“How may I help you?” Holland Darby’s voice was pleasant and smooth, more powerful and magnetic than his son’s.
Agent Sterling didn’t so much as glance at Dean and me as we came to stand behind her. “I’m here for Lia,” she said. Her tone wasn’t argumentative. She was simply stating a fact.
“Of that, I have no doubt,” Darby replied. “Lia is a very special young lady. May I ask what your relationship to her is?”
On either side of the gate, Holland Darby and Agent Sterling stood with their arms hanging loosely by their sides. Both of them were preternaturally calm.
“I’m her legal guardian.” Agent Sterling went for the jugular. “And she’s a minor.”
If there was one thing that we knew about Holland Darby, it was that he took pains to stay just this side of the law. The word minor was his kryptonite, and Agent Sterling knew it.
You would hate to part with such a prize, but if she’s not eighteen…
“I haven’t been a minor for three months.” Lia came to stand behind the cult leader. She was dressed in a white peasant top and flowy white pants, barefoot, her hair loose and free.
“Lia.” Dean didn’t say more than her name, but there was a wealth of warning in that single word.
“I’m sorry,” Lia told Dean softly. “I know this hurts you. I know that you want to make it all better, to make everything better, but there is no better, Dean. Not for someone like me.”
A masterful liar wove truth into deception. Lia could say the words
someone like me and mean them.
“I believe there is a better.” Holland Darby took the opening that Lia had left him. “For everyone, Lia, even you.”
Even you. Those two words belied the gentleness in his tone. He was already undermining her, already sowing the belief that she was less, that she was unworthy, but that he could believe in her despite her unforgivable flaws.
For a brief instant, Lia’s eyes met mine. You know exactly what you’re
doing, I thought. He’s a doll-maker who likes broken toys, and you know how to play the shattered, broken doll.
Agent Sterling almost certainly saw that as clearly as I did, but she had no interest whatsoever in allowing one of her charges to play this game. “Lia, you have two choices. The first is to get your ass out here in the next five seconds. And the second choice?” Agent Sterling took a single step forward. “It’s one that you’re really not going to like.”
Lia—being Lia—heard the truth in that statement. I expected her to bait Agent Sterling further, but instead, she shrank back.
Vulnerable. Broken. Weak.
Holland Darby held up a hand. “I will have to ask you to moderate your tone.” He stepped in front of Lia, blocking her bodily from Sterling’s view. “This is a simple place, and we abide by simple rules. Respect. Serenity.
Acceptance.”
Agent Sterling stared the man down for a moment, and then she reached for her back pocket—for her badge, I realized. Dean’s hand caught Sterling’s before she could pull it out. He looked toward Lia, who stepped tentatively out from behind Darby, every motion, every gesture of vulnerability a lie.
“I hope you find what you’re looking for,” Dean told Lia. There was anger in those words, but also a message. He was telling her that he saw through her act—that he knew why she was here, and he knew that it had nothing to do with finding serenity and everything to do with finding out what Holland Darby was hiding.
Lia smiled sadly before retreating behind Darby’s form. “I hope so, too.”
