Deeper Than Red (Red Returning Trilogy) (11 page)

“Yes, you did,” Mona answered, her own voice seething. “You did what no father should do to his little girl!”

“Forgive me, Mona,” the voice pleaded. “It’s the only way you’ll ever be free of me and those things I did to you.”

“I won’t forgive you. I want you to suffer like I do.”

What had he done? Tally had never known her mother’s father. He’d died when Tally was a baby. She couldn’t bear to think the worst.

With a smothering guilt for barging into her mother’s secret pain, Tally started to leave when Mona jumped from her seat and fled the room. Mrs. Bernardo didn’t try to stop or follow her. She appeared fixed in one position. Seconds later, though, she sprang from her chair and hurried after her client. That’s when Tally heard the car at the curb crank and pull away. With no thought of exposing herself, she ran from behind the tree and toward the street, watching the silver Lexus head toward the main gate. She felt like crumpling to the ground, surrendering herself to those who patrolled there. She wished she’d never asked Denise to come. She had no right to be here. Neither one of them did. But how could Tally have known what was coming, what wretched secret her mother had harbored for so many years?

Across the green, someone moved. Tally caught sight of the security guard. She lunged back into the dark and returned to Denise. “We have to run. Now.” But Denise seemed too stunned to move.

“That man’s voice—” she began in a strained whisper, seemingly unable to tear herself from the open window. She shuddered.

Tally had seen similar things happen, always from her hiding places. It was why she’d brought Denise here, though now she regretted it. “Probably an act,” Tally lied. “I don’t know. But I do know we’ve got to get out of here.” Tally jerked against Denise’s arm and forced her away.

Slipping house to house, scanning for the guard, the girls finally reached the back of the hotel and then the shed. When they got to the fence, Tally quickly unlaced the cording, opened the flap, and both girls slipped to the other side. Tally had just finished securing the flap again when she heard something. The faraway drone of an engine. She’d heard it before from her tucked-away hideouts in the compound. A small plane. Sometimes a helicopter. At different times, she’d seen them descend to the private airstrip behind the camp, always at night.

As the girls plunged back into the dark of the woods, something her mother once said returned to Tally, making her stop and turn toward the sound of the plane: “It’s a powerful place, Tally,” Mona Greyson had told her daughter. “And powerful men go there.”

“What are you doing?” Denise asked. “Come on.” Tally still heard bare fright in her voice.

“You know the way home, Denise. Can you get there by yourself?”

“What? Aren’t you coming?”

Tally wondered how much more to tell her, how much her over-sheltered friend could take. “Listen. That plane. I have to see who’s on it.”

“Are you crazy?”

“Maybe. But I’m going back, this time all the way to the school.”

Denise gaped at her. “You think Curt Vandoren is going to let you in there?”

“I’m not asking permission.”

“This is nuts, Tally. You don’t know anything about that place.”

But Tally did know. After leaving the University of Miami to keep a closer eye on her mother, Tally had made it her business to know the compound and those who had lured others into their cosmic web.

Charismatic Curt Vandoren had swept into Anhinga Bay from nowhere, she was told, just eight years ago, moving into the quiet camp and setting up shop like just another medium. Only he quickly gained a following of people from around the world who began filling the hotel on weekends. Then he started the mass séances. They were spectacles that the camp old-timers protested. Vandoren had stirred their waters too many times, and they finally made him leave. But he didn’t go far.

Either from spite or an irresistible land deal, he bought the property behind the camp, all the way to the bay, and built what he called the University of the Spirit. He brought in his own faculty who taught Vandoren’s clairvoyant protégés about channeling spirit guides and the departed loved ones from the far reaches of the etheric planes. About paranormal contact between humans and the all-knowing others who’ve passed on to that other side. About psychic healing and counseling.

There was something else working there, though. Tally had overheard her mother confess suspicions to another patron of the camp, who, like Mona, was attending some of the few university classes offered to the public. Just home from Miami and needing a closer look at the school, Tally had joined her mother in those classes. It was during a break one day that Tally heard her mother admit sensing “an evil presence in this place.”

