Strings of Fate (Mistresses of Fate) (15 page)

“Why?”

“Summer was her younger sister.”

WHEN THEY RETURNED
from the restaurant, bringing sandwiches and drinks for the rest of the team, Helmer spent thirty minutes checking in with the analysts for any new developments, while Chris sat with Sandeep and looked at the remote image of her computer. So far today nothing unusual had happened and no one had posted anything to the
Mysteries of Fate
blog.

She reread it again anyway, frowning at the mention of strings and the girl in the woods. She didn’t realize that Helmer had come up behind her and was looking over her shoulder at the screen.

“Do you have any idea what he’s talking about?” Agent Helmer asked her, studying her face.

Chris didn’t want to talk about Summer, especially since she didn’t know what possible connection there could be between Summer’s stories of string-makers and the unsub’s mention of the girl; she just had a weird hunch.

“Sorry.” She shrugged, but got the feeling he didn’t believe her. His gaze, which had mellowed some while they’d been working, narrowed suspiciously.

A few of the analysts were looking into the idea that the unsub may have lived near the victims he targeted, but without his real name they were having trouble finding any connections. Someone had added the locations of the four new people Chris had added to the list to a giant map, though, marked with pushpins and the images of the victims.

Chris swallowed, looked at the scattered red dots. He’d been moving steadily south, toward Fate, a fact that didn’t escape or surprise her. Sometimes she felt like her small town acted like a magnet for the crazies, drawing them in the way a Venus flytrap does.

“Helmer.” Midaugh stuck his head in the door to the conference room. “You’re clear to go check on the call we received about Ms. Pascal. Take her with you. See what shakes loose.”

Helmer, who’d never changed back into his suit, still managed to pick up a press tail as he left the office.

There was no help for it, Chris realized with a sigh as she walked to her own car. She was going to have reporters camped out on her damn doorstep. She just hoped they gave the town a little business while they were at it.

With the press following in big white vans, she drove north out of Rome, Helmer following in a black SUV, and took Highway 140 east until they reached the exit for Fate. It wasn’t much of an exit; there was only a gas station and a McDonald’s indicating any kind of civilization. About half a mile past the gas station, the two-lane road curved past a two-story house that was being consumed by kudzu vines, slowly folding in on itself under the weight of the plants. For some reason, it always made Chris sad.

A few miles down the road, past several farms, and over a couple of small bridges covering streams that meandered through the hilly country, a wooden sign proclaimed
WELCOME TO FATE, GA. POPULATION, 2,432
. The sign was old; Chris didn’t know what the latest population figures were, but then again, people around here weren’t the type to open the door for census workers.

The highway turned into Main Street, meeting up with and running parallel to the railroad tracks into town. They drove past a couple small neighborhoods, the high school, and then made a right turn over the tracks to the circle. She avoided using the circle, however, cutting around so that she could enter the alley behind the buildings, pulling into her usual space.

Helmer pulled up next to her and she’d hopped in his car quickly so he could pull out before the reporters blocked the exit.

He managed it, barely, turning left out of the alley between two buildings and navigating back to Main.

They drove in silence for a few miles down Main, until Christina directed him to turn left down River Road. The news van, which had managed to catch them again on Main, suddenly turned and headed off back the way it had come.

Chris frowned, watching them speed away. “That doesn’t bode well.”

Frowning, Helmer shrugged. “If they suddenly got new information related to the case, Midaugh would have called.”

“Hmm . . .” Chris had an alternate theory, one that involved the witches. They had a way of making sure that no one unwelcome made it onto their property. She didn’t know how they did it—surveillance, magic, a network of talking squirrels—but they always seemed to know when someone was headed in their direction.

The witches’ property, which they called the Havens, was two miles east of Tavey’s land, spanning about one hundred acres of countryside. They farmed the land nearest the road, separating it with neat hedgerows into one-acre chunks.

A triple mailbox marked the entrance to the property, which was a gravel road with a Mohawk of grass that grew between where car tires passed to and from the houses. The road curved past a copse of trees and the land began to rise. Along the left side, up on the hill, the first house came into view.

“Damn,” Helmer muttered, and Chris silently concurred. That was her normal reaction as well.

The first house looked like it had been designed by several different architects, all with different predilections when it came to style, color, and general maintenance. Parts of the house looked Georgian, others seaside cottage, and others recalled a scary Victorian gingerbread. Half of it was yellow, the other half green, with spots of purple and pink. She had never been inside, though one of the older sons who’d lived there, Keenan, had been two years ahead of her in high school. He’d been strange and awkward, especially since he hadn’t attended elementary or middle school with any of the other town children.

The next house was a simple rectangle with wood paneling and river rock on the outside. If it weren’t for the land cleared around it and the red clay bleeding out of the hillside, Chris thought that it would have blended neatly with the rocks and the dark wood of the trees that rose behind it.

The third and final home on this part of the property belonged to Jane—Chris hated calling her Circe, even in her own head—but the Triplets and their mother also lived in it. Jane’s husband, Mark Arrowdale, had left several years back, and the Triplets’ father, Jane and Summer’s brother, had been killed in a training accident in Fort Benning. It was a simple farmhouse, one-story, with a wraparound white porch and an herb garden surrounded by a white picket fence.

