Blind Spot (28 page)

Rita’s blood ran like ice. “Why Tasha?” she asked, worrying that Lori might hear the little quiver in her voice.

“Gibby says he talks to her and that’s what she calls herself. We’re taking our cue from Dr. Norris.”

Dr. Norris…

Rita hung up and stood staring into space for a full minute.

“Rita!” Delores yelled from the bedroom.

Rita didn’t hear her, didn’t even process. She’d spent hours the night before looking for that wretched little bitch. She’d been mud-soaked, drenched with rain, cold to the bone, and it had taken half the night to get warm and clean and her mind was a muddle of fury.

Tasha had tricked her into believing she was in labor. She had tricked her.

Tricked her…

Rita could scarcely see. Her vision was red. Filmed. Blurry. She wanted to kill her. Needed to.

Rita was going to kill her and take Rafe’s baby.

“Rita!”

Tasha took Rafe away from her.

Rafe. Her one true love.

Rita Feather Hawkings’s one true love.

“Rita, for God’s sake. If you’re not going to work, make some lunch! You’re starving me!”

Rafe had a few close friends. No family, really, lucky him. She shot a dark look full of menace down the hall.

Except for Cade. Cousin Cade.

“Rita!” Delores banged the television remote against the wall.

But the house was empty.

Rita was gone.

“Let’s take two cars,” Lang said as they stood beside their respective vehicles in Claire’s driveway. The rain had abated earlier in the morning but the steel clouds hung low in the sky, threatening to open up at any moment. It was three thirty, as both of them were running a little late. “If Catherine lets me in, great. A bonus. If not, I’ve got a couple of things I could do.”

“Okay.”

“Any further ideas on how Jane Doe got out, if she did?”

“She’s not hiding in any closets or cupboards. She must have had help.”

“Who would help her?”

Claire had a funny tickling of her memory, but couldn’t place it. She shook her head, then said, “I went with Dinah to meet her father last night. I’ve been meaning to tell you, but with everything else it just didn’t seem important.”

“How was it?” Lang asked, so Claire gave him a quick rundown on what Herman Smythe had said about Siren Song. Lang listened intently and when Claire finished, said simply, “Interesting history.”

“Seemed a lot more relevant before Tasha disappeared. I was going to bring up some of it to her, see if she reacted. I don’t know.”

“We’re definitely calling her Tasha now?” Lang asked.

Claire nodded.

“Okay.”

He then went to his truck and led the way back to the lodge, driving the nose of the gray Dodge past the scrub pine and mountain laurel and making room for Claire to park beside him. Climbing from their respective vehicles, they came to stand by the gate, both Claire’s shoes and Lang’s boots squishing into the mud.

“A strange way for us to keep meeting,” Claire observed.

“A strange cult of people,” Lang observed.

“Why won’t she admit to knowing Tasha? Is there any chance we could be wrong? That Tasha’s not from here?”

“Sure.” He shrugged. “But she was with Rafe, and she fits the description of a Colony member, and no one else has come forward to claim her.”

“She’s close to having that baby.”

“We’re going to find her. Someone had to help her.”

“Who?” Claire asked.

“Someone who knew she was at Halo Valley.”

Another flash of quicksilver memory that Claire almost grasped. “She came from Laurelton General.”

At that moment a figure stepped through the front doorway and into the rain. Not Catherine. A younger woman, her blondish hair scraped into a bun at the back of her neck, her slim figure encased in an ankle-length waisted dress with a gathered skirt. Her shoes were practical. Black soft-soled leather slip-ons.

Claire realized, “Tasha had similar shoes. Those are Easy Spirit, maybe Eccos, or something like them.”

“Guess they don’t make their own shoes,” Lang observed.

“Tasha’s from the Colony.” Claire was positive.

“Got no argument from me.”

The woman walked up to the gate and Claire realized she was much older than she’d first assumed, closer to Claire’s age. She had pale blue eyes and a generous mouth, and the resemblance to Tasha was unmistakable.

“Catherine would like the doctor to come inside,” she told them, then pulled out a large ring of keys and threaded a long one into the lock, giving Lang a warning look as she did so. He stepped back as a matter of course, reading the unspoken command. She then swung the heavy gate open and Claire stepped through.

