by April Hunt
“Come on, man. Seriously?”
“Do I come to your place and shit in your bed?”
“No. You shit in my latrine, and then I have to light those damn scented candles just so I can take a piss afterward.”
Knox’s continued scowl dropped Ryder’s feet to the ground. “Hard-ass.”
“Lightweight.” His one-word reminder of Ryder’s recent failed attempt to outdrink Jaz, Steele Ops’s resident sniper, broke the two brothers out into near matching grins.
Knox nodded for everyone to take a seat. “Let’s get this show on the road.”
“And not on I-95 during rush hour,” Ryder joked.
Everyone groaned, and Roman threw his empty coffee cup at his younger brother’s head. “What did I tell you about those lame-ass jokes?”
“Oh, come on. That was funny,” Ryder protested.
Grace patted his hand and took a seat; the one as far from Cade as possible. “It really wasn’t, honey. If those are the kind of jokes you dole out during happy hour, no wonder you’re still single.”
“I think I like it better when you ride Cade’s ass. Dude, switch seats with me.” He lifted his ass off his chair as if to get up and got yanked back—hard—by Grace.
“I think you guys need to start talking.” She glanced around the room. “But aren’t we missing someone? I seem to be one cousin short.”
Knox nodded. “Liam’s going over the logistics of the New Dawn op with Tank and Jaz.”
Ryder chuckled. “And probably regretting his chosen occupation as the Steele Ops smart-ass. You and Cade are cuddly kittens compared to those two.”
Grace arched a delicately curved eyebrow. “And you paired the two of them together?”
“You’ll understand when you see them interact,” Cade interjected. “But we’re also running low on options. We’ve used undercovers, both ours and local law enforcement, and haven’t gotten much more than a nibble. For a cult, New Dawn is pretty damn particular.”
“And let me guess, when you got a nibble, it didn’t go anywhere.”
“Exactly.”
Grace pulled a stack of files from her bag and spread them out on the table in front of them. “Because they weren’t the right fit. Even though Teague Rossbach’s a sociopath, he isn’t stupid. The Seekers—or recruiters—that he sends out into the general population are little more than sheep. He gives them just enough information for them to do their job.”
“So even if they had nibbled…”
“They wouldn’t have been able to give you a damn thing, or at least anything that we’re looking for. Anyone who knows anything of use is going to be in his tight circle—his Council. And they’re going to be on the Order compound—which is where Brandt’s intel states that Sarah’s been since leaving DC.”
“So then why the hell are we bothering with winning over these Seekers?” Cade’s question earned him everyone’s attentions. “Sarah Brandt’s on the OND compound, right? Then we perform an old-school recovery. In and out. Everyone’s happy.”
Grace rolled her pretty eyes at him. “That’s not going to work.”
“Why not?”
“Because in order to raid the compound, you’d need to find it. It’s not like it’s on a map, and I highly doubt even the Seekers know the exact location.”
Roman scratched his scruffy beard, deep in thought. “Then how do they get new members there? If they do most of their brainwashing at the compound, then they have to transport them somehow.”
“Members of the Council. I vaguely remember that there’d be times when a few of them disappeared for a day, sometimes two, and when they returned, our little ‘flock’ had grown.”
“Flock?” Roman lifted a dark eyebrow. “What the hell did he see his followers as? Geese?”
“Please don’t get me started on Rossbach’s twisted dictionary of words. I could spend weeks talking about the psychology behind it all.”
From the file, Cade pulled the surveillance images of Bethany and Thomas Williams, the New Dawn couple they’d been tailing for the last few weeks. Fairly recent transplants in DC, they both worked steady jobs at one of the private schools across town. Teachers, for God’s sake.
A realization nearly smacked Cade in the face.
Teachers. “Most school systems don’t exactly dish out a lot of personal time. These recruiters aren’t going to be able to drop everything to play escort to new members very often.”
