Believing (Lily Dale #2)(31)

Now, though, she goes straight for the television remote. Odelia’s cable brings in a local television station from Erie, and the eleven o’clock news should be starting in a few minutes.

There’s going to be news about Erin, she tells herself as she settles on the couch. I just know it.

She’s right. It’s the top story.

“A happy ending tonight to a story we’ve been following all week,” the anchor announces over footage of a rural area swarming with people, police cars, rescue vehicles, and satellite trucks. “Seventeen-year-old Erin Shannahan, missing since Labor Day, was found alive just hours ago in the Allegheny Gorge.”

Calla gasps, clasping her hands to her mouth.

“Acting on an anonymous tip, police searched the rugged Chuck Keiper Trail, where the girl was ultimately spotted by a helicopter. She was transferred via ambulance to an unnamed local hospital, where she is listed in critical condition but is expected to survive.”

Expected to survive.Thank God, thank God.

“Relatively warm overnight temperatures this week are credited with helping to keep her alive. With a cold front headed in late tomorrow, the window of opportunity for rescue was rapidly drawing to a close. Police are releasing no further details about the girl’s disappearance, or about the tip that led them to her, and the case remains under active investigation. In other news . . .”

Calla tosses the remote aside and hurries to the front door. She opens it and looks out at the Taggarts’ driveway, noting that the lights are on, and Ramona’s car is still gone. Good.

She slips out into the night and across the yard. She’s halfway up the steps when the front door opens and Evangeline appears, wearing a pair of lavender knit pajamas and sneakers.

“Oh! Calla! You scared me!”

“Evangeline, did you see—”

“Yes! I just saw it. I was about to run over to your house and cross my fingers you were still up. I can’t believe it!”

“I can’t, either!”

Their excited whispers punctuate the hushed night air, marked only by steadily chirping crickets and the occasional croak of a frog.

“You must feel great,” Evangeline tells her. “You just saved a life. I told you calling the hotline was the right move.”





Wrong move, he silently snarls at the so-called anonymous tipster as he strides angrily across the floor like a caged animal.

He should have been more careful. Made sure Erin Shannahan was dead before he dumped her. Now she’s going to tell the cops all about the so-called detective who abducted her.

That simply can’t happen.

He’ll take care of Erin Shannahan once and for all.

But first, he has to silence little Miss Psychic. There isn’t a doubt in his mind that she’s the one who led the police to Erin. Thanks to his online research, he already knows exactly how far away she is, and exactly where to find her, if the time comes.

No . . .

Not if.

When the time comes.

You might have saved one life—temporarily, he tells her, but you just made sure you’re going to lose your own.





NINE

Saturday, September 8

10:45 a.m.

“More coffee, Jeff?”

“Sure, I’ll take a warm-up. Thanks.”

Stifling a yawn, Calla watches her grandmother fill her father’s cup. He sits comfortably at the kitchen table eating breakfast as though they’ve all done this a thousand times before.

“Tired, Cal?” he asks, catching her yawn.

“I stayed up awhile after you left.”

Awhile? More like hours. Too exhilarated to sleep after the news about Erin, she watched a couple of bad old movies on television. Today, she’s paying the price with burning shoulder blades and scratchy eyelids—just like all those mornings when she was awakened at 3:17 and couldn’t get back to sleep.

“That was delicious, Odelia.” Dad polishes off his second helping of homemade waffles with fresh blueberries and whipped cream. “I think I’ve got to go walk this off. How about showing me around Lily Dale, Cal?”

“Oh, uh, there’s not much to see, really.”

Conscious of her grandmother looking up, mid-sip, above the rim of her coffee cup, she goes on nervously, “I mean, it’s a small town.” Which happens to be populated by mediums, channelers, healers, and a whole lot of dead people. “You know . . . just a bunch of houses . . .” Yeah, mostly haunted. “. . . And, uh, you know, some trees.”

Uh-huh. Including one former tree: the concrete-encased Inspiration Stump deep in Leolyn Woods—a hallowed local landmark where the Dale’s spiritual energy is supposedly at its peak.

“I don’t care what we see,” Dad tells her, “as long as we can get out and enjoy a beautiful day.” He gestures at the sun streaming in the window, and Calla curses it for making one of its rare local appearances today, of all days.

“But I was thinking we could go to a movie or something,” she suggests. “I’ve been wanting to see . . . uh . . . uh . . .” Terrific—she can’t come up with one title of a movie that might be playing right now.

That’s what happens when you’re completely out of touch with the electronic world. The only movie that pops into her head is a really old, really stupid comedy from the early eighties that was on late last night.