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This narrow point of land on which she now stood was the ridge in her visions, the one in which Jessie was poised over the angry, rushing sea. It had to be. She felt familiar here, and she thought for just an instant that the girl she’d seen in her trancelike state hadn’t been Jessie at all, but herself. Hadn’t people said they resembled each other?
But, no, the girl she’d seen had been Jessie. Jessie, trying to tell her to get justice from the man who’d murdered her. Becca recalled suddenly that Jessie had told Renee when she was sixteen, “It’s all about justice,” which made Becca wonder if Jessie had seen her own death approaching.
She shivered, then gazed at the surrounding cliffs, seeing the dark shape of the lighthouse on its rocky mound and the island farther out, barely distinguishable tonight in shades of black and gray.
How many times had she witnessed just this view? How many times had it terrified her? “No more,” she vowed as her sweatshirt flapped around her. “Jessie?” Becca called. “Tell me what to do.” She closed her eyes for just a second, willing the dead girl, her newfound sister, to enter her mind. If the dark figure, the image of the killer, joined the ghost of Jessie, so be it. “Come on, come on,” she said, feeling the cold from the ever-changing Pacific seep through her skin and burrow into her heart.
But nothing came to her.
Just as she had in life, Jezebel Brentwood played by her own rules, stubbornly refused to bend to anyone else’s whims.
Becca opened her eyes. It was dark and she was alone. Alone and on her own.
Backtracking to the front of the motel, Becca walked up a couple of steps to a sagging porch and pressed the doorbell. Over the keening howl of the wind, she heard the faint sound of a buzzer and then nothing. No footsteps. Maybe the old gal had fallen asleep in front of the television. Or maybe she wasn’t home. Becca rang again, heard the buzzer, but no other sound.
“Maddie?” she called loudly. “Madame Madeline? It’s me, Rebecca Sutcliff. Ryan. We met at the antique store?” She started to pound on the door only to have it creak open. She froze, arm raised to beat on the weathered panels again. “Maddie?”
From within came a low, pain-filled moan.
Becca’s heart dropped through the rotted floorboards of the porch. She thrust open the door and stepped inside to the smell of fried fish and ashes from a wood stove and something else. Something metallic and out of place. “Maddie?” she called again and was already extracting her cell phone from her pocket. The living room with its flickering television screen was empty, the worn recliner sitting near a TV tray with a plate of food-tater tots, cole slaw, and fish sticks-half eaten. A fork with some white sauce still globbed on its tines had clattered to the floor. A cigarette burned in an ashtray.
And stains on the floor? Dark red stains. Blood…?
Oh, dear God, what was this?
The hairs at Becca’s nape stood on end. She speed-dialed Mac, but the call didn’t go through. She should turn back now, drive into town, call the police…
Another groan emanated from a doorway at the back of the house.
Carefully, her pulse racing, her nerves wound tight as watch springs, Becca peeked around the corner to a bedroom where Madame Madeline lay slumped on the floor, blood pouring from her abdomen, a pistol in one hand.
“Maddie!” Becca said, trying to remain calm, not knowing what the wounded, crazed woman would do. Maddie looked up, her bloody fingers wrapped around the butt of the gun. “Justice,” she whispered and leveled the barrel of the pistol straight at Becca’s heart.
Mac took the call, a patch in through the sheriff’s department, and he couldn’t make out much, mostly static that the detectives had to repeat. The upshot was that Hudson Walker had checked himself out of the hospital against doctor’s orders and now he was worried sick that Rebecca Sutcliff might’ve taken off after the killer-the same sicko that so far had eluded capture by all the authorities in Tillamook County. Hudson was certain Becca had gone back to Siren Song-a place Detective Clausen informed Mac was a cult.
“What the hell’s she doing?” Mac growled as he noticed a turnout in the road and pulled a quick U-turn. “Son of a goddamned bitch.”
“Don’t shoot,” Becca said as calmly as she could, though her heart rate was zooming wildly. “Don’t shoot. Please…”
“Justice!” Maddie cried again, her face ashen, her eyes round with terror, the gun wobbling in her hands.
“You’ll get justice, I swear, but now we need to get you to a hospital. Drop the gun,” Becca said, terror striking deep in her heart. She thought of Hudson, of their unborn child, and she knew she couldn’t die. Heart jack-hammering, she stepped out of the gun’s sights, and miraculously, the old woman didn’t train the muzzle on Becca’s moving form, just kept the barrel pointed at the doorway. “It’s all right,” Becca lied, a wary eye on the weapon and the heavy-knuckled fingers curled possessively over it. “It’s all right,” she said softly, again.
She moved closer to one side and eased the pistol away from Maddie’s nerveless fingers. Quickly, she retrieved her phone with the other and dialed Mac again. Maddie’s eyes closed. She was bleeding profusely from a wound in her abdomen. Self-inflicted? Or…what…? She set the gun down, put the phone on speaker, and tried to stanch the flow of dark blood with some of the old woman’s clothing. “Don’t move,” she said, “I’ll get help.” But there was so much blood, so damned much blood. “Hang in there.”
This time, the call went straight to voicemail, and snagging up the cell, she sputtered off where she was and that she needed an ambulance and that she was going to call 911-when he stepped from the shadows, from the hallway.
Becca froze, eyes wide. For the first time she got a good, hard look at this psycho who had been chasing her down, for that’s who he was. She nearly crumpled when she recognized his features, so like Jessie’s, so like her own. He was an older, stronger, male version of Jezebel Brentwood. And he was related to Becca in some way, as well.
“Sister,” he snarled, smiling and showing strong white teeth as he realized she recognized him for the monster he was, a murderer who was blood kin. He lifted a hand. In his fingers was a long-bladed knife. Blood dripped from its cruel razor edge.
“Why?” she whispered, gesturing vaguely toward Maddie’s crumpled form.
“Her time came.”
She saw the deadly intent in his hazel eyes as the wind raged around the cliffs, rattling the eaves, screaming over the thunder of the tides. “Why? Why are you doing all of this?”
“You are Satan’s spawn, witch.” His nostrils flared. “And you carry a new evil.”
