Wicked Game

Chapter Twenty-Two

Becca was letting her nerves get the better of her as she made the long drive through the canyons and ridges of the mountains. Tall evergreens, like an army of sentinels, rose into the thick dark sky. Sleet and misting clouds caused the winding, slick road to seem even more isolated and sinister than ever.

Whatever was after her felt very close.

But she was safe.

Hudson was at her side.

Ringo was in the damned car. Sleeping in the backseat.

Nonetheless, despite her internal pep talk, Becca felt the gloom of the night-dark forest closing in on her. And as she drove, listening to some obscure country song riddled with static, she thought of Jessie, who had traveled on this very same road so many times.

It seemed as if Jessie’s spirit had infiltrated this stretch of road.

She told herself she was imagining things, that she couldn’t “feel” Jessie or “sense” her ghost wandering through the rain, mossy, old-growth timber, and sharp canyons. Her mind was playing tricks on her.

She glanced at Hudson, whose eyes were trained on the road. His jaw was set, his expression harsh in the dim glare from the dash lights. He, too, was lost somewhere in his thoughts.

She drove across an icy bridge spanning a deep chasm and her heart seized when she recognized the area. Hadn’t she herself been run off the road here on her way from Seaside sixteen years before?

The last time you were pregnant.

She slid another glance at Hudson, then stared through the windshield where condensation was fogging the glass. She felt as cold as death as she passed the mile post marker where her car had been forced off the road.

Nervously, she checked her rearview mirror, but the car that had been behind them for a while had lagged back, no headlights visible. Nothing but the frigid black night. Her teeth chattered and no amount of adjusting the temperature of the Jetta’s heater could warm her.

“Cold?” Hudson asked, rousing from his thoughts.

She offered a weak smile as her fingers clenched the wheel. “It’s supposed to be eighty in here.”

“It is. At least.”

Really? God, she was chilled to the marrow of her bones. “I guess it’s just me.”

“We could turn back,” he said reluctantly.

She shook her head. He wanted to see this through as much as she did.

Should she admit why this stretch of 26 gave her the willies? Point out the place where she, like his sister, had been forced off the road? Admit that she’d been pregnant with his child and hadn’t had the guts to tell him about it?

Now her hands were sweating. Though she felt chilled to her soul, her palms were damp. You’re a basket case. Just tell him. Let the chips fall where they may.

A flash caught her attention and there in the rearview, she glimpsed twin headlights cutting through the night. Either the car that had been following at a distance had caught up, or someone else had passed the first vehicle and was bearing down on them.

Hudson’s attention was on the radio. “I think we should be able to pick up a decent station from Astoria or Seaside,” he said.

Becca kept her eye on the rearview. Why here? Why after all this time alone on the highway would a vehicle appear at this winding spot in the road, so close to where-

“Is he nuts?” she said as the beams bore down on her.

Just around the next bend, the highway widened, a passing lane over the summit, but the vehicle behind-a truck-didn’t wait. In a rush, it swept by, sliding a little as it flew into the oncoming lane and roared past, no one visible through its foggy windows.

Hudson looked up sharply. “Damn idiot.”

Becca hit the brakes, making room.

The big truck rocked, sliding into the right lane before thundering ahead, rushing into the night, taillights disappearing into the mist.

Becca’s heart was pounding, her lungs tight, her nerves about to shatter.

Hudson glared through the glass. “That son of a bitch could have killed us. You know, it’s one thing if he wants to play Russian roulette with his own damned life, but it’s another thing to screw with my family.”

His family.

From the backseat Ringo gave out a disgruntled woof, then stood on his back legs, nose to the glass of a rear window.

“You tell ’em,” Becca encouraged him, finally relaxing a bit.

Swearing under his breath about brainless jerks with driver’s licenses, Hudson continued his search for a radio station. The choice was a late-night sermon or songs from the “AWESOME sixties, seventies, and eighties.” Hudson chose the music and Gloria Gaynor, in the middle of “I Will Survive,” blasted through the speakers. He turned the volume down, though their conversation disintegrated to a few observations about the condition of the road or the distance left.

