Ritual Sins
Authors: Anne Stuart
Tags: #cults, #Murder, #charismatic bad boy, #Body; Mind & Spirit, #American Southwest, #Romantic Suspense / romance, #Revenge, #General, #Romance, #New Mexico, #Swindlers and Swindling, #Fiction
R
ITUAL
S
INS
Anne Stuart
Copyright © Anne Kristine Stuart Ohlrogge, 1997
For Barbara Keiler and Judith Arnold, two of my dearest friends.
For Richie, who keeps me sane. And for Maureen Walters and Susan James, who take such very good care of me.
R
ITUAL
S
INS
PART ONE: SANTA DOLORES, NEW MEXICO
PART TWO: COFFIN’S GROVE, ALABAMA
PART THREE: SANTA DOLORES, NEW MEXICO
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1
R
achel Connery didn’t want to be there. At the age of twenty-nine she’d made it her policy never to do anything she didn’t want, to always have a choice in matters. She was here by choice, she reminded herself grimly. It was simply a choice she wished she didn’t have to make.
The taxi had already pulled to a stop outside the sweeping expanse of Santa Dolores, home base to the Foundation of Being. Seventeen miles away from Albuquerque, it sat beneath the New Mexico sun like the peaceful retreat it was purported to be. A compound devoted to meditation and enlightenment, combined with a hospice center to care for the dying.
Her mother had sought enlightenment behind those walls. Her mother had died there.
The cabdriver had already opened her door,
and she slid out, brushing imaginary dust off her silk suit as she glared up at the compound. She didn’t want to be here, she thought again. And
they
knew it.
“I can handle it from here,” she said, taking her leather suitcase from the driver and handing him a generous tip.
“Blessings,” he murmured.
“What?”
“Blessings. You’re one of Luke’s People, aren’t you?” The driver seemed momentarily confused, but his fist closed tight over the money in case she was inclined to snatch it back.
“No,” she said shortly. “I’m not.” And she marched toward the beautiful forged gate, her high heels firm in the dusty drive.
Luke’s People, they called themselves. She’d managed to blot that particularly ugly thought out of her mind, but now it was back. There was no more hiding from things she didn’t want to face. She’d never met the man, only seen him from a distance. But even across a crowded courtroom she could feel the poisonous strands of his charisma, like a spider’s web reaching out toward any stray creature who wandered in its path.
Luke Bardell, ex-con, convicted murderer, founder of what some people called a philosophy, others called a religion, and Rachel called a cult. The man who had mesmerized her dying mother
into leaving twelve and a half million dollars to the Foundation of Being. And not a damned thing to the only child she’d ever had.
Ten years ago Rachel might have simply curled up in a tight ball and wept. But not now. She’d fought back, hard. Only to have her lawsuit thrown out by the first judge, her lawyers quit on her, and defeat wash over her like a bitter shower of acid. You can’t sue a religion. You can’t accuse a saint. Stella Connery was of sound mind when she made her will, she knew she was dying of breast cancer, and she’d made her decision and disinherited her daughter.
And the Foundation of Being had been nauseatingly gracious in triumph. Surely Rachel would want to make a pilgrimage to the place where her mother had spent her final peaceful days, to the spot where she was buried? She could see the good that Stella’s money was doing, make peace with what the courts and her mother had chosen. The Foundation, and Luke’s People, would welcome the chance to share the blessings that had come their way.
Rachel would have rather eaten fried caterpillars. They certainly weren’t about to share the money that they’d wheedled and tricked out of a vain, dying woman. Stella and Luke had been lovers, Rachel had no doubt about that whatsoever. Stella had gone through men with a
voraciousness that had left her only child awed and frigid in response. No good-looking man had been immune to Stella.
Luke Bardell, the messiah of the Foundation of Being, was a very good-looking man indeed. And he’d been paid well for sleeping with a dying old lady.
If Rachel had been willing to accept defeat she would have refused their offer of hospitality. A sensible woman would have accepted the fact that the mother who’d abandoned her on almost every level had finally finished the job. She could find a new job, make a life for herself, choose not to be a victim of a distraught childhood.
Choice, again. There was that word. She could choose anger and revenge. Or she could choose to get on with her life.
If it hadn’t been for the letter from a stranger she might have made the wise decision. But once the creased, scrawled letter arrived in her mailbox with its hints and accusations, she had no real choice.
Your mother never had cancer. She was murdered by one of Luke’s People. Maybe by Luke himself, or at least he gave the order. At the end she knew what was happening to her, but she couldn’t stop them. Come to the center and I’ll help you find proof that will bring him down.
No real choice. The letter was unsigned, written
in a childish scrawl, but it rang with truth. Or at least, the truth she wanted to believe.
At that point, anger and determination kept her going, and they carried her straight to Santa Dolores, to the Foundation of Being. And to Luke Bardell.
“She’s here, Luke.”