The whine of the engine grew louder and Tally looked up. Through the trees, she now saw the blinking lights on the plane’s wing tips. There wasn’t much time. “Denise, you’ve got a whole family and lots of friends. I’ve got no one but my mom, and she’s in trouble. I have to go back.” She pointed the way through the woods. “Take this path and keep going. Pretty soon, you’ll see the streetlights. Okay?”

“Okay,” came the weak reply.

Without waiting for further objection from Denise, Tally spun around and ran hard toward the bay, just outside the camp’s fence. She knew she’d abandoned her friend in a place that was frightening to her, and for that, she was sorry. But Tally was riding a runaway locomotive and didn’t know how to get off, refused to get off while her mother was still on board.

N
ear heedless, again, of her own safety, Tally sprinted toward the bay, her ear tuned to the incoming aircraft. Where the camp fence ended, a cement wall began, enclosing the campus of the University of the Spirit. It wasn’t what she’d expected that first visit with her mother. No darkly draped rooms, incense, candles, pyramids, or crystals. Though hunkered low against the threat of hurricanes, the one-story concrete building drew light through expansive windows that pulled in waves of ocean light. Its marble floors were polished, its glazed stucco walls shining, its air almost astringent. There seemed to be a wellness about the place that Tally found contradictory to what transpired there.

“The University of the Spirit,” Tally repeated the name to herself. “Like it takes a degree to know your own soul.” But did Tally know hers?

She ran along the outside of the wall, sandwiched between solid concrete and a dense swath of slash pines. She glanced over the wall to see the school’s asymmetrical roof that ran at odd angles. Another time and it might have engaged her eye for architectural lines, but not now. Her sights were set on the airstrip straight ahead. As she ran, she felt for the bulge in a pocket of her cargo pants. She’d sold one of her mountain bikes to afford the night-vision binoculars now tucked inside the pocket. The special optics were light and compact, but powerful enough to spy through camp-bungalow windows if she couldn’t get close enough. They’d been particularly handy for monitoring her mother’s bizarre séances in the far trees of the camp green.

Pulling the binoculars from her pocket, she looped their wide strap around her neck and clutched them tightly as she ran. She wanted to be ready as soon as the plane landed.

When she made the ninety-degree turn at the far end of the wall, she saw the runway lights across a stretch of sand and low brush. As though she’d been trained in military reconnaissance, she ran upright as far as she dared, then dropped to her belly and crawled to a mound of young palmettos not too far from the airstrip but outside the arc of the runway lights. As the plane circled overhead, she tucked herself entirely within the bushes to avoid a chance beam of light that might catch her. As the plane steadied its landing course, she parted the leafy fronds just enough to see out. When she trained her binoculars on the landing strip, her mouth fell open at the sight.

She’d been there once before to watch a plane land. Only Curt Vandoren, whose form she’d recognize anywhere, and one of his aides had met its passengers, three men she couldn’t identify who were shuttled the short distance to the university campus in a stretch van.

That wasn’t the scene before her now. Besides the passenger van and Vandoren’s refrigerator-size presence, illuminated by the nearby lights and Tally’s night-vision technology, there were two panel trucks and a small squad of armed men gathered near a tractor-trailer rig Tally had never seen anywhere near the camp or university. At that moment, she was especially grateful for the cover of dark and the palmettos, dense enough to hide a person from those who’d surely apprehend an unwanted observer. She was certain of that, though she wasn’t sure why. She’d had no history with Curt Vandoren, except on one visit with her mother. He’d only spoken briefly to her when introduced, but curiously enough, had reached out to finger her hair in a way that made her recoil. He’d only laughed at her startled reaction and moved on.

Now, she focused on his ponderous form, dressed in a loose tunic over billowy pants. His silver hair shone brightly in the light, but his face hung darkly, its mouth grim, eyes lifted toward the plane just now clearing the treetops. The aircraft was bulkier than a passenger plane. It looked like a miniature version of the great cargo planes she’d watched take off from Homestead Air Reserve Base farther up the mainland.
What could they be hauling into this freaky little place?

