Wolf river, p.25
Wolf River, page 25
Jase grabbed her then, without thinking, and kissed her. A long deep powerful kiss that shook all words and thoughts right out of their heads.
When Jase finally lifted his mouth from hers, and studied her, her eyes were still closed. He waited, watching her face like a wolf watching a mouse until she opened them.
“How’s that for obsessed?” he grated. “If there’s anyone I’m obsessed with, Erinn or Tiffany or whatever your name is, it’s you.”
“Well, then, now we’re getting somewhere,” Erinn murmured. She still felt dreamy from that kiss. She smiled at him mistily, and reached up, stroking her fingers along his cheek, down his jaw, savoring the rough scrape of his five o’clock shadow against her skin.
“Yeah?” His hands moved swiftly, cradling her face. She heard his breath coming hard. “Forget I said that,” he said thickly. “Forget I just kissed you. You have to leave.”
“I know.” Erinn smiled. She reached up on her tiptoes and pressed her lips to his. “Lily’s expecting me at the day-care center,” she breathed.
Just as he slanted his mouth against hers once more, Erinn heard her cell phone ring. Jase swore and let her go so she could tug the cell from her purse.
“I got your message, Erinn.” It was McKindrick, returning the call she’d placed to him last night. “All about the cave, the coffin, that damned mist.”
“Yes, and the horse—the horse outlined in blood,” she reminded him, trying desperately to concentrate while her heartbeat was still racing and all she wanted to do was step back into Jase’s arms.
“Yeah, well, none of it suggests anything to me right now,” the detective complained in the flat raspy voice that came from smoking three packs a day over the last twenty years. “You’re giving me too damned little to go on this time. I’m good, but not that good. Got any names, any faces for me?”
“I wish I could say I did.”
“Well, get back to me when you do. I need something more substantial. Like a description of the perp or victim, you know? In the meantime, I’ll keep my eyes and ears open, see what I come across. Life treating you okay these days?”
“Not too badly.”
He disconnected and she put her phone back into her purse. That was about as personal as McKindrick ever got. “He’s less than thrilled,” she told Jase. “Not enough to go on. Hey, I really do need to get to the day-care center.”
She hopped up into the Jeep before she could be tempted to change her mind. Jase seemed to know exactly what she was thinking.
“We’re not finished here, Ms. Winters,” he said as he slammed the door.
Erinn started the engine, her gaze locked on his. “I didn’t think we were.”
But as she drove away, Jase felt a surge of panic in his chest. How had he come to care for her so much? What was happening to him?
Not love, he thought, his jaw tightening. I’m not in love with her. No way.
Better tell her that, buddy, he thought in alarm. Soon. Before somebody gets hurt.
A bedraggled-looking woman in a light blue cotton pantsuit hurried from the day-care center as Erinn drove to the end of a rutted lane. The woman had shaggy light brown hair and carried a girl of about two in her arms.
Half a dozen other children about five or six years old tumbled out behind her, spilling across the front yard, laughing and shouting.
“Can I help you?” the woman asked distractedly, as the girl in her arms grabbed with chubby fingers at her eyeglasses, trying to pry them off her face. “Don’t pull my glasses, Abby, I need them to see. Here, play with this.”
The woman stooped and grabbed up a doll lying in the grass. The two-year-old grasped it in delight.
“You must be Edna.” Erinn hurried forward as the woman nodded. “Lily asked me to come and read to the children today.”
“Oh, you’re the author! Well, she never said anything to me this morning.” Edna looked flustered. “I had no idea.”
“You mean she didn’t tell you I was coming?”
“No—but she did tell me she was coming.” The woman sighed. “She promised, actually. I just don’t know what happened—Lily’s usually so reliable.”
“What…what did you say?” Erinn stared at her as if she hadn’t heard right. “Lily isn’t here?”
