by Rose, Karen
That brought chuckles from everyone, even Gideon, who was studying Amos with more respect. ‘You risked yourself by making that hope chest for Eileen. Thank you.’
Amos sighed. ‘Don’t thank me. As you said, it took me long enough. But I saw Eileen one day and she was bruised and bloody. And I remembered Mercy and your mother . . . And I had to do something.’
‘What prompted you to leave last night?’ Daisy asked.
‘I was waiting for spring. There’s still snow up in the mountains. I made another hope chest, this time with a false bottom to hide Abigail. I was biding my time, hoping for an opportunity to get her out on DJ’s truck, but with me accompanying her. I didn’t want her to end up like Eileen. Ephraim told us that she’d fallen down a ravine. The body that he brought back was unidentifiable, just like the body that Waylon brought back after your escape, Gideon. But then I saw Ephraim kill the Comstocks with such . . . glee. He told the membership that they’d decided to return to the world, that they’d turned their backs on God because of Eileen’s death.’
‘You knew that was a lie,’ Gideon said quietly. ‘But you couldn’t tell anyone.’
‘Because they’d kill me, too. And then Abigail would have no one. And then, on Saturday, I cut my finger.’ Amos looked at his finger, now wrapped in a fresh bandage. ‘It seems like a year ago, but it was just four days. I went to the healer and got a glimpse into her office. And I saw she had a computer.’
Gideon whistled. ‘That must have been a shock.’
‘Oh, it was. I mean, I’d seen computers before I joined Eden. But they were certainly not the same as they are now. We knew about the Internet. We heard about it from people who joined in the last twenty years or so, but the way I pictured it was nothing like it really is. I was shocked, mainly that other people besides Ephraim were lying. Ephraim killing the Comstocks shocked me as well, but I already knew he was a brutal man. That Sister Coleen was part of any of the secrecy . . . Well, it was hard not to show how stunned I was. Luckily the cut was bad and she attributed my reaction to blood loss. Later that night, I overheard Pastor talking on the phone. A cell phone, as it turns out.’
Mercy smiled. ‘You got catapulted into the twenty-first century, huh?’
Amos nodded. ‘I knew about phones as well, but nobody was allowed to speak of them. Abigail told me that one of the children in her class was beaten for telling the other students about them. I didn’t realize how widespread the lies were. I didn’t know who to trust.’
‘Who was Pastor talking to on the phone?’ Gideon asked.
‘He made two calls. The first, I don’t know. He was looking for Ephraim. The second call was to Ephraim himself. Apparently Ephraim should have come back to Eden already. We thought he was fasting and praying on the mountain like he did four times a year, but he must have told Pastor that he’d been hurt and needed to rest, because Pastor acted like he felt relieved that there was a good reason because DJ had told him otherwise. Ephraim and DJ do not get along, but you already knew that, Mercy.’
Mercy’s throat went tight. She didn’t want to talk to Amos about her mother’s death. It still hurt and it would hurt him, too. But keeping it secret wasn’t right, either. ‘DJ shot Mama. Twice. He killed her. But before he did, Mama told him that Ephraim would kill him – DJ, I mean. DJ laughed and said that he couldn’t. I assumed that meant that DJ had information on him.’
‘I know about that,’ Amos said heavily. ‘Agent Molina told me. I wish I’d known when I climbed into his truck last night. I would have killed him myself and saved us all the danger.’
Mercy squeezed his hand. ‘So you left Eden after Pastor’s call?’
‘No. On Monday I followed DJ out of the compound and heard him make a call as well. He talked about you, Mercy. That’s why I’m here.’
Folsom, California
Tuesday, 18 April, 6.20 P.M.
Ephraim collapsed onto the bed in his camper. He’d made it out of Granite Bay, but it had been close, the cops setting up roadblocks seconds after he’d passed by. He’d been able to see them in his rear-view mirror as he’d turned onto the main drag out of town.
It had been too damn close. And for nothing.
As soon as the cops made the link between the shooting, the stolen Jeep, and the honeymoon murders from Broken Tooth Campground, Mercy would go underground, of that he was certain. Rafe Sokolov and that bastard Gideon would close ranks and he’d never get her alone.
