“Don’t!” she warned as sirens screamed over the wind and Mac burst out of the end unit of the motel. “Hudson, don’t!”

Mac screamed, “Put the gun down, Walker! Now!” His sidearm was aimed not at Hudson, but the wounded man. “We want this fucker alive. He’s got a lot of explaining to do, and he can start with Jessie Brentwood.”

Hudson lowered his gun and Becca nearly collapsed against him. “It’s over,” she whispered as his good arm held her tight. “It’s finally over.”

The sheriff’s department seemed to appear by magic. One moment Hudson was holding Becca and Mac was staring down the writhing monster on the ground, gun aimed at the man’s chest, the next a swarm of armed men were running across the grounds.

Becca pressed her face into Hudson’s chest. She heard him swear softly. “We need to take you back to the hospital,” he said.

“I never want to go there again.”

“You’re hurt.”

“But alive. He didn’t hurt our baby. He wanted to. He wanted to hurt our baby.”

“He’s sick.”

“It’s something to do with Siren Song, Hudson. He wanted to kill everyone from Siren Song.”

Her teeth were chattering. Hudson didn’t wait any longer. He led her toward Mac’s Jeep. “Gotta get you help,” he murmured.

Mac materialized out of the gloom. “I’ll call an ambulance,” he said, glancing at Becca. “We’re ordering one for the woman in the cabin.”

“Madeline? She’s alive?” Becca turned toward him.

“Barely. But she’s breathing okay.”

“I can go in the Jeep,” she assured him.

Hudson said to Mac, “You want to stay, I can drive.”

Mac nodded and handed him the keys.

“Thank you,” Becca said to him, heartfelt.

Mac paused. “I should be thanking you. I put you all through hell for a long, long time. And none of you were responsible for Jessie’s death.”

“Becca and my baby are alive, in part because of you,” Hudson said, helping Becca into the passenger seat. “We’re all even.”

With that Hudson slid in the driver’s seat and turned away from the motel and Deception Bay and toward Ocean Park Hospital once more.

“I love you,” he said into the sudden quiet. “I love you so much.”

“I love you,” she breathed.

“You don’t have to answer now, but I want you to know, I plan to marry you.”

She almost smiled.

“What?” he asked, and she could tell he was glancing at her with concern in the darkness of the Jeep’s interior.

“I’ve been planning to marry you since high school. I just didn’t think it would ever happen.” She felt him relax a little. “You’re sure you want me? With my visions and physical anomalies and possible ‘cult’ connections?”

“I want you,” he said, and it was decided.

Becca stood in the hot July sun, staring through the wrought-iron gates of Siren Song. It was the third day in a row she’d kept up the vigil, and she knew the reclusive residents had seen her. She brushed her hair away from her face, feeling heat burn into her scalp. Hot for the beach. Blistering, really.

Her belly had grown. There was no hiding the fact that she was pregnant, and her joy showed on her face. That pregnancy glow. She had it in spades.

Hudson had told her so the morning that she’d left for the beach. “I love you,” he’d said. “You’ve never looked more beautiful.” Becca had curved into his arms and kissed him deeply, bursting inside, loving him with everything she had.

They’d been standing outside the barn, watching the new colt kick up its heels. It ran from one side of the field to the other, zigzagging in front of his mother, never getting too far away.

New life. New love. Four months ago it had seemed an impossibility.

She wrapped her hands around the bars of the gate; they were almost too hot to touch. She wasn’t going to give up. She had questions. She deserved answers, and when she’d told Hudson what she planned to do, though she knew he wanted to keep her safe with him, he’d reluctantly allowed her to go.

“I’ll go with you,” he invited himself, but she’d shaken her head.

“I’ll have a better chance by myself. They’re secretive and suspicious, but I am one of them.”

He wanted to argue, but she pointed out what he already knew: The Colony members at Siren Song were no threat to her. Justice Turnbull-Madeline Turnbull’s son-was the threat and he was in custody, locked up under heavy guard, preparing for a transfer to a mental facility for the criminally insane. Justice’s wild ramblings had assured that conviction.

In the wake of the events at Mad Maddie’s motel, the authorities had swarmed over his life. His strange lighthouse lair had revealed torn notes and scribbled writings about his obsession over the colony; a cache of weaponry was discovered, notably knives, and a tan truck with a removed front grill guard was parked at the side of the motel under a dark gray tarp. There was a sense that he’d killed other colony members besides Jessie, but without the colony’s cooperation it was all conjecture, and the women at Siren Song were collectively unhelpful. McNally had tried to interview the members but they would not open their gates. Justice’s ramblings didn’t offer enough evidence for a search warrant. Half of what he said was delusional fabrications. He insisted that Jessie and Becca were the devil’s spawn and they must be sent back to hell. It was his mission.

Then with continued digging a story had emerged, one that was recorded by a Deception Bay pseudo-historian who’d written down an undocumented account of The Colony’s founders. It had found its way into the hands of a Dr. Parnell Loman, who’d fallen to his death from his cliffside home into the Pacific some fifteen years earlier. This was the same Dr. Loman who’d signed both Jessie’s and Becca’s birth certificates and facilitated their adoptions.

The account talked about the area’s early inhabitants, and there was mention of women arriving from the east-witches-and how they’d mingled with the local Indians and created their own colony. A shaman “wed” one of the women, and the children from that union were unusually perceptive in “odd and repellant” ways. For reasons unknown, those children, the ones that survived, were mostly female. The few males born died early.

How Justice fit in was a bit murky. The written account ended with the birth of Mary Durant and Catherine Rutledge, sisters whose mother, Grace Fitzhugh, had married first Richard Durant, then John Rutledge, having a daughter by each. Dr. Loman had added several paragraphs that indicated Madeline Abernathy Turnbull was part of the family as well, some distant relative of Mary and Catherine, who both still lived at Siren Song as of Dr. Loman’s writings.

But one thing was clear: Justice believed in his mission totally. He had to rid the world of the cursed offspring of colony members. Did that make Becca Mary’s daughter? Justice seemed to think so. Or was it all a fabrication of his depraved mind? His accusations of incest could not be corroborated, but he clearly felt he’d been scorned by the colony women, and in the twisted soup of his beliefs, which combined witchcraft, native lore, and a fear of the wrath of God, he was determined to send as many members as he could back to the depths of hell from where they’d come. They were children of lust, incest, and the devil’s design. They must be killed.

Becca shivered despite the beating sun. She was thirsty. If they didn’t come soon, if she failed to make contact again, she might have to abandon this quest for now. Releasing her fingers from the bars, she gazed up at the heavens to a pale blue sky and white, burning sun.

A flicker of movement brought her attention back to the colony grounds. To her surprise, a middle-aged woman in a long gray dress was walking toward her. Finally!