Also by Joe Hart

The Dominion Trilogy

The Last Girl

The Final Trade

The First City

The Liam Dempsey Mysteries

The River Is Dark

The Night Is Deep

Novels

Lineage

Singularity

EverFall

The Waiting

Widow Town

Cruel World

Obscura

I’ll Bring You Back

Novellas

Leave the Living

Short Story Collections

Midnight Paths: A Collection of Dark Horror

Something Came Through: And Other Stories

Short Stories

“The Line Unseen”

“The Edge of Life”

“Outpost”

“And The Sea Called Her Name”

“The Exorcism of Sara May”

Comics

The Last Sacrifice

Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

Chapter 37

Chapter 38

Acknowledgments

About the Author

Also by Joe Hart

Intrusive memories can be experienced in the form of flashbacks, nightmares, and intrusive images. These memories lack the awareness that they are something from the past, and are instead experienced as some kind of threat in the present.

- American Counseling Association

Chapter One

Northern Minnesota. September 2001

Evil.

He couldn’t get the word out of his head. Not since waking up two days before and turning on the news, the coffee he’d made untouched and cooling on the table beside his favorite chair. The images of the planes, the buildings, all the people covered in gray dust like funeral shrouds were ingrained in his mind’s eye. How human beings could do something like that to one another—

But Lucas Murdock stopped himself there. He knew how people could do such things. He’d seen it firsthand. Participated. There were no limits on human depravity, the only boundaries were the imagination.

Lucas sighed, reaching out to turn off the truck’s radio. Everything on the airwaves was about the attacks and he couldn’t absorb any more of the horror and anguish. It brought him ten years into the past to a desert with trenches carved into swaled dunes. To men screaming and being buried alive beneath armored bulldozers. That war had been about oil. The war that would come would be for revenge.

It was a warm day, gorgeously sunlit in a way he thought of as unique to Minnesota in the fall. The leaves weren’t quite ready to turn yet and the grass lining the dirt access road stood tall and unyielding to the gentle breeze.

Lucas guided the DNR vehicle around a turn, letting the air wash through the open window. Such quiet solitude here on state land. It was one of the many reasons he’d aimed his career trajectory toward the Department of Natural Resources after coming home from the Gulf. He liked being alone and much of his work kept him that way. But the isolation tended to follow him home and permeated the house he shared with Cindy, separating them with a divide he seemed to carry with him wherever he went.

A blue jay called loudly somewhere in the woods, making its voice heard even over the growl of the engine and steady crackle of gravel beneath the tires. Lucas let his mind settle into the groove of the workday, what his schedule looked like. A tree down across the road somewhere ahead had been reported by four-wheeler riders, and once that was done there was a beaver dam needing to be disassembled on a stream a dozen miles away. He could take his time, enjoy the sunshine that would soon become fleeting in the coming fall and winter. Let some of the hellish thoughts and reports fall away, at least for now.

As he rounded a sharp bend in the road the smell of smoke flowed into the cab and he wondered if it was his subconscious unwilling to let go of the vileness of the last forty-eight hours, since there was a burning ban on.

In the next moment he registered the girl walking down the center of the road and knew he was going to hit her.

Lucas yanked the wheel hard to the left, continuing the turn as the back of the truck slewed dangerously in the loose dirt. He tried tracking the girl as he skidded past, sure he would feel the solid thump of her body against the vehicle, but there was nothing.

The truck slid off the road, banging down hard into the shallow ditch before coming to a stop. The engine rattled, coughed, died.

Lucas vibrated with adrenaline, his hands scrabbling at the seatbelt release for infinitely long seconds before triggering it. Then he was out, boots and pants shushing through the long grass of the ditch, already preparing himself for what he would see on the road.

Blood. Bone. A ruined body that had held life only seconds ago.

But the girl was still upright, still walking down the middle of the road. Like she hadn’t even seen him.

“Hey!” It was all his mind produced to say. She didn’t pause or turn toward his voice. “Hey, where . . .” Lucas glanced in the direction she’d come from. No other vehicles, no people. Just the quiet sounds of the forest, unfazed and uninterested in the scene playing out on the road.

Lucas hurried up out of the ditch, tripping once on an errant tree branch before jogging to catch up to the girl. He reached out to touch her shoulder and stopped, unsure if she was injured or not. Instead he stepped around and into her path.

She was young, maybe in her early teens. Shoulder-length brown hair that had come partially loose from some kind of tie brushed her cheek and temple each time she took a step. Her face was dusted with soot and the insane notion that she was a survivor of the attacks in New York somehow transported here came and went. Her eyes were unfocused, so full of shock there was barely any life in them at all. He’d seen the look before on the battlefield, from trauma received and inflicted.

“Are you okay?” he asked as she neared him. When she said nothing and it was clear she wasn’t going to stop, he put his hands out and gently grasped her shoulders.

Her legs and feet stopped moving. A robot with its batteries finally depleted.

He tried catching her eye, moving his face before her. Nothing, no recognition. “Are you hurt?” he said, glancing quickly down at the simple shirt and ankle-length skirt she wore. No blood or tears in the fabric, though it was dirty, and he caught the same smell of ash coming off her that had been on the wind. A nasty bruise approximately the shape of a hand was purpling on her upper right arm. She was barefoot, her toes ruddy from the rough gravel, and her hands were bright red, the palms strangely shiny. He cupped one of her hands, bringing up for a better look.

Burns. Severe. Many of the blisters had broken, leaking fluid across the folds of her palm. The skin was taut and bright white in areas where heat had seared the top layers.

“Jesus Christ,” Lucas said, letting her hand drop back to her side. “What happened? Were you in an accident? Are other people hurt?” The last question stirred something in her eyes and she seemed to see him for the first time. Her lips trembled, parted, then closed again, gaze drifting away once more.

A gust of wind glided down the road’s corridor, tugging at the girl’s hair and bringing with it the scent again. Lucas stepped to the side, a thousand thoughts cannonading through his mind as his attention was drawn to the north.

A column of smoke rose thick and black above the tree line into the blue autumn sky like a pillar carved in worship of an unholy god.

Chapter Two

18 Years Later

Portland State University, Oregon

September 2019

“A destructive cult is an abusive family.”

Clare Murdock let her gaze wander over the crowd in the lecture hall. The tiered rows of seats were mostly filled, a decent crowd for a Friday evening forum. The faces ranged in age, but the majority were social sciences students—their lagging grade point averages being bolstered by the credit of attending a non-required class, or their résumés in need of an extra bullet point.

“Just like an abusive family unit, destructive cults use fear as manipulation. This can range from threats of physical violence to emotional and mental degradation.” She clicked the small remote in her hand and the flat screen filling up the wall behind her shifted to a picture of a dark-haired man wearing sunglasses. “When you hear the word ‘cult’ you probably think of Jim Jones. So many times his name arises when speaking on the topic. How could it not? He was the charismatic leader of the Peoples Temple cult who led his followers from Indiana to California, then to Guyana, where upwards of a thousand people eventually died by suicide or were murdered under his rule. It remained the highest single-event death toll of American citizens until 9/11.” She let this sink in for a moment. “You’ve all heard of ‘drinking the Kool-Aid,’ correct?” A mumble of assent and some scattered laughter came from the crowd. “The saying was derived from this horrendous act, since the group drank grape Flavor Aid laced with cyanide.” She walked out toward the first rows of seating, looking from student to student. “You’d ask yourself, how could over nine hundred people willingly commit to this? To this madman’s ideals and ultimately their own destruction as he saw fit? The answer is simple: they believed in him. They believed his lies, believed his vision. Believed in him as a higher power. They were afraid not to. They were afraid of the outside world and what it held because he indoctrinated them against it. He built in them a sense of oneness, of belonging, and in the end, convinced them to leave life as a family too.”

She hit the remote’s button again and a bulleted list appeared on the screen. “Many destructive cults preach equality and mutual respect—again, familial traits—but this is another lie. The power nearly always remains at the very top with one person. Typically this is a patriarchal figure of influence. If you look at the Manson Family, at Aum Shinrikyo, at the Branch Davidians, all of them have a figurehead in common. The belief system is mandated by one individual’s vision. Many times this is a mixture of religions, cherry-picked to support whatever the figurehead wants.” She ticked off her fingers. “Sex, drugs, money, power. At the end of the day they are all con men. Many are mentally ill and undeniably charismatic, but con men all the same. Now you’re probably thinking, how? How can people be so taken in by these individuals? Give themselves over so completely? I must remind you these leaders are no common scammers who steal credit card numbers over the phone. They are dangerous manipulators who are able to skew the very perception of the world in their victims’ minds.”

She made her way back to the narrow podium, glancing once at the notes on her tablet before clicking through to the next display on the screen. “Free will is another tenet leaders sometimes rely on to obfuscate their intentions for a group, when in actuality their actions all boil down to the opposite: control. Cults are control. Most people count themselves as part of a larger whole. Be it religion or a corporation or even simply humankind itself, they form a connection with the greater world. For destructive cult members, their connection is intrinsically centered within the cult. There is no life beyond, no hope for them, and at a certain point of brainwashing and control, there is no line they won’t cross for their leader or belief system. Even murder can be justified to someone under the influence.” She paused, listening to the quiet of the vast room. “Tonight we’ll delve into specific case studies of both large destructive cults as well as smaller, more familial-based groups and try to lay out a foundation as to how these cults come into being and what their impact is on society as a whole.”

“Dr. Murdock?” The voice came from a young man sitting in the first row of seats. He held his hand politely at shoulder height, a timid smile on his face.

“Yes, go ahead.”

“Before you begin, could you tell us why so many destructive cults end in death and ruin both for their leaders and members?”

She swallowed. The room, solid and steady in its reality only moments before, elongated. A funhouse mirror stretching and distorting. The lights dimmed, lost their whiteness, and became sulfurous. Like fire through thick smoke. She could taste it. Taste the soot and grimy oil of things burning.

She wasn’t there, wasn’t then. She was here and now.

Here and now.

“Typically it’s a disrupter,” she said, focusing solely on the student who’d asked the question. “Some change in the hierarchy or a decision sent down from the cult’s leader. In doomsday cults it is sometimes the arrival of the prophesized date of the end of the world. In other groups it’s encroachment by outside entities, many times law enforcement.” She paused, looking out at the sea of faces. “And sometimes it comes from an upheaval within. When even one person no longer believes, it can trigger the end of the cult altogether.”

* * *

The last of the people filed through the door at the back of the hall, their voices lowered and punctuated with a burst of laughter from in the hallway. Clare watched them go, then set to cleaning up her materials.

Other than the momentary distraction at the very beginning, the lecture had gone well. Five years ago the intrusive memory would’ve derailed her completely, left her a panicked mass of nerves unable to continue speaking at all. It might’ve taken hours, if not days, to get past. But now she was past the point of needing to catalogue every memory and work through each one individually. Years of therapy and her medication allowed her to move past them almost as quickly as they arose. Besides, if she let it bother her Eric would see it on her face when she went home, and she knew what he would say—she was pushing herself. Too hard. And why?

Why? It was something she didn’t think Eric would ever truly understand. The only ones who could grasp why she continued to face the trauma, to reopen old wounds, were those who were scarred deeply themselves. They would understand letting go was infinitely harder than holding on, even if it was killing you.

“Dr. Murdock?” Clare startled at the voice, glancing up at the woman only a few paces away. “Oh, I’m sorry I scared you.”

“No, no. I was lost in my own thoughts. I didn’t see you there.”

The woman flashed a brief smile, brightening her strained features. She was nearing middle age, streaks of gray in dark hair pulled tightly back from her forehead. “Sandy Granger,” she said, holding out a hand.

Clare took it and nodded. “Did you have a question about the lecture?”

“Uh, no, I mean, yes. Sort of. See, it’s my sister, Beverly, and her daughter, Manda.” Sandy frowned, spinning a narrow band of gold on one finger. “I was hoping you could speak with them.”

“Sure, I’d be happy to take their information and set something up later.”

The other woman looked down, frown deepening. “They don’t really have any information. No phone or email.” She blinked rapidly before fixing her gaze on Clare again. “I read your articles, at least what I could find. How you grew up in that cult.”

Clare felt the pacing creature in the darkness trying to close in. Her throat tightened and she inhaled deeply, fighting back the sensation of the air thickening around them.

“—thought with your background you could talk to them. Talk some sense into them. God knows they won’t listen to me,” Sandy finished.

“Why won’t they listen to you?”

“It’s that damn religion they’re pinned under. That—that cult they’re in. There’s no other word for it.”

“What group are they a part of?”

“The Shining Rock of Faith Church. I don’t know if you’ve ever heard of them, but they’re out in Annover.”

“I know where they’re based.” Clare glanced down and snapped her briefcase shut. “Your sister and niece, they’re here?”

A look of hope from Sandy. “Yes. I mean, they didn’t come inside—they’ve got some strange rules about entering a college building or something. But yes, they’re waiting in the park across the street.” All at once Sandy’s eyes glazed with tears. “They left, but Beverly’s thinking of going back. They’ll punish her and little Manda for leaving, I know they will. There’s something wrong with that church, I can feel it. Please, Doctor, please talk to them. Make her understand.”

Clare reached out and squeezed her arm. “Call me Clare. And I’ll try to help if I can.”

* * *

The sun had fallen to the horizon during the lecture and now it was only a suggestion behind the campus buildings, wisps of clouds stained red with the day’s last light.

“Beverly left home when she was fifteen,” Sandy said as they walked. “She got sucked into Shining Rock through a guy. I could tell right away he wasn’t what he said he was when we first met him. But he fooled her. Got her to move to that ranch they have and cut ties with everyone else. She had Manda a year later.”

“Very standard with fringe sects,” Clare said. “Is this the first time she’s left the compound?”

“Uh-huh. We’ve had a few sporadic phone calls, and I’ve always asked her to come stay, but this is the first time I’ve seen her in almost eleven years. Both our parents are gone.” She swallowed. “It broke their hearts that they never got to meet their granddaughter.”

“Has anyone from the church come looking for her yet?”

“No. I don’t think they know where we live.”

“That’s good. The longer she stays the better chance she won’t go back.”

They continued down the block and across the street to a sunken outdoor commons, the space lined with wooden benches and half a dozen picnic tables. A woman and a young girl sat at the nearest table. They both wore simple button-down blue shirts and full-length jean skirts. Their hair was covered by thin white scarves. Both caught sight of Clare at the same time and stared as she and Sandy approached.

“Bev, Manda, this is Dr. Clare Murdock. She’s got a few minutes talk to you.”

“Nice to meet you,” Clare said, shaking hands first with Beverly, then with Manda. The girl had large brown eyes that flitted from Clare to the buildings to the tree-studded street and back again. “Is this your first time in Portland, Manda?” Clare asked, settling onto the bench across from the girl. Manda glanced first at her mother, then nodded slowly. “What do you think of the city?”

“We’re not used to it,” Beverly said after clearing her throat loudly. “It’s very noisy.”

Clare shot a quick smile at the little girl before focusing on her mother. “Sandy tells me you’re from Annover. It’s beautiful there.”

“It’s a city like this, just smaller, so it’s dirty too. We’re outside of town about twenty minutes. Air’s clearer there.”

“I see.” Clare repositioned herself on the bench. “Sandy told me you’ve recently left your church.”

Beverly sat stock-still, staring blankly for so long Clare was sure she wasn’t going to answer. Finally she said, “We’re taking a sojourn.”

“Okay. Everyone is entitled to a vacation from time to time. You’re staying with Sandy?”

“Yes. For now.”

“Dan and I have an extra room. It’s been great having them both home,” Sandy chimed in.

“That’s nice. And have you done anything fun lately? Gotten out to see—”

“I know what you’re doing,” Beverly said. “I know the tricks people like you play.”

“Bev,” Sandy hissed.

“It’s okay,” Clare said, then directed her attention back to Beverly, holding the other woman’s gaze steadily with her own. “What type of tricks do you think I’m playing?”

“You’re a doctor?”

“Yes. A sociologist.”

“All doctors lie. You obfuscate the truth of God’s word. Twist it for your own benefit.”

“I understand how you feel, Beverly. I do. I grew up in a very separatist group,” Clare said, carefully avoiding the word ‘cult.’ “I’m not here to tell you your beliefs are wrong. I just want to listen to you.”

“I confess to the Lord God Almighty. He knows all sins.” Beverly shot a poisonous look at her sister. “I told you I didn’t want to come here.”

“Bev, Dr. Murdock just wants to help.”

“We don’t need help. We have all the help and safety back at home on the land. Come on, Amanda.” Beverly stood and pulled the girl up with her.

“If you were completely happy there, why did you leave?” Clare said quietly.

“I told you. We’re on a sojourn. We’re allowed—”

“But you’re not, are you? That’s why you’re so nervous being here. Whoever’s in charge when you return won’t be happy you left. I’ve studied your church, Beverly. Interviewed people who have escaped.” The indignant heat and anger in Beverly’s face had cooled, her skin now as pale as the evening light fading from the streets. “You’re afraid, and you should be if you’re planning on going back. But you’re also extremely brave for even being here right now. I know you feel alone, like no one else will understand or accept you, but that’s not true. There are people who can help. Your sister here is one, I’m another.” Clare glanced at Manda, then back to her mother. “You’ve come this far, so please, tell me why you’re here. Talk with me, that’s all I’m asking.”

She watched the war rage within the other woman. Watched her fight until finally the battle tipped one way, her defenses hardening. “Our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world, and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.” Beverly’s eyes blazed and she grasped Manda’s hand tightly in her own before striding away.

“Bev! Bev, stop!” Sandy cried, taking a few steps after her sister.

“It’s okay,” Clare said. “She’s done for now.” Beverly walked quickly down the sidewalk, pulling Manda along so that the little girl’s skirt swished fast across the concrete. Manda threw one look over her shoulder, wide eyes finding Clare. And in that moment she was every girl at the will of the world, powerless and caught in the current of those around her.

“I’m so sorry,” Sandy said, wringing her hands and on the verge of tears again. “She’s different now. Like another person. I just . . . I don’t know what to do.”

“You’re doing it. Being there for her and Manda is crucial. Having support, even if it seems like she’s fighting you the whole time, is the most important part of leaving a cult. She’s going to be morose, unresponsive, combative even, but you’re making a difference.” She gave Sandy’s shoulder another squeeze, then fished out a business card from her briefcase. “Call this number, she’s a good friend of mine who’s helped a lot of people. I’ll make sure she has time for both Beverly and Manda if they agree to talk to her.”

“I’m not sure we can afford—”

“It’ll be taken care of.”

Sandy did cry then, looking at the card. “Thank you. It’s been so . . . so hard.”

Clare embraced her, letting the other woman sob quietly against her shoulder for a moment. Anger flared within her, as it always did when dealing with the fallout of a cult. This was another facet of harm groups like Shining Rock did, collateral damage they were unaware of or didn’t care about. And Sandy’s pain was nothing compared to what Beverly and her daughter would go through if they didn’t return to the cult’s control—it would be a long, treacherous road freeing themselves from the brainwashing and other heinous tactics Shining Rock employed.

The only thing worse would be if they did go back.

Clare and Sandy parted, the other woman walking in the direction her sister and niece had gone. Clare went the opposite way toward her vehicle, trying to quell the sick feeling in her stomach. Chances were Beverly would return to Shining Rock, and from what she knew about the cult, retribution would be swift, severe, and kept completely within the fold. The thought of the little girl enduring punishment handed down by power-hungry elders made her grasp her phone and text Adam.

Hey, when you have a minute maybe we could talk about Shining Rock Church in Annover again. Got a woman and her daughter who left but are probably going back.

She’d barely reached her SUV when her phone chimed a response.

Already gone over that one, remember? Couldn’t find anything solid enough for a search warrant.

I know, but there has to be something. Could you put someone undercover?

Not with what I have so far. Does she or her daughter have evidence we could run with?

I don’t think she’d be willing to go on record.

Then there’s not much I can do. Higher-ups would knock it down. FBI’s on a tight budget, haven’t you heard?

They need help.

She sat in the driver’s seat for several long minutes, watching the last of the light leech from the city before another text came through.

Resend me your notes from the last interview. Maybe I can leverage something based on alleged abuse or trafficking. It’s thin, but I’ll try.

Thank you.

Welcome. And you totally owe me.

She smiled at that. She’d been liaising with the FBI as a consultant for almost four years and Adam Zimmer had been assigned to a division specifically to monitor the threat of destructive cults at the same time. They knew each other as well as anyone could who worked together, many times at long distances, and he’d always followed her recommendations in regard to cult activity, never questioning her findings. Another simpatico they shared was their upbringing. Adam had lived in a cult with his family until the age of five, before his father forced their departure. The event had torn their family apart and defined Adam as he watched his mother and older brother leave him and his father behind to rejoin the religious sect. Beyond their similar background, they truly trusted each other, which in her opinion was better than professionalism any day of the week and twice as good on Sundays.

As she started the vehicle her eyes slipped down to the dashboard, where the time display glared back at her. “Shit.” She pulled out into traffic and accelerated off campus. She was late again.

Chapter Three

The city faded behind her.

Headlights staining the highway, the rush of cars, speeding through the late dusk.

Clare lost herself in it all.

Slowly the tension of the lecture, the meeting afterward, the compulsion to help and subsequent failure eased from her. Traveling did that most times. She could let her mind float in the nether, unhindered. The only spike in worry was knowing she’d kept Eric waiting. Again.

The darker stain of the Northern Coast Mountain Range grew closer on the horizon, soon eating up the view as she guided her vehicle along the pass. The highway wove through pine-studded curves and rocky outcroppings. Despite the falling dark, the rough beauty of the surrounding state forest sent a familiar wave of awe through her.

An hour later the trees and low shrubs gave way to a rounded plain, the vast expanse startling even at night as the earth fell away to the sea. Beyond, the Pacific was a black velvet blanket, unbroken and calm beneath a white sickle of moon. Clare drank in the sight as she neared a Y in the road, taking the right, which drew her away from the ocean view for a time.

Capeside appeared from around the second curve, an ambush of a coastal town, quaint but bustling on weekends, especially during the summer months when Californians traveled north to escape the heat of the cities and expose their children to the “country.” Many of Capeside’s residents commuted as Clare did to larger metropolitan areas, but returned each night to the relative solitude of the little town perched above the sprawl of the ocean.

Clare turned into the cul-de-sac and coasted to a stop before the tidy bungalow she and Eric had shared for the better part of three years. The front porch, normally lit when she returned late, was dark, and only a single light burned in Eric’s office on the second floor.

She sighed, parking her SUV beside Eric’s truck, and gathered her briefcase before heading inside.

The warmth of the foyer was a welcome change from the fall chill outside. She hung her coat on the rack by the door and kicked off her heels, relishing the feel of the hardwood beneath her aching feet.

A single plate covered with tinfoil was at her place on the table, one of their good cloth napkins beside it. She touched the foil. Slightly warm. Eric’s dinner dishes were drying in the rack next to the sink and the smell of lemon and butter hung in the air. He’d cooked salmon and asparagus, her favorite. Adding to the guilt of missing dinner was a group of extinguished candles on the counter. He’d gone all out.

