Blood Sins (17 page)

Sawyer thought about the sarcastic inner voice that had been nagging at him and had to ask. "You haven't been--you haven't done that before? Put thoughts in my head?"

Her eyebrows went up a bit. "No, that was the first time. Why? Has there been an alien voice in your head?"

"I assume you mean
alien
as in unfamiliar."

"Well, I'm not a big believer in visitations from little green men, so, yeah, that's what I mean."

"How could I have an unfamiliar voice in my head?"

Her mouth twisted slightly. "Around here? Pretty easily, I'd say. There's a weird sort of energy in this place, here in the Compound and even in Grace, and you can't tell me you don't feel it."

"Lots of places have weird energy. That doesn't translate to somebody else's thoughts in your head."

"It might here. I can't be absolutely sure of the number, but I can tell you there are quite a few psychics inside this Compound."

"I can't believe I'm having this conversation," he muttered.

"It gets worse," she told him.

J
ESUS.
How does it get worse?"

"We believe Samuel is one of the strongest and most unusual psychics we've ever encountered. Extremely power ful and extremely dangerous. And probably at least one of the people closest to him is an unusually strong psychic as well. Maybe DeMarco." She shook her head. "I couldn't get a read on him, and that's rare for me."

Sawyer took a moment to sort through the questions rattling around in his mind and focused on one. "We believe. Who is
we
?"

Tessa answered readily, having clearly expected the question. "I work for a civilian investigative organization called Haven. We're called into cases that . . . present difficulties for cops and federal agents, for whatever reason. Most of us are licensed P.I.s, but we obviously don't have quite as many rules and regulations to worry about during an investigation."

"You break the law?"

"Personally, no. Well, not so far, though I have to admit I've never been faced with that particular choice. And it isn't company policy, believe me; we also work with cops and federal agents, both of whom would be more than a little uncooperative if we didn't mostly play by the rules."

"Mostly."

She ignored the muttered word to add, "This time out, we're part of a federal investigation of the Church of the Everlasting Sin. And of Samuel."

"First I've heard of it." He tried to keep the suspicion out of his voice and undoubtedly failed, judging by her faint smile.
Or, hell, maybe she's just reading your mind.

"You'll have to forgive us for that. We had reason to believe that Samuel could have people inside local law enforcement. Church members, perhaps. So we couldn't be sure who to trust. Until we had someone here who could . . ."

"Read me?"

Tessa nodded. "We had to be sure. We couldn't take the chance of confiding in the wrong person, not with so many lives potentially at stake. I'm sure you know enough about cults to know that if and when the cult leader is threatened, or even just feels threatened, the consequences can be devastating."

"Koresh," Sawyer said grimly. "Jim Jones."

She nodded again. "Probably something you've been worried about yourself, especially in recent weeks. You pulled those bodies out of the river. I'm betting you know there have been other victims as well. Victims someone else had to pull out of the river at some point downstream. Victims who died in . . .unnatural ways."

"Are you telling me that Samuel killed them? You know he killed them?"

"If we knew absolutely, if we could prove it, then you and I wouldn't be having this conversation. We're sure he's responsible. We just don't have courtroom proof. Yet."

"So . . . what? You're here to get that proof? By allowing them to recruit you, take you into the fold?" Before she could answer, he sat up straighter and said, "Wait a minute. If this is your job, then you aren't really Jared's widow. It's all a cover."

She cleared her throat and looked, for the first time, a bit uncomfortable. "Jared Gray is alive and well. Sailing somewhere off Bermuda, last I heard. I'm sorry, Sawyer, for the deception. That part of it, at least. He said--well, he didn't think there'd be anybody back here to grieve for him, especially since he left right after high school. He was in Florida trying to untangle his parents' estate months after they'd died in a car crash, hadn't even started thinking about what he'd do with the part of it here in Grace."

"You asked him to play dead."