The plane landed smoothly and rolled slowly toward the welcoming party. Even before its wheels came to a complete rest, the armed men rushed forward to stand guard. When they raised their automatic weapons shoulder high, Tally’s pulse spiked.
I really shouldn’t be here
, she groaned inside, though she dared not move.

Now she could see how much larger the plane was than the one she’d spied on before, than others she’d seen from town on their ascent toward the university, the only place in this water-gorged region where a plane could land.

When the aircraft’s engines shut down and chocks were placed behind the wheels, the side door of the plane opened and the stairs were lowered. Two men in fatigues descended the steps first, both with automatic weapons cradled in their arms. Barely breathing, Tally didn’t move anything but the finger on the focus wheel of her binoculars.

At the foot of the steps, the two armed men were joined by several others already on the ground, all of them facing away from the plane in a 360-degree sweep that made Tally suck in a breath and hold it. They appeared to be waiting for someone else to deplane. Just then, from the open doorway above them, a muscular man in what looked like black running clothes emerged, took one step down, then turned toward the man following behind him. To Tally, the second man appeared much older and unsteady on his feet, so much so, the black-clad aide had to grip the man firmly and help him down the remaining steps. Someone else on board followed, carrying a wheelchair. Only when the older man was on the ground and settled into the chair did Curt Vandoren approach him and deliver a kiss to each side of his face.

Tally squinted hard at the man’s features, but they were hooded by the brim of a safari hat.
That’s an odd thing to wear at night
, she thought, then watched Vandoren commandeer the wheelchair and push it and its passenger toward the rear of the plane.

Moments later, another man descended the steps of the plane and Tally looked long and hard at him through the binoculars. There was something familiar about this face. She recalled a day two summers ago when she had accompanied her mother to the school. In a hallway outside one of her mother’s classes, she had watched two men arguing with one of Curt Vandoren’s aides. The three men hadn’t noticed her as she was mostly hidden by a giant, potted schefflera. The last man down the steps of the plane was one of those three men, she believed. He’d been the shortest of the three, with a wide face, though his features just now were vague. He joined Vandoren and the man in the wheelchair, their voices now floating toward her on the wind off the bay. But she couldn’t distinguish their words. Too many others spoke at the same time, some issuing orders, others responding. A tension seemed to build among those assembled nearest the plane. Then one in the group ran toward the cab of the tractor-trailer rig, and Tally heard its engine roar to life. Distracted by the truck now maneuvering toward the plane, Tally didn’t notice when the big door at the rear of the aircraft yawned open. But now, she watched the truck back toward the opening and stop. Several other men jumped to open its cargo door and withdraw a long ramp.

Tally pressed the binoculars’ eyecups harder against her face. She saw a team of people enter the back of the plane, and soon, they rolled a large wooden crate down the ramp onto the pavement. The man in the wheelchair propelled himself forward and laid a hand on one of the wide straps securing it. Vandoren joined him and the two spoke just to each other. Again, Tally strained to hear their words, but couldn’t. The wind had picked up, out-voicing the two men and causing Tally considerably more distress.
If it blows any harder, it will flatten these palmettos and leave me exposed.

She lowered the binoculars, tucking them inside her shirt, and was about to risk a slithering exit on her belly when shouts rose from the tarmac. Four men had harnessed themselves to the rectangular crate and were now pulling it up the ramp to the truck while four others pushed from behind. Vandoren and the man in the wheelchair watched the whole maneuver. Only when the crate was secured on board and the door lowered did the wheelchair move. Vandoren pushed it to a waiting van and helped the man inside. The others from the plane joined them, and the van headed for the school. The armed squad piled into the panel trucks and followed the tractor-trailer along the same route. Not until all four vehicles rumbled into the walled campus did Tally stir. Still inside the palmetto blind, she scanned the area with her binoculars, seeing no one from that strange pack left behind. Regardless, she crawled all the way to the piney woods before bolting up to a full run.