He gasped.
She had stripped out of her housekeeper’s uniform and into a set of red, sheer mesh lingerie, the bra and panties embroidered with a floral pattern. Her body was exquisite, her skin glistening as if lacquered. She had let down her hair, letting it drape her shoulders in luxurious waves.
“Hey.” Ben cleared his throat. “What is this all about?”
Blank-faced, empty-eyed, like a robot programmed to complete a mission, Leah advanced toward him. Ben rose, unsteadily, to his feet.
His head felt as if it were inflated with helium and might separate from his shoulders and fly away across the room.
“You’re beautiful, and I’m flattered by this, whatever it is,” Ben said. “But I’m in a serious, monogamous relationship. I don’t cheat on my lady.”
Wordlessly, Leah slipped her arms around his waist and pressed against him. The warm firmness of her beautiful, nearly naked body snuggled against his had a predictable physiological effect: he felt an erection stirring. His face burned.
Feeling his arousal, she pressed against him more urgently. She raised her legs off the floor, trying to wrap all her limbs around him.
Their bodies so close, her perfume swirling around him, it would have been easy to give in to primal desire, to shut down the moral center of his brain and allow pure sensation to take over. If he were a younger man with poor impulse control and raging hormones, he might have succumbed to this odd seduction and had the night of his life with this nubile young woman. But looking at her, he could not help noticing the vapidity in her eyes, as if she were a street worker and he was the fiftieth john of the night; and then he noticed the faint scar on her throat—hadn’t the woman at the barber shop had a scar like that on her neck?
Everything about this encounter was strange, and deeply disturbing. Most of all, he loved Mallory and meant what he said: he wasn’t cheating on his lady.
“Sorry, but I’m not doing this.” Swiveling to the bed, he grasped her slender arms and tugged them away, but trying to slip out of her embrace was like trying to get untangled from a spider’s web. Half lying against the bed, half wrapped around him, she squirmed soundlessly.
“No!” he said, prying free from her grasp. He moved away from the bed and pointed to the doorway. “Get dressed, and leave. Please.”
She sat on the bed, watching him with those flat, dark eyes. Then she unhooked her bra and let it drop to her lap.
Ben wanted to turn away, but looking away was like fighting a powerful magnetic force. Her breasts were so perfectly sculpted they might have been cosmetically enhanced. Watching him gawking at her, she slowly traced her fingers around the nipples and caressed the smooth, firm curves. She puckered her lips in a kiss and flicked her tongue at him, teasingly.
His groin ached with pent-up lust. For a microsecond, lush images crowded his mind: him kneeling on the floor while she wrapped her legs around him and cradled his head to her breasts, giving him free reign to kiss, nuzzle, suck, lick . . . but he blinked it away. Never.
“I’ll wait outside for you to get dressed,” he said. “Please hurry. I’m tired.”
It felt like the longest walk of his life, but Ben crossed the room to the exterior door. He waited on the concrete walkway outside.
Not a single vehicle passed on the main adjacent road while he waited in the warm air, hands shoved deep in his pockets. He literally heard crickets chirping. But he thought he saw, for the briefest minute, a shadowed face at the window of the motel manager’s front office, and when he looked again, the image had vanished.
At last, Leah came out of the room. She had dressed in her uniform again.
“Is . . . is everything okay?” he asked.
She looked at him as if with reluctance, and he saw tears shimmering in her eyes. He didn’t know whether to give her money or a hug; in the end, he just touched her shoulder, lightly.
“I don’t understand what this was all about,” he said. “But there’s another way for you to live, Leah. It doesn’t have to be like this.”
He saw the hint of a smile grace her lips. It looked like a melancholy expression, but he wanted to believe it was also a look of gratitude.
She left him and shuffled to the motel’s front office. Ben went back into his room, closed the door.
He needed a long, cold shower before he could get back to sleep.
30
Sleeping wasn’t part of Mallory’s plan before her midnight rendezvous with Rachel. There was no alarm clock in the guest room, and without her iPhone, she had no mechanism for setting a time to wake.