Becca hit ice a couple of times at the summit, but the Jetta’s tires grabbed on. Still, as the car wound down the westerly slopes, she couldn’t let go of the tightness in her chest, the eerie and growing sensation of doom chasing after her.

Whoever he was, he was sure working on her fears.

And it didn’t ease up when they turned south on Highway 101, following the snakelike coastal highway. Through small towns, over deep chasms, and hugging the cliffs that rose from the ocean, Becca drove on, battling the wind and rain that slanted in from the Pacific.

A few miles north of Deception Bay, Hudson craned to look out the window. It was the cliff edge where Renee’s car went over. “You want to stop?” she asked carefully.

“No. I’ve seen it.”

They drove the remaining miles to Deception Bay in silence. It was dark and a sharp wind blew patchily as they entered the small coastal village that curved along a crescent-shaped shoreline. The town itself was wedged between the ocean and mountains with the highway separating the two. To the south was the bay, a freshwater body of water allowing fishing boats a gateway to the open sea.

Becca’s heart began to race and she felt strange. She knew she’d never set foot in the town before and yet, as she turned one corner after the next, buildings illuminated by the watery glow of a few street lamps, she felt as if she’d walked these narrow streets. An eerie sense of déjà vu so real it chilled her to the bone enveloped her and she had to fight to keep her teeth from chattering. Even with the mist rising, the weathered storefronts and the fishing boats moored in the bay seemed like pictures from her childhood, though, of course, they couldn’t be.

Not your childhood. Jessie’s.

A chill whispered up her spine and she swallowed back her fear.

It’s all in your mind. You’ve never been here before. You’re letting your damned imagination run away with you.

“Becca?” Hudson said and she snapped out of it.

“What? Oh!” She realized she’d slowed to a stop and idled at an intersection controlled by a blinking red light, but she hadn’t resumed driving, despite the fact that no other car was waiting. “Sorry.”

“You were a million miles away,” he said.

“I was thinking about-Jessie-and this town.”

“Deception Bay?”

It’s like I’ve been here before; not once, but several times. Had she dreamt of this place, had visions of the tiny fishing village that she couldn’t consciously remember?

“Let’s get something to eat before everything shuts down,” he suggested, pointing to an establishment with a glowing “Open” sign in the window, and Becca headed into the parking lot. She had her pick of parking spots in front of a restaurant that still displayed its mid-century façade. The entire building appeared as if it hadn’t been updated much since the early 1930s with its stone façade and rusting anchor mounted over the door.

Inside a heater blasted warm air around a near-empty cavernlike room with plank ceilings to match the floors and fishing nets filled with dusty glass balls and fake fish draped along walls paneled in rough wood. A couple of twentysomethings in stocking caps played pool, an older man in a ski jacket and full graying beard nursed a drink at the end of a long, timeworn bar, and a middle-aged couple sat in a corner, drinking beer and staring at the big screen positioned over an area Becca assumed was sometimes used as a dance floor.

Becca and Hudson took seats opposite each other in a booth near the huge rock fireplace. Kindling had been lit and now hungry flames crackled and hissed over mossy chunks of oak and fir. A fading stuffed marlin leapt over a rough-hewn mantel, and wood smoke covered the scents of frying food and cigarette smoke drifting in whenever a side door opened.

Becca swabbed some crumbs from the table and noticed that it, secured into the wall, listed slightly. Soft music-some kind of nondescript jazz-played from speakers mounted on the walls, pool balls clicked, and the deep fryer sizzled, the scent of oil-fried food rising above the sound emanating from the kitchen.

Hudson ordered a microbrew to go with his Dungeness crab cakes while Becca settled for sparkling water to wash down the spicy clam chowder. They shared a small loaf of sourdough bread and lathered it in garlic butter, but Becca barely tasted any of the food.

