“Deputy, there’s something wrong,” she said. Wilt’s head didn’t turn toward her, his face hidden by his baseball hat. “Goddamnit,” she swore, and yanked the door open.
Her next words were cut off as something warm drizzled across her pant legs and shoes. Wilt tipped toward her and she reached for him, catching his shoulder out of instinct. His hat fell off and she saw.
Saw the blood sheeted down his shoulder and chest to where it had pooled in the vehicle’s doorjamb and footwell.
Saw the red scribe below his chin opening wide like a ragged second mouth as his head tipped back.
Saw the vacancy of his open eyes.
She let him go and stepped back. Wilt tipped the rest of the way free of the car and landed with a terrible dead sound. His arm swung bonelessly over the top of his head and he lay still. Clare tried to draw a breath in but her lungs refused it. Her chest hitched as if she were drowning.
The ground tipped, then rushed up as she sat down hard and began crawling backward, part of her freewheeling mind registering all the blood covering her lower legs. It looked as if she’d waded through a red lake.
A voice was crying out inside her head, telling her she had to stand, had to run. Run down the drive because Eric was coming, he’d be here any second, and they had to get away. Had to get away before whoever did this found them. And somehow, before a shape moved from behind the cruiser into the pale light, she knew exactly who that person was.
Shanna walked toward her, smiling beatifically. Blood stained both her arms to the elbows and dripped from the tip of the fillet knife she held in one hand.
Clare skittered back and Shanna followed, walking slowly through the rain plastering her hair to her skull. “Clare, it’s okay. You don’t have to run,” Shanna said.
Clare continued backward, trying to get to her feet and failing again. It was as if she’d been drugged, but instead of a chemical racing through her bloodstream it was fear, disbelief, betrayal. “You . . . you killed him.”
Shanna glanced back at Wilt’s form hanging half in, half out of the car. “Yes. I didn’t want to, you have to know that. I didn’t want any of this. It was all supposed to be different. We were supposed to go with Daryl at the hotel. Wilt and the other deputy weren’t supposed to be involved.”
Daryl. Daryl Saint. Clare managed to push herself onto her feet and swayed upright. “You planned it.” And even as she spoke, the larger implications engulfed her like the wings of a massive bird of prey, talons digging deep. “All of it.”
“It was for you,” Shanna said. “Everything. We needed you to believe. To complete the circle. It was all for you, Clare.”
A thousand thoughts cascaded through her mind, avalanching until she was lost in a sea of white with one beacon shining through it. The only clarity within reach. “You called me Clare. Not Clara.”
Shanna slowed, then stopped. “I did, didn’t I? I guess I forgot. We all forget, don’t we? You know that.”
Clare drew in a shuddering breath. “You’re not Shanna.”
The woman shook her head, a pleading look on her face. “No. But I am your sister.”
Clare tried to spin and run, but arms wrapped around her from behind. They were strong, unyielding. They held her fast as she convulsed, trying to shake herself free. A cloth was shoved over her face, the harsh bite of chemicals racing deep into her open mouth and sinuses.
She tried to hold her breath but already a fog began descending over her senses, coating her nerves, draining strength from her muscles. The world grayed further as she sank to the ground, the arms around her holding tightly as she tried to turn her head away from the choking cloth, but it clung to her mouth and nose like something alive.
Clare drifted into herself, deeper and deeper, as if she were a submarine dropping below pallid waves. The raindrops became stars in a night sky as the darkness between them grew, flowing outward until the light was gone completely.
Chapter Thirty-Six
There once was a girl who didn’t believe.
Oily darkness.
Smoke. Something burning.
Pain.
Clare blinked. Fluttering images of dancing light. Heat. Spinning dizziness. She inhaled air tinged with smoke and turned her head to vomit. Her stomach crushed upon itself, doubling and redoubling the agony in her skull.
She was seated, legs splayed out in front of her, shoulders against something narrow. A tree? Her hands were behind her back, fingertips numb. Clare managed to sit upright again, a thin line of drool stringing from the ground to her lower lip. Her memory was awash in muddied images. They’d left the hotel after the man had tried taking them. She’d stopped him. Hughes had brought them to a . . . house on a lake and then—
“The girl was frightened of what she couldn’t see,” a voice whispered somewhere over her left shoulder. She could feel the passage of air from their lips on the back of her neck. Clare tried to turn but pain detonated in the base of her skull, racing up, then down over her forehead and stabbing into both eyes. She winced and let her head rest against the tree’s rough bark. A dozen yards beyond the V of her feet a fire burned. The flames sputtered and leapt as someone outside the ring of light tossed on another log. Sparks took flight like a swarm of bright insects and extinguished themselves in the darkening sky. Above the tree line in the far distance the horizon was a leached blue-gray.
“Her faith became broken and she dreamed of things that weren’t real. Of a world that never was or will be.”
“Shanna,” Clare croaked. But that wasn’t right either. The last of the recent memories came rushing back, rushing like blood, and she saw the woman who had called herself Shanna walking toward her, scarlet staining her shirt and arms, a knife in one hand she’d used to butcher Wilt with. “Who are you?” Clare finally managed after working up enough spit to swallow.
“I’m your sister, Clare. You know me. You remember.”
Clare strained against the bindings at her wrists but all the effort produced was more numbness in her fingers that began spreading up into her hands. Even as she relented, her body slackening against the tree, the woman’s words conjured an image. One she’d had several times since this horrible journey began. It was the splinter in her mind, the one irritating and prodding, telling her she’d overlooked something crucial.
She saw a little girl looking over her shoulder as she walked away down a street, her mother’s hand pulling her along.
Manda. The girl from Shining Rock Church. The church and the girl were important. Slowly, something Sandy had said came back to her regarding her sister Beverly’s inclusion in the cult: “I could tell right away he wasn’t what he said he was when we first met him. But he fooled her. Got her to move to that ranch they have and cut ties with everyone else. She had Manda a year later.”
All at once the splinter in her mind came free.
Shining Rock was a polygamist group. Most, if not all, of the children were sired by one man—the leader of the cult.
If she hadn’t been sitting down, she would’ve fallen. She made a choking sound in the back of her throat and thought she might be sick again.
“I think you’ve finally gotten it,” the woman said. “Simon Kinley wasn’t just your and Shanna’s father, he was the father to all of us. Every last child was his. And we all sang in the dark. He wanted to be sure his gift was passed on to the next generation, so he had many children.”