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Levi switched off the beam of the flashlight, then removed the keys from the car, quietly petting Ringo’s head, which strained out the window. “No need to advertise where we are,” he said into the sudden dark.
Near exhaustion, Becca settled herself inside the driver’s door next to Hudson. She found his hand and linked her fingers through his.
Spawn of Satan. I am God’s messenger. Sister…
He’d seen Jessie. He’d shared Becca’s vision.
He knew them both.
“He’s still out there,” she said. “He chased me. Through the woods.”
Levi moved closer to Becca. She saw the gun was in his hand. She heard a click and realized he’d removed the safety. “You know about guns?” she asked him.
“No.”
“You’re not—McNally’s son?”
“Yeah. I just don’t know him that much.”
“And you don’t know about guns.”
He was staring into the dark, not at her. “I know video games,” he said, and for some reason that was enough to comfort Becca.
The rain eased up and finally quit. Becca kept feeling Hudson’s pulse but it was strong and steady. Eventually, they heard a car approach and saw it was Mac’s Jeep. He scrambled down the bank and took the gun from his son, resetting the safety. He assured them an ambulance was on its way. They would take Hudson back to Ocean Park Hospital. He felt Becca should be looked at, too, and had told the 911 operator there were two victims.
Ringo, who’d waited patiently till now, started renewed whining and bouncing in the backseat, so Levi pulled the dog from the car and held him while Ringo reached his tongue toward Becca. She leaned forward and let him wash her face, hugging him hard.
“Can I take him home?” Levi asked her. “I’ll take good care of him for you.”
Becca started crying in earnest. She couldn’t stop. She nodded jerkily, and in the distance came the wail of a siren.
She gazed off in the opposite direction and wondered what had become of her assailant. “He had his truck around the corner,” she told McNally.
“I’m going to find him,” the detective told her with certainty.
Becca turned to Hudson. Please be okay, she prayed. Please, please.
And then the ambulance arrived in a blinding flash of red and white strobes and the welcome scream of its horn.
Chapter Twenty-Four
“Sister.”
The word was a sibilant sound searing through Becca’s mind.
“Ssssisssster.”
Oh, God, no!
Becca’s eyes flew open, the hiss of his voice still ringing in her ears. Her heart was pounding, her pulse racing from the terrifying nightmare. In the dark dream, she’d been running through rain and mud, vainly searching for Hudson, seeing the ghost of Jessie at every turn, feeling the hot breath of a nameless, twisted psychopath upon her neck.
Sister.
She blinked, but remnants of the dark nightmare persisted where a writhing wrought-iron fence separated her from hundreds of women, all with the same face. Jessie’s face! And there had been a baby crying, its pitiful, frightened whimper nearly obscured by the roar of the sea and rush of wind. Panicked, knowing there was danger at every turn, Becca had been running, faster and faster through the forest, following the ever-shifting fence line, searching vainly for the baby and Hudson…
She shivered.
Forced the damned dream away and tried to think clearly.
She was in a hospital bed in a room with stainless steel fixtures and a table at her side. A single narrow window cut into the wall overlooked a near-empty parking lot where security lights offered weak illumination of the rain that poured in gusting sheets while the limbs of the already crooked pine trees twisted in the wind.
The accident. It flooded back in a flash of mental pictures.
Not an accident, though. It had been intentional. Someone had forced them off the road. She could scarcely remember the ambulance ride to Ocean Park Hospital. What had the doctor said about Hudson? “Concussion. Contusions. No broken bones…” That was right, wasn’t it? Her memory was spotty, but she did recall she’d told the medical staff about her baby. Without thinking, she placed a protective hand over her abdomen and remembered the doctor saying there was no sign of miscarriage. But where is Hudson now?
Her heart was pounding irregularly, adrenaline and fear speeding through her bloodstream. She remembered well the feeling of doom that had been chasing her. The reason Renee had been killed was the same as the reason she and Hudson had been forced off the road.
Who is he? How am I connected to him?
She couldn’t just lie here in bed.
He would never be stopped. Not if she didn’t do it.
Though not a wimp, Becca had never been particularly brave, but now she felt a deep anger growing inside her. She had to thwart him. Stop him. Stop his murderous intent or he would eventually win—like he’d won with Jessie.
The answer lies at Siren Song. You know it. You felt it. That’s why you didn’t want to go.
The clock mounted on the wall said it was all of six-twenty in the morning, and from the sounds of rattling trays, carts, and gurneys coming from the hallway, the hospital was stirring. No time like the present.
She threw off the covers and sat up, pulling an IV taut in her wrist, one she hadn’t noticed. Her head throbbed.
“Good morning.” A woman’s voice caught her attention and she looked toward the door. A nurse armed with a stethoscope and thermometer was entering the room. Her name tag read Nina Perez, R.N. Though her dark eyes were kind, there was a presence to her that suggested she was used to being the boss. “How’re you feeling today?”
“I’ve been better.”
“A little sore?”
More than a little. “I’m okay.” Becca slid out of the bed, bare feet hitting the cool linoleum floor. “I need to find Hudson Walker,” she explained. “I…I think he’s here. A patient.” Unless he was taken to another hospital. She had to find him. “He and I were in an accident. That’s why I’m here and—”
“He’s here. Recovering.” Nurse Perez offered a steady, sincere smile and Becca felt a smidgen of relief. “You can see him soon.”
“But I need to talk to him now.” To see for myself that he’s really all right, that whatever horror I led him into, he’s now safe.
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