Blind Spot (29 page)

Claire heard the ringing finality in her voice and saw that she was being asked to leave. Reluctantly, she, too, got to her feet. “Do you think she will come back here?” Claire asked.

Catherine’s smile was ironic. “If you find her, please contact me. I would like to know the baby is well. But as for Natasha…we would be the last place she would return.”

Lang drove into Deception Bay and, as if by magnetic force, ended up at the historical society, a freshly painted white building that had once been a church and still had the steeple to prove it.

Inside it was one big reception room, but instead of pews there were glass cases with artifacts and curiosities from the last several centuries. A middle-aged woman with narrow glasses perched on the end of her nose smiled in welcome. “May I help you?” she asked.

Lang was still feeling like a stranger in his own skin. He could hardly reckon the man he’d become—the one who felt anxious, protective and possessive of Claire Norris—to the man he’d been a scant six months earlier.

“I’m looking for a book on the Colony,” he said. “The women who live at the lodge called Siren Song. I understand you have something here. A history?”

“An undocumented history,” she said, eyeing him curiously. “Left by the estate of a local doctor who attended to the women at the lodge before his death.”

Lang nodded. “But written by someone else.”

“Yes…”

She seemed reluctant to show him the book and Lang was about to ask her why when she mentally shrugged and took him to a bookcase where it was tucked between two thicker, hardcover volumes. The account itself looked like an unfinished manuscript with a laminated cardboard cover that had clearly been added later to keep the pages from shredding.

“Do you have a particular interest?” she asked.

“Mostly I’m just passing time.”

“There’s a general interest in the women who live at the lodge. A lot of people describe them as a cult. You don’t seem to fit the image.”

She drifted away and Lang thumbed through the account of the Colony, skimming. Mostly it concerned the relationships of the ancestors of Catherine Rutledge and her sister, Mary Rutledge Beeman, and the suspected intermingling with the local Indians regardless of whom they were married to, especially one very talented shaman. There was mention of dark gifts present in the female offspring.

Dark gifts, huh.
Lang wondered what the hell that meant. After about twenty minutes he put the account back in the bookcase, thanked the woman for her help, then left the building. Shocking though it might be to Catherine, Lang thought it a fairly tame account. Mary Rutledge had married a man named Richard Beeman and given birth to several children, unnamed, their sex undocumented. That was where the account ended.

It wasn’t of as much interest as he’d hoped. He’d learned more immediate information from Dinah.

He was heading back to Siren Song, watching the clock, when he caught sight of the sign for the Drift In Market. Turning the wheel sharply, he found a parking spot right in front, then strode up a wooden ramp to a sliding door on rails.

The Drift In Market was cramped, with tall shelves and narrow aisles set on a beat-up wood floor. The one checkout line was attended by a very large woman who wasn’t going to win a record for speed. Several people were waiting patiently to be helped.

Lang walked past them and through the store. A man in his thirties wearing a dark blue apron with the store’s name and logo in white—a piece of driftwood underscoring the market’s name—was cleaning up some spilled grain from one of the plastic bins where you could scoop it yourself, if you were so inclined.

“You work here long?” Lang asked.

“A while.”

“Do you know the woman from the lodge, Siren Song, who used to work here?”

“Uh. No. Heard about her.”

“Did she work here long?”

“You could ask Julie, at the register. She’s been here a long time.”

He believed it. “Thanks.”

He picked up two bottles of wine, one red, one white, thought about adding some beer to the mix and then changed his mind. Then he got in line behind the others at the checkout, waiting somewhat impatiently for his turn.

Finally Julie picked up his first bottle of wine and Lang casually asked her about the woman from Siren Song who had worked there. “She was here for a while,” she said. “Nothing remarkable. She wasn’t weird or anything.”

“I didn’t think they ever left the lodge,” Lang said.

“I asked her about it once. The owner had to tell her to get some different clothes ’cause she looked pretty old-time, y’know? She said she wasn’t forced to stay. It was up to her.”

“Are we talking about the same group? I didn’t get that impression.”

“I know, right? But that’s what she said. Is that all?” she asked, as she’d rung up the wine.

“Yeah.” Lang reached in his wallet for payment. “Do you remember her name?”

“Laura. You a cop, or something?”

“Or something.” He smiled and left.

Back in the truck, he checked his watch and headed back to the lodge in a hurry.

Dark gifts.

“The Wrangler’s beyond broken. Can’t get ’er going,” Cade said regretfully, tossing the keys on the kitchen counter. “You gotta stay here.”

“I have to leave.” Tasha was serious.

“No, now, you gotta take care of yourself. Rafe would want me to keep you and his baby safe. You look like you’re gonna pop.”

