“So it might not be this Mother person. It could be Lydia Rosenberg.”
“Maizie told me she was bad news. Like ‘pack a bag, get out of Chicago’ kind of bad news. So maybe call her if you need more information.”
Tony frowned. “If she told you that, why are you still here?”
“It was right before I saw Sarah on the train and got caught up in that whole thing with Faith.” Eliana didn’t like the insinuation that she had to always follow her family’s orders. She could make her own choices. “Why are these people trying to kill me?”
The Reverence Sisters seemed to want her dead, but in a way that would be entertaining for them. It seemed more like spite than anything else, which didn’t say anything good about Luci and her influence. Was she directing them toward Eliana? That was a horrible thought.
Maybe Luci sending them her way was a cry for help, and she wanted them to rescue her. Or maybe vindictiveness had put Eliana in her crosshairs.
Tony set his hand on her shoulder. “I’m gonna make sure you stay safe. No matter what.”
Eliana shifted so he had to drop his hand, but said, “Thanks.” She wanted to see Carlos and visit Patience. Take a nap, but maybe on Carlos’s couch and not at her house.
She wanted to know Luci was safe, regardless of how she felt about Eliana. And she didn’t want to be the one to face Detective Maloney with the truth of what the FBI suspected. No matter what happened, she got dragged into it.
Eliana figured she should either pack a bag and get out of Chicago, or flip things around and jump in with both feet.
If people expected her to engage with this, maybe she should. The situation might resolve itself faster if she started kicking in doors and demanding answers.
As long as it wasn’t Lydia Rosenberg’s door.
That one could stay shut.
Chapter Thirty
Wind whipped down the street, ruffling her collar so that it tapped her cheek. Trying to get her attention.
Eliana turned around. She was standing on the white line in the center of the street. Traffic passed on both sides. Ruffling her hair. Her clothes.
A horn honked, and she chased the vehicle with her gaze until she turned all the way around to face the other direction.
And saw her.
The woman stood facing her, far enough away that they couldn’t yell loud enough to hear each other. Lydia Rosenberg lifted her hands to her cheeks.
And screamed.
Eliana gasped, sitting up on her couch. Breathing hard. Hand to her chest. Still in her clothes from this morning. She must have fallen asleep here after she’d come home, following that conversation with Keri Herbohn and Tony’s vow to keep her safe.
Night had fallen outside her apartment while she’d been sleeping, but that incessant rain from the storm hammered on her window still. It seemed like it would never stop until the whole world was drenched and drowning.
She sat forward, forearms on her knees, and breathed as the memories—the images—of her dream dissipated. But she could clearly recall the street and the woman.
Lydia Rosenberg.
She was definitely the woman from Eliana’s dreams, the one with the blue coat who chased her through the woods. But that didn’t make any sense when the dream was a memory morphed into a nightmare.
She’d first had the nightmare the day she’d gone to find adventure in the woods. That was the earliest she could recall the woman in the coat, chasing her and Cabot through the trees. Now, after all these years, it had grown and changed as she did. Almost to the point where it had taken on a life of its own.
Her tablet, on the coffee table, chimed.
Eliana grabbed her phone instead and swiped up. She saw a weather notification and a couple of messages from Tony asking how she was doing. Carlos was on shift tonight. The Shrine was doing whatever they were going to do next—investigating Lydia Rosenberg now that she’d given them the name. Hopefully, they’d found Carolena, wherever she was.
Eliana unlocked the screen, which opened to the resignation letter she was writing to Sylvia. Giving up her job and everything she’d come to Chicago for.
She should call Maizie. Call her mom—if they had signal wherever they were on the road now. But part of her hesitated doing either of those when she still had so many questions and no answers to satisfy them. She wasn’t leaving Chicago anytime soon, no matter how her family felt about Lydia. If she quit her job, she could double down on looking for Luci.