She found him upstairs before his computer in the little office overlooking the street. It was one of two rooms in the house providing a view of the ocean, their bedroom being the other. She’d insisted on him setting up his work station in the spare room instead of the designated office on the lower floor, arguing he needed to rest his eyes every so often from the stock pages he traded on each morning. And what better to look at than the ebb and flow of the Pacific? But now the window was a dark mirror revealing nothing beyond the glass. Instead it reflected her tentative approach behind him.

Eric turned his head as she neared, giving her a tight smile over one shoulder, a glare from the monitor flashing off the rimless glasses he wore. “Hey,” he said, turning back to the screen.

“Hey.” She waited as he typed, trying to figure out how to apologize again for yet another dinner missed.

“Food might still be warm. Otherwise you can toss it in the toaster oven.”

“I’m sorry. The lecture ran long and then there was this woman who brought her sister and niece to see me who’d just left Shining Rock.” She waited for him to respond but he continued typing. “I couldn’t turn her down.”

“It’s okay.”

“Is it?”

He pivoted in his chair. She noticed he wore a nice pair of slacks and a gray button-up shirt, loose at the throat. His hair was combed and a hint of his good cologne wafted to her. “It’s gotta be, right?”

“Honey, I’m sorry. I was planning on leaving right after the lecture and—” She looked at him. Took in the resigned set of his features. Tonight went beyond the slight annoyance at her tardiness. He was genuinely disappointed.

Eric stood and gave her the same pinched smile, kissing her lightly on the corner of her mouth as he passed. “It’s okay.” She stood for a few moments before following him into the hall and to their bedroom two doors down. Eric straightened from his bedside table and began to strip, carefully unbuttoning his shirt.

“What was I supposed to do?” she asked.

“I didn’t say you should’ve done anything different.”

“Then why are you mad?”

He slipped a hanger into the shirt, returning it to their walk-in closet, and despite the tension she caught herself taking in his lean torso, the shift of muscle beneath his skin. “I’m not mad.”

“Then what are you?”

He removed his pants and donned a set of his athletic shorts, pulling on a tattered cut-off shirt before finally facing her. “I’m tired.” He walked past her.

“Where are you going?”

“For a run.”

“Now? It’s dark.”

“I’ll be fine.”

His footsteps receded down the stairs and a few moments later the front door opened and closed. Quiet rushed back in.

She stood in the center of the room gazing at their belongings and seeing nothing. The hunger she’d felt on the drive home was gone, replaced by an emptiness in her center. Normally when she was late, and it was often if she were to be honest with herself, Eric was good-natured and forgiving. But tonight was different. She’d felt it the moment she stepped in the house.

Clare turned slowly, taking in the coziness of their room—the tidiness of the bed, the uneven stack of books on her side, a solitary water glass on Eric’s. The windows facing west were the same dark panes of reflection as those in the office and she studied herself for a drawn moment, the thought that it wasn’t really her looking back nearly overwhelming.

She glanced away, her eyes snagging on Eric’s bedside table. Its drawer was open a fraction of an inch. Some internal compass guided her forward, and despite silent half-formed questions about what she was doing, Clare pulled the drawer all the way open.

Pushed to one side of the drawer, partially hidden beneath a magazine was a small, hinged ebony box.

Her heart did a strange half beat, then thundered at triple speed as she reached out and picked it up.

The box was too narrow to house a necklace. Too exquisitely made to contain anything trivial. All at once it felt very heavy.

Clare took several steps backward, unable to count them or form any real cohesive thought, and dropped onto their bed. The hand holding the ring box trembled and she cupped it with her other palm, one of her thumbs going instinctively to the box’s lid.

She started to lift it.

And stopped, letting it snap closed again.

Now everything made sense. Her favorite meal downstairs, the candles, his dressing up.

“Oh God,” she whispered. She didn’t know whether to leap for joy or throw up.

Barely trusting herself to stand, she rose from the bed and wobbled to his table. How had the box been sitting beneath the magazine? With the top or bottom exposed? Shit, shit, shit. The top had been facing her, it had to have been. Clare placed a hand against the table and took several deep breaths. Four of them, to be exact. She put the box back, rearranging it until she was satisfied everything looked natural.

Fresh air. She needed to breathe.

In the attached bath she yanked the single window up and perched on the corner tub’s rim, sucking in lungfuls of cool ocean breeze. Gradually her heart rate slowed, though she still felt like a low electric current was passing through her body. Her foot tapped an irregular rhythm on the tile.

What was she going to do? She loved Eric; he was an incredible man. They’d been together for five years, lived with one another for three. She knew his body, his mind, his heart. But somehow she hadn’t seen this coming. How? How had she not predicted he’d want to take their relationship to the next level? It was beyond stupid on her part. But was it stupidity? Or was it her internal built-in safety catch, the one keeping everything that looked like permanence at bay? The shields she wrapped around herself, layers of guilt and grief, couldn’t protect her from love. Even as anxiety tried boiling through her it was overwhelmed by a wave of sheer happiness.

She knew what she would say when he asked.

The front door opened and shut downstairs. Clare jerked back to herself. How long had she been sitting there? Frozen. Her skin was chilled and she fought back a shiver as she pushed the window closed and locked it. The sound of Eric rattling around in the fridge drifted up the stairs as she went to her side of the bed and undressed. She slipped between the covers and lay facing the wall. A short while later Eric padded up the stairs and clicked the room’s light off. He went into the bathroom, closed the door, and the shower started.

Clare stared into the darkness, listening to the quiet swish of water and afterward the sounds of Eric readying for bed. He settled in beside her a few minutes later, his movements gentle as to not wake her. She was still for a time, then rolled toward him. Eric lay on his back, hands behind his head in his usual position before dropping off to sleep. The wan light of the moon through the window wasn’t enough for her to tell if his eyes were open or not. She gazed at him, his outline that of a stranger and her soul mate.

Her hand slipped between the covers and rested on his thigh. The touch brought his face toward her. Clare eased closer to him, pressing her body against his, letting everything she couldn’t say flow through her touch. She tucked her forehead into the hollow of his neck and shoulder and let her hand on his thigh glide upward.

He responded quickly, and in the pale ambient light they faced one another, hands and mouths exploring as if for the first time. She pulled him nearer, lying on her back as he moved above her.

Delicious heat gradually blossomed like a flower in her center, and when she came, splinters of pleasure slid outward to every inch of her body, driving a cry from her as Eric buried his face in her hair and shuddered, releasing her name as a moan.

They stayed that way for seconds, an eternity, hearts thudding and sweat slowly cooling on skin. When they parted she felt a strange sense of loss she’d never experienced before following lovemaking. Like he’d left on a cross-country trip instead of shifting only inches away.

Through the darkness they looked at one another.

“I’m sorry I missed dinner,” she finally said.

“It’s okay.”

“You always say that.”

“And it is. Really. I was just . . .”

She waited, breath locked in her chest. Would he lean over to his bedside table now? Her calming heart rate sped up again.

“. . . looking forward to it, that’s all,” he finished.

It was long minutes before she spoke. “You want me to stop, don’t you?”

“Stop what?”

“The lectures. Mostly the consulting.”

He settled onto his back, looking up at the ceiling. “I don’t know.” She waited, giving him time to process and answer honestly. “I wonder sometimes about progress. I look at numbers all day, try to find meaning from them, figure out where they’re going. There’s always a story behind movement and if you understand it, then you can predict what happens next. I worry about your story. I worry even though you can’t remember all of it, it’s not guiding you forward, it’s pulling you back.” He sighed quietly. “You know you can’t save everyone, but I love that you keep trying.”

She swallowed, a lump swelling in her throat. “I’m trying to make sense of it. Trying to come to terms.”

“I know. And I feel helpless most times because I don’t know what to do. This—” he gestured at their room, the house. “Our life, sometimes it feels temporary. Like it’s a pause before something else. I . . .” His voice trailed off. “I don’t want temporary.”

“I’m here with you right now,” she said, stroking his cheek. “I was here a few minutes ago.”

“But you’re not always. You suffer, and it kills me to see you hurting. Kills me not knowing what to do.”

“You help me so much. Maybe I don’t tell you enough, but you do. You tether me to what’s real. What’s good. I love our life. I love you.”

“I love you too.”

He kissed the inside of her forearm and closed his eyes. She ran her fingers through his hair and waited for him to say something more, but his breathing became deep and even and she knew he’d drifted off.

She rose and went to the bathroom, pausing on the way back to bed to look at herself in the mirror. How many times had she studied her reflection, wondering if she really was who she was? Clare Murdock. PhD in sociology. A consultant with clearance in the FBI. Respected in her field with many future prospects, and an absolute mess on the inside.

Back in bed she cuddled close to Eric, nestling into his warmth, the safety of his body. Lying next to him or sitting across from him at dinner was when she felt most like herself. The disassociation consuming her now would be less in the morning. She needed rest and a reset.

Sleep came and drew her downward without her awareness. As she slipped into its depths a cloud slid across the curved bone of the moon and the night deepened.

Chapter Four

She woke as if catapulted from a nightmare.

Clare shoved herself upright in bed, hair hanging down in sweat-soaked stringlets. A cry was locked behind her clenched teeth and it took several seconds of looking around the room and associating everything before she was able to assure herself she wouldn’t scream.

The dream was nearly gone, only a blurred impression like an unspeakable painting doused with turpentine, but she could still feel it clutching at her, trying to reveal itself fully. She didn’t want that. Didn’t want to see, to remember.

Gray storm-light coated the room. Eric’s side of the bed was empty. There was no familiar clatter in the kitchen signaling he was making breakfast and the door to the bathroom stood open. Maybe he’d gone for another run.

Clare donned a pair of sweatpants and a loose t-shirt before padding down the stairs to the living room. The TV was a dark rectangle and when she stepped in the kitchen it was as it had been the night before.

“Eric?” Her voice died in the still air of the house. The ashen morning light was caustic, skewing the shape of everyday objects, making them unfamiliar and ugly. Outside, the cul-de-sac was quiet and empty. No usual bustle from the neighboring houses, no sound of lawnmowers or children laughing on a Saturday morning.

Nothing.

For some reason she thought of the compact handgun she kept in the bedside table upstairs. She could feel its heft in her hand and she longed for the real thing. Part of her, a strong part, told her to retrace her steps and retrieve the gun. She needed something to defend herself with. Defend against—

What?

The doorknob was frigid, as if January waited outside instead of a cool fall. She stepped onto the porch, and took in their yard along with both vehicles, parked where they’d been last night. The air was brisk but not cold, and the lead-lined sky appeared low above the sea. She imagined she could see the water and air angling into one another somewhere miles away from shore, the world folding in upon itself.

A wind chime jangled down the street like something had brushed against it. Clare moved down the steps and onto the pavement, aware she hadn’t stopped to put on her slippers beside the door. She scanned the clean sidewalks and tidy yards, hoping at any second Eric would appear at his steady jog from down the hill. The Millers’ dog wasn’t barking when she passed by their yard. An empty collar lay in the manicured grass at the end of the dog’s chain.

Something else began bothering her as she made her way down their street toward the nearest intersection. Something elemental missing she couldn’t name and didn’t want to. It was when she turned her attention toward the ocean the realization came to her. Her pace slowed, then stopped.

The sea wasn’t moving. Wasn’t making a sound.

She should’ve been able to hear the beat of the tide as an intermittent rush. Should’ve been able to see the waves whitecapping beyond the shore. But it was motionless. As still as a painting.

Newly fallen leaves scuttered along the gutter in the opposite direction, as if they were fleeing something. Clare turned in a slow circle, looking for life. Anything to signify she wasn’t alone. Eric’s name perched on her lips and the urge to shout it was cut off by the idea that if she yelled, something would hear her and come looking.

Home. She’d go back and wait for him there. He would come home and they could lock the doors and windows together and keep watch on this silent new world. Watch for what might be out here stalking the streets. They would be okay if they had each other.

She started back the way she’d come and stopped.

A girl stood facing away from her in the center of the lane.

She was small and wore a red nightgown hanging nearly to her ankles. Dark hair draped over narrow shoulders and bloodless hands poked from the ends of her sleeves. A sound carried to Clare—the girl was humming. The tune was familiar and sent a bolt of dread so strong through her it stole her will to breathe.

The girl turned, and as she did, her hair began to smoke and smolder. By the time she was facing Clare, flame licked across her shoulders and chest, growing in intensity with each second.

“Shanna,” Clare whispered, one of her arms reaching out to her sister.

The world dissolved even as she felt the heat of Shanna’s immolation on her own skin, reigniting the old scars there.

She woke crying, clutching her pillow tightly to her face, the fabric wet with tears. So many times it was like this coming out of a nightmare. No dramatic screams or leaping from bed. Just the wreckage of the psyche trying to mend itself together again within sorrow.

Eric slept on. Her emotion hadn’t woken him. She gradually got control of herself, sobs coming in hitches and gasps. It was still very dark and when she stabbed her phone with a finger the feeling of unrest was confirmed by the time.

3:38 A.M.

Clare swung her feet to the floor and crossed to the bathroom. She drank two glasses of water, washing down a single tablet of Buspirone with the second. The medication had been her bedrock for years, rounding the edges off the anxiety and panic attacks enough to function almost normally. The drug would begin working soon enough, but in the meantime she sloughed away the dream’s miasma with the same tactics she used to break free of intrusive memories. She touched the sink’s cold surface, counted the holes in all the electrical outlets, focused on the subtle mineral taste of the water. Here and now. Here and now.

When she felt mostly grounded again she returned to the bedroom only to grab the thick robe Eric had bought her for Christmas last year before heading downstairs. Sleep wouldn’t come without a fight and the thought of returning to it made her uneasy. The dream could still be lurking just beneath consciousness, biding its time until she succumbed.

No, right now a cup of tea and something to snack on. Maybe she’d turn on the gas fireplace in the living room. She decided against the last option, still able to imagine the lick of flame on her hands as she reached out to—

“Stop.” Her voice sounded even and strong in the silence of the house. It bolstered her and she pushed back against the encroaching anxiety.

After filling the kettle with water she set it on a burner and listened to the comforting ticking as it begin to heat. She wandered over to the tall dining room window and looked out at the neighborhood.

The cul-de-sac was a three-quarter circle of well-kept houses, lawns trimmed every other day, and the odd tree bordering yards where children ran barefoot for many months of the year. Quiet during the day, their street was absolutely devoid of activity at this hour. The stillness tried returning her to the dream but she brushed it away. This was just their neighborhood at night, no different than in the morning or afternoon. But the childlike idea that darkness changed things wouldn’t leave her. If anything it caused her to scan the street more intently, searching for anything out of place.

She was about to go back to the kitchen to finish making her tea when something stopped her.

Movement across the street in Jim and Ellie Sandford’s yard.

Clare squinted. The moon had shifted and freed itself of the clouds, splashing wan light amidst puddles of shadow. The motion she’d caught had been between the house and the privacy fence at the edge of the Sandfords’ lawn. She focused on a darker shape near the corner of the fence, unsure whether it had been there moments ago. As she watched, the shape separated itself from the corner and slid along the fence line. She lost it in a the deeper darkness of a towering pine near the sidewalk.

What had it been? A dog? No, it was too large. But it was also strangely slumped for a man. A weird angle to its upper portion, like it had been put together crookedly.

The kettle began its low hum, which became a hollow whistle. Clare hurried to the kitchen, pulling the kettle from the burner. But instead of pouring hot water into the waiting cup on the counter, she moved to the front entry, peering out through one of the narrow panes of glass bookending the door.

The street was unchanged. Nothing out of place. She centered her attention on the Sandfords’ yard, throwing glances at the Millers’ yard next door. What had she seen? A prowler? One of the teenagers from down the street doing something stupid to amuse their friends? Or was it vestiges of the dream invading reality through her worn senses? The latter was most likely. Meeting with Beverly and Manda had wound her nerves tighter. And what she’d found in Eric’s bedside drawer, that above all else was—

A board on their front porch creaked.

Clare froze, eyes shooting to the right as a sickening tingle climbed up her back.

Something was standing at the far end of their porch.

Her eyes watered both from fear and from resisting the urge to blink. A slumped shadow leaned against the side of the house a few feet from the kitchen window. She could barely make out its shape, but it looked man-like. Allowing herself a half breath, she ran through a thousand different thoughts of action. Scream? Stay quiet and watch? Go get her pistol? Call the police?

The shape moved in an odd sliding motion and tipped itself over the porch railing into the yew bush growing below.

Clare double-checked the front door was locked, then hurried as fast and as quietly as she could through the kitchen to the dining room, catching a glimpse of movement rounding the corner of the house through the large window. Without slowing she angled toward the living room and into the rear entry at the back of the home.

Their backyard was barely an acre, surrounded by low bramble giving way to mature trees on either side. The nearest neighboring houses were fifty paces through the growth. In the summer and fall the structures weren’t visible at all from the yard.

Clare watched the entire clearing, honing in on the left side where she guessed the figure would emerge.

Seconds ticked by.

Minutes.

Her fingers began to ache from where they rested on the light switch that would throw the space into bright relief.

Where had it gone? Back to the front porch? Across the street? Into the neighbor’s yard? Had it really been there at all? Stop it. She chided herself for doubting what she’d seen. Someone or something had been on their porch. It had been, what . . . pressing itself against the siding? Scoping out the interior through one of the windows?

Her mouth was beyond dry. Heartbeat bashing against her eardrums.

There.

She flipped on the light, half expecting whoever it was to be climbing the rear stairs, pinned in place by the sudden blast of LED.

No one stood in the yard. Nothing mounted the stairs. On the left side of the yard a branch shifted, swinging back into place. It could’ve been a natural movement, the tree realigning itself from an earlier gust of wind or passage of an animal. But she didn’t believe it for a second, because she could feel something—a sensation she’d chocked up to the nightmare’s residue when she’d initially come downstairs.

It was the heavy weight of eyes on the house. The feeling of being watched.

Chapter Five

“Are you sure?”

Eric stood beside the kitchen island, sipping his first cup of coffee. He’d appeared in the stairway a little after six, still on workweek time which required him to be at his computer no later than six thirty to meet the East Coast market’s opening bell. Dawn was a brilliant gold pouring into the house and filling it with early warmth. Everything was so opposite from the night, so normal and right, Clare also continued to question herself about what she’d seen.

“I don’t know who or what it was, but yes, there was someone skulking around the house.”

“Skulking.” He smirked.

“Shut up, it’s a good word.”

Eric raised one palm in submission. “But you didn’t get a good look at them.”

“No. They looked . . . weird. Like a toy that got stepped on and broken.”

“And they didn’t try getting into the house?”

“No. They were just, I don’t know, standing there. Then whoever it was walked around the side yard and went into the woods.”

“Why didn’t you wake me up?”

“By the time I really knew something was wrong, they were gone.”

“So instead you got your gun out and sat down here in the dark until sunrise.”

Clare glanced at the compact Ruger pistol lying on the coffee table within easy reach. Adam had encouraged her to get her license and training after a particularly ugly legal battle with a separatist group in northern California two years ago. She’d initially brushed off the notion of owning a gun, but after receiving a half dozen death threats she’d followed through on his advice. Now she looked guiltily at the weapon. “I didn’t . . .”

“Didn’t what?” he asked gently.

“I didn’t know if it was real or not.” She let her gaze drop to the floor.

Eric set his coffee down and sat beside her, drawing one of her hands into his own. “Do you think you were awake?”

“Yes.”

“Then you saw something. I’ll talk to Bryan this morning; he’s always on the lookout for the neighborhood. Maybe he saw someone too. Or noticed someone hanging around lately.”

“Don’t ask him. The only people he thinks are a threat are ones who have more melanin than he does.”

“That’s probably true.”

Clare sighed. “It might’ve just been a drunk. Someone got confused, wandered through the Sandfords’ yard and onto our porch.”

“Could’ve been.”

“But . . .”

“But?”

“But it didn’t feel like that. It felt like whoever it was, meant to do what they did. Like they were here for something.”

Eric frowned. “We haven’t been arming the security system for a while. Maybe we should start again.” Clare nodded and he stood, moving toward the kitchen. “Are you hungry? I’ll make some eggs.”

“Not really. Think I’ll run over and visit Lia quick.”

“Okay.”

Upstairs she changed into a pair of jeans and a sweater, winding her hair up in a simple bun. She emailed Adam the collected files regarding Shining Rock Church, then sent a text to Lia inquiring if she had time to talk, and was rewarded with a response almost immediately.

If you get here before ten. I have lunch with Darin and I’m not going to be late.

I won’t screw up your date. There’s just some things . . .

Bring your baggage. We’ll sort your “things.”

Bitch.

Tramp.

Love you.

Love you.

“What are you doing this morning?” she asked, stopping in the dining room on the way out.

Eric looked up from his laptop, a spoonful of granola paused between the bowl and his mouth. “I’m going to sit by the window, pining for your return.”

“After that.”

“Heading down to Mom and Dad’s. Haven’t seen them in a few weeks. I’ll hit the farmers market on the way back for dinner.”

“Sounds good. Give them my love.”

“The farmers?”

She bent and kissed him. “Smart-ass.” On the way to the door she paused, a remnant of disquiet from last night clinging to her. “Be careful today, okay?”

He gave her a smile. “I will, honey. Don’t worry about me.”

She nodded, ducking out to the front entry to don her jacket and shoes before the alien dread could stop her from leaving altogether.

* * *

The city of Bayview where Lia had her practice was true to its name. Thirty minutes south of Capeside, an inlet protected by a long peninsula stretched out below a smattering of businesses and homes built into tiers, which never failed to remind Clare of rice terraces in the Philippines. The bay itself was calm in the morning sun, the few scudding clouds overhead cottony reflections on the water’s surface.

She’d passed the quiet drive replaying the occurrences of the night before. From the discovery of the ring box to the nightmare of her sister to whoever—

whatever—

had been lurking around their house. She knew none of it was connected, the only link being her stress, but despite the continued reassurances, she wasn’t convinced. The sinking feeling of something impending hadn’t receded. If anything it had grown stronger on the drive. It was as if an unknowable weight was descending from overhead, coming steadily downward even though she couldn’t see it. The sensation had become so palpable she’d taken an extra dose of Buspirone before leaving the house, but so far the drug hadn’t helped dispel the feeling.

Clare guided the SUV into the first exit and wound her way up through the tiered streets, stopping before a large two-story brick home that doubled as Lia’s office and residence.

The front door was unlocked, as she knew it would be, and she let herself in to the spacious foyer. The air smelled of the lavender Lia kept in several diffusers around the house.

“Go ahead into the den, I’m just mixing a drink,” Lia called from the kitchen down the hallway. Clare glanced at the time on her phone and suppressed a laugh before making her way to the next room.

Lia’s den was spartan yet welcoming. A candle burned on an antique end table and a ceiling fan turned lazily overhead. Clare settled into the corner of a long leather couch as Lia entered the room from the other doorway.

She drank deeply from a large mug filled with vermilion liquid. “Tequila sunrises are my favorite sunrises,” she said, setting the drink on a coaster atop a narrow desk near the far wall. “Want me to whip you up one?”

“It’s barely eight o’clock.”

Lia stared blankly at her. “So do you want one?”

“No thanks.”

