Serenity Ranch was less of a ranch than a compound, surrounded by a ten- foot-tall fence on all sides. Agent Sterling parked her car outside the main gate.
“Stay here,” she told us.
Clearly, she wasn’t thinking straight. Lia was the closest thing to family that Dean had. Before he could latch his hand around the door handle, I reached out to stop him.
“I know,” I said. “Lia did something stupid, and you weren’t there to stop her. And now she’s in there playing a very dangerous game with very dangerous people. But you need to calm down, because you saw the way that Darby was with Shane. He wanted Shane to take a swing, and he’ll want the same thing from you.”
Power. Control. Manipulation. This was the language that Holland Darby spoke. It was a language that Dean and I knew all too well.
Dean’s entire body was tense, but he forced himself to breathe in and breathe out. “Lia was seven when her mother joined a religious commune,” he said, his voice rough in his throat. “Lia’s mom was in this country illegally, and after what she’d been through, the man in charge seemed like a savior.” Dean closed his eyes. “To Lia, he was something else.”
I thought of Lia, learning to recognize deception. Lia, learning to lie. “Lia likes high places,” Dean continued softly, “because her mother let a
man like Holland Darby stick Lia in a hole in the ground for days at a time. Because six-year-old Lia didn’t have a humble spirit. Because she wouldn’t take forgiveness when it was offered. Because she didn’t repent her sins.”
Dean forced himself to stop, but my mind was reeling at the implications. As a child, Lia had gotten locked into a battle of wills with a man who dealt in power, manipulation, and control. The kind of man who benevolently offered forgiveness, so long as you accepted that your salvation was his to give. From the moment Lia had seen those people in town, from the moment she’d read about Serenity Ranch, she was a ticking time bomb.
Power. Control. Manipulation. Lia had known that approaching Holland Darby as tourists wouldn’t work. Approaching him as the FBI would only
cause him to close ranks. But approaching him as a lost soul in need of redemption?
You’ll play his game better than he does. You’ll find out what he’s hiding.
And if it costs you—whatever it costs you—so be it.
“I’m not going to take a swing at anyone.” Dean did his best to look like he wasn’t on the verge of letting his darkest self come out to play. “But I’m also not staying in the car.”
“Good,” I replied as the cult leader approached the gate where Agent Sterling stood. “Because neither am I.”
