The second we walked past Agent Starmans, who was stationed in the hallway, and into the hotel room, Michael scanned our faces. “You spoke to Lia,” he concluded. “Where is she?”
“She infiltrated Serenity Ranch.” Sterling addressed those words to Judd, who didn’t look any happier about Lia’s absence than we were.
“Lia infiltrated a cult,” Michael repeated. He shot an incredulous look at Dean. “And you didn’t drag her home kicking and screaming?”
“Don’t start with me, Townsend.” A muscle in Dean’s jaw ticked. “Consider me warned.”
Judd ignored the tension brewing between Michael and Dean and focused his attention on Agent Sterling. “Is Lia in any immediate danger?”
Agent Sterling’s answer was as terse as Judd’s question. “I don’t think Darby has avoided formal charges for this long by overtly abusing newcomers before he’s had a chance to fully indoctrinate them.”
In other words, as long as Holland Darby bought the persona Lia was presenting to him—the lost lamb in need of guidance—she was probably safe.
For now.
“Will she be discreet?” Judd addressed that question to Dean. “Discreet?” Michael repeated incredulously. “Are we talking about the
same Lia Zhang here? The one who expresses her displeasure with relationship partners by threatening to duct-tape them naked to the ceiling?”
“Lia knows how this game is played,” Dean told Judd. And then he turned back toward Michael, the muscles in his neck and shoulders as tense as his jaw. “So now you and Lia are in a relationship?”
“Excuse me?”
“You weren’t ‘in a relationship’ in New York when we went to find Celine,” Dean said. “The second things got tough, you pushed Lia away.”
“I’m confused, Redding,” Michael said, taking a lazy step toward Dean. “Is talking about our feelings something you and I do now?”
Leaving Lia at Serenity Ranch had taken everything Dean had. He’d done it because he trusted her, because trusting Lia and offering her honesty in exchange for every lie was the way he’d made it past her walls. But walking
away had cost him. His temper was already frayed, and Michael’s flippant tone wasn’t helping.
“You’re not good enough for her,” Dean told Michael, his voice low. “If you were even the least bit capable of caring about anyone but yourself, Lia wouldn’t have gone in alone. She did this to you as much as for the rest of us.”
“Dean,” I said sharply.
Michael held up a hand. “Let the man speak, Colorado. I do love it when he-who-has-literally-tortured-someone-in-this-room casts stones.”
“Michael.” As the person Dean had tortured, back when he was a child trying to help her escape his father’s grasp, Agent Sterling didn’t appreciate the reference.
“You should have known,” Dean told Michael between gritted teeth. “If Lia was on the verge of taking off, if this case cut too close to home, if she was itching to get out of her own skin, if she needed to fight back—you should have known.”
“You think I don’t know that?” Michael got in Dean’s face. “You think I wanted her to leave?”
For a moment, I thought Dean would de-escalate things. But then he leaned forward to speak directly into Michael’s ear. “I think you don’t know how to do anything but take a punch.”
One second, they were standing there, and the next, they were on the floor. Michael swung at Dean, who grappled for better positioning and pinned Michael to the ground.
“Stop.” The word exited Sloane’s mouth in a whisper. “Stop. Stop. Stop!”
She’d been silent since we’d made it back, and as her volume escalated to a yell, the boys froze.
I’d never seen Dean pick a fight with Michael before. I’d never seen the two of them in an all-out brawl.
“It’s not Michael’s fault.” Sloane’s voice was barely audible. “It’s mine.” She moved backward until she hit the wall. “I saw Lia leaving. She asked me not to tell.” Sloane sucked in a breath, her middle finger on her right hand tapping against her thumb. She was counting something—counting and counting and unable to pull it together. “We’d just gotten back, and she changed clothes. She was wearing white, and Lia only wears white thirteen percent of the time. I should have known.”
“Sloane,” Judd said gently. “Sweetheart…”
“I offered to go with her,” Sloane continued, picking up the pace of both her words and her tapping. “She said no. She said…” Sloane looked down. “She said I’d just get in the way.”
You knew how much that would hurt Sloane, Lia. You knew. Objectively, I could see that Lia had been trying to protect our most vulnerable member, but
Sloane didn’t know that. She wouldn’t understand it even if I tried to explain what the combination of anger, fear, and dread that Michael had seen in Kane Darby had drudged up for Lia.