Afraid of drifting off and missing her window of opportunity, she sat at the desk, the nearby lamp burning, and alternated between scribbling the day’s observations in her notepad and reading a text that Tabitha had loaned her from Father’s personal library, The Book of Timeless Teachings; it had been authored by none other than Father himself (the byline was simply, “Father”) and published nine years ago by Sanctuary Press. Mallory believed Sanctuary Press was a vanity imprint that Father had established to stroke his enormous ego.
The book was only about fifty pages in length. It was a collection of aphorisms, presumably that Father had written or gathered from his studies. The heading of each page stated the topic of Father’s insights.
On Charity:
Charity is a balm for the souls of both the giver and the receiver. Practice it daily.
On Discipline:
Do that one task you despise, and do it cheerfully, for it may forge willpower as a hearth flame forges a sword.
On Sorrow:
The heart has the capacity to endure infinite sorrows, but can it love in equal measure? This is the way of the chosen.
Despite her determination to stay awake, Mallory felt her eyelids getting heavy. Before she realized what had happened, she nodded off at the desk, head drooping against her hand.
Fortunately, her internal biological clock roused her sometime later. She snapped upward in the chair, her eyes feeling as if they were full of sand. Father’s book and her notepad lay on the desk in front of her. Her neck and upper shoulders ached. She had slipped inadvertently into slumber like a college student struggling to cram for finals.
The grandfather clock ticked toward midnight. She grabbed her purse, slipped inside the pen that doubled as a digital recorder, and a fresh notepad, hung the purse strap across her chest, and stepped out of the room.
The Sanctuary costume fluttered silently around her as she moved. She had changed out of the flats Tabitha had given her and into her own sneakers.
The adjoining corridor was lit only by a single candle burning inside a wall-mounted lantern. The flame cast a pale glow.
She looked toward Tabitha’s bedroom. The door was closed, and darkness outlined the edges of the doorway. She had seen her niece before heading toward bed and the girl had bid her goodnight and said she was turning in as well. It would be good to have some freedom from her monitoring presence.
Mallory’s shadow accompanied her as she crept in the opposite direction, toward the catwalk. Her shoes whispered across the hardwood floors; the mansion was quiet, illuminated in sections by candles glowing in lanterns.
Ahead, the outer doors to Father’s wing hung open, weak light filtering from within. Mallory hesitated for only a moment before she plunged across the threshold.
Another wall lantern illuminated a long hallway that ran parallel to the corridor on the opposite wing of the house. Paintings, all of them of Father in various poses and settings, adorned the walls, the pieces artfully displayed in lantern lights. It was like a gallery in a museum.
She passed a couple of doors, each of them locked, before she reached a much larger doorway on her left: a wide pair of closed French doors.
The inner sanctum, Mallory thought.
Warm light glowed at the bottom of the doorway. A mahogany end table occupied a niche on the edge of the threshold, a vase of a dozen fresh red roses standing on the polished surface.
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Mallory placed her ear against the doors. She heard nothing but flat silence. She lay the tips of her fingers against the brass door lever, tried to turn it.
Locked.
She needed to get moving. If Rachel didn’t see her soon, she might get spooked and return to her quarters, and Mallory would lose her as an ally. Reluctantly, Mallory left Father’s wing. She took the staircase to the main level.
She didn’t see any of the Brides as she hurried to the mansion’s rear door. She was grateful the hard-working young women had finally been granted an opportunity to sleep.
The rear doors opened soundlessly. Outside, the summer night was cool and breezy. Nocturnal creatures wove a tapestry of sounds.
Glass lanterns standing on wrought-iron pillars cast circles of golden light along various regions of the landscaped property. A cobblestone walkway led to the courtyard, where the gazebo stood beyond a tall row of thick hedges.
Creeping forward, Mallory avoided the walkway and lighted areas and kept to the pooled darkness. She didn’t know who might be watching from a window, though she’d yet to see any signs that anyone else in Sanctuary was awake.