“You’re right,” Grace admitted. “I think I remember it being about once a month, and it wasn’t as if they brought a busload. It was maybe two or three people at a time. At the most, four. Rossbach’s selective. He’s only going to pick people who he thinks he can do his mind-meld thing with.”
Ryder snorted. “So basically the chances of getting recruited are the same as someone’s chances of being drafted by the NHL. Nice.”
Grace eyed the photos in Cade’s hands. “If you’ve been tailing those recruiters for weeks and haven’t seen anything suspicious, it probably means they haven’t transported any new members recently.”
Cade’s eyes snapped up to hers. “Their flock’s overdue for a population increase.”
“Exactly what I was thinking. If we move on this quickly, your operatives can be first-round draft picks.” Grace grinned at Cade, nearly making him fall off his damn chair.
Fuck. That smile. At the sight of it, his body never ceased to come alive. There’d been times when they were teenagers that he’d do something purposefully stupid to see her flash one his way. It was more addictive than caffeine.
As if suddenly realizing who’d she’d been smiling at, Grace’s grin melted away, and the loss of it was a like a sucker punch to his gut.
She leaned back in her chair and tucked her hands on her lap, turning toward her cousins. “I’m going to make sure your people get on the inside, but there’s one thing you may have to prepare yourself for that I haven’t heard anyone mention.”
“What’s that?” Knox asked.
“What are you going to do if Sarah Brandt doesn’t want to leave?”
* * *
No one moved. No one took so much as a shallow breath or blinked. It was more than a little eerie.
Grace hated being the bearer of bad news, and judging by the looks on her cousins’ faces as well as Cade’s, it was probably one of the worst she could have delivered. But they had brought her here to do a job, and that was what she needed to do even if it meant dropping a metaphorical monsoon on their parade.
“Didn’t think of that, did you?” Grace asked.
Knox opened and closed his mouth, unable to form words. Ryder and Roman both looked horrified at the concept.
Cade looked her dead in the eye, the first to speak. “You seriously think that could be the case?”
“I would be surprised if it wasn’t.” Having prepared to drop reality into the situation, Grace popped open three files and slid them down the table. “The People’s Temple in Jonestown. Heaven’s Gate in California. The Branch Davidians in Waco. All with very different belief systems. But one thing they have in common is the followers follow blindly. They stay because they want to.”
“You didn’t.”
Grace forced herself to meet Cade’s eyes.
As a general rule, she didn’t talk about the OND. It wasn’t the healthiest coping strategy, and as her old therapist had told her with routine frequency, it would come back to bite her on the ass one day.
That was why she’d opened up to Cade all those years ago. Not wide open. A girl had to keep up some protective walls in this day and age, but she’d given him enough glimpses for him to know what getting involved with her meant.
For him. For her. For them.
She’d expected him to run away screaming, but instead he’d held on tighter…until her college graduation, when he’d let go completely and re-upped his service with the Army.
Grace pulled her head out of the past before it swallowed her whole. “My issues with the OND
weren’t exactly typical. I’m pretty sure that I’m the reason Rossbach even designed the Reconditioning Center.”
Roman winced. “Is that as bad as it sounds?”
“If it sounds like manual labor mixed in with solitary confinement and a lot of self-reflection, then yes.”
Her cousin’s dark eyes narrowed. “And where was your mom during all this?”
“Mother Dearest? Rossbach’s fiercest cheerleader and mega-groupie?” Grace let out a humorless snort. The idea of Rebecca Steele giving a damn about her daughter, other than how Grace’s disobedience made her look to others, was laughable. “She probably would’ve been thrilled if he’d kept me in the Rec full-time. But we’re getting off topic. We need to focus on Sarah Brandt, not me.”
Knox leaned his arms on the table. “So you’re saying that we’re looking at two scenarios: the vice president’s daughter either being a permanent resident of the Reconditioning Center or someone who leads the freakin’ evening blessing.”
“That’s pretty much what I’m saying.”
Cade glared at Rossbach’s picture on the wall-mounted computer screen, which Grace had been careful to avoid looking at until now.