What was it about this town that made her feel as if she’d been here before? Certainly not just because Jessie had spent time here. And not because Renee had visited. But something…something she didn’t understand had infected her, made her think she’d peeked around the corners of Deception Bay.

The restaurant was warm enough that she shed her coat, but during the hour they spent over dinner, watching the few people enter and leave, making small talk, Becca never completely lost the chill that had burrowed into her spirit.

Hudson left bills on the table, helped Becca with her coat, then together they dashed the few steps through the lashing rain to the car. She switched on her wipers though they were nearly useless against the downpour and she drove slowly, creeping up the hill to the bed and breakfast, a two-storied rambling hundred-year-old manor with eight bedrooms and a panoramic view of the ocean, now dark as tar.

Hudson carried the bags and she shepherded Ringo into a wide foyer with an antique chandelier suspended from the ceiling that rose high over a sweeping staircase. Hudson had already paid for everything online, and they found their key in a lockbox just inside the door. With Ringo leading the way, they headed to the second floor and a cozy room complete with a glowing gas fireplace, canopied bed, and Victorian antiques. His and Hers robes were draped by a jetted tub behind an obscure shade.

“Nice,” she murmured.

“Only the best.”

“Or the only place available on short notice.”

He smiled and she relaxed a bit as she stood at the window, looking out to where she knew the Pacific should be. With the ocean dark, no moon offering its glow, and rain peppering the glass, she couldn’t see anything but her own pale reflection, a worried woman searching the storm.

As she stared at her own weak image she felt another pair of eyes, not Hudson’s, who had opened his laptop and was struggling with a barely existent wi-fi connection. Nor did she feel Ringo’s dark eyes upon her as he was sniffing the connecting rooms, hardly paying attention to her. Whoever was staring at her, she was certain, was on the other side of the glass, observing her through the shroud of the storm, following her every movement, reading her damned thoughts.

She snapped the blinds shut and turned around.

Hudson abandoned his computer and came around the desk to gather her in his arms. She snuggled into them gratefully. “You make me feel safe.”

He kissed the top of her head. Then he tucked a finger under her chin, turning her face up to his. “You make me feel…something else,” he said suggestively.

“Ahh…” she said, her mood lightening. And when he kissed her again, more passionately, she kissed him back with all her pent-up love and desire.

Nothing could hurt her and her baby as long as she was with Hudson.

From my lighthouse, I stare at the shoreline, barely visible through the night. But she’s there. Becca. Close.

And rutting like a whore!

I feel my lip curl in disgust, though I shouldn’t be surprised.

Isn’t it what she does, what they all do?

Jezebel was the mistress of fornication.

Rebecca is no different.

Fingering the knife I stole from the cabin, I tamp down my frustration. I’d known she would come, of course, had felt her need as the sea pulled her. But I’d thought she would be alone.

Who is this man? This stud?

I push open the door and it’s nearly ripped from its hinges with the force of the gale, the door thudding hard. The old metal walk is rusted, but I step outside naked, feeling the slap of the wind, hearing it howl and whistle as it whips the breakers into froths of whitecaps and swirls of angry foam.

I had to pass her in the mountains, take a chance and speed by her in an effort to outrun the storm and get to the lighthouse. As it was, I barely made the crossing, the waves washing over the sides of my craft, threatening to plunge it to the bottom of the ocean.

I will have to kill them both.

Once again, I’ll need to attach the grill guard to my vehicle. Two bolts to secure the bars across the front of my truck and then I’ll force them off the road as well. My truck will go unscarred, the grill guard hidden securely.

I finger the edge of the knife and wish I could use it as my weapon. Feel the lifeblood ooze out of Rebecca’s body. Like it did with Jezebel. With a smile I remember her rounded eyes in the moonlight, her gasp of surprise. She, too, had been curious and, foolish girl, had thought she could better me, lure me to her and then stop me from my mission.

Talk me down?

Convince me of the sin of my ways?

Offer up sexual favors for me to ignore my duty?

