Ringo whined at her from the car. One of her hands was still on the hood, and she concentrated on it with all her strength, turning toward the vehicle for support before she was completely taken over by the vision.
She expected to see Jessie but instead she was in a vehicle herself, spinning the steering wheel, screaming, desperately trying to gain control. Trees and brush flashed by as her car plunged off the road and down the embankment. Her car. It was her car! Her accident! Instinctively Becca cradled her abdomen, protecting her baby. She could hear the rush of the engine from the car behind her, the one that had forced hers over the edge. In a panic she glanced back. She saw him driving away, heading like a maniac away from the scene of the crime.
And then blackness. Nothing but blackness.
Hudson scanned the accident scene. He was sick with grief and it had driven weariness into the marrow of his bones, but he couldn’t stop. Couldn’t let this terrible nightmare become a reality.
“Who did this?” he whispered. He didn’t believe it was an accident. Someone had purposely run Renee off the road. And the colored paint on the asphalt road and gravel shoulder told him the sheriff’s department agreed.
Why?
He tore his gaze from the sheer rocks that led to the gray and white plumes of surf far below. He glanced at the ground, saw the tire tracks. He could see where she had stomped on the brakes but had been unable to gain purchase. The tracks just lost their tread as the wheels locked and the car kept moving straight toward the edge and through the guardrail, propelled over the cliff.
Pushed!
Intentionally forced over the edge to her death.
“Goddamned son of a bitch.” His body was freezing. The deputy had alluded to the accident but he’d been holding back information; Hudson had felt it at the hospital but had been too absorbed in his own pain to pick up the signals. Someone had intentionally run Renee off the road.
His chest swelled with misery. He felt incapable of crying and didn’t know why. He wished he could. That there was some way to release the weighty buildup of sorrow that was choking him.
Becca made a strangled sound and Hudson looked her way to see her clinging to the front of his truck just before she slid to the gravel. He raced to her side, covering the ground in four large leaps, grabbing her just as she sprawled in a heap.
“Becca!” He heard the tremor in his voice. The quake of real fear.
She was breathing. Her eyes moving. And he was glad that it was one of her “visions” and not some deadly disaster. There had been too many of those.
He cradled her head and rocked her and his eyes burned, unaware of the crash of the sea and the wind blowing through his hair. Cars traveled past, slowing, then speeding forward in this snaking area of roadway, but he clung to Becca, his thoughts jumbled with fear and fury. Something was happening to their group. Something was after them. Wasn’t that what Renee had said? Or near enough?
What was it?
Several minutes passed while Becca lay in his arms, her body twitching as if she were fighting off an attack. When she slowly opened her eyes, she gazed at him for a moment in bewilderment.
“Jesus, Becca, you scared the hell out of me,” he said.
She blinked several times, then inhaled sharply. “Renee,” she murmured.
“You had another vision.” It wasn’t a question.
“Yeah.” She slowly sat up, feeling weary.
“What did you see?” he asked tautly. “Anything about Renee?”
She looked into his tortured blue eyes. He believed in her visions at some level, but it was small comfort in the face of such loss. “I saw an accident,” she said carefully. “Where a car was run off the road by another driver. But it wasn’t Renee.”
He gazed at her blankly. “What do you mean?”
“I think it was…me. My accident. From my past.”
“Was Jessie any part of it?”
“No…”
“It was more a memory, then?” He held her close and she could feel the pounding of his heart as he struggled to understand. “Someone deliberately killed Renee,” he said tautly. “I don’t know why yet. Or who. But I’m sure as hell going to find out!”
Zeke grabbed for the large bottle of water he’d placed on the kitchen table and took several more long gulps. He was going to drink down the whole damn thing to keep himself from reaching for a bottle of bourbon, which was what he really wanted to do. But now was not the time to get ass-stinking drunk.
Renee was dead.
Jessie had killed her.
He was sure of it.
Evangeline was standing in the archway between the kitchen and hall, shrunken, her arms cradling herself, looking ashen and pale, her entire body shaking. “This is a joke. A cruel joke. Hudson’s trying to get you to say something, to admit to something.”
“Shut up, Vangie!” Zeke grabbed the water bottle, twisted the top, then threw it forcefully against the wall. The plastic bottle hit the ground and water gurgled onto the floor in a spreading pool. “Stop saying that!”
“Renee’s not dead. It’s not true.”
“It is true! Hudson doesn’t play sick games like that. It’s his sister. His twin. What the fuck’s wrong with you?”
“It’s just not true. Don’t be so mean. You’re so hurtful.” She folded in on herself even more, her big eyes pleading with him to come and hold her, to love her, to help her.
Zeke slammed out of his chair and grabbed the bottle of water, tossing it into the sink. Then he leaned against the edge of the stainless steel basin and stared at the rivulets of water circling the drain.
“Is Tamara coming over here?” Evangeline asked.
“She went to see The Third, I think. I don’t know. She was crying.”
“Now they’ll think it’s true,” she sniffled.
“It is true!” Zeke slammed out of the kitchen and through the front door, gazing around wildly for his car. He’d parked it at the curb, hadn’t he? Where was it?
Evangeline suddenly had hold of his arm. “Where are you going? Where are you going?”
“The hell away from you! She’s dead, Vangie. Dead. Renee’s dead. Glenn’s dead. Jessie’s dead. They’re all gone!”
“No…”
“Goddammit!” He shook her off him and ran down the steps. There was no car anywhere, so he took off at a run and kept running until there was not a drop of energy left in his body and he threw himself onto the grassy berm that bordered the playground of a nearby school.
“Jessie,” he murmured brokenly, then broke down and sobbed.
“What was it that Renee said when you met with the other girls?” Hudson asked Becca, holding a cool washrag over her head as she lay on the bed.
They’d checked into a motel near the county sheriff’s offices, basic and weather beaten, willing to take pets, and surrounded by a small strip mall and a couple of fast-food eateries. Neither of them felt like driving home, and Hudson had decisions to make about the disposition of Renee’s body anyway.
So they’d just headed into the musty-smelling room and Hudson had insisted Becca lie down on the bed while he ministered to her. He’d shaken out a couple of aspirin and handed her a glass of water while Ringo paced around the top of the bedspread, occasionally glaring at Hudson as if Becca’s condition were his fault.
Becca had tossed back the aspirin, insisting she was fine, though her headache wasn’t giving up its grip. Hudson, meanwhile, kept going over everything and anything that could explain what had happened, a circular litany that did not require any input from her. She understood that this was his way of trying to grasp his sister’s death, and she lay quietly, petting her dog, as he paced the room, running on restless energy, unable to stop.