When they pulled into the gravel drive beneath the shade of a big oak tree, the Triplets were tending the garden in the late-afternoon light, probably planting fall crops like turnips, kale, and collards. Sometimes the girls sold the veggies in the farmers’ market on the weekends; that was actually how Chris had met them, the three identical girls and their crops, which always seemed to taste better than everyone else’s.

“Hey, girls,” Chris called, walking around the SUV. The girls had stopped what they were doing at the approach of the unfamiliar car, but they didn’t appear wary, or even surprised. They looked . . . resigned, almost.

“Miss Pascal,” Yarrow greeted her. All three girls were wearing jeans and long-sleeve plaid shirts, their blond hair in ponytails, gardening gloves covering their hands.

“This is Agent Helmer with the FBI.”

“Nice to meet you, Agent Helmer,” Yarrow said politely, but then she looked at Chris and gave her a small wink.

Helmer had followed Chris to the fence that surrounded the garden, his expression friendly. He ignored the wink, or seemed to, but Chris had a feeling he’d ask her about it later.

“Nice to meet you as well . . .”

“Ro,” she supplied, “and that’s Tira and Sandra.”

The two other sisters smiled and waved, but didn’t speak, which was normal, but Chris had never seen Yarrow so animated. It was charming, actually, but also a bit frightening.

“Well, Ro . . .” Helmer looked to Chris for assistance.

“We’re here to talk to your aunt Jane.” Chris tried not to grimace.

Ro gave Chris a doubtful look, which Chris accepted with a nod. Yeah, she knew better, but what the hell.

“She’s not here, but you don’t want to talk to her anyway,” Ro explained to Helmer, walking forward to the fence, both her sisters a couple steps behind her.

“I’m afraid I do, ladies. There’s something I need to speak to her about.”

“The phone call to the FBI?”

“Yes.” Helmer sounded surprised. “What do you know about it?”

“Everything.” Ro grinned cheekily. “We made it.”

19

CHRIS DIDN’T THINK
a great deal shocked her anymore, but this little confession on the part of the sisters had thrown her for a loop just a little bit. And they were acting weird. They seemed prettier, more confident, less awkward.

“You made the call?” Helmer repeated, trying his best not to sound doubtful.

“Yes,” Yarrow said simply. “Won’t you come inside? We have pecan pie and coffee.”

Pecan pie sounded great; Chris looked hopefully up into Helmer’s face. “Sounds good,” she answered before he could politely decline, and followed the three girls, who held hands as they walked up their drive.

They rinsed their hands from a spigot on the outside of the deck before leading the way into the house, opening first a screen door that squeaked on its hinges and then a wooden front door with a stained-glass window showing a woman at a loom.

Chris remembered the kitchen from when she would visit Summer, and had missed it ever since. The view from the window showed a small birdbath and then nothing but forest and trees as the land sloped down and away from the house. The land started rising again not far away, showing more trees and the mountains beyond.

A huge stone fireplace with a cast-iron cauldron dominated the center of the room, and matching stone covered the floor, only it had been smoothed to make it easier to walk. The dining room table was a picnic bench, but it looked ancient and lovingly sanded. Summer had told her one of her great-grandfathers had made it, but that hadn’t stopped the four friends back then from carving their names on the underside of it when no one else was around. Antics like that certainly didn’t help Chris’s relationship with Summer’s mother, who disapproved of Summer’s friends. Disapproved of any friends, actually; she’d been overprotective, worried that her daughter’s handicap made her vulnerable to negative influences, like Chris.

The rest of the kitchen had modern updates. Jane ran the witch store in town and did pretty well; well enough to keep the houses and the land with a few luxuries here and there. The kitchen boasted a top-of-the-line Viking range, stainless-steel sinks, and granite countertops. The witches knew how to live.

The three girls busied themselves pouring coffee in small china cups with a border of red roses and cutting what smelled like the most heavenly pie on planet earth.

“I don’t need any—” Helmer began, but Chris elbowed him. He should know better. When someone offered you food in the South, you ate it, even if you weren’t hungry. Besides, Chris had tasted the girls’ pie; it won the pie contest at the local high school’s annual fund-raiser every year and would undoubtedly win at this Saturday’s contest as well.

“Have a seat,” Yarrow instructed, and Chris and Helmer took a place at the table and waited while the girls arranged the table and set out thick slices of gooey chocolate pecan pie. Chris took a bite and whimpered a little bit in her throat. Hot, holy damn, it was good
.
She’d even go so far as to say it was better than sex, but she really didn’t feel qualified to make that judgment, especially when the hard length of Helmer’s thigh was resting alongside hers.

Realizing that she was sitting a little too close and that there was plenty of room on the bench, Chris warily slanted her eyes up to Ryan’s, checking to see if he wanted her to scoot over. He didn’t seem irritated, though his cheekbones were flushed; she thought that might have been from the fire the girls had burning in the fireplace.

“So . . .” He looked away from Chris at the girls, who’d cut themselves small slices of pie and seemed to feel guilty about putting even that much on their plates. Chris knew the other kids teased them about their weight, but most of the time the Triplets seemed to ignore it, trying to stay positive, for the most part.