Whispers (4 page)

If he was honest, he had to admit that he’d been brooding about the trip for many weeks—months even. Since Matt died. Chloe walking into the bookstore with her entourage of weirdos and her bizarre claims that she’d been called to Diablo Springs by spirits was interesting. And he couldn’t pretend that he wasn’t intrigued by the fact that she’d shown up to take
him
with her. How could she know that the mere mention of Carolina Beck would pique his curiosity like it had? He was betting she didn’t know why. She couldn’t know what his relationship to the old woman was. Just like she couldn’t know what his relationship to her granddaughter, Gracie Beck, was. She couldn’t. And yet, here Chloe was and she seemed to know a hell of lot more than she let on.

But even that wasn’t compelling enough to send Reilly across the desert.

He’d been a coward three months ago when Matt died. He’d gone on with life without pause, taken business as usual without caving into the loss or indulging in grief. There hadn’t even been a service. Digger Young, whose family had owned the mortuary business in Diablo Springs for at least a hundred years, cremated his brother and shipped his ashes and a bill to Reilly in LA. The ashes were in his suitcase now, on their way back.

He’d pretended his brother’s death was a tragedy that didn’t really affect him. But each day since, getting out of bed had been a little harder. Going to the computer, a bit more difficult. Facing himself in the mirror, a lot more painful.

He’d lost weight, lost his drive. He quit caring about anything. Last week he’d shaved his fucking head. Next week he might move onto something more permanent— like maybe shave a few years from his life. The fact of the matter was, he needed to bury his ghosts and Matt was only one of them.

He’d made the decision to come in a split second, because he knew if he thought about it, he’d talk himself out of doing it. And every survival instinct he possessed was telling him now or never. Deal with the shit or let it bury him so deep he’d never come out.

Chloe LaMonte was merely the resounding clap that began the avalanche—the instigator of a collapse long in coming. Reilly either came home and faced his past or he would self-destruct. Simple as that.

The thing that ate at him though, was he was pretty sure Chloe knew it. In fact, he’d bet on it.

He couldn’t say why she’d walked into the bookstore, but he’d swear there was more to it than chance or fate or spirits whispering their secrets in her tiny old ears. She had an agenda and once he got his own shit together, he intended to find out what it was. In the meantime, though, he’d saddled himself in a no-win situation. Not surprising. He was the master of getting himself into no-win situations.

“
You ready to talk yet?” Zach asked, turning off the hissing radio in disgust.

Reilly had been silent and stoic the whole way, though he’d agreed to let Zach accompany him and conduct his interview. In some delusional part of his head, Reilly had decided bringing Zach would be a good thing. Reilly would go to Diablo Springs, deal with his messed up issues, write a brilliant novel about the experience. And Zach ... Zach would write an article about the fascinating road trip he’d taken with literary genius Reilly Alexander. The publicity from it would please his publisher, boost book sales, and they’d all live happily ever after.

Except Zach wasn’t interested in writing about Reilly Alexander, author. He wasn’t even interested in writing about Reilly, ex-Badlands lead singer. Zach wanted to dig up dirt. What Zach wanted, Reilly wouldn’t give. And like a coon dog on a scent, Zach wouldn’t quit until he had Reilly treed.

“
I told you, man,” Reilly said. “I’m not spilling my guts to you or anyone else.”

“
You’d spill to Oprah. Everyone spills to Oprah.”

“
Yeah, well, if Oprah ever has me on and I spill, you can say I told you so.”

“
That’s cold, man.”

Reilly wasn’t really worried about Zach tripping him up. He wasn’t a man to cave under pressure. But what if now that they were in Diablo Springs, Zach found other sources? What if he caught another scent? What if he realized Reilly hadn’t come because of the crazy woman in the minivan behind them?

Reilly didn’t say anything for a minute and then he asked, “Why do you care, anyway? Why the hell do you give a shit about me and my brother?”

“
You guys were great. Badlands could have had it all.”

“
Not even close. Cut the crap, Zach. What do you really want?”

