Lisa Jackson - Wicked Game

She wasn’t alone. Another man was nearly yelling into his phone while he paced back and forth and smoked.

“Hello?” she said. “Detective.”

“How are you doing?”

“Okay, everything considered.”

“And Hudson?”

“He’s going to be fine. How’s Ringo? And your son?”

McNally brought her up to date quickly on where Ringo was and how Levi had surprised him by rising to the “animal responsibility” level so fast. They were both with his ex-wife for the day. At least Ringo was safe, she thought as the rain slowly let up and the guy who’d been nearly screaming into his phone had walked back inside.

“Where are you?”

“Still at the hospital.”

“Wait for me. Coming your direction. It won’t be more than fifteen minutes.”

“Sure.”

She hung up and walked back in to check on Hudson, who was groggily coming to. He managed a faint grin at the sight of her. “You’re okay?”

“Yeah.”

“And-?” His gaze drifted to her abdomen.

“Baby’s fine.”

Some of the tension left his face and she wondered how she’d have broken the news to him if she’d lost their unborn child. Like before. How will you ever tell him about the first baby? About the accident, so like this most recent one, that caused the miscarriage?

She looked into his eyes, heavy with pain and medication, the scruffy stubble on his chin barely hiding bruises already forming. Today wasn’t the day to bring up an old sadness.

“Hey,” she said, leaning over and brushing her lips across his forehead.

Hudson reached a hand up and kept her close to him. “Did they find him?”

“I don’t think so. Not yet. McNally was there.”

“Where?”

“He was coming from the beach, and if he hadn’t shown up, I don’t know what would have happened.” She filled him in on the events of the night before that he’d missed, brushing over some of her own terror, though the way his blue eyes bored into hers, she didn’t think she was fooling him.

“I’m going to kill that son of a bitch. The next time he messes with us, I’m going to rip his damned head off.”

“I think Jessie would agree with you,” Becca said lightly. “That’s what she’s been trying to tell me: justice. She wants justice.”

“You saw her?”

“And so did he. He called us by name, Jezebel and Rebecca.”

“What the hell does that mean?”

She heard a soft cough behind her and turned to find the two detectives from the sheriff’s department in the doorway. “Looks like you’re wanted,” she whispered. “I’ll be back later.”

While the detectives entered the room, she headed down the stairs. Her cell phone jangled and she picked up to hear Tamara’s worried voice on the other end of the wireless connection.

“Are you all right? What about Hudson? O-my-gawd, I just heard about your accident on the news. That you were forced off the road. Just like Renee!”

“We’re okay,” Becca assured her and lingered in the hallway near a side door. “I mean, I am. Hudson’s going to be out of commission for a bit.” She sketched out the details of the last twenty-four hours, but she omitted the part about Siren Song; no need to go into that. She didn’t even know what it meant yet herself.

Her one-sided conversation was interjected with Tamara’s remarks. “Are you kidding me…But who’s after you…Do you think it has anything to do with Jessie…You know, she was right, there does seem to be a damned curse…Don’t you need, like, police protection or something?”

“I just need to figure out what’s going on,” Rebecca said and thought about Siren Song. Her earlier fear and aversion to the place had been replaced by an overriding anger. Like Hudson, she wanted to nail the son of a bitch.

“Don’t you think you should come back home?”

“Not without Hudson,” she said and left it at that. She couldn’t confide in Tamara, couldn’t confide in anyone. Not until she had more answers.

She stepped through a side door where the wind tugged at her new hooded sweatshirt and the air was heavy with moisture. She was just wondering what was holding up McNally when she saw the detective heading toward the front door of the hospital. He veered toward her and they met on a cement path that led to an adjoining building that housed other clinics.

“Glad you showed up last night,” she said seriously.

His hands were in his pockets and he looked as if he’d aged ten years in as many hours. Unshaven and rumpled, a bit of gray showing in his hair, dark smudges under his eyes-clearly he hadn’t slept much. But then, neither had she. She wasn’t too interested in holding a mirror up to her face.

“Look,” he said, “is there somewhere we could go and talk privately?”

“There’s a coffee kiosk in the lobby and some tables. I don’t know how private it is…”

“It’ll do.”

They walked through a set of automatic glass doors behind a couple of nurses, heads bent against the wind, their uniforms visible beneath their coats, who were deep in conversation. “I’ll buy,” McNally said, and Becca asked for decaf black coffee.

A few minutes later he joined Becca at a table she’d chosen because it sat away from the rest a little bit. He handed her one of the paper cups and gazed at her soberly.

“What do you want to tell me?” she asked, suddenly scared. “Oh, God, did someone die? Another wreck?”

“Nothing like that, trust me, and your dog is fine. Getting excellent care.” He paused, then said, “Tell me about your parents.”

“My parents,” she said blankly. “What do you want to know?”

He frowned. Hesitated, then looked her squarely in the eye. “Your blood type doesn’t match to either Barbara Metzger Ryan or James Ryan. It would be impossible for you to be their biological child.”

Rebecca just stared at him. “Where is this going?”

But she knew. She knew. She belonged with those people, as did Jessie. They were connected. Both of them. Connected to him!

Her mind spun backward to the night before. “Sister,” the beast had called her. Sister. Had he meant it-literally?

She was trembling.

“You look like one of them,” the old lady had said as she’d placed her gnarled fingers over Becca’s flat abdomen. “Siren Song.”

“Ms. Sutcliff? Becca?” McNally asked, seeing her face pale, her attention turn inward.

She pulled herself back with an effort. “You’re saying I’m adopted.”

“Yes.”

She was related to the colony members at Siren Song. Related to that girl who looked so much like Jessie. A question trembled on her tongue. Something so bizarre, and yet it made a peculiar kind of sense.

Before she could ask it, however, McNally gave her the answer. “We have a DNA match,” he said. He told her about the lab results, as well as the bone spur on her rib that was identical to Jessie’s. “You’re Jessie Brentwood’s sister.”

“A DNA match,” she repeated.

“Your parents and Jessie’s were the same two people,” he added for clarification.

“How can this be?” Becca murmured, but the tumblers started clicking into place. She looked like Jessie in some ways. She shared a strange and troubling extra ability with her-her visions; Jessie’s precognition. Jessie came to her in visions that were real enough to make her believe they were a message.

McNally was talking, saying Jessie might have come looking for Becca, that she was a runaway and had attended more schools than not around the Portland area, that she was maybe running to something, rather than away from it.

“No.” Becca cut him off. “She was running from him.”