The Complete Colony Series. Lisa Jackson

Mac asked.

      “I’m the father,” he blurted out. “That’s what you’re going to tell me. I’m the baby’s father.”

      Mac had put the paternity issue aside in the wake of Renee Trudeau’s death; he’d been too caught up in those events to even think about it. His thoughts had been occupied by Renee, Hudson Walker’s sister. Why had someone pushed her car off the cliff? Did it have something to do with Jessie’s murder? Whatever the case, the Tillamook County Sheriff’s Department was on an all-out hunt for a vehicle with a smashed front end.

      So when Zeke jumped in and hit the issue head-on, Mac was slightly surprised. “That’s exactly right,” he admitted. “You are the baby’s father. You slept with Jessie.”

      He nodded jerkily. “A couple of times. She was trying to get back at Hudson. She teased like mad. She was so wild and scary. I don’t think she slept with anyone else, though she acted like it. She chose me.”

      “Because you were Walker’s best friend.”

      “I thought she wanted me, at the time.” He looked faintly ashamed.

      “Walker have any idea?”

      “I don’t think so.”

      “He’s going to have to know now,” Mac said.

      “Yeah. I see. Yeah…”

      Mac thought over a few things and the moment stretched out between them. The pause made Zeke antsy. His eyes darted around the room as if now that he’d made his confession, he wanted to escape.

      “You think this has something to do with the fact that you never received a nursery rhyme note?” Mac finally asked.

      Zeke looked flummoxed. “What do you mean?”

      “Does anyone else know about your relationship with Jessie?”

      “No…uh-uh. I don’t get what you’re driving at?”

      Mac said, “You’re Jessie’s baby’s father, and you’re the only one of your buddies who didn’t get a note. You see? It’s a difference. Something that stands out.”

      He went quiet, internalizing, and his face seemed to grow more gaunt.

      “It’s a connection that doesn’t make any sense,” Mac said. “Unless maybe…” Zeke’s gaze flew to Mac’s. “Someone is trying to direct the attention away from you?” Zeke didn’t respond, though it looked like it was taking all he had to keep quiet, so Mac pushed a little harder. “Someone who knows you’re the father. Someone who thinks you killed Jessie?”

      “No.”

      “It seems like a woman’s idea of terror.”

      He gulped out a laugh. “Now you’re going to tell me Jessie’s alive!”

      “I don’t think it’s Jessie.”

      Zeke’s eyes were hollow, like he’d stared into a hellish world. “Vangie did not kill Jessie! She couldn’t have done that. She doesn’t have the strength.” He was breathing rapidly. “And what about Renee? And Glenn? What happened to them?”

      Gretchen had been at her desk when Zeke came in but she’d moved closer to hear the exchange. Mac felt her presence behind his right shoulder and was glad she had chosen to keep her mouth shut instead of breaking in.

      Zeke looked ready to fall into pieces. Mac told him the investigations into Glenn and Renee’s deaths were ongoing, but he didn’t seem to hear. He was lost in his own thoughts and when the interview concluded he rose from his chair in a daze. Together, Mac and Gretchen watched him walk out of the station.

      “He thinks his fiancée wrote the notes,” Gretchen observed.

      “He’s been thinking that for a while,” Mac concluded.

      “You gonna let him drop that bomb on her?”

      Mac shrugged. “Do you see Evangeline Adamson as Jezebel Brentwood’s killer? Following her into the maze, stabbing her in the ribs? Murdering her and her baby?”

      “Zeke’s baby, too.”

      “I agree with Zeke. I don’t think she has the nerve. The note sending is more her style, sneaky and anonymous. She was trying to protect Zeke, when in fact she pointed an arrow right to him.”

      Gretchen’s blue eyes narrowed and she smiled her thin smile.

      “What?” Mac asked.

      “You better stop this, or I might start thinking you’re a decent detective after all.”

      Mac harrumphed and turned away from her. He didn’t want to start liking Gretchen, either. She was a pain in the butt, then, now, and forever.

      Hudson drove away from the house Tim and Renee had shared and tried not to hate the guy. All he’d wanted was Renee’s laptop and notes about the story she’d been working on, but Tim didn’t have them. Stunned that his wife was gone, Tim was a walking automaton. He acted like he didn’t hear Hudson’s request, going on and on instead about what a great relationship he and Renee had had, how much he’d loved her, how alone he felt now, how miserable. He seemed to have conveniently pushed away all the contention their relationship had been fraught with at the end. Hudson had wanted to explode at him, but had held his temper in check by sheer will, and finally Tim paid attention enough to say that the laptop hadn’t been found when her Toyota was pulled from the sea. It, and whatever luggage Renee had carried with her, had been lost. Not that a computer that had been submerged in the sea would be of much help.

      “I’ll have to add that to the insurance report,” Tim said to Hudson. “Thanks for reminding me.”

      In a foul mood, Hudson pushed thoughts of Tim aside as he drove home. Ignoring the calls from reporters on his answering machine, he spent the rest of the day caring for the livestock and fixing a broken gate. The physical labor of forking hay into mangers, shoveling manure from the stalls, and replacing hinges and broken boards gave him time to think and sort things out.

      He tried to remember more of what she’d said in their last phone conversation, but there didn’t seem to be anything there that meant anything. He knew her user ID and password, so he switched on his computer and flipped through her unread and “kept as new” e-mails. There weren’t a lot of them. And none of them had to do with the story she was working on. Less than an hour later, he logged off in frustration.

      Maybe the only way to learn something was to follow in her footsteps, like she’d followed in Jessie’s.

      His cell phone chirped at the same moment he heard tires crunching on his gravel driveway. He answered the phone, then glanced up the stairs, where Becca was working on her own laptop, getting some overdue work done for her job. “Hello?”

      “Hey, Hudson. It’s Zeke. I’m just pulling into your driveway.”

      “Yeah? What makes you come out here?”

      “Just wanted to talk to you.”

      “Come on in. Door’s open.” He hung up and yelled, “Zeke’s here.”

      When she didn’t answer, he headed upstairs and caught her coming out of the bathroom, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand. “You all right? Zeke’s just pulling up. He wants to talk to me.”

      Becca grimaced. “I ate something that didn’t agree with me. I’ll be right down.”

      “Okay.”

      Hudson clambered back down the stairs and Becca watched from the upper rail. She’d just lost her dinner. Food poisoning, or…pregnancy?

      Too soon to know, she told herself with a flutter of anxiety in her already nervous stomach. She couldn’t think of it. Couldn’t hope. Yet elation was building, a sudden, blinding certainty that ran down her nerves like electricity.

      No.