Bitter Falls

by Caine, Rachel

  “Police are going to get involved,” I tell him. “These kidnappers took their car and uniforms. Did you find the officers?”

  “Trunk of their own cruiser,” he says. “Trussed up like Thanksgiving turkeys in their undies. My son Jesse took some photos for posterity. They’re all right. But the clock’s running fast, Ms. Proctor. Better decide quick if you want my help.” He’s staring at me, but I can’t read anything in his face.

  I grab for the SUV’s keys. I miss.

  He’s shaking his head. “No good tearing off after them, even if you could drive without passing out. And you got no idea which way they went.” I don’t like the smile he gives me. Or the look in his eyes. “I do.”

  I feel every muscle in my body tighten. Painfully. “Where?”

  “Favors for favors is how we do business. Now, my girl Florida, she’s one hell of a smart kid. You know anything about drones?”

  “Drones,” I repeat.

  “I had my boy Jesse follow that RV when it left; it went up onto an old logging road, don’t even have a name. Florida got a drone up and landed it on top of the RV before it got off that road. So we can track it . . . or I can just have Florida fly that drone on back home.” He pauses. We both register the sound of sirens coming. “Time’s up. I’m good either way.”

  I swallow hard. I feel fragile now, all my bones turned to milky glass. I hurt. My head’s throbbing so hard I see pulses of red in front of my eyes. What he’s asking is a terrible thing. And I can’t decide for my daughter. She’s the one who’ll have to lie.

  I look at Lanny, and she says, without a second’s pause, “I’ll do it. Anything, Mom. If it gets Connor and Sam back, I’ll say whatever he wants.”

  “And your whole clan leaves,” Jasper says. “You pack up and you leave Stillhouse Lake when this is done. Agreed?”

  Like my daughter, I don’t hesitate. “Agreed,” I say. I offer my hand. He takes it.

  “If it helps salve your conscience, Olly ain’t no killer. He’s foolish, and he’s a good man in a fight. He may sell some recreational drugs now and again. But he never wanted Candy hurt. That was all on Bon, the idjit.”

  Lanny bites her lip and nods. “That’s true,” she says. “I mean, I’m pretty sure. Bon admitted it.”

  I walk to her and take her in my arms. I press my forehead to hers and whisper, “I’m sorry, baby.”

  “It’s okay,” she says. “We’re going to find them.”

  Jasper grunts, but makes no promises. His phone makes a chiming sound, and he looks down at it. “Spotters say Johnny Law’s coming ’round the lake. You tell them what happened here, but leave us and that stuff about the drone out. You have your girl change her statement. Then come out to the lodge, and we’ll get to finding your boys.”

  “Lodge?”

  “I suppose you’d call it our compound,” he says, and huffs, as if he takes that personally. “Anyway, I’ll have Jesse waiting to lead you up when you’re done. You bring Vee and Lanny; my wife will look after them. Best you bring what you need for some days.”

  “You’d better not screw me over, Jasper. I’ll kill you.”

  “Ma’am,” he says, “I’m going to consider that you’ve been bashed silly and not hold that against you. Hospitality’s a sacred thing, and when I offer it, I mean it. No harm will come to either of you under my roof, and I’ll swear to that.” It’s weird, but I believe him. He’s actually offended that I’d think otherwise. Southern customs. In some ways they’re utterly incomprehensible to me still. But right now I’m just abjectly grateful.

  “Mom? I want to come with you,” Lanny says. “I want to find Connor!”

  I just shake my head. It’s impossible for me to take my daughter into this fight, and she knows that.

  Doesn’t mean she likes it. At all. Doesn’t mean I do either.

  I give Jasper a few minutes to clear out; then I call the police and report the home invasion and the abductions—it would be strange if I didn’t. I excuse the delay by telling them I was unconscious. Kezia and Prester burn rubber and arrive together just behind the patrol cars, and their professionalism and kindness shake my hard-won composure. It feels like I’m standing on a thin pane of glass over a hole as deep as the Grand Canyon, and every move I make cracks it a little more. Please, Sam, I pray, in the quiet moments between questions. Please stay alive. Please watch over our son. I know he will, if it’s humanly possible. But the thought of losing one of them, or both of them . . . it destroys me.

