Ritual Sins

by Anne Stuart

  He didn’t expect to pass anyone in the narrow, dimly lit halls leading to the utility rooms, and he didn’t. Someone had locked the door to the plant, which was very strange. He hadn’t thought there were any locks in the place, except in his own rooms, and only he and Calvin knew about those. He could have picked the lock in less than a minute if he’d had anything with him, but he had no pockets in the loose-fitting pants and tunic, and he was barefoot.

  He was also very strong, and he knew without reasoning that Rachel was beyond that heavy locked door. He simply kicked it, using all his strength, and it slammed open against the far wall with a crash.

  The room was dark, but the light from the hall pooled into the shadows, and he could see her, curled up in a little ball against the far wall, staring at him. It was too dark to read the expression on her face, and besides, he’d probably seemed like the wrath of God, coming out of nowhere and smashing open the door.

  He walked over to her, ignoring the fact that his bare foot hurt like hell, and stared down at her. “Curiosity killed the cat,” he said.

  “Are you going to kill me?”

  It was questions like that that made him want to smack her. He wouldn’t, of course. He’d never hit anyone smaller or weaker than he was in his life, and he wasn’t about to start, no matter what the provocation. He’d seen enough of that. But damn, she was annoying.

  “Not at the moment,” he drawled. “You want to spend the night on the cement floor or are you coming with me?”

  “Do I have a third choice?” Her voice wavered only slightly, and he realized she’d been scared to death, locked up in this room.

  He grinned slowly. “That’s my Rachel,” he murmured. “Still fighting. You can come with me and I’ll escort you to your quarters like a good Southern gentleman. I won’t even touch you. How does that sound?”

  She didn’t say anything. He wasn’t vain enough to suppose she was reconsidering her options. “Can I sleep somewhere else?” she asked in a quiet voice.

  “The place is practically empty. Take your pick. What’s wrong with the rooms Catherine put you in?”

  “Actually I was sharing a room with Catherine. I just thought I might like my own space, and I’m sure she’d appreciate the privacy.”

  It sounded so reasonable. It was a lie. He tilted his head to one side to survey her. “What do you know, Rachel?” he asked in his softest, most insinuating voice. The voice that could make strong men weep for his approval. “What aren’t you telling me?”

  But Rachel was stronger than anyone he’d come across yet. “Nothing,” she said with a bright smile. “Absolutely nothing.”

  He looked at her for a moment longer, then nodded, half to himself. He reached down and caught her arm before she could flinch away, hauling her up. He resisted the impulse to pull her against him. It might be a way to get to her secrets, or it might merely strengthen her gathering defenses.

  “You shouldn’t smile when you lie, Rachel,” he said, releasing her arm. “It’s always a dead giveaway. About the only thing that could bring forth an honest smile from you would be my head on a platter, and I’m not about to oblige.”

  “I’ll just have to hope someone takes care of it for me.”

  He almost kissed her for that. Things were in a sad state when a woman’s fond fantasies of his decapitation made him horny, but Rachel did that to him. She was unpredictable, and he wanted to push her up against the wall and kiss her.

  “You can have your old room,” he said. “It’s empty.”

  “How do you know?”

  “I know.”

  They walked in silence, down the hallways. It was late, and through the high-set windows he could see the brightness of the desert moon. A clear night, he thought. The wolves would be running.

  He stopped outside the cell door. It was closer to his quarters than Catherine’s were—a decided advantage. “Do you want me to tell Catherine where you are? She’ll probably worry.”

  “Yes, please.”

  “Shall I tell her where I found you?”

  The fear in her eyes was unmistakable and utterly fascinating. She was now afraid of Catherine, one of the calmest, most together of his varied band of followers. What had happened in that storage room?

  “Please don’t,” she managed in a subdued voice. “When she let me come back I promised to be an obedient disciple. That room was off-limits.”

  “What did you think you’d find? My dead wives?”

  “No, I imagine they’d be in Coffin’s Grove,” she said, rallying.