"Not me personally. But, yes, that's what he was asked to do. And he was willing to disappear for a few months. More than willing; I think he was sick of dealing with legal matters and just wanted to get away. A sailing 'accident' was easy enough to arrange."

"And a wedding before that?"

"All the paperwork to indicate there had been a wedding, yes. An actual ceremony wasn't necessary."

"Just a lot of lying."

Grave now, she said, "I hate that part of the job. And if I didn't believe I was helping, doing something positive with my abilities, I couldn't pretend to be someone else."

Sawyer drew a breath and let it out slowly, honestly not sure if he was relieved or pissed. "So what's your real name?"

"Actually, my real name is Gray. Tessa Gray. One of the hardest things about going undercover is remembering a whole new name, so we try to avoid that as much as possible, keep at least our Christian names the same. This time it just happened to work out that I was able to keep both."

"Quite a coincidence."

"My boss says there are no coincidences. Just the universe

arranging things."

H
ollis Templeton would have been the first to admit that inactivity drove her nuts, so she considered it a cosmic joke that fate had placed her in the small town of Grace and in the Gray family home where she was virtually a prisoner.

She couldn't even go into town.

"You broadcast," Bishop told her frankly. "Especially since you began to see auras. We can't take the chance that Samuel or his people might see or sense you. It's enough of a risk just to have you in the house with Tessa when church members visit her."

"I know, I know. I wouldn't even be here if Ellen Hodges hadn't told me I needed to be. I just wish she'd told me
why
I needed to be here."

"You'll find out eventually. But until you have some sense of why, you have to keep a low profile."

"I don't have to like it."

"No, I wouldn't expect you to. But sit tight for the time being."

Hiding her abilities had never been an issue until recently, and since they were still evolving--seeing auras was a very new aspect--she had spent her time learning to cope with what was rather than worry about shielding it from other psychics.

She wished now that she had taken a few lessons in developing her personal shield and had in fact been practicing using the few basic instructions Bishop and others on the team had offered. But she was a long way yet from being able to hide her abilities.

In the meantime, since doing
something
was better than pacing the floor in worry about whatever Tessa might be doing inside the church Compound, Hollis had abandoned the smaller kitchen space to turn the big table in the formal dining room into her command center. Her laptop was set up there, and files, notepads, and maps vied for the remainder of the polished mahogany surface.

There was a very large, very grand book-lined study on the other side of the sprawling house, but Hollis, like Tessa, was uncomfortably aware of being very much an outsider in someone else's home, and she preferred to work in the brighter and less personal dining room.

Not that there was a lot of work to do. She had gone over everything so many times that she felt like it was all branded in her mind, and staring at the bits and pieces of information was a bit like staring at blank jigsaw pieces: impossible to know how everything really fit together.

If it fit together.

Despite Bishop's certainty, Hollis was having a difficult time accepting that the Reverend Adam Deacon Samuel really had been the mastermind--literally--behind one of the most vicious, inhuman serial killers ever to rampage across American soil. It didn't seem possible, at least in a sane world, for an avowed man of God to deliberately unchain an evil, ravenous beast and set it loose to maim and kill innocents.

Even worse, to personally hunt for and virtually feed that monster its victims, one by one.

How could any man, after doing that, return to his church and preach to his congregation about God's love?

"It's a cult," she reminded herself aloud, needing more sound than that provided by the kitchen TV, on low and tuned to an MSNBC news show. "He's got himself a cult. Cults are all about power, not religion. All about control. Look at what he's doing now with the women of that church. Maybe he needs the energy, or maybe he just likes manipulating them. Controlling them. He gets the energy and the kicks--and the satisfaction of knowing he's the alpha among all the men of the congregation. That he can . . . pleasure the women in a way none of their men can. And . . . yuck," she added involuntarily.

Hollis had only recently begun her training in criminal profiling, but what she had learned so far told her to look for patterns, for a kind of logic in a personality so far outside accepted norms that trying to find something logical seemed irrational.