Or did she really think she could kill me with her tiny little knife, the one I turned on her?

She’d been shocked to know that she’d lost.

Jezebel who had always won.

And now it is time for another.

Rebecca needs to die.

And die soon.

“So you wanna watch a movie? There’s a Star Wars marathon running all night,” Mac said to his son. Levi sat on the edge of a plaid couch, his bare feet propped on the edge of a metal and glass coffee table, his head bent over a handheld computer game. “We missed the first one, but the second comes on in twenty minutes.”

“Okay.” Levi’s lack of enthusiasm was palpable.

“I picked up some microwave popcorn and red licorice.”

Levi winced, but it was from missing something on his game system. He hadn’t heard a word Mac uttered. The kid was placating him. They were stuck together in a small cabin in a coastal town in the middle of nowhere, and Sam McNally realized for the first time how little he knew his son.

“I’ll put in a pizza.”

“Yeah.” Levi stopped and for once Mac thought he’d caught the kid’s attention until his boy picked up his cell phone, read the display, and began texting like crazy. Mac hadn’t even heard the damned thing ring.

“Someone callin’ ya?” Mac turned on the oven, preheating the ancient thing.

“No.”

“But you saw a message.”

“I texted Seth. No big deal.” The phone either vibrated or made some inaudible noise and Levi snapped his head into the direction of the tiny screen. Once again his fingers flew over the keypad.

“Seth must’ve had something pretty important to say.”

“It wasn’t Seth. Someone else.”

“You can do two at once?” he asked and smelled old crud burning off the inside of the oven. This fleabag was the first place he’d tried when he called for a place to stay, and now he was second-guessing himself. He’d known as soon as he’d driven up and seen the rates for daily, weekly, or monthly that the units wouldn’t be five-star. But he’d thought a fireplace and a cabin feel would be roomier and a little more relaxing than a sterile motel room with two matching beds, TV in an armoire, coffeepot, and maid service rapping on the door in the morning.

Now, looking at the sagging, scratched furniture and ancient paneling, he wasn’t so sure. Even the plumbing at the Coastal Cove Cabins seemed suspect.

“It’s easy to text a bunch of people,” Levi told him disparagingly.

“If you say so.” Mac slid the frozen meaty pizza out of the box. Hell, he could count the pieces of pepperoni and sausage on the thing on the fingers of one hand. He figured it didn’t much matter. The oven reached the temperature and he placed the pie inside.

Levi had abandoned his game completely and now was texting faster than the best typist in the department.

“How many people are you talking to?”

“I dunno. Why? Oh. Don’t worry, I’ve got unlimited texting. It’s not costing you…er, Mom or Tom anything.”

“Tom? Who’s Tom?” he asked before he realized what he was saying.

“Mom’s latest.” For the first time Levi met his gaze.

“You don’t like him.”

A shrug. “He’s okay.”

“And he’s paying your cell phone bill?” This was news to Mac, but then Connie only told him what she wanted to, when she wanted to.

“He added me to his plan. It doesn’t cost much.”

“But-”

“Mom’s on it, too. Tom’s moving in.”

“How do you feel about that?”

Levi’s phone zinged again and he looked away. “It’s all right.” He began texting again and Mac sensed the conversation was over. He’d known Connie was “involved” with someone, but he’d never heard his name and figured it would pass. In the years since they were separated and divorced, she’d dated a number of men. One guy, Laddie, had moved in with her twice, and twice she’d kicked the bum out. Now, it seemed, she was onto a new one.

Mac didn’t begrudge her the new men in her life. He just hated that Levi had to be dragged along for the ride.

“You could move in with me,” he suggested and Levi’s head bobbed up as if it had been pulled by an invisible string.

“You’re serious.”

“Thinking about retiring.”

Levi’s eyebrows drew together. “You sure?”

“Yeah, why not?”

“I don’t know…” He shook his head. “Mom wouldn’t like it.”

“We’d work something out.”

