What if you’ve walked into a trap? You have no weapon, nothing to protect yourself.

She started the car, but as she did, she saw the same girl who had been at the gate before appear in her headlights. Tonight she was wearing a long coat with a hood. She stared at Becca with wide eyes. Jessie’s eyes.

Becca clambered out of the rental and approached the gate.

“You need to leave,” the girl said in a quiet voice.

“I can’t.”

“Drive away. Now.”

“Jessie Brentwood came here years ago, and someone else just recently, a reporter. With dark, short hair. Renee Trudeau. She wanted information on Jessie.”

“She did not come in.”

“You didn’t let her in,” Becca realized.

“It wasn’t safe.”

“But she knew this is where Jessie came from. I think I came from here, too.” The girl gazed at Becca soulfully. Becca had no idea what she was thinking. “Can’t I come in?” Becca cajoled. “I just have so many questions.”

“It’s not safe for you, either.”

“Do you know who I am?”

She glanced behind her, then down at her feet. “Rebecca…”

Becca’s pulse jumped. “Look, I think…I think I might be related to someone here and it’s very important that I find him.”

Jessie saw the girl’s eyes dilate, the pupils making her eyes two black orbs with the faintest halo of color around them. “You won’t find him here,” she said.

“You know who I’m talking about?”

The girl hesitated. “You’ve met Madeline?”

“Yes,” Becca said, surprised by the non sequitur. “But I’m looking for someone else and it’s really important. People have died. I need to find him.”

She half turned away.

“No, wait!” Becca called, but she was already leaving.

She stopped when she was about thirty feet away. “Whoever you’re looking for is not here.”

“How do you know?”

“Because you asked for ‘him,’” she said without inflection. “There are no men at Siren Song.”

Hudson stared at the pimply-faced clerk on the other side of the faux-wood counter in the lobby of the tired-looking motel where he, Becca, and Ringo had stayed only a few short weeks ago. A striped yellow tabby viewed the interplay with utter disdain from the back of a worn couch as the clerk, who was all of fourteen or so, gazed at him in consternation.

“I-I-can’t talk about our guests. It’s, um, the privacy policy.” The kid kept looking over his shoulder, hoping someone would come to the rescue while the cat yawned and stretched his legs.

“I’m her fiancé,” Hudson tried. A stretch maybe, but close enough, and the next time he saw her, he damned well was going to ask her to marry him. He’d spent too many hours in the hospital wondering about her, worrying about her, loving her, to let her go again.

“Do you, like, have some kind of proof or somethin’?” The kid’s gaze slid to the sling supporting Hudson’s left arm, and Hudson realized he looked like hell in his filthy clothes, disheveled hair, and scruffy beard. He probably appeared to the kid to be one of those loner, killer types from the movies.

But Hudson was too panicked, too sick with worry to go into it or explain anything. Time was running out. “Just tell me what unit she’s in.”

“Grandpa?” the boy called nervously over his shoulder to the open door at the back.

“What?” a male voice bellowed.

“I, uh, could use a little help out here.”

With a huge sigh, “Grandpa,” a large man built like Humpty Dumpty, shuffled into view. Suspenders looped from his faded denim pants, doing nothing as they dangled uselessly from his waist. A thin, tank-style T-shirt was half covered by an open flannel shirt. He peered over the tops of half-glasses. “What’s the problem?”

Irritated, Hudson repeated his request. “My fiancée checked in earlier. I’m supposed to meet her, but I don’t know what room she’s in.”

The man swiped a hand over the graying stubble on his jaw, started to argue, then said, “Oh, forget it. A woman checked into unit seven today. I can’t let you in, but I can go there myself. You can come along.” He glanced out the window. “But I’d bet Butterfinger over there,” he said, nodding to the orange tabby, “that she’s not in. Her car’s missing. No lights on. No television, either.”

The kid walked over to pick up the cat, stroking its head.

Butterfinger snuggled up to the boy, his long tail twitching as he, too, gave Grandpa Humpty the evil eye. Gramps found a baseball cap and jacket, then, with a jangling set of keys, waddled toward unit seven.

It was all Hudson could do not to run in front of him. The fact that Becca wasn’t here made him crazy. Where was she? God, what was she doing? He had a deep, driving fear that she might be out baiting the madman. As they crossed the seedy parking lot, he tried her cell phone again.

Humpty cast him a look. “Cell service ain’t great around here.”

So get into the twenty-first century! But the man was right. He couldn’t connect. Not with Becca and not with Mac, as he didn’t have the detective’s number on Zeke’s phone.

The big man knocked on the door, and when no one answered, rapped again and said, “Hello? Ms. Sutcliff?” He opened the door, and the minute it swung inward Hudson could tell that Becca hadn’t been in the room in a while. Packages were strewn on the bed, bags from a local all-in-one market. Her dirty clothes from the night before were stacked on a chair near the television stand. Grandpa Humpty nodded to himself as if he’d been an ace detective. “Whaddid I tell ya?” He looked over his shoulder at Hudson. “Maybe you should find yerself a new fiancée.”

Hudson didn’t stick around to listen. He was jogging across the parking lot, his shoulder screaming in pain, his jaw set. Once in Zeke’s Mustang, he found his vial of pain pills, tossed a couple into his mouth, and swallowed them whole. He found the card the two detectives from the sheriff’s department had given him, and dialed. They would have Mac’s number or, if not, they could damned well help him themselves.

He had no proof.

They would have to take his word for it.

But Hudson was damned sure Becca was heading for trouble.

Trouble…Jessie’s word.

The thought sent ice running through his veins.

What was Siren Song? Becca asked herself as she drove back toward Deception Bay proper. Her birthplace? A cult?

She eased the old Chevy through the streets of this sleepy little town where traffic was sparse. The wind, which hadn’t existed a few hours earlier, was beginning to pick up, sharp gusts stirring the branches of trees and pushing litter and debris inland. Night had fallen in earnest and the few streetlights’ bluish lights cast a pool of illumination down the main street.

But Becca was on her way to see Mad Maddie. The young woman at Siren Song had mentioned her name, almost like a direction to what Becca sought. And Renee had talked about the sometime psychic who’d warned her that she was marked for death. Becca herself had wanted to see her, but then had gotten sidetracked by the cult at Siren Song.

She turned her car northward. Driving mostly by instinct, she headed for the cliff area and the area she suspected was the old woman’s home. She’d never been to Maddie’s before but knew it was on the sea, so she only had to follow the road running along the shoreline. The beachfront road turned inland for a bit as it climbed away from the downtown area and the sandy crescent that was connected to the bay at the south end of town.

She recognized the old motel the minute she turned the corner, so she eased the car onto the pockmarked gravel lot. A few lights were shining on the long, low building, an old motel, situated on a ridge overlooking the dark, whitecapped ocean. Another storm was in full force now, wind screaming, rain on its way.