“I’m Isadora,” she said, then with a hard clank she shut and locked the gate again, inviting Claire to walk ahead of her across the flagstones to the front door.

As she started out, Claire sent Lang one silent glance before turning her attention to her feet and heading to the lodge.

As soon as she was out of sight Lang wanted to call her back. He felt unnaturally apprehensive. What if the damn cult swallowed her up and never let her out?

Irrational. Crazy. Dr. Claire Norris was going to be fine.

But he couldn’t deny the tightness of his chest. The anxiety that had him in its steel grip.

He had to do something. He’d told her he had things to do. But damn if he could remember even one!

“Hellfire,” he muttered, turning to his truck. He didn’t want to leave. Didn’t want to stay. He sat in the cab, immobile, and swore violently and pungently, finally switching on the ignition. She had her own car. He’d arranged it that way. There was no reason for him to feel this way.

They were only women. She was safe.

But every one of his nerve endings was alive. His emotion concerning her was so intense he felt almost physically ill. He wanted to hold her, kiss her, feel his body moving with hers in that age-old dance. His head was full of thoughts of having her in his bed, being inside her, feeling her skin, her mouth, her tongue.

It was fear that sent these messages down his nerves, changing to pent-up desire.

If she came out safely—
when
she came out safely—he was going to his damnedest to make her his. Dr. Claire Norris. His onetime enemy.

It was staggering, but he wanted her more than anything.

Cade Worster was both enamored with and dumb-founded by the pregnant girl. “It’s Rafe’s baby?” he asked, just to be absolutely certain. He’d found her some of his clothes and she’d dressed in them, her other pants and shirt being caked with mud and soaked with rain.

“Yes,” she said. “It’s Rafe’s.”

Her admission left him shaking his head and trying not to stare. Cade’s clothes were bigger than Gibby’s and she had to roll up the legs of the pants even farther and cinch the waist with a belt. The arms, too, needed to be folded back at the cuffs several times. He gave her a pullover cotton sweater that had seen better days.

The effect was she looked younger than her years, too young to be having a baby.

Tasha sized up Cade quickly. “Rafe’s ex-girlfriend is trying to take my baby,” she said.

“Rita?”

So he knew. It worried Tasha greatly. “Yes.”

“She the one who attacked you at the rest stop?” Then, “Holy shit,” when Tasha nodded. “You’re not saying
she
killed Rafe!”

“Yes, she did!”

“No…she was nuts about him.”

“She’s completely mad,” Tasha assured him. “She would do anything to get what she wants. She wants to kill me, too.” She went on to tell him how Rita had sprung her from the mental hospital. “I was planning to leave, to get away from her. But she just kidnaped me before I could!”

“You need to call the police,” Cade said.

“No!” Tasha was horrified. “They’ll send me back to the lodge and Catherine. I can’t go back there. I can’t!”

“Well, where were you and Rafe going?”

“Anywhere. Portland, maybe. We just wanted to get away! To be together and raise our baby…”

“Where’s Rita now?” he asked.

“Looking for me,” she said gravely.

“There was a policeman who came by, asking about Rafe. He wants to help. You need real help.”

“I need your help,” Tasha implored.

“I can’t. Rafe took the truck!” he declared. “He always took my truck, and now it’s gone for good.”

“Can you get another one?” she asked anxiously.

“Steal one, you mean? I don’t know. No…but I know a guy…maybe…who has cars.”

She placed her hand on his arm. He was wearing a black hooded shirt and dirt-crusted denim pants. He looked like he could sorely use a bath. Rafe had told her his cousin was a ne’er-do-well of sorts. She could feel time tick, tick, ticking away.

“Cade, please…”

“All right.” He swallowed. “You stay here and hide. Rita’s mom’s house is only a couple of blocks away. She could be there.”

She is there,
Tasha thought.
Or was.
And now, in the light of day, it was going to be damn near impossible to move around without being seen and wondered about. Rita had to suspect where she was. The fact that she hadn’t stormed Cade’s house suggested to Tasha that she was planning an ambush.

Thinking about it, Tasha realized that Rita would wait until nightfall. Wait till the screen of darkness.

Closing her eyes, Tasha remembered all the times she’d tried to escape herself, and all the punishments she’d endured for her attempts. Oh, how she hated Catherine. How she hated all of them!

