Danger in Numbers

by Heather Graham

  The way she stood enhanced the sleek length and beautiful grace of her body, and even hinted at the curves that lurked beneath.

  He thought of her hands, the length of her fingers.

  The way she spoke, the way she moved.

  In that minute, he imagined...the two them, simply dropping everything, and him sweeping her off her feet into an embrace...

  She gave him a crooked smile. The moment broke. He wasn’t sure if he turned, or if she turned. Or if maybe, just maybe, she had envisioned the same thing, and the fact of who they were and why they were together swept in. Just his imagination, of course. All in his head.

  And yet, in that moment, he wondered if they hadn’t shared their thoughts, as they sometimes seemed to do...

  She headed down the hall. He heard the bedroom door close.

  Despite the fact that the house was an FBI holding and had a top-notch alarm system, Hunter still checked the back door that led out from the kitchen, and then the front door again.

  He was beyond exhausted, and he still feared he wouldn’t sleep.

  He told himself he’d be thinking over the events of the day, thinking about the brand that had been seared into the flesh of the dead women, thinking about the horror of the half-consumed corpse that had been the center of the day.

  Thinking about bursting into the house that night, just in time...

  Amy was a damned good agent. She could hold her own. But thank goodness he’d gone to check on her.

  He headed into the second bedroom, realizing his footsteps slowed as he passed her door. He forced himself to keep going.

  The bedroom was fine, simply furnished. The sheets on the bed were fresh and clean.

  He crashed down on the bed.

  Awkwardly, he realized he had to set his gun holster by the side of the bed, shed his shoes and jacket at the very least.

  He stripped down.

  The bed felt wonderful. His body craved the comfort.

  His body also craved something else.

  No, he needed sleep. Let the sweet act of falling asleep interact with the subconscious mind, make use of the night and the rest...

  And his mind remained awake.

  But he realized he wasn’t attempting to reason out the case, sorting information into the compartments of his mind.

  He was thinking about the woman who slept so near him, the light in her eyes when she was passionate, when she laughed, her wit, reason, humor... The empathy she showed. How she faced the things they’d already been through together without falling apart.

  He liked her.

  Admired her.

  Wanted her.

  He had known her just a few days.

  It was...

  Not good.

  They were partnered up for this—a professional partnership.

  They were working together to catch a brutal killer. And it might well get way worse. Eye on the prize, he reminded himself.

  But it wasn’t easy. She slept just feet away.

  Thankfully, he didn’t dwell on that thought; he was physically and mentally exhausted.

  And in less time than he had imagined, he slept.

  * * *

  Hunter was already at the dining room table with coffee. He had his computer out and was studying the screen intently when Amy came out of her room, showered and ready to face the day. She had slept deeply, and she was glad she’d set her alarm—otherwise, she’d have still been sleeping deeply.

  She was surprised because she’d thought, as tired as she was, she’d have a hard time falling asleep. There had been that strange moment between her and Hunter in the hall...

  And she had thought maybe, just maybe, there would be a tap at her door; she would whisper he should come in, and then...

  She’d imagined all kinds of things she probably shouldn’t.

  At least she had slept well once she’d slept. She knew it was in part because Hunter had been so near. He had her back, and she could let down her guard.

  And now it was morning. They had a witness to interrogate today, a witness who would most probably be charged with a federal crime: Artie had taken part in holding Martin and Patty hostage.

  But she didn’t think, in the end, the young man could have killed anyone. That wouldn’t matter legally; he had aided and abetted Hank in his plans.

  While Amy was not nearly as experienced as a man like John Schultz, she had worked vice and homicide for Metro-Miami-Dade. She’d spent two years with the FDLE. She’d seen bodies on the beach, and bodies in barrels, encountered those with the drug cartels who had executed another in the blink of the eye.

  She’d learned something about people.

  If she was any judge at all of human beings, Artie wasn’t a bad person. She even wondered if, had she not been able to get his pill away from him, he would have gone through with suicide. But they would talk to Artie again this morning. Possibly, there was something he could say.

  “Morning,” Hunter said, looking up. “There’s coffee. There’s sugar, fake sugar and powdered creamer, if you like.”

  She smiled. “I used to like cream in my coffee, but then there were too many times it was nonexistent or going bad in the station when I first started working,” she told him. “Black is just fine. What are you studying?”

  He looked up at her and he was quiet for a minute, and she wondered again if he, too, hadn’t thought a little bit about her.

  “I think that I know who is behind this,” he told her.

  “Oh?” she said.

  Uh, no. He had his eye on the prize.

  He hesitated.

  “Okay, I don’t have anything to back this up yet, but I believe Ethan Morrison is the ‘Divine Leader.’”

  “Okay,” she said slowly, sliding into the seat next to him. “I hate, loathe, passionately despise everything the man has done and gotten away with, but we can’t jump to an assumption like that, Hunter.”