“Each to their own.” Lia sat in an overstuffed chair matching the couch and crossed her legs. She was a year younger than Clare but looked slightly older. It might’ve been the way she carried herself, confident and direct while exuding an air of worldliness. Or it could’ve been the smart suits and dresses she wore even while at home relaxing. Either way the hint of maturity seemed to add to Lia’s mystique instead of draw away from it.

“Sorry I kinda barged in this morning,” Clare said, settling further into her seat.

Lia waved her words away. “It’s fine, but full disclosure—Darin has abs you could wash clothes on and a double-jointed tongue, so if we’re not done here by ten thirty, I’m walking out.”

Clare laughed. “This won’t take long.”

“I’ve heard that before.”

She started by detailing the meeting with the women after the lecture, following up with the discovery she’d made in Eric’s bedside table, while leaving out the strange events of the early morning hours.

Lia sat back in her chair. “Holy shit. A ring? Are you sure?”

“I mean, I didn’t look at it, but what else could it be?”

“Wow. That’s . . . amazing, right?”

“It is. And I was so happy when I found it. Thrilled he would want to . . . that he thought I was—” She grimaced. “But I’m a little terrified too.”

“Totally natural.”

“How can I be sure I won’t screw this up and hurt him?”

“You’ve been together for years and haven’t hurt him.”

“I’m late a lot. And I know I get too wrapped up in work sometimes.”

“I wouldn’t necessarily say those are relationship-ending offenses.” Lia paused, looking at her, into her. “You’re afraid you’re not worth it. You’re worried Eric will eventually see that and he’ll walk away.”

Clare sighed, glancing out the single window overlooking the street. “I’m afraid I’ll run away again. I’m terrified that I’ll leave him when he really needs me, that I won’t be strong enough.”

“Clare, it wasn’t your fault.”

“Then why did I live and everyone else die? Why am I still here? Why can’t I—” She was going to say remember. But she already knew the answer to that question. Even if portions of her memory weren’t blanketed in banks of fog, she would be terrified to see them clearly. To know exactly what happened the night her family died.

“Do you think knowing anything involving over forty people killing themselves and burning their entire camp to the ground will absolve you of the guilt and regret you carry around? Because I know it won’t. It was a sickness, Clare. All the beliefs your father tried forcing on you, the rules, the seclusion, all of it was a sickness. It stemmed from him. He was mentally ill and it led him to do terrible things to everyone in that cult. And none of it was your fault.”

Clare’s throat was closing. She clasped her hands together, trying to hold on to the here and now even as she felt the past trying to intercede. “I dreamed about Shanna last night, and that can’t be a coincidence.” Lia waited while she gathered herself. “I walked outside our house and everything was quiet and still. Like the whole world was empty. And there was this presence, something bad I couldn’t see but knew was there. I couldn’t find Eric and then Shanna was in the road. She . . . she was on fire and I couldn’t . . .” Clare’s voice faltered.

Lia left her chair and knelt beside her, grasping one of her hands. “Look at me. You loved your sister, right? Still do?” Clare nodded. “You did not fail her. She was just as much a victim as you were, and the fact you survived and she didn’t wasn’t your choice. Do not feel guilty for being alive.” There was a box of tissues on the floor beside the bag and Lia tore two free, handing them to her before returning to her seat. “You have to remember that what you endured would’ve broken most people, but you persevered. The reason you do what you do today is proof positive you’re a survivor. There are two ways to deal with trauma: you either avoid it or confront it. You’ve been confronting your fears since I met you in that half-assed support group fifteen years ago.”

“Then why am I still so afraid?”

“Because of what’s in that little box you found last night. You’ve become so focused on the past when the future is what you’re really afraid of. You think that by committing to something or someone you’re dishonoring your sister’s memory somehow. By moving on you feel like you’re not shouldering your share of the blame. It’s survivor’s guilt, plain and simple. Everything, all your diagnoses—the anxiety, your OCD, the intrusive memories, all of it stems from what happened that night, and it holds power over you because you’re terrified of moving on.”

Clare stared at the floor between her feet. “I know you’re right. But knowing something and believing it are two different things.”

“Very true. Are you going to tell Dr. Connors about all this?”

“I don’t know. I’ve got a session next week.”

“You should. Listen, I’d treat you myself if it weren’t a personal conflict. But then I couldn’t drink when you came over.” She took a long sip from her cocktail and smiled evilly over the glass’s rim.

Clare laughed. “Just saying things out loud helps. Thank you.”

Lia smiled. “Take a little time, think about the future. About what could be. You are worth it.”

They sat quiet for a time, only the sound of a passing car breaking the silence. “I worry I’m too broken.”

“We’re all broken. The people who get better are the ones who admit it and get to work fixing what’s wrong. You know more than anyone how screwed up I was when I ran away from the cult that was my family. I made a vow afterward I’d never let my life be dictated by someone or something again. Haven’t looked back since.”

Clare nodded. The weight she’d felt on the drive over was less. Hearing Lia’s assertive viewpoint always cleared away some of the cobwebs in her mind that seemed to gather between their visits. She glanced at her phone and stood. “I’ll get out of here so you can get ready for your date.”

Lia rolled her eyes as she drew Clare into a tight hug. “I have that man on a short leash. I could be two hours late and he’d still be waiting for me.”

As they walked to the door a thought occurred to Clare. “The women I mentioned from Shining Rock—I gave them your card.”

“You know I’m booked solid.”

“They really need help. The girl couldn’t have been more than eleven or twelve.”

Lia made an exasperated sound Clare knew was just for show. “I’ll try to find an hour for them if they call.”

“And I’ll take care of the charge.”

“You’re going to go broke paying for other people’s treatment.”

“And you’re going to get rich.”

“Bitch.”

“Tramp.”

Clare kissed her on the cheek and waved as she headed down the walk to her car.

Chapter Six

The brightness of the day gradually dimmed, as if a lid was closing over the world.

Clare noticed the encroaching clouds layering upon themselves to blot out the sun, but the colors washing out to gray did nothing to dampen her mood. As she drove back to Capeside Lia’s words bolstered the stability she’d failed to attain that morning. The disassociation she’d felt the night before still lurked behind her thoughts, but it was less tangible and more dreamlike than anything else. These moments of clarity and solidity were havens sometimes difficult to find on her own, and for the countless time she sent up a silent thanks for having Lia in her life.

When she arrived at the turnoff to their cul-de-sac she surprised herself by staying on the winding lane instead of swinging right. She wasn’t ready to go home yet—the thought of returning to the empty house, even in daylight, was unattractive. Instead she guided the SUV down through town, stopping at one of two intersections, then continuing on to a frontage road running parallel to the ocean.

A few minutes later she pulled to a stop in a roughly paved parking lot. Only one other vehicle occupied a spot at the very end of the area, a rusted Chevy pickup with an equally dilapidated topper that looked like it had been there for some time.

The salt breeze tugged at a few errant strands of hair that had come loose from her bun, tickling the sides of her face and neck. A low dune separated the lot from the actual beach and she strode up it, stopping once to pull off her flats.

Waves crashed on the shoreline and a half dozen gulls wheeled against the slate sky. Their calls sounded mournful, fitting in the flat light coating the beach. Clare moved to the tide’s border where the sand darkened with moisture, stopping short to let her toes sink into the dry silt. She gazed out across the expanse.

For her the ocean was a paradox. Despite its beauty and allure, the depths it harbored along with its ferocious and unforgiving power terrified her. She couldn’t imagine living somewhere with the sea not in view, but the thought of going out among its waves and becoming captive to its will always caused an unpleasant lurch in her center.

In a sense the ocean was her life. No matter how much she yearned to move forward and take pleasure in its small miracles, the fear of letting go and committing was overwhelming. Lia had asked if fully remembering those terrible lost days would free her. The true answer probably wouldn’t make sense to her friend, because the doubt she harbored was what stalked her like a prowling animal just beyond the firelight. Not knowing if she could’ve done something different to save her sister, or any of the others who perished, was a steel wall inside her. Uncompromising and unmoving despite any rational argument.

She sighed at the futility of her inner battle. Lia was right. There was no time machine, no simple answer to free her from the past. Only acceptance and the will to move forward. God knew she was trying.

It was the better part of an hour before she pried herself away from the ocean. The tide had continued to creep inward, seeking her toes as she gradually retreated. Clare said her goodbyes to the water and walked up over the dune, pausing at the parking lot’s edge to don her shoes. As she slid them on her phone trilled a text message. It was Adam.

Got your email. Do you think you could get the woman and her daughter to make a statement?

I don’t have their contact info, but they might be making an appointment to see Lia. I could contact them through her.

Okay. I’ll wait to hear from you. Heading to New York for a week’s vacay now but will be back in the area next week. If they’re able to give me a statement I might be able to get a warrant.

Sounds good. Thank you. Enjoy your vacation!

Thanks! Need anything from the city? Slice of pizza? Rat the size of a small dog?

She laughed. Neither.

Your loss.

Buoyed by the exchange, she tucked the phone away. Tonight she’d make an effort, she thought, walking toward her vehicle. She’d attempt to live only in the moment, no future, no past, just now. Eric would cook dinner from the fresh produce he’d invariably buy too much of at the farmers market, they’d share a bottle of wine, and maybe take a walk. Afterward he might try asking her the question he’d been planning on the night before. The thrill of her answer almost pushed itself out of her mouth and into the autumn air, but all at once the word died on her tongue. She stopped a pace from the SUV’s door, keys in hand.

A small wooden disc rested on the ground near an empty beer can. Even from where she stood the cross etched into the coin was visible. The carver’s knife had left serrations around the coin’s edge, a sign of lazy work her father never would have accepted.

Clare felt herself move forward and bend over, though she hadn’t meant to. Her arm reached out and it was like watching a movie, one familiar and with a horrible ending, yet something she couldn’t look away from.

Gravel and sand slipped beneath her fingernails as she grasped the coin and straightened. All hope and assurances that the coin wasn’t what it was faded away.

And so did the parking lot along with the crash of waves and screaming gulls.

It’s cold in the workroom, even with the woodstove heating the space. Clare looks across the table as Shanna’s friend Abigail sits down on a stool. She is around the same height as Shanna and fair-skinned as well. The two are inseparable and even now they giggle together over some implied joke Clare missed.

“Quiet,” Mrs. Mason snaps. The woman is probably the oldest in camp. Ancient. At least forty-five. Her position as midwife gives her dominion over the children since she’s assisted most of their entrances into the world. Her mouth is a shriveled thing in the bottom of her face and her eyes are flints of cold steel. “Heads down. Focus.”

They follow her command. A dozen children, all of them under fourteen, lined up and down the long table. Clare is the oldest at thirteen, looked up to in an almost motherly way by some of the littlest ones. Without drawing Mrs. Mason’s attention, Clare nods at Shanna and Abigail, glancing downward at the piles of wood before them. Both start carving again, their small fingers adept with the short but razor-sharp knives they use.

Clare examines her own coin. The shape is good, almost perfectly round, the cross in its center upraised beneath the pad of her thumb. Done. She sets it in the growing pile to her right and grasps a new piece of poplar, starting the whole process over again. She likes the wooden charms they carve much better than the coins. She’s good at making crosses and beads to thread on necklaces and bracelets they sell to several Christian stores in the towns she’s never seen. She imagines the people who purchase one of the trinkets she’s made and it gives her a warm feeling to imagine their lives and the places they travel to wearing something she’s made.

The workroom’s door swings out and Clare’s father is framed in its opening. All hands pause, then set down their work and become clasped before them. Heads lower.

Simon Kinley is a tall man with wide shoulders without brawn to fill them out. He resembles a bird of prey, with sharpened features and a quick, flitting gaze Clare imagines would suit a hawk searching fields far below for something to feast upon.

He wears his usual dark pants and shirt beneath a black winter jacket dusted with snow. He steps inside and shuts the door, running his eyes down the table. Clare lowers her head a second before he looks at her and she swallows, studying the piles of wooden coins.

Simon walks the length of the room and stops behind Shanna and Abby. Shanna’s pile is the smallest of any, the few finished coins slightly misshapen. Simon gathers a handful from her pile and lets them drop one by one back to the tabletop.

“What is toil but love?” he says, letting the last of the wooden discs fall. “Willingness to work is a promise. And promises are sacred.” He sets his hands on Shanna’s shoulders, and to the girl’s credit, she doesn’t flinch. Clare returns her eyes to the tabletop as Simon glances her way. “Our toiling will not be in vain. Soon, very soon, the reckoning will come and we will be a gateway for a new world. A holy rebirth that will sweep sin from the land, and give passage for his return. Do you see?”

“We see.” Their voices mingle in the expected response.

“We see.”

“We see.”

“We see,” Clare whispered, vision coming into focus.

For a horrifying second she was completely adrift in her consciousness, unmoored from who she was. She didn’t recognize her surroundings, didn’t know how she’d gotten there.

It came rushing back at once.

Everything, her entire life up to that point, in an instant.

She swayed as if standing thigh deep in a rushing tide. The urge to be sick was strong but she bit it back, slowly centering herself. Rubbing bits of sand between her fingers. Smelling the salt and heady odors of the beach. Here and now. Here and now.

When she tried recalling the prior moments of reality outside the memory, there was nothing. Just a blankness in her mind. Instead she saw the workroom from her childhood where they’d carved knickknacks and wooden jewelry to sell for the cult. Where they carved Charon’s obols.

She froze. How long had it been since she’d thought of that particular phrase? Years. Decades. And her father. His rhetoric still echoing in her mind.

We see.

Clare sucked in a deep breath, letting it out slowly, then did it four more times. An intrusive memory. The strongest she’d had in a long, long time. It hadn’t threatened to wash over her like one of the waves still crashing on the beach, it had swept her away completely. And the thing that had spurred it—

The coin lay a few feet from her SUV’s front bumper. She must’ve dropped it while enveloped by the past.

A part of her denied its existence. It couldn’t be. But another part, a more rational part, forced her to reach down and pluck it from the ground again. She braced herself for another attack and looked at what she held.

It was the coin. No doubt.

A thousand explanations clamored in her head and just as quickly fell silent. There was no rationalization for this. A piece of her past had broken free and found her here, eighteen years later and seventeen hundred miles away.

Her head snapped around, eyes scanning the parking lot and its borders. The old truck hadn’t moved and there was no one else in sight. She was alone.

A sense of vertigo enveloped her. The sky suddenly seemed too close. Like she would begin to drift upward and float away. Clare clenched the wooden disc in her hand, as if squeezing it would somehow diminish its hold on her, then deposited it in her jacket pocket. She climbed behind the wheel of the SUV and backed out of the space, accelerating so quickly the tires threw loose gravel in a spray behind her.

Chapter Seven

A few kids on bikes rode past in the opposite direction as Clare pulled onto their street, several of them waving at her cheerily.

She managed to raise a hand in return but couldn’t summon a smile. The coin was a thousand-pound weight in her pocket, her thoughts a radio scanner unable to settle on a station.

Even though she knew Eric wouldn’t have returned yet, disappointment still sank through her at the sight of their empty driveway. She parked and got out and stood looking up at their house. The windows were dark and the wind had blown some dead leaves onto the first two steps. If she hadn’t known better she would’ve said the place was unlived in. Abandoned.

Clare blinked. No. She wasn’t doing this—giving in to the illness in her mind. She needed to stay focused, think critically, and keep herself rooted in the present.

As she started up the walk she noticed the same sensation she’d felt early that morning and turned her head to the left.

A man stood on the sidewalk in front of their neighbor’s home. He was dressed raggedly, an amalgam of clothing decrying “homeless.” He was of average height, or at least she thought so since his posture was canted to one side, his right shoulder jutting much higher than his left, neck cranked at a painful-looking angle. His hair was gray-streaked and lank. An athletic bag hung from one bony hand.

For a second she continued toward the porch, then slowed as the man’s appearance settled into her mind’s eye.

She stopped and stared at him.

He stared back.

One of his hands came up and his fingers waggled at her.

Clare changed directions and crossed the lawn, striding up the sidewalk before she could stop herself. “Hey, who are you?” she asked, coming closer to the man.

He smiled, teeth shockingly white and straight. “Me? I’m passing through.”

She glanced down at the bag he carried, something bulky within. “What were you doing on my porch last night?”

He cocked his head, adding to the already extreme angle so that his face was nearly perpendicular to his body. “Don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“I saw you. You were on our porch and walked around the side of the house.” The man simply watched her, smile unbroken.

Clare shot a look toward the other homes across the street. Each yard was empty and no one gazed out any of the windows. Nobody to help her if she needed it. The man was a statue, watching her with eyes that danced with internal delight. She slowly turned and moved toward her lawn, keeping the vagrant in her peripheral line of sight. When she was almost to the front steps, he spoke, his voice quiet and airy but carrying across the distance between them.

“Home is a beautiful thing, but only if it’s filled with family.” He turned, heading toward the far end of the street where it curved back on itself. A whistled tune drifted over his shoulder, and she caught only a few notes before it was gone, but that was enough.

Clare bumped into the porch stairs and stumbled up them, fumbling with her keys before managing to unlock the door. A loud beeping echoed through the house as she stepped inside and she bit back a scream. The security system. Eric had armed it before he left.

It took two aborted tries to get the code in correctly and silence the touchpad. But then the quiet of the house was almost worse. She rearmed the system and double-checked the locks, peering out through the door’s side window to see where the homeless man was now.

The end of the cul-de-sac was vacant save for a striped cat hunting in the grass of the empty lot on the far side. He was gone.

His absence was alarming rather than reassuring and she took the stairs two at a time to their bedroom. The electronic safe in her bedside table sprang open with the number combo she punched in. She drew out the Ruger, checking its load even though she’d gone through the weapon that morning.

Her breathing came in dry rasps, heart rate skipping along like a flat stone across water. She knew to anyone else she’d look psychotic, standing there, gun in hand. But the things she’d noticed and hadn’t fully processed about the “homeless” man continued to cascade through her mind.

She and Eric had volunteered several times at Capeside’s small soup kitchen in the last year and she’d seen the local homeless community up close. Yes, they were unwashed. Yes, their clothing was torn and patched and oily from constant wear. Yes, many of them were in the advanced stages of substance abuse. But for the most part they were peaceful, polite, and quiet. The man she’d just encountered was none of those things.

His clothing had been dirty, but not tattered. In fact, it had appeared relatively new. The bag he’d had wasn’t very dirty or frayed. There was no sense of neglect about him. And his eyes were the most telling. The way he’d looked at her had been threatening with a hint of something else she wasn’t sure she was ready to confront quite yet.

Recognition.

It was like he had known her.

But beyond all else the thing that had sent her scrambling inside to clutch the gun in her hand now was the tune he’d begun whistling as he walked away.

To her it had sounded very much like one of the hymns her father had written when she was a little girl.

* * *

When Eric’s truck rolled to a stop in its accustomed space late that afternoon she disarmed the alarm for the second time.

Clare had spent the hours after arriving home replaying the day’s events, trying to reason her way through everything, find a flaw in the coalescing fear tightening around her like a full-body noose. But each time she began to calm herself she would hear the off-kilter tune whistled through the puckered lips of the man and her resolve would collapse. She’d taken a shower to warm herself and tried to eat, but nothing in the fridge had seemed appetizing. Afterward she’d turned on the gas fireplace and settled into the couch, letting her gaze unfocus as she watched the flames dance.

Now, as Eric bustled in through the door, her eyes fell to the coin on the countertop where she’d laid it earlier. She stood in the living room, far enough away that the small disc looked innocuous in the early evening light.

“Hey, I’m home,” Eric called. “Oh, you’re right there,” he said, noticing her in the next room. “So, you’re going to love me. I got fresh cilantro and organic pork along with some green onions. Pork ramen and vino, how does that sound?” He busied himself with the grocery bags while she waited, not saying anything. After a moment he glanced up, concern creasing his features. “Hey, what’s wrong?”

“Nothing.”

Eric crossed the room to her, took her hands. “What is it?”

She fought to keep the tremble from voice. “I saw a man in the street this afternoon. I think he was the one who was on our porch last night.”

“What? How do you know?”

“He had the same shape and he . . . I don’t know, he talked to me like he knew me.”

Eric frowned. “Here, let’s sit down. Tell me exactly what happened.” They settled onto the couch and she relayed the incident, trying to recall any further details as she relived the encounter once again. When she was finished Eric went to the kitchen windows and surveyed the street. “You haven’t seen him since?”

“No,” she said, wringing her hands in her lap. She wrestled with whether or not to tell him about the intrusive memory at the beach, but if she went into that she’d have to explain the wooden coin as well, and she wasn’t sure she could do that right now. The twisted man’s whistled tune wove through her mind like a cold breeze nudging wind chimes.

Eric returned holding two brimming glasses of wine and handed her one. “I’ll put a call in to the police department, say someone’s been prowling around the house at night and give them this guy’s description.”

She nodded, sipping gratefully at the wine. “Okay. It wouldn’t hurt to have a patrol come through the neighborhood.”

He smiled and squeezed her shoulder. “I’ll make us some food. Once your belly is full of ramen you’ll feel better.”

She watched him go to the kitchen and busy himself among the dinner supplies. In that moment she wasn’t sure if she’d ever loved anyone or anything more. Maybe all of this was coincidence, maybe the man was just a drifter passing through and she’d misheard the tune he’d been whistling. Her thoughts slid back to Lia’s earlier insight. Perhaps the knowledge of Eric’s proposal was affecting her more than she knew.

Eric said something as a pan clattered in the kitchen, drawing her back to reality. “What did you say?” she asked.

“I said what’s with the old button?”

Clare frowned and made her way into the kitchen. “What old button?”

Eric was bent over the stove, his back to her. “The one on the counter.”

Clare’s gaze slid downward and a ripple of pure dread went through her center.

The coin was no longer a coin. In its place rested a large wooden button. It was old and pitted, the holes for the thread elongated with wear and time. She reached out to pick it up and stopped.

Eric turned from the stove and surveyed her. Clare cleared her throat, unable to look away from the button. “It was down by the beach. Thought it was neat and picked it up.”

“Cool. Looks pretty old.”

“Yeah, I think it is,” she heard herself say, and retreated to the living room. She was having trouble breathing, oxygen lodging like something solid in her throat. She leaned against the mantle and took another sip of wine. It helped and she drew in a long, shuddering breath. It had been a coin when she’d picked it up, she was sure of it. But now . . .

You’re losing your mind, a cold internal voice said. Just like your father was.

She drained the remainder of her glass, drowning out the voice in three long swallows. There were two possibilities about how a button was now sitting on the counter instead of the coin she’d found near the beach. One, the voice telling her she was losing her grip on reality was right. Her mental gears had slipped and resulted in a full-on hallucination, trigging the intrusive memory. Or two, somehow the coin had been swapped for the button.

Of course the second notion was insane in itself. No one had come into the house and switched it with a button. The security system had been armed and she’d been sitting right here almost the whole time.

So it was number one, then. Her eyes glazed as she watched the fire.

What she’d feared all her life had finally come to fruition. The past wasn’t finished with her. Since she’d escaped the cult’s final reckoning, her father hadn’t been able to fully fulfill his twisted prophecy all those years ago. But he was still reaching out beyond the grave, still manipulating and forcing his will on her—not physically, but through the ghost of his genes, of which there would be no running away from this time.

“Clare?”

She snapped free of her thoughts, coming back to the comforting confines of the living room. Eric stood in the kitchen, concern in his eyes.