He didn’t move. He’d heard them shuffle in, that odd group of middle-aged and elderly professionals who’d found the answer to life’s questions with the Foundation of Being, and used their financial expertise to make it thrive. They were called the Grandfathers, even though there were several women in the group, and they ran the organization like a blue-chip company.
And Luke ran them. He lay flat on his back on the cool tile, arms outstretched, eyes closed, as he inhaled the sweet, sharp smell of burning sage. He could feel the energy tingling, rushing, flowing through his body, every nerve taut, every vein pumping with blood, with life, pulsing, throbbing. That energy was his power, his gift, and he used it carefully, never squandering it.
For a moment he wondered who they were talking about, and then he remembered. Stella’s daughter. The skinny, pale, sour-faced woman who’d had the astonishing gall to try to take his money away. She’d gotten nowhere, of course.
The Grandfathers thought she should have been paid off. After all, lawsuits and accusations, no matter how farfetched, were bad publicity. And the Foundation of Being preferred little or no publicity. They weren’t looking for converts. Those who needed what they offered would find their way to Santa Dolores. Sooner or later.
But Luke hadn’t wanted to pay her off. He’d watched her, with her patrician face and her fuck-you eyes, her designer clothes and her utter contempt, and that old feeling rose in him, one he thought he’d squashed down. Here was a challenge, when nothing had been a challenge for years. Here was a soul who would fight him, tooth and nail, before he could claim her. Here would be a battle that would test his rusty skills, prove that there was no one immune to the power he could exert, when he chose to focus it.
He would bring Rachel Connery to Santa Dolores and he would seduce her. Spiritually and emotionally, he would strip her, ravish her, drain her, and own her. As he did all the others.
He had no qualms about it. He could take that sour look on her pale face and turn it into the placid expression of bliss that surrounded him twenty-four hours a day. All without laying a hand on her.
He never slept with his followers. As far as they knew, he never slept with anyone at all. Luke
Bardell was celibate, vegetarian, drug- and alcohol-free, purity personified. It was all part of the tools of the trade. They all wanted him. He knew it, and he used it. He slept with no one, and they believed they could all have him, men and women, young and old. As long as he remained out of reach it kept them blind and focused and needy.
The way he liked them.
It would be interesting to see just how long it would take him to bring about that change in an angry disbeliever like Rachel Connery. He’d converted others before, it should be a simple matter.
Except that she was different, he’d felt it, even from a distance. Her anger ran deeper. And it called to him, a challenge that he had no intention of refusing.
He opened his eyes and sat up, fluidly, brushing his long hair behind him as he crossed his legs and stared back at the Grandfathers. “Blessings,” he said.
“What do you want us to do with her, Luke?” Alfred Waterston had been chief of staff at one of the leading cancer research institutes in the country. He’d taken early retirement to follow Luke’s way, in the meantime taking charge of the Foundation’s complex finances. Alfred’s attention to detail was impressive to the point of obsessive.
“Make her welcome,” he replied in his gentle voice that he’d trained to carry to the farthest
corner of any room. Another tool, one he used wisely.
“She’s expecting to see you. I told her you were meditating, and she just laughed. I’m afraid she’ll be a disrupting influence, Luke.”
Luke simply nodded. “Not for long, Alfred. See if she’ll submit to purification before she approaches. What’s she wearing?”
“City clothes,” Alfred said with a dismissive sniff.
“Bring her some of our things. She’ll be more comfortable in them.”
“And if she refuses?”
“Then I’ll deal with it, Alfred. I always do.”
She’d refuse, of course, even though the ritual bath was simply the private use of a hot spring that was wonderfully enervating. She’d probably insist on cold showers during her stay. She’d refuse the loose cotton clothing that they all wore as well, but he’d see to that in good time. The phrase rang in his head,
Strip her, bathe her, and bring her to my tent
, and he smiled serenely.
“Blessings,” Alfred murmured, with no idea what his saintly leader was thinking.
“Blessings to you all,” Luke replied, lying back down again.
It had been three months since he’d been laid. He’d grown used to the long periods of celibacy—if he were to keep up the image of purity,
then he had to be very careful how and when he took care of his needs when they became overwhelming.
But he’d learned to channel that frustrated sexual energy into a kind of burning power that reached out to everyone. And he lived inside that volcano, inviolate.
Santa Dolores was a safe haven for all, based upon trust and love and freedom. It also worked extremely well due to an advanced surveillance system that gave Luke visual access to certain rooms on the compound. He sat up again, alone in the pale, cavernous room, and rose. He would retire to his private meditation chamber, the one place where no one, not even Calvin, would disturb him. He would draw aside the thick black curtain and stare at the banks of television monitors. And maybe he might get a chance to see whether Rachel Connery was as pale and sour and skinny without her clothes on.
The first thing she noticed was that there were no children around. Apparently this cult catered to the unencumbered. The better to extort their money, Rachel thought. The main house of Santa Dolores was built along fittingly Southwestern lines—cool tile floors, adobe walls, plain dark wood on the windows and ceiling.