  He stared down at her mouth, pale and full. It had yet to touch his body, and he wanted it. “There’s nothing left in Coffin’s Grove,” he said.

  And he turned and left her.

  Bobby Ray had been waiting for Rachel to come back. Catherine suspected something was up, and she’d told him to keep watch for her. He was good at that, watching other people. Catherine had taken his drugs away from him, though she’d told him he still had to speak slowly, to keep his eyes unfocused. She told him she didn’t like it when he was too calm.

  He hadn’t been calm for a long time.

  Catherine liked pain. The more he hurt her, the more pleasure she got. He liked pain as well, but not as much as he liked death. But he’d learned, early on, that once you kill them there was no more pleasure to be had.

  Maybe she’d let him kill Stella’s daughter. She’d promised she would take care of his needs, and he knew that getting rid of Rachel was important. He could make it last a long time.

  She was going back to her old room. That’s what Catherine had thought she would do. She’d said that if Rachel did go there, it meant she knew things that she shouldn’t be knowing. And there’d be no harm in telling her even more, since there’d be no way she could escape.

  No locks on the doors at Santa Dolores. Nothing to keep him from Rachel Connery. And no one to care if she screamed.

  Odd, Rachel thought, that her tiny cell would feel familiar, safer. She was still confused, disoriented from the time spent locked in the storage room. She was mildly claustrophobic—she didn’t mind dark, enclosed places as long as someone was with her. Alone, unable to escape, she’d felt a panic so deep in her bones that she’d begun to doubt what she’d heard. It was odd that she hadn’t had that reaction in the darkness of Luke’s converted van. Of course, she hadn’t been alone. And then she knew exactly what she was afraid of.

  She still couldn’t believe what she’d heard. The full horror of it was appalling—falsified test results, patients dying. He hadn’t come right out and admitted that he was murdering patients, falsely diagnosing them with cancer and then making certain they succumbed to the disease. But he’d said enough to convince her that Bobby Ray’s wild suppositions had been right all along.

  And they were talking about killing Luke. Had she imagined that? Or maybe it was wishful thinking. The Grandfathers made Luke the center of their lives—why on earth would they want to kill him?

  Except for the word that lingered in her mind. Martyrdom.

  The Grandfathers weren’t the spaced-out yuppies who comprised most of Luke’s followers. They were smart, experienced, sophisticated men and women. People capable of committing great evil. They must have suspected that Luke wasn’t the plaster saint he presented to the world. They must know that their cushy little retreat center was living on borrowed time.

  Not if Luke was killed, however. Martyred. A dead saint would bring the followers, and their money, flocking. If they could orchestrate it properly they would have an even bigger gold mine on their hands, and no dangerous live wire like Luke to send it all sky-high.

  Maybe they weren’t completely evil. Maybe they believed in Luke’s new age mumbo jumbo, maybe they thought they were doing this for the greater good of humanity. It didn’t matter. They were going to kill Luke.

  And she had to decide whether she was going to do anything to stop it.

  “Rachel? May I come in?” The voice was soft, hesitant,
and she looked up in surprise, into Bobby Ray Shatney’s sweet, handsome young face. He wasn’t a Grandfather—maybe he wasn’t part of the conspiracy. Or maybe he was. He’d warned her before. Could she dare trust him again? She wasn’t sure.

  She managed a faint, unwelcoming smile, stalling for time. “I’m really tired, Bobby Ray. Could we talk tomorrow?”

  He pushed the door open and came in anyway, closing it quietly behind him. He looked so young, so innocent. What was it Alfred had said about his mother?

  “It can’t wait, Rachel,” he said earnestly, and his voice was different, higher-pitched, and his eyes were clear and oddly emotionless. “I need to talk to somebody, and you’re the only one I can trust.”

  “What do you need to tell me about? Is it something about Luke? Is he in some kind of danger?”

  To her surprise he shook his head. “He’s fine. No one would want to hurt him. They all believe in him, they think he’s a god. Why should anyone want to hurt Luke?”

