Glad you’re settled in. How’d it go?
Her fingers hovered over the screen. Fine. Met with the sheriff. Did the DNA swab. Will know more in the morning.
Good. How are you feeling? Holding up okay being back there?
Fine. It’s weird, but it’s just a sad little town. Nothing to worry about. What are you doing?
Moping around. Drinking too much. Writing bad poetry for you.
She laughed. Maybe save all that for tomorrow.
Okay. I miss you.
You too.
Call me in the morning?
Absolutely. I love you.
I love you. Sleep well.
She gazed at the phone, wishing now Eric would have produced the ring earlier that morning and asked his question. Even with all the trepidation of committing to something as permanent as marriage, she would’ve said yes.
Footsteps came down the hallway, nearing her door. Slowed. Stopped.
Clare sat up, clutching the phone tightly. She waited, listening.
Nothing.
Whoever it was hadn’t continued on their way.
Her stomach tightened, twisting with apprehension. Slowly she slid from the bed and went to her bag sitting on the chair near the small desk across the room. She retrieved the locked hard case from inside and spun the combination dial to the correct numbers. The lid popped open and she drew the Ruger pistol out, fumbling for a second with the magazine before sliding it into place. She hadn’t let Eric see her put the gun in her bag or fill out the extra paperwork at the ticket counter, knowing it would’ve been a fight. Now, with the pressure of someone lurking outside the hotel room door, she was infinitely glad she’d brought it.
Her bare feet made no sound as she moved to the door. She’d thrown the deadbolt and the folding security lock, but the sense of someone waiting on the other side of the door made the measures seem insubstantial. She had the wild impression that whoever stood in the hallway could brush aside the barrier without a second thought.
Clare steadied herself, taming the images galloping through her mind. It was only another guest returning to their room. She simply hadn’t heard them continue on down the hallway.
She felt exposed, as if the peephole’s lens had been reversed and now someone observed her from outside the door. She swallowed the metallic taste gathering at the back of her throat and leaned forward, peering through the fisheye.
Darkness.
She couldn’t see anything through the lens. It was like the lights in the corridor had been turned off, yet when she stepped back a pale glow oozed beneath the door. Clare leaned forward again and placed her eye to the peephole.
Black as midnight.
A thousand spider legs crept up her spine.
Someone was standing outside with their palm pressed over the door’s lens.
She drew in a shuddering breath. She should call the front desk. Tell them what was happening. Instead a current of anger thrummed through her and she reached toward the locks, drawing them back as silently as possible. When the door was free she turned the handle smoothly and pulled it open a few inches, keeping the Ruger tucked near her hip.
The hallway was deserted. Clare opened the door enough to do a quick check in either direction. A door five rooms from her own clicked shut. A knot popped in the lobby’s fireplace and she jerked.
Clare closed the door, relocking it, and paused. She leaned in and looked through the peephole again.
A swath of the corridor met her, clear as day.
She stepped back, retreating into the safety of the room. Must’ve been looking through it at an angle, she thought, settling back onto the bed. That’s why she couldn’t see anything. “Yep, for sure,” she said, lying down. “Nothing there.”
Much later, when she finally succumbed to sleep, the lights were still on and the gun rested beneath a pillow beside her.
Chapter Fifteen
Her recollection of where city hall resided proved much better than the former hospital’s locale.
Clare pulled to a stop in one of the many empty parking spaces set before the three-story brownstone and climbed out, deeply aware of the handgun tucked into the small of her back. She hesitated but finally unclipped the holster, depositing the weapon in the car’s center console. She locked the vehicle and approached the building, still shaking free of the prior night’s restless sleep. A nightmare she couldn’t recall upon waking had plagued her through the early morning hours, but no matter how hard she tried bringing its details into coherence, no clear picture ever formed.
Hughes’s office resided on the first floor, the entire sheriff’s department an anteroom to the county clerk’s quarters and a wide stairway leading to the courtrooms above. A female deputy with strawberry-blonde hair let her through a perfunctory barricade made of glass and guided her to the sheriff’s office, where Hughes sat behind a desk smothered with paperwork.
“Have a seat,” he said, half rising as she came in. Clare sat in one of the two worn chairs across from him. “Wasn’t exactly sure I’d see you today,” he continued, his own chair protesting with a squeal as he settled into it.
“Me neither.”
“What kept you from leaving?”
“I’m not sure yet.”
“You recognized her.”
She drew in a breath to deny it, but stopped. “She looks like I’ve always imagined my sister would look if she’d lived. Not exactly, but she was only eleven the last time I saw her.”
Hughes leaned back in his chair. “If she is who she says she is, we have much bigger problems than an impersonation charge.”
“I thought you already believed who she was given the stab wounds and sexual abuse.”
“Those things can be faked in extreme circumstances. But my job is to always ask why. So if you’re saying you recognize her—”
“I’m not.” Clare looked down, her eyes landing on a file folder near the top of the sheriff’s mess labeled Kinley/Refuge. “I don’t know what to think.”
“For now neither do I. We’ve got an APB out on Harold Rainier, but honestly the net cast is full of holes. Unless he decides to blow through a speed trap well above the limit or try to leave the country, he could be anywhere in the wind. We do have this, though, which may or may not nudge us in one direction or another.” He handed her sheet of paper.
An artist’s sketch. The man’s face was sallow and long, with hangdog eyes above a scruffy beard. His hair was shaggy and the lines in his face had become valleys, but she easily recognized Rainier. The page shook a little in her hand. “That’s him.”
“You’re sure?”
“Yes. He was . . .” She struggled for a moment. “He was who I was promised to when I turned fourteen.”
“Child brides.”
“Yeah.” Her voice was a husk. “My father didn’t know when the end of the world would come, just that it was coming, so he envisioned a kingdom of sorts. Girls promised to older men, more babies, and the cycle continues.”
“Jesus.”
“Very common in religious sects.”
Hughes looked sick. “We had a sketch artist sit with her after she woke up. The picture is her description.”
The implications swam through Clare’s mind. Any former pictures still floating around of Rainier would be extremely dated. She wasn’t sure where her father’s acolyte had come from, only that he’d been within the cult as long as she could remember. He’d been perhaps twenty-five when she could first recall him clearly. He would be pushing fifty today. “How did she say she escaped?” Clare said, more to break the spell of the past than anything.