by Kay Hooper
“Do you believe that would discourage me?” he asked, curious.
“No. I think you’re convinced the church is connected to the deaths of those two poor women found in the river.”
Sawyer wasn’t surprised she had noted his suspicion; he had certainly not tried to hide it. Nevertheless, he heard the defensiveness in his tone when he said, “You think I’m wrong to keep pushing?”
“I think,” Tessa Gray said, “you should push harder.”
“They’re just sitting there talking.” Brian Seymour gestured toward the main monitor in the security room. “She said something, he said he was having a bad week—and then he moved away from the microphone, and that’s all we got. They’re just far enough away that we can’t pick up their voices.”
“Convenient,” DeMarco said.
“Well, the microphone was placed just so we could record Father’s sermons,” Brian reminded him. “It wasn’t intended as part of the security system.”
“Yes. I know.”
They were alone in the security room for the time being, so Brian didn’t hesitate to be frank. “I know you want to keep a close eye on the chief, but Mrs. Gray as well? She walked through the scanner when she came into the church with Ruth, and nothing showed up. No weapon, no electronics. Not that I’d expect her to be carrying anything like that, anyway.”
“No,” DeMarco said. “Neither would I. But as long as she’s with the chief and within range of any of the cameras, watch her.”
“Copy that. I’ll tell the guys as soon as they get back from their break. Should we record if any of the microphones pick them up again?”
DeMarco considered, then shook his head. “As amusing as it might be to listen to the chief try his hand at courting, I believe we’ll leave them their privacy. That much of it, at least. As you say, audio isn’t part of our security system out there, so we might as well save the tape. Turn the microphones off for the time being, Brian.”
Brian grinned a little as he obeyed. “Courting? Way I hear it, Chief Cavenaugh’s slippery as an eel; the matchmaking biddies in town have been trying to hook him up permanent for years without any luck.”
“It remains to be seen whether he needs their help,” DeMarco said dryly.
“Maybe his taste just runs to wealthy widows, and this is the first real shot he’s had. They aren’t all that common in Grace. Especially young and very good-looking ones.”
“True.”
Sobering, Brian said, “It could cause problems for us, though, couldn’t it? I mean, if Mrs. Gray decided to remarry—and especially the chief?”
“You’re jumping the gun just a bit, Brian, don’t you think?”
“Well, yeah, sure. But—”
“I doubt the chief is ready to ask for a date, let alone propose.” Without waiting for a response, DeMarco added, “I’ll be in my office. Make sure I’m called if necessary, but otherwise I don’t want to be disturbed.”
“Yes, sir.” Brian turned back to the monitor, not entirely relaxing until he heard the door close behind DeMarco. Then he leaned back in his chair and checked the other monitors before returning his idle gaze to the silent discussion going on just over the hill and supposedly out of sight of anyone in the Compound.
——
“Push harder?” Surprised yet again, Sawyer frowned at Tessa. “Why? Have you seen something?”
“I’ve seen what you’ve seen. Less, really, since this is only my second visit here.”
“But you believe there’s something here to see?”
It was her turn to frown, and she looked away to gaze up the hill toward the “natural” pulpit. Her eyes seemed unfocused for a moment, almost dreamy. “I’m not a cop,” she said absently. “I’m not so sure I’d recognize anything unusual.”
“Then why do you—”
“Except for the Stepford bit. They’re all very . . . perfect, aren’t they? Scrubbed and polite and smiling. Content.” Her gaze returned to his face, the gray eyes sharp now. “I hear some people get that from their religion, but up here it seems a little excessive.”
“Just a little?” he said almost involuntarily.
Tessa smiled. “Okay, more than a little. A nosy question, but are you religious, Sawyer?”
“Not really. Raised with it, of course. Hard not to be here in the South.”
“But it didn’t . . . speak to you?”
“The preachers yelled quite a bit, but, no, I didn’t much care for the fire and brimstone.”
“Me either. Do you think that’s why what Samuel offers his flock is so seductive? Because he doesn’t yell? Because he promises reward instead of punishment?”
Sawyer studied her for a moment, conscious of the very odd but strong impulse to tell her that they should both leave. Now. But he had no idea why, specifically, he felt a threat directed at them both.
“Sawyer?”
He actually turned his head and looked all around them, wary, realizing that the hairs on the back of his neck were stirring in warning, and not because of the damn camera.
“We should leave,” he said.
“They turned the microphone off.”
He looked quickly back at her. “Tessa, what are you talking about?”
“There’s a microphone hidden up there just behind the pulpit. Didn’t you feel it? Can’t you feel it now?”
Carefully, he said, “How could I feel a microphone?”
She studied him, a tiny smile playing about her mouth. “That’s your thing, isn’t it? Electronics? So you always know when there’s a camera around, when there’s surveillance? I bet watches die on you within weeks or even days and cell phones lose their charge much faster than they’re supposed to. And I’ll bet you short out lamps and screw up computers from time to time. Unless you’ve learned more than basic control, at least.”
