Deadly Obsession (A Brown and de Luca Novel Book 4) (17 page)

She hadn’t watched any news reports, because it would be easier to feign surprise, shock and horror if she hadn’t heard any of the spin the press were putting on the fire. But maybe it was time she started listening. She got into her car, tuned the radio to a local all-news station, then turned herself around and headed back the way she had come.

“...so far, no human remains have been found at the scene of the fire. Detective Brown’s two nephews are being treated as missing persons...”

She snapped the power button off. Dammit. If the kids weren’t in the house when she torched it, then where the hell were they?

“Marie,” she whispered. “It had to have been Marie.” She stomped hard on the gas pedal, sending up a cloud of dust in her wake.

* * *

“Mason, we’ve got a sighting of what looks like a young person walking alone along a deserted stretch of road near Parish. Fisherman headed out for an early morning trip saw him and found it odd enough that he called it in to the local sheriff. Are you still in the area?”

The voice was Vanessa Cantone’s, and it came from Mason’s cell phone, set to speaker and resting in the spot that used to be an ashtray when the car was new and was now a cell phone holder.

“We’re still here, Chief,” he said, sending me a hopeful look. I thought it was unlikely just any local kid would be out walking the back roads of this nowhere place in the predawn hours. “Where?”

“Barclay Road.”

I snatched the portable GPS off the dash and keyed in the road in question. “U-turn,” I told him, slamming the unit back onto its holder and then unfolding the map to verify.

“We’re on our way,” Mason said, swinging the car around in a one-eighty, then flooring it.

We’d been driving in an approximation of concentric circles, and I’d been trying to feel Joshua and Jeremy’s vibe or whatever you want to call it. But my NFP wasn’t doing a hell of a lot to help me, which was odd. If the boys were in trouble, I’d feel it, wouldn’t I? When Amy was in trouble, my NFP was practically screaming inside my head. It was like there was a magnet pulling me right to her.

I was as close to Josh and Jeremy as I was to Amy. Maybe closer. Yeah, probably closer. Okay,
definitely
closer. Much as I hadn’t wanted to, I’d become a kind of a mother figure to them, I supposed. Until I’d walked onto the scene of Mason’s burning home, I hadn’t realized how much the brats meant to me.

So why wasn’t I getting anything stronger? Why was their signal so weak?

“There’ll be a right just up ahead,” I said. “Then a quick left. Slow down a little.”

He did, but not enough. The car rocked up on two wheels when we took the corner and barely touched all four down again before he took the next.

“This is it, this is the road.”

He braked to a crawl. I dragged my finger along the map. “It’s only a two mile, road, Mason. Let’s park the Beast and walk it.”

He pulled onto the shoulder, and we jumped out of the car, slammed the doors and started walking, him on the right shoulder, me on the left. I called the boys’ names and wished Myrtle were there. She’d sniff them out if they were close.

We walked and we shouted, and we walked and we shouted some more.

And then I heard something rustling in the woods along my side of the road, and a soft voice said, “Rachel?”

I looked up, my heart clenching in my chest just as Joshua burst out of the trees and into my arms. I hugged him to me, picked him right up off his feet, and hugged him, and yeah, there was a sudden floodgate that opened behind my eyes, but so what? Jeez, I’d gone from being sure he’d died a horrible death to thinking he was kidnapped by a homicidal maniac to having him all wrapped up in my arms. So yes, I bawled. Sue me.

Mason crossed the road in two long strides and wrapped his big arms around us both, and Josh sobbed and tried to twist around to hug his uncle, too. And then eventually we untwined ourselves and set the poor kid on his feet.

His face was dirty and wet, and he was sobbing almost too hard to talk.

“Have to...get...Jeremy.”

“We will. We will, don’t worry. Do you know where he is?” Mason asked.

He nodded. It was jerky but firm. “With Mom. In a c-c-cabin.”

“Can you find it again?”

“I can try. I don’t know. I think I took one of the turns Jere told me not to. I thought I was lost for sure.” He wiped his eyes. “Sh-she’s crazy, Uncle Mason. I was scared she’d k-kill us.”

“I don’t think she’d do that,” Mason told him. “She’s sick, but she still loves you.”

“It’s like...some s-stranger. In Mom’s body. I d-don’t know
what
she’ll do. And Jeremy thinks she might hurt us. That’s why he made me sneak away.” His face contorted and fresh tears spilled. “He saved me.”