“Nope, not yet. She was supposed to help me out today since we’re shorthanded, but she never showed up.” Wearily, Edna set the little girl on her feet. As the child raced off toward the sandbox, clutching the doll, Edna blew away a wisp of hair that had fallen across her eyes. “I guess she’s still out there searching for Culp. Maybe she couldn’t get away, but—”
“She did get away.” Erinn felt fear surging through her. “Lily left to come help you hours ago.”
Edna stared at her, then shook her head. “I wish. There’s ten more kids under the age of five inside. I’ve got to go back and check on them, but—she left hours ago, you said? Are you sure?” For the first time, worry deepened the creases in her narrow brow.
“Did you try calling her cell phone?” Erinn demanded.
“Two or three times. Just got her voicemail, that’s all. It’s so unlike her. I wonder if she had car trouble—still, you’d think she’d have called.”
“I took the same route she’d have taken. I didn’t see her car anywhere.” Erinn felt ill. “Oh, dear God—”
Edna’s eyes blinked rapidly. “You don’t think?…No, who on earth would want to hurt Lily—”
“Jase—I have to call Jase.” Erinn’s fingers flew across the buttons on her cell phone as she turned back and scanned the rutted lane, hoping against hope to see Lily’s car coming toward them.
But the lane was empty.
“Jase.” Her voice was low and fast as he answered on the second ring. “Lily isn’t here. She’s not at the day-care center.”
“What do you mean?” His voice was sharp. “Erinn, slow down. Where are you now?”
“I’m at the day-care center with Edna. She says Lily never showed up and she couldn’t reach her on her cell phone. Oh, Jase—”
“Stay there. Don’t move. I’m on my way.”
She started to turn around, to look at the road once more, but instead she toppled forward, the phone tumbling from her hand as the vision swooped in without warning like a giant bird of prey and carried her off down the dark icy tunnel.
Chapter Thirty-three
Erinn awoke to find herself lying on the grass. She was cold, ice cold, shivering as violently as if it were the dead of winter and not June in the foothills of Montana.
Shakily, she tried to sit up, and saw Edna hurrying from the day-care center, a small paper cup clutched in her hands.
Lily. Something’s happened to Lily. The rush of memory, of dismay and horror sickened her stomach and she took great gasping breaths.
“Now there, young lady. Don’t you get sick. Here’s some juice. Sit still now, and take small sips.”
She obeyed, drinking apple juice from a child-size paper cup, as all around her swirled the sounds of children playing. But the calls and the laughter didn’t drown out the terrified voice she still heard in her head.
He’s going to kill me. I’m going to die.
It was Lily’s voice.
This can’t be happening, Erinn thought. She was still cold, still shivering, and fear deep as a bottomless well shuddered through her.
Rawley. Culp. Lily.
Setting the juice down on the grass she closed her eyes and tried to reconstruct the vision.
She was still trying when Jase arrived. By then, Edna had rounded up the children and herded them all inside.
She tried to get Erinn to join them, but Erinn shook her head and sat on the grass, focusing on the vision, searching her mind.
The air crackled with danger, or so it seemed to her as she sat there, staring straight ahead, seeing only the tunnel, the dark, the mist.
When Jase pulled up, her heart nearly broke at the expression on his face. His skin was gray as oatmeal, his eyes glittering with pain and fear and a quiet deadly fury all rolled together as he vaulted from the Explorer and raced to her side.
“I had…another vision, Jase. I saw something…something different this time.” The words poured out of her, slowly at first, then coming faster as if she would forget them if she didn’t tell him quickly enough, as if perhaps he could find something she’d missed, something that would help them save Lily.
“The mist was thicker than ever. Curling like ribbons, obscuring everything. I tried so hard to push through them—”
She shook her head in frustration, still mentally trying to penetrate the murk that had obscured her sight. “It was dark again and cold, like before. But it wasn’t a cave, there was no entrance, no light. Just the darkness and the mist…and the box…wooden slats…a coffin…”
She lifted her head and tears stung her eyes as she looked into his face.
