Special Agent's Perfect Cover

by Marie Ferrarella

  “I’m the last one to dismiss a gut feeling,” Hawk assured him. A gut feeling was what had gotten him this far. Granted it was by no means an exact science, but he’d found that his instincts were right over seventy percent of the time. “Why are you telling me this?” he asked.

  “Because I need your help,” Rafe said without any fanfare. “I can’t find him. I came as soon as I saw the story on TV about the murdered women all being from Cold Plains. I thought maybe she’d left my son with her relatives, but I’m beginning to think that maybe she didn’t even come back here between the time she called me and the time she was killed. I’ve been asking around if anyone’s heard anything about a motherless baby somewhere in the area, but so far, nobody seems to know anything. Or,” he amended, “if they know, they’re not saying.”

  “Yeah, I get that a lot,” Hawk told him with a dismissive laugh that had no humor to it. “Did you go to the police chief with your story?” he asked out of curiosity. Fargo definitely wouldn’t have been his first choice, but then maybe the man was different with the people of his town.

  “Yes, I did.” Rafe’s frown told him just how far that had gotten him. His next words confirmed it. “Man’s not very friendly,” Rafe testified. “Said he hadn’t heard anything about any of the women in his ‘community’ having any unwanted children, but I get the feeling that he’s not telling me the truth.”

  Welcome to the club, Hawk thought. “I’ll keep my eyes open and let you know if I find out anything,” he promised the doctor. In exchange he was hoping the doctor would do the same. “Listen, since you got me out here, maybe you can answer a question for me.”

  Was it his imagination, or did the doctor look a little apprehensive before finally saying, “Sure, if I can.”

  Hawk’s question concerned the newly constructed clinic that Grayson had had built according to his specifications. For a medical clinic, it was exceedingly cold, sterile and unwelcoming.

  “I noticed that the town now has this Urgent Care Center that Grayson was responsible for building.” When he’d left town initially, any medical care had to be sought outside the town, over in a neighboring county. “I’m picking up things that don’t seem right to me.”

  Rafe knew exactly what the special agent was referring to. He’d become aware of strange practices himself, practices that went against the norm. He’d also noticed that he hadn’t been asked to join the care center. Was that because he was new to the town, or was it because of some other reason? Such as, if he knew exactly what was going on behind closed doors, he would request an investigation?

  “By that, you mean like the fact that people aren’t allowed to leave the facility until they get a complete, clean bill of health from the attending physician—even if they have ongoing conditions such as diabetes or heart trouble?” Rafe asked.

  Hawk nodded his head. “That’s what I mean.” What had gotten his attention in the first place was finding out about the unorthodox case he was now recounting. “I talked to someone the other day who said that her cousin accidentally hit his head on the pavement, so he went to the Center to get some stitches—and he hasn’t been heard from since. This cousin also has a heart murmur, according to the woman I talked with.”

  Rafe nodded. That didn’t surprise him. “Sounds about right. People who have started coming to me looking for treatment are people who don’t want to have anything to do with the care center. Margaret Chase—” he brought up the name of one of the town’s oldest residents “—told me that some of her friends have gone missing, and the last time she’d heard from one of the women, she was going in to the clinic to get treatment for a persistent cough that just wouldn’t go away.”

  He’d already noted that the people he’d seen around town who belonged to Grayson’s dedicated followers all seemed to be robust, healthy-looking specimens of humanity. Now that he thought more about it, he couldn’t remember hearing anyone even coughing or sneezing. No one seemed to have so much as a hangnail. Everyone seemed to be the flourishing picture of health.

  Was that by design?

  Where were all the sick people, the ones with disabilities? For that matter, where were the homely ones? The ones who were not perfect?

  This was beginning to sound eerily gruesome, Hawk thought.

  For all he knew, Grayson might actually be trying to fashion some perfect society filled with movie-star-handsome men, women and children.

  And Carly was right in the thick of it, he thought suddenly.

  Damn but he needed to get her to back away from all this for her own good. Maybe if he swore to her that he would rescue Mia the first chance he got, he could get her to listen to him and leave Cold Plains before Grayson found out what Carly was up to and things became really ugly.

  But even as he thought it, Hawk knew that there was no reasoning with Carly, not once she made up her mind. There’d been a time when he’d admired her strong will and strength of character, but right now, it could be the very quality that could get her killed. He had no illusions about Grayson, not after he’d reread the report on the man’s background.

  “Look, Doc,” he proposed out of the blue, “if I promise to keep my ears and eyes open for any information about an orphaned newborn, will you see what you can find out about what’s happening to those people in the Urgent Care Center? I mean, it’s not like a circus clown car when dozens of people go in and then don’t come back out again.” Rosenbloom had compiled a list of people who had gone into the care center in the past six months but hadn’t been seen or heard from afterward.

  So where were they? Had they been asked to leave town or, he thought darkly, were they merely eliminated if they didn’t cooperate? It sounded almost absurd. He could easily see Grayson justifying this action because he wanted to purify the strain, form a society of healthy, pretty people.

  The man wasn’t a charming hypnotist, he was a crass, manipulative bastard, and the sooner he could take Grayson down, the better.