  Lanny doesn’t say much to any of the officers, and I think she’s going into a deeper state of shock now that there’s nothing for her to do. Vee stays with us—or, more accurately, with Lanny. And I’m glad of that; Lanny needs the support.

  Every second this takes feels like sandpaper grinding on my heart.

  I’ve taken the phone that the cult’s team leader left for me; it’s burning a hole in the pocket of my jeans. I don’t mention it to the police, not even to Kezia. She insists on having my head wound checked by a paramedic, and I don’t object too fiercely, but I refuse a trip to the hospital. No time.

  Within an hour, the state police are involved too. They’re going to issue an Amber Alert for my son. I don’t really want that; I’m desperately afraid that these cultists have nothing to lose in a fight, but the last thing I want to do is rely completely on the word of Jasper Belldene. I’m just worried that like most fanatics, these Assembly kidnappers will believe they’re bound for heaven anyway and run toward the chance to die in glory if they’ve got no other options.

  It’s a relief when someone calls on my regular phone. I grab for it, hoping against hope it’s Connor or Sam, but a different name comes up.

  It’s Mike Lustig. Sam’s FBI friend. I answer and he says, “Sam’s missing?”

  “How did you hear?” I ask him.

  “Friend in the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation gave me a heads-up. They got an abduction alert from the Staties; there’s an agent on his way to you now. What do you know?”

  I tell him, while the state police officers look at me impatiently; Lustig’s an old friend of Sam’s, fiercely loyal, and with his position in the FBI he might be of immense help right now. Or not. It depends on where he is and what he’s doing. But he takes it all in, and then says, “You think Remy Landry’s disappearance is connected to other similar cases. And a cult.”

  “Yeah, I do,” I say.

  “Well, we looked into those cases, but we were never able to pull any commonalities together. And we never heard of any cult in connection with it.”

  “I’d say it’s a pretty damn solid lead, considering they took my son,” I snap, and immediately regret it; none of this is his fault. I brought this to my own doorstep. “Any way you can help?”

  “You got tracking chips in your kids?”

  “On their phones.” Lanny’s old one is at the bottom of the lake, but she’s got a brand-new disposable; I make sure my kids are never out of contact. “Can you track Connor’s?”

  “Staties will try, they’ve got the ball, but I’ll help any way I can. Even if the phone’s off, we can still expedite the tracking.” He pauses, and his deep voice gets a little deeper. “Gwen. You know the chances they’ve still got that phone with them aren’t very good.”

  “I know,” I say. If the cultists have a pattern of abductions, like I believe they do, then they’ve learned to be methodical about covering their tracks. Leaving no trace.

  Which is why keeping my agreement with Jasper Belldene is so vitally important right now.

  I appreciate what the authorities are trying to do, but I’m desperately impatient to be done with them. I talk to Kezia; I still can’t tell her the whole truth, but she agrees to take Lanny’s amended statement about the incident up on Killing Rock. She’s really not happy about that, and she pushes Lanny hard, but my kid doesn’t waver. That allows Olly Belldene his freedom, or at least a far less dire charge to plead away. I don’t care what happens to Bon; he can rot in jail
. He isn’t part of the deal.

  As soon as the police—local, state, and Tennessee Bureau of Investigation—finish with us, I tell them I need to get Vee and Lanny somewhere safe and away from here. I admit, I play the posttraumatic shock heavily; it’s not entirely an act either. They agree, on the condition I tell them where I’m going. I lie glibly about a motel in Knoxville, and give them the address when I look it up on the internet. I turn over the house keys. We’re already packed to go, but I make sure I collect every gun in the house, especially the Browning, which was left behind. After I identify it and get J. B. on the phone to verify that it’s a work-issued weapon, they let me keep it.

  J. B. asks me what she can do, and I tell her to throw every single resource at finding Carol. I don’t intend to turn her over to the cult, but I want to know where she is. If the Belldenes’ drone stops working, I may need a plan B.

  Interestingly, the police don’t seem to trust me as much as they should, considering we’re the victims. The TBI agent tails me to Knoxville and the motel; I register for a night, and we go to the room. I watch from the window until he leaves, then order the girls back into the car.