Mason crouched down and hugged the kid again. “You’ve got a hell of a brother, kiddo. Let’s go get him, okay?”

Josh nodded, wiping his eyes with his knuckles.

“Come on, pal, and we’ll head back to the car. It’s not far, and then we’ll go get Jeremy. Okay, pal?”

“Thank God you weren’t in the house,” I muttered.

Josh frowned and looked over at me. “Why?”

I blinked and slid my gaze to Mason’s, stunned that Josh might not be aware of the fire. Mason gave me a subtle shake of his head, and then I focused on Josh again. “Myrt’s gonna be so glad to see you. She’s been out of her mind.”

“Is she okay? I was so worried about her and Hugo.”

“Why were you worried?” Maybe he
did
know about the fire.

“’Cause I left the door out to the back room open. Mom took us so fast, I didn’t have time to go back in and close it. Did they get outside?”

“Yeah, kid. They got outside.” I ran a hand down his back. His forgetfulness had probably saved Myrtle’s life. And Myrt had, in turn, saved Hugo’s. “And they’re both just fine. Now we’re gonna go get your big brother, and then everything will be okay again. All right, pal?”

He sniffled, nodded. “I knew you’d come for me. I knew you
both
would.”

He reached sideways to take hold of my hand. My damned eyes burned again. What the hell had happened to hard-ass, independent, “don’t even think about making me a mother figure” Rachel? Where was she?

Burned up in that fire, I guessed.

* * *

Jeremy had barely managed to grab hold of the car door handle and jerk it open as his mother pulled away. When he did, though, she braked sharply, and he banged his head on the open door. He didn’t even pause, though, just dove into the passenger seat. “Dammit, Mom, you’re losing it! Let him go.”

“Don’t you think I would if I could?” She had tears dripping from her chin, and her nose was running. “God, I’d let you both go if I could. I can see you’re terrified of me.” Her lips pulled into a tight grimace. “You hate me. You do, don’t you?”

Something in Jeremy’s stomach knotted up tight. “I hate what you did. Killing people, Mom. Trying to kill Rachel.”

She nodded rapidly. “I know. I know. I know that now.”

“And leaving my pocketknife in the snow. So Uncle Mason would think it was me.”

She sniffed hard. “Only to divert him. I never would’ve let you go to prison, Jeremy. Never. I’d have died first.”

“Why did you do it, Mom?”

“Your father told me to.” She blinked, frowned hard. “Only my doctors say it wasn’t really him. It was some kind of sickness in my brain.” And then she shook her head rapidly. “But it wasn’t sickness. It was him. It was your father. I know it was. And I shouldn’t have listened, but I just love him so much that—”

“Mom, no. It was the illness. It wasn’t Dad. Dad’s dead.”

“Demons don’t die, honey. It was him. I know you loved him, but your father wasn’t a good man.” Again, the grimace that pulled her mouth so wide it was almost a smile. “He was evil, and he made
me
evil, too.”

“Dad wasn’t—”

“He killed a lot of people, Jeremy. Thirteen before he died. More after. I don’t know how he did that, but like I said, demons don’t die.”

Jeremy sat there, staring at his mother, knowing she was insane. And yet there was something. There was something way down deep inside him, some weird kind of awareness. “That’s not true,” he said.

“You should know. You deserve to know what he was. Your father was the Wraith.”

He shook his head. “That’s not right, Mom. The Wraith was that lunatic I shot when he tried to kill Uncle Mason.”

She shook her head. “Your father just made you believe that.”

“My father was already dead.”

“You don’t understand. Maybe it doesn’t matter.” She pulled the car to a stop. “I wonder which way Joshua went from here. We have to find him, Jeremy. We have to. There’s another demon, and she’s after him. After you both.” Then she started forward again, driving until she spotted a rutted track off the road into the forest. A logging road or something. It had a sign on it that said No Trespassing, but she took it anyway, and drove several hundred yards before she stopped again, got out of the car and started walking as the sun rose over the horizon.

By 7:00 a.m., after they’d walked and searched for more than an hour, Jeremy was sure Josh had either found help and was somewhere safe, or had gone off track and was hopelessly lost. Otherwise they would have found him by now. Apparently, his mother had given up on finding him, too. As they made their way back to the car, she said, “We have to leave here now. We can’t go back to the cabin. Josh will tell them where we are, and they’ll find us. We have to leave.”

