The White Lily

by Susanne Matthews

  “I practice. I picked these up on my way home last night.”

  “They’re bright and suit you.”

  “I like them, and I know they may not look it, but they’re really comfortable.”

  “I’ll take your word for it. I assume you’ve forgiven me?”

  “Never assume anything, Jacob, especially not about me.”

  She continued down the hall, her chocolate-brown skirt swinging as she did. Opening the door to Room Two, she grabbed the nearest chair and propped it against the door to keep it open.

  “Hello, everyone. Rob’s bringing coffee,” she announced.

  “You seem bright and chipper this morning,” Trevor said. “Sleep well?”

  “Very well, better than I have in ages.”

  “Good, because we have a long day ahead of us.”

  “Where’s Tom?” she asked.

  “Getting some papers in my office. Jacob, nice to see you. I hope you had an uneventful night as well. I’ve called the Nashua Street Jail and made arrangements for you to see our guests around two tomorrow afternoon. That’ll give you time to get up to speed on the case. There are a few older cult members there, and I’m hoping some of them will recognize you. Hopefully, you’ll know a couple of them as well. So far, we haven’t been able to get them to speak—not even to tell us their names. Try to explain that we want to help them, although after the news I received a few minutes ago, my patience is wearing thin. We need to know where the Prophet is.”

  “Did your uncle ever talk about the Promised Land?” Rob asked, coming into the room with a trayful of coffee mugs. Tom followed him and closed the door.

  “You mean as in the Bible?”

  Trevor nodded.

  “I know it was the land God promised Abraham and his descendants. It was one of my uncle’s favorite passages, the one they drilled into us while the adults were in those night sessions. Moses talked about the Promised Land, too. Why do you ask?”

  “When we rescued Faye and the others, they were getting ready to leave for the place. By the way, I’m not as up on my Bible as I should be, but does it ever mention the Great Burning?”

  “No, but that phrase is familiar. I can ask at the jail tomorrow.”

  “Do it. The sooner we have answers, the better.” Trevor reached for the file Tom handed him. “It looks like the hits just keep on coming. Jacob, the rest of the team is aware of this, but you need to know everything that’s going on. The Harvester case isn’t an inactive one, although it might sound that way.” He reached for the coffee mug Rob had handed him and took a drink. “Did you see the press conference yesterday?”

  “I did. Munroe did an excellent job. A child-trafficking ring that can kill with impunity like that is disgusting. I’ve dealt with white slavers in Australia, but this ...”

  “There isn’t a child-trafficking ring,” Trevor interrupted. “We suspect your uncle’s behind it. The girl taken from the Richardson house is your niece, Faith Volt, and I received confirmation when I arrived this morning that the boy taken from the Winchester House is Ethan Newcomb, your nephew. We’ve had a DNA match on a pacifier found at the scene.”

  Jacob slammed his fist on the table, rattling the mugs.

  “You can’t be serious! Are you telling me that bastard has those innocent children again?”

  “It certainly looks that way,” Trevor admitted. “And the son of a bitch who’s collecting the kids is committing the grisliest murders I’ve ever seen.” He passed the file folder across to him, and Jacob opened it. There were four photo montages of before and after shots. He’d seen similar ones countless times working cases back home. The first showed a man in a uniform on one side and his corpse with half of its face missing, no doubt because of a close contact gunshot to the back of the head, on the other. The attractive woman in the second one, he assumed it was the wife, had been killed the same way. Turning to the third composition, he noted the increased violence. This woman had been viciously beaten before being strangled. But it was the fourth set of pictures that made him gag.

  Lilith saw this? He’d once been on a manhunt for a serial rapist. They’d found the man, partly eaten by a saltwater crocodile in the Adelaide River near Darwin, and that man had looked a hell of a lot better than this poor bastard. No wonder Lilith had been so angry. A person could only take so much before the least little thing sent him or her over the edge.

  Hell of a way to die.

