reached a decision, spoke to them again.
“It’s complicated. I don’t want you thinking my people are worshipping some primitive African god. Most of them, including Frankie Wilson when he’s in the mood, are actually devout Christians. But they’re also superstitious, and sometimes when the situation is desperate enough and their prayers aren’t answered, they’ll turn to the old religion, hoping for a solution.”
“Desperate how?” Brenna questioned.
Zena hesitated, as if searching for the right words to enlighten them. “Did you notice the sad faces in the circle?”
“I did. I also noticed that, except for the two drummers and the priest, all of them were women.”
“There’s a reason for that. You have to understand that children aren’t just important to the islanders, they’re everything. The arrival of new babies is always celebrated. But—and I know this is hard to believe, because I can hardly believe it myself—there hasn’t been a single baby conceived in my village over the past eight months.”
“You’re telling us,” Casey said in wonder, “that this is what the ceremony back there was all about? This obeah priest doing his thing to lift what the women are convinced is a curse?”
Chapter 4
“That’s exactly what you were seeing,” Zena told them. She went on to elaborate, “Of course, there are children in the village, some of them infants, but no pregnancies since last August.”
“I’m supposing it wasn’t for want of trying,” Casey said.
“You can trust me when I say the villagers have never had any problem in that department.”
“But wasn’t there any effort to consult a doctor?” Brenna asked.
“A doctor was persuaded to come up to the village. The women most eager to get pregnant, the youngest ones who have yet to have babies, were more than willing to be examined.”
“And?”
Zena shook her head. “Nothing. The doctor—and he’s a capable one—could find no reason for their infertility.”
“What about the men?” Brenna wanted to know.
Zena rolled her eyes. “You don’t know the St. Sebastian males if you think any of them would even consider himself incapable of fathering a child. Much too proud to submit to any test. I suppose it is unlikely at that that every husband, or for that matter, lover, would be sterile.”
No more unlikely than the infertility of the women, Brenna thought, but she refrained from voicing it.
Zena changed the subject. “Do you have a car nearby?”
“Over in the parking lot,” Casey said.
“Why don’t I walk you there before we say goodbye?”
Casey waited until they reached the Toyota before he verbalized a consideration that must have occurred to him on the trail from the bridge. “This infertility thing...is it possible there was some kind of epidemic in the village that could be responsible?”
“Nothing like that. In fact, the village has been healthy since it got itself a safe supply of drinking water last year. It wasn’t the case before then. I don’t know. It all seems a mystery with nothing to explain it.”
“Where does the new supply come from?” Casey asked.
“A deep well was drilled.”
“And the village was able to afford that?”
“Not the village, no. I wasn’t here then, but they tell me a wealthy benefactor who preferred to remain anonymous provided it.”
Before saying their goodbyes to Zena, they thanked her for befriending them and wished her well in her training.
They were on the road when Brenna expressed her sorrow. “What a tragedy. An entire village with its women suddenly barren. That’s got to be one for the medical records.”
Casey agreed and was silent after that. Whatever his thoughts were, he didn’t share them with her.
It wasn’t until they were descending the highlands that she realized she’d never gotten either her photographs or sketches of Braided Falls. It was too late to turn back. She’d have to wait for another day.
They had reached the cyclone fence that enclosed the old sugar plantation when Casey slowed the Toyota.
Now he slows down, she thought, when what she wanted him to do was speed on by. The place was too creepy for comfort.
He not only slowed, he stopped the car altogether in front of the closed gates to the drive.
“You see what I see, Rembrandt?”
She couldn’t help noticing it. Parked outside the main door of the mansion was the dark green sedan that had followed them earlier.
* * *
When Brenna had no response for him, Casey turned to look at her. Was it his imagination, or had she turned pale under that golden tan that so became her?
“No thought on the subject?” he asked her.
“Please, can we just forget it and go on?”
She doesn’t want to discuss the car, he realized, complying with her request. Probably doesn’t want to even think about it. Its presence, both earlier and now, seemed to scare her.
But Casey couldn’t forget what they’d referred to as the green demon as he headed them toward the shore highway. His mind, trained by the best instruction Quantico had to offer its agents, examined the puzzle.
The vehicle wouldn’t have followed them, as it had tried to do, without a reason. The obvious explanation was the driver had wanted to know just where they were going. But why? Casey’s FBI training had no answer for that. Couldn’t be expected to provide answers without the information he lacked.
No sense in denying it. He had the questions, just not the solutions. Questions like why the clerk at the general store had been frightened by his discovery of the green sedan out front. And why it was now parked in front of the great house behind the locked gates. What connection did its driver have with that sinister plantation?
Those thoughts alone were enough to keep Casey’s brain busy. Because it seemed to be a day for puzzles. He couldn’t forget the most significant of them. Zena King’s village. It just didn’t make sense that a whole village could go barren.
It had to be a coincidence that he and Brenna had been confronted by two major mysteries, one following directly after the other. Casey resisted the urge to try to relate the plantation, the driver of the green demon and the village in any way. Much too unlikely to even consider such a possibility. Or was it?
Managing to put the whole thing out of his mind, at least for now, he resumed paying attention to Brenna. She looked like she was recovered from her alarm over their second sighting of the green demon. They were on the shore highway now, and she was contentedly occupied with finding new flowers and birds outside her window.
He was occupied with her. Hell, he would have been better off still worrying about puzzles than getting all bothered now by the woman beside him. Whatever their different moods of the day, shifting with the frequent events that had triggered them, Casey had never lost his awareness of the sexual tension that existed between Brenna and him. Nor did he think he’d be wrong in swearing she had been just as conscious of it, as well.
This heat he was experiencing whenever his gaze drifted in her direction had him frustrated with need. And what could he do about it? Nothing. She had made it clear on more than one occasion that she was off-limits to him now.
But he could look, even though it did raise his temperature with no possibility of release. And so he did, stealing frequent glances.
Damn,