Breath of Dawn, The (39 page)

Morgan stood and shook hands with the striking Japanese CEO whose bearing, drive, and apparent integrity impressed him as it had Denise. Once again she’d proved indispensable as a screener, with a thoroughness and natural instinct for people that made her choice of boyfriends baffling. And, though he’d rather have the lout in jail, since Denise would not testify, paying to keep the barrier in place was well worth it.

He called to tell her the initial contact with Mikio Funaki had intrigued him enough to arrange the more in-depth scrutiny that would take most of tomorrow. She was especially impressed by his ability to recognize hers. He disconnected with a smile tugging. It was good to have people who honed you. He and Denise would never be flint and steel, but they were definitely steel on steel.

The meetings would also take his mind off William’s upcoming conversation with the FBI. He believed what he’d told Erin, that they were in good hands—the best. But she had committed a crime, however naïvely, and the piper must be paid. From what he’d been told before reviewing the files Anselm provided, William expected a grand jury hearing at the least.

Alone in the elevator, Morgan prayed that was the most. If Erin had a chance to explain herself, they’d see her sincerity, her decency, the things he’d been drawn to from the shadows. Her bright spirit had breathed life into his flagging soul. He wanted nothing more than to live in peace and raise his children with her.

After cabbing over, he entered the hotel where he and Erin had stayed on the second tumultuous night of their marriage. He was tempted to call her again but had to trust that she’d let him know if anything happened. From the little she’d shared, her father and the other men in her life had undermined her intelligence and resourcefulness. He wasn’t going to be one of them.

Instead he phoned his baby girl and filled his heart with her chatter. Then he settled into the creative stream of professional energy he tapped to prepare for tomorrow.

In the mountain condo, with the night settled hard and cold, the lines of Ray’s face grew long as he sent his thoughts to a time
he’d clearly avoided visiting. He had taken so long to answer, Erin thought she’d overstepped in asking so directly about someone he’d obviously cared about.

But after a while he said, “The Juniper Falls Mental Hospital started out way back as an asylum for real head cases. The stuff in the cellar is mostly from those days. By the time I got there it was an exploratory, transcendental sort of drug and alcohol rehab center. A treatment facility for anger management and depression, where celebrities came to get their auras smoothed with acid and rituals. It was sort of a badge of achievement to have done a stint at JFMH.”

“No electroshock?”

“A decade or two before. Then it went to progressive, experimental treatments.”

Erin listened intently, aware of RaeAnne doing the same, as he described therapies that sounded more like rites—maybe dark rites—to her.

“Brandy arrived in the last year of operation. Well, she sort of saw to that,” he added with a shadow entering his eyes. “A young starlet with every kind of issue you could imagine.” He shook his head. “She immediately attached to me, which was all right, except she wanted something romantic, and I just wasn’t into young women.”

RaeAnne made a sound in her throat that brought a ghost of a smile from Ray.

“Maybe it was her addictions, or her insecurities. Maybe she went looking, or was merely susceptible, but she reacted to whatever was there in a terrifying way.”

RaeAnne jumped in. “What do you mean ‘whatever was there’?”

Ray looked from one of them to the other. “Brandy wasn’t the first to have weird episodes, things that got people hurt or scared them silly. Sillier. We were all a bunch of nutcases.”

“That’s not true,” Erin said. “Every person in there was dealing with an emotional or physiological condition. It doesn’t make you less human.”

He spread his hands. “Just a figure of speech.”

“Go on,” his daughter said, caught up now.

“Stuff had happened there as far back as people remembered. But Brandy’s was the worst I’d heard of. They started finding her in locked places, places she shouldn’t have been able to get into. And there were always some marks on her, bruises or burns, hand marks around her throat, cuts when there wasn’t anything sharp in sight. She didn’t know how she got there or what happened.”

Erin thought of patient 1 in the asylum director’s account not remembering the strange voice and foreign tongue. Of the janitor not understanding why he touched the searing boiler.

“All the staff was questioned and even took lie detector tests. No one was doing it. I told Brandy to leave, that it was no place for her. I’d have left myself if she agreed, but she wouldn’t. She seemed to . . . thrive on it.” He shook his head. “People said she wanted attention. And she did. But this was something else. This was something . . . evil.”

Erin swallowed. In hardly more than a whisper, she said, “Brandy lit the fire?”

It was minutes before Ray spoke. “That’s what they say.”

“You think it was someone else?”