  “I listened to Artie last night when he was speaking with you. Artie was a kid who couldn’t get a girl, and Hank convinced him that if he followed the Divine Leader, he’d get a girl. I’m puzzled because—if what he was saying is true—our first victim went to have sex with him before she was murdered. She was brought down here by someone. We might be looking at trafficking, too.” He shook his head. “We needed Hank alive. Once I shot him—”

  “Once you shot him, you saved my life,” she said.

  “You were doing okay on your own,” he told her.

  “Thank you,” she acknowledged. “And thank you again for having my back.”

  “It’s a good back to have,” he said, and then he managed a rueful smile. “Sorry, that didn’t sound the way it should have—”

  “It’s all right!” she assured him. “We know Ethan Morrison wasn’t at the murder sites.”

  “But according to Artie, it was the ‘Brothers,’ or acolytes, or his main band of followers, who carried it out. We’ll get more on Hank today from Dr. Carver, but we know he took a poison pill—a death pill. Followers must all walk around with them. Think of the depth of that brainwashing! It’s terrible. When you put the need to believe in something together with a person who feels down, perhaps unloved and unwanted by the world, it’s a playground for a person who knows how to manipulate others.”

  He closed his computer.

  “They have an interrogation room ready for us. Artie will be arraigned and transferred after we’ve spoken with him. I’m afraid we’re not going to get more out of him than what you already managed to get in the car. Artie was a teenager more downtrodden and mixed up than your average teenager. Hank promised him sex with a woman—something he probably believed he’d never have. Sex, heaven, a life where he was loved... He was easily manipulated.”

  “I—I almost feel bad for him.”

  “So d
o I. But if we’re lucky, he’ll help us stop this thing from going any further, and prison might be the thing that saves him,” Hunter said.

  She smiled and he arched a brow.

  “I was just hoping that my feeling bad for him wasn’t a mistake,” she said.

  He shook his head. “No, empathy isn’t a mistake. It’s a good human quality.”

  “Well, let’s get started on this, shall we?” She stood and went over to the counter, where there were paper cups next to the coffeepot. “I’m taking along a coffee. Can I get you one, too?”

  “Yeah, thanks. I’m going to grab my things. Your bag ready?”

  “On the bed.”

  “I’ll get it.”

  “Thanks.” She started pouring the coffees and, thinking aloud, said, “It’s a good thing we travel well. I’m starting to think we’ve slept together over half of the state.”

  Her words came out entirely wrong; she turned to stare at him in horror.

  But he laughed.

  “We do it well,” he said lightly. “We do it well.”

  11

  Fall 1993

  Sam

  Time. Seconds stretched out. All life was a matter of seconds.

  Seconds became minutes, minutes became hours, and then days...

  And finally, in the end, a man’s life would be measured.

  Sam found himself praying; he no longer knew what he believed, except that there was a higher power, and he knew now, with crystal clarity, that a man’s life was not measured by riches or power but by his actions and reactions—and his common decency to his fellow man.

  Nice realization to make while he stood here, holding what was most important in life to him, his wife and his child.

  And praying.

  If I am going to die, that will be fine. I’ve been a fool. I knew there was something wrong, but I understand too clearly how Jessie felt, as well. We needed something different in life. We stumbled upon a really wrong different, and now...

  We’re both aware we might die for our mistakes. But please, God... Save the life of our child.

  There was another whisper of movement in the leaves.

  Jessie looked at him, her beautiful eyes filled with fear.

  He brought his fingers to his lips, warning her. “Stay still! Just stay still. We have to wait and watch,” he breathed into her ear.

  Someone was coming, but he hoped it was the agent who had slipped like an eel into their commune—and slipped out just as easily. The man who would be their savior.

  For a moment Sam worried he’d been tricked. That the man who had identified himself as an FBI agent was really just a plant, someone to find out who might betray Brother William and his core of deacons. His...henchmen.

  The movement in the trees continued.

  Sam strained his eyes to see. There was someone there. They weren’t clad in the casual everyday clothing of the members of the commune.

  It was a hunter, he thought.

  Except they were on federal land. He didn’t believe hunting was legal here, and yet the man moving through the trees ahead of them was in forest-camouflage pants and jacket, a tan baseball cap on his head. Sam held a small camera in his hand. It was all they had taken with them. Their clothing, Cameron’s toys, everything had been left behind. That was the only way to escape.

  He had managed to secretly get the camera. The main members of their colony—as Brother William called it—didn’t have personal equipment like cameras. Technology was a distraction from work and from the love and togetherness they shared.

  But on one of the rare supply runs into the nearest town, Sam had managed to buy a little point-and-shoot camera and a roll of film at a drugstore. He had taken pictures of damning evidence against Brother William, shots sneaked quickly in the office of letters—people swearing that they will not leave the colony. And even once during a gathering when Brother William had been choosing a young—underage—girl to be “honored” by his touch.

  More than that, he had images of some of the paperwork that showed the vast amount of money that Brother William was making off his followers: investments, assets, all handed over to the colony. And payments to his henchmen and others. Those who carried out Brother William’s dirty works received great rewards on earth, as well as those promised in heaven.