  He closed the file, letting his disgust fuel his rage. “Bloody hell! Duncan has a monster like this collecting children? Now I know the bastard’s insane. Nothing living should come anywhere near a creature like this man. You have to stop him. I assume you expect him to go after the others—six, didn’t you say, Munroe?”

  She nodded. “It’s a safe bet he’ll try to recover the bodies we have downstairs, too, as well as the other children and their mothers, although he may kill the women since they’re disposable.” She glanced at Rob, whose fists were clenched so tightly, his knuckles were white. “He’ll go after the people we have in custody, too.”

  “Of course he will. Duncan Lucius never gives up what he believes is his, but this time, by God, he can’t have any of them. He tormented my sister in life, and I’ll be damned if I’ll let him touch a hair on her head now that she’s dead. And as for James, my uncle did more than enough damage to my brother. Let him lie in peace now along with Seth and those two other men who probably had no idea what they were doing either.”

  He stood and paced the small room, grabbing and dismissing ideas. He stopped. You said one woman had a suicide pill. Did any of the others?”

  “No,” Rob said, “but they’re primarily women and young girls.”

  “They’re liabilities. If he thinks they’ve disclosed information to you, he’ll kill them without a second thought.” He turned to Rob. "Your wife’s one of those rescued women. Now I understand what you meant about fear. After seeing that,” he indicated the file, “everyone should be afraid.”

  “The only way he’ll get Faye is over my dead body.”

  “Then we’re agreed on something. I assume you’ve taken the necessary steps to protect the people he’s after?”

  “We have, or at least we’re trying to,” Trevor said, his tone bitter and full of frustration. “But bureaucratic red tape is a pain in the ass, as you know. Our other problem involves his other plans and the reason we need you to talk to his followers. We have to figure out what the Great Burning is before he puts his plan into place.”

  “I’m assuming this is something you learned after the rescue because there’s no mention of it in the files I found online.”

  “It wasn’t in the information we gave the press. While Homeland Security is aware of it, we’ve kept all mention of this threat under wraps. According to what Faye told us, your uncle sees himself as some kind of Old Testament prophet along the lines of Noah. God flooded the world and allowed Noah to save the seeds of mankind in his family as well as the animals. This time, God is sending fire in some form or other to burn away what James referred to as the vermin infesting the Promised Land. That burning could be anything from an arson attack to a nuclear bomb.”

  “My God,” Jacob said, grabbing the edge of the table for support. “I know where I’ve heard the expression. My uncle described the fever that way—a great burning that cleansed him from the inside, making him a fitting vessel for God’s use. There won’t be a nuclear bomb—that would be devastating to the country, and preserving the planet would be important. No, his Great Burning is more personal than that.”

  He watched the horror dawn on the team’s faces.

  “A biological weapon,” Lilith whispered.

  “Yes. Something like the dengue fever that attacked the commune. There are a number of viruses around that would do the job. Look at Ebola, for example, and the number of deaths from it. If that’s what he’s got planned, then it’s why he left New Mexico. He needs to isolate the people from where the disease might spread.
He’d inoculate them somehow to protect them, but conceivably, a widespread viral attack could kill millions. And he’d start it in the most populous parts of the country.”

  “We have to stop him,” Trevor said. “You have to speak to his followers and find out when this Great Burning is supposed to take place. Jacob, you’ve got to make them talk to you.”

  “You said dengue fever was spread by mosquitoes, not people,” Lilith accused, her trembling voice proof of how frightened she was. He wished he could tell her everything was going to be fine and he’d protect her, but he couldn’t do it. He wouldn’t lie to her or anyone else. Not knowing what the threat was made it impossible to guard against.

  “Yes, but someone there has pharmaceutical knowledge. My uncle’s had years to work on his plan. I’ll speak to the people of New Horizon, promise them whatever I have to, short of letting them return to the cult, to get answers from them, but before I do, I need to know everything you know. I need those files you mentioned last night, Trevor. I can’t go in there blind. I have to know what I’m up against. I have to figure out how I can make their belief system work in my favor. These used to be honorable people.” He turned to Rob. “I’d like to talk to your wife, too.”