Tasha gazed at him squarely. Where was the man who’d been so eager earlier to help her? The one who had warned her about Rita being near? “Are you lying to me about the car?”

“No! Hell, no.” He ran a hand through his hair, then said, “But I’ve been thinking. You’re gonna have that baby, and you can’t be in a car when you do it.”

“Let me decide what I need to do,” she told him, angry and scared. “She’ll find me if I stay here.”

“I’ll keep you safe.”

As she watched, he pulled a handgun out of a drawer. She’d never seen one before. Knew what they were from books. “Is it loaded?” she asked.

“Well, yeah. I don’t wanna kill Rita if I don’t have to. But I will. You bet I will. She killed my cousin and she attacked you. We’ll stay right here and wait for her. That’s what we’ll do.”

Tasha wondered. Her instinct was to flee, run away, get as far from everything as she could. Freedom. She ached for it.

But Rita would come and find her wherever she went. Rita wanted Rafe’s baby and she would do anything to have it. Confronting Rita, finishing this between them, maybe that was a better plan.

Cade was now looking at her that same way Rafe had, with starry-eyed love and adoration. He wanted to protect her. Thought he could. And was risking her window of escape with his own needs and overprotectiveness.

Tonight Rita would come. And Cade would shoot her dead.

Then Tasha would leave. Away from the sisterhood. Away from the hospital.

Away…

Claire was escorted to the gate by Isadora, feeling like she knew almost less about the Colony than she had before. Lang’s truck was slotted next to her car and she suddenly felt weak in the knees from emotion. She wanted to throw herself into his arms and damn the consequences.

Pulling herself back to the present, she said to Isadora, “I’m worried about Natasha. She could have her baby at any time, and someone did attack her and kill her companion, Rafe Worster.”

“Catherine doesn’t want us to talk about her,” was her response, but Claire saw some unidentified emotion flit across the other woman’s face.

“Don’t you want her and the baby safe?”

“We’re all extremely worried, too,” she said with feeling.

“Why wouldn’t she come back here to her home? Catherine said she wouldn’t.”

“Natasha has free will. Just like all of us.”

“You choose to be here? You could leave at any time?”

They were at the gate and Isadora was twisting the key in the lock. She threw a cautious eye at Lang, who had climbed from his cab and was waiting in the dying light for Claire to join him. He looked tense, Claire saw, glancing his way, but her attention was on Isadora.

“This is not a prison.” She pulled the gate open and Claire walked through. The scrape of the key in the lock signaled that their interview was over.

“Claire?” Lang said.

Something in his tone, some element of concern, reached inside her. There was no reason for it, she told herself staunchly. Nothing had happened to her. It was just reaction to the series of events that had brought her to this place.

“Tasha is one of the Colony,” Claire said as Lang took her arm, helping her through the slippery mud. “Catherine admitted it.”

“I could tell by the resemblance.” He gazed past her to Isadora’s retreating form. “Why was it such a secret?”

“I don’t know.”

“Do they know where she is?”

Claire shook her head and turned toward her car. “Her full first name’s Natasha. She did talk to Gibby. He knew.”

“Maybe she’s on her way back here.”

“Catherine claims it’s the last place she would come.” Lang held open her door a moment while Claire climbed into the driver’s seat. “Come back to my place and I’ll give the complete report,” she said lightly.

“Let me take you to dinner,” he said.

“Thanks, but I’d rather eat in. If you’re up for a tuna fish sandwich, I can make us some.”

He inclined his head and closed her door.

Ten minutes later he was hauling his bottles of wine from his truck and following Claire inside her bungalow. It was starting to feel familiar, and though he knew he should proceed with caution, he didn’t want to, and knew he wasn’t going to.

“I’m on call,” Claire said when she saw the bottle of wine. “But the corkscrew’s in the drawer,” she said, pointing. “Please help yourself.”

He did as she directed and poured himself a glass of white as she made the sandwiches. She seemed dead on her feet and he sensed it was more emotional than physical. He felt a lot the same way. Weary. Soul deep.

They ate in companionable silence, and when Claire tried to clear their plates, Lang took the task from her. “Sit down,” he ordered. “You want tea or something?”

“Thanks, I’m fine with this.” She lifted a glass of water, then said, “I was so sure Tasha’s disappearance was related to the Colony. She was scared and needed help, and I thought they’d come for her, I guess. Save her. Take her back. I thought maybe Catherine was hiding the fact that she was back inside Siren Song already.”

“But Catherine said differently and you believed her.”

“I did. I do.”

Lang nodded, not as convinced as Claire, but willing to explore the possibility. “Go back to Gibby. What did he say about Tasha?”

