Olivia recognized Simon’s housekeeper in the spray of light, but she didn’t understand. Why was Izzy at her door?
The woman slumped against the doorframe, leaning like a felled tree.
Olivia hopped out of her car. “What’s wrong?”
“Men at the lake,” Izzy said, her eyes closed. “They’re looking for me.”
Did Simon bring Izzy to the house? If he was at the lake, they both needed to get away from here.
“Where’s your baby?” she asked. The sweet girl from Winfield.
“He took her—no.” She shook her head like she was trying to loosen something. “He’s upstairs.”
“Simon?”
Izzy waved her hand. “The baby.”
Poor girl. Had the fear of Simon crippled her tongue? Maybe she was just confused. They needed to retrieve her child before Simon returned and then find Chief Logan. “Is Greta upstairs?”
“He—” The woman teetered again. “He killed her.”
The ice froze in Olivia’s veins. “Izzy?”
A dozen words stammered in reply, none of them making sense.Olivia wanted to shake the words free until a cry rained down from the second floor.
Thank God, Greta had only been asleep.
The ice dissolved quickly into action. “I’ll get her.”
Izzy caught herself on the doorpost, and Olivia saw a bloody gash on her hand. “You’re hurt.”
“The moon seeds.”
Olivia shivered. What had happened in her hours away?
Izzy reached up to rub her face, but Olivia swatted her hand. If she’d touched the moonflower seeds, if the toxins had seeped into her wound, rubbing her eyes could blind her.
She turned her toward the sedan. “Don’t touch anything until we wash your hands.”
Izzy wouldn’t move. “I have to get my babies.”
“I’ll find her.” Olivia turned off the headlights. “Please, get in the car.”
She couldn’t force Izzy to leave, but she could fetch the woman’s daughter. Olivia raced up the steps and into Hattie’s room. The girl should be bigger, she thought, as she lifted her from the makeshift crib, but she’d no time to ponder the child’s size. As she ran back downstairs, the girl crying in her arms, the kitchen door hit the back wall. Then feet pounded across the floor.
Olivia flung open the front door. Thank God, Izzy waited in the front seat of her sedan.
Izzy stretched out one of her arms as if she wanted to hold her child, but Olivia kept the girl on her lap as they bumped down the lane. Through her open window, she could hear shouts behind them.
“We need to rinse off the moonflower oil,” Olivia said, the child crying in her lap. “Before the poison spreads.”
“Car—” Izzy sputtered, her chin bobbing as she fought the flower’s grip. “Below.”
“We have to hurry.”
“I can’t leave her.”
“We aren’t leaving her, Izzy,” she said, her voice as steady as she could manage knowing that Simon and the others were on their way downhill.
