by Geri Krotow
“You mean your terms.”
They contemplated one another and she saw the total concentration Mitch was putting into their planning. He wasn’t going to budge.
“My terms are TH terms, Nika.” He covered her hand with his own. “The most important thing is that you get in and out safely.”
She pulled her hand away. “No, no, no! This is exactly why we should have waited until we closed the case to give in to our basic needs.”
“Basic? Excuse me, but I disagree. Combining sodium and chlorine to make table salt, that’s basic, ordinary. Making salicylic acid takes a few more steps, but it’s pretty routine, it gives us aspirin. What we did? What we shared in there? Pure combustion. Like when we allow lithium to hit ambient air. Bam! It’s not something we could stave off like hunger or thirst, Nika. And we’re adult enough to know what we’ve discovered with each other is separate from the case.”
When he shouted “Bam!” and used his hands to demonstrate an explosion, Nika tried to keep her face straight. The man she couldn’t stop thinking about was a nerd.
“Mitch, this is life-or-death for our town, for the school. For your students. We need to remember what we’re doing, why we’re here together in the first place.”
“That’s a given. The ‘keeping everyone safe’ part. But, Nika, what we just experienced today, we can’t ignore it, pretend it’s not there. Isn’t that what we’ve been doing for the past couple of weeks? Trying to ignore it? It’s been here between us since you walked into my classroom.”
Pleasure washed over her. Still, she hung on to her professional bearing. “I was a student that day, Mitch. You didn’t know I was older than seventeen or eighteen, not right away.”
“I knew the minute I saw you. And not because Claudia had let me in that an undercover officer was assigned to the case.”
“You saw through my undercover disguise that easily?” True, she didn’t wear a wig or anything special for the role, but the thought that anyone saw through her that easily shook her professional esteem.
He didn’t answer her and she let it go. They had bigger things to worry about. Like how they were going to manage Mitch playing protector while allowing her to do her job unencumbered.
*
“My mother is driving me cray-cray.” Rachel sat next to Nika at the large folding table they’d spread with a rainbow-themed tablecloth. A plethora of baked goods and candy was piled high and they didn’t have a lot of time to talk, their conversation in bits and bites as they sold the goodies to hungry schoolmates.
“How much for three cupcakes?” An impossibly thin cheerleader tossed her raven hair as she held the paper plate of sweets in one hand, her other full of bills.
“It’s a voluntary donation.” Nika spoke up before Rachel could make a cutting remark, her specialty with the girls who seemed less than friendly.
“Is a dollar a piece okay?”
“Sure!” Rachel grabbed the dollars and Nika hid her grin. She wouldn’t have thought this was so funny in high school but from the outside looking way back, the ridiculousness of the cliques and snubs was excruciatingly obvious.
“How much have we made so far?”
“Two hundred, plus thirty-five cents.” Rachel never looked at the cash box they were putting the payments into.
“How do you do that?”
Rachel blinked. “What?”
“Know how much we’ve both put in there.”
“I hear everything. You know how some kids have photographic memories? I remember everything I’ve ever heard. If I listen to a class lecture, I can recall it during an exam.” Rachel’s cheeks turned red as soon as she finished her declaration. “That sounds so lame, doesn’t it?”
“Not at all. I mean, no, of course not.” Shit! Nika knew she was sounding too much of an adult and not the eighteen-year-old she was supposed to be. “I wish I had that kind of superpower.”
Rachel’s eyes lit up. “It is a superpower, in a way.” Dimples appeared and Nika realized she’d never seen a genuine, unguarded expression on Rachel before.
“Five cookies, a brownie and two of those mini apple pies, but on separate plates. I don’t want them to touch. And I want the cookies that are more chewy.” Gabi from chemistry class stood in front of them, her smile wide and...fake.
“Do you want a latte with that?” Nika couldn’t help poking at the perfect student’s demeanor.
Gabi’s smile disappeared for a split second, her eyes narrowed on Nika. She recovered quickly, looking like the perky girl who was always raising her hand to the hardest chemistry problems Mitch threw out.