Jeremy sighed, his hopes for imminent rescue dashed. But he was too relieved about Josh to be too upset. If they left here, then Josh was home free for sure. And that was more important. He didn’t want his kid brother within reach of his crazy mother and her wild delusions about their father.

The Wraith. The only serial killer their area had ever had, the one Jeremy had come face-to-face with on what was still the most terrifying day of his life. His mother was even crazier than he’d realized.

13

M
ason drove, while Josh told him where to go. I don’t know how many times the kid changed his mind, and we had to backtrack and start over. The kid had gotten himself so turned around it was a miracle we’d found him. Thank God he’d stuck to the roadsides and hadn’t wandered off too deeply into the forest.

I manned the phone. The first call was to Chief Cantone, who had the State Police dispatch choppers and every cop within a reasonable distance to our location.

My second call was to my sister, but I only had time to say, “We’ve got Joshua. He’s safe. Marie still has Jeremy. But I think we’re close” and for her to reply with a predictable “Be careful, Rache” before the cabin came into sight.

Mason stopped the car, left it running and got out. “Take the extra gun out of the glove compartment, Rachel. Lock the doors and stay in the car.”

Like I was gonna shoot the kid’s mother in front of him. I scooted over behind the wheel. “If we have to run, we’ll run, but I’m not going to shoot anybody.”

Josh was in the backseat, leaning forward, looking hard for his brother. “Her car’s gone,” he whispered. “She had a car. A blue one.”

I saw Mason’s face fall, but he closed the door and crept forward anyway. I watched him, realizing after a few seconds that I was holding my breath. He moved fast and easy, kind of edging his way along the tree line. The log cabin was tiny, couldn’t have been more than two rooms, or maybe just one big one. Two little windows in the front with no adornment. And a door that had been painted a dark shade of green that was hard to distinguish from the moss growing over it. The place had an abandoned look to it.

And something bad. Something real bad. Something that made me want to grab Mason and pull him back into the car, only he was out of reach now.

I looked again at the cabin, those two black windows like dead eyes staring back at me.

And then there
were
dead eyes staring back at me. A young man’s dead, wide-open, brown eyes, with blood trickling across his forehead and dripping into one of them. And I was standing over him, holding a bloody framing hammer in my left hand. It was a big hand, stuffed into a leather glove that strained at the seams, and it was attached to a thick, hairy forearm.

I’m Mason’s brother again. I’m Eric. I have his corneas. I’m seeing what he saw.

He’d killed here.

Josh was shaking me, one hand on my right shoulder. “Rachel? Rachel? Come on, Rachel, please?”

I blinked back into myself and gave a full-body shudder that felt like a dog shaking off water. It was Eric I was shaking off. I wanted a shower. God.

He’d killed here. I’d seen it. Here in this cabin no one but his wife had known about. Now that I knew what had happened here, the stench of death was hard to miss. I wanted to get out of this place.

“Where’s Mason? I lost track,” I said, my eyes jumping from one part of the clearing to the next. “Where did he go?”

“He went behind the cabin a second ago. I don’t think there’s a back door, though. I had to climb out the window.”

I felt a sudden stab of fear. Josh’s fear. Jeez, the poor kid. “He’ll be okay,” I promised.
Joshua shouldn’t be in this place. It’s bad for him here. His father murdered innocent young men here. And I can still feel it. It’s like I breathe it every time I inhale.
God,
I want to get out of here.

“Something moved inside! Rache!”

“I see it, I see it.” I squinted, leaning forward in my seat. Why the hell didn’t we have a pair of binoculars as standard equipment in every vehicle? A shadow moved. I traced the curve of its neck into its wide, sturdy shoulder. “It’s Mason. I don’t see anyone else.”

Almost as soon as I said it, Mason came out the front door and walked toward us. I opened my door but couldn’t bring myself to get out, to set even one foot on this polluted ground.

“I found a couple of windows in the back, one big enough to get in through. They’re gone. Left in a hurry, it looks like. Lots of stuff left behind for Forensics to go over.” He braced his hands on the open door and hung his head in between them.

