Lisa Jackson - Wicked Game

I see you get in your car but you cannot escape your destiny.

But I must lay the trap.

You will come to me.

Very, very soon.

Becca drove toward Siren Song. She didn’t have much of a game plan but seeing her nemesis-whether real or imagined-had spurred her on. She’d face the son of a bitch. Track him down. It was time for the hunter to be the prey.

If only Hudson were with her-but she didn’t want him to be drawn into her battle. She’d already risked his life. He was lying in a hospital bed because of it.

The afternoon was dark enough to seem like night. For a moment she considered calling McNally. She reached for her purse and her cell phone, but then hesitated.

And what’re you going to tell him? That you feel him?

She would seem as crazy as Mad Maddie. More so.

Gritting her teeth, Becca bumped up the pothole-riddled land to the gates of Siren Song.

Where Renee had sought information on Jessie’s past.

Where it had all begun.

The wrought-iron barrier was closed, of course, and, as it was getting dark, she couldn’t see much beyond the outline of the lodge. She climbed out of the rental and stepped to the gates. “Hello?” she yelled. “Anyone there?”

She waited, yelled again, then waited some more. After twenty minutes, she went back to the rental. There was no daylight left now, so she switched on her headlights, pointing them through the black fencing as the mist rose and swirled in the twin beams that cut through the tall fencing. The side door and a stone path were illuminated and the arms of surrounding trees seemed to reach inward in long fingers.

She honked the horn of her car, and it sounded like the pathetic bleat of a dying lamb over the dull roar of the Pacific, which could be heard as if it were right next door.

Should she try and scale the fence with its pointed arrow-like spikes piercing upward? She honked again and this time there was movement, a flash of color in her headlights.

What if it’s him?

You didn’t think of that, did you?

What if you’ve walked into a trap? You have no weapon, nothing to protect yourself.

She started the car, but as she did, she saw the same girl who had been at the gate before appear in her headlights. Tonight she was wearing a long coat with a hood. She stared at Becca with wide eyes. Jessie’s eyes.

Becca clambered out of the rental and approached the gate.

“You need to leave,” the girl said in a quiet voice.

“I can’t.”

“Drive away. Now.”

“Jessie Brentwood came here years ago, and someone else just recently, a reporter. With dark, short hair. Renee Trudeau. She wanted information on Jessie.”

“She did not come in.”

“You didn’t let her in,” Becca realized.

“It wasn’t safe.”

“But she knew this is where Jessie came from. I think I came from here, too.” The girl gazed at Becca soulfully. Becca had no idea what she was thinking. “Can’t I come in?” Becca cajoled. “I just have so many questions.”

“It’s not safe for you, either.”

“Do you know who I am?”

She glanced behind her, then down at her feet. “Rebecca…”

Becca’s pulse jumped. “Look, I think…I think I might be related to someone here and it’s very important that I find him.”

Jessie saw the girl’s eyes dilate, the pupils making her eyes two black orbs with the faintest halo of color around them. “You won’t find him here,” she said.

“You know who I’m talking about?”

The girl hesitated. “You’ve met Madeline?”

“Yes,” Becca said, surprised by the non sequitur. “But I’m looking for someone else and it’s really important. People have died. I need to find him.”

She half turned away.

“No, wait!” Becca called, but she was already leaving.

She stopped when she was about thirty feet away. “Whoever you’re looking for is not here.”

“How do you know?”

“Because you asked for ‘him,’” she said without inflection. “There are no men at Siren Song.”

Hudson stared at the pimply-faced clerk on the other side of the faux-wood counter in the lobby of the tired-looking motel where he, Becca, and Ringo had stayed only a few short weeks ago. A striped yellow tabby viewed the interplay with utter disdain from the back of a worn couch as the clerk, who was all of fourteen or so, gazed at him in consternation.

“I-I-can’t talk about our guests. It’s, um, the privacy policy.” The kid kept looking over his shoulder, hoping someone would come to the rescue while the cat yawned and stretched his legs.

“I’m her fiancé,” Hudson tried. A stretch maybe, but close enough, and the next time he saw her, he damned well was going to ask her to marry him. He’d spent too many hours in the hospital wondering about her, worrying about her, loving her, to let her go again.

“Do you, like, have some kind of proof or somethin’?” The kid’s gaze slid to the sling supporting Hudson’s left arm, and Hudson realized he looked like hell in his filthy clothes, disheveled hair, and scruffy beard. He probably appeared to the kid to be one of those loner, killer types from the movies.

But Hudson was too panicked, too sick with worry to go into it or explain anything. Time was running out. “Just tell me what unit she’s in.”

“Grandpa?” the boy called nervously over his shoulder to the open door at the back.

“What?” a male voice bellowed.

“I, uh, could use a little help out here.”

With a huge sigh, “Grandpa,” a large man built like Humpty Dumpty, shuffled into view. Suspenders looped from his faded denim pants, doing nothing as they dangled uselessly from his waist. A thin, tank-style T-shirt was half covered by an open flannel shirt. He peered over the tops of half-glasses. “What’s the problem?”

Irritated, Hudson repeated his request. “My fiancée checked in earlier. I’m supposed to meet her, but I don’t know what room she’s in.”

The man swiped a hand over the graying stubble on his jaw, started to argue, then said, “Oh, forget it. A woman checked into unit seven today. I can’t let you in, but I can go there myself. You can come along.” He glanced out the window. “But I’d bet Butterfinger over there,” he said, nodding to the orange tabby, “that she’s not in. Her car’s missing. No lights on. No television, either.”

The kid walked over to pick up the cat, stroking its head.

Butterfinger snuggled up to the boy, his long tail twitching as he, too, gave Grandpa Humpty the evil eye. Gramps found a baseball cap and jacket, then, with a jangling set of keys, waddled toward unit seven.

It was all Hudson could do not to run in front of him. The fact that Becca wasn’t here made him crazy. Where was she? God, what was she doing? He had a deep, driving fear that she might be out baiting the madman. As they crossed the seedy parking lot, he tried her cell phone again.

Humpty cast him a look. “Cell service ain’t great around here.”

So get into the twenty-first century! But the man was right. He couldn’t connect. Not with Becca and not with Mac, as he didn’t have the detective’s number on Zeke’s phone.

The big man knocked on the door, and when no one answered, rapped again and said, “Hello? Ms. Sutcliff?” He opened the door, and the minute it swung inward Hudson could tell that Becca hadn’t been in the room in a while. Packages were strewn on the bed, bags from a local all-in-one market. Her dirty clothes from the night before were stacked on a chair near the television stand. Grandpa Humpty nodded to himself as if he’d been an ace detective. “Whaddid I tell ya?” He looked over his shoulder at Hudson. “Maybe you should find yerself a new fiancée.”