Sawyer was rarely speechless, but at that moment he couldn’t think of a damn thing to say. The sense of a threat was still there, hovering, but he honestly wasn’t certain if it was the camera—or something else.
“Sorry. Under normal circumstances I wouldn’t have said anything,” Tessa continued. “It’s your ability, after all, and your decision who to tell about it. I know from experience that keeping quiet is . . . usually the better way. People tend to fear what they don’t understand, and—But we don’t have a lot of time, so I have to be blunt.”
“Blunt in saying what?” He wasn’t giving in without a fight.
“That you’re psychic. Probably since you were a kid, but you may not have been aware of it until you hit your teens.”
“Tessa—”
“Most of us move from latent to active in our teens, unless there’s some kind of traumatic event earlier than that. Or sometimes much later in life. We’re the lucky ones. Our abilities aren’t born in pain and suffering.”
Again, Sawyer didn’t know what to say.
Tessa smiled, this time a bit wry. “Technically, you have a heightened sensitivity to electrical and magnetic fields. We don’t really have a name for that, other than a kind of clairvoyance. I don’t know if you’re able to manipulate the fields, but you do affect them, they affect you, and you could probably feel that microphone about the time you topped the hill.” She nodded slightly to indicate something off to his right. “Just like you can feel the camera trained on us from that tree over there.”
Sawyer didn’t bother to turn his head to look at the camera thirty yards away from them but kept his gaze on her face. “And you know all this because . . . ?”
“Because I’m psychic too. And one of the things I’m really good at is sensing another psychic and knowing what abilities they have.”
“One of the things?”
“I’m also clairvoyant, though not like you; I tend to pick up bits of information, emotions, snippets of thoughts. I have an unusual shield that hides my abilities from every other psychic I’ve ever encountered, and I’m mildly telepathic both ways.”
“Both ways?”
Yes. Both ways.
“Shit. Was that—”
“Me, yeah. Sorry. It is, to say the least, intrusive to shove thoughts into other people’s minds without so much as a by-your-leave, and I generally ask permission first.” Her shoulders lifted and fell in a little shrug. “The ability only seems to work with other psychics. And even then I’m limited to very short phrases and sentences.”
Sawyer thought about the sarcastic inner voice that had been nagging at him and had to ask. “You haven’t been—you haven’t done that before? Put thoughts in my head?”
Her eyebrows went up a bit. “No, that was the first time. Why? Has there been an alien voice in your head?”
“I assume you mean alien as in unfamiliar.”
“Well, I’m not a big believer in visitations from little green men, so, yeah, that’s what I mean.”
“How could I have an unfamiliar voice in my head?”
Her mouth twisted slightly. “Around here? Pretty easily, I’d say. There’s a weird sort of energy in this place, here in the Compound and even in Grace, and you can’t tell me you don’t feel it.”
“Lots of places have weird energy. That doesn’t translate to somebody else’s thoughts in your head.”
“It might here. I can’t be absolutely sure of the number, but I can tell you there are quite a few psychics inside this Compound.”
“I can’t believe I’m having this conversation,” he muttered.
“It gets worse,” she told him.
Ten
JESUS. How does it get worse?” “We believe Samuel is one of the strongest and most unusual psychics we’ve ever encountered. Extremely power ful and extremely dangerous. And probably at least one of the people closest to him is an unusually strong psychic as well. Maybe DeMarco.” She shook her head. “I couldn’t get a read on him, and that’s rare for me.”
Sawyer took a moment to sort through the questions rattling around in his mind and focused on one. “We believe. Who is we?”
Tessa answered readily, having clearly expected the question. “I work for a civilian investigative organization called Haven. We’re called into cases that . . . present difficulties for cops and federal agents, for whatever reason. Most of us are licensed P.I.s, but we obviously don’t have quite as many rules and regulations to worry about during an investigation.”
“You break the law?”
“Personally, no. Well, not so far, though I have to admit I’ve never been faced with that particular choice. And it isn’t company policy, believe me; we also work with cops and federal agents, both of whom would be more than a little uncooperative if we didn’t mostly play by the rules.”
“Mostly.”
She ignored the muttered word to add, “This time out, we’re part of a federal investigation of the Church of the Everlasting Sin. And of Samuel.”
“First I’ve heard of it.” He tried to keep the suspicion out of his voice and undoubtedly failed, judging by her faint smile. Or, hell, maybe she’s just reading your mind.
“You’ll have to forgive us for that. We had reason to believe that Samuel could have people inside local law enforcement. Church members, perhaps. So we couldn’t be sure who to trust. Until we had someone here who could . . .”
“Read me?”
Tessa nodded. “We had to be sure. We couldn’t take the chance of confiding in the wrong person, not with so many lives potentially at stake. I’m sure you know enough about cults to know that if and when the cult leader is threatened, or even just feels threatened, the consequences can be devastating.”
“Koresh,” Sawyer said grimly. “Jim Jones.”
She nodded again. “Probably something you’ve been worried about yourself, especially in recent weeks. You pulled those bodies out of the river. I’m betting you know there have been other victims as well. Victims someone else had to pull out of the river at some point downstream. Victims who died in . . .unnatural ways.”