“Here you go.” Rachel handed Gabi a cardboard box filled with the baked goods and accepted a twenty-dollar bill in return. Gabi turned on her heel and walked over to a group of students Nika didn’t recognize.
“She’s not one to be messed with, Nika. She can be a real bitch if she wants to.”
“If she was a bitch she wouldn’t have just bought twenty dollars’ worth of sweets from the Rainbows, would she?”
Rachel tilted her head. “You’re from another kind of world, you know that? At Silver Valley High, no one is who you think they are.”
“Have you made any money with these lame treats yet?” Amy Donovan interrupted them as she stood in front of the table, her eyes hungrily assessing the goodie table.
“We’re bringing in a lot, actually.” Nika adopted the same pose she saw Rachel use. The kiss-my-butt-you-stuck-up-bitch pose.
“Do you want anything, Amy?” Rachel’s tone clearly said she didn’t expect Amy to lower herself to help their fund-raiser.
“I would, but I don’t have time to stop now. I’ve got to meet with the student council. We’re voting on the rules about fringe clubs.” She sauntered off and Rachel’s hand hit the table, making the tower of cupcakes quake.
“That girl is such a jerk. She has the perfect grades, is the perfect Goody Two-shoes. But I don’t buy it.”
“Why not?”
Rachel shrugged and didn’t say more.
“What are you doing this weekend?” It was the last few weekends before the formal, and most of the girls were lying low, studying and pleasing their parents so that they’d be allowed to stay out later after the dance.
It was Nika’s chance to get into a New Thought cult meeting.
Rachel shrugged. “Studying for the exams the week after formal. Writing two essays. Trying to convince my mother that no way in hell am I going to go to one of those crazy meetings with her.”
“What kind of meeting?”
“You know. That stupid group she’s in, that I told you about.”
“What if you agreed to go with her and brought a friend with you? It might be fun, seeing how nuts they really are.” Nika prayed Rachel would see it as a chance to get Belinda off her back for a while, which would be a ticket to paradise as far as Rachel was concerned.
“You’d do that for me? You know we can’t sell cookies from the Rainbows there, right?”
Nika laughed. “Yeah, I get it. I promise, I’ll be superquiet and look like I really give a crap.”
Rachel stared at her long enough to make Nika worried she’d pushed too far, too quickly. But time was marching on and the sooner the cult was blown apart, the better.
“I’ll ask her, but I can guaran-damn-tee you that she’ll say it’s okay. Hell, she’ll probably buy us a nice dinner after it lets out. She’ll get good-girl points from the team leader for bringing in a new ‘member.’”
Nika shrugged. “Whatever. I’m all about the free food.”
“Six of the snickerdoodles, please.” A stringy-haired boy with glasses and a nerdy graphic tee stood at the table and several more students were lined up behind him. It was a certainty that the Rainbows were going to have enough funds to buy a table for the Silver Bells Ball. Nika wanted to be happy for the group but her cop’s sixth sense told her that it only made them a bigger target.
Chapter 14
“You absolut
ely cannot be recognized anywhere near that compound, Mitch.” Claudia pinned him with her Marine Corps General stare and he shifted in the seat across from her desk.
“You trained me, Claudia. I know what I’m doing.” And he knew she knew that, too. They’d first met on the battlefields of Iraq, years before either of them had ever dreamed of being part of a government shadow agency.
Claudia didn’t relent. “You’ve got personal feelings mixed in here. That’s enough to make any of us miss a step. It’s not a fault, just part of being a human being.”
“I’m not having any more PTSD events, if that’s what’s concerning you.”
“Actually I’m not at all worried about your PTSD. You’ve apparently come through the worst and you’re one of the lucky ones who can manage it. Is that fair to say?”
“Yes.” In fact, the brief flash he’d had right after the last blood message in his classroom had been so fleeting, so quickly dissipated by a couple of deep breaths, he had to agree with her.