“Yeah?”

“It’s ready.”

She stood and made her way into the dining room to a dinner she wasn’t hungry for.

Chapter Eight

Shadows capered on the ceiling like imps in some folktale better forgotten.

Clare watched them dance, eyes wide and sleepless. The remainder of the night drifted through her mind. Her lack of appetite, Eric’s attempts to draw her free of her malaise, the episode of their favorite show flat and meaningless. All she could concentrate on was the idea that she might be losing her grip on reality. As she’d watched the television characters trundle through the plot she wondered if she could really trust what she was seeing. If her consciousness had come unmoored from reality, from the here and now, how could she know if something was real or not?

She glanced at Eric, who slept soundly beside her. He’d tried to initiate sex when they’d finally gone to bed, his lips gently moving up her bare shoulder to the spot just below her ear that normally drove her wild, but she’d brushed him off with a kiss and apologized quietly. When she’d rolled away he’d nestled in behind her, holding her close until he’d fallen asleep and she’d separated herself as to not disturb him. She had a momentary urge to wake him and tell him everything, expose her fears of what was happening, but just as quickly the impulse passed. What would he say if she told him she was losing her hold on sanity? What would he do? The biggest part of her believed he wouldn’t even blink, that he’d fall into the calm mode of calculation and problem solving he operated in day in and day out. That he would love her no matter what her state of mind. But a smaller, uglier part of her believed the opposite. She imagined him turning away, of leaving her on her own. And though that part of her was the minority, its voice was so much louder than anything else.

A car rolled by on the street. The Millers’ dog barked once and was quiet. The whole world seemed asleep except for her. She reflected that the loneliness accompanying insomnia was of a special breed. It hollowed you out and made you feel not only empty, but also wronged, since the elemental gift of sleep had been denied.

She turned over. Then flipped back the other way. Her head ached from the wine and her thoughts were an endless merry-go-round. Shanna’s face surfaced in her memory and she stilled, letting the recollection drift fully into view.

They’d been in Shanna’s bedroom, the walls a drab beige, her narrow bed, a simple bookshelf, and the desk where Shanna did her Bible studies the only adornments. Mrs. Mary, Shanna’s homemade stuffed bear, sat on the bed, watching them with dark button eyes. She was holding Shanna’s hands in her own, the little girl’s eyes wide as Clare spoke in a hushed whisper, telling her what she’d seen their father doing in the basement earlier that day. She wondered then, as she did now, if she’d gotten through at all to the younger girl. Or had the indoctrination been so deeply ingrained there’d been no chance of convincing her she was in danger? That they both were.

As she’d begun circling the idea of running away, a board creaked outside the room and she’d frozen, cutting off the words in mid-breath. Sing, she’d mouthed to Shanna, and they began to sing the hymn they’d learned the day before. She’d watched the two stripes of shadow beneath the door linger for nearly a minute before sidling away. And her fingers hurt from gripping her sister’s hand, the will to continue the song flowing through her touch.

“We sang in the dark,” she breathed to the quiet bedroom, and a chill crept through her as if a window unto winter had been opened.

She slid free of the bed and walked into the bathroom, needing to move. At the window she raised the blind and looked out onto their street, a sudden premonition the twisted man would be standing there, staring up at her, so strong she nearly lurched back from the glass.

But the street was empty, shadow-dappled yards devoid of movement. She thought of the button still resting on the counter downstairs and felt its pull like a magnet. What would it be if she went down there right now? Would it still be the tarnished button, or would it be the coin, its cross replaced by an open eye looking directly through her?

Clare shook herself free of the notion, but part of her wanted to go and check, make sure the button hadn’t changed somehow in the dark. Maybe she’d sit up for the night and keep her phone handy in case the twisted man came back. Then she could prove he was real. Not so much to Eric, but to herself.

No. She wasn’t going to give in to compulsions. It would only send her further down the rabbit hole of doubt and fear. Besides, it was late and sleep no longer felt like an indistinct island in the distance she would never reach.

When she returned to bed the sheets were cool on her side while Eric radiated heat from his. The contrast was comforting and she settled deeply below the covers, finally feeling weariness overtake her continuous thoughts.

Light pried gray fingers beneath her eyelids and she blinked.

The room was lit in somber tones and she had to glance around, taking in details to make sure she was awake and it was actually morning.

Eric wasn’t in bed and the bathroom door was open. As she moved across the room she slowed, needing to reassure herself she wasn’t trapped in the nightmare she’d had two nights before. No, she could hear kids laughing down the street and someone was revving a weed-whipper obnoxiously. She was awake.

A near-scalding shower brought her fully conscious, and by the time she’d brushed her teeth and dressed in a comfortable set of sweats, the day before had taken on a hazy quality that didn’t prompt the same dread she’d fallen asleep to. The woman she saw in the mirror was herself.

Heartened, she went downstairs, smelling strong coffee. Eric must’ve risen early and made it, then ventured out for his Sunday morning run, because his shoes were absent from the entry. On certain weekends he would jog five, sometimes eight miles, not returning for hours.

Clare poured herself a cup of coffee and stood at the dining room window. The Millers’ dog, a yellow lab, jumped at the end of his chain in response to several kids playing tag down the street. One of the children did an impromptu cartwheel, bringing a half smile to Clare’s face. The sky was clouded but bright—a freshly laundered sheet stretched tight from horizon to horizon.

She decided to grab the new paperback she’d started a few nights ago and sit in one of the chairs on the porch, drink her coffee, and wait for Eric to get back. The fresh air would do her good.

She set her mug down and started toward the living room. Immediately her eyes flitted to the counter where the coin lay. Button. It was always just a button. But even as she continued around the island she felt herself stiffen and falter.

The wooden coin sat beside a coaster, its cross upraised and undeniable.

Clare squeezed her eyes shut. Opened them.

A button. Four little holes in its center.

She swallowed a surge of panic and continued to the stairway. A trick of the light along with what she’d feared she would see. That was it. That was all. She snagged her book off the nightstand and went back down the stairs.

She cut down the hallway behind the living room, fully focused on grabbing her coffee and heading outside, but something made her slow and stop short of the kitchen doorway. For several beats she couldn’t understand what it was. Something off, but unnamable. Clare looked back at the hallway to the stairs at its end. Nothing out of place. The small table they kept in the hall was in its customary place, a few knickknacks arranged on its top. A modest mirror hung above it. And the hall closet. Completely normal.

Except it wasn’t.

Clare stared at the closet. The open closet. It had been closed when she’d passed it initially. She was sure of it.

She huffed a laugh. Stupid. It had been open before, she just hadn’t noticed it. But as she stepped toward the closet the assurance teetered and fell apart. She specifically recalled walking past the closed door the first time. Now the opening gaped wide, the door folded almost flat against the wall.

“Eric?” she said. Her voice sounded strange, as if she’d spoken in a much smaller space than the hallway. The house lay quiet around her. The kids had fallen silent outside.

She took a step. Another, and stopped before the open door.

It was a typical hallway closet. Three feet deep, six feet wide. A few shelves to one side holding extra blankets, their winter clothes in plastic bins, and two sets of cross-country skis. But she couldn’t see any of that.

The closet was a rectangle of darkness.

Her stomach lurched. It was like someone had hung a black blanket over the inside of the doorway. She leaned first one way, then the other, trying to see through the gloom and make out something familiar. Anything. But there was only darkness.

It wasn’t real. Couldn’t be. She was seeing things again. Clare blinked, keeping her eyes closed for several seconds before opening them. The darkness remained unchanged. And now there was something else. A sound that hadn’t been there before. She cocked her head, thinking it was a car coasting by the house, but after a second she realized it was coming from inside the small space before her.

Whispering.

A low voice muttering words so quietly she couldn’t make them out.

This wasn’t happening. It was in her head. All in her head.

Clare took a step back but she bumped against the hallway’s wall. The darkness in the closet swirled like dust motes disturbed by someone’s passage. The whispering grew louder. She could almost hear the words. Could almost—

—make out what he’s saying, but not quite. Clare stands at the top of the basement stairs in the light of the late afternoon sun. Mother Charity and Shanna are readying for evening worship at the hall and she was charged with making dinner for her father. It’s ready, a plate steaming on the table, and she’s called to him twice but he hasn’t answered. She’s not sure he can hear her in the basement where he goes to have his visions.

She takes a step down onto the first tread and stops. The last time she’d been in the basement was years ago, almost too long to remember. It had been dark and dank and smelled like decaying earth, the air thicker and more oppressive than it had any right to be. Even now she always hurries past the closed and locked door on her way through the small house.

“Father,” she says, her voice weak. She takes another step down. Another.

There is a feeble glow of light and the smell of kerosene. She forces herself down, finally deep enough below the house she can see the entirety of the basement.

The kerosene lamp sits on a small altar at the far end of the room. A solitary cross illuminated a dull yellow hangs above it, its shadow jittering and distorted. Her father kneels before a rectangle of deeper darkness carved into the earthen floor. His hands are clasped before him, head lowered in supplication. He mutters under his breath.

A shape snags her attention beside what must be a hole cut into the floor. It’s a handmade conglomeration of boards nailed together to form what looks like a small door. It takes her half a beat to realize it normally covers the opening her father is kneeling in front of. Some kind of hatch he made for the hole.

She begins to call out for him again but stops herself short. His voice has risen slightly and she catches bits and pieces of what he’s saying.

“—into the abyss of sin and return gleaming of polished righteousness. Sacrifice is love and love cannot be denied. Your will unto us shall be done. Passage paid in toil and blood.”

The words send a ripple of goosebumps across her skin and the back of her throat tightens. She doesn’t think she could speak if she tried. And there is something else, which sends a sickening weight plummeting downward through her middle, as if there is a hole inside her to match the one in the floor.

Her father’s voice isn’t the only one she can hear.

Another, more guttural uttering is beneath his, speaking the same words a second before her father repeats them.

Shock and pure fright has staked her to where she stands until now. But as she hears the voice coming from the hole say her name, she scampers up the stairs, rushing blindly toward the faint light above, toward sanctuary. The last glimpse she sees is of her father’s head coming up and turning in her direction.

Clare looked up from the clenched fists she held in her lap. She was sitting on the floor of the hallway across from the closet. The memory of the basement burned away like an old spool of film held too long over a projector bulb. The wood of the hallway was cool beneath her. Solid. She could taste the coffee she’d sipped earlier along with acid on the back of her tongue. The closet door was still open and darkness remained solid inside it.

She made it to her feet, unclenching her hands, and listened.

Nothing. No whispers. No voice. Silence.

There had never been any sounds coming from the closet, she reminded herself. Only the misfiring of neurons in her mind caused by a gene handed down to her from a man long dead. She was sick, like her father had been. Then why is it still so dark in the closet? The voice in her mind sounded like her own, a sharp edge of fear in it.

Clare stepped forward, peering deeper into the depths. Conscious of the fact she was sidling up to the doorway as if it were a thousand-foot drop, she leaned forward but still couldn’t make out any of the familiar objects.

You’re being foolish, she thought. You didn’t hear anything and it’s just dark inside the closet. Nothing more. Turn on the light.

She reached out to flip the switch positioned on the interior of the wall before she could second-guess herself.

Something moved inside the closet.

She yanked her hand back as a quiet sliding sound met her ears, followed by a furtive thump.

A waft of damp earth drifted past her and was gone.

Exhaling hard through clenched teeth, Clare lunged forward and swung her arm around the doorjamb into the inky pool, hand fumbling for the switch and knowing any second something would latch onto her wrist and drag her forward.

Her fingers caught on the switch, flipped it up. Light bloomed in the closet.

Blankets folded neatly on shelves. Plastic tubs stacked in one corner. And one of her skis tipped over against the right wall.

The front door swung open, triggering a warning from the security system, and this time she did scream.

Chapter Nine

They sat on the porch, Clare’s coffee refreshed and overly diluted with whiskey she’d sloshed into it before coming outside.

The air was cool and carried the first scent of winter’s intentions. Gulls wheeled and called to one another. A horn honked on the road bordering their neighborhood. Clare glanced around at the surrounding houses for the third time, half expecting one of their occupants to be standing outside with a concerned look. But no one seemed to have heard the drama unfolding in their home, and the tranquil Sunday morning on the street rolled on undisturbed.

When she’d cried out Eric had come running, not bothering to turn off the alarm. By the time she’d convinced him she wasn’t in mortal danger, the system had gone into full crisis mode. Both of their phones lit up with calls from the security company alerting them of a breach, and it had taken several minutes of answering security questions before everything grew quiet again.

Eric glanced around the cul-de-sac. He was still in his running gear and the rings of sweat circling his neck and underarms were beginning to fade in the crisp air. “You’re sure you’re okay?” he asked for the third time.

“Yeah. One of the skis fell over in the closet as I was walking by and it startled me.” She didn’t have the heart to tell him the truth. It would only frighten him in turn, reopen the door she was attempting to close on what happened. She could still feel the remnants of fear in her system, like a drug slowly metabolizing. The fact that there’d been nothing in the closet was only slightly less troubling than knowing it had all been in her head.

“Have you been feeling okay?” Eric asked slowly.

She nodded, taking another deep drink of the spiked coffee. The alcohol was doing its work and some of the surrealness of the closet had faded slightly. “Yeah, fine.”

“Because you can tell me, you know? If you’re struggling, I wanna help.”

She favored him with a weak smile. “I know.”

He watched her a moment longer. “Are you hungry?”

Not in the slightest. “Sure, I could eat.”

“I’ll whip up an omelet.” He stood and made it to the door before stopping with one hand on the knob. “It’s really all it was? You were startled?”

She could tell he knew there was more; they’d been together too long for him not to. “Yeah. It’s the last few days all building up, I think. I’m fine.”

He bit his lower lip, frowning. “You know I’ll take care of you. No matter what.”

“I know.”

“Okay. Need any more coffee with your whiskey?”

She smiled. “No. I’m good.”

He disappeared through the door and she was alone.

The normalcy of the neighborhood was a comfort, the way the ocean looked beyond the sprawl of land below soothing. She knew she was safe, yet knowing did nothing to assuage the tension continuing to ratchet tighter in her mind.

There was something wrong.

Almost certainly in her head. She’d experienced panic attacks that left her reeling, unable to cope with the most simple and mundane tasks. At one point in her life it had taken almost a half hour of ritualistic counting before she could leave the house feeling like doom wouldn’t befall her and everyone she knew.

And yet she’d never felt like this before. Like something was looming on the horizon. Something terrible coming straight for her she couldn’t avoid even if she tried. She guessed it was the revelation of inherited psychosis. And as much as being diagnosed with schizophrenia terrified her, there was treatment. She had a support system, people who loved her. There was hope. But beneath the worry there was a deeper fear she couldn’t name.

The memory she’d experienced in the hall returned to her. She’d always been able to recall the occasion when she’d ventured down into the basement in search of her father, but this time the recollection had taken on a new clarity. She could still hear her father’s voice and smell the kerosene. See the yawning opening in the floor like a miniature grave.

She gulped the remainder of her drink, willing the liquor to burn away the memory before she could analyze the most disturbing part. But it was too late.

The other voice beneath her father’s murmured in the back of her mind—words bitten and raw as if the mouth and tongue speaking them was ill-formed.

She rose from the chair, pacing to the railing, unwilling to allow the memory any credence. It had been nearly twenty years ago—she’d been thirteen and terrified. The details of what happened couldn’t be trusted. She’d been a witness to her father’s unfiltered insanity and at best heard an echo, at worst imagined the second voice.

Her phone rang, jarring her from the discordant reverie. When she drew it from her pocket the number was unknown and she hit the decline button. Damn robocalls—the only thing worse than losing your sanity.

She laughed from exhaustion and the darkness of her mood. The door opened behind her and Eric leaned out. “Breakfast is served, madam.”

Inside, the smell of sautéed onions and chives along with buttered toast nudged her appetite. As they sat at the table her cell chirped notice of a voicemail and she opened the phone app, staring at the unknown number. She was about to delete it but on a whim hit play, holding the phone to her ear as she cut into the omelet.

There was a pause on the recording as if the caller were gathering themselves, then a gravelly voice spoke. “Ms. Murdock, this is Reginald Hughes from the Cairn County Sheriff’s Department. I’m calling in regard to a situation we have here and hope you can help us out.” At the mention of the county’s name her hand trembled and she set her fork down. Eric paused in eating across the table, watching her face intently. “Please call us back at your earliest convenience.” Hughes paused after reciting a phone number. “It’s very important,” he said, and the message ended.

“What is it?” Eric asked as she rose from her seat. Clare shook her head, punching in the number Hughes had mentioned. She returned to the front entry, slipping on her shoes as the number rang in northern Minnesota.

It was picked up a second later, the same gruff voice on the message answering. “Sheriff Hughes.”

“Sheriff, this is Clare Murdock calling you back,” she said, stepping onto the porch.

“Ms. Murdock, thank you for the quick reply. I’m calling in regard to an incident we’re dealing with here. Just to be clear, you are the Clare Murdock formerly known as Clare Kinley, correct?”

“Yes.”

“Your father was Simon Kinley?”

She struggled for a moment. “That’s correct. What is this about?”

“Well, to be honest I’m not one hundred percent sure yet, but I’ll do my best to explain it as well as I can.” The line went completely quiet and she was sure the call had dropped when Hughes spoke again. “Two nights ago one of our deputies was notified of a potential trespassing. When he arrived at the property the complainant was administering first aid to an unconscious, injured woman. From what the owner of the property could tell us, the woman had wandered into their yard and begun knocking on the windows and doors. It was only after the homeowner had placed the call to us that they noticed the woman’s clothes were bloody. When they opened the door, she collapsed. The deputy called for an ambulance, which took her to the hospital where she was treated for multiple stab wounds.”

It felt like there was a steel band drawing tighter and tighter around Clare’s skull. She rubbed absently at her temples. “I’m not following what this has to do with me.”

Hughes cleared his throat. “Well, I don’t know any other way to put this since I’m aware of your history here, so I’ll just say it. The woman regained consciousness early this morning and started asking for you. It took us until now to track down your whereabouts and contact info.”

Clare shook her head and blinked. “What? What do you mean, asking for me? How does she know my name?”

A long pause again. “She’s asking for you because she claims her name is Shanna Kinley. She says she’s your sister.”

Chapter Ten

They sat at the dining table, Eric’s partially eaten breakfast along with her own full plate between them.

Clare stared at the plate and utensils as if they would become something else. She didn’t trust anything now; nothing seemed to be what it was. The idea that the reality around her was thin and could be punctured, scraped away to reveal something different underneath, was disturbingly potent.

“It’s a mistake. It has to be,” Eric repeated. “Some kind of mix-up.”

She’d told herself the same thing since getting off the phone with Hughes, that it was some kind of sick joke. “Why, though? Why would she say she was Shanna?”

“To get attention. To cause problems. Who knows? You remember watching that documentary about the guy who impersonated the boy who’d been abducted and went missing for fifteen years? Put the family through hell thinking they’d finally found their son and brother?”

“Yeah, I remember.” She reached out and nudged her fork, clinking it against her plate. “I just don’t understand. The sheriff said she was approximately the right age and—”

“Wait, wait. Shanna’s gone, honey. She’s dead. You’re not actually entertaining this idea, are you?”

“No, of course not.” She crossed her arms, tightening them across her middle as if to snuff out the tiny, but undeniable, spark of hope she felt deep inside. “It’s just . . .”

“Just what?”

“It was eighteen years ago. I was a kid. I still don’t remember exactly what happened. After I was found they asked me how many people there were at the Refuge. I tried counting them all, and I think I remembered everyone, but I could have been off by one or two people. We had quite a few join within those last months, and several left right near the end.” She paused, gathering herself. “They might have thought everyone was accounted for, but my number may have been wrong. The fire was so hot there was barely anything left of the bodies. Besides a couple people they had DNA records for, there was no way to identify everyone.”

“So you’re saying you think she might’ve gotten out like you did?”

“She could have.”

He was quiet for a while. “So where has she been all this time?”

“I don’t know. The sheriff said there was condensed scar tissue around her wrists and ankles, like she she’d been bound over and over.” She paused for a moment, trying to gather herself, gather the courage. “There are things . . . I’ve never told you before,” she started. The words were immense. Stones rolling aside from a cave mouth leading down into darkness. “Things that happened when I was young. I’ve told you some, but not everything, and I’m sorry.”

He frowned. “I did look into it a little after we started dating. Read up on the internet.” There was a hint of guilt in his voice.

“I knew you did, how could you not? But that’s the issue, I was the only one in the cult to survive, and I was a minor at the time. I didn’t talk with anyone in depth about what happened. It was only later in therapy I started digging deeper. And even then I didn’t tell everything. Not even to Lia.”

She rocked slightly in place and Eric squeezed her hand before rising and moving to the kitchen. A minute later he returned with a glass of whiskey on the rocks for each of them.

Clare took a generous drink and set the glass down. They both sat quietly, the house seeming to hold its breath. “I want to tell you now. Some of this you know, but there are details I didn’t think mattered before.” Clare paused and continued, “My father was mentally ill, undiagnosed schizophrenia most likely. He saw things, spoke to people who weren’t there, did things that made no sense. His parents were wealthy. So wealthy they didn’t see the need to get him help. Instead they hired tutors who taught him about anything he wanted—religion, Greek mythology, history, philosophy. They thought if they indulged his ‘eccentricity,’ he would eventually come around. Money-logic, in other words.” She paused, taking another deep drink. The booze was working, smoothing out her frayed nerves. “He got worse and left home when he was nineteen, taking a lot of their money with him. He used it to buy a plat of land in Minnesota about an hour south of the Canadian border. It was surrounded by state property, literally in the middle of nowhere. He called it the Refuge.”

“That’s where he started the cult,” Eric said gently.

Clare nodded. “He and my mother and a half dozen other impressionable and lost kids he’d met over the years. They built houses and a worship hall, stocked supplies, started recruiting more members in the closest towns. They’d wait outside homeless shelters and family crisis centers offering help. A place to sleep, food, acceptance. In the first year a handful of people grew to twenty. I was born that fall.” She stopped again, looking around the room. Was it darker than it had been a few seconds ago? Clare turned on an overhead fixture and the light heartened her. “My mom left three months after I was born. I don’t know what spurred her. Maybe they had a falling out, my father never said. The way he put it was she’d lost her faith, lost her spirit. He said she ran away in the night and left me behind. I was never able to track down where she went. She must’ve changed her name, became someone else. And as much as it hurt that she’d abandoned me, I always pictured her in some city, living a new life, maybe with a new family. And instead of making me feel sad, it made me happy. Later, when I was forming a plan to escape with Shanna, I thought it was her independence, her courage I had inside me. Most people wouldn’t say it takes courage to run away, but in a cult it does.”

“You said your mom ran away when you were three months old?” Eric asked slowly. She nodded. “Then Shanna . . .”

“Was my half sister.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah. My father didn’t waste much time with that. Shanna was born when I was two. Her mother was a woman named Charity Henson. She was young and simpleminded, but she was kind. Even with all the brainwashing I remember her being gentle. Caring.”

