Darkness & Shadows (36 page)

They returned to the trailer. Tristan passed out as soon as her head hit the pillow. No such luck for Patrick. Sleep was the furthest thing from his mind—too many thoughts running nonstop, too many emotions soaring, looking for a place to land. Besides, someone needed to stay up and keep a watch out for Wesley.

Patrick lay on his back and stared at the ceiling, thinking. About what an idiot he’d been for letting Marybeth fool him. Apparently, once hadn’t been enough—all these years later, he’d managed to fall into her web of lies again.

How could I be so damned stupid?

The more he thought of her betrayal, the deeper the pain penetrated, then anger arrived, giving him a merciless slam. The two emotions whipsawed him until he could no longer keep still. He jumped out of bed and into the kitchen, powered up the laptop, began searching for something to make sense of the senseless.

Tristan sat up in bed. “What the hell?”

“I need answers,” he said, his eyes locked on the screen.

“Now?”

He nodded, still searching.

“Good freakin’ Lord. It’s three a.m.,” she said, clutching her pillow to her chest. “Whatever you’re looking for will still be there in the morning.”

“Can’t wait,” he said, fingers clicking, mind on full throttle.

She got out of bed, walked to the fridge, stared inside.

Patrick combed through all his notes, his research, and his resources, but page after page showed information he already knew or that held no significance. Nothing. He looked up past his screen at Tristan, now sitting patiently across the table and said, “It’s got to be here, somewhere. It has to.”

“Maybe it’s not there at all,” she said, aiming a half-eaten candy bar at him. She peeled the wrapper back farther, took another bite.

He kept searching. Tristan kept watching.

Moments later, he said, “Beaumont, Louisiana.”

“And?”

He scrolled, eyes dashing back and forth across the screen. “Sully mentioned another girl named Marybeth Redmond who died there at age sixteen. We blew it off at the time, but now…”

Tristan came around and rested her arms on the back of his chair, looking on. “I still don’t get it.”

“Wesley Clark lived in Choctaw Lake, Louisiana.”

“Could be a coincidence.”

“Could be, but I’ve looked at everything else.” He pulled up a map, studied it. “And Beaumont’s just a few miles from Choctaw Lake.”

“So, another coincidence.”

He peered over his shoulder, gave her an aggravated look.

She took another bite from the candy bar, chewed and shrugged.

“Does your phone get Internet?” he asked.

She nodded.

“Let me see it.”

She grabbed it from the counter, handed it to him.

He began searching. The trouble was, getting access in their remote area was spotty at best. The signal kept going in and out, driving Patrick’s nerves closer to the edge.

He kept a link long enough to find a newspaper story dated June 4, 1989: an obituary for Marybeth Redmond in Beaumont. He zoomed in on the photo: a cute kid with short, blond hair, rosy freckled cheeks, and plump lips framing a beautiful smile, but not his Marybeth. Not by a long shot. He turned the phone to Tristan.

She said, “Completely different girl.”

He read the obit out loud so she could hear. “Students, faculty, and parents at Joseph’s High School are mourning the death of popular student Marybeth Redmond, who died early Friday morning after the car she was driving with three other teens as passengers lost control and crashed on East Findlay Road near Lake Fredrick’s Pass. Authorities estimate the vehicle was speeding in excess of 80 miles per hour when it slammed into a tree. Jonathan Sanders is listed in critical condition at Saint Mary’s Hospital in Fairlawn. Cynthia Wallace and Sandy Friesland
escaped with minor injuries. Redmond is survived by two brothers, William, 8, and Samuel, 4.”

“It’s a bust, Patrick. Go to sleep and give it a rest.” Tristan moved toward her bed.

Patrick tried searching for more information but lost the connection. Frustrated, he put the phone down.

And heard a loud crash outside. He stood up and spun around; Tristan was already reaching for her gun.

Now they heard footfalls moving rapidly outside the trailer—and now they knew: someone was there.

Tristan moved quietly toward the front, finger firm on the trigger, motioning with her free hand for Patrick to follow. She stepped to the side of the door and hunched against it, listening intently.

More movement and more noise.

A car door slammed, and an engine roared, then came the sound of tires spinning in the dirt and a vehicle speeding away.

Tristan pushed the door open and hurried outside. Patrick grabbed a flashlight off the counter and followed her. They ran around the trailer. When they got to the other side, they stopped in their tracks and stared at two wooden crates scattered under a window, one cracked in two.

Tristan looked at Patrick.

Patrick was already watching her with a troubled expression.

Tristan said, “Someone’s been looking in on us, and it sure as hell wasn’t to make sure we were having sweet dreams.”

The enemy was getting bolder, moving closer—an enemy determined not just to shut them down but also wipe them out. If there had been any question about just how much danger they were in, there was none now.

“We’d probably be dead if the crate hadn’t busted,” Tristan said, lifting a cracked slat of wood, then tossing it. She looked at Patrick and shook her head. “We let our guard down and gave
him a clear shot at us—big mistake. We have to get out of here, and this time, we need to make sure he doesn’t follow.”

“How do we do that? And where do we go?”

She crossed her arms, stared up the road. “Anywhere but here.”

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For a lack of a better idea, they spent part of the night sitting at a truck stop diner, alternately staring into their cups of coffee, at each other, and over their shoulders, trying to figure out their next move. The other part they spent in the car, taking shifts, one trying to sleep while the other kept a watchful eye out for any sign of danger.

They made it through until morning alive—still heavy on their minds, though, was the reality that, were it not for a lucky twist of fate, they might not have been.

