Wicked Game (8 page)

“Hey.” Hudson’s voice washed over her and her muscles tightened reflexively as she waited for him to move into her line of vision.

“About time, Walker,” The Third said, gazing Hudson’s way, his eyes assessing him carefully.

Becca attempted to ease her stiff shoulders, afraid she looked as tense as she felt.

“Traffic snarl on Sunset,” he answered.

“You’re coming from the west,” Jarrett said as Hudson walked around the table into Becca’s view.

Faded jeans. Tan suede shirt. Thick, dark hair that brushed his collar. I-don’t-really-give-a-damn attitude still intact.

“Shouldn’t be any traffic that way.” Jarrett eyed him carefully.

“You think I’m lying?”

Jarrett backed off with a shrug. “Just think you’re late.”

“Okay, now that the bull rams have locked horns, can we get over this?” Renee asked.

“After we say hello,” Tamara said. She turned to Hudson and added, “Hudson Walker. You haven’t changed a bit.”

“Oh, there have been some changes, all right.” He took a chair next to Zeke, directly across from Becca, and when his gaze touched hers, Becca remembered all too vividly how those blue, blue eyes could dilate in the dark. There was just something earthy and male about him that couldn’t be missed. Of course, as she’d guessed, he looked even better than she remembered, and she kicked herself for noticing, for the sudden rise in her pulse.

“Hey, Becca.”

“Hi.” She smiled a greeting, hoping she’d hidden her true feelings as he greeted everyone else. Pretending to be unaffected, which was damned hard. He seemed to have grown an inch or two, which was probably all her perception. But along with a cynical, “just dare me” smile, he still had that tall, rangy cowboy style going for him. And it was sexy as hell.

Great.

She’d hoped to be immune to him.

But this more mature, more relaxed, more confident Hudson was even more intriguing than he had been two decades before, as sexy a man as she’d ever want to meet. Whereas Zeke’s good looks and appeal had diminished, Hudson’s had increased.

Renee said, “The thing is, I’m doing a story on the discovery of the remains. A piece about high school and what it’s like when one of your friends disappears and how it can affect you. We’ve all dealt with the same questions for twenty years. Where’s Jessie? What happened to her? Did she leave on her own, or was she taken from us? Now maybe we can find some answers.”

Evangeline stared at her in horror. “You’re not serious!”

Jarrett breathed noisily through his nose. “What a bunch of bullshit. Until you know who’s been rotting in the maze at St. Elizabeth’s, you’re writing fiction. I don’t think the
Valley Star
is big on conjecture.”

“I can theorize, put my spin on it,” Renee said. “I’ve already talked to the kids who found the bones. Great story. Older brother and friends were trying to scare the littler kids by telling ghost stories in the maze, and then one of the kids sees this bony hand reaching upward.”

“Oh, for the love of God.” Evangeline pressed her lips together. “You’re trying to profit from this?”

Renee regarded her coldly. “I want a purge. I want this behind us all. My way is to write about it. I’ve kept in contact with Jessie’s parents all these years because I
was
a good friend of Jessie’s,” she said directly to Evangeline, “and I think she died in the maze at St. Lizzie’s and I want to tell that story. For Jessie, and for us all.”

Scott said, stunned, “To your paper?”

“Don’t count me in!” The Third stated, glaring. “Jessie ran away, okay? I don’t believe those bones are hers. And I’ve had more than enough wrangling with the police about it. Those bastards wouldn’t leave us alone.”

“McNally wouldn’t leave us alone,” Mitch corrected.

“Who gives a shit? I’m not doing any of it again.” He reached for his glass, then realized it was empty and let it sit on the table.

“The police will figure it out,” Renee went on. “Those are somebody’s bones, and I’m guessing they’re Jessie’s. It’s all over the news. If I don’t write this piece, somebody else will.”

“Oh, yeah. You’re our savior.” Jarrett was sardonic. “You’re writing the damn thing to make a few bucks.” He waved away her arguments. “Gain some attention. That’s what this is all about, and it’s crap.”

“I’d like to know if the body the cops found is really Jessie.” Hudson met Jarrett’s eyes. “And if so, then I’d like to know what happened to her.”

Renee bit back a hot retort and seemed to relax a bit when Hudson came to her aid. “I’ve been thinking about Jessie a lot lately. Remembering what she said. Doing some research.”