Seemed.

There was always logic, if only that of a twisted mind.

A twisted and impenetrable mind, at least to Hollis. She almost wished Dani were here; as far as Hollis knew, Dani Justice was the only person living who had firsthand experience with at least some of the thoughts in this twisted monster's mind. And was, moreover, possibly the only person who had ever hurt him in a psychic sense.

And therein lay the danger.

Dani was someone else too easily recognizable to Samuel, and she, unlike Hollis, posed a very real and deadly threat to him. Hollis he wouldn't be happy about; Dani might be able to destroy him, and that was a threat that could push him over the edge.

"Call me," Dani had said to Bishop. "If it comes to that. If you need me there. Call me. In the meantime, I'll keep practicing."

"What about Marc?" Bishop had asked, referring to the man with whom she was in the process of forming a unique partnership.

"Marc understands the stakes. And he knows how I feel about finishing this, once and for all. Call me, Bishop. If you need me."

Hollis hoped they wouldn't need Dani. As remarkable as her ability was, Dani had not faced Samuel in a literal sense, had not pitted her strength against his directly. What she had done in Venture had been self-defense, not an offensive attack.

Facing him here would be . . . something very different.

Something deadly.

"He recharges," Hollis said aloud to herself as she stared down at a detailed drawing of the church Sarah had managed to get out to them weeks before. She fixed her gaze on the third-floor layout and Samuel's suite of rooms in the rear of the building. "He controls. He kills. Why does he kill? Because he can? Because he wants to? Because he has to? Why--"

The physical reaction was always the same. All the fine hairs on her body stood out as though electrical energy filled the room, and goose bumps rose on her flesh as if someone had suddenly opened a door into winter. And there was, still, a jolt of fear, a sense that some doors were really never intended to be opened by the living. Not, at least, without some dreadful cost. Hollis looked up slowly.

The woman was young, pretty, with long fair hair, and her expression was unhappy.

Possibly because she was dead.

But she looked alive, looked flesh-and-blood real; Hollis had the uneasy suspicion that if she could reach across the table and touch this spirit, the woman would feel just as alive as she looked. Hollis always had that notion and probably would until--if--she put it to the test.

"I told you to look for her in the water. Why didn't you listen?" Her voice was low, anxious.

Hollis ignored the question to ask one of her own. "Who are you?"

"Andrea."

"Andrea who?"

"You have to look for her in the water."

"Look for who in the water?" Hollis countered, trying for once to get at least a few bits of useful information she could focus on.

"Ruby."

"Is Ruby in the water now?"

"I told you."

"You told me more than three months ago."

Andrea's expression turned uncertain. "Three months ago."

"Three months ago and in another town. Another state. I saw you in Venture, Georgia. At a murder scene. We're in North Carolina now. Don't you know when you are? Where you are?" A breath of a laugh escaped Andrea. "I'm in hell, I think."

"Andrea, when did you die?"

"You don't know about me yet." She said it in an odd, automatic way, as if reciting something memorized.

"You said that before. In Venture."

"Did I?"

"Yes. When did you die?"

"Before."

"Andrea--"

"It's my fault. What he's doing. I should have made him understand. I should have . . . He's made it so much worse, and it's all my fault."

"What's your fault?" Hollis's question was more insistent, because she could see that Andrea was fading, losing substance and energy, and knew the contact would last only seconds longer.

But Andrea was shaking her head. "Please, look for her in the water. Help Ruby."

Hollis drew a quick breath. "If she's already in the water, then I can't help her."

"You can. You have to. All of you have to." Even her voice was fading, the final words holding a curiously hollow sound. "You need her help to stop him."

Hollis stared at the empty space on the other side of the table, vaguely aware that the room was a normal temperature again and that the sensation of a live current in the air was gone. She pulled a legal pad from under one of the maps and made several quick notes, jotting down what had been said while it was still fresh in her mind.