When Shadows Fall (24 page)

Chapter
50

Bethesda, Maryland

THE SUN WAS
crawling steadily out of the horizon when Fletcher and Jordan rolled up to the Stevens house. The overnight team gave them bleary looks, clearly disappointed they weren’t being relieved.

Claire and Kevin Stevens were sitting in the kitchen, also bleary-eyed, and their joint looks of hope morphing into despair were hard to take. Claire vaguely waved her hand at the coffeepot. Fletcher poured coffee for everyone, then joined them at the table.

“Any news at all?” Claire asked in a whisper.

Jordan touched her arm lightly. “We’re doing everything we can, Mrs. Stevens. Trust me. I know this is incredibly difficult, but right now we need some information. Can you tell us a little more about Rachel?”

“Of course. What do you want to know?”

“I’m sorry for being blunt, but is she your biological child?”

Claire Stevens had ivory skin. It was astounding to imagine she could get any paler, but she blanched so violently Fletcher reached out to steady her in case she fainted. “I take it that’s a no?”

Kevin Stevens’s face turned a mottled red. “I can’t believe you’re asking this now. She’s our daughter, and she’s missing. Nothing else matters.”

His wife’s mouth was working silently, as if she was trying and failing to find the appropriate words. She finally straightened her slim shoulders and spoke quietly. “How did you find out? It was a closed adoption. We were assured no one would ever know Rachel wasn’t ours.”

Fletcher looked at Jordan, and she leaned forward a little bit. “We believe we’ve found Rachel’s biological mother.”

The look of hope returned to Claire’s face. “Oh, thank the Lord. Did she steal her? Are we dealing with a custodial battle then? We can get our lawyers involved. We are her legal parents. Her mother abandoned her when she was a day old, and when she didn’t come back to claim her within thirty days, we were told we were in the clear. There’s no legal recourse for her to take Rachel back.”

“Let’s back up a minute, ma’am,” Fletcher said. “Tell us who helped you with the adoption.”

“No. Who is this woman? I want to know. I want to know who’s taken my daughter.”

Fletcher’s voice was gentle and steady. “Mrs. Stevens, please, calm down. We don’t believe Rachel’s biological mother is the person who took your daughter. But we do believe that her name is Kaylie Rousch, and she was a missing child, just like Rachel is now.”

“I don’t understand what you’re saying.”

But Kevin had leaned back in his chair, a look of wariness on his face. “Kaylie Rousch is the little girl—she’s a woman now—who’s been all over the news this morning. She was dead, they found her body. Now we find out they made some terrible mistake and she’s come back to life. You’re telling us this woman was Rachel’s biological host?”

“Yes, sir, that’s what we think.” Fletch sat back in the chair.
Biological host?
God, what an expression.

“But according to the news, the Rousch girl was stashed away in a cult for years, right?” Stevens asked.

Jordan nodded, took a sip of the coffee. “Yes, she was. We need to know how the adoption worked. Who facilitated it for you?”

Claire had recovered her composure. She was still pale, but there was some life in her eyes. “We had a lawyer. He helped us find the firm who did the private adoption. They were out of Lynchburg, Virginia. I only know that because I ran a background trace on our lawyer’s phone and saw all the calls he made when he was billing us were to a firm down there. We were never given their name, and to be honest, I never wanted it. What we were doing wasn’t against the law, not at all. They said it wasn’t going to take much time to get us a child, and we were thrilled when they were true to their word.”

“And you never dug any deeper? You checked out your own lawyer but not the firm he was working with?”

“That’s right. Our lawyer was taking our money regardless of whether we got a child. I wanted to be sure he was legitimate. And he was—he checked out. After that, I let it drop.”

“What’s his name?”

“Barry Evans, but he passed away a few years ago. He was based here in D.C., but he was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer soon after Rachel came home to us. He sold his practice, shut everything down to try and fight the disease. Sadly, it didn’t work out for him,” Stevens said.

“That’s good information, Mr. Stevens, but still, I need both names. Do you know who was your lawyer working with?”

Kevin Stevens looked at his wife, who nodded. “His name was Rolph Benedict.”

* * *

Fletcher called Sam as they left the Stevens house, told her what they’d learned, promised to keep her filled in. Confirming Rachel was adopted, and knowing that Rolph Benedict had brokered the deal, brought many things into focus. They now had proof Mac Picker’s firm was involved in baby-brokering. Claire Stevens even admitted they’d paid a hundred thousand dollars for Rachel.

It was a lot of money, but not if you didn’t want any trace of the fact that you weren’t the biological parents of a child. Rachel’s birth certificate listed Claire and Kevin Stevens as her biological mother and father. There were no adoption records at all, no paperwork. Even the money trail had been erased. A child bought with no one the wiser.

Fletcher wondered how many more were out there.

He stared out the window as Jordan drove back into the city. The day was going to be a scorcher, followed by wicked thunderstorms in the late afternoon and early evening. Stormy weather would hamper their search. He wanted to find Rachel before then.