Zach gave him a look across the dark cab. “I want to know how someone can have it all and just piss it away.”

Reilly tightened his grip on the wheel. Fair enough.

He turned after the Circle K and made his way into downtown Diablo Springs. The view temporarily distracted his passenger and Reilly had a moment of reprieve.

“
Christ,” Zach said, peering out the window. “People live here?”

Reilly shrugged, trying to smile though it wasn’t really funny. People did live here, though why in hell, he didn’t know.

“
There’s not even a stoplight,” Zach said in the same tone of voice he might declare an alien landing at the corner.

“
There’s one,” Reilly said.

“
I can’t believe this is where you grew up.”

“
Believe it. I lived right down Rough Street. Fourth house on the left.”

He stared at the house he was raised in, now boarded up and overrun with scrub and, most likely, rodents and bugs. This was the desert and no place on earth was more hospitable to vermin. He’d written a number-one single and two bestsellers about the things that creeped and crawled across the hot sands of Arizona.

Zach snorted. “What a dump.”

“
Yeah,” Reilly said, “what a dump.”

He pulled up to the curb in front of the Diablo, where they’d be staying for the next few days if Chloe could be believed. She said she’d spoken to Carolina Beck just yesterday and confirmed reservations for herself, her disciples, and Nathan Reilly Alexander. Zach was the only surprise it seemed. And yet, she didn’t really seem that surprised at all. That irked him nearly as much as her continued use of “Nathan.”

Lightning sizzled and sparked above them, turning the windows into glowing eyes of malice. The giant mesquite in the front swayed dangerously and smacked the house with sagging branches. Rock and cactus made a hostile and skeletal garden of the front yard and tumbleweed bounced its way past them to lodge in the neighbor’s fence.

Reilly glanced at his watch. It was nearly two a.m., but lights blazed at the house. A welcoming sight in a town that gave desolation new meaning.

He and Zach stepped from his Jeep.

“
What is this place?” Zach asked, standing beside him.

“
It used to be a hotel... saloon ... casino ... fine dining ... brothel... ,” Reilly said. “Kind of one-stop shopping for the outlaw in need.”

“
Is that a fact,” Zach answered, suitably impressed. “A whorehouse. Cool.”

The oppressive heat was intensified by the brooding storm overhead. It felt like they’d stepped into a damp electric blanket with a buzzing short deep within its circuitry. In the distance the ruins of the old hot springs stuck up like black bones against the gray-green sky. There were flashing lights out there—police cars, it looked like. He frowned, wondering if the Dead Lights had lured another victim into the caverns of the dried-up springs.

“
How do people survive in this?” Zach wanted to know.

“
You’re lucky it’s night.” Reilly looked away from the flashing lights to watch the younger man swat at a rash of black gnats buzzing around him. “If the sun were shining, you’d be fried before you reached the porch.”

Zach looked like he believed it.

“
Hell, this is pleasant,” Reilly went on, enjoying his cocky companion’s discomfort. “When I was a kid, we didn’t even have air-conditioning.”

“
You’re shitting me?”

Reilly laughed and shook his head. He glanced back at the vehicle that had followed him out of Los Angeles, watching the old woman and her two companions pile out of the minivan. Between the vampire/Abe Lincoln look-alike, the white gloved priest, and Chloe, he couldn’t say which of the three was the strangest.

“
Welcome to Diablo Springs,” he said.

The air held a fetid smell that brought home a million memories. Hot summer nights swimming with his brother, Matt, in Danny Green’s aboveground pool. They’d frozen water in milk jugs and floated them in a vain effort to cool it off. They’d slept on cots in the backyard, braving the bugs for the chance of a breeze. They’d learned the sun could be an enemy. And so could a lightning storm.

As Reilly grabbed his bag from the back of the SUV and looked up at the rumbling, mottled sky, lightning split the clustered darkness, and the sharp scent of sulfur joined the loamy smells in the air. The rain seemed to evaporate before it reached earth, leaving a thin steam that made the skin sticky and the air thick.