“What kind of research?” Becca asked. The vision she’d had of Jessie on the cliff felt very close. It was all too much of a coincidence, and she was starting to feel claustrophobic.

“The Brentwoods never left the area after Jessie disappeared. They wanted to be where she could find them when she returned, but now they think the bones are hers, too. I told them what I wanted to do and we talked about Jessie at length. I think they want closure, too.” Renee looked thoughtfully at Evangeline. “They remember you and Jessie being tight.”

“Wow. Everybody’s telling me how it was. Funny, I don’t remember it that way.” Evangeline pulled her gaze from Renee’s and looked around the room, obviously trying to distance herself from the missing girl. “Can I get a glass of wine or something?”

Scott nodded, appearing irritated as he glanced at the door to the kitchen. “Glenn should be back any minute.”

Renee wasn’t sidetracked. “Before she disappeared…Jessie was on a search herself. Kind of obsessed about it. Kind of looking into who she was. Trying to figure out what made her tick.”

Was that right? Becca had never heard this before.

“Hudson made her tick,” The Third said with a dirty chuckle. Jarrett laughed and Scott grinned.

Renee, on her own track, went on doggedly, “She lived in a bunch of different places before ending up here. She was adopted by the Brentwoods and they moved around a lot.”

“Chasing after her, probably,” Mitch snorted.

“But she always returned until she attended St. Elizabeth’s. She’s missing for a reason. If those are her bones, something happened to her.”

Scott’s expression darkened. “‘Something?’ You mean, like murder? That’s where you’re going with this, aren’t you? Just like McNally. He acted like we were all in on some kind of conspiracy.” Scott half laughed, almost nervously. “What an idiot. He had a hard-on for Jessie and he never even met her.”

“He probably killed her.” Evangeline was serious. “The cop that gets all obsessed about a girl. It happens. You hear about it. Read about it. See it in the movies, like, all the time!”

“Oh, sure.” Jarrett regarded her disparagingly.

“I thought you didn’t believe she was dead,” Scott pointed out.

“McNally didn’t know about Jessie until after she disappeared,” Hudson reminded Vangie.

“Well, I don’t know. Maybe he did and we just don’t know it,” she sniffed.

“Stick with your theory that she’s still alive,” The Third suggested. “It’s not as kookoo as ‘the sex-crazed cop killed her.’”

This was getting crazier by the minute, Becca thought, the conversation nearly drowning out the background music still straining to offer a calm, relaxed atmosphere while everyone in the room seemed on the verge of freaking out.

Tamara shook her head and twisted up one palm, her bracelets musically jingling. “Well, I don’t think the bones are Jessie’s, either. Sorry,” she said to Renee. “Jessie was just too much of a force, y’know? She’s not dead. She’s out there. She was…different. Don’t you remember? She
knew
things.”

“Here we go with the mumbo-jumbo stuff.” The Third sat back in his chair and Jarrett followed suit. The perfect lieutenant, Becca thought, liking him less and less and feeling the need to run away. She’d never fit into their crowd in high school, and things hadn’t changed. If anything, she was more of a misfit than ever.

“The last time I had my Tarot read, I swear it was all about Jessie. Remember?” Tamara looked to Renee for verification. “You saw it, too.”

“You believe in that junk?” The Third looked around at the rest of them for support, as if to say, “What a bunch of idiots.”

“Oh, learn to have some fun,” Tamara snapped at him.

“You did that Tarot crap, too?” Jarrett demanded of Renee.

Hudson’s twin waved off his attack. “I’ve done a lot of things. We all have. It’s been twenty years, for God’s sake. And sometimes everything isn’t black and white, you know, not cut and dried. We did the Tarot thing and Tamara asked questions about Jessie.”

“So did you,” Tamara reminded her tartly.

Renee nodded. “It’s kind of what got me going on the Jessie story.”

“So you’re not a true believer?” Scott lifted a brow.

“Oh, shut up,” Tamara said to him with a faint smile. “Tell them what you learned, Renee.”

Renee hesitated, then said, “It was something about how I was about to embark on a quest for knowledge. That someone from my past was reaching out to me. And that I should be warned not to let it take over my life.”

Becca eyed Hudson’s twin with a wary eye. This, from Renee? The journalist? The girl who always had her facts so straight? What was going on here? What was Renee’s real angle?

“And so you decided to chase Jessie’s ghost?” The Third looked from her to his friends as if he thought Renee had gone around the bend.