“Are you telling me that Samuel killed them? You know he killed them?”
“If we knew absolutely, if we could prove it, then you and I wouldn’t be having this conversation. We’re sure he’s responsible. We just don’t have courtroom proof. Yet.”
“So . . . what? You’re here to get that proof? By allowing them to recruit you, take you into the fold?” Before she could answer, he sat up straighter and said, “Wait a minute. If this is your job, then you aren’t really Jared’s widow. It’s all a cover.”
She cleared her throat and looked, for the first time, a bit uncomfortable. “Jared Gray is alive and well. Sailing somewhere off Bermuda, last I heard. I’m sorry, Sawyer, for the deception. That part of it, at least. He said—well, he didn’t think there’d be anybody back here to grieve for him, especially since he left right after high school. He was in Florida trying to untangle his parents’ estate months after they’d died in a car crash, hadn’t even started thinking about what he’d do with the part of it here in Grace.”
“You asked him to play dead.”
“Not me personally. But, yes, that’s what he was asked to do. And he was willing to disappear for a few months. More than willing; I think he was sick of dealing with legal matters and just wanted to get away. A sailing ‘accident’ was easy enough to arrange.”
“And a wedding before that?”
“All the paperwork to indicate there had been a wedding, yes. An actual ceremony wasn’t necessary.”
“Just a lot of lying.”
Grave now, she said, “I hate that part of the job. And if I didn’t believe I was helping, doing something positive with my abilities, I couldn’t pretend to be someone else.”
Sawyer drew a breath and let it out slowly, honestly not sure if he was relieved or pissed. “So what’s your real name?”
“Actually, my real name is Gray. Tessa Gray. One of the hardest things about going undercover is remembering a whole new name, so we try to avoid that as much as possible, keep at least our Christian names the same. This time it just happened to work out that I was able to keep both.”
“Quite a coincidence.”
“My boss says there are no coincidences. Just the universe
arranging things.”
Hollis Templeton would have been the first to admit that inactivity drove her nuts, so she considered it a cosmic joke that fate had placed her in the small town of Grace and in the Gray family home where she was virtually a prisoner.
She couldn’t even go into town.
“You broadcast,” Bishop told her frankly. “Especially since you began to see auras. We can’t take the chance that Samuel or his people might see or sense you. It’s enough of a risk just to have you in the house with Tessa when church members visit her.”
“I know, I know. I wouldn’t even be here if Ellen Hodges hadn’t told me I needed to be. I just wish she’d told me why I needed to be here.”
“You’ll find out eventually. But until you have some sense of why, you have to keep a low profile.”
“I don’t have to like it.”
“No, I wouldn’t expect you to. But sit tight for the time being.”
Hiding her abilities had never been an issue until recently, and since they were still evolving—seeing auras was a very new aspect—she had spent her time learning to cope with what was rather than worry about shielding it from other psychics.
She wished now that she had taken a few lessons in developing her personal shield and had in fact been practicing using the few basic instructions Bishop and others on the team had offered. But she was a long way yet from being able to hide her abilities.
In the meantime, since doing something was better than pacing the floor in worry about whatever Tessa might be doing inside the church Compound, Hollis had abandoned the smaller kitchen space to turn the big table in the formal dining room into her command center. Her laptop was set up there, and files, notepads, and maps vied for the remainder of the polished mahogany surface.
There was a very large, very grand bo
ok-lined study on the other side of the sprawling house, but Hollis, like Tessa, was uncomfortably aware of being very much an outsider in someone else’s home, and she preferred to work in the brighter and less personal dining room.
Not that there was a lot of work to do. She had gone over everything so many times that she felt like it was all branded in her mind, and staring at the bits and pieces of information was a bit like staring at blank jigsaw pieces: impossible to know how everything really fit together.
If it fit together.
Despite Bishop’s certainty, Hollis was having a difficult time accepting that the Reverend Adam Deacon Samuel really had been the mastermind—literally—behind one of the most vicious, inhuman serial killers ever to rampage across American soil. It didn’t seem possible, at least in a sane world, for an avowed man of God to deliberately unchain an evil, ravenous beast and set it loose to maim and kill innocents.
Even worse, to personally hunt for and virtually feed that monster its victims, one by one.
How could any man, after doing that, return to his church and preach to his congregation about God’s love?
“It’s a cult,” she reminded herself aloud, needing more sound than that provided by the kitchen TV, on low and tuned to an MSNBC news show. “He’s got himself a cult. Cults are all about power, not religion. All about control. Look at what he’s doing now with the women of that church. Maybe he needs the energy, or maybe he just likes manipulating them. Controlling them. He gets the energy and the kicks—and the satisfaction of knowing he’s the alpha among all the men of the congregation. That he can . . . pleasure the women in a way none of their men can. And . . . yuck,” she added involuntarily.
Hollis had only recently begun her training in criminal profiling, but what she had learned so far told her to look for patterns, for a kind of logic in a personality so far outside accepted norms that trying to find something logical seemed irrational.
Seemed.
There was always logic, if only that of a twisted mind.