“And it’s also fair to say that since Nika has come into your life you’re not even thinking about the war, are you?”
Goddamn it. Claudia, ever the professional, had hoodwinked him with a tried-and-true interrogation method.
“While I’ve certainly been more involved in the cult op, as you’ve let me, it’s not fair to say that Nika is responsible for whether I have a PTSD flashback or not.”
“Not Nika, Mitch. Your feelings toward her.”
“You don’t ever play for fun, do you, Claudia?”
She looked at him thoughtfully and he swore he saw a softening in her eyes. “Admittedly I’ve been a hard-ass my entire life, or at least since I reported for my Plebe summer at the academy so many moons ago.” The heavy academy class ring she wore on her right hand was unmistakable. “Do you think people can change, Mitch?”
The turn of conversation would have shocked him if he and Nika hadn’t witnessed Claudia locking lips with Chief Todd. He thought about telling her what they’d witnessed, but it was too personal. Even the CEO of the Trail Hikers had a heart, a woman’s soul. Theoretically, anyway. She deserved her privacy.
“Yes, I do. Not our basic natures, maybe, but if we want to we can always take a different direction, learn how to behave differently. Otherwise, what’s the point?”
She looked at some location over his shoulder and didn’t reply. He took it as a signal to end their talk and get out of the TH office. The urgency that filled him, knowing Nika was on her way to a New Thought event tonight, was undeniable, and made him damned prickly. As did the touchy-feely nature of his conversation with Claudia.
“If we’re finished, Claudia, I need to go. I have some work to do before I join the stakeout tonight.”
“The un-stakeout, Mitch. Keep your cover, no matter what you think is going on in that building. If Nika gets in trouble, let SVPD handle it. Not that it will happen—Nika has proven she’s a worthy Trail Hiker.”
“Roger. I’ll report in anything I observe after she’s out of there, Claudia.”
“I know you will.”
“Will you be there?” He was on shaky ground. It wasn’t his place, or any TH agent’s, to query Claudia on her activities.
“Not that you have a need to know, but, yes, I think I’ll ride along with Colt. Chief Todd.” Her cheeks turned an uncharacteristic shade of pink and he smiled.
“Boss, it’s okay. Like you said, we’re all human.”
“That’s enough, Agent Everlock.” CEO Claudia was back and not about to take any guff from one of her employees.
As Mitch walked out of the TH building he couldn’t help pondering the juxtaposition of the relationships that were developing. In the midst of what he thought might turn into a life-or-death struggle against a warped sociopathic cult leader, at least three couples had found love. Bryce and Zora. Rio and Kayla. Colt and Claudia.
Are you sure it’s not four?
*
“Sorry about this part.” Rachel spoke under her breath, just loud enough for Nika to hear as they slid into the backseat of Mrs. Boyle’s car. It was a huge, house-size SUV, typical for a family with several kids. But since Rachel was the only one left at home, it seemed like overkill.
“No worries.” They situated themselves in the backseat and Mrs. Boyle easily maneuvered the vehicle out of their gravel drive and onto the main pike.
It was the only part of her plan that bothered Nika. She wouldn’t have her own vehicle to come and go as she pleased from the trailer park on the outskirts of Silver Valley. But it was better for her cover to ride with Rachel and her mother. It was best that she didn’t have her mother’s car, even if it hadn’t been totaled by the crash, and no way in hell would she use the new car her mother’s insurance was paying for. As for using her own dilapidated sedan or an unmarked police car, they weren’t the best options, either. She had to be seen solely as Rachel’s friend, a tagalong to the meeting. No telling which Silver Valley citizens she’d ticketed over the last eighteen months who were now part of the cult. She couldn’t risk being recognized as an officer. She’d policed both the huge fiasco of the mayor’s daughter’s wedding last spring and the Christmas blowout at Silver Valley Community Church a few months before that.
It seemed that just as SVPD eliminated one faction of the reassembling cult, another popped up.
Whack-a-cult. A giggle escaped her and Rachel gave her an are-you-cray-cray? look. Nika smiled and shook her head. “Later.” She mouthed the response more than spoke it.