“But I saw something pink, Jase. In the coffin. And today Lily was wearing a pink—” Her voice broke, but Jase finished the sentence for her.
“A pink sweater.” A boulder seemed to have lodged in his chest where his heart was supposed to be. He’d given Lily that pink sweater last Christmas.
“I know for sure now, Jase.” Her voice trembled. “McKindrick can’t help me figure out the visions. What I’m seeing—it’s happening here. It’s not going to be on some police blotter or in a national database or in the New York Times. It’s happening in Wolf River, all around me. That’s why they’re coming so quickly, one after the other, and not just at night. The danger is close—the people in trouble are close, they’re people I care about.”
Jase’s hand gripped hers. “Listen, Erinn, tell me everything you saw, no matter how inconsequential it seems. Lily and Culp, they have to be nearby. She…she wasn’t dead, was she?” His voice was hoarse with fear.
“No, no, I think she’s alive. I heard her voice, Jase,” she cried, her heart twisting. “She said, ‘He’s going to kill me. I’m going to die.’”
Jase froze. “What…else?” he bit out.
“Nothing. I couldn’t see clearly where she was, there was all this mist, weaving like…like transparent string. It was like peering through shreds of clouds. But Jase,” she gulped. “We have to find her—quickly. I have this feeling…there isn’t much time.”
“You’re right.” His hands closed for a moment on her shoulders, his eyes suddenly dark and unfathomable. “Go inside with Edna and the kids. Lock the doors and windows and wait for Farley to get here. I called him and he’s on his way, probably less then ten minutes behind me. Tell him everything, make him believe you. Be sure to tell him about the coffin and the cave.”
He gave her a quick hug and started toward the Explorer.
“Wait a minute, where do you think you’re going?” she demanded.
He broke into a run. “Someplace I should have gone days ago. To the Wheeler cabin.”
“Not without me, you’re not.” Sprinting faster than she’d ever run for a taxi, Erinn raced across the packed-down earth and grass. She reached the Explorer as Jase slammed the driver-side door closed, but she flung the passenger door open and jumped in before he could protest.
“Get out, Erinn. You can’t come with me.”
“Who says?”
She fastened her seat belt with a loud click as if to emphasize the point and felt his eyes boring into her. But she stared right back.
“I don’t have time to argue with you.”
“Then don’t,” she told him. “Let’s go search the Wheeler cabin.”
Two seconds ticked by before he spoke in a hard tone. “If Wheeler’s there, you stay inside this rig with the doors and windows locked,” he told her, putting the Explorer in gear.
“We’ll just see about that. Drive.”
Clay and Devon were playing gin rummy on the front porch when the phone call came in.
Clay listened to Sheriff Farley’s voice, his face turning slowly to stone. When he pocketed his phone at last, he didn’t say a word, just sank heavily back in his chair.
“Mr. Fortune—are you all right?” All of the color had gone out of his cheeks, and Devon was scared.
“Mr. Fortune?” she asked again. “What’s wrong?”
He ignored her question and pushed himself out of the chair with a sharp lurching motion. “Stay here. You hear me? Stay inside.” He lumbered down the steps, his shoulders stooped.
“I’m going to get Rawley to come keep you company, but I have to go.”
“Where?”
He turned and stared at her. “To find my daughter.”
Devon barely recognized his voice. It sounded so old suddenly, old and quavery. And there was something in his face she’d never seen there before.
Fear.
“Where is she? Did she…get lost?” Like Culp? Devon thought in horror.
“I think…someone took her.” His eyes welled with tears and he vigorously blinked them back. “I don’t know what’s happening anymore. But if anyone hurts my little girl—”
Stopping short, Clay shook his head, then strode toward the barn.
Devon’s cards tumbled from her fingers and she stared at them on the floor of the porch, not really seeing them. She was thinking about Mick. And Frank Wells. They couldn’t be behind this. Could they?