“Some
thing
.” The skin around his eyes reddened. “Something was there before Brandy.” He fixed her with a blue stare as serious as a stroke. “Sounds like it still is.”

Leaving Ray’s condo, Erin did not feel like talking. For once RaeAnne seemed to agree. Processing his story about Brandy along with the rest of the visit, they drove silently to Rick and Noelle’s ranch, where she let RaeAnne into the cabin, then went herself to get the gun. She took it from the glove box, knowing it was loaded and dangerous. Morgan had briefly explained its operation, the safeties, etc.

It was lighter and smaller than the revolver she’d shot with Pops. It might not buck and smart as that one had, but she didn’t want to know. Next, she used the key hidden where Noelle told her, and went into the big house to get her truck keys. Rick hadn’t sold it yet, she discovered when she disarmed the Maserati’s alarm. That way, RaeAnne could use the rental car, and she’d have her own transportation.

She put the gun and the keys on the nightstand in Morgan’s
bedroom, where she’d refused to sleep the night they spent here. She’d been right then, but she sure wished he was with her now.

In the other room, she smiled at RaeAnne. “Well?”

“He’s kind of sweet, don’t you think?” RaeAnne’s eyes looked hopeful.

She pictured Ray. “He’s more than sweet. He’s kind and good and humble. He’s everything a dad should be.”

RaeAnne’s tears flowed. “I can hardly believe it. Yet as happy as I am, I’m so angry too. How could Vera have done this to me? To him? Why would she keep us apart and never let us know?”

Erin shook her head. “I think you said it. She wanted him all to herself.”

Markham had thought about giving Hannah a dose of the drug but decided not to share the experience. His visions were private, between him and God, and though the mountain air was frigid, freezing even, he went outside to experience the quest without Hannah hovering.

He wanted to know what the stars and trees would look like when the effects began. He had dripped it from an ampule onto his tongue, and it seemed to take longer to take effect. Once it began, he would return to the house before the imagined paralysis made him unable to move. For now he wandered between the trees in the slicing moonlight.

With only the first hints of dizziness, he followed a path packed into the snow and relatively visible. It shouldn’t have surprised him that it came out at Rick’s ranch. They did share the road to the area, the only two properties on it.

His steps seemed to labor and fly at the same time, as though he covered a great distance without moving at all. Astral projection, he told himself with a laugh that made no sound. One of the cabins had lights on, and he moved toward it, feeling invisible and no longer cold—overly warm, in fact. He crept up beside the window and looked in, stunned by what he saw.

On her back across the bed lay Quinn, talking on the phone. He watched as she twisted her hair, her face sweet, then animated,
serious, then amused. It had to be her husband she was talking to with such emotions playing over her face. Markham’s eyes narrowed when she rested her hand on her belly. What would the man pay for his wife
and
offspring
?

Still talking on the phone, Quinn closed her eyes, a look on her face he’d never seen on Hannah’s. With such similar features, he should have. His breath grew shallow and sharp—the drug, he told himself, knowing he had to get back. Hannah worshiped him. He was not merely a prophet, but a god.

The sky exploded into colors, the stars praising him as he moved along the path. He was great and marvelous, deserving of praise. Not only a divine messenger, he was himself divine. So why had he never seen the look on Quinn’s face in Hannah’s eyes for him?

B
efore dawn, Markham opened his eyes to Hannah beside him on the bed, staring like a farm animal. A woman in the congregation, the midwife, had told him Hannah’s birth had been complicated, cord issues, oxygen deprivation. She’d approached him in reverence to intercede on Hannah’s behalf. Maybe another small miracle? If he had the time?

“Are you awake?” Hannah’s voice trembled. He wanted to pump air into her lungs and force it out robust and lively—like her sister’s.
“I expected it would be Quinn who caught your interest.”
Oh yes. But she’d been shrewd and suspicious, never giving him an instant’s encouragement, whereas Hannah . . .

He frowned, less euphoric than the last time he’d awakened from the drug. “What are you doing in my bed, Hannah?”

“You were so cold and confused. I tried to warm you.”

He had no memory of her. Obviously he’d been lucky to make it back.

“Thank you, Hannah. God is dealing with me in new and fearful ways.”

“I was afraid. You weren’t yourself. It didn’t . . . sound like you.”

He smiled. “My sweet Hannah. It wasn’t me.”

Her eyes widened in amazement—and fear. He rose and went out. Tracing the path he’d taken the night before, he found a place in the trees and watched. After a while, Quinn came out and went into the barn. Moments later she drove out in a black truck. He had no need to follow. He only wanted to make sure he hadn’t hallucinated last night and imagined her altogether.