  If they were caught, the camera would mean a horrendous punishment for them. For him and Jessie and for Cameron. He knew now that Brother William would kill them.

  He had risked their lives for this. Jessie had known all along. She’d agreed. Cameron wouldn’t have understood, although Sam thought his son was special, smart, even at his young age.

  Cameron was suspicious of those they were supposed to obey and follow. When another young girl had been punished for not doing her share of work in the fields, Cameron had rushed forward, saying he would pick up the slack. He’d even volunteered to take the seven stripes on the back that were the child’s corporal punishment. The memory made Sam flush with pride and anger all over again.

  Sam barely dared move, but now he looked for a place where he might secrete the camera.

  God, he thought, if nothing else...if You’re there, I beg of You, spare the life of my son.

  He managed to twist slightly and ease the camera into a thicket where the black case was hidden completely by vines and brush.

  Movement again... Closer now. Someone was there.

  A savior, offering them new lives?

  Or a murderer, bringing death?

  Sam strained his eyes.

  “Sam?”

  He wasn’t sure at first whether it had been Jessie who said his name so softly.

  Not Jessie.

  She, too, was staring at the man who began to emerge from the cover of the trees.

  A man carrying a gun.

  12

  Artie looked somewhat better than he had the night before.

  He was in an orange jumpsuit, but he’d had a shower and washed and brushed his hair.

  They met first with a Dr. Kashi in the hallway before they went in to speak with Artie. Dr. Kashi had seen the young man the night before; because of the circumstances of his arrest and his state of mind, Dr. Kashi recommended that he be on a suicide watch.

  “This kid has suffered from anxiety disorder for a long time. He has trouble focusing. He was horrified when I first suggested he take pills to calm down and focus on a conversation, but then he wanted to try. He looked at me so hopefully. I have a feeling he comes from a family, perhaps a society, where anything that is perceived as a mental abnormality is ignored or frowned upon. Any use of drugs is forbidden. I’m not for pushing pharmaceutical intervention—we did go through a time when it was too easy to think every problem could be solved by popping a little white pill. But some people seriously benefit from medication and Artie is one of them. But now, he’s anxious—almost excited—about seeing a therapist and maybe having a life. I’m not a judge or a jury, but I hope they go easy on this kid.”

  “We’re hoping that, too,” Amy told him.

  “He’s able to have a conversation, right?” Hunter asked.

  Kashi nodded gravely.

  Ten minutes later, they were seated in one of the bureau’s interrogation rooms, facing Artie. He was calm, and he managed to smile at Amy.

  “I know I have to pay a debt. After that...”

  His words faded. “I don’t know what I’m going to do. My parents thought I’d graduate and just stay on—we have a small cattle ranch. I wasn’t going to college—no money. Please, don’t get me wrong. My parents are good people. And now I can tell you how sorry I am. I knew Mrs. Sanders. I didn’t want to hurt her. We weren’t supposed to hurt them—Mr. or Mrs. Sanders, I mean. We were just supposed to wait and ambush you, Special Agent Larson, and sneak you away. Now I know that was a lie. It would have been n
ecessary for us to kill them both, because we couldn’t leave witnesses behind.”

  “Artie, we know you didn’t want to hurt anyone—that was evident,” Amy said.

  “But I did. I hurt her. I cut her neck.”

  “She’s going to be all right,” Hunter told him. “But we still need your help. Artie, there is no reward in life or death for serving anyone who wants you to commit murder.”

  “Oh, we weren’t supposed to kill anyone,” Artie said. “I mean, I wasn’t supposed to have to kill anyone. That’s what Hank told me. We were supposed to hold the Sanderses as hostages, knock Special Agent Larson on the head and bring her to an old shack that’s in the Everglades a few miles. Used to be, people could have little hunting shacks out on that land. The law did something where they were grandfathered in, but when the owners died, they were supposed to be removed. But mostly, no one really cared, and lots of the cabins were just left to rot. Then we started up on those ‘great python challenges’ and people were going out to find constrictors loose in the Everglades, and whatever cabins were still left up kind of came in handy for the python hunters. Anyway, that’s where we were supposed to take Special Agent Larson.” He looked at Amy apologetically. “Hank said you were a girl—that we wouldn’t have any problem taking you.”

  Hunter glanced Amy’s way. “I guess she proved to be a problem. Artie, where is this cabin?”

  “There’s an old work road about a mile before you reach the diner,” Artie told them. “You just take it west until you come to the canal. At the canal, you hop in a canoe. An airboat would be better, but Hank told me we were just to use canoes, as airboats were hard to come by. My dad has one and lots of people out here own them, but an airboat is... I don’t know. Too high-tech?” Artie asked dryly. “Anyway, we were to use the canals. South along the water. The shack is visible from the canal. At least that’s what Hank told me. I’ve never been to the shack. Hank has. Hank had been.” Artie sighed, shaking his head.

  “Does anyone else know about any of this, Artie? Were you Hank’s only recruit?”