His broad forehead looked wider due to a receding hairline, and his rounded face was devoid of any angles except for the slight crook of his nose. Unassuming. Unthreatening. And unremarkable. Most people passing him on the street wouldn’t give him a second glance.
Grace, on the other hand, would sprint through a busy intersection to get away from those eerie mud-green eyes.
Cade still stared at Rossbach’s picture, shaking his head. “Why the hell do people follow him so blindly? And why the hell hasn’t anyone stopped him before he put a mysterious compound in the middle of nowhere?”
Grace forced her stomach to stop rolling. “Because like most cult leaders, he’s charismatic, and on paper, he’s a law-abiding citizen. He pays taxes, obeys the law—even if that’s only a public façade. Cults like the Order of the New Dawn don’t want to give the government any reason to infiltrate their space. They don’t want another Waco.”
“So you’re telling me that he’s a simple, hardworking couples therapist?”
“No. He’s a narcissistic megalomaniac with psychopathic tendencies and delusions of grandeur. But on paper? Yes. He’s a certified family counselor.”
“Scary-ass shit if you ask me,” Roman muttered.
“Not going to disagree with you.”
“I’m sorry, G,” Knox said. “We tried keeping you out of this, but when Brandt did his own digging and found out about your connection he was a man on a mission. Are you sure you’re going to be okay working on this?”
She waved off her cousin’s apology. “For eight years, my mother and Rossbach tried erasing every aspect of myself that made me me. If there’s even a chance that they’re doing that to Sarah Brandt, or anyone else, I’m going to do what I need to do.”
“That doesn’t really answer the question.”
It didn’t, but that was the only answer she had to give him, because the truth was that she didn’t know. For seventeen years, she’s shoved her New Dawn memories into an airtight vault, and now she had to jimmy it back open.
But she’d meant what she said. She’d do whatever was necessary to get Sarah Brandt home—and then she’d hope like hell all of her shit fit back in its box.
Chapter
Three
If Grace had spent one more hour with her cousins and Cade at the Steele Ops headquarters her head would have exploded.
She needed a hot shower. Chocolate. And her best friend. Not necessarily in that order.
Zoey stood at her apartment door when Grace came up the steps and pulled her into a tight hug. “Look what the cat dragged in.”
“Speaking of cats…where’s Mr. Evil?” Grace warily looked for Snuggles, an oxymoron-of-a-name for her best friend’s twenty-pound behemoth. The last time she’d visited, the admittedly beautiful hairball hocked an actual hairball on her five-hundred-dollar Jimmy Choos and then pissed on her backup Louboutins.
Zoey chuckled, obviously remembering that fated day. “I think he’s hiding. I told him you were coming, and he zoomed right underneath the bed.”
“Lying in wait’s probably more accurate, but fool on him because I’m not planning on taking my shoes off this time.”
Zo’s eyes flickered down to her feet. “You’re going to sleep in boots?”
“And shower,” Grace joked, tossing her things on the kitchen table. “And speaking of hot water…”
“Towels are already in there.”
“Bless you, my child.” Grace planted an obnoxious kiss on her cheek and hightailed it to the bathroom. Forty minutes later, she donned her fuzzy flannels—and boots—and found Zoey on the sofa with two mugs of hot chocolate, already sufficiently marshmallowed.
“You’re an angel.” Grace took the cocoa and spotted the heating pad on the empty couch cushion. She sunk on top of it with a groan. “Strike that. You’re a goddess. I worship you.”
Zoey chuckled. “Worship me so much that you used up all my hot water?”
“I spent half the day in a car and the rest of it dealing with my cousins. Trust me, I earned that shower.”
“So it wasn’t to avoid my probing questions about my brother?”
Grace threw her hand to her chest, feigning shock. “You? My longest friend on record? Probe for information? That never once entered my mind.”
“You’re a freakin’ liar, but I love you anyway. But seriously, on a scale of one to ten, how tempted were you to throw Cade in the Hudson last night?”
“The scale only goes to ten?”