They drove toward TJ because they didn’t know where else to go, their path feeling more uncertain than ever before. As they drew closer to the city, the Internet connection got stronger, and Patrick decided to take advantage of the drive time to pick up where he left off the night before.

“What are you looking for?” Tristan said, sparing him a glance.

“Anything that makes sense,” he said.

“Good luck with that.”

“Something’s still bugging me about that story.”

“Seems irrelevant to me.”

“Yeah, well my instincts are telling me otherwise, and I’ve learned to trust them,” he said. “This is my department.”

“Okay, what’s bothering you about it?”

He lost his Internet connection once more. “Two tiny towns, less than ten miles from each other. Seems like too much of a coincidence. Problem is, I can’t find anything more on the car accident… or the girl.”

The connection returned. Tristan kept driving, and Patrick kept searching for an answer he wasn’t even sure existed.

On the outskirts of TJ, he was able to search without interruption and found a story published about a week after the crash. Patrick zoomed in on the photo. And felt his jaw practically become unhinged.

“Not loving that look on your face,” Tristan said. When he didn’t respond, her voice became more fretful. “Patrick, what is it?”

“Pull over,” he said.

She found the nearest parking lot and turned in.

He handed her the phone.

She looked at it, and he could see the shock register on her face. Slowly, Tristan moved her eyes up toward Patrick and said, “You’ve got to be fucking kidding me.”

He shook his head.

It was a picture from the Redmond memorial service: a crowd of students and teachers and relatives with vacant expressions, gathered around the casket, paying their respects.

And in that crowd was a face Patrick knew very well.

Marybeth.
His
Marybeth.

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“Her name wasn’t Marybeth,” Tristan said.

Patrick nodded somberly, his jaw set.

She held his incensed gaze a moment longer, then started the car and pulled out of the lot. For the next mile or so, bewilderment rendered them silent, then Tristan said, “She took the girl’s name after she died.”

Patrick was staring into oblivion. He couldn’t even nod his answer.

“She’s good,” Tristan said, shaking her head. “I’ll give her that much.”

Coming from her, it was quite a compliment, but for Patrick, it felt like another cruel slap in the face. More deception, more pain—the bad just kept coming. He’d fallen in love with a fraud. Now, to make matters worse, not only did he not know the woman; he didn’t even know her real name.

And he also didn’t know what to feel anymore. Or maybe it was just that he was feeling too much, information overload sending him into a state of mental paralysis. A mind could only take so much, and he was pretty sure he’d reached his limit. But through it all, one emotion still managed to rise to the surface,
and it was growing stronger with each passing minute: he was angry.

No, he was
furious
.

And now more than ever, he wanted to see her face-to-face, whoever the hell she was. He wanted to look into the eyes that used to captivate him and demand answers from the demon who had been destroying his life one year at a time, leaving him with nothing but a legacy of pain and suffering.

“We’ll find her,” Tristan said, as if answering his thoughts, her voice rising with steady and indignant determination. “We will.”

When they reached TJ, a dark ceiling of cloud cover moved above the city, swirling its way through bygone blue skies. Patrick couldn’t help but feel as if it were some sort of symbiotic reaction, a force of nature brought about by his inner turmoil. His emotions began to settle into a hazy mix, anger giving way to acceptance, truth leading him toward a path paved with resolve and firm determination.

He looked at Tristan and said, “So, what’s the plan?”

She glanced at him and smiled. “Thought you’d never ask.”

“Sorry, my mind’s been occupied. Or maybe hijacked is a better word.”

“We’re going to take care of that. So, here’s the deal. Your Marybeth is still in Mexico. I’m willing to bet on it.”

“Based on what?”

“Based on she’s burned every other bridge, so to speak.”

“Not funny,” he said.

“I’m trying. Work with me here.”

He nodded noncommittally.

She went on. “There’s nowhere else the woman can go. She sure can’t head back to the US now. Besides, there’s a reason she chose to dump the body here. People are hardly ever as random as
they think they are. There’s always some kind of unconscious logic.” She nodded to herself. “So, we have to figure out her logic.”

“Which would be…?”

“For starters, she likes to hide in plain sight, and quite honestly I’ve never seen anything like it before. The woman is amazing.”

“What do you mean?”

“She’s an expert. More than likely, she’s been doing it her whole life. She was fine hiding out in public at a university filled with her peers, and as Charlene Clark—well, I don’t know how the hell she pulled that one off, but it shows just how good she is at it. I’m willing to bet she’s doing the same thing now, hiding out among the masses, someplace where she can blend in.”

“But how? And where?”

“Well, we can assume now it was Marybeth that dumped the bogus body.”

Patrick nodded.

“Dressed as a nun.”

“You think she’s hiding out as one?”

“It’s a perfect cover.”

“But we can’t search every church in TJ.”

“Right, we can’t. But we can go to the places with the highest concentration of Catholic churches.”

“That’s pretty much the whole city. Three-fourths of the people are Catholic.”

“They have an archdiocese? Or even the biggest cathedral? Remember how she thinks. The more obvious, the better.”

Patrick was already on Tristan’s cell and searching. He said, “
Calle Segunda
, downtown. It’s got the biggest cathedral, and there are a bunch of others scattered over the surrounding area.”

“Perfect. Lots of other nuns, priests, and churchgoers. Someone might recognize her. We’ll start there.”

“And if that doesn’t work?”

“We start hitting hospitals, then the orphanages. Nuns can go lots of places without being recognized. We’ll hit them all until we find her.”

“But what’s our strategy?”

She thought about that. “It would help if you had a photo of her.”