  “Then what did you want to tell me?”

  “I found out the truth,” he said with a shudder that shook his lean young body. “The truth about the cancer, the truth about your mother. They’ve been killing people. Telling them they have cancer, giving them drugs and radiation, cutting their bodies apart until they die, and they haven’t been sick at all. We were right all the time.”

  Rachel didn’t move. “I know,” she said in a dead voice.

  He stared at her in shock. “How?”

  “I overheard Alfred and Catherine talking. I got locked in the storage room, and they came in. They didn’t spell it out, but it was pretty clear what they were saying.”

  Bobby Ray had an odd expression on his face. “What are we going to do about it?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You can’t just ignore it. It happened to your mother. It didn’t make sense, her getting so sick, so fast. And then just dying like that. Leaf is my friend, and I told her what I suspected, and she checked the records, and it’s true. It’s all true. They keep killing people, and no one can stop them. And now Leaf’s disappeared, and I think they know we’ve found out. I had to tell someone before they get rid of me, too.”

  She stared at him in sick horror, wishing it were all a nightmare, that she didn’t have to believe him. It was too horrifying—the thought of healthy men and women systematically destroyed for a lie and a pile of money. “Does Luke know?” she asked finally. “Is he part of this?”

  Bobby Ray lifted his head, tears streaming down his sweet face. “That’s what’s stopping you, isn’t it? You’ve fallen under his spell, just like everyone else, and it doesn’t matter that he’s condoned murder. Even the murder of your mother. Of course he knows, Rachel. It was his idea in the first place. Dr. Waterston just does the dirty work. He’d do anything for Luke. Anything for the Foundation. We have to stop them. Kill them.”

  The nausea was back. She wanted to throw up, to scream, to throw things. She didn’t move, frozen.

  “And Catherine?” she managed to ask.

  Absently Bobby Ray reached up and touched his neck. There was a deep, nasty scrape there, and his hand came away wet with blood. “She’s part of it as well,” he said heavily. “She deserves punishment.”

  “We’ve got to get help,” she said, her voice numb.

  “No one will believe us.”

  “It doesn’t matter. I’ve got to go to the police, get them to come here and—”

  “That’s not all, Rachel.”

  She didn’t want to hear any more. But Bobby Ray was looking at her so expectantly, like a little puppy, that she couldn’t move. “What else?”

  “We have to move fast. They’re going to kill everyone.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous!” she snapped.

  “Catherine’s going to put poison in the water system. Cyanide. Like those people that drank poison Kool-Aid. Everyone will die, and she and the Grandfathers that are in on it will disappear with the money. And no one will ever find them.”

  “I don’t believe it. She couldn’t …”

  “She has help. She has a lover who’ll do anything she orders him to do.”

  For a moment Rachel was silent. The room suddenly stank of sweat and fear, sickness and evil. She had been right about the Foundation. All her paranoid instincts had been right.

  She’d been right about Luke Bardell. He was even more of a monster than she’d ever imagined, a creature so horrifying she couldn’t even comprehend. And she had let him touch her. She had wanted him to touch her again.

  “I’ll go for help,” she said flatly. “They won’t suspect me.”

  Bobby Ray nodded, a faint, approving expression in his colorless eyes. “If you go now you could probably make it. It’s seven miles to town, but you should be able to do that in a few hours. Go out through the garden and over the wall there. No one goes out there—no one will even notice until it’s too late.”

  “Why don’t you come with me?”

  “They keep a close eye on me. I’ve already been here too long. Be careful,” he said, heading for the door. “There are very bad people out there. People who like to cause pain.”

  She looked up into Bobby Ray’s soulful face. “You be careful too,” she said, and touched her fingers to his cheek.

  Bobby Ray was shaking so hard he wasn’t sure he could stop himself. Catherine hadn’t told him he could have her so soon, but he couldn’t wait. That touch on his cheek was the deciding factor. He slipped out into the garden, glancing up at the faint sliver of moon that hung overhead. Not a full moon, and yet he felt like a werewolf. He had no knives tonight, but he didn’t need anything. He would use his hands, his fingernails, his teeth. And he would dance naked in her blood.