“He knew her name. She talked to him. She said she needed help. He got her a set of clothes and then she was gone.”

“Catherine and company didn’t help spring her,” he mused aloud. “They don’t have spies everywhere. They’re pretty much insulated in their lodge.”

Claire shook her head. “She’s either hiding in the hospital somewhere we can’t find her—”

“—or someone’s hiding her.”

“Or someone’s hiding her…” she repeated slowly, thinking that over. “Or she left, either on her own power or with someone’s help.”

“With someone’s help makes the most sense,” Lang pointed out. “It just wasn’t anyone associated with Siren Song.”

“Who, then?”

“Whoever killed Rafe,” he said seriously. “Look, I know you thought the knife wounds on her abdomen seemed like someone just hacking away. Maybe that’s what they were, but maybe it was just someone who didn’t really know what they were doing.”

“Then it’s someone who knew Tasha was pregnant, and that means they knew her
before,
and how can that be? She was behind the gates of Siren Song. She never left.”

“That Catherine knows of,” Lang proposed.

“I don’t think there’s any way she snuck out of there without Catherine knowing.”

“She got out of the hospital,” he pointed out. “We’re assuming Rafe’s killer and the person who tried to take Tasha’s baby are one and the same. Agreed?”

Claire nodded. “Agreed.”

“Would you say that’s a man or a woman?”

“A woman,” Claire answered readily, and then her conscience twigged her again. She stopped, hesitated, then said, “A friend of mine from Laurelton General said there was a woman—a nurse—who said she thought she knew Jane Doe. Leesha, my friend, gave the woman my name. Leesha called later and asked me if the woman ever contacted me, but I told her she never had.”

“A nurse?” Lang repeated.

Claire nodded, then thought of the recently hired nurse at the hospital who never quite met her eyes. She’d put it down to something else. Newness. Shyness. Whatever. But suddenly it seemed more sinister.

“What?” Lang asked, sharp-eyed as ever.

“We have a recent hire at Halo Valley. A nurse. Talking about this reminded me of her.”

“How recent?”

“Last couple weeks. Since Tasha arrived at Halo Valley.”

“You think she’s after Tasha?”

“I don’t know. There’s just something.”

“Go with your instincts,” he said. “Might be a good idea to check with Gibby, too.”

“Oh, I’m on that. First thing tomorrow.” She tried to stifle a yawn and failed.

Lang took his cue to leave. He set his empty wineglass down on the kitchen counter. Realizing she’d sent him an unconscious message, Claire got up abruptly and said, “Thanks. I’m sorry. I feel like I’ve been concentrating on all the wrong things. Dinah’s father. History of the Colony. Other things.”

“Catherine wouldn’t talk to us, so it was research. No harm done. I checked the book old man Smythe wrote about them while you were inside the gates. Pretty much genealogy with a few side notes. Nothing really since Catherine and Mary.”

“I wonder what happened to Mary,” Claire mused.

“And all her men,” Lang said with a slight smile.

Claire looked at Lang’s empty glass and the hand he had wrapped around the edge of her counter. His hips were balanced against the counter’s edge. There was something completely male about him that she hadn’t noticed in a man in a long, long time. “If Mary was as promiscuous as Herman Smythe would lead us to believe, it might explain Catherine’s austerity now. A kind of knee-jerk reaction.”

“Unbridled sex in the nineteen seventies and eighties. Repression in the nineteen nineties and two thousands.”

“It would make sense. I wonder when all that long-dress wearing began. Could have always been there and Mary just spat in the eye of convention.”

“You think she’s dead?” Lang asked.

“I guess so.” They thought about that a moment, then Claire said, “I hate thinking of Tasha, so pregnant, out God knows where. She needs to be found. I keep hoping that if someone helped her escape, that it’s because they care about her.”

“Not because they want to steal her baby.”

“Yeah.” Claire reached for the empty glass, intending to put it in the dishwasher, but her hand swept against it, sending it crashing into the sink, glass splintering. A piece shot up and grazed Lang’s cheek, though he ducked down instantly.

“Oh, my God! I’m so sorry.” Claire was mortified, coming close to examine the cut.

“No big deal.” He shifted away.

“No, please. Let me look. I can’t believe I did that.”

“You’re distracted. Tired. Really, it’s okay.”

“Stop shifting.” She spread her fingers around his jaw and twisted his face to the right so she could see the jagged slit. It was bleeding like a son of a gun. “I’m sorry,” she said, heartfelt. “No, don’t move. Just wait.”

“I’ll just tell people I cut myself shaving,” he called after her as she disappeared into the hallway and the bathroom. “Really, I’m fine.”