Reaching the hedges, she heard sounds of struggle coming from ahead. A woman’s muted cry. A man’s soft grunt.
Mallory froze, childhood memories flooding into her mind. She tried to force her feet to move, but her shoes might as well have been cemented to the ground. Cold perspiration saturated the back of her neck.
Someone gasped. It was a sound of pain—or pleasure. Mallory finally broke her paralysis. She slid around the edge of the hedges.
A tall, broad-shouldered man in a blue costume that matched hers stood in the middle of the dimly lit gazebo, his back facing her: Nimrod, her nephew.
A Bride knelt in front of him. Mallory couldn’t see the woman’s face from where she stood, but it could have only been Rachel.
Her stomach churned.
But Mallory didn’t move. Although the scene felt wrong, she didn’t understand what was going on, didn’t know the rules in this strange place. Rachel wasn’t even supposed to be there, and neither was she. What would happen if she exposed herself?
This is how you get institutionalized, she thought with a sick sense of realization. When you stop acting, stop speaking up, and you start giving in to fear.
She hated herself, but she waited there, hidden beside the hedges, until Nimrod apparently finished up with Rachel, turned, and swaggered away from the gazebo. He wandered from the courtyard and the mansion, into a dark, wooded region of the property, back to his private quarters or wherever he lived with his dogs.
Mallory hurried to Rachel. Rachel sat cross-legged on the gazebo’s pinewood floor, shoulders slumped, head down.
“Hey, Rachel,” Mallory whispered. “Are you okay?”
Rachel raised her face. One of her eyes looked red and swollen.
“Jesus, did he hit you?” Mallory asked. “What did he do?”
Rachel shook her head, shrugged helplessly. Remembering her pen and pad, Mallory placed the items in the young woman’s hands.
“Tell me what happened, please,” Mallory said.
Hesitating only a moment, Rachel scribbled, furious ink slashes on the paper: Doesn’t matter. That’s life here.
“We need to get you some ice,” Mallory said. “It’s going to hurt like hell and bruise.”
Impatient scribbling: I can take care of myself. Don’t have much time.
“I’m going to get you out of here,” Mallory said, but her words sounded hollow to her own ears. She had stood back and done nothing while Nimrod had violated this woman, who was only there in the first place because Mallory had asked her to meet in the gazebo at midnight. At what point was she going to rescue Rachel from anything?
Rachel responded to Mallory’s promise with only a feeble smile.
“Why don’t any of the Brides speak?” Mallory asked. “I need to understand.”
Rachel rolled her head backward to expose the length of her slender neck. She traced her index finger along a faint, inch-long scar at the base of her throat.
“Surgery?” Mallory asked. “Someone performed a surgery that took away your ability to speak?”
Rachel slashed a word on the paper: Father.
My God, he’s even crazier than I believed, Mallory thought. There was a name for the procedure, she recalled: a laryngectomy. Removal of the larynx, the so-called voice box. Usually, it was done to treat cancer, as a last resort.
They have pledged to serve in silence, Father had said.
“Did you . . . did you ask for this?” Mallory asked. She knew how absurd her words sounded, but she had to put forth the question.
Rachel gawked at her as if she’d gone mad. Shaking her head, she slashed another comment: I was brought here. My big sister, too. I tried to get out. But they brought me back.
Human trafficking, Mallory realized. She was aware of the literature on the subject, knew that the United States was the worst offender internationally, understood that metro Atlanta had long operated as a human trafficking hub, thanks to its busy airport and reputation as a gateway for the Southeast. In the deepest layers of her mind, she had suspected this might be going on at Sanctuary, the truth obscured by Father’s psychobabble.
These young women, the so-called Brides, were modern-day slaves.
But for what purpose? Was it primarily to constantly clean and maintain the mansion and surrounding property? To provide sexual gratification to men like Nimrod and possibly Father? To stroke Father’s megalomania?
And how did any of it tie back to Liz?