  Jesse Belldene’s been following us too. He’s better at it than the TBI agent; I spotted his muddy, nondescript Jeep tagging along on the road out of Norton, but he was skillful at staying just at the edge of sight, and the TBI agent was so intent on us that he probably never looked behind him. When we get down to our SUV, Jesse’s Jeep is idling next to it. He just nods to us and exchanges a guarded glance with Lanny. I don’t like the look of the man, but he seems polite enough when he says, “Thanks for helping my brother out with the cops. He never wanted y’all hurt, swear to that. Bon got carried away. Olly’s a dumbass, but he ain’t evil.”

  Lanny gives him a wary nod. Truce. He winks at Vee. “Want to ride with me, pretty gal?” he asks her. I fully expect Vee to say yes; everything I know about her—including the fact that she’s familiar enough with the Belldenes to go to them for help—tells me she will. But she doesn’t. She just shakes her head and gets in the back seat of the SUV with my daughter. Lanny takes her hand and clings to it desperately. My head still hurts, but the painkillers I’ve taken are doing their job of keeping it to a dull roar.

  “You okay?” I ask my daughter softly as I drive, tailing Jesse’s muddy bumper. “Lanny?”

  She sniffs and wipes her eyes and says, “Sure. I’m fine, Mom.”

  “No, you ain’t,” Vee says. “And it’s okay, Lanta. You don’t have to be okay. You know that, right? You’ve got people.”

  Lanny takes a deep, uneven breath and drops her head onto Vee’s shoulder. I blink as I start to put the relationship into a new light. I’m pretty sure I don’t approve. “Do you think Connor and Sam are okay?” Lanny asks me. The vulnerability in her voice makes me forget my objections. For now.

  “I think Sam will do everything in his power to be sure they are.” That’s not an answer, but I don’t want to lie to her. Not about this. “Baby, I think I should take you to Javier and see if he can let you stay with him while I do this—”

  “You’re thinkin’ the Belldenes might hurt her,” Vee says. “They won’t.” She sounds utterly sure, and I give her a long look. “They do what they need to do, but there’s a code. They’re not about to break their word and hurt Lanta. Besides, I’ll look after her.”

  It’s strange, but . . . I believe her. “Why did you come, Vee?” I ask it gently. Without accusation. “Really. What happened to you?”

  Vee looks away, and for someone like Vee, who’s always on guard and armored, that’s as good as a wince. Her expression is still and quiet, and when she answers, her voice is neutral. “There was a girl in that foster home. Younger than me. Real young. She . . . she ran away and got herself hurt.” She swallows. “Was my fault. She kept followin’ me around, treatin’ me like her sister. I wasn’t, we just had rooms in the same house is all. I told her we wasn’t never goin’ to be sisters.” Her rural Tennessee accent is so thick it’s hard to understand her on the last of that. She pauses, and I realize that she’s crying—fat, silent tears sliding down her cheeks. “I just—I couldn’t stay there after. I wanted to be—” She doesn’t continue. Lanny puts her arm around her. Vee takes a deep breath and wipes her face with an impatient swipe. “I had to be on my own is all.” I hear the armor going back on, almost an audible clank of metal plates.

  “Vee,” I say. “You aren’t on your own. You don’t have to be.” Vee—fierce, independent, wildly unstable Vee—needs someone to care, and I do. I have since I met her, even though she unsettles me, even though I worry about her influence on my daughter. “You came to us for a reason, and it wasn’t to get reward money like you told Sam. Right?”

  She shakes her head, and I see the effort it takes for her to force the grin. “Good idea, though, ain’t it?”

  “I have to ask this, honey, and I need you to be completely honest with me. Do you know where Vernon Carr really is? Exactly where?” Because if she does, it’s possible that’s also where they’re taking Sam and Connor. We could get there first.

  But I can see it in her face before she says it. “No, ma’am. I know he’s got to be at that Assembly compound. But as to where it is . . .” She shakes her head. “We never were part of those people. Momma always stayed away. She was real glad when Father Tom pulled out of Wolfhunter.”

  “Okay,” I tell her. I’m disappointed, but I let it go. “I mean what I said, Vee. You’re safe. You’re not on your own.”

  She gives me a hard look this time, and it reminds me that she takes no bullshit. “For now. But what happens after? You sendin’ me back to that foster family? They don’t give a shit about me. Probably don’t even know I’m gone except it’s one less mouth to feed.”

