Lisa Jackson - Wicked Game

And what was he going to tell her? By the way, Becca, did you know that Jezebel Brentwood was your sister? Either good old Mom and Dad gave her up for adoption and kept you, or you were adopted out, too. Was that the kind of news-the kind that created more questions than answered them-that you delivered over the phone?

“Let’s go to Seaside,” he said gruffly, and they both got into his Jeep.

Becca found the turnoff to Siren Song after passing the entrance twice. It was little more than an opening between hedges of laurel and sturdy grasses that led to two lines of gravel whose center was a tall strip of weeds. Rain drizzled down to be flung in sheets by sharp puffs of wind, making the entry look desolate and cold. Anyone could believe this road hadn’t been driven on for months. Maybe Renee had been the colony’s last visitor.

As soon as they turned off the highway onto its bumpy surface, Becca gripped the steering wheel with white knuckles, easing the Jetta along as its tires dipped and swayed through potholes filled with water. It was not an auspicious first impression, though Siren Song itself, the lodge, loomed large and imposing when viewed from Highway 101. This hidden, dreary access did not do the place justice, but maybe that’s just what the secretive inhabitants within its walls wanted.

“This must be it,” Hudson muttered.

“No other way to get to the lodge as far as I can see.”

“They could use some signage.”

They bumped and swayed along for over a quarter mile before the lane widened to provide a view to a tall stone fence that stretched east and west and a high wrought-iron gate with vicious-looking spikes whose double swinging gates provided a view into a grassy field where Siren Song stood. In the fading light its dark, cedar shakes and darker windows seemed to stare back at them.

Becca pulled to a stop in front of the gates, leaving the engine running. Both she and Hudson peered through the wrought-iron gate in silence. The gloom from the storm had deepened the shadows. Faintly, light shone from several windows on both the first and second floor. From a distance they heard the thud of a closing door.

“Someone’s here,” Hudson observed, reaching for the handle.

Becca began to shiver uncontrollably, but Hudson didn’t notice as he climbed from the Jetta and walked to the gate, peering through the bars. Ringo whined from the backseat.

Who are you? Becca silently asked.

There was no answer. Not even a feeling that someone received her message.

Becca saw Hudson straighten. He glanced her way urgently and she slowly got out of the Jetta, hearing the car’s door-ajar bell ding several times. The sounds were muffled by the wind, which was loudly shaking the trees, and something beyond the gate, maybe an unlatched shutter, was banging with surprising ferocity.

She moved in beside Hudson and with a distinct shock saw what had captured his attention. A young woman in a long dress standing beneath an umbrella. She was staring at them.

They stared back at her, and Becca’s mouth opened in a silent scream.

She looked just like Jessie!

Hudson grabbed Becca by one arm as she started to go down. He caught her before she slid into a dark puddle and pulled her quaking body into his arms. Glancing back, he saw the brush of the woman’s skirt as she entered through a side door of the building, heard the distinct plok of a thrown bolt.

“We have to go,” Becca chattered. “We have to go.”

“Wait.”

“No!”

“Okay, okay.”

“We have to go.”

“Fine. Then I’m driving.”

He helped her into the passenger side, alarmed at how white her face had become. Ringo, now in the back, bounced around wildly, scrabbling to reach Becca, but Hudson held up his hand to the dog. “Stay,” he ordered.

“It was Jessie,” Becca whispered. “You saw. It was Jessie, wasn’t it? She’s our age now.” Becca’s eyes fearfully peered through the windshield at the sudden driving rain. The lodge was barely visible. Faint smearings of light.

“It wasn’t Jessie,” Hudson said, though he’d had a moment of shock himself. “She was younger than we are.”

“Who are these people? I don’t look like them.” She threw Hudson a panicked glance. “Do I?”

“Not-like that,” he said.

“Not like Jessie, you mean?”

“We don’t know what Jessie would look like now.”

“She would look like that!” Becca flailed an arm in the girl’s direction. “Please! I want to go. Now.”

Hudson didn’t hesitate further. He jerked on the wheel, turning the Jetta around in a tight space. Branches scratched against the sides of the car.

“Hurry,” Becca said.

Her attitude worried him; he would have liked to stay and try to ask a few questions. But it was clear the woman in the dress had no interest in talking to them. It was not Jessie. He knew it wasn’t.

But she’d been the spitting image.

The Jetta bumped, shimmied, and jostled as Hudson ran it faster than he should back down the rutted track. When they reached 101, Hudson turned the car’s nose north and the wheels zinged along the wet pavement toward the turnoff to Highway 26.

Becca sat tensely for several miles, then said in a voice so low he could scarcely hear her, “In my vision, he was standing behind Jessie with a knife. He was going to stab her and then he looked at me. Hudson, he knows I’m pregnant!”

“Was he at Siren Song?” he asked carefully. He didn’t know how far he believed in her ability to see the man who intended her harm, but her fear had infected him. She believed it, and that’s what counted right now.

“I don’t know,” she said. “I thought so. Before we went. But then we saw the girl…”

“Woman.”

“Yes, woman.” She drew a hard breath. “Jessie was adopted. Are these people…did she come from this cult? If that woman wasn’t her, is she Jessie’s sister?”

“Some kind of relative, maybe.” Hudson didn’t want to jump to conclusions, but Lord, there had been a resemblance.

He shot a glance Becca’s way. In profile, she possessed a striking similarity as well. It had always been there, to some degree, but until he’d seen the Jessie lookalike, he’d never really taken it seriously.

“Jessie came to find them, but then she encountered him,” Becca murmured, watching the rivulets of rain run down her side window.

“Who is he?”

“One of them? I don’t know. But he hates me. I can feel it, and it’s real.”

“We’ll go home,” Hudson said grimly. “Make sure you and the baby are safe.”

Something in his tone cued Becca to his unspoken thoughts. “You’re going to come back here without me!”

“Not tonight. I want to get home. Safe. Have a late dinner. And think about this.”

“I don’t want you to come back here.”

“I need to know what Renee learned.”

“It’s not safe.”

“I don’t believe we’re marked for death,” Hudson told her. “Mad Maddie’s a demented old woman who believes in a psychic ability she doesn’t possess.”

“I know. I know.” But she didn’t sound like she believed it.

“I’ll feel better knowing you’re back in Portland, safe and sound, away from whoever killed my sister.”

Becca didn’t respond. She wanted to get back home and she wanted Hudson and Ringo with her.

They made the turnoff to Highway 26 in relative silence, each absorbed in their own thoughts. As they started into the Coast Range, the light drizzle turned into mixed rain and snow.

“Maybe we should call McNally.” Becca broke into the silence, watching the hypnotizing slap-slap-slap of the wipers. “Send him to Siren Song. Let him take it from here.” Without waiting for a response she dug in her purse for her phone and made a sound of annoyance. “I switched it off last night and never switched it back on.”