You Can't Escape (22 page)

“Rusty was saying the Freads are members of Green Pastures Church. I know you’re not a member of that congregation, but you’re . . . more spiritually inclined than Rusty.”

Todd snorted. “Nearly anyone’s more spiritually inclined than Rusty.”

“Do you know much about Green Pastures? I understand it’s a very strict congregation . . . a lot of rules?”

“That’s about the size of it. What are you looking for?” he questioned.

“I was just at the police station and I mentioned to the chief that I’d heard Bernadette Fread may have run away because her father was too strict. I also brought up Green Pastures, and I questioned whether there was abuse.”

Todd signaled Loretta and ordered a grilled cheese sandwich. He then turned to Jordanna. “You should come hiking with me and forget this. I’m serious. You’re poking a hornet’s nest. The chief’s a Green Pasturer.”

“I heard that. It was kind of the point of why I brought it up to him. He damn near threw me out.”

“Which story are you following? The homeless guy, or the missing girl?”

“Both?” Jordanna said, a bit sheepishly. “I’d like to follow up on Bernadette, as well as the branding victim. I’m thinking about checking in with the pastor at Green Pastures, Reverend Miles.”

He shook his head, his gaze admiring as it skated over her. “If you’re asking me what I think, I think you should leave it all alone. You go to Green Pastures, you won’t be greeted with open arms. They’re pretty reclusive.”

“My father’s a Green Pasturer. I was invited to the wedding, but I didn’t go.”

“They would have been happy to have you at a wedding, but they won’t want you digging into their world, especially if you’re trying to find out something they don’t want you to know, like why Bernadette Fread ran away.”

“You think that’s it? She ran away? And some of the parishioners know?”

“What I know is that it’s not going to be easy for you to get past their defenses. Don’t get me wrong. A lot of ’em are good people, but some of ’em . . . maybe not so much.”

That had pretty much been the extent of their conversation and Jordanna had paid for her burgers and left. Now, she was almost back to the homestead, her mind reflecting on everything she’d learned. She was eager to see Dance, too. A part of her had this irrational fear that somehow he was going to get up and leave and go back to Portland and the Saldanos, and she was going to be left in Rock Springs without him.

She pulled around to the garage at the back of the property and gasped when she saw the black Explorer parked in her usual spot. The Saldanos! God, no! No, no, it couldn’t be. How would they know?

Oh, God
. . . Dance!

She ran through the woodshed, not bothering to hide her clattering approach. Her cell phone was in her hand. If he was in danger, she could dial 9-1-1 pretty damn fast.

These thoughts skidded and pinged off each other in her mind, fast as atoms. She’d never thought of herself as brave, but she felt a wild, carnal need to protect. She burst into the kitchen and through it to the living room, where she skidded to a halt upon seeing Dance seated on the couch. He looked up at her, his hands clasped and hanging loosely between his thighs.

Then she whipped around and saw the other man seated on the wooden bench against the opposite wall.

“Holy . . . shit . . .” she whispered.

“Jordanna,” her father greeted her carefully, rising to his feet.

“What are you doing here?” she demanded. “What have you been saying?”

“I came to see you, but instead I found Mr. Danziger, who says you two were working on a story together.”

Jordanna turning blankly to Dance, who gazed at her calmly and said, “I told your father the truth about you helping me on the Saldano case. He offered up the help of the chief of police here, but I said you had the matter in hand.”

“And I told Mr. Danziger that there are only so many places in town that you could be, and that finding you was too easy,” her father said. “Once Jennie told me you were in town, it didn’t take long to find you. She thought you were just moving through, but I didn’t believe you were back just to choose a hiking trail.”

He spoke matter-of-factly, but Jordanna was nearly deafened by the pulse thundering in her ears.

“A few days, that’s all we need,” Dance said to her father, in a tone that suggested he’d made this request already.

“I’m not going to give you away,” her father assured him.

“We turned the electricity on. I’ll pay you back for all this,” Jordanna said tautly, waving an arm to encompass their living arrangements.

“No need. I’m just happy to see you. And I understand that you need discretion. You’re lucky you weren’t killed by that bomb, son,” he added, inclining his head toward Dance.