Well, I can go under, too. He’d been in hiding for thirty years. He’d go back to Eden. Wait her out. The worst that would happen would be that DJ would find himself the unfortunate victim of an ‘accident’, and Ephraim would bury him. Pastor would mourn the boy he’d called his own son, of course, but as long as Ephraim played it smart, Pastor couldn’t blame him.
The old man still might not make Ephraim the heir. He’d skipped over Ephraim several times in the last thirty years. Pastor had only tolerated Ephraim’s presence in Eden from the very first day he’d shown up, and the feeling had been mutual. Ephraim had been young, brash, and stupid – and injured. Shot during the bank robbery that had sent him and his brother, Aubrey, on the run in the first place. Aubrey wouldn’t leave him to die and dragged him to Eden because it was the only place Aubrey knew they’d be safe.
Ephraim hadn’t quite appreciated the gravity of their situation or how much Pastor needed their constant adulation. Ephraim had been a seventeen-year-old punk, plain and simple. And Pastor had only allowed him to stay because Aubrey had demanded it. There had been something between Aubrey and Pastor, some history, some debt that Pastor felt compelled to repay.
Ephraim had never asked. He really hadn’t wanted to know back then. He really wanted to know now, but Aubrey was long dead. Ephraim might never know, because Pastor still didn’t like him.
And if Pastor held on to DJ’s memory, still refusing to share those damn bank access codes? Then I’ll come back for Mercy when the coast is clear and she’s gone back to her normal life. Bringing her back to Eden – dead was fine, but alive was preferable – would force Pastor to admit that DJ had betrayed them all, and that Ephraim was the injured party.
If Mercy had returned to New Orleans by then, that was okay. Ephraim could find her there. He knew where her family lived. He knew where her best friend lived. He knew where she worked. Once Mercy’s guard was down, retrieval would be child’s play.
That settled, he closed his eyes to grab some shut-eye. He felt safe enough in the camper, tucked away in the woods. He’d ditched the custodian’s truck, stealing another Jeep.
This time, he’d planned ahead, taking the honeymooners’ camper license plates with him. He’d switched them out for the plates on a rental RV, one that advertised See America. He figured renters of vehicles didn’t memorize their plates. They wouldn’t notice that he’d switched them out until they returned their unit.
By then, he’d be back in Eden. Killing DJ.
He’d almost fallen asleep with a smile on his face when his phone rang, jarring him awake. No one had called him on either of the two new phones. The one ringing was the flip phone. He considered not answering it until he saw the caller ID.
A Santa Rosa number. It was his doctor. His mother’s doctor as well.
He answered cautiously. The doctor must have gotten the number from Pastor. Ephraim sat up, pulling his gun from its holster. Just in case. ‘Hello?’
‘Harry, it’s Dr Burkett.’
He wanted to snap that it was Mr Franklin, not Harry, but Burkett had known him since he was a little kid, so it was easier to just go with it. ‘Where did you get this number, Doctor?’
‘From your pastor. I called your old number and it just rang.’ He hesitated. ‘Was I not supposed to have your number?’
‘No, it’s fine. What’s wrong?’
Either his eyeball had been recalled, or his mother was sick. Be the
eyeball. Please be the eyeball. Especially since he kept it covered in Eden. None of the membership could know that he’d left the compound for modern medical care when they could not.
Not even Pastor or DJ knew he had a fake eye. It would be no hardship to take it out when he returned. Let my mother be all right.
‘It’s your mother. She’s fine,’ Burkett assured him quickly. ‘Some days are better than others. But today she had a visitor, and I thought you should know.’
Ephraim’s stomach twisted. This wasn’t good. ‘She’s not supposed to have visitors,’ he growled.
‘I know, but I can only make it a request. I’d have to justify an order and I can’t.’
‘Who visited her?’ Ephraim barked, not wanting to hear the doctor’s excuses.
‘A woman named Miriam Smith and her friend, Beth Jones.’
Ephraim’s blood ran cold. Miriam? That had been Mercy’s given name in Eden. It had also been Eileen Danton’s given name. Either way, this was not good. ‘I don’t know those women.’