Cade left and was gone for several hours and finally, in the late afternoon, she heard the rumble of a vehicle that proved to be a black Jeep Wrangler with flaps for windows and doors.

“Come on,” Cade said hurriedly. “We gotta get outta here before somebody notices.”

“Whose is this?”

“A guy I know.” He tried to toss it off.

“You stole it?”

“Get in.”

The vehicle was old and had been hard used, and the seat Tasha sat on was split down the center. She suffered another several contractions; every time she moved too sharply or felt too much anxiety, her whole body clenched. This baby was going to come. She had to get somewhere safe, and soon.

Rita cruised through the Foothillers’ community in Delores’s rusted Chevy, keeping a sharp eye on Cade’s place. There wasn’t much happening there, but then Cade was a night owl. A thief with thieves’ hours. He was handsome enough, though. If she’d been in the mood she might have tried to seduce him. He wasn’t as sexually attractive as Rafe, but then who was? Not Paolo Avanti, for certain, but he, at least, was a doctor. Somebody smart, which really couldn’t be said about Cade.

She waited outside his house but a couple of blocks north, near the field, hoping he didn’t recognize her parked car if he came out the door. She’d pulled in behind the Blackburns’ RV, angled slightly so she had a line of sight to Cade’s place without being too conspicuous. If he looked her way he wouldn’t see more than a front fender of her car.

So he surprised her when he suddenly drove up in a dilapidated Wrangler. Roberto’s car, by the look of it, she realized. She hadn’t seen Cade sneak out the back, which he must have done, because there he was, big as life.

And then the bastard was bringing Tasha out the front door!

Her hand clung to his arm like the piece-of-shit damsel in distress she pretended to be. Out of the corner of her eye, Rita caught the twitch of curtain from the Blackburns’ front window. Damn the old busybody, Portia. She and her husband Cliff were nosy-nosy. They’d stared through a telescope across the field from their big house to her aunt’s smaller place, spying on Angela and her two sons, gleefully making up stories about what they saw. They’d even gone as far as labeling her a witch and a whore, convincing the dumb-ass Foothillers that Angela was somehow involved with Tasha’s people! That she possessed special, evil powers because of it!

All lies, but it didn’t matter. The lies had been believed by many.

Rita hated the Blackburns almost as much as she hated Tasha. Their nasty, flapping tongues had sealed Angela’s fate and she’d been killed as a result, the field torched behind her place.

Now Rita sank down in the seat and willed herself to be invisible.

Cade and Tasha climbed into the Wrangler and Cade tried to back it out and it just stopped, the engine whining and whining. Rita watched curiously as Cade got out and opened the hood. He pretended to look under it but instead just waited a minute or two. Then he returned to Tasha’s side of the vehicle, shaking his head.

What’s he doing?
Rita wondered.

He opened the passenger door and helped Tasha back out, though she clearly didn’t want to come. She wanted to stay in the car, wanted to leave. There was something of an argument. Then hurrying, surreptitiously looking around, Cade urged her back up the front steps and into the house.

Shenanigans, Rita thought, trying to make sense of it. She knew Roberto, knew how he valued and loved his cars. Cade had either borrowed or stolen Roberto’s Wrangler, and Rita would bet there was nothing wrong with it.

Cade’s reasons escaped her but she didn’t care. As long as he kept Tasha at his home, that’s all that mattered.

She checked once again to make certain her knife was in the side pocket of the car, an obsessive search of her fingers that she performed without thinking.

Tonight, she would need to have it near.

She glanced back up at the Blackburns’ house, but the curtain was still.

Claire felt as if she’d stepped back in time to another century. The lodge was all wood, rough-hewn and hand-carved, she suspected. The furniture was the same and the oak table was a slab of wood, the breadth of which made her lips part.

But it wasn’t the lodge that amazed her the most. It was the women. All of them with blond or light brown hair, blue or green or hazel eyes, printed floor-length dresses, black walking shoes like Tasha’s, serious expressions, silence as their universal greeting. One was in a wheelchair, but she looked exactly the same as the rest.

Everyone looked like Tasha.

Only Isadora spoke. “My sisters,” she said.

Catherine stood to one side and up close Claire could see she, too, was older than she’d first thought. Somewhere in her midsixties, she thought, though her face was remarkably unlined. She wondered if any of them ever went out in the sun.