  It was a thought he hung on to as he drove back to the cabin. He needed to fill his team in on this newest twist, and it was done better in person.

  Chapter 10

  Depositing the three, extra-large containers of dark roast coffee on the table, Hawk looked at the three men who gave every indication of having severe cases of cabin fever. “How are we doing with our Jane Doe? Any progress finding out who she really was?”

  Rosenbloom pried the lid off his giant container and took a long swig of the still-hot coffee before giving him an answer. Only after the black liquid had wound its way through his system did he frown critically at his container.

  “What did they use to make this, trail mix?” he asked.

  “I guess gourmet coffee hasn’t made an appearance in Cold Plains yet,” Jeffers quipped, seemingly grateful to have something black and hot to sustain him.

  “Hey, it’s better than nothing,” Patterson commented, downing all but the last third of his container.

  “Jane Doe?” Hawk prodded, looking from one man to the next. All three shook their heads.

  And then Jeffers put it into words. “We haven’t found any missing persons report matching her description so far. At least not in Wyoming in the last four years. I’m going to check the out-of-state reports next.” His expression said he didn’t hold out too much hope. “But after four years, this seems like a pretty cold case.”

  That wasn’t what he wanted to hear. “Well, then, warm it up,” Hawk instructed.

  Rosenbloom turned his chair back to face the laptop on his side of the table. “By the way, how’s life in the outside world?” he asked. “The sky still blue?”

  “Do people still get to listen to the news?” Patterson put in.

  Hawk ignored the flippant remarks and filled the men in on his meeting with the new doctor and the latter’s hunt for his missing son. He went on to tell them about the physician’s theory about what he believed was going on in the Urgent Care Clinic.

  Jeffers ate up every word. �
��You know, once we wind this up, we’ve got the makings of one hell of a movie script here,” he commented.

  Hawk laughed shortly and shook his head. “Yeah, if we ever do wrap this up.” Right now, he had his doubts about that happening. There was no denying that Grayson was slick. Nothing seemed to stick to the man. And without the information that Micah was supposed to provide, who knew if they would ever be able to pin anything on the so-called community leader.

  “Do I detect a lack of faith?” Jeffers asked with a touch of surprise.

  It wasn’t so much a lack of faith at play here as a healthy respect for the reality of the situation. On the average, more cases remained open than were closed. “It’s just that everywhere we turn for answers, all we find are more questions.”

  “Well, my money’s on us,” Jeffers said cheerfully. “Don’t forget, we’re the good guys,” he reminded his superior.

  “Yeah, well, if we don’t get out of this cabin soon, we’ll be too stiff and out of shape to do anybody any good,” Rosenbloom complained. He was far from happy about being confined this way.

  Patterson’s nerves were getting frayed. “Maybe if you started cooking something that wasn’t exclusively made up of fat, salt and sugar, we wouldn’t be getting out of shape.”

  He had to nip this before it got out of hand. Ordinarily, the three men worked well together, but that was when they weren’t living in one another’s pockets 24/7. “You three keep this up, and I’m going to have to send you to your rooms without your supper,” Hawk warned, looking from one to the other.

  He got his point across. They were bickering like children. Not that he didn’t secretly sympathize with them. Staying in the cabin for an indefinite amount of time, waiting to finally be able to spring into action, could drive anyone crazy. But playing the waiting game was all part of the job. Not a pleasant part, but a part nonetheless.

  The moment Hawk started toward the door, Rosenbloom was instantly alert. “Where are you going?” he asked.

  “It’s time to see if I can rattle the head honcho’s cage and hopefully get him to make a mistake.” Hawk paused by the door just before leaving. “If I’m not back by tomorrow, pick him up for questioning,” he told Rosenbloom.

  “You think he’d actually try something?” Jeffers asked.

  “He does know you’re an FBI agent, right?” Patterson asked.

  “He does, but desperate men resort to desperate measures. Especially if they think they can get away with it.”

  He had no illusions about Grayson. If he had had those women murdered, then what was another body more or less? At this stage, having gotten away with so much, Grayson had probably developed a god complex, he reasoned. Or at the very least, thought he was invulnerable.

  So far, he was right.

  “Remember, one day,” Hawk reminded his men as he went out. The way he saw it, it was always better to be safe than sorry.

  Rather than corner Grayson alone in his office and ask him questions that the man was probably going to respond to with lies, Hawk decided to observe the man in his full glory first. He wanted to see for himself exactly what all the excitement was about.

  Hawk was aware of several motivational speakers who had managed to do very well for themselves, building up an empire based on books, audio tapes and speaking engagement fees. He’d heard that Grayson had had a modest amount of success following that route, but obviously the man wasn’t strictly interested in making a living or even in the “calling” of helping people fulfill their true potential, something that was the supposed cornerstone of every motivational speaker’s philosophy.

  The only one Samuel Grayson wanted to help was Samuel Grayson, and apparently the way he did it, at least in part, was to boost his ego by seeing just how many people he could get to pledge their undying loyalty to him.

