Danny shook his head.
“What?” Rose said.
“There’s some fucked up shit there lately.”
“Oh yeah, like what?” Rose said in a voice exuding innocence.
“They found an arm there last month. On the Mornington Peninsula.”
“Really?” Rose said and leaned forward. “I’ve heard the surfing there is amazing.” She’d found that little tidbit while researching the missing girl.
“It was a girl who’d gone missing,” Josie said. “She was only sixteen. Her mum and pop said she’d just gone out to a friend’s house to study and disappeared.”
Rose swallowed and tried not to act too interested.
“That’s terrible,” Rose said and then, as casually as she could, asked, “Who do they think did it?”
Again, Josie shot Danny a look. He scowled and spit.
“What?” Rose asked.
Josie shrugged and reached for the joint that Danny held out. Rose waited until the girl exhaled. She held the joint out for Rose, forgetting that Rose had declined it earlier. Rose took it and held it to her lips for a second and then put it down. “Do they know how she was killed? Or who did it?”
Rose thought about the details in the article she’d read. She wanted to prompt them, but was afraid she’d give her interest away.
“They said it might have been a satanic sacrifice,” Danny finally said.
Josie shivered and he looped an arm around her shoulders.
“Why would they think that?”
“The way they found the body. It was near a pentagram or something.”
“That’s it?” Rose said. “That could be a coincidence.”
Then Danny leaned forward. Rose held her breath. Here was what she’d been waiting for.
“There’s a group there. Call themselves The Family. They don’t follow the law. Nor any of the rules. Some say they are Satanists. Some say they took the girl and killed her.”
“How long have they been there, these Satanists?” Rose asked.
Danny shrugged. “I never heard about them until this happened.”
“Are they kids or adults or both?” Rose asked. The answer Danny gave could change everything.
“I heard there’s one guy and a bunch of kids.”
Rose’s heart began to pound so hard she could hear the beating in her ears.
Shit.
Then she realized both Danny and Josie were staring at her.
“That’s fucked up,” she said and noticed the other two relaxed at her words.
11
Present Day
Australia
The skinny, bespectacled man slouched in his chair, glaring at the inspector.
The station’s interview room was small. It usually only contained a table and two chairs.
Today, Inspector Harris had asked for the table be removed.
He was an expert in reading body language and wanted to make sure he could see the man’s entire body during the interview.
The man’s name was Samuel Dean Smith, and he was the head of what the government said was a cult he called “The Family.”
“Why you call me in here?”
It was the first time the man had spoken since being brought into the room. For a second, the inspector was slightly taken aback. The man looked like a professor, yet spoke like an uneducated street thief.
“A girl’s body was found near your camp. In the quarry.”
The man’s forehead creased. “That’s nothing to do with us.”
The inspector’s face remained blank.
“We are tying up all loose ends,” he said.
“What loose end am I?” the man said cocking his head.
“Did you kill the girl?”
The man sat up straight and met the inspector’s eyes.
“Piss off, you piece of shit.”
Red flag number one. Not that he’d denied it or told Harris to piss off. It was the shift in body posture.
Up until that point, Smith had remained slouched in his chair and avoided eye contact.
Harris didn’t react. The man slumped back into his seat and crossed his legs.
“I’m sorry, just had to ask. Part of my job.”
“Why you ask that? This is bullshit. This isn’t wrapping up loose ends.”
The inspector almost never led early on with a question of that magnitude, but he wanted to see how Smith would react. Like it or not, this uncouth piece of shit was his best suspect, even if he apparently had an alibi—a woman in town said he’d been in her bed that night until early morning the next day.
After purposely asking a half dozen mundane questions he already knew the answer to, the inspector dropped another loaded bomb.
“You said you didn’t have anything to do with girl’s death, and you seem to have a solid alibi for the night she disappeared, but I have to ask since she went missing in such close proximity to your camp… Can you think of anyone in your camp who might have killed her or caused her harm?”
The man scowled, but the inspector noted that he remained slouched in his chair.
“You get off on harassing people? That why you become the law?”
“So, you don’t know who killed her?”
“Like I said, I don’t know.”
The inspector ignored the denial. He was more interested in the man’s body language.
When the man answered, his right leg—which had been crossed over his other one at the knee—began to bounce erratically. Up until then, the leg had remained motionless.
Red flag number two.
“Only a few more questions, and we’ll be done,” the inspector said. “Did you ever see Maddie May Johnson? I heard she sometimes went on long walks on the road right by your camp.”
The man didn’t answer and just stared morosely at the inspector.
Finally, he rubbed his chin and spit on the ground.
“You’re wasting your time. I’m done.”
The inspector nodded. He couldn’t hold the man. He wasn’t under arrest.