Clare finished her glass and Eric refilled it. “You know you don’t have to do this all right now,” Eric said, returning to her side. “You can take a break and we can—”

“No, with what happened this morning, I need to get through this.” He opened his mouth to reply, then closed it. “My father thought he was a prophet. To him his hallucinations were holy visions. The voices he heard in his mind were angels. The belief system he created was typical of a lot of cults—a mixture of Christianity and other lore. He was very interested in Greek mythos and wove a lot of the prominent stories into his preaching.” She paused, wrestling with the next part. “I loved him. Isn’t that horrible? Despite everything he did, how he hurt all of us, I loved him. He was charismatic and intense and when he wasn’t talking to an empty room he could be kind.”

“It’s not terrible at all,” Eric said. “It says a lot more about you than him.”

Her mouth was acrid and she drank more whiskey. Her head was becoming light, everything in the room softened by the alcohol. “It wasn’t a good childhood, nothing normal about it, but there were moments when I was happy. There were quite a few other kids to play with, all of them younger than I was. They kind of looked up to me. But Shanna was who I normally worried about. She was so impressionable. She believed.”

Clare could see her sister, so young, innocent and trusting. Too trusting. “He thought our group was going to bring about the end of days. In the last year before it happened he started talking to someone, someone who wasn’t there. But this was different than all his other hallucinations. This was consistent. Every day he had a new notion, some new proclamation. When he first started talking about the messages I misunderstood what he said. I thought he said he was speaking to the fairy man. It wasn’t until much later I realized he was saying ferryman.”

Eric squinted. “You mean like the River Styx?”

“Yes. Charon from Greek mythology. The one who ferried the dead across into the underworld. My father thought Charon was channeling through him, guiding him toward the apocalypse and Christ’s return. He made us . . .” Her gaze flicked to the kitchen counter. “. . . made us carve these wooden coins as an offering to Charon. Payment like in the myths for passage. We carved hundreds of them. He thought we would have that many members when the time came.”

“Jesus,” Eric whispered.

“I knew it was wrong. Everything about the camp. The things my father said. I could see him talking to nothing and listening when no one else was speaking. I didn’t believe like Shanna did. Like they all did.” She struggled for a moment. Once the dam had broken with the help of alcohol and Eric’s quiet patience she’d been sure everything would come out just as easily, but now she found herself hesitating, as if standing on the edge of a long drop over deep water. “I knew what was coming, not exactly, but I could feel it was something bad. It was like the buildup in the air before a thunderstorm. I had this idea about getting Shanna into one of the cars and driving away. But that’s where it ends. I don’t remember anything until Lucas found me on that access road.” Her jaw trembled. “I left everything behind, everything I’d ever known.” Tears crept into her eyes. “Left Shanna.”

“Hey, that’s not true at all. Whatever happened wasn’t your fault.”

“But how do you know that? How does anyone? They’re all dead but me.” Her breath came out in a long stutter. “I take medication but I’m still afraid all the time and I count things obsessively to keep control, and now with what’s happened—” She faltered, looking away from him.

“I know you want this to be true,” Eric said slowly. “And I can’t imagine what you’re feeling right now, but in all likelihood this is a mentally unstable person who heard about the cult and internalized it somehow until she believed she was your sister. People can be strange, cruel at times. All I’m saying is I don’t want you going down a dead-end road. I don’t want to see you hurt any more than you already are.”

She reached out and grasped his hand. “I’m sure you’re right. But I have to know. If there’s a chance, even a small one, that it is her, then . . .”

Eric sighed. “Okay. We’ll go. I’ll clear my schedule.”

“No.” Her reply was so sudden and forceful it shocked both of them. “I need to do this myself.”

“I don’t want you going alone.”

“It’ll just be a couple days. The sheriff said I could speak with this woman, whoever she is, and they could do a DNA test.” She spoke with what she hoped was an air of confidence she didn’t truly feel. When he continued to look at her, hand still gripping her own, she said, “I’ll be fine. It’s exposure, like Lia always says. You face your fears and then they don’t rule you anymore.”

Eric shook his head. “I don’t like this. I think I should come with.”

How could she tell him the truth? That she didn’t want him anywhere near the place of her past, not even within the same state. The thought of him being close to where it all happened was terrifying, for more than one reason. Reading about where and how she’d grown up was one thing, but being exposed to it in person was another. “I know you want to, and I love you for it, but this is something I need to do on my own. Something to reaffirm how far I’ve come from where I started.”

He stroked the back of her hand with his thumb. “You have come a long way. You amaze me.”

She went around the table and hugged him, and in the safety and comfort of his embrace she felt a tidal pull to stay and let the sheriff’s office carry out their investigation half a country away on their own. Let the woman, whoever she was, go back into the nether of obscurity. Let the past remain where it was.

But at her core was the crux preventing her from this notion. If there was a chance Shanna was still alive, if there was a chance to relieve the crushing guilt of surviving her own childhood, if there was a chance she could move on—she had to go. It wasn’t even a choice.

She packed a light bag while Eric lingered in the doorway. When she was halfway through changing into a comfortable set of traveling clothes, he crossed the room and held her again. He kissed her deeply and she responded, both of them easing down onto the nearby bed without saying a word. A fleeting thought that it could be last time she’d be able to hold him like this came and went in half a heartbeat as they began moving together. Afterward they lay facing one another, still entwined, hearts thudding against each other’s bodies. When she eventually drew away Eric reached toward his bedside table and she forgot to breathe for half a second until he let his hand fall back to the bedspread, a conflicted look there and gone on his face.

Without discussing anything further, she loaded her bag into his truck and they left the house well before noon. On the way to Portland she phoned her preferred airline and booked a flight to Minneapolis leaving in three hours. They spoke very little on the way to the city, mostly about how the leaves were beginning to turn and their plans for the rest of the fall. Their hands rested on the center console, fingers interlaced. As they rode she thought about Eric reaching toward his bedside table earlier, no doubt to retrieve the ring box from inside, and was glad he hadn’t. She didn’t want the proposal to be tainted by anything connected to her past. Her future was in that little box, and she wanted it to begin free and clear of what she’d escaped.

At the security screening entrance she kissed Eric, leaning into him hard before drawing back. “You’re sure you don’t want me to come with you? I’ll go get another ticket right now,” he said.

“No. It’ll either be a misunderstanding or someone playing a cruel prank. Besides, you’d be postponing work. You’ve got that analysis presentation for the investment group this week.”

“I could reschedule.”

“And lose your biggest client.”

“Maybe. Maybe not.”

When it still looked like he might buy a ticket anyway she said, “Just a few days and I’ll be home.”

“A few days.” He kissed her once more and raised one hand in a wave, and she had to blink back tears and turn away to keep herself from calling the trip off completely. When she felt she could look at him again he’d already crossed the terminal and was lost in the throng of travelers.

Chapter Eleven

Turbulence, both outside the plane and in her head.

Clare gave up trying to nod off after the third swoop and jerk of the plane. Mottled clouds stacked thousands of feet high passed by the windows in flitting wisps. Although her ticket claimed a flight time of three hours and twenty minutes, she knew it would feel twice that long once they made it to the ground. If they made it to the ground.

Stop that, she chided herself and readjusted in the seat. Everything was fine. She’d been on plenty of airplanes and flown through hours and hours of turbulence. The flight always smoothed out. A memory came to her then, not intrusive and all-consuming, but natural and poignant. She’d been nine or so, helping Charity hang the wash on the clotheslines behind their house while Shanna played in the ankle-high grass nearby. Clare had noticed the jetliner as soon as they’d come out of the house, a bright winking far in the eastern sky, its white contrail cleaving the azure dome overhead in two. Her father always claimed most technologies were devices of the devil, blinding and rushing souls past God’s true work. But the sight of a plane gliding without sound so far above never failed to entrance her. To her it looked as if the machine were a soaring creation of heaven rather than hell.

“Don’t look at it,” Charity had said quietly, nudging her arm with a wooden clothespin. Clare reluctantly drew her eyes back to her work, but continued to track the jet’s progress with furtive glances.

Shanna had parted two bedsheets and stepped toward her moments later. Mrs. Mary was tucked beneath her arm while her small hands cupped around something. “Look, Clara.” For some reason the little girl always tagged on the extra vowel to her name, something Clare feigned annoyance at. Shanna opened her hands, revealing a small caterpillar resting on the ragged edge of a leaf. “Isn’t he pretty?” Clare had nodded and thrown a quick look at Charity, who had traveled farther down the line, continuing to hang clothes. “One day he’ll grow wings and fly away,” Clare said, pleased with the way Shanna’s eyes widened and latched onto her own. “He’s special. He can change and be something new.”

Now, riding along at nearly seven miles above the ground, she felt a fleeting thrill of that same moment. The possibility of change and that there might be something beyond the confusion and doubt she’d always known.

There was a muted dinging and the pilot’s voice streamed through the speakers overhead, letting the passengers know there would continue to be “some bumps” for the next half hour or so. Clare began wishing she’d put in a drink order with the flight attendant when she’d come by earlier. At least the two seats beside her were unclaimed. She never liked making small talk with whoever happened to be seated next to her, and on this flight she was doubly thankful for the solitude.

Another dip in altitude, this one deep enough to elicit a few startled cries from the rows ahead. Her thoughts turned then to the season, to the infamous date approaching in the following week. She guessed no matter who you were, riding on a plane this time of year probably would bring back the horrific images from that day. You remembered where you were when it happened, what you were doing.

The plane shook and dropped, making her stomach fly upwards, its contents surging against the back of her throat. She gripped the handrests, knuckles whitening. Yes, she remembered because it was one of her last memories before a swirling darkness licked by flames and choking smoke enveloped her mind. She remembered—

—her door opens and her father is there suddenly beside the bed, his eyes wild and bloodshot. He speaks so fast Clare can’t understand the babble, only hears the word “planes” and “towers” and says everyone needs to gather in the worship hall.

Clare dresses quickly, heart slamming in her chest and she wonders if it’s finally time, if she can get Shanna away from the others and to the car she’s been watching over the last weeks, assuring herself Harold Rainier, her father’s most trusted acolyte, always leaves it unlocked with the keys in the ignition. But the idea is dashed to pieces as she’s ushered quickly out of the house by Charity with Shanna meekly in tow. Early sunlight flashes between trees in blades of gold and she squints, trying to make sense of what’s happening. The rest of the Refuge is awake and streaming toward the worship hall, where her father is already inside and shouting a litany. The strain in his voice is unmistakable, the precarious balance in it she’s heard for years tipped completely away from sanity.

Inside the hall the pews are already full but their space at the very front is reserved. Charity leads them there and they sit, looking up at Simon Kinley, who stands behind a handmade pulpit.

“It is near,” he says once quiet holds sway in the hall. “I’ve seen what is to come and it is the end we have been told of.” It is so still she can hear Shanna’s shallow and hurried breathing beside her. “An act of evil will be delivered upon the world. Upon us. Two great towers will fall, brought down by an unholy hatred. And Charon has told me the time is nigh for our sacrifice. Christ is on the verge of his return, and blood is required for passage unto his grace.” Clare reaches out and folds her fingers over Shanna’s small hand. Her skin is cold. When she looks up again at the pulpit her father is staring back, gaze fevered and unblinking. “The weight of true faith is heavy. But we must bear it. No matter the cost, it will be rewarded tenfold when we enter into the embrace of the almighty.” He shifts his eyes away, taking in the entirety of the congregation. “Twelve. Twelve apostles. Twelve is the number we must follow. Two days from now at nightfall on the twelfth of the month, we will heed the call and give what’s been asked. We see when others do not.”

“We see.”

“We see when others turn away.”

“We see.”

“We see the glory and the everlasting.”

“We see.”

“Ma’am?”

Clare started, turning toward the voice, the flight attendant’s face coming into focus. “What? What’s wrong?”

“I think you were dreaming,” the attendant said, a note of uncertainty in her voice as she straightened.

Clare glanced around, her mouth beyond dry. None of the other passengers were looking her way, but the turbulence had passed. How long had she been caught in the memory? “I’m sorry, was I talking out loud?” she asked, settling back into her seat.

“No. You were making some noises. I was worried you were having a seizure since your eyes were open.”

“Oh. I . . . I’m fine now. Thank you.”

“You’re sure? Can I bring you anything?”

She resisted the urge to ask for alcohol. She needed her head clear when the plane landed. “No, thank you.”

“Press the call button if you change your mind.” The attendant gave her a half smile and moved toward the back of the plane.

Clare sat unmoving. Two intrusive memories in one day. It had never happened before. And the power with which she’d been swept away both times was terrifying. It was like being abducted and not knowing you were gone until you’d been returned.

But what bothered her most of all was the detail in the memory she’d either forgotten or blocked out before. The date her father had mentioned—the twelfth.

There’d been no calendars in the refuge, no clocks, nothing to note the passing of time. Later she’d learned it was just another control tactic employed in certain cults. Take away a person’s sense of time and have them rely only on the leader’s direction and schedule. Regardless, she and the other children had been taught seconds, minutes, hours, days, months, and years. She knew her birthday, when Christmas was celebrated, and later learned of the national tragedy which had nearly overlapped the devastation at the Refuge.

9/11.

And yet she remembered her father saying “two days” on that morning he gathered them all together. The fire which consumed the Refuge happened late on September twelfth, which meant the morning her father had been speaking of “planes” and “towers” and an “act of evil” had been September tenth—a day before it happened.

Her head began to shake without her meaning to. A flaw in her memory, it had to be. He must’ve said one day, or maybe her mind was inserting details that didn’t belong, skewing the timeframe somehow. There was no way her father could have known about the attacks. It was impossible.

Taking deep, cleansing breaths, she looked out the window, hoping to see the ground or at least a suggestion of sunlight, but there were only the welded gray layers of clouds beyond the wing.

Chapter Twelve

She rented a car at the Minneapolis terminal and left the city heading northbound as the day slid toward evening.

The reality of being back in the state where she was born kept trying to enshroud her. Knowing with each passing minute and mile she grew closer to the place she’d barely escaped did nothing to calm her. Instead she focused on the changing landscape, how the sprawl of the city was gradually nudged back by suburbs, which in turn ceded to rolling fields hemmed by swaths of trees. She counted different colored cars, keeping mental track of the numbers. She noted each mile marker. Tallied letters in the names of each smaller and smaller town she passed through until there was nothing but wild stretches of woodland to either side of the car.

The desolate beauty of Minnesota’s early fall wasn’t lost on her, but it carried too many memories to fully appreciate any autumnal colors. Even the good recollections were tainted with heartache. No question about it, her life belonged to the northwest now. There’d been nothing for her here when she’d left all those years ago.

It was nearly nine p.m. when her headlights illuminated the city limits sign for Sheen. She wasn’t surprised to see the population had grown only marginally since her departure nearly two decades ago. It was primarily a tourist town with enough big box stores on its outskirts to feign the illusion of progress while the corpse of a paper mill decayed at its center.

Clare navigated through the narrow streets, tasting the tang of sour nostalgia. This was the very first town she’d ever witnessed, the first civilization outside the Refuge. Before moving away due to unending attention surrounding the cult, she’d never taken to the low buildings or cobbled side streets. To her it was a façade of something far more sinister, as if the town was simply another cult painted over with a gentrifying coat of humanity.

It took two wrong turns down avenues before discovering the former hospital had been shuttered sometime in the intervening years, replaced by a new facility on the western edge of town. She pulled the rental into a space before the building’s main entrance, eyeing the sheriff’s cruiser in the next spot over. She’d called Hughes after landing and he’d suggested meeting here to start. They would need to collect DNA through a cheek swab to eliminate the possibility she was related in any way to the woman claiming to be Shanna. This was of course completely voluntary, Hughes assured her. She was in no way bound legally to assist in the investigation. Right, she thought, gathering her things from the car and stepping out. Tell me there’s a woman claiming to be my long-deceased sister, but I can sit it out if I want to. She huffed a laugh and headed for the entrance.

At the later hour none of the reception cubicles were staffed, only a worn-looking woman behind a desk at the far end of the long hallway who directed her back through a set of double doors. Various exam rooms lay on the opposite side, many with their lights off. Beside a nurses’ station a middle-aged man sat on a bench, looking at his phone. His graying hair curled tightly to the top of his head and the set of his shoulders suggested a background in sports or weightlifting. As she approached he glanced up from his phone and stood.

“Dr. Murdock?”

“Yes, and please call me Clare,” she said, shaking hands with him.

“Then I’m Reggie. I can’t stand all the proper titles anyhow.” He studied her. “You don’t remember me, do you?”

“I’m sorry, no. Have we met?”

“Not really. I brought you a bottled water once. I was just a deputy back when everything happened, one of the first on the scene after the call came in.”

“I apologize, I wasn’t . . .”

He waved a hand. “No, not at all. I’m not sure we even exchanged any words. Glad to see you’re doing well.” He gazed at her for a long moment before motioning to follow him down a corridor. “You didn’t have to rush out today, but I’m very thankful you did. If we can establish the fact that this woman is of no relation to you, we can begin heading down other avenues of interest.”

“Has she said anything else since waking up?”

“Some. She’s asked for you several more times and also about her child.”

“She has a child?”

“Well, we’re not sure. It’s all wrapped up in her story, which is pretty . . . disturbing.”

She waited and when he didn’t offer any more, she said, “I know you had to sort through the system to track me down, so I’m guessing you’re aware I have an FBI clearance.”

He nodded. “I am.”

“Then I can assure you I’ll be as confidential with any information you give me as I am with federal investigations.”

“Fair enough.” Hughes stopped beside a water fountain and glanced once in either direction. “She has no ID, no tattoos, and there are no missing person reports filed meeting her description. We’ve asked repeatedly about her identity and she continues to claim she’s Shanna Kinley, born February seventh, nineteen eighty-nine. She says she grew up in the Refuge cult created by her father, Simon Kinley, and that after the subsequent fire destroyed the compound she was abducted by a man called Harold Rainier. Does that name ring a bell?”

Clare took a deep breath. “Yes, he was basically my father’s right-hand man. An acolyte in his church. He went on supply runs for the group and helped facilitate new recruits.” Hughes’s eyes narrowed. “But that doesn’t mean she’s telling the truth. His name was listed among the dead in every report made about the cult. It would be easy to find that information.”

“Very true.”

“So where does she say she’s been all this time?”

“Held against her will by Rainier in a shack somewhere in the woods. There are some large swaths of state land north of where she showed up. So far she hasn’t been able to give us a detailed location. A court-appointed psychologist has been in to see her twice. He says she’s doing remarkably well for being captive that long.”

“And her wounds?”

“Several to the middle of her back and one on her flank, probably made by a knife. Deep enough to cause substantial bleeding and basically impossible to inflict on your own. She’s a little malnourished and dehydrated, but not dangerously so. We also collected tissue from under her fingernails, so if it comes back as someone else’s there’s a good chance she was being held against her will.”

Clare blinked a few times and went to the water fountain, drinking deeply before facing Hughes once more. “I’m sorry, this is all a lot to deal with.”

“I understand. I hated to call you and open this whole mess up again. I remember how this town treated you afterward, how afraid and cruel a lot of people were. You were only a child. It wasn’t fair.”

She gave him a wan smile. “Thank you. It’s funny, as I learned more and more about people I realized how they treated me was a natural reaction. Fear of the unknown is the oldest and strongest of all fears, I think Lovecraft said that. I was all that was left of a horrific incident no one understood, so they didn’t have anything else to be afraid of.”

“Didn’t make it right,” Hughes said quietly.

“No. No, it didn’t. Once I changed my name and moved away it got better.” They stood silently for a beat before Clare said, “You mentioned a child?”

Hughes ran a hand through his hair. “That’s where the waters get muddied further. She says she was . . . abused for many years and the assaults eventually resulted in a pregnancy. She gave birth in this shack and afterward Rainier took the child away. She never saw it again—all she knows is it was a boy.”

A young nurse bustled toward them, stopping beside the nearest exam room doorway. “Are we ready, Sheriff?” she asked.

“Are you okay with doing the cheek swab now? The faster we get it to the lab the better,” Hughes asked Clare.

“Of course.”

Clare stepped inside the exam room and signed a waiver concerning the DNA sample while the nurse donned latex gloves and opened a sample container. She swabbed the inside of her cheek with a long-stemmed Q-tip and placed it inside the container, asking Clare’s name and date of birth for a second time as she affixed a label. When it was done she left Clare and Hughes alone once again in the deserted hallway.

“So what now?” Clare asked. The day was coming down on her. The travel, the stress, and yet she contained a strange giddiness, not entirely good or bad. It felt like anticipation.

“If she’s who she says she is, the DNA test will come back with at least a twenty-five percent match. That would indicate half siblings like you and Shanna were. It would be closer to fifty percent if you’d been full siblings. Until we know more or have the test results back, you can do whatever you’d like as long as you stay in the area. I’ll be in touch as soon as we learn anything new, which shouldn’t be long one way or another.” Hughes paused. “The other thing to keep in mind is the press. A reporter from the local paper’s been sniffing around after she caught wind of the woman being brought in with stab wounds. She’s a tenacious journalist for a small town like this and if she were to make the connection of who you are and who this woman might be . . .” Hughes let the implication sink in. Her entire past, all of the vile and terrible scars of her father’s cult, would be torn open again for the whole world to see.

“Don’t worry, I won’t talk to anyone.”

“Good. Eventually the story will come out, whatever it actually is, but until then we keep a tight lid on this. No reason to rile up the public if this is a case of mistaken identity or some kind of hoax.” Hughes glanced down the hallway and Clare followed his gaze.

“She’s here, isn’t she?” she asked, still looking down the quiet corridor as if she expected to see the woman in question standing at its end.

“Yes.”

“I’d like to see her.”

“I’m not sure that’s a good idea right now. We don’t know enough about her or what she’s involved in yet.”

“But she hasn’t committed a crime.”

Hughes hesitated. “No.”

“Then I’d like to visit her.”

The sheriff wavered but she could tell he wouldn’t deny the request. Maybe it came down to how she’d been treated after her arrival in Sheen, or maybe he was just as interested as she was to see what her reaction would be upon meeting the mystery woman in person. His deliberation only lasted a few seconds.

“This way.”

He led her deeper into the building to a pair of elevators. They rode to the second floor and stepped off into a hallway where a janitor walked behind an electric mopping machine. He nodded at the sheriff and eyed Clare from the soles of her shoes to the top of her head. They took a right and walked another ten paces toward a door where a young deputy sheriff sat idly, scrolling on his phone. Clare counted the steps she took, added together the room numbers they passed, anything to keep her grounded as her heart jackrabbited in her chest and the corridor seemed to lengthen.

“Travis, the lady has a visitor,” Hughes said as the younger man rose to his feet. “This is Clare Murdock.”

“Travis Wilt,” the deputy said, shaking Clare’s hand lightly.

“Anything pertinent?” Hughes said.

“No, sir. Still stable. Quiet, mostly. Skittish whenever anyone comes in the room. Turned on the TV, but she didn’t care for it.” Wilt’s eyes slid to Clare and away. “Seemed to be frightened of it.”

“Thanks, Travis. Why don’t you hit the vending machine.”

“Sounds good. Nice to meet you,” Wilt said, moving down the hall.

Hughes placed his hand on the door’s handle and Clare took a step back. “Can I have a second?” she asked. “Before . . .” She motioned toward the room.