What if they are? she thought, a sob rising in her throat. What if all this time, they’re the ones who shot at poor Rawley, or hurt Culp? And now they’ve taken Lily…
She stared at Clay Fortune’s retreating back. He loved Lily so much. And Tiffany begged and begged me to tell her about Mick, but I didn’t. What if it’s my fault they did something to Lily?
“Mr. Fortune!”
He turned around ten feet from the barn as Devon limped toward him as fast as she could.
“I know something bad about Mick Wheeler—and someone else. I wouldn’t tell Tiffany because I didn’t think they were the ones who hurt Rawley or Culp but…” Her lips trembled. “What if one of them did? I…I wanted to tell her, just in case, but I’ve been too scared. Mick threatened me. He said he’d hurt me and Tiffany if I told anyone—but now I think I have to. Just in case he took Lily—”
“No one’s going to hurt you, young lady.” Clay glanced down, met her gaze squarely. “I’ll see to that. Tell me what you know—out with it. Otherwise, people might get hurt because you’re scared. That’s wrong, Devon.”
She knew he was right. Swallowing hard, she fought the fear that had been curled up inside her ever since she and Hank moved into the cabin. “Mick’s…Mick’s breaking the law. He and Frank Wells. They’re in it together!”
“In what?”
“They make fake ID’s. They have a computer and a scanner and a printer in the back room. They’ve been printing fake drivers’ licenses, and passports and things, and selling them. For a long time now and—”
“Selling them to who?” he interrupted.
Devon shook her head, shaking inside because she had actually told him about Mick. “I don’t know…somebody important, but I…I think they’re from someplace else, part of organized crime or something. All I know is that Wells goes to Crystalville sometimes with boxes and boxes of fake ID’s in his truck. They all look real. And the man pays him and he gives some money to Mick, and they hide it somewhere. I don’t know anything else, I swear it.”
She drew in her breath, staring at him pleadingly.
“If they find out I told you—”
“They won’t. You did the right thing. Devon, thank you.”
He patted her arm and then straightened. She was shocked. Though his voice was calm, his eyes had turned dark—the dark roaring blue of an angry sea, and she took a step back in spite of herself.
“Go inside now, Devon, like I said. Lock the door.” He wheeled toward the barn, yanking his phone from his pocket.
“Farley!” Devon could hear his voice booming into it as she ran up the porch steps and into the house.
She didn’t close the door though, just held onto it as her heart skittered in her chest and she listened to him telling the sheriff everything she’d said about Mick.
“And I’m on my way to that scummy cabin to tear the place apart, so you may just want to show up there and see if you can prove your sorry self the least bit useful. If they have my daughter or Culp there, I won’t be responsible for what happens,” Clay barked and snapped the phone shut.
Devon closed the door and locked it. She was glad she had done the right thing, but she was still scared. Maybe because she’d been scared for so long she didn’t remember any other way to be.
She stared out the window, trying to calm her breathing, until Clay got in his rig and floored it. Still she stood there, chewing her lower lip until the only thing left in his wake was a cloud of dust.
Chapter Thirty-four
The jig was up.
Wells had heard everything. Every last filthy word the little slut had spoken. His name. She had told Clay Fortune his name. Linked him to the counterfeiting.
If he hadn’t been planning to get rid of her before, he sure as hell was now.
He leaned against the far side of the Fortune ranch house, his eyes narrowed, and waited until Clay Fortune’s rig roared off into the distance.
The brat had done just as he’d said. She’d gone inside, locked the door—he’d even heard the tiny sound of the bolt clicking into place.
A fat lot of good it’ll do her, he thought, his lip curling in contempt. He’d earned his stripes breaking and entering way back in the day. Before he’d ever joined the Contello organization.
Before he’d learned everything there was to know about crime—and punishment. Before he’d struck out on his own.
He’d left LeeAnn’s place while his lover girl was still in dreamland, and had been taking care of business ever since.