‘That’s interesting, because Miriam claimed to be your wife.’
Shit. ‘What did she look like?’
‘Tall, dark hair. Green eyes.’
Fucking hell. ‘She was with a woman? Not a big blond guy?’
‘No, it was a woman. I talked to the nurse’s aide when I got there. She called me when the women showed up. Which is what I pay her for.’
‘Was my mother . . . lucid?’
‘I don’t know. She wasn’t when I got there, but who knows? Like I said, she has good and bad days. She was rocking and saying that her baby was gone and that she hadn’t used a key. Do you know what that means?’
Yes. Of course he did. The key was to their safe-deposit box. It contained a handwritten statement detailing the guilt of all the Founding Elders. If any of the founders died unexpectedly, whoever they’d entrusted with a key was to give the documents to the police. They’d all prepared a similar package, and they’d all stored the documents in individual safe-deposit boxes, except for Ephraim and Edward, who shared a box.
All of the founders had given their key to someone on the outside. It was a fail-safe mechanism. A way to keep them all honest. Or at least honest with one another. It kept them from killing one another at first. But with Waylon and Edward gone? Only Ephraim and Pastor still had files. DJ might have had Waylon’s, but he hadn’t used it after Waylon’s death, and Pastor claimed he’d taken Waylon’s key.
Of course, both Pastor and DJ were liars, so who knew what the real truth was? His plan to kill DJ dimmed a little. He’d forgotten that DJ might have access to Waylon’s safe-deposit box.
‘No,’ he lied. ‘I have no idea what that means. Probably nothing. My mother hasn’t made sense in years.’
Still, he relaxed. If all his mother had said to Mercy was that she hadn’t used the key, there was no real harm done. His mother didn’t even have a key anymore. He’d taken Aubrey’s key back after his brother’s murder and retrieved his own key when his mother had started to show signs of dementia.
Ephraim had made sure to tell her not to send the incriminating documents out after his brother’s death because none of the other Founding Elders had done it.
That would be Gideon’s sin. For which the bastard would pay.
‘Well . . .’ Burkett hesitated and Ephraim’s stomach twisted again.
‘Well, what?’
‘She told me that she gave Miriam the key.’
‘She doesn’t have a key,’ Ephraim said flatly. He had the only keys. They were in a pocket of his laptop bag. He’d kept the keys and the laptop in his locker at Regina’s place until Saturday night.
His gut took a sudden plunge. Regina had broken into his locker. She’d searched his laptop. He scrambled from the camper’s bed to grab the laptop bag and check the pocket. Then exhaled in relief. The keys were still there, right where he’d left them. ‘There is no key,’ he added with more conviction.
‘She seemed to think that she had one. She showed me a small wooden chest with a false bottom. Said she’d hidden the key there for Aubrey. Sometimes she thinks he’s still alive, you know. Or you would if you visited her more often.’
Shit, shit, shit. Ephraim knew the chest. It had been made by Amos, Eden’s resident woodworker. Ephraim hadn’t realized that it had held anything. His mother had assumed that Ephraim had made the chest himself, and he’d let her believe it. It had made her happy and he’d certainly told worse lies.
And worse truths. He thought about the contents of the safe-deposit box, swallowing hard at the sudden burn of bile in his throat. He’d written down everything he’d ever been told, everything he’d overheard or witnessed. He’d documented every sin the Founding Elders had ever committed, but those sins weren’t what had him sweating right now.
He’d kept a running tally of every penny the founders shared. Pastor showed them the earnings reports twice a year, and each time Ephraim made notes of the numbers as soon as he was out of Pastor’s sight. If Mercy gave that key to the cops, they’d know exactly what Eden was worth.
The money was safely hidden in offshore accounts for the moment, but if there was one thing he’d learned from DJ over the years, it was that the Feds were capable of tracking nearly anything with their fancy computers. And now the Feds knew where to look. If Mercy had gotten a key from Ephraim’s mother, she’d already given it to either her detective boyfriend or her brother.
Gideon. The Fed. He was behind this, Ephraim was certain.