“Sure. I’ll wander down the hall a ways but if you need anything just call for me. I won’t be far.”

Hughes ambled away and Clare stood facing the door. She reached out to grasp the handle, her heart continuing its hurried rhythm. The floor felt as unsteady as a trampoline.

Steeling herself, Clare touched the handle. It was cold, and for a moment the present began to lapse into the past again. She counted the beats of her heart until everything felt solid once more, then opened the door and stepped into the room.

Chapter Thirteen

A single bed in the center of the room bathed in fluorescent light.

Clare kept one hand on the door handle, partially to retain a quick exit, mostly to steady herself. A woman occupied the bed. Her hair was snarled but clean. The neck and sleeves of the gown she wore exposed pale skin, almost translucent in the harsh light. Clare took in the shape of her face, the set of the eyes slowly tracking toward her, how her lips parted before she spoke.

“You’re here,” the woman said. Her voice was pitted, probably from disuse. She reached out and began to cry, delicate sobs wracking her.

Despite herself, Clare moved forward, brow furrowed so tightly her head began to ache. She looked down at the woman’s hand, stretching toward her as if she were drowning and Clare stood on dry land. “It’s me,” the woman said between hitches of emotion.

“I . . .” Clare glanced at the outstretched hand again and slowly took it. Her skin was warm, incongruent with her complexion. The woman gripped her fingers tightly. Part of her wanted to back out of the room and run away down the hall. Out of this hospital and town. Forget she’d ever been here. But another part wouldn’t allow it. She was locked there, robbed of volition by the familiarity the woman gave off like heat. Clare locked eyes with her. They stayed that way for seconds, years. She felt something struggling to break free in her chest as her vision swam with tears.

She drew her hand away. Took a step back. “I’m sorry, I just . . .”

“It’s me. Shanna. It’s me.”

At any second she expected the entire scene to come apart at its seams, a dream shredding to reveal the waking world beneath. But it remained intact, refracted by tears.

“I knew you’d come,” the woman whispered.

Clare tried to release some of the tumult taking place inside her, but couldn’t. A knot had formed deep in her chest and kept anything more than a few stuttered breaths from escaping.

A soft knock came from the doorway and Clare turned to see Hughes standing there. “Sorry, is everything okay?”

“It’s—” Clare began, but her voice broke as she looked at the woman again. All at once it was too much.

Clare moved past Hughes out of the room as the woman called out to her.

The hallway stretched into darkness that rushed up to meet her. She bit the inside of her mouth hard enough to draw blood and her vision cleared slightly. She had to get out of here. Away from the smell of disinfectant mixed with the odor of life succumbing to death. She made it to the elevators before Hughes caught up with her.

“Hey, are you all right?”

“I’m fine. It’s—I have to go.”

“What did she say?”

Clare punched the elevator button repeatedly. “She knew me. As soon as I walked in the door.”

“We didn’t tell her you were coming.” The doors opened and she stepped inside, quickly hitting the ground floor button. Hughes kept the doors from closing with one arm. “Do you recognize her?”

She stared at the floor. “I don’t know.” When Hughes didn’t move she looked up at him. “I have to go.”

He nodded after a second’s pause. “I’ll give you a call in the morning.”

The doors closed as he stepped away and she rode down, hurrying out of the lift on the ground floor.

Outside, the night had cooled into a fall crispness. Clare half walked, half ran to the rental and pulled her bag open in the backseat. She dug to the bottom and came up with a pill bottle, dry swallowing a Xanax she kept only for emergencies before settling into the driver’s seat and speeding out of the parking lot.

Town scrolled by in succession with her thoughts. She only noticed she’d left Sheen’s city limits when the streetlights faded and night took over completely, closing in like water in a miles-deep ocean trench. A frontage road appeared to the right and she pulled onto it, putting the car in park.

She gazed out the windshield at the cracked blacktop illuminated in the car’s headlights, seeing nothing. We didn’t tell her you were coming, Hughes had said. And yet the woman in the bed had known her the second she walked in. Could’ve been part of the ruse, she thought, beginning to drum the steering wheel while counting each beat of her fingers. Maybe this woman had tracked her down somehow, seen current pictures from one of her lectures.

So what was that feeling when you saw her lying in the hospital bed? The voice in her head let the question hang. Clare replayed the moment over and over, trying to recreate it perfectly. Her initial reaction was undeniable.

Recognition.

The woman looked familiar. More than that, she looked how Clare had imagined Shanna if she’d lived. The simpleness and vulnerability Shanna had exuded when she was a child hung about the woman in the same way. Even the few minutes Clare had spent with her was enough to recognize it.

Every rational cell in her body raged against the notion. It wasn’t possible. Wasn’t logical or sane to think her sister was alive. That she’d been in the same room with her, touched her hand.

The pill was doing its job. Already she felt a sense of calm beginning to round off the edges of her panic. The urge to flee lessened and she put the car into gear again, turning back in the direction of town.

As she drove, searching for a decent hotel to spend the night, the cries of the woman claiming to be Shanna came back to her. She’d heard her clearly while fleeing the room but only now did they sink in, their meaning gaining weight exponentially.

Don’t leave me. Don’t leave me again.

Chapter Fourteen

The hotel was called the River Wood Inn, its kitschy nature name synonymous with so many other establishments in the northern Midwest.

Clare paid for two nights at the front desk beside a yawning fireplace and climbed one set of dual staircases sweeping to the second floor from the lobby.

Room 206. Clean bathroom. Full-length mirror across from the queen bed, and heavy drapes over windows looking down on an undeveloped lot behind the building. She sent a text to Eric letting him know she was settling in for the night and took a long shower, letting the hot water work on the tightness between her shoulder blades. Fifteen minutes later she lay in the bed’s embrace, too much space to either side of her. The mini bar called out from the corner of the room but she ignored it. She wanted clean, uninterrupted sleep tonight. A clear head for what might come in the morning.

Her phone buzzed. Eric returning her text.

Glad you’re settled in. How’d it go?

Her fingers hovered over the screen. Fine. Met with the sheriff. Did the DNA swab. Will know more in the morning.

Good. How are you feeling? Holding up okay being back there?

Fine. It’s weird, but it’s just a sad little town. Nothing to worry about. What are you doing?

Moping around. Drinking too much. Writing bad poetry for you.

She laughed. Maybe save all that for tomorrow.

Okay. I miss you.

You too.

Call me in the morning?

Absolutely. I love you.

I love you. Sleep well.

She gazed at the phone, wishing now Eric would have produced the ring earlier that morning and asked his question. Even with all the trepidation of committing to something as permanent as marriage, she would’ve said yes.

Footsteps came down the hallway, nearing her door. Slowed. Stopped.

Clare sat up, clutching the phone tightly. She waited, listening.

Nothing.

Whoever it was hadn’t continued on their way.

Her stomach tightened, twisting with apprehension. Slowly she slid from the bed and went to her bag sitting on the chair near the small desk across the room. She retrieved the locked hard case from inside and spun the combination dial to the correct numbers. The lid popped open and she drew the Ruger pistol out, fumbling for a second with the magazine before sliding it into place. She hadn’t let Eric see her put the gun in her bag or fill out the extra paperwork at the ticket counter, knowing it would’ve been a fight. Now, with the pressure of someone lurking outside the hotel room door, she was infinitely glad she’d brought it.

Her bare feet made no sound as she moved to the door. She’d thrown the deadbolt and the folding security lock, but the sense of someone waiting on the other side of the door made the measures seem insubstantial. She had the wild impression that whoever stood in the hallway could brush aside the barrier without a second thought.

Clare steadied herself, taming the images galloping through her mind. It was only another guest returning to their room. She simply hadn’t heard them continue on down the hallway.

She felt exposed, as if the peephole’s lens had been reversed and now someone observed her from outside the door. She swallowed the metallic taste gathering at the back of her throat and leaned forward, peering through the fisheye.

Darkness.

She couldn’t see anything through the lens. It was like the lights in the corridor had been turned off, yet when she stepped back a pale glow oozed beneath the door. Clare leaned forward again and placed her eye to the peephole.

Black as midnight.

A thousand spider legs crept up her spine.

Someone was standing outside with their palm pressed over the door’s lens.

She drew in a shuddering breath. She should call the front desk. Tell them what was happening. Instead a current of anger thrummed through her and she reached toward the locks, drawing them back as silently as possible. When the door was free she turned the handle smoothly and pulled it open a few inches, keeping the Ruger tucked near her hip.

The hallway was deserted. Clare opened the door enough to do a quick check in either direction. A door five rooms from her own clicked shut. A knot popped in the lobby’s fireplace and she jerked.

Clare closed the door, relocking it, and paused. She leaned in and looked through the peephole again.

A swath of the corridor met her, clear as day.

She stepped back, retreating into the safety of the room. Must’ve been looking through it at an angle, she thought, settling back onto the bed. That’s why she couldn’t see anything. “Yep, for sure,” she said, lying down. “Nothing there.”

Much later, when she finally succumbed to sleep, the lights were still on and the gun rested beneath a pillow beside her.

Chapter Fifteen

Her recollection of where city hall resided proved much better than the former hospital’s locale.

Clare pulled to a stop in one of the many empty parking spaces set before the three-story brownstone and climbed out, deeply aware of the handgun tucked into the small of her back. She hesitated but finally unclipped the holster, depositing the weapon in the car’s center console. She locked the vehicle and approached the building, still shaking free of the prior night’s restless sleep. A nightmare she couldn’t recall upon waking had plagued her through the early morning hours, but no matter how hard she tried bringing its details into coherence, no clear picture ever formed.

Hughes’s office resided on the first floor, the entire sheriff’s department an anteroom to the county clerk’s quarters and a wide stairway leading to the courtrooms above. A female deputy with strawberry-blonde hair let her through a perfunctory barricade made of glass and guided her to the sheriff’s office, where Hughes sat behind a desk smothered with paperwork.

“Have a seat,” he said, half rising as she came in. Clare sat in one of the two worn chairs across from him. “Wasn’t exactly sure I’d see you today,” he continued, his own chair protesting with a squeal as he settled into it.

“Me neither.”

“What kept you from leaving?”

“I’m not sure yet.”

“You recognized her.”

She drew in a breath to deny it, but stopped. “She looks like I’ve always imagined my sister would look if she’d lived. Not exactly, but she was only eleven the last time I saw her.”

Hughes leaned back in his chair. “If she is who she says she is, we have much bigger problems than an impersonation charge.”

“I thought you already believed who she was given the stab wounds and sexual abuse.”

“Those things can be faked in extreme circumstances. But my job is to always ask why. So if you’re saying you recognize her—”

“I’m not.” Clare looked down, her eyes landing on a file folder near the top of the sheriff’s mess labeled Kinley/Refuge. “I don’t know what to think.”

“For now neither do I. We’ve got an APB out on Harold Rainier, but honestly the net cast is full of holes. Unless he decides to blow through a speed trap well above the limit or try to leave the country, he could be anywhere in the wind. We do have this, though, which may or may not nudge us in one direction or another.” He handed her sheet of paper.

An artist’s sketch. The man’s face was sallow and long, with hangdog eyes above a scruffy beard. His hair was shaggy and the lines in his face had become valleys, but she easily recognized Rainier. The page shook a little in her hand. “That’s him.”

“You’re sure?”

“Yes. He was . . .” She struggled for a moment. “He was who I was promised to when I turned fourteen.”

“Child brides.”

“Yeah.” Her voice was a husk. “My father didn’t know when the end of the world would come, just that it was coming, so he envisioned a kingdom of sorts. Girls promised to older men, more babies, and the cycle continues.”

“Jesus.”

“Very common in religious sects.”

Hughes looked sick. “We had a sketch artist sit with her after she woke up. The picture is her description.”

The implications swam through Clare’s mind. Any former pictures still floating around of Rainier would be extremely dated. She wasn’t sure where her father’s acolyte had come from, only that he’d been within the cult as long as she could remember. He’d been perhaps twenty-five when she could first recall him clearly. He would be pushing fifty today. “How did she say she escaped?” Clare said, more to break the spell of the past than anything.

“She’d been working at her bonds while Rainier wasn’t around. He’d check them every so often to make sure they were tight, but it’d been awhile. Late Friday night or early Saturday morning Rainier starts assaulting her, except this time one of the bindings on her wrist works loose. She manages to get free while he’s . . .” Hughes grimaced. “Anyway, she jabs him in the eye and while he’s floundering around, unties her other wrist. She scratches his face as he tries to tackle her and she runs. She said he cut her a couple times with something as she was going out the door, but he must’ve tripped and fallen because he didn’t catch up to her in the woods. She ran until she hit a road and then followed it until she saw lights. That was the residence where we answered the call.”

Something gnawed at the edge of Clare’s thoughts. “What time did the call come in on Saturday?”

Hughes tipped forward in his chair and shuffled through a few papers. “Five forty a.m.”

Her stomach lurched as if the entire room was an elevator dropping downward. Given the time zone difference, the woman claiming to be Shanna was found at almost the exact same moment Clare had woken from her nightmare the day before.

“You okay?” Hughes asked.

“Yeah. Fine.”

“After some deputies arrived they called an ambulance, and you know the rest.”

“What’s your plan going forward?”

“First establish her identity, then see if we can’t ascertain where this shack is she was being held at.”

“You haven’t found it yet?”

“No. We had men out searching last two days, a K-9 unit too. Even flew a small plane low over the area. Nothing. We thought maybe we could retrace her tracks through a blood trail, but her wounds had partially clotted by the time she made it to the house where she was found. We’re hoping she can lead us to the place when she feels up to it.” Hughes fidgeted with a pen. “As far as Rainier goes, his record is mostly clean. One charge of breaking and entering when he was eighteen, which he served community service for. A drunk and disorderly that got dropped at twenty. Then he’s off the radar. His parents passed away almost twenty years ago, no other known family.”

“The cult was his family.”

Hughes grunted. “If it is him, and he survived the fire somehow, do you have any insight as to where he might’ve gone?”

She thought of the man who had been completely subservient to her father, in awe of him. She recalled how his eyes had followed her after a certain point, right around the time she became a teenager, and repressed a shudder. “He was devoted to my father’s vision, a true believer. If he somehow made it out of the fire he would’ve shunned authorities. If he had no home to go back to, chances are he either joined or started another cult.”

“You’re kidding me.”

“No. Most cult members see the outside world as a threat, a place without answers for them. If they’re excommunicated or the cult breaks apart, many seek out another haven to be accepted in. I don’t see Rainier being any different. Are you aware of any other sects springing up after the fire?”

Hughes’s expression darkened. “The only thing I can think of is a little community outside of town. But we didn’t catch wind of them until maybe ten years ago.”

“Tell me.”

“Not much to tell. Quasi-Christian-hippie-free-love kind of setup. A few cabins and some conversion vans. Call themselves Free Spirit Disciples.”

“It doesn’t ring a bell. How many people?”

“Maybe twenty or so. Had but one complaint about them years back. Disturbing the peace or something. A deputy visited them and everything was fine after that.”

“You should check with them if you haven’t yet. Rainier might be living there.”

“I’ve met the man who’s in charge. Harmless as they come.”

“My father was calm and reserved unless he was in the grips of a hallucination.”

Hughes was quiet for a beat. “Point taken.” He shifted in his seat. “But like I said, they showed up around a decade ago—way after what happened at the Refuge.”

“You became aware of them a decade ago. There’s no telling how long they’d been gathering before that.”

Hughes seemed to digest this. “Okay, I’ve got nothing against going out and speaking with them.”

“I’d like to come with if possible.”

“I’m not sure that’s the best idea.”

“Do you have another person with a doctorate in sociology with an emphasis on cult studies hanging around?”

For the first time Hughes smiled. “I guess I don’t.”

“When do we leave?”

He mulled it over. “I’d like at least one other deputy to accompany us just in case we do stumble upon Mr. Rainier and he’s unwilling to come quietly, so let’s say this afternoon around one. That’s our shift change and I’ll have a free man.”

She nodded, thoughts spooling out in a dozen different directions. “How long until the cheek swab analysis comes back?”

“Normally a week, but I called in a favor with the technician who does all our work down in Minneapolis. We should have results as soon as tomorrow morning.” Clare let out a long sigh and Hughes frowned. “I can’t imagine how hard this must be for you. You know you don’t have to do all this.”

“I know.”

“That being said, I do really appreciate your assistance. And be assured, if she is just running some scam or prank she’ll be prosecuted to the full extent of the law.”

As they both stood and Clare began to leave the office, her gaze snagged again on the file bearing her former name. “Could I borrow that?” she asked, gesturing at the folder.

Hughes hesitated for only a second before pulling it free of the pile and handing it to her. “Almost all of it is public record anyhow, and the rest is mostly your own statements. What do you want it for?”

“I’m not sure yet,” Clare said. The folder seemed warm and slightly clammy in her hand, as if it were some nocturnal thing drawn from beneath a rock. She resisted the urge to set it back down. “I guess I’ll know when I see it.”

Chapter Sixteen

The day had warmed since she’d entered the building and a wind blew steadily from the south.

Traffic murmured past on Main Street, a woman called out to someone walking their dog in the next parking lot over, a gaggle of kids flew past on bikes—all of them sporting new backpacks. Small-town life emerging on an average weekday in the Midwest.

Clare observed it all from inside the rental. She glanced down at the passenger seat to where the folder lay. She couldn’t say exactly why she’d taken it; call it a calculated impulse. It had just seemed like the right thing to do. Her hand went out to open it and she drew it back. She wasn’t ready yet, didn’t know if she’d ever be.

It was still a bit early to call Eric. Ditto that for visiting hours at the hospital. The thought of going back and speaking to the woman calling herself Shanna sent the same swooping sensation through her as she’d felt during her flight’s turbulence. What if? What if it really is her?

Clare started the car and put it into gear. She couldn’t let herself go down that road, not yet. If it came to a dead end she wasn’t sure she’d ever be able to find her way back from it.

* * *

She drove without aim.

Sheen glided past in streets hemmed by low businesses, mostly tourist shops. She recalled a fifties film starlet had been born here, her golden-age movie still tugging at heartstrings and bringing baby boomers north to see her hometown whenever the weather was fair.

Relying again on instinct rather than memory, she guided the car to a northeast section of neighborhood, not poor, not rich, and coasted through two avenues before gliding to a stop in front of a quaint two-story painted a light blue. Grass grew long in the yard fenced in by waist-high chain link, and the porch sagged, but there was no mistaking this was the place she’d lived for the better part of a year after being released from the hospital, and subsequently, police custody.

Clare stepped from the car into the deserted street. Leaves gusted along gutters and a dog barked from two houses down. She moved to the sidewalk before her former home, the very first that had been a place of quiet recovery, of home-cooked meals, and an introduction to television and all its wonders. It had shielded her from rain, snow, and cutting looks from passersby, until it hadn’t. Until it, too, had crumbled under strain of her past and she’d fled once more beneath the wing of a man she came to call father.

A shrill creaking brought her free of her reverie and she noticed the “For Sale” sign tipped sideways near the far end of the fencing. And like a veil being lifted she saw the peeling paint and cracked window on the second floor, the darkness behind the glass speaking of emptiness and neglect. Up until then she’d been looking through a lens almost twenty years old. Now she saw it for what it was—a derelict shell. No more a home, just a house.

Clare turned away, unable to weather the sight for another second. But in the center of the street her steps slowed, then stopped. She rotated, eyes traveling across the neighborhood, taking everything in. No one stood in any front yards and there were no cars but for some light cross traffic four blocks down the hill. She stayed still for the better part of a minute—an animal standing in a clearing suddenly much too quiet. She swiveled again, looking up the street to where it branched off between two undeveloped lots.

Something moved swiftly out of view behind a stand of trees.

It hadn’t been anything she could put a name to, no features of a person or that of an animal standing out. Just the impression of movement sliding away through the trees.

Clare hesitated, then began striding up the street, shoes crushing bits of rock and leaves. At the intersecting avenue she paused before continuing on to where the sidewalk ended and the wooded section began. She peered through the foliage, searching for another hint of movement.

Nothing.

But she could’ve sworn she’d seen something. And beyond that, the feeling of being watched had been so intense it made her skin crawl. She rubbed her arms, trying to banish the sensation away.

“Hello?” she called into the trees. A squirrel chittered loudly, sending a jolt through her, and she shook her head. There was nothing but her frayed nerves on the quiet street. She turned to head back toward her car, and froze.

A wooden coin lay in the center of the sidewalk, its upraised cross in stark relief.

Clare stumbled sideways as if avoiding a poisonous snake and stepped into the grass, hand going to the gun she wore. She spun, scanning the trees and empty yards of the nearby homes.

Nothing. No one.

Hesitantly she bent and grasped the coin from the concrete, bringing it closer. It felt heavy, just like the first coin that she’d found. Clare squeezed her eyes shut, unsure if she wanted the coin to be something else or not when she opened them. When she looked again Charon’s obol was unchanged, its presence an offense in itself.

Clare backed down the sidewalk until she was to the cross avenue, then turned and jogged the rest of the way to her car.

The press of eyes on her skin didn’t leave until she was well out of her old neighborhood.

* * *

Clare stood at the corner of the second-floor hallway, trying to gather the courage to move toward the door where the sheriff’s deputy was stationed.

She’d taken a pill at a red light halfway across town, balancing on the edge of hyperventilating before having to pull over to get herself under control. She’d closed her eyes and reopened them three times while holding the wooden coin, half expecting its shape to change, for the carved cross to sink into itself and become the holes of another innocuous button. But it remained solid and unchanged. It was real, at least as real as she could fathom in her state of mind.

When the pill had started to do its work, she’d proceeded to the hospital and called Eric from the parking lot, filling him in on the events so far. His astonishment filtered through the silence after she’d stopped speaking. He’d asked if she wanted him to fly out that afternoon and she’d told him no. Not yet. If things changed or anything truly got confirmed, then maybe she would need him here. No use jumping the gun if it all turned out to be coincidence and her jangled nerves were making shadow puppets on the wall. Besides, the more she could keep him removed from the fray of her past, the better. She also couldn’t bring herself to tell him about the coins. Either her mind was coming apart at the seams, or someone was truly following her and leaving the talismans as some sort of message or warning. Either way she couldn’t say anything unless she wanted him to fly in.

After hanging up with Eric she’d texted Adam concerning the Free Spirit Disciples to see if the name or any other groups associated with them were on the FBI’s watchlist. Doing something proactive made her feel more in control, at least until this moment standing outside the hospital room and trying to get herself to go inside.

Wetting her lips, she stepped away from the corner and approached the deputy on duty. He didn’t have the friendly down-home look Travis Wilt had the night before and she hesitated before mentioning who she was and what she wanted. Deputy Orris, as she learned, was a stickler for protocol, and called in to the office before letting her into the room.

It seemed like a completely different room from the night before. Light from the uncovered windows filled every corner and the air smelled like fresh linen rather than harsh disinfectant.

The woman in the bed turned her head to look at her as soon as she stepped inside, this time not saying anything.

“Hi,” Clare said, not moving any closer.

“Hello.” When the silence stretched out to an uncomfortable length the woman motioned toward the nearest chair. “Sit?”

Clare made her way to the chair and settled into it. She didn’t know what to do with her hands. They kept moving from the chair’s arms to her lap, down to her knees, and back again.

