Dead Run by Erica Spindler

don’t want to talk about her!”
    â€œI can help you, Tara. Trust me.”
    â€œNo!” The teenager leaped to her feet. “You can’t help me. Nobody can!”
    Liz followed her to her feet, hand out in supplication. “Let me try. You let Pastor Rachel try.”
    â€œAnd look what happened to her!”
    Liz’s heartbeat quickened. “What do you mean? What happened to her?”
    â€œShe’s gone now. Gone! And I’m here. I’m—”
    She brought her hands to her face. Her shoulders shook with what Liz thought were tears, but when she dropped her hands Liz saw that her eyes were dry.
    She looked at Liz, expression curiously neutral. “Do you believe in God?” she asked. “Do you believe in heaven and hell? In the devil and eternal damnation?”
    Startled, Liz replied that she did. “Do you, Tara?” she asked.
    â€œPastor Rachel did. She warned me against the devil.”
    For a moment, Liz couldn’t find her voice. She wondered what her sister had told this impressionable and troubled young woman.
    â€œAnd what did she say when she warned you, Tara?”
    â€œThat the Evil One masks himself and his army of the damned in beauty. He is seductive, his pleasuresearthly and immediate. But beneath, his stench is more foul than any known to man. She warned that the price of succumbing was the eternal fires of hell.”
    Liz hid her dismay. Her sister couldn’t have said that. The woman she had known never would have. Never.
    Liz tilted her head, studying the teenager. The fanatical light in the girl’s eyes troubled her. Liz suspected she had found the source of imbalance in the girl’s life. She made a mental note to speak with Pastor Tim about the family’s religious beliefs.
    â€œCan I tell you a story?” the teenager asked suddenly. “It’s about a miracle.”
    â€œIf you’d like.”
    Tara inched back to her chair and sank onto it, never breaking eye contact with Liz. Liz followed suit, then waited, hands folded in her lap.
    After a moment, Tara began. “In 1846, back when Paradise Christian still belonged to the Catholic church, the Blessed Virgin appeared to children playing in the churchyard. Twenty-four hours later blood ran from the hands of the statue of Christ, in the church’s sanctuary.”
    Tara began to tremble. “Fourteen days later a hurricane hit Key West. It devastated the island and destroyed the church. A third of the island’s inhabitants were killed.”
    Tara lowered her voice to a strained whisper. “The Catholic archdiocese decided the visions had been the work of demons and struck all accounting of them from their official records.”
    Liz cleared her throat. “So how did you learn the story?”
    â€œI grew up on the island,” she murmured. “Some stories can’t be hushed.” She fell silent a moment, expression far away. “There are those who believe theBlessed Mother appeared to warn the faithful of the disaster to come. That like the Great Flood, the hurricane was delivered by the Lord to punish the wicked. To make them pay for their sins.”
    Liz swallowed hard. “Is that what you believe, Tara?”
    â€œIt doesn’t matter what I believe.”
    â€œYes, it does. It—”
    â€œI have to go now.” The girl stood so abruptly she sent her chair sailing backward. She hurried toward the door.
    â€œWait!” Liz jumped to her feet. “Is that what Pastor Rachel believed? Did you tell her that story? Did you—”
    â€œAsk Father Paul, he’ll tell you. He believes.” Tara yanked open the door and dashed out to the waiting room.
    Liz took off after her, heart racing. “Tara, please! Don’t leave like this. We have to talk. We—”
    She bit the last back. She was too late. Liz watched helplessly as the young woman darted across Duval Street, earning the blare