I had a perfect view of the anguish on his face. On impulse, I reached up and ran my palm over his stubble. “We’ll find them,” I said. I heard a chopper overhead and the first sirens in the distance. Then I looked Mason right in the eye and willed him to feel what I was sending. “Mason, we have to get away from this place. I can’t
be
here. Okay?”

He heard me, understood what I was saying—that bad things had happened here and I was feeling them. I could tell by the way he frowned hard, searching my face like he was worried about me, because he probably was. I was amazed all over again at how we could communicate without any words at all. The enormity of this thing kept hitting me full-on over and over again, amazing me every time.

I know, great timing, right?

“Slide over, I’ll drive,” he said.

We drove until my spine unknotted itself and started to elongate again. I don’t know what to tell you, that’s how it felt. Then he stopped at a pull off alongside the road, in plain sight of the police vehicles that screamed past us toward the cabin. If they wanted us, they would know where to find us.

“What was it?” he asked me. “About the cabin?” He slid the shift into Park, and turned off the engine.

My window was down. I could smell the pine all around. Everything was dappled in early-morning sunlight, the way it filtered through those boughs. I breathed deeply, then looked at him and then Josh, and back to him again. He got the message:
Not in front of Josh,
and acknowledged it with a slight nod.

“Where do you think she took Jeremy?” I asked Josh, to distract him from the unspoken conversation I’d just had with his uncle.

“I don’t know. Anywhere. She’s crazy, Rache. I’ve never seen anything like it.” He was shaking his head in a way that was far too old for him. He had seen too much in his life, things a kid should never see.

“It’s awful, how sick your mom is, Josh,” I told him, ’cause my heart was breaking for him and I just wanted to say something to make it better. I looked for words, and they were right there. I don’t know who put them there, but they started spilling out, like when I’m on a roll with my writing, like I’ve tapped into a well. I reached around, put my hand on his shoulder. “But it’s not her fault. I want you to remember that. She’s not the woman you just spent last night with. She’s the mom you remember from back when things were good. That’s who she is. You hold on to that, okay? Because you know what? Your holding on to that memory of her when she was at her best is gonna help her as much as it helps you.”

“It is?” He sniffled—unashamed, I think.

“It is. Don’t ask me how I know it, but I do. I wouldn’t lie to you, Josh. I love you.”

He snapped his arms around my neck, almost launching himself out of the backseat and into the front. “I love you, too,” he said against my jaw. His cheeks were wet.

Great time for an emotional meltdown, right?

I let him go, wiped my eyes and turned to Mason. “Let’s find a diner, get some breakfast and wait for another lead, okay? Jeremy’s smart. He’s going to find a way to let us know where he is. Or the team will find some clue in that cabin. Or I’ll get another inkling. We need to get some sustenance into us.”

“Okay.” He looked from me to Josh, then back at me again. And he smiled, but it was a shaky smile. Finally he started the car and drove back toward the nearest town.

* * *

Jeremy couldn’t believe what he was seeing.

His mother had driven them into a nearby little town, and she hadn’t spoken a word the whole way. Then she pulled into the parking lot of a retro-looking diner that was apparently just called Diner. That was all the sign said, at least.

She’d gotten out and gone inside, and he’d had no choice but to follow her. They sat down, and when he asked her what she was doing, she held up a finger and calmly ordered two breakfasts of ham and eggs, and coffee with cream and sugar.

And then she sat there, staring over his shoulder at the TV in the corner, answering every question with a finger aimed at his food. She wanted him to eat. So he ate. She didn’t. She only pretended to.

“Look,” she said at last.

He turned, frowning to see what was on television that was so important. Didn’t she know she shouldn’t be here in public? She would be caught.

But that was what he wanted. Wasn’t it?

The question went unanswered as his brain registered what his eyes were looking at. News footage of a house on fire. Of Mason’s house,
his
house, on fire. He leaned forward, listening now and motioning to a waiter. “Can you turn that up?”

The guy did.

...the fire that destroyed the home of Binghamton Police Detective Mason Brown last night was deliberately set, according to arson investigators. The whereabouts of Brown’s two young nephews, ages twelve and seventeen, are still unknown; however, investigators say there are no signs of human remains at the scene, and there are indications the boys may have been abducted. An Amber Alert has been issued.

At that point Jeremy saw photos of himself and Josh flash onto the screen with the words
Missing Boys
underneath them. He lowered his head, turned back around and felt more than one pair of eyes on him.