“Are you two girls hungry? I can’t promise there will be a lot to choose from at the potluck.” Mrs. Boyle met Nika’s eyes in the rearview mirror and for a brief instant Nika thought she saw the woman Belinda Boyle used to be. The mother who’d raised children, loved a man, had a career. Before she’d sold her soul to a devil like Leonard Wise.
“We’re fine, Mom. But you know I won’t turn down some mac and cheese at the Silver Valley Diner. Apple pie à la mode on the side.”
“We’ll see what we can do.” Belinda turned off into the trailer park. Leonard Wise had purchased the entire run-down facility almost two years ago, before his release from prison. He’d used a corporate front and a former minion who’d only served a minimal prison term for activities related to the Upstate New York True Believers Cult.
Nika had entered the spooky park a few times but only as part of routine patrol ops. There was no reason to think anyone here would recognize her as anyone but a high school friend of Rachel’s.
And a potential New Thought recruit.
Belinda parked in front of a prefabricated building the size of approximately three double-wide trailers. Nika noted the wheelchair access ramp and kept her outrage silent. Of course the building and entire compound would be accessible to people Wise thought would be more vulnerable and needy, like the elderly and disabled. She seethed with the need to bring this op to closure, put Wise and his men behind bars.
Because his cohorts were almost all men. The women who became involved in his cults were almost exclusively subservient to him, victims of psychological manipulation. Brainwashing. His beliefs were misogynist at best, evilly criminal at their worst. Wise would never allow a woman in his inner circle. Nika hadn’t fully understood his motives until she’d had access to the TH reports that included a personality analysis for Wise and several of his more dangerous staff members.
His mother had abused him from a young age but he’d escaped his home and gone on to college. Where he’d been assimilated into a crazy cult himself. Until he’d left and worked in corporate America for several years, after which he surfaced in Upstate New York as the charismatic leader of a new “church.”
Nika shuddered as she thought of the innocent people who’d been attracted to the idea of a church, a community that would give them something they’d been missing. Home, purpose, a family, community. Then they’d faced horrors of having their young girls betrothed to Wise, forced to have sex with a man decades older than them to p
roduce the “perfect” True Believers.
Looking at the warmly lit building from the chilly winter night, it was hard to believe such a nondescript place harbored such malevolence.
As soon as she walked through the open door and was assaulted with glaring fluorescent overhead lighting and the equally stark stares of dozens of people, all here willingly, Nika’s resolve was strengthened.
This is what evil feels like.
“Hello, friends. This is my daughter Rachel, who many of you already know.”
“Welcome back, Rachel.” They all spoke in unison. Nika counted at least thirty on one side of the large room, standing in front of their folding metal chairs, facing the back entrance. All eyes were on them.
“And this is Rachel’s best friend, Nika. Nika is new to Silver Valley.” Belinda spoke as if she’d bagged a double winner; Nika was a new student, her daughter’s “best” friend and new to Silver Valley.
Vulnerable.
“Welcome, Nika.” The singsong greeting chilled her and she tried to not meet anyone’s eyes directly, acting the part of the shy, new girl. More importantly, she couldn’t risk identification by someone that she’d ticketed or met at an SVPD fund-raiser. Although she was certain she passed as a teen at Silver Valley High, she worried that these kooks might see right through her disguise.
Mitch. If Mitch were here she’d feel safer. Ridiculous. She’d never been afraid or fearful during any other op, even with a gun in her face or bullets flying around. The rock through her windshield and following explosion had shaken her but she’d never felt afraid, not really.
Facing this group of people who looked as if they all knew the same moves, the “right” responses, she felt fear. Was this how her parents had felt under Soviet rule?
“Come, have something to eat.” A pale woman ushered Nika and Rachel over to a folding table set up with a huge urn for hot water and several plates of baked goods. Nika declined anything to eat but figured the hot water would be safe enough to try; she made herself a cup of tea. Rachel refused anything.
