Planet Lara: Sanctuary

4. Be Careful What You Wish For

CHAPTER FOUR

be careful what you wish for

DAY 2

Full sun streams through the bedroom sheers. A sheen of sticky sweat coats my skin. I blink a few times to orient myself.

I’m at home, in my bed, alone.

Finan is missing.

I bolt upright and check my phone. Ten thirty. I managed about four hours of sleep. My body feels like I’ve been asleep for a month.

Voices filter in from the other room.

“She’s awake!” Harmony yells. “I’ve been waiting for you to get up for a million hours.” She hops onto my bed. I don’t have the energy to scold her about still having her sneakers on. “I am so happy Big Dog came home! Dr. Stillson let me help this morning with putting a splint on and then he and Catrina moved him to the clinic and they’re doing an X-ray because poor Humboldt has a broken leg, but they said I can go in later and Dr. S. will teach me how to put on the antibiotic cream for his sutures—Lara, did you know the bad guys stabbed him? WHO DOES THAT? Who stabs a beautiful dog like Humboldt?”

Her blue eyes are wide and glistening with tears, but her red cheeks and fists tell me she’s not sad—she’s furious. I don’t blame her. “If I ever find out who hurt our dog, I swear I’ll kill ’em.”

“I’ll help you,” I said, offering my hand. She takes it. “Who’s here?”

“Dakota, Rupert, and the two giant cops. Catrina is at the clinic with Humbie, like I said, and Dakota is just about to go back to the community centre to make sure people have stuff to eat and drink.” Harmony releases me, slides up, and plops herself onto the adjacent empty pillow. She examines her chipped blue fingernails for a second before dropping a sweaty hand on my forearm. “We didn’t find Finan yet, but we’re going to. My dad said we could go looking again. He’s at our tiny house having a snooze, but I didn’t need to sleep anymore, so I came here to help with Humboldt.”

“Thank you, Harmony.”

She moves over and settles her head on my lap, draping her left arm over my legs. “Don’t worry, Lara. We’re gonna find him. Finan is super smart and he has big muscles. I’ll bet he beats up the bad guys and escapes.”

My tight throat makes swallowing, breathing, even talking impossible. I grunt in response, trying to keep the tears in my eyes so as not to freak out this little kid whose family thought they were moving to a safe place.

Rupert appears in the open doorway in a fresh suit and starched, bluish button-down, minus his usual tie. He’s without his cane, though the persistent pallor of his face hints at the battle raging within.

“Hey,” I croak.

“Hey yourself.” He steps into the room. Harmony sits up.

“Did Dr. S. call about Big Dog?” she asks.

Rupert shakes his head. “Not yet.” He moves yesterday’s clothes off the padded bench at the end of my bed and eases himself onto it. “Harmony, may I have a word with Lara?”

She looks up at me. “You want me to make you some coffee?”

“That would be amazing.”

Harmony flies out and bounces down the hall, hollering how she’s going to make coffee if anyone else wants any.

“What I would give to have an ounce of that child’s energy,” Rupert says.

“Amen.” Our eyes connect. “Any news?”

He looks over his shoulder and then stands and slides to the door. He quietly clicks it closed and moves to the overstuffed chair in the corner near my bed.

“Number Two, you are making me very nervous.”

He eases into the chair and reaches into the interior pocket of his suit coat. His long thumbs fly over his phone screen, and he extends his arm, as if to hand me the phone.

I stare at it like it’s a snake ready to strike. “Is that … if this has anything to do with Finan—he’s not …”

Rupert shakes his head. “Not Finan. But brace yourself, Lara.” He pushes the phone at me again.

I take it, hands juddering. I can hardly focus on the screen.

“Jesus Christ, Rupert.” I drop the device on my legs, staring at it. The threat of vomit sears my throat. With a hard swallow, I squint at the phone and pick it up again. The limp, bloodied body staring lifelessly into nothing is naked from the waist up. The victim’s arms are missing. A sob of relief breaks to see that the goateed, swollen face is not Finan’s, the bloated skin too white and soft and squishy to be him. “Is that … Hale?” I zoom in. “Is that an envelope nailed to his chest? And are his lips …?”

I drop Rupert’s phone and launch out of my bed, making it over the en suite toilet in the nick of time.

Rupert follows me in and closes the door after us. He wets a cloth and drapes it over my neck, my head resting on my forearm on the now-closed toilet lid.

“They found him this morning. Someone dragged him onto Cordelia Beach.”

“Any surveillance? Did the cameras pick up anything?”

“Nothing useful. Two more individuals in head-to-toe black garb, pulling along shore in an unremarkable vessel. They jump out and pull the body, or what’s left of it, inside a tarp onto the beach and pose it with the note.”

“To be sure we wouldn’t miss it.”

He nods.

“Please never make me look at that photo again,” I say, pressing the cool cloth to my sweaty face. “Are more RCMP here?”

“Special Crimes is en route.”

“Has the media gotten hold of this yet?”

“No.” Rupert rewets my washcloth and hands me a glass of water. “Hale Watts was well known in Vancouver circles. It won’t take long for this to leak.”

“Why take his arms? This is next-level horror. I didn’t think Dea Vitae was capable of something like that,” I say. A wave of guilt washes over me. I’d wished Hale Watts dead just the other day, after he broke the story on his blog about my mother and Jacinta Ramirez being involved with a dangerous Mexican cartel. At that moment, I wanted his head on a pike in my front yard. Except now that his body is on the sandy shoreline named after my mother—a weird irony, given his fixation with her—I’m unnerved that someone would go to such extremes, especially over a box of red rocks.

“What does the note say?” I ask, afraid of the answer.

“We’re not sure yet. As you saw, it’s in an envelope.”

“The handwriting on the front—can you tell from the photo if it’s calligraphy, like the letters Iona sent?”

Rupert shakes his head. “We’re not touching anything until the Special Crimes Team arrives.”

Someone knocks. “Lara, I have your coffee. Do you want it in the kitchen?”

Rupert opens the bathroom door.

Harmony stands at the threshold with my favorite coffee cup in her hands. “Oh my god, did you barf? Do you need some medicine? Do you feel like you’re going to faint? Lara, are you pregnant?”

Number Two stands. “Let’s take Lara’s coffee into the kitchen while she freshens up, shall we?”

“My mom barfed all the time when she was pregnant with the little asshole.”

“Harmony, we have talked about you referring to your sister so harshly,” Rupert says, turning my protégé around and shooing her out of the tight en suite. I’m grateful.

As the cabin’s only shower is in the main bath right off the living room currently filled with burly men, I stay put and wash my face, brush my teeth, and sponge off with a washcloth. I’ll take a proper shower after everyone departs.

However, I doubt I will ever be able to shower long enough to scrub the image of a dismembered Hale Watts from my brain. Is this Iona? Would her people have done this? Why Hale Watts? He made it clear during our meeting at Clarke Manor that he knows everything, and I mean everything. Did Iona and her ilk see Watts as too big a threat?

But why cut off his arms? Is this part of their ritual sacrifice, an escalation on what they did to that poor raccoon?

Nausea washes through me again just as I’m zipping up my pants. I finish the tepid water in the glass on my nightstand and breathe deeply through my nose to quell the tide. I cannot be a wimp about this today. We have to find Finan before Iona …

I cannot finish that sentence.