The resemblance among them was deep. Once Claire had gone with a friend to a dog breeder’s home where the breeder had raised pugs. When Claire walked by their pens, she was slightly unnerved by all those look-alike black faces silently following her every move, the way their heads turned in unison as she passed. These women were like that, their eyes watching her every move. She had the same eerie feeling now.

Catherine said, “We didn’t know that Rafe was dead.”

The one in the wheelchair asked, “Did Natasha kill him?”

Claire stared at her and she seemed to realize she’d said something wrong, for she pushed herself to Catherine’s side for protection. Claire sensed that her mental development might not be as advanced as expected for someone her age.

“Lillibeth,” Catherine said, by way of introduction.

“Is Natasha sometimes called Tasha?” Claire asked.

One of the youngest ones piped up. “That’s what she calls herself.”

“Ophelia,” Catherine snapped, and Ophelia’s lips tightened for a moment but she dropped her gaze.

“Why don’t you come in and sit down,” Catherine said to Claire, motioning for the other women to move aside. They scattered from the room by some prearranged command, Claire guessed.

Claire took a seat at the long end of the table and Catherine sat at the head. “I went to see the sheriff this morning,” she said. “He told me about Rafe. We didn’t know.”

Claire nodded, waiting. She knew, from long practice as a therapist, that Catherine was trying to decide just how much to tell. Sometimes it was best to just stay quiet.

“I had no intention of discussing Natasha with him,” she said, her lips tight. “But like Ophelia said, she likes to call herself Tasha.”

“She is from here. Why have you been so reluctant to claim her?” Claire asked when Catherine didn’t continue.

“She doesn’t want to be a part of us.”

“You know she’s pregnant.”

“She didn’t try to hide it,” Catherine stated flatly.

“You knew Rafe was the father?”

“There really could be no one else. We don’t allow many men inside the gates, as a rule.”

“Any longer,” Claire said. When Catherine stared at her questioningly, she said, “The women—the sisters—each have a father or fathers. I’m assuming that at some point he or they had access to your lodge.”

“Whom have you been talking to?” she demanded.

Claire had a feeling she was about to be thrown out. “I don’t mean to pry and make you uncomfortable. The reason I’m here is that I’m interested in Tasha’s welfare, and her baby’s. She’s missing from the hospital.”

“The sheriff mentioned that,” she said carefully. “She walked out?”

“She couldn’t have.” Claire explained the locked doors. “Someone may have helped her. Someone she knew?”

“If you’re thinking it’s one of us, you’re wrong. I’m the only one in the house who drives our car, and that’s very rarely. From what you’ve said, it’s someone who works there. Someone with a key. Unless Natasha stole it.”

She said it so matter-of-factly that Claire sensed something similar might have happened before. “You think that’s possible? That she would steal it?”

“You don’t know Natasha, Doctor.”

“Then tell me about her. Let me help her. We need to find her.”

Catherine seemed to struggle with herself, finally saying, “I’m worried about the coming child.”

“We all are. That’s why we need to find Tasha.”

“She won’t be able to take care of it. She has…an affliction she cannot control.”

“What do you mean?”

Catherine hesitated, then said, “She has spells. She retreats to another world and is uninvolved in this one.”

“Catatonic states,” Claire said. “She’s had them before?”

“Put any name you like to them.”

“Has she seen a doctor about them?”

“When she was young, we asked the shaman to drive the evil spirits away. He was unable to help. And then we had the doctor who tended to Lillibeth. He gave Natasha medicine, but it made no difference. She is what she is.”

“What doctor?”

“He passed away some time ago.”

Claire flashed on Herm Smythe’s recital. “Dr. Loman?”

Catherine met Claire’s gaze with cool suspicion, but admitted, “Yes.”

“Who took his place?”

“No one.”

“None of them have had any medical attention since Dr. Loman’s death?” Horrified, Claire looked around the room, taking in its rustic appointments. “Catherine, that’s not safe.”

“The only way we stay safe is to live the way we do.”

Claire wasn’t sure she agreed with that, but there was no way she was going to convince Catherine otherwise. “What happened to Lillibeth? What was the accident?”

Catherine got up abruptly from her chair. “You came here about Natasha, not Lillibeth. Not any of the rest of us. I will help you as much as I can concerning Natasha and her baby.”