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“Sure.” She managed a small smile that she didn’t feel.
“You need a ride?” he asked Tamara, but she shook her head.
“Got my car.” With a wave, she picked her way through the wet grass to the spot where she’d parked her Mazda.
Becca watched her drive away from the passenger seat of Hudson’s truck. He put the pickup into gear and said, “Zeke told me McNally wants to talk to him at the station. What do you think that’s about?”
Becca stared out the side window. “He never got a note.”
“Must be something more,” he said wearily as he slid his truck into the slow file of vehicles driving toward town. “I’m getting to the point that I don’t even want to know.”
Becca felt that same
stabbing sensation of being watched. She glanced back toward the trees, watching their limbs flail in the stiff breeze. “I don’t, either,” she said firmly.
The scent of betrayal, of unholy lust is in the air, teasing at my nostrils, reminding me that I must not s, reminding me that I must not fail.
She looks my way.
Through the haze I see the worry in her eyes; so like Jezebel’s.
You can’t see me, Demon Bitch. I’m invisible to you, but you feel me, don’t you?
You know I’m coming for you.
I sense your fear.
God will make you pay for your pact with Satan, Rebecca. I am His messenger.
And I’m coming for you…
“Have a seat,” Detective McNally told Zeke, indicating a chair on the opposite side of his desk.
Zeke did as he was told, his body as taut as a bowstring. He cupped his jaw in one hand, his arms tucked in tight, a position of defense.
Mac gave him a moment to relax and drew a long breath himself. He’d spent half the week in Tillamook County, learning all he could about the accident that had taken Renee Trudeau’s life, and half the week in Laurelton dealing with a double homicide where the only man left standing-thirty-one-year-old junkie Harold Washington-claimed the deceased man and woman with the fatal gunshot wounds had fired at him first. They were all meth users-a lovely bunch of Johnny Ray’s clientele-and it was hard to say just what had happened at the rented three-bedroom ranch at the east side of town. Gretchen was in her element; she loved interrogating low-life scum like Washington. Mac was tired of all that, and as he sat down at his desk across from Zeke St. John, he wondered if he might be becoming the burnout everyone thought he was.
“Know why I asked you here?” Mac asked.
“I’m the father,” he blurted out. “That’s what you’re going to tell me. I’m the baby’s father.”
Mac had put the paternity issue aside in the wake of Renee Trudeau’s death; he’d been too caught up in those events to even think about it. His thoughts had been occupied by Renee, Hudson Walker’s sister. Why had someone pushed her car off the cliff? Did it have something to do with Jessie’s murder? Whatever the case, the Tillamook County Sheriff’s Department was on an all-out hunt for a vehicle with a smashed front end.
So when Zeke jumped in and hit the issue head-on, Mac was slightly surprised. “That’s exactly right,” he admitted. “You are the baby’s father. You slept with Jessie.”
He nodded jerkily. “A couple of times. She was trying to get back at Hudson. She teased like mad. She was so wild and scary. I don’t think she slept with anyone else, though she acted like it. She chose me.”
“Because you were Walker’s best friend.”
“I thought she wanted me, at the time.” He looked faintly ashamed.
“Walker have any idea?”
“I don’t think so.”
“He’s going to have to know now,” Mac said.
“Yeah. I see. Yeah…”