  21

  Luke leaned back, staring at the television monitors. He’d moved Rachel back there on purpose. It was too expensive and too boring to watch each bedroom in the retreat center. Only a few came equipped with surveillance equipment, and he wanted Rachel where he could see her. He’d had every intention of placating himself with the distant pleasure of watching her undress. He hadn’t expected her to welcome Bobby Ray Shatney into her room.

  He should have had the place bugged as well, but he hadn’t bothered. So far no one at the retreat center had secrets from him—if he wanted to find out something he simply asked.

  But he’d sat alone in the darkened room and watched the sick horror wash over Rachel’s face, and he knew things were moving too fast.

  It could have been something relatively simple. Bobby Ray was kept in a docile state through the judicious use of tranquilizers, but that didn’t mean he’d forgotten. He might be telling Rachel about the night he systematically, savagely destroyed his entire family in the name of some arcane satanistic message. Bobby Ray had told him, his voice soft and slurred, his innocent face dreamy and peaceful as he recounted horrors that shocked even Luke, who prided himself on having seen everything.

  If he was telling Rachel about washing his hands in his mother’s blood, it was no wonder she was looking sick.

  No, that couldn’t be it. She’d be more than sick, she’d be puking her guts out, as Luke had once Bobby Ray had finished his cheerful confession and left.

  Bobby Ray had kept his back to the surveillance camera during most of the time he’d spent in Rachel’s room, and Luke had little chance to see his expression. For a moment he wondered whether any of his devoted followers had come to suspect he might be watching them, then he dismissed the notion as Bobby Ray turned away and headed for the door, touching his cheek lightly where Rachel had impulsively touched him.

  His eyes were sharp and clear and, unseen by Rachel, he was smiling. And Luke knew that the monster had been unleashed.

  There was no sign of Calvin, no sign of anyone as Luke rushed into the main room. It was close to midnight, and everyone would have gone to sleep hours ago. Calvin had his own rooms, at the far end of the compound—they’d planned it that way so that he could keep an e
ye on things. Luke tried the cellular phone, but there was no answer. Another anomaly. Calvin kept his miniature cell phone with him at all times. He was never beyond reach.

  He had no choice but to go and find him. He went out into the hallway, just in time to see Bobby Ray disappear into the garden, the door closing silently behind him.

  Luke paused, uneasiness washing over him. Maybe he was simply waiting for Catherine to return, so that they could continue their kinky games. Or maybe he had something else, something worse in mind.

  The answer came a few minutes later as Rachel tiptoed down the darkened corridor, holding her soft-soled sandals in one hand to keep her advance even quieter. The lights had been turned way down, as they were every night, and she had no idea he was watching her surreptitious approach. Odd, he would have thought she’d start to develop a sixth sense about him. As he had about her. He knew when she was nearby, he sensed her. Apparently she was better at fighting the obsession.

  Obsession. An ugly word, but curiously apt, and Luke wasn’t one to shy away from ugliness. Yes, he was obsessed by her. Too damned bad he couldn’t have chosen someone a little easier to fall in love with.

  He jerked, startled at his own inadvertent mental slip. Obsession was one thing, sick but unavoidable, like most of life. Falling in love was stupid, childish, weak, and impossible.

  She saw him then, just as she was reaching for the door to the garden. If she made it through the door Bobby Ray would have her, Luke knew it with a sudden terrible clarity. He would kill her, without compunction, with pleasure and lingering agony. He didn’t know why things had suddenly come to this pass, but they had.

  He caught her before she had the door halfway open, slamming it shut again, slamming her back against it. “Where do you think you’re going?” he demanded in a dangerous undertone.

  She was looking up at him in utter horror. He thought he’d grown used to that expression on her face; for some reason she kept thinking he was evil incarnate, and he was getting damned tired of it.