Her heart booming, Mallory took Rachel’s hand in hers and helped her stand. The girl wobbled against her for a beat, and then found her footing.
“Are you sure you’re up for this?” Mallory asked. She felt an instinctive urge to hug Rachel, to guide her somewhere safe and tend to her like a little sister. Asking for the young woman to help her after Nimrod had assaulted her felt like the most selfish act she could imagine.
But Rachel bobbed her head and wrote. We’re here now. What did you want?
“Okay,” Mallory said. “I need you to help me find my sister. She’s a couple of years older than I am, in her late thirties. But I think she’s here, at Sanctuary. Do you have any idea where she might be?”
She scribbled on the pad and then handed the pen and paper back to Mallory.
Follow me.
31
Rachel took her away from the courtyard and the well-lit outdoor areas, into the dark wooded region beyond. They followed an asphalt path broad enough to accommodate a vehicle, rocks crunching underfoot. Back in the guest suite, in a moment of inspiration, Mallory had thought she might need her keychain flashlight. She used the tiny flashlight’s narrow white beam to illuminate the way as they traveled deeper into the woods.
Moths flitted through the arc of light, papery wings fluttering. Of one thing Mallory was certain: Tabitha had avoided this area earlier during her tour. A deliberate omission? Her niece was a lot more calculating than she let on.
Shoulder to shoulder, she and Rachel traveled at a brisk pace. An opossum crossed their path and turned its ghostly white face in their direction, startling Mallory and drawing a gasp from Rachel. The marsupial promptly lost interest in them and scampered away into the forest.
Mallory had plenty more questions for Rachel, and she supposed they have could communicated via their rudimentary system while walking through the night, but nothing was more important to Mallory than learning more about her sister. She was almost afraid to ask where Rachel was taking her and kept quiet, confident that soon enough, she would discover more.
After they had walked for several minutes, the road twisted around a knot of bushes. Rachel slowed and stuck out her arm to block Mallory from advancing.
“Why are you stopping?” Mallory panned the light around; the road stretched on ahead.
Rachel scribbled: I’m going back. I’m not going to the stable.
“The stable?” Mallory asked. Her voice seemed loud in the darkness. “What’s kept in the stable?”
But Rachel thrust the pen and pad into Mallory’s hands and retreated along the path, back the way they had come. In the backsplash of the flashlight’s glow, Mallory saw the girl’s eyes were wide with fear.
“Wait,” Mallory said. “Tell me what’s in the stable, please.”
Without answering, Rachel turned and ran, her slender, white-robed form like a spirit floating through the night, the sound of her footsteps receding.
“Shit,” Mallory muttered. She didn’t worry about finding her way back to the house—she hadn’t seen any intersecting paths—but what lay ahead that frightened Rachel so much?
The flashlight beam sputtered. Mallory tapped the base of it, and the light brightened once more.
The sense of isolation was so profound she might have been a castaway on an island in the South Pacific. A million different night creatures buzzed and chirped and hooted in the underbrush. She was a city girl, most comfortable surrounded by buildings and traffic and urban noise, and being out here, alone in the woods at midnight, made her skin prickle with a vague sense of unease.
But she pressed onward.
After she had walked about a hundred yards, the road dipped sharply and emptied into an asphalt parking area. Three vehicles were parked down there: a golf cart, a black Mercedes S-series sedan, and a white transport van.
The lot was adjacent to an immense, windowless brick building that looked like some kind of warehouse. A light glowed above a doorway.
The stable, Mallory thought. But what was kept in there? To whom did the Mercedes and transport van belong? She could assume they used the golf cart to travel back and forth from the house to this mystery building.
She hurried forward, tiny rocks scattering in her wake.
The parking lot was small, and could have held no more than ten vehicles. On the opposite side, it emptied into another asphalt path.
She shone her flashlight on the sedan’s license plate. A Georgia tag, Lowndes County. She wrote the plate numbers in her small spiral notepad.
The Quiet Ones Page 12