Zoey snort-laughed. “If I didn’t love my job in crime scene so much, I could quit and become a self-made millionaire by selling tickets to the ‘Grace and Cade Show.’”
Oglers do love watching a good train wreck.
Grace couldn’t fault her best friend for her curiosity. To everyone around them, they’d once been a solid, unwavering couple. Cade had joined the Army under a four-year term while she finished up her last two years of high school and then ventured off to NYU.
Between the two of them, they’d clocked about a million hours’ worth of air miles traveling back and forth on weekends, and added even more during her last two years of college, when they took advantage of every scheduled R and R and family holiday that they could.
They’d had a plan.
FBI Academy for her. College on the GI Bill for him.
And then he’d enlisted again, and all those plans went up in a plume of smoke. Or more accurately, with the fumes of Cade’s Boeing as it left Andrews Air Force Base.
Happy graduation to her.
Before her sour mood transferred to her best friend, Grace changed the subject. “So now that I can see your face and tell if you’re lying…how have you been doing? Really. My cousin’s been treating you right? Everything’s back online with that stinker-of-a-ticker?”
A pink blush rose to Zoey’s creamy cheeks. “Knox is great, and the replaced heart valve is doing exactly what it’s supposed to do. I’ve actually been downgraded from monthly cardiac appointments to quarterly.”
“Which is no doubt driving Knox bonkers.”
“And by extension, me.” Zoey’s fingers played with the blanket over her lap, a ghost of a smile on her lips. “But we’re good. We’re…great. So great, actually, that I sometimes wait for the other shoe to drop. Do you know what I mean?”
She did. Completely. But she wasn’t about to say it to her best friend, not with everything Zoey had gone through this past year. If anyone deserved a shit-ton of worriless happiness, it was her best friend.
Grace squeezed Zoey’s hand. “You have paid your dues, lady, and then some. It’s time for you to bask in the sun…and in Knox. But it should be pretty easy to do both since you’re living on the Angel Eyes now.”
Behind black-rimmed glasses, Zoey’s eyes went a little too wide and a lot too innocent. �
��I don’t know what you’re talking about. We’re sitting in my apartment right now.”
Grace smirked over the rim of her mug. “You’re really forcing me to break out my powers of observation? Fine. Your bathroom toiletries are all new, and I’m talking just-cracked-open-the-seal new. When I first turned the faucet on, the water was brown-tinged like it had been sitting in the pipes for a while. And then there’s your toilet.”
“What’s wrong with my toilet? And you looked inside? Ew!”
“A girl has to pee. And there’s nothing wrong with it…other than having that orange stagnant-water line. Which, as you know, Miss Crime Scene Investigator, means that it hasn’t been used, probably in weeks. There’s also the distinct lack of the freesia odor stuff you spray to mask His Evilness’s litter bombs. Either Snugs isn’t here, or you toilet trained him. And we know that’s not the case because water line…”
Zoey’s cheeks went from pink to fuchsia.
“Oh, so nothing to say, huh?” Grace teased.
“Knox said you’d notice.”
“And he was right. You didn’t need to do this. I could’ve gotten a hotel room or stayed with Aunt Cindy.”
“Or you could’ve asked one of your adoring cousins.”
Grace’s mouth dropped, openly horrified. “I swear it’s like you don’t know me at all! I served my time living with those barbarians. Never. Again.”
Tears of laughter rolled down Zoey’s cheeks. “No more talk about a hotel, and if you really want to stay with Cindy and be coerced to go man-hunting with her and my mother, I’m not going to stop you. But I’d love for you to stay here. Even if I’m on the boat with Knox, I want you to act like this place is yours. For however long you need.”
“Judging by tonight’s events, I’m going to be here a lot longer than I want to be.” Catching Zoey’s concerned look, she added, “You know I love everyone here—well, except Cade. It’s just…”
“New Dawn.”
Grace dropped her head to the back of the couch. She wished she could rewind time and pretend she hadn’t seen Director Vance’s text. “I’ve spent the last seventeen years trying put it all behind me.”