Now that he knew it, he made his way back to the house and let himself in. Hannah waited at the door, a little confused, but—he was gratified to see—still devoted. She would need that for this trial. “It is good you’re here with me, like the widow for Elijah.”

“I don’t want to be a widow. This house scares me.”

“No, precious Hannah. Not a widow. But you too have been chosen.”

“Your wife and handmaid.”

“Yes.” He laid his hands on her head. “And you remember your vows. They mean even more for us than a typical marriage. We’ve been set apart.”

“You have, Markham.”

He smiled. “But like Esther, you’re here for a time such as this.”

She blinked with awe and wonder.

“Are you willing? No matter how hard it might be?”

“I am,” she breathed.

“Then come.”

She gaped when he put his shoulder to the hutch and pushed it away from the hidden door. She had no idea where it led. But he did.

Erin slid with anticipation into Rudy’s oxidized Wagoneer. The narrow lake was remote, tucked into a valley with steep evergreen slopes rising to a slate gray sky. Breathing air so cold it pinched her nostrils, she watched, shivering, while Rudy bored a hole with a four-foot corkscrew he called an auger. When he’d settled beside her, wrapped in a blanket that matched hers, she said, “It’s so peaceful.”

“Yep.” Rudy handed her the pole and tackle that included a speckled grub he wanted to compare with the Phelps Glow Spoon
on his. “I like to try out the equipment,” he said, “and this is a good chance to go head to head on the lures.”

She butted fists with him. “May the best fake bug win.”

The valley was almost wholly silent, the gray dawn broken by a cold silver sunrise behind a veil of clouds. Across the freshly glowing sky an eagle soared. A bull elk stalked majestically to where the water flowed beneath a thinner crust of ice. With its powerful hoof, the elk crushed the ice and drank. It reminded her of the bugling she and Morgan had laughed at, one small vignette in their storybook romance.

Before she would have expected it, her pole dipped. She glanced at Rudy, who had noticed it too. When she got another tug, she jerked up, feeling it snag something in the dark gray hole. That something pulled back. With both hands she held and reeled the line in, Rudy watching without a word. The fish had heft and spirit for having pickled in ice water, but she hauled out a pale yellow, gray-speckled cutthroat trout longer than her forearm.

Sliding her the pail with a huge grin, Rudy said, “If I took you fishing first, Morgan wouldn’t have stood a chance.”

“Probably.” She tipped him a sidelong glance, smiling back.

“That’ll make you a nice dinner.”

“It will. Want to join me?”

“Would, but I’ve got a Scout troop meeting tonight. Lots to get ready.”

“You’re a troop leader?”

“It’s slim pickin’s up here.”

She shoved his knee. “I’m sure you’re great. What don’t you know about scouty stuff?”

“Scouty?” He shook his head, chin down. “Scouty.”

They sat a good while, but nothing else decided to bite, and it was time to check in with Ray and RaeAnne. Carrying the bucket, she felt a little bad for the fish, but it would be put to good use. Even split three ways, it would make a tasty treat, and Ray, for one, might enjoy hearing how her speckled grub won the contest.

Back at her truck, she thanked Rudy for what really had been a special time—different, yet sweetly reminiscent of those spent with Pops.

As he pulled out in the Wagoneer with a wave at the window, her phone vibrated. She dug it from her pocket, noting eight new messages. That little valley must not get a signal. With the exception of one from Morgan, they were all from Pops. She pushed Talk. “Hi, P—”

“Quinn!” her sister gasped. “Please come.”

What? Her thoughts stalled. Why did Hannah have her grandfather’s cell phone? “Hannah? What’s wrong?” If something had happened to Pops . . .

“It’s dark and—”

She sensed motion and started to turn when a jolt struck her back beneath her left shoulder. Her muscles twitched with uncontrollable spasms. She couldn’t move her arms. Millions of tiny needles shot through her body as confusion and dizziness filled her mind.

Something big moved behind her, then around to the side. Her arm pulled back but not by her own muscles, or her will. A hard shove pushed her over, and her other arm jerked back. The sound of something ripping moved through her mind, but she didn’t make sense of it until the stickiness wrapped her wrists.

She was flying—no, someone lifted her off the ground and tossed her behind the driver’s seat into the cab cargo area. A terrifying helplessness overwhelmed her, even though the hard spasms were lessening. Dazed, she lay at an awkward angle on her shoulder, her cheek pressed into the utilitarian truck carpeting.