“I don’t think so. Mom, she says she and Tom are gonna move in together and get married. He’s got a couple of daughters. They’ll need a place to stay, so the den, that’ll be their room when they come.”

“How old are they?”

“Dunno.” He thought. Scratched at his chin and Mac saw the first evidence of a beard, a few stray hairs on his chin.

At twelve? The kid was growing up. Fast.

“I guess they’re five and eight maybe. Little kids.”

“How do you feel about that?”

Levi was about to equivocate, to lie, and say it was “all right” or “not too bad.” Instead, he scowled and yanked off his stocking cap. “It sucks. Big time.”

“Then we should talk about you moving in with me.” He hesitated, then said, “Mom and I already talked about it.”

“You did?” The first he’d heard anything like this.

“Mom told me to give it a chance, that Tom would make things…better. We would eventually get a bigger house, and, you know, I could go to a better school. Get ready for college.” He forced a smile he didn’t feel and in a falsetto mocked his mother’s voice. “We’ll be this one big happy family and everything will be just perfect.”

“That what you want?” Mac asked, surprised that his kid was opening up. Connie hadn’t said a word about the new guy, just that she was seeing someone and that Levi had a girlfriend. Mac couldn’t remember the girl’s name, but he’d bet his badge she was texting Levi up one side and down the other.

“I just want everyone to leave me alone,” he muttered and picked up his phone again.

It ain’t gonna happen, Mac thought, then waited as the pizza finished baking. When the timer dinged Mac found an old towel to drag the bubbling, half-burnt thin crust from the oven. He cut the pizza into pieces and Levi ate with him, only to slip into game mode again. Rather than bug the kid, he turned his attention back to the case. He was going to check in with the sheriff’s department in the morning, see what, if anything, had developed on Renee’s accident, then do a little reconnaissance around the cabin the Brentwoods had owned.

Afterward, weather permitting, he’d take Levi crabbing on the bay and talk some more.

He might just learn something about his own damned kid.

“Hey, Sleeping Beauty.”

Becca opened a groggy eye. She’d slept like a rock after making love to Hudson, and sometime during that time, the storm had passed. Struggling to sit up, she found him at the foot of the bed dressed only in jeans, his hair dark from a shower, his torso as bare as his feet.

“Weather’s better,” she observed as sunlight streamed through the now unshuttered window.

“Don’t count on it lasting. Supposed to get colder again. Maybe snow in the passes.”

Becca groaned. “What time is it?”

“Nearly ten.”

“Really?” She couldn’t remember when she’d slept so late. She blinked and stretched as Hudson walked to the coffeepot and poured some into a cup.

“Here, this is all that’s left, but there’s breakfast until eleven, so…”

“I’m up!” She rolled out of bed and padded to the bathroom where she got a glimpse of herself and cringed. Her hair was a tangle, her face still heavy with sleep, her makeup long gone. What had Hudson called her? Sleeping Beauty? A bad joke at best.

She showered, slicked her hair into a ponytail, applied minimal lipstick and mascara, then pulled on a pair of jeans and a sweatshirt. Hudson had already walked Ringo, so they, along with one other couple who looked to be in their seventies, ate a breakfast of a spinach quiche, fruit cup, and cinnamon rolls that, the owner of the establishment confided, were baked at the local bakery.

“You own this place long?” Hudson asked as the tall, lanky man brought them a new pot of coffee.

“Nearly twenty-five years. Will be this September. My wife and I decided to give up the rat race and move here from Chicago. This old house was for sale and we converted it to a B and B. We’ve never looked back.”

At the next table, the woman waved her hand. “Is there any more orange juice?” she asked, and the owner/waiter hurried off to the kitchen. Becca looked out the window toward the ocean, now calm, beams of sunlight bouncing off the restless gray water.

The beach far below was littered with debris, driftwood, seaweed, the shells of dead clams and crabs. Seagulls wheeled and cawed above the small strip of sand. Waves came and went, lapping the shore and leaving bits of thick foam as they receded.