“I really appreciate you coming in to talk to me. You’ve been a big help in our narrowing down some details about when and where she might have gone missing. Just one more question. I’m asking in case you saw anything when you were driving into town on the night she disappeared. I think,”—here the inspector looked at his notes, pretending to review them—“I think you said you were at Bella Pepin’s house in town that night until maybe two or three in the morning, right? Could you just walk me through that really quickly, and we can wrap this up?”
“I was at Bella’s, like I told the other cop,” Smith said, looking to his right. “I am at her place for the entire night. We make dinner. Some pasta, and we are drinking wine and listening to music. I like jazz. Miles Davis in particular. We have a little fun in the bed, which is none of your goddamn business. We don’t go to sleep. We are awake all night because it’s not often I get to see her. I have many demands on me and my body back home if you know what I mean?”
He dropped his gaze to the inspector.
Inspector Harris didn’t react. He knew exactly what this aberration of nature was talking about. The rumor was the man had sex with all the women in his cult, even girls as young as twelve. It disgusted the inspector more than he could say, but he kept his face deadpan. “Go on,” he said.
Smith’s eyes returned to a spot on the ceiling to his right. “After that, I go take a shower. You know how these things can get messy? Bella is asleep in bed. When I am coming back from the bathroom, I look out and see it’s starting to get light, so I figure it’s time to leave. I drive home like normal. I don’t see nothing. Don’t see nobody. Got it?”
“Thank you,” the inspector said. “I think that’s all for now.”
He’d gotten what he needed. The conversation had confirmed his suspicions. Smith was lying.
In recalling that night at Bella’s, Smith kept looking up and to his right. Typically, but not always,
&
nbsp; when someone recalls an incident, or accesses their memory, they look to their left. When they are using their imagination—or are lying—they tend to look to their right.
That alone wasn’t enough.
The bouncing of the previously motionless leg was the second sign.
But more importantly was the tense Smith used in recalling the details of that night. As he reeled off (in suspicious detail) his account of that night, he described it in the present tense. This although the night in question was three weeks ago. Red flag number three.
From what the inspector knew about lying, these three details were further evidence that Smith was most likely being deceptive.
12
Present Day
Sumatra
Rose was itching to go to Australia.
All she had to do was go get Dylan and her laptop, and she could buy a plane ticket.
Her passport was in her laptop case. It would allow her to withdraw money at the bank.
She put the idea of going to the other island in the Aussie’s heads, talking about the cool surf gang and the massive waves to be had.
Finally, they made plans. They chartered a small fishing boat to take them to the other island the next day. Rose would stowaway. She didn’t want them to give her up to the surf gang in case Gia was still there looking for her. She’d hide below deck. Later, she’d sneak into the camp and try to find Dylan and retrieve her laptop under the cover of darkness.
It was a solid plan.
She’d be back on the other island by the next day.
But later that afternoon, when she was in the small tent one of the Australian’s had loaned her, she heard a commotion.
She peered out.
A group of surfers were talking excitedly and gesturing.
Rose crept out and as soon as she heard what they were talking about, she took off sprinting for the small harbor.
There had been a shitshow on the other island with the surf camp the night before. Some of the fishermen had been talking about it: a giant black boat, CIA or FBI agents, international police, helicopters and militia, explosions, and dead bodies.
Holy shit!
As soon as Rose got to the marina, she raced up to an older fisherman who was on the dock about to tie his boat up. She yanked the rope out of his hands and jumped into the boat, pushing off with her foot against the dock as she did.
The man swore in some language, and she winced.
“I’m so sorry. I promise I’ll make it up to you.”
And then she was in the boat and gone, steering the small motored craft toward the other island in the distance.
When Rose steered into the island’s marina, she immediately saw she’d missed the Sultan’s black boat again.
She shook off the disappointment that threatened to overwhelm her.
This was a marathon, not a sprint, she reminded herself.
If she let every setback bring her down, she might as well just give up and stay on this island surfing for the rest of her life.
It wasn’t the worst choice she could make.
But her bloodlust wouldn’t allow that.
She needed to stop the Sultan. Not just for her own need for vengeance, but to stop him from hurting others.
It was a moral obligation.
If she gave up, she would have the blood of untold girls on her conscience.
Instead of docking at the marina, she pointed the nose of the small boat toward a small inlet that lay south of the surfing beach. She would retrieve her laptop, find Dylan, and set off for the Australian coast.
The inlet was just south of a jetty marking the surfing area.
She was able to pull the boat into shallow water and tied it to a tree not far from the shore.
Creeping up along the jetty, she peered down the beach toward the small surf camp to plan her approach. If she stuck to the jungle lining the road, she could make it to her hut unseen. Luckily, her hut was one of the closest ones to her current hiding spot.
One reason she’d decided to come by sea instead of land—her hut was the furthest away from the road leading to town. If she’d come that way, she’d have had to pass by everyone else’s place to get to hers.
She would wait until dark.
