The Complete Colony Series. Lisa Jackson

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.

      “What was it Renee said when you met with the other girls?” Hudson asked.

      “She thought something was after her. Us. She was digging up stuff about Jessie and she stirred it up.”

      “It.”

      “She couldn’t explain her feelings. Tamara thought she’d taken the Tarot too seriously, but it was more than that. But she was determined to get the story, like it was going to save us all, I guess. I don’t know. She didn’t say that. It just seemed like that.”

      He squinted his eyes, as if in pain. “Something that killed her.”

      “Why would anyone kill Renee?”

      “Her story about Jessie. God, I don’t know.” He shook his head in frustration.

      Becca sighed, feeling that same frustration. “You said Renee called you. What did she say?”

      “I couldn’t hear her. It was a bad connection.”

      “You didn’t hear anything?”

      “She was excited about the story.