  As he stood in the back of the room, near the door he’d used to slip into the auditorium, Hawk watched Grayson become a dynamo of barely harnessed energy. Moving about the entire stage and remaining in perpetual motion, Grayson created the illusion of addressing each person in the room individually. He singled them out, as if that particular person was the only one who mattered at that particular time.

  It was a pretty neat parlor trick, Hawk couldn’t help thinking. Admittedly, it was a skill that not that many people had.

  What was the man’s end game? he wondered. Was Grayson just doing this to see how many people he could get under his thumb, vowing to follow him to the ends of the earth—and beyond? Or did he have almost a physical need for all this adulation? Was he stirring everyone up for a reason, for some personal gain at the end of the line, or was it all just a power trip?

  Most of all, how had he benefited—if he actually had—from the deaths of those five women? Why those particular women? And were they the only dead bodies to be found, or were there more that they just hadn’t come across yet?

  Hawk had an uneasy feeling it was the latter, but for now, he shut the thought away and observed Grayson in his element.

  “You can’t let life drag you down,” Grayson said, his words and gaze taking in each and every person seated at the seminar. His voice swelled as he asked, “What do we do with negative thoughts?”

  “We flush them away,” the audience chanted in response.

  Grayson cupped his ear as if trying to make out a faint sound. “I can’t hear you,” he announced in a singsong voice.

  The audience responded with enthusiasm, repeating what they’d said, only louder this time. However, it still wasn’t loud enough to suit Grayson. He kept egging them on to say the phrase louder and louder until they were all shouting the words.

  Only then did he smile with approval, an approval his audience ate up and reveled in, like children allowed to temporarily sit at the adult table.

  The guy’s a real puppet master, Hawk thought, his eyes sweeping over the faces of the audience that he was able to see from where he stood. They looked as if they were in the throes of rapture. It reminded him of a black-and-white film clip he’d seen on one of the history channels, chronicling a dictator’s rise to power just before the fateful second world war.

  A chill went down his spine.

  Hawk saw no difference between the dictator and Grayson. Both appeared enamored with the sound of their own voices. And with the desire to seize power through the people they so obviously commanded.

  It was enough to make a man sick.

  As Grayson moved about the raised platform he’d had specially built according to his exact specifications, focused on working up his audience the way he did every day as he brought each of his seminars to a close, his eyes met Hawk’s.

  Hawk was immediately alert. There was no quizzical pause, no indication that Grayson didn’t know who he was looking at. Instead, there was an evident smugness, as if he was well pleased with his performance and satisfied that he had created the impression Grayson wanted him to witness.

  “That’s all for tonight,” Grayson finally announced. Taking a hand towel from the podium, he wiped the perspiration from his brow. “I want you all to go to your homes and think about how you can improve upon what you’re doing and how you can enrich your neighbors’ lives through your own evolvement.”

  Yeah, and how to put more money into your fearless leader’s pockets, I’ll bet, Hawk thought cynically. Grayson was as phony as a three-dollar bill. If he hadn’t believed it before, he did now. What completely mystified him was how nobody seemed to be able to see through the other man’s facade. It was all sparkling glitter and hyped-up rhetoric.

  As the meeting broke up, Hawk watched the people in Grayson’s audience rise to their feet, applauding wildly. Those who didn’t swarm around the speaker began to file out of the auditorium.

  A few hung back, neither trying to gain Grayson’s attention nor leaving just yet.

  He realized that Carly was in that third group. Why was she lingering?

  And then he had his explanation. A girl who looked vaguely famil
iar—was that really Mia, all grown up now?—was part of the circle clustering around Grayson. They all appeared to be eagerly vying for the favor of the speaker’s momentary attention.

  Carly’s sister smiled broadly as he heard Grayson say, “Mia, I need a word with you, please.”

  “Of course, Samuel,” the young woman replied.

  She sounded just like a robot, Hawk couldn’t help thinking.

  Despite the fact that there was half a room between them, his eyes met Carly’s and he could see she was thinking the same thing. And that it really upset her. Small wonder.

  Grayson, with his lofty seminars and flattering words, with his attention, which made the members of his circle feel as if they were being singled out by God, had managed to brainwash a room full of easily manipulated people, young and old.

  To what end? Hawk wondered again.

  Was it just to feed his ego, or was there some darker purpose in all this? A dark purpose he wasn’t seeing just yet.

  He could see why Carly was worried. Hell, he’d been worried himself before he realized that Carly was only putting on a show for Grayson’s benefit.

  And it was a pretty damn convincing show at that, he thought now, watching her. Though it took some restraint, Hawk made no effort to approach her. As far as he knew, Grayson wasn’t aware that he and Carly had a history, and he wanted to keep it that way. Not knowing that little fact would keep Carly a lot safer at the moment. He didn’t want to think what might happen if Grayson suspected she had a connection to an FBI special agent—no matter how innocent that connection might actually be.

  He watched as Grayson took both of Mia’s hands in his. “The ladies have selected a wedding dress for you,” he informed her. “You need to make yourself available for a fitting.” He bestowed a benevolent smile on the young woman whose hands he still held. “You wouldn’t want to offend your husband by not appearing perfect at the ceremony.”

  “Oh no, Samuel, I would never do that,” Mia assured him with immense feeling in her voice.