her big eyes pleading with him to come and hold her, to love her, to help her.

Zeke slammed out of his chair and grabbed the bottle of water, tossing it into the sink. Then he leaned against the edge of the stainless steel basin and stared at the rivulets of water circling the drain.

“Is Tamara coming over here?” Evangeline asked.

“She went to see The Third, I think. I don’t know. She was crying.”

“Now they’ll think it’s true,” she sniffled.

“It is true!” Zeke slammed out of the kitchen and through the front door, gazing around wildly for his car. He’d parked it at the curb, hadn’t he? Where was it?

Evangeline suddenly had hold of his arm. “Where are you going? Where are you going?”

“The hell away from you! She’s dead, Vangie. Dead. Renee’s dead. Glenn’s dead. Jessie’s dead. They’re all gone!”

“No…”

“Goddammit!” He shook her off him and ran down the steps. There was no car anywhere, so he took off at a run and kept running until there was not a drop of energy left in his body and he threw himself onto the grassy berm that bordered the playground of a nearby school.

“Jessie,” he murmured brokenly, then broke down and sobbed.

“What was it that Renee said when you met with the other girls?” Hudson asked Becca, holding a cool washrag over her head as she lay on the bed.

They’d checked into a motel near the county sheriff’s offices, basic and weather beaten, willing to take pets, and surrounded by a small strip mall and a couple of fast-food eateries. Neither of them felt like driving home, and Hudson had decisions to make about the disposition of Renee’s body anyway.

So they’d just headed into the musty-smelling room and Hudson had insisted Becca lie down on the bed while he ministered to her. He’d shaken out a couple of aspirin and handed her a glass of water while Ringo paced around the top of the bedspread, occasionally glaring at Hudson as if Becca’s condition were his fault.

Becca had tossed back the aspirin, insisting she was fine, though her headache wasn’t giving up its grip. Hudson, meanwhile, kept going over everything and anything that could explain what had happened, a circular litany that did not require any input from her. She understood that this was his way of trying to grasp his sister’s death, and she lay quietly, petting her dog, as he paced the room, running on restless energy, unable to stop.

“What was it Renee said when you met with the other girls?” Hudson asked.

“She thought something was after her. Us. She was digging up stuff about Jessie and she stirred it up.”

“It.”

“She couldn’t explain her feelings. Tamara thought she’d taken the Tarot too seriously, but it was more than that. But she was determined to get the story, like it was going to save us all, I guess. I don’t know. She didn’t say that. It just seemed like that.”

He squinted his eyes, as if in pain. “Something that killed her.”

“Why would anyone kill Renee?”

“Her story about Jessie. God, I don’t know.” He shook his head in frustration.

Becca sighed, feeling that same frustration. “You said Renee called you. What did she say?”

“I couldn’t hear her. It was a bad connection.”

“You didn’t hear anything?”

“She was excited about the story. About Jessie. Something about getting justice and some history…about people living on cliffs. Colonies forming on cliffs,” he corrected himself.

Becca shook her head, perplexed.

“Your visions,” he said. “You said you’ve had a series of them since Jessie’s remains were found.”

She looked into his tense face. He was grasping at straws. Lines of weariness radiated from the corners of his eyes. She suspected she looked much the same.

“Like I said, I had the first one at the mall. Jessie was standing on a cliff above the ocean. She put her fingers to her lips and then she said something to me. I couldn’t make it out. And then I saw her outside the Dandelion Diner.”

“When we met McNally and his partner?”

She nodded. “That’s why I went into the restroom. I was afraid I was going to pass out. And then I saw the nursery rhyme note to Glenn, and then this latest one, my car being pushed off the road.”

“Do you think you were reminded of it because of Renee’s accident?”

“Possibly.” But it had felt far more real than that. A vision, not a memory.

Hudson came back to the bed and lay down beside her, moving a reluctant Ringo aside. “I can’t take it all in.”

“Me, neither.”

He draped an arm around her, pulling her close. Time passed while they were lost in their own thoughts. Becca eventually heard Hudson’s breathing grow more even, but her own mind ran through a maze of alleys, seeking answers that were always around the next corner, always just out of reach.

Gretchen was waiting for Mac when he crossed the room to his desk, and she didn’t waste time with hellos or even to ask where he’d been all afternoon. “Reports are on your desk. The fire was arson, gas line was purposely damaged. The DNA results are back from the Preppy Pricks. And we’ve got our artist’s mock-up on what she looked like.”

“Jesus.” Mac snatched up the files and glanced through them. “Good things really do happen in threes.”

“That’s bad things.”

“Hmm. See if Hudson Walker’s DNA matches with the baby’s.”

“Already told ’em. We should get a call soon.”

“And the rest of the Preppy Pricks,” Mac added as an afterthought.

“They’re checking them all,” Gretchen said impatiently. “What do you think of this?” She plucked the rendering of the victim’s face from the pile and held it in front of Mac’s eyes. He gazed at it hard. “This your little girlfriend?”

“I only saw pictures of Jessie.”

“Me, too. And?”

“I think this is pretty close,” he said slowly, though his heart was beating like a drum as he looked into those sexy, knowing eyes, the perfect mouth that he imagined twitching upward in a teasing, knowing grin. “What are little boys made of?” He could almost hear the rhyme slip through those sensuous lips.

“Don’t go all careful on me now,” Gretchen warned with a snort. “You’ve been saying it all along and now you’ve finally made me a believer. This picture’s a dead ringer for Jezebel Brentwood. Those bones are hers and her baby’s. And DNA’s gonna prove it.”

The phone on his desk rang and Mac swept it up. “McNally.”

Gretchen’s brows lifted and Mac nodded that it was indeed the lab tech with the information. “Thanks,” Mac said thoughtfully, hanging up a moment later.

“Well?” Gretchen demanded.

“It’s Jessie. The baby’s DNA matched her father’s.”

“Walker?”

“Zeke St. John.”

Gretchen screwed up her face in disbelief. “Walker’s BFF?”

“Mac!” Pelligree called from across the room. “Tillamook County Sheriff’s Department reported a fatal accident on Highway 101. Victim’s name is Renee Walker Trudeau.”

“What?” Mac jumped to his feet.

“Jesus Christ,” Gretchen murmured.

Pelligree was sober. “Her brother identified the remains.”

“I’m going,” Mac said, snatching his coat and heading out the door.

For once Gretchen remained behind, sinking slowly into a chair. She and Pelligree looked at each other in the wake of Mac’s departure.

“He was right,” she said on a note of admiration. “There’s a helluva lot more to this case than any of us thought.”