“I’m sorry for last night,” she finally said. The woman in the bed looked at her, waiting, and the thought that she was sitting across from her sister was the equivalent to standing on the edge of a hundred-story drop. She could be looking at Shanna right now. Clare dropped her eyes, trying to regain an internal balance.

“I understand. It’s been . . . many years.” She spoke in a stilted fashion, like she was chiseling out the words one at a time from some unplumbed depth inside her.

They sat that way for some time, letting the soft whir of machines and hum of lights fill in the place where words weren’t. When she thought she could speak evenly Clare said, “How are you feeling?”

“Sore. The doctor said only one wound was deep.” Clare nodded, not knowing what else to say. The woman shifted toward her. “I held onto you,” she said. “When it was very bad and very dark, I held onto you, held onto your memory. Sometimes I thought you’d never been there at all, that I’d dreamed you up to keep going. But I never forgot.”

Clare’s eyes slid down to the woman’s wrists, where scarred calluses roped across the joints like ghosts of what once bound her. “Rainier,” she said, motioning at the restraint marks.

The woman dropped her eyes to her wrists. “Yes.”

“He took you.”

“Yes.”

“Where? How?” Clare waited, watching the other woman for signs of deceit, an eye tic, a finger twitch, but there was nothing. She only became more still.

“You don’t remember?” the woman asked.

“Not everything, no.”

“I can’t either. That night, it was so dark. I remember getting up from bed and going outside into the woods.”

Clare stiffened. Something dragged at the depths of her mind like an anchor sliding along an ocean bottom, churning up things that nearly surfaced before submerging again into places she couldn’t reach.

“Then I was inside the hall, and there was a smell, a really bad one. There were some candles burning but not enough to see.” She paused for a second before continuing. “There were shapes in the pews. They looked like people but they were slumped and some were lying down. I couldn’t understand why they were sleeping, but they weren’t sleeping, were they?”

“No,” Clare breathed. “No, they weren’t.”

“I saw Abigail in the dark and tried to hold her hand, but then she was gone. Father was behind the pulpit with Rainier and some other people, and they were holding cups of something. Father was crying but he . . . he . . .” She struggled for a moment. “He was smiling the whole time.”

“You don’t have to,” Clare said, fighting the urge to stand up and flee the room. She didn’t want to hear any more, and needed to at the same time.

“They wanted me to drink what was in the cups and I was afraid,” she continued as if she hadn’t heard Clare. “Mother was crying and telling me to drink it and Father had his hand on the bottom of the cup, pushing it toward my mouth, and then . . . then there was fire.”

Clare blinked, the sensation of sinking into herself enveloped her, and the room wavered. One second she was looking at the woman in the bed, and the next she could feel heat blossoming across her skin, searing into her hands.

“The fire,” Clare said, breaking free of the sensation. Her hands gripped the chair’s arms so tightly white spots appeared over her knuckles. “The fire was already burning and they were trying to get everyone to drink the poison.”

The woman in the bed nodded, brow drawn tight. “All I remember after that is flames and heat. Rainier grabbed me and hauled me away and I was yelling for Mother and for you. And you . . .”

“What?” Clare asked, leaning forward.

“You ran,” she finally said, looking away as delicate tears spilled from her eyes.

“No,” Clare said, shaking her head. “No, I didn’t. I . . . I know I wouldn’t have . . .” left you, she almost said, but stopped herself. She strove for the memory, straining to lift it from her subconscious, but it was an immovable weight, slipping away like she’d never had a grip on it in the first place.

“He took me while everything burned,” the woman said quietly. “Got in his car and drove us somewhere. He said he was going back to get Father and Mother and you. He left me in a little clearing in the woods but only came back with food and blankets. We lived out of his car for a while. Then we found the house in the woods.” Her eyes gained a dull glaze. “Rainier fixed it up. We had a fireplace to keep warm and he hunted deer and hauled water from a flowage nearby. I had no idea where we were. I was getting used to life there. I guessed Mother and Father were dead. I thought you were, too, otherwise someone would have come for me.” She paused again, bringing her haunted eyes back to Clare. “He touched me for the first time when I was fifteen. I tried running away in the middle of winter and nearly froze to death. He nursed me back to health and then . . .”

Clare put a hand over her mouth, wanting to say something and not knowing the words.

“After that he kept me tied all the time. Even when we went outside I was on the end of a rope, like a pet. The first time I tried to kill myself I chewed through one wrist and passed out from the pain. When I woke up he’d bandaged me and said if I ever did it again he’d . . .” Her voice trailed off and she sat staring past Clare at the blank wall for a time.

“I’m so sorry,” Clare whispered.

“You always looked out for me. That’s why I kept you close all those years. I dreamed one day you’d come through the door, and now you have.”

A nurse strode into the room, preempted by a brief knock. She smiled at Clare before moving to the bedside to check the woman’s vitals. While they were speaking, Clare rehashed everything that had been said and studied the woman again, searching for a detail that would derail the precarious belief inside her. She found none.

When the door clicked shut and they were alone again, Clare said, “I don’t really remember any of that. It’s like there’s a burnt place in my mind.” She paused. “I always felt guilty for being alive. That I was the only one.”

The woman looked down at her hands and scarred wrists. “It wasn’t your fault.”

Clare hesitated, wondering if she should do what her instincts were shouting to do. She gave in. “The main thing I remember is how long we had to sit in the workroom handwriting all those flyers for recruitment. Folding the paper and everything.” Clare watched the woman closely.

“We didn’t write the flyers. The adults did. We carved the coins. The ones with the cross on them.”

The coins were something Clare had never told the police about. She wasn’t withholding this information from the cops, there were just so many details to tell that minor things like the wooden coins never came up. All of the coins would’ve burned in the fire, since it encompassed nearly twenty acres by the time it was brought under control. No one knew about the coins except her, and the woman in the bed.

“I’ll be right back,” she said, standing and moving toward the door before the woman could protest. Shanna, the voice in her head intoned. That’s your sister right there.

Clare brushed past the deputy and saw the sign for the bathroom in enough time to dive inside and vomit into the toilet. As her body heaved, images flashed across the movie screen of her mind.

Fire.

Shanna’s stuffed animal staring with blank eyes.

The coin laying in the parking lot by her car.

Eric sleeping peacefully.

Her father, arms out as if calling down judgement from above.

Clare slumped beside the toilet, brushing hair from her face. Alternating bouts of panic and joy flowed through her. She felt a tipping point—of letting herself truly believe, the last vestiges of caution dissolving—and embraced it.

Chapter Seventeen

They spent the next two hours filling in eighteen years of absence.

Clare described the aftermath of the fire. The media coverage, the police interrogations, and finally finding a home with the man who had found her wandering, catatonic and miles from the Refuge’s borders.

“We were harassed,” Clare said, holding a paper cup of bad coffee in her hands. “Run out of town, really. Lucas wanted to move once the court granted him custody of me but his wife wanted to stay. She resented me. They were already on the rocks when he found me. I was what put them over the edge.” She paused, staring into the cup. “We moved to the southern part of the state. I changed my last name, we started over.”

Shanna watched her, hands folded on the clean blanket draped over her legs. “I’m glad he found you.”

“Me too.”

“Where is he now?”

“He’d been in a war overseas. He got sick from it and his health deteriorated. He had a heart attack when I was nineteen and passed away. He was a good man.” She shook her head, gathering herself for a moment. “I’m sorry for everything. If I could’ve gotten us out sooner then maybe—” The familiar plummeting sensation began drawing at her, and this time she let it, hoping it would unearth more of the past. Instead of the present fading and giving way to memory, everything solidified once more.

“It’s all so bright and loud,” Shanna said after a moment. “The cabin was quiet. Sunshine and candlelight. The trees and the wind. It was all I knew outside of books.”

“You had books?”

“Rainier brought me some. I guess he thought he was being kind. Mostly nonfiction but some mysteries too. They kept me from going completely insane.”

Clare digested this, the question she’d been wanting to ask for some time surfacing once more. “You said earlier, ‘the first time’ you tried killing yourself.” Shanna nodded. “You tried again?”

Shanna’s delicate features darkened. She dropped her gaze to her lap where her fingers intertwined with one another. “After . . .” She struggled. “After the baby.” Clare waited, ready to tell her she didn’t need to say anything further if it was too much, but after a few deep breaths, Shanna continued. “Five years ago. When I knew I was pregnant I started planning how to end it. The thought of carrying his child . . . I didn’t think I could take it. When he brought me outside to walk and get fresh air I tried throwing myself onto a rock, tried to land on my stomach. It was all I could think to do. Rainier stopped me. Hit me. I couldn’t understand why he wanted to keep the baby. He said something about a bloodline. He wanted a son.”

“Bastard,” Clare breathed.

Shanna nodded. “When it was time, I . . .” She faltered. “I wanted to have the baby. I hated the thing inside me, hated a part of myself, and at the same time there was an urge to keep it safe. To love it.” Tears spilled down her cheeks but she didn’t move to brush them away. “I talked to the baby when Rainier wasn’t there. He would leave for periods of time and I would be alone except for the life inside me. It was all I had.” Shanna squeezed her eyes shut and a quiet sob escaped her. Clare reached out, laying a gentle hand on her arm. When her crying had diminished Shanna said, “I gave birth in the fall. The leaves were turning. It took all day and most of the night. Rainier brought supplies and I lost quite a bit of blood. I thought I was going to die. Then it was over and he was holding . . . a baby, my baby. It was a boy and he . . . he took him away. I never saw him again.”

Shanna tipped toward Clare, settling against her shoulder. The keening sound coming from her lanced through Clare’s heart. The amount of trauma she’d gone through was staggering. How had she survived and maintained a semblance of sanity through everything? The pit of sickness in Clare’s stomach gradually boiled to anger. Rainier’s face, both the one she recalled from childhood and the newly sketched version, floated in her mind. If he were in the room with them now she’d tear him apart with her bare hands.

When Shanna’s sorrow receded to the point Clare felt she could release her, she went to the attached bathroom and brought a handful of tissues back for her sister. As Shanna blotted away tears and wiped her nose, Clare moved to the window. The day was bathed in bright fall sunshine, everything gilded white gold. “I tried too,” she said without turning around.

Shanna’s response was a long time coming. “Tried? To end things?”

“After Lucas passed away. I was adrift. First year of college. What happened—it was national news for a while, before a different tragedy took its place. Even though no one knew who I was it felt like everyone was looking at me. Judging. And at the same time I was alone.” She turned her back to the window, trying to pry loose words she’d never said aloud to anyone before. “I swallowed a ton of painkillers along with too much vodka. If I hadn’t gotten sick I might’ve . . .” She bit back emotion. “What matters is we’re here now, and I’m not going to leave you.” Again.

“I have nightmares,” Shanna said, almost to herself. “About burning. About breathing smoke and crawling over bodies. I’ve dreamed it for years.” She paused, throwing a glance at the closed door. “Sometimes when I wake up I think he’s standing there. That he’s come to take me back to that place and tie me up again.”

“That’s not going to happen. You’re safe.”

“Am I? I don’t feel safe. I don’t know what that means.”

Clare opened her mouth to say she was wrong, to say she would heal with time, but stopped. How could she, when she herself still suffered from the past as if it were radiation, sickening her years after exposure?

“Will you help me find him?” Shanna asked. She was staring at Clare with a directness she hadn’t seen since entering the room for the first time. For a beat Clare thought she meant Rainier, then Shanna spoke again. “My son. Will you help me find him?”

Clare found herself answering before she could collect her thoughts or evaluate what it might entail. “Yes. Of course I will.”

Chapter Eighteen

It was only noon when she left the hospital, too early to show up on Hughes’s doorstep, too late to go back to the hotel and dig into the case file on her passenger seat.

Instead of doing either, Clare stopped at a café and ordered the first sandwich on the menu, eating it at an outdoor seating area in the afternoon sun. She didn’t taste the meal and didn’t realize she’d finished it until she reached for the nonexistent sandwich and rattled the empty bag of chips.

I left her, she thought, folding up the remnants of her meal. When she needed me most, I ran away. Shanna’s account of what happened that night explained everything. The guilt and remorse, panic, and anxiety—all of it stemmed from the fact she’d left her sister.

Clare’s hand tightened into a fist, crumpling her drink container. She threw it into the nearby trash receptacle so hard the entire bin shuddered. Her vision swam and she gritted her teeth, counting the tiles on the table’s mosaic top. As much as it hurt to know what Shanna had gone through, what she was still going through, a glimmer of hope shone through the gloom. Her sister had been returned to her and she had a second chance to make things right.

And she would. She had to.

“Excuse me, are you Clare Murdock?” A woman stood a few steps away, mid-fifties with stylish platinum hair, a leather valise slung over one shoulder.

Clare glanced around the empty seating area. “Who are you?”

The woman approached, holding out a manicured hand. “Brynn Johnson with the Sheen Review.” When Clare didn’t move to shake her hand Johnson dropped it to her valise, pulling out a small digital recorder. “I was hoping to ask you a few questions.”

“How do you know who I am?”

“It’s my job to know people, Ms. Murdock.”

Clare stood, placing the last of her trash in the receptacle. “I don’t have anything to say.” She brushed past the other woman and headed for her rental.

“Is there a connection between your presence here and the woman who was found this weekend?” Clare pretended she hadn’t heard the question and tried to keep her stride steady as the reporter followed a few steps behind. “Does this have something to do with your father’s cult?”

Clare stopped at the rental’s door. “I don’t have anything to say to you.”

“I think you do.”

She watched the other woman for a moment, the events from the morning and the night before coalescing in her mind’s eye. “Have you been following me?”

“Of course not.”

“Were you at my hotel last night?”

“Ms. Murdock, I can assure you I’m just a reporter trying to get the facts for a story. That’s all. Now if you’d just give me five minutes of your time we could—”

Clare climbed into the rental and put the car in reverse, cutting off the rest of Johnson’s words. She shot a last look at the woman before pulling away, her heart juddering in her vision. It was several blocks before she could calm herself enough to form a cohesive line of thinking. Johnson must have been tailing her almost as soon as she’d crossed into Sheen’s city limits. But how? Maybe she’d been staking out the hospital the night before and noticed her. This was a small town—how far-fetched was it to think the hotel clerk who had checked her in had provided Johnson with her identity? Could it have been the reporter the night before outside her room? If so, what the hell had she been doing?

Her phone rang, jarring her from her thoughts. Expecting Eric’s number, she was caught off guard seeing Adam’s instead.

“Hello?”

“First I’m checking on Shining Rock, now you’ve got me gophering after . . . what the hell is this? Free Spirit Disciples? Sounds like an opener rock group at Woodstock.”

His typical banter grounded her, made the events of the last few days seem dreamlike since she’d never met anyone more rational or real-world than Adam Zimmer. “I guess I’ve been busy.”

“I’ll say. What’s this all about?”

She exhaled. “I’m in Minnesota.”

Silence. “What’s going on?”

Clare started talking, running over the events of the last few days. The questions concerning her sanity she skimmed over, mentioning only that her anxiety and stress levels were extremely high. She pulled into a parking space in front of city hall as she finished, waiting for Adam to break the ensuing silence.

“And when’s the DNA analysis coming in?” There was the sound of a zipper, then the clack of dresser drawer being snapped shut from his end.

“Could be in the morning.”

“Mmm-hmm. And where is the local law in all this?”

“The sheriff and I are going out to the group’s location now.”

“Any other activity recently? Disappearances? Murders?”

“I’m not sure, but I can check. It’s a really small town. Quiet.”

“No town is quiet.” More commotion from his end.

“What are you doing?”

“Packing. I’m heading out there.”

“What? No. Adam, you don’t have to do that.”

“I know I don’t have to. This vacation stuff is killing me. I’m bored as all hell. Besides, if this turns into something involving that group I could be sent anyway.”

“I’m not sure the sheriff will appreciate the help.”

“Unofficial capacity. Just a friend there for support.”

She smiled. “You’re sure?”

“Goodbye, Clare. See you soon.”

She hung up, heartened by the fact Adam was on his way. As an agent he was diligent, smart, and had a field sense about him that many times helped guide cases to a satisfying, and typically bloodless, conclusion. There were reasons why many cult apprehensions and takedowns didn’t end in standoffs and rarely made the news—Special Agent Adam Zimmer being one of them.

As she climbed from her car Hughes appeared in the building’s doorway and motioned toward a county sheriff’s SUV several parking spaces down. “Hop in. Let’s see where this rabbit hole goes.”

* * *

They left the highway seven miles north of Sheen, a breeze cascading showers of leaves across the dirt road Hughes guided the vehicle onto. Clare glanced into the side mirror, catching the sheriff’s cruiser behind them making the turn as well.

“He was a little perturbed,” Hughes said, breaking the quiet that had fallen since they’d left the city limits.

“Who?”

“Deputy Wilt,” he said, tipping his head back toward the following car. “He didn’t say it aloud but he was hoping to be put back on duty at the hospital. I get the feeling he’s a bit smitten.”

“I doubt Shanna’s interested.”

“Oh, nothing so far as him asking her on a date, no. He’s not that dumb or unprofessional. I can just tell he’s taken a shine to her. He mentioned they talked quite a bit the night before.” She noticed him looking at her and returned his gaze. “You’re certain it’s her, then? You must be to call her by name.”

She glanced away, looking out at the passing scenery. “She knows things.”

Hughes grunted. “If you don’t mind me saying, this all feels very strange. If it is what it appears to be, it’s a tragedy that might eventually have a happy ending. If it’s not . . .” He let his voice trail away. Clare continued to watch the trees and interspersing fields yellowed by recent frosts. She couldn’t help noticing Hughes’s observations matching the unease she’d felt the day before. The feeling that something was deeply wrong.

“Had a run-in with your local reporter.”

“You did? When?”

“Just before I met up with you.”

Hughes sighed. “And?”

“I didn’t tell her anything. But she caught me off guard. She knew who I was.”

“Brynn Johnson is a very good reporter and a real pain in the ass. She can be too tenacious at times.”

“None of your department would be talking to her, would they?”

“About an ongoing investigation? Absolutely not. My staff might be small, but they’re professional. If she shows up again and bothers you, let me know.”

Clare nodded, not stating it but not having nearly as much confidence in Hughes’s department as he did. It wasn’t a stretch of the imagination to think Johnson had inside info coming out of the sheriff’s office, which added another complication to how everything would progress from this point on.

The county road twisted and turned, gliding past sloughs and glorified ponds that couldn’t rightly be called lakes. They traveled through a patch of swampland, the ground beneath the trees sodden and populated by long grassy humps. She tried estimating how far they were from where the Refuge had been. Not very. Perhaps fifteen miles or less as the crow flew. What were the chances of another religious sect popping up in this remote area shortly after her father’s cult came to an end?

Seeming to read her mind, Hughes said, “Same general area and all, but that’s where the similarities stop. Did a little refresher about the group after you left this morning. The leader’s name is Steven Parson. He owns the land. From what we can tell the group started off with him and his family, then a few friends showed up and settled in. There were twenty or so people the last time we were out here. From time to time Steven and his kids are on one corner or another in town handing out flyers and preaching to anyone who’ll listen. Harmless stuff generally. Most people just tolerate it. Like I said, we’ve only had one formal complaint and that was from a neighbor down the road who’s quite particular. He’s also an atheist. I suspect the issue is that he isn’t keen on living next to a religious community.”

Hughes took a left off the county road onto a track barely wide enough to encompass the vehicle. Tire ruts carved a path up a hill and over a rise to a clearing where the trees drew back like curtains before a stage. Clusters of buildings ringed the open ground, most of them log cabin style, while some resembled sea shanties she’d seen in the poorer reaches of Oregon’s coast. A few conversion vans and some rusted cars were parked to one side of the clearing. A yellow dog announced their arrival by throwing back his narrow head and baying at the sky.

They parked near the dilapidated vehicles and climbed out, Deputy Wilt giving her a quick nod as he adjusted his duty belt. A massive fire ring stood in the center of the clearing, its steel circle blackened from the heat of countless bonfires. A few folding chairs were stacked nearby. A gust of wind brought the scent of ash with it and Clare turned her face away.

A tall, stoop-shouldered man stepped out of the largest home. Tangled gray hair covered his head and stretched down to a well-kept beard still streaked with black. He wore faded jeans and a dark button-up shirt with the sleeves rolled to the elbows. A squat woman with dark hair appeared behind him, her gaze skittering between the two sheriff’s vehicles and across the three of them as they approached.

“Afternoon, Sheriff,” the man said, coming to meet them. He held out a large bony hand that Hughes accepted.

“Steven, sorry to bother you today. This is Deputy Wilt and Dr. Clare Murdock. She’s helping us with a case.”

Parson appraised her. Though he fixed a smile on his face it didn’t touch his eyes. “Good to meet you all. Welcome to our little haven.” He gestured around at the circled clearing. “I’ve always found a unique peace in autumn. It’s unlike any other season. Like nature is holding its breath for what comes next.”

Clare noticed a small gold crucifix dangling at his throat and nodded. “It’s a beautiful time of year.”

“What can I do for you fine people?”

Hughes unfolded the sketch of Rainier while Wilt meandered off to the left toward a woodshed stacked to the ceiling with split oak. “We’re looking for this man. His name is Harold Rainier, though he might be going by something else.”

Parson took the page and studied it while Clare studied him. “Can’t say I’ve seen him before,” Parson said, handing the page to the woman who had moved to his side. “Margaret, how about you?” Margaret spent less time looking at the page and shook her head, eyes flashing to Clare and away.

“Would you mind if we had a look around? Speak to a few of the others?” Hughes said. More people had emerged from their homes and the side doors of one conversion van stood open, revealing a younger woman and man along with a narrow bed behind them.

“Not at all,” Parson said, sweeping an arm out. “Our kingdom is yours as well.”

Hughes led the way along the front of the buildings, stopping to speak to several people who milled about before their homes. Clare took everything in as they moved deeper into the clearing. There didn’t seem to be a larger central building that could serve as a worship hall, the only gathering point so far being the fire ring. The people also wore casual clothes, both men and women in jeans, a few in shorts, sandals, and tennis shoes, along with some work boots and sweaters. No uniform dress Clare could see. She looked for signs of abuse—bruises or marks on exposed skin, paying special attention to the wrists of the women—but they were unblemished. She listened to their answers to Hughes’s questions, if there was any hesitation or inconsistencies. She noticed none. For the most part the people of the group seemed happy, cheerful, upbeat. No, they didn’t recognize Rainier. Yes, of course they could step inside their homes to look around.

The structures were better constructed than they seemed. Many of them were neat, floors swept and dishes washed, care taken to keep surfaces clean. Clare observed books laying on tables and shelves, many being editions of the Bible or religious tomes she was familiar with. Mixed in were a few classics, Melville, Dickens, Hawthorne, along with some contemporary fiction.

Clare stepped out of the last cabin and looked across the clearing where an electrical transformer squatted. Not far from it the land humped, marking a buried septic. Some distance away a well pipe jutted from the land. She chewed her lip.

“What do you think?” Hughes said quietly, stepping up beside her.

“I’m not sure.”

“I don’t see an empty van or cabin, somewhere Rainier could’ve been staying.”

“Easy to put him up with the others. Besides, Shanna said he only left her for short periods of time.”