Where was her phone? Where was the gun? She didn’t need to ask who or why—only what was he doing here?

Her head cleared as the truck moved, slowly first, then stopping, then accelerating. She could think, but she couldn’t seem to act on anything. As the last of the contractions tapered off, the truck stopped. The door opened, and before she could even cry out, another jolt arched her back, as a hundred hammers pounded up and down her spine. Her limbs jerked, then froze, and on a terrible wave of vertigo, she lost the last thread of thought.

On his way to meet Mikio Funaki, Morgan tried to reach his wife again. This time instead of going instantly to voice mail, as it
had before, it rang. It rang, but she didn’t answer. Any other time, he’d balance all the reasons for that. Now, disquiet seeped in like sarin gas invading his lungs and sinuses.

Answer the phone, Erin.

William’s meeting with the assistant deputy director of the FBI had already begun. After studying Markham’s conviction and Erin’s testimony as well as the current case the feds were building, he’d sounded confident of her chances for a plea and cautiously optimistic about no charges at all. She could deliver what they needed and connect it to Markham—leverage in William’s hands that worked like magic.

Morgan wiped the sweat from his palm. Before he got locked into this meeting with the Japanese CEO, he wanted to tell Erin things looked good. He wanted her to know she’d be fine, everything would be fine. Yet he couldn’t shake the disquiet.

Cell service worked well at the ranch, though he didn’t know what part of Juniper Falls RaeAnne’s dad lived in, and there were spotty areas. That gave him a thought, and he called another number.

“Hi, RaeAnne, this is Morgan,” he said. “I’m trying to reach Erin and not having much luck.”

“Erin?” She voiced real confusion. “Who’s Erin?”

It baffled him for a second; then he said, “Didn’t Quinn tell you she’s going by Erin?”

“Why would she do that? Quinn’s a great name.”

He gave her the succinct version.

“Well, I knew about most of that, but she’s still been Quinn to me.”

He rubbed his eyes. “I guess it doesn’t matter. Is she there?”

“No. I’m at my dad’s. She said she might join us later, but she went ice fishing with Rudy.”

Ice fishing. In the valley Rudy usually fished, there’d be no service. He blew out his breath, relief clearing his head. “Is there a plan for later?”

“She said we’d talk. I’m actually thinking of staying the night with my dad. There are so many things I’d like to do here at his place before I go.”

“Okay. But if you don’t talk to her soon, would you go by the ranch and see what’s up?”

“Sure. Of course. Is everything okay?”

He frowned. “Probably.”

“Well, I’ll let you know as soon as I hear.”

He thanked her and hung up. Erin would see his calls when she got service. She’d call and tell him she was fine. Maybe at that point he could tell her the same from his end.

Dizzy and disoriented, she opened her eyes to darkness and Hannah weeping. Feeling the cold metal clamp on her left wrist, she realized the tape that had bound her was gone. She shifted on the hard surface, rolling from her hip to sit up against a metal bed frame she recognized by touch. Groping, she found Hannah’s hand in the other cuff on the same bed and said, “Are you all right?”

The noise Hannah made was not speech. Fear, fury, loathing.

“Hannah, are you hurt?”

“No,” she wailed.

Erin let go of her sister and felt her pocket. No gun. Either it fell out when Markham manhandled her and it was on the ground somewhere . . . or he had it.

She didn’t feel her phone either. Then, as if her mind willed it, the phone rang. But not in her pocket.

It was Morgan’s ring tone from the modern metal opera he loved. An organ blast, then “What good this deafness if this prattle I must hear.”

She had laughed so hard the first time she heard what he programmed for his ring. She couldn’t laugh now.

In the nearly complete darkness, Markham touched her phone. The face of it faintly illuminated his features as he said, “We’ll let it go,” and touched Ignore.

His appearing like that in the darkness creeped her out—as he intended it to. She waited him out, but when he laughed softly, she said, “You’re scaring Hannah.” Her sister hated the dark.

“Are you scared, Hannah?”

She whimpered.

“There, see? No complaints.”

“This is between us. Let her out of here.”

Laughing contemptuously, he lit the camp lantern from the kitchen and eyed them. “You still think you have control. It’s hard to imagine you don’t. There’s no point of reference for the sort of helplessness you’re experiencing, so your mind spins scenarios of escape. If you do this, or you say that . . .”

She didn’t respond. Let him play out his fantasy.