They had all the threads. Now it was time to weave them into some semblance of a fabric everyone could understand. If they could do that, they’d find Rachel Stevens and Kaylie Rousch. And destroy Eden.

Chapter
51

Fauquier County, Virginia

BALDWIN ARRIVED AT
the unholy hour of 7:00 a.m. Xander had begged off, said he wanted to spend some time on the computer seeing what he could find about Eden and its followers. She knew he was going to do some deeper sleuthing, in places the FBI couldn’t legally go. With any luck, they’d all get some answers soon.

He came to the door as Sam was leaving, kissed her, gave her a pat on the bottom and sent her on her way. All she was missing was a lunch box.

She was somewhat refreshed after a few hours of sleep, a hot shower and half a pot of extremely strong Turkish coffee. The bandage on her neck itched. She’d checked the wound and thought it was going to heal fine, possibly without a scar. Her hands hurt, and her shoulders were sore from the struggle with Kaylie, but other than that, she felt good. Jazzed. Everything was coming together, and she was certain they were on the right track at last.

She kept an eye out, knowing Adrian or even Kaylie might be lurking nearby. But the birds were chirping and people flowed up and down the Georgetown streets without a care. She didn’t get the sense either of them were nearby.

That’s the point, isn’t it, Sam? He’s a prolific serial killer—he knows how to make himself invisible.

Bravery banished, she hopped into Baldwin’s vehicle and triggered the door locks.

He glanced at her but didn’t say anything. Once they were over the Key Bridge and driving west on the George Washington Parkway, Sam told Baldwin everything Xander and Fletcher had discovered, and asked him what he hoped to accomplish talking to Anne Carter.

“That’s a good question. I don’t know, exactly. We’re missing something. She was in charge of the operation, had access to all the files, all the intel. It’s been ten years. There’s a whole new round of leadership in place. More than that, I’m not convinced the files we have are accurate. You know we don’t like to commit everything to paper. An agent going rogue is what we fear the most. I’m hoping Carter left something out, something important, that might help us.”

“Any news on Rachel?”

His lips tightened. “No. The search resumed at first light. There have been hundreds of tips, and we’re chasing them all down, but none has been the one we need. Like Fletch said, Agent Blake is putting together a team to go into the area specified in Kaylie’s note. The BOLO on her got us exactly squat. She’s quite good at blending in.”

“I think you were right. Matcliff had years to teach her military survival tactics. The question is, where do you think she’d headed?”

“Same place we are, when we find out where it is. Eden.”

“You know that’s where Rachel has to be. Shouldn’t we be helping them?”

“I’m happy to let Jordan’s team handle the operational stuff. They can’t go in without authorization, and that’s going to take a while. We’ll catch up to them. I have a hunch we’re going to find something useful out here. We’ll talk to Carter, and then we’ll head back and see if they’re ready to saddle up. What’s Xander really doing?”

She smiled. “You’re quick. Most people think he just lazes about by the pool and jogs with the dog.”

“He’s much too intelligent to waste his time doing nothing. I figure he’s been working all the angles this whole time.”

“You’re right. He has been. So I’ll be honest with you. If he’s not on the computer digging, he’s probably on the road behind us, heading out to Great Falls with Thor.”

Baldwin shot her a glance. “Should I let the team know there’s a friendly in the woods?”

“You can, but they won’t see him. He’s like the wind out there. If he finds something worth our time, he’ll call in.”

“You sure about that?”

She watched the Potomac slip by the highway, the water on its incessant southerly march. “I know him well enough to know we can’t put him back into the chain of command and expect him to listen to orders. I will tell you this—he must think highly of you to let me off on my own without an argument. He’s been ridiculously overprotective of late, and he wasn’t exactly thrilled at your offer to have me join the Bureau.”

“Well, when we see him again, I’ll tell him I’m honored. You ready to talk about my offer again?”

She grinned at him. “Nope.”

Half an hour later, Baldwin’s GPS unit, a device he called Lola—because what Lola wants, Lola gets—told them their exit was ahead.

Anne Carter lived on forty acres of prime horse country in Fauquier County. Once they exited the highway, it was a bucolic drive—emerald fields and black fences supplemented by stacked field stones; muscular black and brown horses let out to graze. Gold Cup, the biannual steeplechase event, was coming up in a couple of months, and Sam wondered how many of these beauties would be running.

The country morning wasn’t as unbearably hot as it had been in the city, and Sam was enjoying watching the horses scamper about, playing in the fields. They were in Civil War country, the rolling verdant hills still masked with the slightest haze of early morning fog, and despite the clear sense of health and happiness around them, Sam couldn’t help feeling the shadow of those lives lost.

Carter’s drive was flanked with stone pillars and a twin row of poplars, evenly spaced on either side of the drive to create a multidimensional picture as they drove toward the house. The circular drive held two Range Rovers and a convertible BMW similar to Sam’s own, and had plenty of room for more. The cars surrounded a small fountain with a bronze statue of nymphs dancing in the spray.