The trio huddled beside their van like preschoolers outside a haunted house. Then Chloe LaMonte stepped from the circle and headed toward Reilly. She moved with the grace of a 1950s movie star, her steps very sure, especially for a woman of her age. Her eyes glowed like embers in the muted light.

She stopped at his side, followed closely by the vampire guy Reilly guessed to be her bodyguard or an adopted son... or maybe her significant other. Hard to say. He easily topped Reilly’s own six foot two and looked like he might never have seen the sun. He wore a plain black T-shirt and black cotton slacks. Next to the colorful Chloe, he looked like he’d missed his own funeral. He wished he could remember the guy’s name.

“
Nathan,” Chloe said in her soft, mysteriously accented voice. “Do you feel them?”

“
Christ, they’re eating us alive,” Zach said, swatting at the bugs.

Abe the vampire frowned at Zach, but Chloe didn’t even spare him a glance. “I know you do. You sense them. You’ve always sensed them.”

“
I sense we’re going to get hit by lightning if we don’t get inside.”

Her grin was smug. He gritted his teeth.

“
We’re late,” she said, unconcerned with his prediction. “Not too late, but late. Let’s go in.”

Reilly gave one more glance at the flashing police lights out at the dried-up springs and then followed Chloe and Abe up the walkway. The priest and Zach fell in step behind him.

Chloe paused on the porch, looking at him expectantly as he joined her. “No one home?” he asked.

She gave a shrug that managed to look European and convey absolutely nothing. “You go first,” she said. “You’ll have to face ... is it Faith?” She tilted her head to the side and narrowed her eyes. “No, it’s Grace, isn’t it?”

“
Gracie?” Reilly glanced at the front door and then back to Chloe, more disturbed by Chloe mining the name from his memory than anything the peculiar woman had said up to this point. He hadn’t seen Gracie Beck in years— not since the night he’d lied to protect his brother. How many nights since had he wished he could do it all over? Do it right? But there were no do-overs in life.

Chloe gave him an enigmatic smile. “Gracie, yes, of course. You didn’t really think you were through with her, did you?”

Reilly was flat-out dumbfounded. “I think you’ve got your wires crossed, Chloe. Gracie hasn’t been back to Diablo Springs since she ran off. And I never really knew her that well in the first place.”

“
Perhaps,” she said, her tone contradicting her words. “Why don’t you find out?”

“
Who’s Gracie?” Zach asked, looking between Chloe and Reilly. When neither answered, he looked to Abe. “Who’s Gracie?”

Reilly gave a tight smile and shook his head. Chloe was baiting him. She had her little psychic antennas out looking for ways to scam him. Sure, he’d been thinking of Gracie Beck. Hell, this had been her house. But there was no way she was in it. As far as he knew, Gracie hadn’t set foot in Diablo Springs in seventeen years.

“
Do we know who’s dead yet?” Zach asked.

“
Give it a break, Zach,” Reilly said.

Chloe waited for him to open the door, making it clear that it was by her decree he entered first. That pissed him off, too. He didn’t like people making decisions for him. Never had.

Frowning, he rapped on the door, waited, knocked again. When no one answered he tried the knob. He hadn’t expected it to be locked and it wasn’t. Diablo Springs wasn’t the kind of place anyone robbed. If the residents had anything worth stealing, they would have long since sold it to get out of town.

The door swung silently open. Somewhere behind them, not far from the ruins, lightning struck with a crack and a hiss, releasing a torrent of raindrops that broke through the vapors. It seemed they should sizzle as they hit the brimstone below. That was all the invitation any of them needed to get inside.

They filed through the door in twos, like kids using the buddy system for their field trip. Reilly dropped his bags and closed the door.

Every light in the house seemed to be on, but there was no sign of life anywhere. Reilly called out, “Is anyone home?” but only his echoing voice bounced back to answer.

“
God, it’s hot in here,” Zach said.

“
The Lord’s name is not an epithet,” the priest said, giving Zach a look that might possibly turn him to stone.