If they’d visited his mother, they were probably already tracking how Ephraim paid for her care. They’d find the bank accounts and would inevitably recognize Frutuoso for an Eden account once they figured out that the company dealt in ‘olive oil and pomegranates’.
Stupid Pastor. The man thought he was so damn clever. Naming the company ‘fruitful’. It was bad enough that Pastor had chosen his name because ‘Ephraim’ meant ‘fruitful’. Ephraim had been only seventeen years old and full of himself, it was true. And yeah, he’d fucked the fourteen-year-old granddaughter of Doc, the oldest Founding Elder, but so what? The old man was long dead now, the first of all of them to die, so he didn’t care anymore. Plus, the girl had wanted it. And Ephraim had married her when she’d shown up pregnant.
Not like he’d had a choice. But marriage was his punishment, as was the name change to Ephraim. It was a taunt, a constant reminder that he’d gotten Doc’s granddaughter preggo. Because Pastor was a prick – a prick who thought he was too damn smart to ever get caught.
But Mercy was smart and so was Gideon. They’d figure out that the bank account was important, and who knew how long it would take them to trace the money back to the offshore Eden accounts?
I need to get that cash before the Feds do.
But the money wasn’t even the scariest thing. That would be the maps he’d added to the safe-deposit box every time Eden moved. He wasn’t sure what the other founders had included in their ‘fail-safe boxes,’ but Ephraim’s approach was scorched earth, all the way. If one of the fuckers had killed him, his mother would have opened his box and found every location Eden had ever settled.
She’d find the locations of their product stashes – pot, shrooms, opioids. And the cash that DJ collected every week that he took a drug shipment to his contacts. DJ would deposit it periodically into banks in either Santa Rosa, Sacramento, or San Francisco, but never often and never in the same bank. Then Pastor would move it into the main offshore account, which the man controlled with an iron fist.
But the most dangerous map in the safe-deposit box was the one he’d made showing the locations of future settlements, because they always had a few scouted out.
If Ephraim had gotten murdered, he hadn’t wanted any of the others to survive, either. His mother knew that if he didn’t visit her every three months she was to assume he’d met with foul play. E
xcept that now she didn’t remember one day to the next, much less how long it had been since he’d come to see her. Which was why he’d taken her keys – or thought he had.
That she’d had an actual key, one that she’d kept secret from him? This was really bad.
He’d literally given the Feds a road map to the compound and its assets. He hadn’t yet added a map since their last move, after Miriam ran away, but it didn’t matter. They were reusing a past location because it had been November and they’d needed shelter as snow had already begun to fall.
So the Feds would still find them. Fuck me.
‘Harry?’ Dr Burkett prompted. ‘Are you all right?’
‘I’m fine,’ he insisted. ‘You’re sure that Miriam wasn’t there with a man? Either blond or with dark hair like hers?’
‘The aide only said that she saw the two women. She took a photo of them with her phone. I can send it to you.’
‘I can’t get photos with this phone. It’s very basic.’ And he didn’t want to give the doctor the number to his smartphone, in case the doctor was too chummy with Pastor. He didn’t want DJ to be able to track him with the smartphone, like he’d done with the last one.
‘I can print them up for you if you want to come and get them. And you might visit your mother. She misses you.’
‘I’ll stop by when I can.’
If the cops got hold of that key, they’d know everything about Eden. They’d know where the compound currently existed. And if Ephraim told Pastor that they had to move again, Pastor would want to know why. If he admitted that the Feds had his maps? Ephraim might as well kiss the millions goodbye.
He needed to get to Mercy asap. His brain started to spin, trying to think of how to best lure her away from her protectors. ‘Thanks,’ he said brusquely. ‘I need to go.’
‘Not so fast,’ the doctor chided. ‘I’m really surprised you didn’t ask more about the key that your mother gave your wife.’
Ephraim bit back a snarl at the thought of Mercy in the same room with his mother. ‘I don’t know what key my mother thought she had or thought she gave to Miriam Smith, but she was mistaken. And if she did have a key, it has nothing to do with me. Thank you for calling, Doctor.’