They finished their meal and then Hudson opened a thick sliding door and he and Becca stepped onto a deck that ran the length of the building. Despite the sun, the air was crisp and cold, and though there was no wind, the surf continued to echo against the cliffs. To the south was the bay, a few brave fishing vessels having already slipped over the bar and into the sea, and to the north was a curving peninsula of rocks and trees, a narrow cape stretching clawlike into the ocean. A few black rocks, islands unto themselves, protected the cape’s shoreline. Farther out, atop a rocky mound, was a lighthouse, a tall spire rising into the heavens. Farther still, an island sat on the horizon, mist shrouded and about a half mile out.

Becca stared at the lighthouse and shivered against a sudden rush of cold air. She turned back inside.

They checked out of the bed and breakfast, packed up the car, then walked into town. It was nearly noon, a few people on the streets. Hudson had the address and knew where the key to the cabin where Renee had stayed was located. The yard was overgrown, the carport sagging a bit, but inside the cottage was cozy, though it seemed to Becca as if she’d stepped back in time at least twenty years. The futon had to have been built in the seventies, and the television was similar to one her parents had bought while she was in grade school.

She noticed the desk, imagined Renee working here, her near-black hair shiny under the tension lamp.

Unexpectedly, her throat thickened and tears burned the back of her eyes. She couldn’t believe Renee was gone. Gone forever. She thought of Hudson’s twin and wondered what Renee might have been doing.

“Feels odd,” he said, his mood matching hers as he walked through the few rooms, his footsteps creaking on the old floorboards.

“Yeah.” Becca noted the faded pictures on a wall of a family decked out in yellow windbreakers while standing on the deck of a fishing vessel, the open sea swelling behind them.

“Okay, I think I’ve seen enough,” Hudson said and they locked up the cabin and walked into the center of town, where, unlikely as it was, Becca felt that same chill deep in her soul, the one that had been with her since driving into the town. A few pedestrians littered the streets, a man walking his dog, a woman jogging behind a stroller, skateboarders weaving along the sidewalk, the hoods of their sweatshirts nearly hiding their faces as they flew past.

The Sands of Thyme bakery was filled with customers, a line for cinnamon bread that had just come out of the oven, the shop filled with the warm scents of spices. The pizza parlor had a sign that said it was closed for the winter and a kite shop, too, was locked up tight.

They bought coffee and walked along the waterfront where beachcombers searched the strand for treasures washed up by the storm.

On their way back to the car, while Hudson tied Ringo to a post outside, Becca wandered through the open door of a shop that smelled of soap and candles, where antique dressers, tables, and armoires displayed smaller items. Everything, including the hanging lights, had price tags attached.

The clerk, a prim woman in her sixties with straight white chin-length hair and a wary expression, sat on a stool near an antique cash register, a half-finished knitting project on a ledge near the window where a calico cat sat, tail curved under its body, as it basked in the sunlight streaming through the windowpanes.

There was one other customer in the shop, a stooped woman with iron-gray hair and gnarled hands who was interested in a case of antique buttons.

Her knitting forgotten, the tight-lipped clerk eyed the woman like a hawk, as if she suspected her of pocketing some of the merchandise.

The old woman was oblivious. “Aren’t they pretty?” she said, looking up at Becca with flat eyes. She was fingering a mother-of-pearl button that glittered under the overhead lights.

Becca eyed the luminescent button. “Yes. Very.”

“But only one…I need two.”

“Can I help you with something, Madeline?” The clerk, obviously displeased, let out a put-upon sigh as she reluctantly slid off her stool, its legs scratching against the wood floor. The cat, disturbed, leapt onto a highboy from where it peered down imperiously.

Madeline? Becca stared at the old woman, who stared back. “You look like one of them,” the old woman whispered.

“Madeline,” the clerk reproved.

“One of who?” Hudson was just stepping through the front door.

Madeline’s head snapped up and she viewed Hudson with a furtive glare as he wove his way between the displays to stand next to Becca.