“Yeah, I guess so,” Renee stated coolly, her dark gaze hard.

Hudson asked her curiously, “How long have you been on this story?”

“A while. It’s just weird the bones have turned up now.”

“A sign?” The Third asked with exaggerated interest.

Renee said, “Maybe one of us should call that cop. McNally. Mac.”

“What?”
The Third demanded.

“He knows more about the Jessie case than anyone.”

“That’s just begging for trouble,” Jarrett snarled as a chorus of denials rose up. Becca had to agree with them, though she said nothing. She noticed Hudson remained quiet, too. McNally wasn’t the enemy, no matter what Evangeline theorized.

But something had happened to Jessie. Something bad. Something Becca felt she should know. With a chill she vividly recalled every aspect of her vision at the mall: how Jessie had appeared to her, how the ocean had crashed so loudly she couldn’t hear Jessie’s warning, how Jessie’s toes had touched the edge of the cliff above the raging water. She remembered her own heart quivering fear, and the calm, clear way Jessie had stared at her, called to her…

“Becca?”

She jumped back to awareness and turned to Renee. “Yeah?”

“I asked you what you thought.” She regarded her with narrowed eyes. “Do you think the body is Jessie’s?”

Did she?

“Of course it’s Jessie,” Glenn answered, reentering the room carrying a tray with four bottles of wine, two red and two white. A waiter followed after him with glasses and began placing them around the table. A waitress carried a tray filled with platters of bite-sized seafood, everything from fried calamari to crab and artichoke dip to crostini topped with smoked salmon, heirloom tomatoes, and sliced mozzarella cheese. Samples of fried razor clams, steamed mussels, and barbecued oysters followed.

While the waiters placed small plates, glasses, and napkins around the table, Glenn added, “She didn’t run away. Maybe she was planning to, but something stopped her.”

Tamara eyed the heaping trays of food. “I’m on a tight budget.”

“It’s on me,” The Third said in a bored tone that suggested he always picked up the check and found it tedious.

Glenn shook his head as he took his seat. “Compliments of Blue Note.”

Tamara smiled gratefully.

“Everything’s free at Blue Note,” Scott murmured, then waved away the remark as if he were just kidding.

“I’d love to know if those bones belong to Jessie,” Evangeline said, once the waiters had disappeared back through the doors and she was helping herself to the calamari.

“So the cop didn’t kill her?” Jarrett asked, pretending wide-eyed shock.

“I don’t know,” Evangeline said with an edge. “None of us do.”

“She’s alive.” Tamara was sure.

“Oh, yeah, you would know. Communing with Tarot and the stars and the charts and tea leaves…” Zeke didn’t exactly sneer, but the thought was there. He, too, was loading his small plate, and some of the others were serving themselves.

“You haven’t changed a bit, either, St. John,” Tamara said, running a hand through her fiery curls, bracelets dancing and singing. “And yes, I communicate any way I can, with the spirits and the dead…” She lowered her voice to a whisper and waved her hands over the table in a circle, pretending to make her eyes roll upward.

Becca smiled at Tamara’s charade while Scott, Jarrett, and The Third glowered. The whole event seemed bizarre and surreal, enjoying wine and seafood while talking about the gruesome discovery at the school, bones that might be the last remains of Jessie Brentwood. The trays were passed to her, but Becca declined, her appetite nonexistent.

Renee held up a hand to restore order. “What do you think, Mitch?”

Mitch, plucking an oyster from the tray, straightened as if he’d been pulled on a string. “About Jessie? I always thought Jessie just left. She’d done it before. Everybody knew it. Maybe she just ran away again.” He plopped the oyster into his mouth.

“People usually run for a reason,” Hudson said.

“Like a big-ass fight?” The Third shot back. “What was that fight you two had about again? Jessie got pissed because you were making it with some other girl?”

“Nice,” Tamara said.

“Not even close,” Hudson said. The Third’s slings and arrows had never been able to pierce his emotional armor, and Becca was glad to see that still held true.

Evangeline’s lips tightened. “I wouldn’t put it past her. Running away to make a point. Jessie was sneaky. And mean.”

Becca couldn’t believe her ears. Evangeline had been one of Jessie’s closest friends. “Jessie was a little secretive, maybe—”

“You didn’t really know her,” Evangeline cut in. “She had a…a cruel streak, a really dark side.”