  “What the hell for? She’s been through enough. Seeing you would tear her apart.”

  “I realize it won’t be easy on her, but she has firsthand information on their lifestyle and the way it devolved under my uncle’s supervision. Discovering how she’ll react to me may give me a clue on how to approach these people, especially if none of them remember me. I want to help you rescue those children and put an end to the Prophet’s reign of terror once and for all. This harvest is over.”

  “I’ll give Faye a call as soon as the briefing’s over. I may not like this, but she’ll want to help. Maybe taking him down will rid her of her demons once and for all.”

  “Trevor, I want Lilith to help me.”

  “I agree, with her expertise, she’s the best person for the job.”

  “She’s exactly who I need.”

  • • •

  Lilith stared at Jacob and the other team members, her mouth agape. She wanted to say something, anything, but her brain refused to work. She wasn’t an expert on this case—and with the way she’d behaved yesterday. Damn. It looks like I’m going shoe shopping again.

  Snapping her jaw shut, she did her best not to glare at them. While she was a rookie on the Harvester case, she did have some expertise on cults, and maybe her time with the FFOW would help her understand these people. It wasn’t that she didn’t feel up to the task, but it would mean working closely with Jacob, and she wasn’t sure that was the wisest thing to do. She’d forgiven him for the incident yesterday and realized there had to be reasons she didn’t understand that had kept him from saving Eloise, but damn it. He was getting under her skin. Now that she’d calmed down, she realized they had a lot in common, and the last thing she wanted to do was like him. Liking someone led to friendship, and that might lead to the desire for a relationship. She didn’t do relationships. But what he’d just said scared the pants off of her, and if she could help in any way ... It wasn’t just about the missing children, it was about all of them, every single person in the world.

  Although the men involved in the Slocum incident had planted bombs that thankfully had been defused before anyone had been killed, those had been simple fertilizer bombs. Getting one’s hands on a nuclear device wasn’t easy, even if you did have a lot of money at your disposal, but it would be even harder for a white supremacist. Since she couldn’t see the Prophet working with the factions that might have such technology available, she agreed with Jacob.

  A biological threat wasn’t anything they’d even considered, and yet it made sense and would be easy to deliver. All it took was infected insects or, even easier, contagious people milling around shopping malls, theaters, places where the public congregated in large groups. They knew the citizens of New Horizon could infiltrate the population—James, Eloise, and the Williamsons had done it, as well as Pierce. Even if it meant they were likely to die from the illness, the cult members would see themselves as the hand of God smiting His enemies.

  Medical labs and drug companies all over the United Sates had live viruses on sight for vaccine research. All it took was one theft, one bribed lab technician, and bingo! The Prophet had access to pharmaceuticals and the money it took to bribe people to get the things he wanted. His virus could be as deadly as he wanted it to be. And, if he planned it right and vaccinated his people ... He could be developing his own strain of flu as they spoke. And if that wasn’t bad enough, the panic such an epidemic would cause would be responsible for countless deaths on its own.

  “You’re awfully quiet,” Trevor said. “This isn’t going to be a problem, is it?”

  “No, of course not.” She swallowed her concern. “It was my idea we involve Jacob in the case.” I just didn’t expect to end up his damn partner.

  Trevor stared at her, and she nodded.

  “It’ll be fine. I’m looking forward to it.” Not.

  “Good. Jacob, do you have any idea what the people of New Horizon will want from you for their cooperation?”

  “If it were me, I’d want my freedom. How long have they been in jail?”

  “Nine weeks,” Rob said, and she sensed his frustration.

  “But we can’t release them. Since we don’t know where that bastard and the rest of his brainwashed crew are, we’d just be putting them in danger, and I don’t want any more deaths on my conscience.”

