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She wished she could get to the island. She would kill him, she thought. She would. He’d taken her sister from her, damaged though she was, and Catherine was all about payback. She knew she should turn the other cheek, but it wasn’t in her.
She wasn’t sorry that Mary had killed Declan Jr.’s real father . . . the devil who gave me D. . . . She’d hated him on sight.
He’d come to Siren Song with a swagger, even though he was old, way past the prime of his life, but then, as she’d told the detective, she and Mary gravitated toward older, more experienced males.
But not the man Mary called Richard Beeman. At least not for Catherine.
Mary, however, had regarded him with sloe eyes, wary and sexy at the same time. She threw over her previous lover, Dr. Dolph Loman, Ophelia’s father, the only one of Mary’s lovers who Catherine knew was one of the girls’ fathers. Mary had stuck with Loman for several years, an eternity for one of her sister’s relationships, much longer, in fact, than she’d entertained his brother, Parnell, but in the end the rigid, stone-faced doctor was tossed aside, as well. However, she’d given the new man a run for his money, too. She liked the chase.
They’d never gotten around to asking Earl for a coffin, so Beeman’s bones lay moldering in the ground. It was these bones that Cassandra had seen in her vision, the bones of the man who’d sired Declan Jr. “He’s coming,” Cassandra had said, and Catherine had sensed the same thing.
Well, she wasn’t about to sit by and cower any longer, like she had when Justice was terrorizing them. And she could admit that her methodology to keep them all safe—living in this isolated state, a cult, if you listened to the ignorant locals—hadn’t really worked. The damage had been done long before her decision to lock the gates, even long before her promiscuous sister had dropped a dozen children. Her ancestors had sowed dangerous oats for centuries, the seeds of which had sprouted not only in the circle of land around Siren Song, but also beyond, in the Foothillers’ territory, in the state of Oregon, and God knew where else.
And who was to say that Mary hadn’t borne even more children . . . out on her island, luring the brave and incautious and horny males to her with her siren’s song. Catherine had suspected and worried and fretted about Mary’s ability to draw in the opposite sex, even out on Echo, and it was one of the reasons she’d seen her sister so rarely, even when the weather was fine.
Now she rose from her bed and walked to the window, staring out across the Pacific to where she knew Echo Island was, though with the wind and rain and darkness, it was indistinguishable tonight from the extended blackness of the ocean. What did the fire mean? What was Declan Jr. up to? He’d clearly found a way over to Echo. She hoped with all her heart that Earl would, too.
What if it’s not Declan . . . ?
This was the thought that had been hiding in her brain, afraid to appear. As much as she feared Richard Beeman’s offspring, there was a chance that whoever was on Echo was someone else. Maybe someone with ill intent. Maybe even another of Mary’s children. Declan Jr. wasn’t Mary’s last child, nor was he Mary’s last son.
Catherine turned away from the window and went to the locked drawer in her closet that held her own leather box. The key was inside the heel of one of her boots, and she reached down and grabbed up the shoe, twisting the heel sideways. The tiny key dropped to the floor with a soft ping. Bending over, she was slightly panicked when she couldn’t find it, but then her groping fingers touched it, and she picked it up and fitted it into the lock.
Inside the drawer was the leather box, and inside the box was her own journal. It did not contain the dark mysteries that were within the pages of her sister’s diary, but it did hold her younger dreams and the one secret she didn’t want to share. Mary had known, but Mary had been oddly careful not to hurt Catherine with it. They were sisters, after all.
Catherine opened to a well-worn spot toward the end of the missive.
I gave birth to her today with Mary’s help. She’s the most beautiful child ever born. I want to keep her so much, I would kill to do it, but Mary’s good days are fewer and fewer, and her bad days are unspeakably dangerous.
I have to give her up. I have to.
Elizabeth, my one true love. I promise I’ll see you again.
Your loving mother, forever and always,
Catherine
She read the message to her daughter over ten times, a ritual she went through whenever she needed strength. Feeling better, she put the journal into the box and relocked the drawer, replacing the key in the heel of her boot. Ravinia might have found Mary’s journal, which was unfortunate, to say the least, but she hadn’t known to look for Catherine’s own.
Catherine moved back to the nightstand and extinguished the flame in the lamp. Then she climbed back into bed and thought about what was ahead with less trepidation. Tomorrow night she and Earl, with Ravinia’s help, would move Richard Beeman’s bones to the back of the graveyard, behind the rhododendrons, and would set Mary in the grave already marked with her name, where she should lie in eternal rest.
Once that was done, she would think about what to do about Declan Junior. One way or another, she was going to deal with him, whatever it took.
And if it turned out he wasn’t the menace she sensed on the island, she would figure out who was, what they intended, and if and why they had started the fire.
CHAPTER 26
It was almost eleven when the sound of a car pulling into the drive awoke Declan out of his sleep with a snort in the den chair. Savvy was seated across from both Hale and Declan, half watching the news, half worrying about what Hale was thinking about what she’d told him. He’d basically shut down after she told him about Declan Jr. and DeWitt’s comments about Charlie and Kristina; he was still clearly processing everything. When she’d tried to go to her car to bring in her bag with the breast pump, he’d stopped her and gone to get it himself. She had the feeling he didn’t want her to leave, and she didn’t want to leave at all, but as the hours stretched by, she wondered what the hell she was doing. Marking time. Locked in this cocoon of safety.
But there was a kille
r out there. Her sister’s killer. And she could pretend only so long that she was Hale’s “wife” before reality jabbed at her conscience. She was a cop. She wasn’t really little Declan’s mom. She was living in a fake world, and though she longed for it in a way that surprised her, it wasn’t her reality.
Owen DeWitt hadn’t phoned her back. Maybe he was purposely ignoring her voice mail. Maybe he’d already talked to Lang. Whatever the case, he was her main priority, and tomorrow morning she was going to do something about it.
She’d told Hale almost everything she knew about the investigation into Kristina’s death. She’d held back only Mickey’s accusation that Kristina had been with Hale at the Donatellas’ house. She hadn’t told Hale she’d talked to Mickey at all. She didn’t believe the homeless man’s story, anyway; Mickey was hardly what you’d call a credible witness. Whatever he had seen or hadn’t seen, or thought he saw or possibly dreamed . . . none of it mattered. The only thing that did was that he’d echoed Owen DeWitt’s claim about seeing Kristina with someone in the same place DeWitt had.
“Who’s that?” Declan asked, clearing his throat and straightening in his chair. “Someone here?”