Carter’s home was breathtaking, a slice of old Virginia. The house was set right in the wave of a hill; three stories of fieldstone with black shutters and a black roof, four chimneys pointing up to the sky. There was an arbor visible behind the house, rows and rows of grapes running away from the expansive backyard.

Sam thought she wouldn’t mind having a working vineyard on a century-old horse farm. She wouldn’t mind it a bit.

Anne Carter met them at the front door wearing a riding habit, the knee-high boots worn and muddied from an early morning ride. Her hair was short and white, eyes as bright blue as Sam had ever seen, her eyebrows still dark despite the white hair, which was slicked back under a headband so it wouldn’t interfere with her helmet. Her lips had a hint of red lipstick.

Everything about her, from her house to her barns to her clothing, was no-nonsense and elegant, a lethal combination. Even her accent was as cultured and Southern as the environs.

“Come in, come in. Let me get you something to drink. It’s so beastly hot out there. I can’t wait for fall. Just a few more weeks and there will be a bit of relief.”

She ushered them into a casual wood-paneled den and made sure they were comfortably seated before handing out tall, cold glasses of tart lemonade.

Baldwin introduced himself and Sam.

Once Carter settled across from them, she said, “I just can’t believe what I’ve been hearing. The news this morning is full of excitement. Kaylie Rousch is alive, and Doug Matcliff was, too? We’d given up on him. I was so torn up when I heard the news. That he was out there alone, thinking we hadn’t been in place to help him? It’s such a shame. Such a damn shame. And with all this hoopla, I hope this means you’re on the right track to find the Stevens girl?”

“About that,” Baldwin said. “I don’t mean to jump right in—”

“Oh, by all means. We don’t have all day. You’re on a case. I don’t miss it, that’s for sure. The pressure, the horror, the intensity day in and day out. I loved what I did, but I was also happy to retire, to buy this farm with my husband and live out here in the quiet where the worst things we have to worry about are whether the grapes are ripe or the horses lame.”

Realizing they were waiting patiently for her to finish, she said, “I am so sorry. Forgive an old woman her ramblings. Please, do go on.”

Old woman. She couldn’t be a day over sixty, and Sam could tell immediately she was as sharp as a tack. So why the artifice?

Baldwin merely nodded. “It’s no problem, ma’am. Doug Matcliff wrote to Dr. Owens, and told her he was going to be murdered, and then, of course, he was. We’ve located, and now lost again, Kaylie Rousch. She’s the one who indicated Matcliff had been checking in regularly to no avail for at least a year after they escaped the NRM.”

“Oh, call it by its rightful name, Dr. Baldwin. Eden is a cult, and always was. That woman, Curtis Lott, was as bad as Jim Jones as far as I’m concerned. Letting all those people kill themselves in that barn. She will surely burn in hell for her actions.”

“I understand you’ve been involved in investigating cults before. You were on the task force that went into Jones’s Guyana compound after the mass suicide, correct?”

Her eyes grew distant. “Yes, I was. What a scene that was. Jones was the worst sort of fraudster, a drug-addled predator preaching peace, love and harmony among the races, all the while bleeding his followers dry, getting them high and raping their children. We had a chance to take him out once but couldn’t get authorization. Think how many people could have been saved if someone had been willing to make the hard choice.”

“Was that what happened with Eden? No one was willing to make the hard choice?”

She took a sip of her lemonade. “
I
made the hard choice. But we were too late. Doug must have warned them, briefed them on how it would go down when we came in, that they’d have a window to get everyone dead before we returned with the warrant. They had to be ready to move at a moment’s notice, and the skills to evade us could only have come from insider knowledge.”

Her tone was bitter, and the faraway gaze was gone, replaced by the anger of a predator who’d missed its prey.

“So you’re saying when Doug went native, he went in all the way?” Sam asked.

“Yes. So you can imagine, hearing after all these years that he actually got out and took the Rousch girl with him is confusing, to say the least. If he was so disillusioned, why not come back to us?”

“He was afraid of being prosecuted,” Baldwin said.

“Yes, yes, that’s the party line, I’m sure. It wouldn’t have happened. We would have spent time and money to see him deprogrammed, and he would have been a hero for finding that little girl. He wouldn’t have been an agent anymore, but he wouldn’t have to stay on the run, either.”

Sam couldn’t help herself. “What do you really think happened with Doug? You had serious clout. You could have protected him. Surely he knew that.”

She took another sip of lemonade. Pointedly avoiding Sam’s question, she held up a finger and shook her head.

“I assume you got the parents’ permission to exhume the body of the one we messed up on?” she said to Baldwin.

Baldwin nodded. “We have a tentative ID—Jennifer Harvey. Lived in an orphanage in Anacostia, may have gotten caught in the cross fire in a drug deal. We’re following up, and Kaylie’s stepmother is willing to cooperate if reparations are made. She’s a piece of work. We found the father dead in the bedroom. He’d been there for months, if not longer. There’s a team liaising with the local homicide office to make sure there was no foul play, but the woman was clearly addled. She hated Kaylie. That much was clear. Said she was a compulsive liar.”

Anne leaned forward in her seat. “Did she, now? How very interesting.”