  “They wouldn’t know what to do with that kind of freedom. New Horizon is all they know. They couldn’t cope in our society even if the Prophet didn’t come after them,” Lilith said. “They’re like prisoners who get released after twenty or twenty-five years. Most of them can’t handle it. Some of them commit suicide, others reoffend to get thrown back into the system, the only life they know.”

  “But some do make it,” Jacob said. He reminded her of a caged tiger as he paced.

  “Some do, but only if they have a support system in place.”

  “Then I may have a solution. Evergreen, my farm in the Northern Territory, is a lot like New Horizon was when I was a child. It’s one of the largest holdings in the area, and it’s isolated. If they were willing to go there, they could live as they’d lived before, but they’d have to adapt to new surroundings and face dangers they’ve never imagined. They’d need to step away from all of my uncle’s teachings and adopt the rules of modern society, but I have trusted men who can watch over them and teach them what they need to know to survive.”

  “How long would it take you to set up something like that?” Trevor asked.

  “If I call today, Toba, my manager, can have portable housing in place within a week. I can charter a plane to take them there, and we can keep the whole thing quiet. No one will even know they aren’t still in those jail cells. You can send along some police officers to monitor them until I can set up permanent security. I’ve no desire to put my homeland at risk either. They’ll require medical screening and may have to be vaccinated. You’ll have to deal with passports and immigration, but if they’ve been convicted of a crime, it won’t work. I have some sway with the people in power, but I can’t make them accept convicted criminals. So, the carrot I’ll hold up for these members’ help is a new life and immunity from prosecution if they can help me find the Prophet.”

  “Are you insane?” The words shot from her mouth. “These people aided and abetted in the murder of four women and the kidnapping of four others. One of them may even be the man who murdered your sister, and you want to give them a ‘get out of jail card’ and a home in a tropical paradise? They’re criminals. At the moment, by refusing to cooperate with us, they’re hindering prosecution, too. We can’t just reward them with a better life.”

  “Why not?” he asked calmly, disconcerting her. Why weren’t Rob and Trevor backing her up on this?

  “Doesn’t the DA
do the same thing when he makes a deal with a mobster who provides evidence against his employers? Isn’t a new life and a new identity what your witness protection plan promises? I may live in Australia, Munroe, but I do read the papers and watch television. I’ll wager those criminals committed far greater crimes than the former residents of New Horizon. You said there were, what, sixteen prisoners? How many are men?”

  “Four,” she admitted.

  “And were they armed? Did any one of them have the knife that slit my sister’s throat?”

  “No,” Rob answered for her. “We haven’t found that weapon yet.”

  “And to the best of your knowledge, did those particular men try to kill anyone?”

  “No. They weren’t armed that night. According to the intel we had, they simply did the heavy work on the farm, but there were additional weapons in the house.”

  “Okay, I’ll give you that they could’ve taken up arms under different circumstances, but how can the women be held accountable? Didn’t you tell me they had no rights, that they were treated like second-class citizens, animals really?”

  “More or less,” she said belligerently, knowing instinctively where he was going with this and hating it.

  “Then, Agent Munroe, how can twelve women be held accountable for obeying orders? For doing what they were told to do to avoid being punished? If there’s one thing I remember clearly about my uncle, it’s that he enjoyed watching people punished. Remember what my uncle did to me when I opposed him. One of his men may have wielded the whip, but he watched every one of those lashes rip open my back and chest.”

  “But they’re still accessories,” she maintained mulishly, more because she needed to forget how helpless she’d been at the hands of the Faithful Followers of the Word. In the FFOW, women had been powerless to do anything but obey. She hadn’t seen any punished, but every now and then, one had disappeared for a few days at a time. They’d come back, pale and quiet, and she’d assumed they’d been ill. How foolish of her. People tended to see what they wanted to see, and apparently, so did she. Those long, brown robes would’ve hidden a multitude of marks.