“Yeah,” Dance agreed.

“I’m not stopping by,” Jordanna said a trifle too loudly. “Tell Jennie.”

“That should be looked at,” Dayton said, his gaze zeroed on Dance’s bound thigh. “Come into the clinic and I’ll—”

“No.” Jordanna was emphatic.

“If we’re still here early next week, I’ll come in,” Dance overrode her.

“NO.” Jordanna pinned him with angry eyes.

“I don’t think that’s your call to make,” her father told her lightly. “Stay as long as you need, but make sure you’re safe and healthy. . . .”

And with that he walked out.

Chapter Thirteen

Across the field from the barn, the house glowed pale yellow in a shaft of afternoon sunlight. He trained his gaze on it, feeling a tightness in his chest. It was a familiar feeling. He took no joy in the job he was facing. Too many of God’s children had strayed and the list grew longer each day.

And Boo was a problem. Damn the boy. Why couldn’t he stay away from the graveyard? If he kept going out there, someone else was going to learn about it. Boo had to stop feeling sorry for the misguided souls who’d followed Satan instead of the Lord. Just the night before he’d caught him digging up a board in the shed, pulling out a dusty box that held keepsakes. He’d had to wrestle it from the boy, who’d beat at him with both fists, crying that his mother had left it for him.

“I’m doing this for your own good,” he’d growled angrily, stuffing the box under his arm and towering over the boy. His fury had sent Boo whimpering into the corner, covering his head.

He’d taken the box away and driven into the hills. He’d driven right past the track that led to the graveyard, which was little more than two flattened lines from his own tires when he’d delivered the latest of Satan’s children there. Didn’t want Boo to have another reason to come this way. Instead he’d kept on going and going, right to the lookout above the falls. He’d opened the box with the loud music of the water in his ears, the spray dampening his face. The keepsakes were memories from his own past as well as Boo’s: Mama’s harsh gifts. Chief among them was the knife that she’d used to gut the deer she’d accidentally run over one starry winter night. He remembered it so clearly. Mama’s skill and iron control as she slit open the carcass from neck to hind.

What Boo didn’t know was that the knife had been used for other purposes as well and he had the scars to prove it. Mama wasn’t the one who’d hid it in the shed, he thought grimly. He’d done that himself, to hide it from her, keep it out of her grasp. Somehow Boo must have seen him tuck it under the boards and, in his jumbled way, thought Mama had left it for him.

He’d thrown the knife, the switch, and other means of Mama’s terrifying control over the falls, tossing the box in after them.

Of course Mama was long dead now. She’d been taken by that Treadwell disease. Somewhere in the twists and turns of her family she’d crossed paths with the Afflicted Ones, and when he’d heard the calling from God, he’d made her the first of the saved.

There had been pleasure in it. Mama finally got hers. He worried about what that meant, as it surely wasn’t God’s intention for him to feel anything but duty. He glanced away from the house, to the stony ground that rose like a hill between the fields, covered with trees. He’d buried Mama over by the hawthorn tree with the prickly needles. His drunken father had wondered what had happened to her, but had accepted that she’d just up and left them. Then he’d died of drink himself not long after, and he’d been taken to that other graveyard and buried there.

For a moment his thoughts got confused. He had a sudden memory of hide-and-seek among the tombstones. Shivering, he dragged his thoughts away from that danger and back to Mama. He’d planned to move her to her special graveyard as well, to be with her own kin, but somehow that had gotten away from him. Now, with Boo traipsing all over the country, looking for his “playground,” it seemed best to keep her where she was, though he knew he was running out of time. Besides, there were others he needed to catch, brand and bury there, too.

Jordanna Treadwell . . .

It was a sign, a good sign, that she’d come back to town. He’d always known there were some that had escaped, though he’d always believed that he would be the one to bring them back one by one. That was God’s plan. He’d been told it, just like he’d been told what to do with all the tainted ones.

Now, he climbed in his truck and drove toward the main road. Once he reached it, he shot a glance to his left and thought about his neighbors. There was the Wright farm next door, new people he didn’t really know, and old lady Fowler next door to them, and then the next one over was the Winters farm. Dr. Winters had taken his young bride away from the old homestead, and it had been empty until the Treadwell girl had returned and taken up residence in her father’s home. He hadn’t seen her there yet, but he’d been warned she was in town and it seemed right that she’d made for the old homestead.