“No, you’re not.” Her voice was muffled.

She returned a few moments later with a first aid kit and a box of tissues. Blood was running from the cut on his upper cheek down the side of his head and sending small drips down to the collar of his shirt. “Head wounds,” she murmured.

“Bleed like they’ll never stop.”

“The head is so vascular.”

She dabbed at the cut and then put some rubbing alcohol on a piece of tissue, dabbing some more. Lang squinted against the sting and Claire apologized again. “I am going to live,” he assured her wryly.

She lifted the tissue and her fingers gently probed the skin surrounding the injury. “You could use a couple of stitches,” she said, though the bleeding had stopped.

“No, thanks.”

“I have some butterfly bandages. I can close it, but seriously, I think stitches would ensure it doesn’t reopen.”

“You’re making more of this than I need.”

In truth, he didn’t need any of it. She was too damn close. An attractive, verboten woman who nevertheless was the only one he could think of in his bed. Jesus. And if she didn’t stop tenderly exploring with those fingers, he was going to simply lose it!

His hand shot out to stop her just as she was saying, “I’ll go get the bandages and—”

Her breath swept in at the way he held her wrist, tight and tense.

“Don’t,” he said.

“Don’t,” she said simultaneously, resisting his grip, her hand clenched.

They stood frozen for a moment in that position, staring at each other.

For Lang, it was a watershed moment. A release of every brick of resentment and blame that he’d built in a wall against her since Melody’s death. It wasn’t her fault. It had never been her fault, and he’d known it all along. He’d just been too arrogant and blind to admit it.

Now he let go of her wrist to lift his hand to her face, laying it gently against her cheek. Claire’s eyes were wide, her expression faintly anxious, but she didn’t move. Her breathing was short and erratic.

“What are you doing?” she asked in a stranger’s voice.

He didn’t answer. Instead he bent his head to hers, capturing her mouth in a hard, pent-up kiss. She shivered. She was quaking all over, but…she was kissing him back.

“What are
you
doing?” he asked, his lips curving against hers.

“I don’t know. Nothing I should.”

“You sure?”

“No.”

And then he was kissing her harder and her hands, clenched and frozen, unfurled and slid up his chest and to his shoulders, clinging. Lang pulled her to him until her breasts were pressed against his chest and he could feel the edge of the counter digging into his hips and lower back. Claire made a protesting sound in her throat that only urged him on. He yanked her blouse from her slacks and slid his hands beneath the fabric, her skin quivering at his touch.

Claire, for her part, had not engaged in anything remotely resembling sex since early in her marriage, and her ex had lost interest in any kind of foreplay, even kissing, shortly after he and Claire had entered into wedded “bliss.” She’d forgotten what it was like to want to die for the feel of a man’s lips, forgotten the unbearable pleasure of having her skin caressed and loved, forgotten the thrill of hearing a man’s moan of desire.

It came flooding back with every moment of this fevered embrace. Her head rushed. She felt like she was back to her teenaged years and the blazing excitement of discovery. The hint of fear at being caught was there, too. The knowing that this was destined to be wrong. A mistake.

But she didn’t care. She’d led too careful a life.

She pressed her hips to his and felt the evidence of his arousal. A delicious power slid through her veins, utterly intoxicating. She spent her days advising against dangerous behavior, just this kind of thing! She allowed herself this moment because she believed she was insulated against it. She knew it wouldn’t be good for her. She also knew it wouldn’t ruin her life. She wouldn’t let it.

But he was doing things with his hands that were playing havoc with rational thought. He’d unbuckled her thin silver belt, unbuttoned the top button of her pants, thrust his hands inside.

“God,” he murmured.

She should protest, she thought. She should make some attempt to stop this madness.

She knew she wouldn’t.

And she wanted him to hurry.
Hurry, hurry, hurry.
Because if either of them had time to think, it would be over as quickly as it had begun, and she couldn’t bear the thought.

They were crazy. Squirming against each other. Half-slipping to the floor. Losing their strength along with their common sense. Laughing softly.

“Come on,” she whispered, grabbing one of his marauding hands and leading him toward the bedroom.

And then there were no more intelligible words, just mews and whispers and groans of pleasure. He divested her of her blouse, pants, and undergarments and she lay still and let him. And then he yanked off his own clothes and she had a glimpse of hard muscles and taut skin and an overwhelming sense of maleness before his body covered hers on the comforter of her bed.

“Touch me,” he groaned and her hands slid down and grabbed his shaft, stroking him, loving the feel of his hardness. She could feel her own body respond and when his fingers invaded her insides, her wetness caused him to moan with pleasure.