As the sun set, a car pulled into the camp from the main road. Rose squinted to try to see who it was. Three guys got out with surfboards.
They were from the other island. They’d listened to her about Makeda’s camp.
Shit.
She’d hoped to use them to get to the island, not send them here to talk about her.
After she saw them head down to the bonfire, Rose decided it was time to start her stealthy approach. She clambered over the jetty’s rocks and then ran to the shoulder of the road, taking shelter in the darkness of the jungle behind her.
As she grew closer to the hut, she saw someone approaching it.
Makeda.
Rose stayed back, ducking into the shadows.
After a few minutes, three figures walked out of the hut and headed down toward the beach.
It was Makeda and Gia, and Rose’s heart leaped to see Dylan. He seemed fine.
Tears pricked her eyes.
She’d leave him. She decided right then and there.
He would be happy with Gia. He’d be taken care of and loved and safe.
Her mouth grew dry. It would be incredibly difficult to leave him behind. But it was for the best.
And as much as she wanted to chase after Gia and hug her, it would crush her. Rose was terrified that seeing Gia’s face would make all her need for vengeance slip away.
She couldn’t afford that. So she let them walk away.
After the figures were far down the beach near the bonfire, Rose slipped inside the hut. She scanned it briefly. It was mostly as she’d left it. She eyed her surfboard, wishing she could take that with her. It was a beauty. But she had to travel light. Over on the futon, she saw one of her paperbacks splayed open. Gia must have been reading it.
Gently setting the book aside, Rose lifted the futon, jiggled the loose board and retrieved her laptop, which was snug and protected in a Kevlar carrying case. She could drop it from 30,000 feet and it would keep her laptop working. Well, maybe not, but it definitely protected the laptop from scratches.
Inside the case, along with her computer, was her passport and some cash.
Giving the hut one last glance, she decided to leave Gia a message.
She picked up the paperback. It was a dog-eared book by Joan Didion called The Year of Magical Thinking. At its heart, it was about grief and love and living life to the fullest.
Rose flipped through it quickly and found the passage she was looking for.
Reaching for a pen on the table, she underlined two sentences: “I could not count the times during the average day when something would come up that I needed to tell him. This impulse did not end with his death. What ended was the possibility of response.”
It would tell Gia what she needed to know: That Rose knew Nico was dead.
She’d known from the minute Gia started relentlessly calling her at all hours, leaving messages that Rose instantly deleted, when she saw Gia step out of that car on this beach.
Rose knew.
And she wasn’t ready to face it yet.
But the thing was, she’d been preparing for his death for the past few years. In fact, she’d been mourning the loss of her father for longer than she could remember.
That’s why she’d picked the Didion book up at the airport—looking for a way to process that grief.
Maybe if she left a message for Gia that showed she knew Nico was dead, maybe, just maybe, Gia would let her go…
Rose stepped outside the hut and was nearly knocked over by a black, wriggling mass of muscle.
Dylan.
She reached down and hugged him. He wriggled and whined, and Rose worried he would pass out from excitement. She’d seen a video of a dog fainting after losing his shit from se
eing his owner again after four years.
Quickly looking behind her, she saw people on the beach starting to move toward the road.
It was now or never.
Dylan had made the choice for her.
“Come on, boy,” she said, starting to run. “Let’s go.”
They raced toward the jungle and then headed to the jetty, scrambling over it.
She untied the rope and ran toward the water, Dylan splashed in beside her, and she had to lift him into the boat.
Rose started the engine and then hit full throttle as they headed out to sea, her hair whipping behind her. Dylan stood on all fours beside her, his ears flapping back in the wind.
13
Present Day
Australia
From the air, Australia looked amazing. At least the Sydney Harbour did. A cluster of skyscrapers, expansive green lawns, impressive bridges spanning numerous inlets of the ocean. Gorgeous.
While she’d seen pictures from her friends surfing massive waves in the Sydney Harbour with the skyline looming in the background, this was not a surf vacation.
She was flying on to Melbourne.
Dylan, on the floor at her feet, gave a small whine.
After Gia had him declared a companion animal, he’d become a decent air traveler, but it wasn’t his favorite thing.
She reached down and patted his head. Poor boy.
“Not much longer,” she said.
A few minutes later, the plane started its descent. Immediately, she saw that Melbourne was less picturesque and a larger city than Sydney, at least when it came to tall buildings.
But none of that mattered.
She was renting a car and heading up the coast to Portsea and the Point Nepean National Park.
And then to the Pioneer Quarry—where the girl’s body was found.
Her research during the flight—tapping into national crime databases in Australia—showed that over the past two years six girls had gone missing within a 100-mile radius of the quarry. Their ages ranged from thirteen to seventeen.
Rose also scanned newspaper and other news websites in the area and found very little mention of the missing girls. Nobody seemed to have made the connection between them.
Blood & Fire (Vigilante Crime Series Book 2) Page 6