“We’ve got to get out of here, Mom,” he muttered without looking up. He picked up the menu to shield his face.

“No,” she said softly. “You’ve got to go back home. And I’ve got to find another way to stop her.” She leaned across the table, put a palm gently against his cheek. “You be careful of that demon, okay, Jeremy? Don’t let her get to you before I can get to her. Do you hear me? Be careful of Nurse Gretchen.”

She got up and calmly crossed the diner, heading into the restroom, while the words
Nurse Gretchen
were ricocheting through his tangled-up brain like stray bullets. His home had been burned down. His mother knew the name of the his uncle’s nurse and said she was a demon out to kill him, but then again, she also said his father was a serial killer whose crimes had continued long after his dad’s death. And he was certain everyone in the diner was looking at him, knowing he was the face on the news. He sat there a second longer, trying to figure out what to do first. Then someone cleared their throat, and he looked at the people around him. The only ones not gaping at him were the ones tapping on their cell phones. Three familiar digits, he bet.

Yeah, this took priority. He stood up and said, “Yeah, it’s me, I’m the kid on TV, but it’s okay. She’s my mother. Everything’s fine.”

Before he could say anything more, a screaming cop car skidded to a stop out front. It was the first of several. God, they must’ve been close.

“Ah, hell,” he said, sinking into his chair and covering his head with his forearms.

The cops came running into the diner, guns drawn. Jeremy stood up, raising his hands. “It’s okay.”

“Where’s your mother, son? We know she took you and your brother.”

“Don’t hurt her. All right? She gave up, she was bringing me back. She already let my brother go. And she doesn’t have a gun or anything.”

But one of the customers was pointing urgently at the restroom door, so Jeremy wasn’t sure the cops were even hearing him anymore.

Five of them converged on the ladies’ room like a SWAT team.

“Mom, they’re coming!” he shouted. “Mom, just do what they tell you, all right? Just do what they say and—”

They kicked the door open and crowded inside while Jeremy held his breath and listened for gunfire he prayed wouldn’t come.

And it didn’t. The men came back out again, shaking their heads. “It’s empty. No one’s there.”

Jeremy sank back into his seat. He hadn’t even remembered standing up.

* * *

As we neared what my smartphone told us was the nearest diner, something in my gut went jittery and my heart skipped. Literally skipped. “Something’s happening. Jeremy’s—”

I clasped Mason’s arm, felt it flex as he clenched the wheel. The flashing lights and crookedly parked police SUVs and sedans said the diner wasn’t serving. He pulled in among them and got out so fast he didn’t even shut off the car. I started to follow, but Josh clutched my hand before I made it all the way.

“Stay with Josh!” Mason called over his shoulder. Then he paused, looked at me. “Keep him safe.”

“I will. Go on.”

He nodded and headed toward the diner door, only to be met by a flow of cops coming out like some cop dam had just busted. One stopped to talk to him, and the flow split and flowed around them. And then, last of all, Jeremy came out. I saw him a split second before Mason did.

“Josh, look!” I said.

“I see him, I see him!”

And then Mason did, too, and he torpedoed through the officers, grabbed Jeremy hard and hugged him right off his feet, even though the kid was taller. I had tears on my face again. They had me, didn’t they, this fucked-up little bunch of males? They had me as hooked as the ring in Amy’s nose. They had me.

Mason looked back at us and motioned us over. It was a good thing, because Josh would’ve split a gut if I hadn’t let him out of that car soon. I got out of the car, stepped out of the way to let him rocket past me, then jogged to catch up. The cops had cleared out, mostly jumping into their vehicles and speeding off in different directions. A few had jogged away on foot.

“Get your family inside where they’re safe,” the cop who’d been talking with Mason told him. “We’ll leave a few men here, just in case.”

Mason nodded as Josh crashed into his brother, almost knocking him back through the diner doors. “I did it, Jere. Just like you told me. And I found Uncle Mason and Rachel.”

“You did great, Josh,” Jeremy was saying. He put an arm around his brother. “I knew you could do it.” He looked at me over Josh’s head, and then his face fell. “I saw the fire on TV. Are the dogs...?”

“They’re fine. Both at my house with my sister. Her whole family is there. Misty’s been out of her mind.” As soon as the words were out, I keyed a rapid-fire text to Sandra to let her know Jeremy was safe and I’d call soon.