Years later, it can still hit you in a moment.
Dean was wrong. This wasn’t about Michael, or what had happened in New York, or any of us. This was about ghosts that Lia had never faced.
Agent Sterling’s phone rang then, and as I told Sloane that none of this
—none of it—was her fault, my brain was already processing the shift in my mentor’s demeanor. The identity of the caller was clear in the way Sterling stood, her shoulders squared to ward off emotion, her free hand dangling loosely by her side.
“I take it you got my messages about Gaither.” Sterling didn’t say that Briggs should have called her back sooner. She didn’t ask why he hadn’t. “Lia’s gone AWOL to infiltrate the local cult.” Agent Sterling set the phone to speaker—one more layer of distance between herself and Briggs. “If the man in charge is hiding something, Lia will find it. But if he realizes she’s looking
—if anyone in his camp suspects she’s with the FBI—this won’t go well.” There was silence on the other end of the line for a moment. “Am I on speaker?” Briggs asked, his tone reminding me that he didn’t have his ex-
wife’s impenetrable control. “You are.”
Briggs processed Agent Sterling’s answer—and her tone—before proceeding. “What do we think the chances are that someone in the Gaither cult has ties to the Masters?”
I registered the logic behind that question. We’d come to Gaither looking for members of one cult; we’d found another. Those people had been implicated in at least one set of murders—those of Anna and Todd Kyle.
What were the chances that there were more victims? Lia’s situation was precarious enough, but if the Masters had a tie to Serenity Ranch, she could be in more danger than we knew.
“The killings started today,” I said, reading into the fact that it had taken him this long to return Agent Sterling’s call. “Didn’t they?”
“April second.” Sloane shivered. “4/2.”
Briggs’s silence answered that question. Finally, he elaborated. “Victim was a female,” he said, clipping the words. “Early twenties, abducted from a college campus. She was found in an open field, strapped to a scarecrow’s post.”
Burned alive, I filled in. I swallowed hard.
“We can’t leave Gaither,” Dean told Briggs. “Not without Lia.” “I’m not asking you to.” Agent Briggs was the type of person who
developed and executed plans, the type who never backed down. “You keep working the case in Gaither,” he continued. “Give Lia the chance to dig into
Darby. And then, Ronnie?”
Agent Sterling didn’t bat an eye at the nickname or the emotion that made its way into Briggs’s voice as he said it.
“Get her out.”
YOU
You aren’t surprised when they come for you. You don’t remember the hours following your conversation with Five, but you remember his words. You knew that it was only a matter of time before you were asked to pass judgment.
Of the nine seats at the table, four are filled at this midnight conference.
Yours makes five.
“There is a threat.” Five has laid his knife on the table for you to see. “I believe the situation to be worthy of the Pythia’s counsel.”
There is a promise in his tone. He will slice and dice and cut and bleed you, then ask you whether your daughter and her friends should live or die.
“There is no threat.” You speak like one who knows the truth of things, like one who has seen that which mortal eyes may never see.
They pay you no heed.
Two is on the verge of losing his seat to the acolyte. This may be his last chance to hear you scream, to burn you, if Five and his knife prove less than convincing. Four believes himself a man of great discernment. You can already feel his fingers closing in around your neck.
It would be so easy to run and hide, deep inside your own head. To go away from this place—from the pain.
“The FBI is closing in.” The fifth member of this quorum is the one who has never laid a hand on you. The one you loathe. The one you fear. “In my judgment, their very presence in Gaither makes this group a threat.”
“They are not yours to judge.” Your voice is dangerous, low. This is the lie that you must sell. You are what they have made you. You are judge and jury, and without a fifth vote, they cannot put you through the rites.
It will happen. Tomorrow, the next day at the latest, but for now…
The door opens. You recognize the person who stands there, and you see now what you should have seen before.
There are nine seats at the table. You sentenced Seven to die. You knew his seat would not remain empty. You knew that the Master who trained him would return to the fold.
But you didn’t know…didn’t know…
“Shall we begin again?” Five picks up his knife, his smile spreading. Six seats filled. Five votes, excluding yours.
