hit the brakes, making room.
The big truck rocked, sliding into the right lane before thundering ahead, rushing into the night, taillights disappearing into the mist.
Becca’s heart was pounding, her lungs tight, her nerves about to shatter.
Hudson glared through the glass. “That son of a bitch could have killed us. You know, it’s one thing if he wants to play Russian roulette with his own damned life, but it’s another thing to screw with my family.”
His family.
From the backseat Ringo gave out a disgruntled woof, then stood on his back legs, nose to the glass of a rear window.
“You tell ’em,” Becca encouraged him, finally relaxing a bit.
Swearing under his breath about brainless jerks with driver’s licenses, Hudson continued his search for a radio station. The choice was a late-night sermon or songs from the “AWESOME sixties, seventies, and eighties.” Hudson chose the music and Gloria Gaynor, in the middle of “I Will Survive,” blasted through the speakers. He turned the volume down, though their conversation disintegrated to a few observations about the condition of the road or the distance left.
Becca hit ice a couple of times at the summit, but the Jetta’s tires grabbed on. Still, as the car wound down the westerly slopes, she couldn’t let go of the tightness in her chest, the eerie and growing sensation of doom chasing after her.
Whoever he was, he was sure working on her fears.
And it didn’t ease up when they turned south on Highway 101, following the snakelike coastal highway. Through small towns, over deep chasms, and hugging the cliffs that rose from the ocean, Becca drove on, battling the wind and rain that slanted in from the Pacific.
A few miles north of Deception Bay, Hudson craned to look out the window. It was the cliff edge where Renee’s car went over. “You want to stop?” she asked carefully.
“No. I’ve seen it.”
They drove the remaining miles to Deception Bay in silence. It was dark and a sharp wind blew patchily as they entered the small coastal village that curved along a crescent-shaped shoreline. The town itself was wedged between the ocean and mountains with the highway separating the two. To the south was the bay, a freshwater body of water allowing fishing boats a gateway to the open sea.
Becca’s heart began to race and she felt strange. She knew she’d never set foot in the town before and yet, as she turned one corner after the next, buildings illuminated by the watery glow of a few street lamps, she felt as if she’d walked these narrow streets. An eerie sense of déjà vu so real it chilled her to the bone enveloped her and she had to fight to keep her teeth from chattering. Even with the mist rising, the weathered storefronts and the fishing boats moored in the bay seemed like pictures from her childhood, though, of course, they couldn’t be.
Not your childhood. Jessie’s.
A chill whispered up her spine and she swallowed back her fear.
It’s all in your mind. You’ve never been here before. You’re letting your damned imagination run away with you.
“Becca?” Hudson said and she snapped out of it.
“What? Oh!” She realized she’d slowed to a stop and idled at an intersection controlled by a blinking red light, but she hadn’t resumed driving, despite the fact that no other car was waiting. “Sorry.”
“You were a million miles away,” he said.
“I was thinking about—Jessie—and this town.”
“Deception Bay?”
It’s like I’ve been here before; not once, but several times. Had she dreamt of this place, had visions of the tiny fishing village that she couldn’t consciously remember?
“Let’s get something to eat before everything shuts down,” he suggested, pointing to an establishment with a glowing “Open” sign in the window, and Becca headed into the parking lot. She had her pick of parking spots in front of a restaurant that still displayed its mid-century façade. The entire building appeared as if it hadn’t been updated much since the early 1930s with its stone façade and rusting anchor mounted over the door.
Inside a heater blasted warm air around a near-empty cavernlike room with plank ceilings to match the floors and fishing nets filled with dusty glass balls and fake fish draped along walls paneled in rough wood. A couple of twentysomethings in stocking caps played pool, an older man in a ski jacket and full graying beard nursed a drink at the end of a long, timeworn bar, and a middle-aged couple sat in a corner, drinking beer and staring at the big screen positioned over an area Becca assumed was sometimes used as a dance floor.
Becca and Hudson took seats opposite each other in a booth near the huge rock fireplace. Kindling had been lit and now hungry flames crackled and hissed over mossy chunks of oak and fir. A fading stuffed marlin leapt over a rough-hewn mantel, and wood smoke covered the scents of frying food and cigarette smoke drifting in whenever a side door opened.
Becca swabbed some crumbs from the table and noticed that it, secured into the wall, listed slightly. Soft music—some kind of nondescript jazz—played from speakers mounted on the walls, pool balls clicked, and the deep fryer sizzled, the scent of oil-fried food rising above the sound emanating from the kitchen.
Hudson ordered a microbrew to go with his Dungeness crab cakes while Becca settled for sparkling water to wash down the spicy clam chowder. They shared a small loaf of sourdough bread and lathered it in garlic butter, but Becca barely tasted any of the food.
What was it about this town that made her feel as if she’d been here before? Certainly not just because Jessie had spent time here. And not because Renee had visited. But something…something she didn’t understand had infected her, made her think she’d peeked around the corners of Deception Bay.
The restaurant was warm enough that she shed her coat, but during the hour they spent over dinner, watching the few people enter and leave, making small talk, Becca never completely lost the chill that had burrowed into her spirit.
Hudson left bills on the table, helped Becca with her coat, then together they dashed the few steps through the lashing rain to the car. She switched on her wipers though they were nearly useless against the downpour and she drove slowly, creeping up the hill to the bed and breakfast, a two-storied rambling hundred-year-old manor with eight bedrooms and a panoramic view of the ocean, now dark as tar.
Hudson carried the bags and she shepherded Ringo into a wide foyer with an antique chandelier suspended from the ceiling that rose high over a sweeping staircase. Hudson had already paid for everything online, and they found their key in a lockbox just inside the door. With Ringo leading the way, they headed to the second floor and a cozy room complete with a glowing gas fireplace, canopied bed, and Victorian antiques. His and Hers robes were draped by a jetted tub behind an obscure shade.
“Nice,” she murmured.
“Only the best.”
“Or the only place available on short notice.”
He smiled and she relaxed a bit as she stood at the window, looking out to where she knew the Pacific should be. With the ocean dark, no moon offering its glow, and rain peppering the glass, she couldn’t