He turned the truck toward town, rattling along the road with its potholes from last winter’s snow. Jordanna Treadwell. . . Jordanna . . . Thinking of her reminded him of Emily Treadwell. Lovely Emily, with those blue eyes like windows into another world. She’d sworn she was on the Lord’s path. He’d help put her on the Lord’s path, but then she’d kissed him and moved up against him, and he’d wanted her so badly, so . . . badly. It had nearly killed him to thrust her away, cover his ears from her lies.

“It wasn’t her fault,” he said aloud now. She was cursed. She couldn’t help herself.

But she lied, over and over again. The Devil’s words had boiled out of her mouth like bats from a cave! Remember?
Remember?

He shuddered violently and damn near had to pull over to catch his breath. What he remembered was how in the end she’d run away from him, screaming. How she’d driven into the hills and how he’d chased her. How he’d screamed himself as her car slid fully around, three hundred and sixty degrees, and slipped over the edge of the precipice to rumble, crash, and thunder down the cliff, carrying Emily to her death.

He’d cried for her, for the soul he hadn’t been able to save. But there were many other sorry souls in need of redemption, and he was ready to answer the call.

“You don’t have to accompany me to the clinic, but I need to go,” Dance said an hour after they had both watched Dr. Dayton Winters’s car disappear back down the long drive. His head had a dull ache and he could feel the incision on his leg, but he damn well wasn’t going back to the pain pills. In the meantime, Jordanna had pulled the bench over to use as a table and they’d both eaten the burgers that she’d brought home. Though they’d been stone cold, Dance hadn’t cared, and though Jordanna had offered to heat them in the microwave, he’d waved that off. For him, the meal had been damn near perfect, and if the burgers were this good cold, he was going to find where she’d purchased them because they might be spectacular warm.

Jordanna wiped her fingers on a napkin. She’d been tight as a coiled spring since her father had departed, and it was clear that she didn’t want to talk about him, ever. But now that they’d finished eating, he wasn’t willing to just act like nothing had happened.

“I know,” she said. “You should go. You will go. I’ll take you and drop you off.”

“Tomorrow’s Saturday, but he said the clinic was open and he’d be there.”

“Yes, he’s always available for the residents of Rock Springs.”

He tried to navigate her mood, but she’d shut down. He attempted some small talk, but it was never his forte, so eventually he just gave up and asked, “Why’d you shoot him?”

She turned to face him, her hazel eyes brilliant in the last rays of sunlight coming through the living room blinds. “You won’t believe me. No one does.”

“I’ve heard a lot of unbelievable stories that were true.”

She made a sound in the back of her throat that said he didn’t know what he was talking about, but she wiped her mouth with the napkin, then said, “I caught him in bed with my older sister her last year of high school.” When he didn’t immediately respond, she said, “You’re trying to come up with some plausible explanation because he’s a wonderful man. Dr. Dayton Winters. Upstanding member of Green Pastures Church. Married to Jennie Markum Winters, daughter of the chief of police. I know. I get it. It’s much easier to believe Dayton’s middle daughter was crazy, probably as a result of that rogue gene carried through the mother’s line.”

“What do you mean?” he asked.

For a moment, he thought she wasn’t going to answer, but then she heaved a deep sigh and said, “I could use a drink. You want some wine? Oh, wait, no, you’re on pain pills.”

She headed for the kitchen to get the wine. He could’ve told her he’d eschewed the analgesic, but what the hell. She was already touchy and seemed eager to shut down the conversation at the earliest opportunity, so he didn’t want to piss her off about neglecting to take her advice.

He heard her going through the motions of opening the bottle, then the sound of her pouring liquid into a glass. A few moments later she returned with a half-f plastic cup of red in one hand, the bottle of cabernet in the other.

“I don’t trust my father,” she said as she sat down beside him on the couch. “He denied everything about Emily. Made us all pretend that I thought there was an intruder. The chief knew, though. But everyone’s afraid I’m just like my mother. . . .”