“Siren Song,” she whispered.

“Are you Madame Madeline?” Becca asked.

“Maddie!” The clerk was heading their way.

Instead of answering, Madeline placed her twisted fingers on Becca’s abdomen, then shrank away, quickly sketching a sign of the cross over her chest, then shuffling to the door.

“Did she take that button? Damn it!” The clerk stamped a small booted foot. “She always does that!” She started for the door, but Madeline was gone, through the door and hurrying off. “I should call the police, but for the most part she’s harmless.”

Becca was unnerved that she’d touched her abdomen. “Who is she?”

“Oh, yeah, she calls herself Madame Madeline. She pretends to be a psychic. She’s a town fixture, lived here all her life.”

“And what did she mean by Siren Song?” Hudson asked.

“It’s a tract of land run by…well, some locals. They mostly keep to themselves. The property is valuable, it stretches from the mountains on the east side of 101 and across the highway to the ocean. They’re this clannish group, like a colony, some even say cultish. Different, you know. All related.”

“Colony?” Hudson asked.

She smiled then and took a long look at Becca. “I see what Maddie means, though, you do resemble them…a little.”

“Them?” Becca felt a little weak in the knees. What the hell was all this? Maddie placing her hand over Becca’s stomach as if she knew she was pregnant, and then this talk of resembling members of a-cult?

“I’m not related,” she said firmly.

The woman didn’t argue with her, but did add, “This is the second time in the last few months that someone has asked about Siren Song. I’ve owned this shop for six and a half years. Before that I worked in one of the spas that closed, and I can go for months without anyone mentioning Siren Song, maybe years, but lately…Oh, well.” She straightened the little case of buttons that Madeline had pawed through.

“Who asked about Siren Song?” Hudson wanted to know.

“A visitor in the town. Can’t remember her name.” The shopkeeper frowned, thinking hard, her fingers frozen over the buttons. “Oh. Yes. It was that dark-haired young woman. The one who was killed when her car went off the cliff just north of here.”

“Renee Trudeau?” Hudson asked.

Becca’s heart did a nosedive.

“Yes.” The shopkeeper brightened, proud of herself. “That’s her name!”

Mac had had enough of the beach. He’d spent the whole day trying to figure out what kind of “fun” thing he and his son could do together. They’d made an attempt at crabbing, but Levi wasn’t really into it. Now the sun was sinking into the horizon and storm clouds were just about to block it out completely. A glacial wind was trying its best to rip his coat from him. Levi was bundled in a hat and coat and all Mac could see were his nose and mouth. They were both frozen and trying to act like they were having a good time.

The Tillamook County Sheriff’s Department knew nothing more than they had the first time Mac had visited them. Mac got the feeling they wanted him to disappear and let them work their investigation in their own way. He didn’t blame them. He didn’t like interference, either.

So he’d taken the hint and brought Levi into Deception Bay with the thought of hanging out with his son, but the weather was sure as hell making that a dicey proposition. He was trying to think what he could come up with, some kind of entertainment they could both enjoy, when his cell phone buzzed. He saw it was Gretchen and was almost grateful for the intrusion.

“What’s up?” he asked.

“A helluva lot, actually. Maybe you should leave town more often and let the rest of us do your work for you.”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah. What is it?”

“You know the DNA you got back on the Preppy Pricks? And the girls, too?”

“That proved Zeke’s paternity, yes.” Mac was trying to be patient, but he could hear the edge of annoyance in his voice.

“You only asked to know the baby’s paternity.”

“Yeah?”

“Well, the tech found some other-unexpected-information in that DNA, and he called this morning to give you the news. I took the call.”

“How long is this build-up gonna go?” Mac demanded.

“Ends right here, killjoy. Your little girlfriend’s DNA matches one of the others. They’re full-on siblings.”

“What?”

“Rebecca Ryan Sutcliff is Jezebel Brentwood’s sister,” she said with relish.