  I don’t know if she’s right. Maybe they do care. Maybe they’re worried out of their minds about her. But I just say, “Until I say different, you’re staying with us.”

  The hard look fades, and I see the vulnerable child underneath. The one who crossed a hundred miles of hard country to get to us. To safety. To some hope of acceptance.

  “You’re with us,” I tell her. “I promise.”

  Jesse’s Jeep takes a cutoff—unmarked, and almost certainly not on any map—that leads through wild, hilly country and up into the woods; I can only vaguely guess the location, but it can’t be very far from Stillhouse Lake, or from Norton either. It just looks like a rough trail, littered with rocks that challenge the suspension of my SUV. We go through three locked gates—the last warns me that trespassers will be shot—until suddenly the trail opens into a wide clearing.

  Jasper Belldene might like to call it a lodge, but it sure meets my definition of a compound. There’s a ramshackle collection of houses clustered around a small pond fed by a stream coming down the hill. The biggest house is fairly handsome, built of heavy timbers; the others are far less fancy. I count three homes and two very large outbuildings, but there might be more up behind the big house. There’s a formidable fence all the way around—heavy-gauge chain link, with razor wire on top, and a corrugated steel fence a few feet behind it that blocks sight lines. The gate’s been rolled open for us, and that makes me think they’ve got surveillance cameras up in the trees along the road. They’ll see people coming a long way off.

  Jesse parks, and I pull up next to him. The gate’s already rolling closed behind us. I get out and say, “Just in case your daddy is thinking of pulling any bullshit, I sent texts to Kezia Claremont, my boss in Knoxville, and the FBI telling them where I’ll be.” That isn’t a bluff. I really did it before we ever left the motel room. As contingency plans go, it’s the best I can manage at the moment.

  Jesse just grins. He’s got the slick charm of a good-looking young man who skids out of every tight spot . . . until he doesn’t. “No problem, ma’am,” he says. “Jasper Belldene keeps his word once he gives it. Until you break yours. You planning on that?”

  “No.”

&nbs
p; “Then we ain’t got a worry.” He turns and heads up the wooden steps to the big house, and as he does, the front door opens and Lilah Belldene steps out. She clasps her hands in front of her and gives us a warm, welcoming smile. “Come on in,” she says. “I’ve fixed up a couple of rooms for you two girls. Gwen, I don’t expect you’ll be staying that long. Jasper’ll be out directly, you just wait right inside.”

  The house is surprisingly . . . normal. Comfortable couches, a worn old recliner that’s no doubt Jasper’s exclusive domain. A rocking chair with a basket of colorful yarn beside it, and knitting needles stuck in. The place smells clean and feels warm. Welcoming. There’s a big high-definition TV set to a news channel that plays without sound.

  It’s not exactly what I expected from the Hillbilly Mafia.

  “Girls, you follow me,” Lilah says. “I’ll get you settled, and then we’ll have some hot cocoa. All right?”

  Lanny’s still holding Vee’s hand, but she drops it and turns to me to give me a hug that takes my breath. I hold her like I never intend to let her go, but I know I have to, and finally I open my arms and watch her step away. “Lilah. A moment,” I say, and Mrs. Belldene stops.

  She looks at me for a second, then turns to the girls and says, “Down the hall and to the right. Your rooms are across from each other. You’re going to have to share that bathroom, now, and I want it kept clean. Go on. I’ll be right along.”

  She turns toward me and waits. I walk closer. Close enough that we could hug, if we’re so inclined. We are not. “People know where they are,” I tell her. “You understand me?”

  She raises her thin, graying eyebrows. She looks so devastatingly grandmotherly in her red gingham shirt. She’s even wearing a necklace I recognize: one that dangles a cluster of birthstones of her children and grandchildren. It’s an impressive collection. A deliberate reminder that she has a family she loves. Everything this woman does, I think, is calculated to disarm.

  “Trust but verify,” she says, and winks. “I’d do the same. We may be friendly right now, but we sure ain’t friends. Even so: if your daughter sticks to her story and my Olly comes home, we’re square for now. Then you leave this county, and we’re square for good.” She loses the smile like it was a paper mask she’d put up. “I would not hurt your child. You can be sure of that.”