“Then what are we looking for?”

Instead of answering, Clare moved across the clearing to where Wilt prodded the fire ring with a long stick. Charred logs smoldered low and there were remnants of paper and cardboard off to one side. “Burning garbage it looks like,” Wilt said.

“Anything else?” she asked.

“Not that I can see. No bones or anything.” He half smiled at her before realizing his misstep. “Oh God, hey, I’m sorry.”

She shook her head. “Did you see anything behind any of the sheds?”

“No, just some scrap metal and more firewood.” It looked like he wanted to apologize again so she left him beside the ring and headed for the Parsons’ home. Margaret stood beside the narrow porch, fixing the string of a wooden wind chime hanging from an eave.

“Mrs. Parson?”

Margaret flinched, the chime she held falling to the ground. She bent and retrieved it, sidling a look at Clare before returning to her work. “Yes?”

“Can I ask how long your family has been here?”

“Going on ten years now.”

“And where did you live before?”

“Outside of Minneapolis. Steven had a parish there.”

“This is quite a change from the suburbs,” Clare said, looking around at the forest enclosing the camp. “What made you pick up and move here?”

Margaret finished tying up the chime and faced her fully. “Steven heard the Lord’s call. He heeded it.” The other woman looked at her with the flat inspection of an exterminator viewing a particularly bad infestation. “The world would be a better place if most embraced their true calling.”

“Mother?” A young man wearing jeans and a hunting vest came out of the house, giving Clare a cursory glance before focusing on Margaret again. “Everything okay?”

“Fine, Daniel. Go inside and help your sister with the bread.”

“I was going hunting.”

“Daniel?” Margaret’s voice hardened and her son’s head lowered. He retreated inside the house, the scent of fresh bread wafting to them as he closed the door.

“You don’t have any children here,” Clare said.

“What?”

“Kids. Lots of people in the prime of their lives, but no kids.”

Margaret fixed her with another stare and shrugged. “They’re drawn by the word of God. If they choose to bring life into the world, that’s between them and the Almighty.”

Steven Parson walked up to them, a genial smile creasing his features. “Are you a believer, Clare?” Her head snapped around, a little too quickly, she realized afterward. Parson seemed to enjoy the reaction. “Faith is a beautiful thing. We’ve found it here in the solitude of nature.”

“I’m glad,” Clare said.

“The sheriff said this man you’re searching for is wanted in regard to a kidnapping?”

“He’s a person of interest, yes.”

Parson sobered. “Very serious. To take someone’s freedom is one of the greatest sins. Free will is the ultimate gift, the power to decide one’s fate. To choose a path and follow it to its end is true beauty.”

Her mouth was dry and her heart had sped up. “I agree.”

Parson smiled once more. “Good. That’s good.”

She nearly jumped when a hand brushed her shoulder. “I think we’re through here,” Hughes said, stopping beside her. “Unless you have anything else, Clare?”

“No.”

“It was a privilege to meet you and a joy to have you visit,” Parson said.

“We appreciate your cooperation,” Hughes said. “And please call if you see anyone who looks like Mr. Rainier.”

“Of course.”

They began heading toward their vehicles and Clare had to force herself not to look back. Would she see eyes at every window, watching their retreat, or just the Parsons—a couple of Godly folk overseeing their flock, friendly and waving their goodbyes?

As she approached the passenger side door of the SUV she slowed, catching sight of something on the driveway. The gravel was disturbed, like a hand or shoe had shuffled through, scuffing the top layer of dirt. But beneath the sweeping marks was something else. Faint squares, all interconnected in a line.

A hopscotch grid.

Clare froze, her hand on the vehicle’s door. She hesitated for a half second before climbing into the vehicle. Hughes backed the SUV up and turned around, guiding them out the way they’d come.

“There was a hopscotch pattern in the driveway back there,” she said as they crested the rise and coasted down the other side toward the dirt road. “Someone tried to hide it by scuffing the gravel around.”

Hughes scowled. “Hopscotch?”

She nodded. “As in the kids’ game. Did you see any children? Any toys? Any kids’ clothing hanging on the lines?”

“No. But that doesn’t mean much, does it?” She waited, staring at the side of the sheriff’s head until he looked at her. “They’re a religious sect, who knows what they get up to out there? Maybe they toss a rock and say the rosary while they hop on one leg.”

“Or they’re hiding a child or children. I think we need a search warrant and a team to go out there.”

“Listen, let’s hold up a minute. Now I know I’m the one who called you and brought you in on all this, but there’s a line. Those people haven’t done anything illegal, and secondly we were just out there and they let us look wherever we wanted.” Clare glanced out the window. Hughes sighed and after a moment continued in a softer tone. “I can’t imagine what you’re going through having all of this past business stirred up, but we can’t go chasing after people we’ve got no cause to. It’s harassment. Did you notice anything out of sorts?”

She wanted to say yes, that Parson and his wife had given her the same sense of unease as the twisted man had back home. Like they recognized her, knew her, even though today was the first time she’d ever laid eyes on them. Instead she said nothing and watched the scenery flow by outside her window.

They rode in silence the rest of the way back to city hall. Clare’s simmering frustration and anger had cooled some by the time they pulled into a parking lot and she turned to Hughes as he shut the SUV off. “You didn’t feel that out there while we were talking to them?” Hughes merely watched her. “They’re hiding something.”

“Whether or not I caught the drift that everything wasn’t completely on the level, I’ve got no more cause to pester them anymore. Until I do, that avenue is closed.” He punctuated the statement by climbing out of the vehicle.

Clare did the same, walking slowly to her car. As she passed Deputy Wilt’s transport he stepped forward, wringing his hands in front of him. “Say, Dr. Murdock, I’m really sorry about what I said back there. It was stupid dark humor stuff. I didn’t mean anything by it.”

“I know. It’s okay.” He nodded awkwardly and headed toward the doorway where Hughes was waiting. Clare made it to her car and stopped, her fingers resting on the door handle as something Hughes said came back to her. She turned, calling out to him as he was about to disappear inside the building. “Sheriff, you said they hadn’t done anything wrong, but what exactly was the complaint about them concerning?”

Hughes paused, his fingers drumming on the doorjamb. “The neighbor called in to say they woke him up from a dead sleep. He said they were singing at the top of their lungs in the middle of the night.”

Chapter Nineteen

She drove past her hotel by accident, eyes unfocused, mind a thousand miles away.

When Clare U-turned on the empty street and glided into the lot, she parked taking up two spaces before noticing. She sat with the engine running, thoughts matching its rpms.

Singing. Parson’s group had been singing in the middle of the night, just like her father had made them do. Rain or snow, it didn’t matter. If and when the urge had struck him, he’d rousted the children out of bed, hurrying them outside into whatever weather awaited. They’d lined up beneath his orders and fevered gaze, the rest of the refuge gathered behind him—a weary-eyed congregation of witnesses—and then he would call out the name of a hymn.

And they would sing in the dark.

She recalled how frightened she’d been. Of what she hadn’t been able to say then and couldn’t now. It had something to do with how the group had watched them, entranced and swaying, a vacancy in their faces that couldn’t be attributed to the early hour. But it had also been how the night felt the longer they sang. How it had seemed to grow darker. To close in around them until it was like they no longer stood in the middle of their camp, but somewhere else, somewhere subterranean, their voices carrying no farther than the edge of the group watching them.

She shook herself free of the memory and overlaid the similarities of the two sects. Could she say with utter certainty there was a connection between her father’s cult and Parson’s gathering? No, not without doubt. Their singing could be something just as strange, but unrelated, like Hughes wanted to believe. There was always an explanation if you wanted to find one, a safe way to view events so they wouldn’t add up to something a person couldn’t deal with. She’d conditioned herself in this way to cope with all of the trauma from her childhood, to place a label on what was real and what wasn’t. But now, if she let all of the logical ponderings and possibilities fall away, she sensed an almost invisible cord stretching across the years, tying her past to the present in a way she couldn’t deny. She felt it not in the processing centers of her mind, but in her center, in the very fabric of who she was.

A wave of gooseflesh swept over her body and she shivered. She dug her phone from her purse, glancing once around the deserted parking lot, assuring herself she was still alone. Right now she needed to hear Eric’s voice. It was the only thing that would ground her enough to move forward and deal with what was to come.

He picked up on the second ring. “Hey there. How’s it going? I was starting to worry.”

“I’m sorry, honey. I was going to call you this morning but it was too early and then . . .”

“And then?”

She took a deep breath. “It’s her. The woman. It’s Shanna.”

A long pause. “What?”

“She knows things . . . things only Shanna would.” She launched into details of that morning’s revelations, pausing only to answer Eric’s occasional question. When she finished she felt spent, like she’d gone ten miles on one of the machines in the hotel’s workout room. Within the fatigue there was also a stirring of imagination, something she couldn’t keep herself from thinking. Depending upon if they found Shanna’s son, alive or dead, what would happen from that point on? Shanna had no other family. The relatives on their father’s side had been gone for years now and despite Clare’s diligent search, she’d never located any known relations of Charity Henson. She saw Shanna, and perhaps her son, returning with her to Oregon. They could make room for them until Shanna got fully back on her feet. She and Eric would take care of them, and it would be a second chance. It would be—

She was daydreaming, letting her mind run away with her. Less than twelve hours ago she hadn’t known whether or not it was Shanna in that hospital room and now she was imagining an entire future for them. As if reading her thoughts, Eric said, “This is really a lot. Are you sure you’re okay?”

“I’m coping. It’s . . . terrifying and exhilarating all at once.”

“I think I should come out there. I can put the analysis on hold.”

“Liar. You’d lose the account.”

“So what? We’re doing more than okay. I’m busy enough day trading as it is.”

“I love you for offering, but finish up your work. If I’m still here when you’re done then we’ll make plans. Besides, if the analysis goes well they might offer to keep you on retainer.”

He sighed. “Yeah, they might.”

“That would be good.”

“Yes. Yes, it would. Okay, you have a deal, Dr. Murdock. I’ll be done with everything here no later than Thursday. If you’re still there I’m on the first flight out.”

“Perfect,” she said, thinking of the moment when he would ask her the question he thought was still a secret. She smiled at the answer she would give him when he did. “I love you.”

“Love you too. Call me before you turn in.”

“I will.”

They hung up and she sat for another minute looking down at the phone before gathering her things from the car and heading into the hotel.

When she’d closed the door to her room and locked it, she leaned against it for a second before moving to the small table to set the file folder there. It landed with a flat thud that made her think of body bags being dropped onto concrete and she gave the mini bar a wistful look before sitting down in the nearest chair. As an afterthought she pulled the coin out of her pocket and set it beside the folder, eyeing it and fixing it in place. Still a coin, nothing else. She reached out, hand hovering over the file’s cover, then flipped it open. She read the cover page, basic information concerning the county and offices involved in the report as well as date ranges covering the incident. It seemed the main county investigator was someone by the name of Felix Howard. She didn’t recall speaking to him, but the days following the fire were a jumble of tarnished memories. She’d been interviewed multiple times while in the hospital and afterward in custody, so many people asking unending questions while all along she had her own, and no answers for any of them.

Clare flipped the page and read on.

At approximately 0800 hours on 09/13/01, a 911 call was received by dispatch from a male reporting an injured female on Access Road 325 in northern Cairn County. The caller was later identified as Lucas Marshall Murdock, 42, a Minnesota DNR officer. Injured female was identified as Clare Alice Kinsey, 13. Emergency medical services were dispatched along with Cairn County Sheriff’s deputies Dale Wilson and Reginald Hughes. Fire services were also dispatched in response to a fire burning several miles northeast of Access Road 325 in plat 415 adjacent to Minnesota State property. (See appendix 2.1 for details on fire containment and acreage burned).

Deputies Wilson and Hughes arrived on scene at approximately 0835 and assessed the situation by taking statements from Murdock and Kinsey. Kinsey was conscious but unresponsive.

She skimmed ahead, turning several more pages before finding what she was looking for, and dreading it at the same time.

Initial crime scene observations were taken by myself, Sheriff Jeremy Dawson, as well as BCA forensics specialists from Elmore, MN. I arrived on site twenty-four hours after 911 call was initiated due to the ensuing forest fire in the vicinity. It was later confirmed fire began due to the ignition of an accelerant (gasoline) on the northwestern edge of property. Dryness of season along with elevated wind speed were factors in the quick spread of burn area. Assessment concluded at least twenty structures burned on property owned by Simon Kinley Jr., including central hall where concentration of bodies were located.

Clare sat back from the table and looked out the window. The afternoon light was still strong, shining through the trees in the undeveloped lot behind the hotel. She stood and crossed to the mini bar, pulling two miniature bottles of bourbon free along with a Coke. Grabbing a glass from the bathroom, she emptied both of the liquor bottles into it, topping the booze off with the soft drink. The thought of going to the ice machine in the hall flashed once through her mind before she drank half the glass in three long swallows. The drink burned all the way down, but an almost immediate sense of warmth spread from her belly all the way to her head. She sipped once more before sitting back at the table, continuing to hold the drink as she read on.

Remains were badly burned mostly due to cache of generator fuel stored at the rear of the structure. Soft tissue was generally absent, leaving only skeletal remains for identification. Remains were scattered within structure’s boundaries (see appendix 3.2 for full forensic analysis of locations) but most were located near the northernmost wall. Final determination of amount as well as identities of deceased is still open at the time of this report’s creation, but at least forty individuals have been accounted for: thirty-three adult remains (eighteen male, fifteen female) as well as seven children (four female, three male). Other unidentified remains were beyond forensic analytic conclusion due to intensity of heat/extended burn period.

Bone fragments were also located in structure to the northwesternmost edge of property near fire’s origination point. These remains were unidentified due to heat level and continued burn time.

The last structure mentioned in the report had been their home. All this time she’d believed the single set of remains found inside had been Shanna’s. But now she realized they could have easily been Charity’s instead. The other factor potentially being the children’s remains that were unaccounted for had been consumed by the blaze, the heat more effectively dissolving them since they were smaller.

But now she knew. Shanna hadn’t been amongst the dead at all.

Another single set of remains were located approximately forty feet from the southeastern corner of the hall. These have been identified through dental records as belonging to Simon Kinley Jr., and at this time the cause for the remains at the exterior location is unknown. None of the pesticide found in various other remains was detected in Kinley’s, suggesting he died of other wounds unidentifiable due to immolation, or immolation itself.

He’d poisoned them all. The entire population of the Refuge had gathered in the hall at some point on September twelfth and drank the offered mixture of pesticide and whatever her father had chosen to cover the taste. Her last true memory of the Refuge was of looking out the windows of her room and wondering at the silence of the camp, the lack of movement save for her father and Charity’s frequent trips to and from the worship hall, gathering families, one at a time.

It was too much. She flipped the file closed and turned slightly away from the table, sickened. She didn’t know what she’d meant to glean from the report. She knew all the basic facts regarding the case, had gone through them several times before in an attempt to confront and possibly ignite a recollection of what happened that night.

Ignite, what an ugly word. She had a theory about why her father’s body had been found outside of the worship hall and why there’d been no poison in his system. He’d wanted to burn up the evidence of his crime. Despite the fervor he’d delivered his sermons with, despite the aura of faith surrounding him, despite the sickness plaguing his mind, he’d felt some measure of guilt at the end and had wanted to destroy the heinous story of those last days. Maybe he was even running away and got caught in the blaze. What she would never be sure of was if he intended to kill himself.

And where were you in all of this? the internal voice wondered. Why were your hands burned and who grabbed you hard enough to leave a bruise on your arm?

She poured herself another drink from the mini bar, dispensing with the soda this time. Clare settled back onto the bed, gazing across the room suffused with afternoon light, and sipped the bourbon. You ran. Shanna’s words repeated in her head until they were an overlapping cacophony. And she must have, she’d been the only other one to make it out alive. Someone had grabbed her as she fled and she’d burned her hands somehow while escaping. It was the answer she’d been fleeing for nearly twenty years.

She set the empty glass on the bedside table and stared at the ceiling. Weariness tugged at her and she fought it, but it was a losing battle. She was physically and mentally drained from the last few days, no strength left to keep her eyes open.

The sun slid behind a thick slab of clouds, and as the room dimmed she fell into darkness.

Chapter Twenty

Clare.

She blinked, looking up at an unfamiliar ceiling, and tried to remember where she was. Her mouth was dry and her eyes were gritty with sleep. The hotel in Minnesota. She’d drifted off after poring over the cult’s file. The remnants of a dream still clung to her, something about a face in a window and her name being spoken.

She blinked again. Had she heard her name in the dream or had it been said out loud as she woke? Slowly she sat up, rubbed the side of her face and froze, watching the bathroom door across the room swing to a stop.

Clare recoiled, scrambling backward on the bed until her shoulders pressed against the headboard. She watched the wedge of darkness in the bathroom for movement as ice water laced its way through her stomach. There was someone in the bathroom. They’d gotten in somehow and now they were in the bathroom.

Her gun, where was it?

There, across the room on the bureau where the TV sat. She’d set it down upon entering the room earlier. Could she get to it before whoever was in the bathroom decided to come out? Her eyes shot to the bedside table where the room’s phone rested. Call for help?

She wavered internally, frozen in place.

With a leap born of pure fear and adrenaline, she lunged up and off the bed, traveling the six-odd feet to where the handgun lay in half a second.

Clare ripped the pistol free of its holster and aimed at the bathroom, sure she would be looking directly into the eyes of an attacker.

Nothing.

No sound or movement.

She started forward, taking tentative steps until she reached the door. Part of the bathroom was visible, a splash of light from the main room revealing the shower’s half-drawn curtain. She nudged the bathroom door open with one of her feet and moved forward, stepping inside and flicking up the light at the same time.

Empty. The bath was small enough to see there was no one present. Clare twitched aside the shower curtain and saw nothing but a solitary fly trundling toward the drain.

Thud.

She glanced around, looking for the sound’s source.

Thud.

Thud.

It was coming from outside the bathroom. She traced it to the door built into the shared wall of the room next to hers. As she watched it vibrated in its frame. A door exactly like it stood only inches on the other side, separating the two rooms, there in case family or friends rented both and wanted to pass back and forth as they pleased.

The door shuddered again as if a draft were pulling it back and forth, bumping against its locks. Clare left the bathroom and walked shakily back to the bed, dropping onto it. The bathroom door moving had been an illusion. A holdover from the dream. She’d been bleary with sleep and still in the grip of the dream. She easily could’ve mistaken the movement.

Thud. Thud. Thud. The adjoining door continued to bump back and forth. She waited a few minutes, imagining an amorous couple leaning against the door in the next room as they went about their business. When the thumping didn’t cease she grasped the phone and dialed the front desk, listening to the ringing coming both from the receiver and from outside the room down in the main lobby. After three rings it was picked up.

“This is Dustin, how may I help you?”

“Hi, Dustin, this is Clare Murdock in two-oh-six. I wondered if you could tell the adjoining room to mine to please keep it down. Whatever they’re doing is rattling my door.” She said it barely keeping a laugh from escaping.

There was a long pause filled by the rapid snap of a keyboard being punished. Then silence. “Um . . . I’m sorry, did you say the room next to yours?”

“Yes.”

“There’s no one in the rooms to either side of you.”

Thud. Thud. Thud.

“Are you sure?”

“Yepper. In fact, you have the whole second floor to yourself this evening. Maybe it’s the heating. We’ve been having trouble lately with—”

“Thank you,” she said, hanging up. The door thumped in its frame like something was behind it, yearning to get out. Clare stood, gripping the pistol, nerves thrumming once more with adrenaline. She crossed the room and placed her hand on the door’s lock.

The thumping stopped.

She held her breath, wondering if whoever was on the other side of the door was doing the same.

Clare unlocked the door and flung it open.

The expectation of seeing the next room’s door withered and died.

A stairway led straight down into darkness. Down below, where in reality the rooms on the first floor of the hotel should’ve been, was a soft glow. It was their old basement stairs. Candlelight. And voices. Two of them, overlapping. Saying the same thing moments apart. Clare drew in a shaking breath, trying to close her eyes and tell herself it wasn’t there. None of it. But she couldn’t look away.

The outline of a shadow fell across the lowermost treads. It was misshapen, elongated by the low light. Monstrous. It lumbered closer and closer to the bottom of the stairs. Soon she’d be able to see what cast it, and there was nothing she wanted less. Clare tried to raise the gun at her side, needed to raise it, but she was paralyzed, helplessly watching whatever was making the horrid shadow loom slowly into view.

The telephone jangled, sending a bolt of cerebral lightning through her head. She blinked.

The door to the next room stood before her. Closed. Locked.

Clare backed away, head shaking. She’d seen it. Seen the stairs leading downward. Recognized the smell drifting up. It had been there, so real. The telephone quit ringing, then started once more. She shut the adjoining door, locking it and checking its security twice before moving to the bedside table to answer the phone.

“Hi, this is Dustin at the front desk. Just wanted to let you know we’ve definitely been having some HVAC issues on the second floor. That’s what I was trying to say before. Probably what you’re hearing.”

“Right, thank you,” she said, her gaze snagging on the table where she’d left the file and coin.

Except the coin wasn’t there anymore.

She knelt, looking under the table and beneath the chairs, but the coin was nowhere to be seen. Where had it gone? There was no possible way she’d imagined it. She’d held it, felt the woodgrain, set it in plain sight. The desk attendant said something else and Clare stopped searching long enough to ask him to repeat himself, instead focusing on the ceiling’s border design, a geometric pattern of squares and triangles. She began counting the triangles, anything to ignore the fact the coin had vanished.

“I said if you hear anything else, that’s what it is.”

“I appreciate the call.”

“No problem. Oh, and by the way, they all died because of you.”

She was speechless for a beat, sure she’d heard him wrong. “W-what did you say?”

“If you would’ve stayed you could’ve saved them.” The voice on the other end of the line was different, changing to a more guttural tone.

“Who is this?”

“You ran.” The line went quiet.

Clare threw the phone. It hit the table and bounced away, landing and rolling to a stop at the end of its cord. She stared at the receiver, waiting for something more. For the voice to come again or for it to move on its own like a striking snake.

She ran.

Out of the room and down the stairs to the lobby. Against her better judgement she glanced at the front desk and saw an elderly woman behind it, gazing at the computer screen through bifocals. The clerk glanced up at her passage but Clare didn’t hesitate. She shoved out through the doors into the evening air and didn’t look back.

Chapter Twenty-One

Deputy Wilt had gotten his wish, it seemed.

He leaned in the hospital room’s doorway as Clare approached, the muscles in her legs letting her know she would need to sit down soon or they would sit her down. When Wilt saw her he straightened, genteel smile sliding from his face. “Oh, hi, Dr. Murdock.”

“Hello, Deputy.”

“I was just . . .” He swallowed and nodded awkwardly before stepping aside to let her through. Clare went into the room, shutting the door behind her.

Shanna sat mostly upright in bed. Her hair had been washed and her color was better. “I didn’t know if you’d be back tonight.”

“I didn’t either. I . . .” She settled into the nearest chair. Her body was wrung out despite napping that afternoon. She wasn’t sure she’d ever been as tired.

“Are you okay?”

“I’m not sure. I’ve been . . .” Clare paused, sitting forward. “Do you remember our father talking to himself or to people who weren’t there?”

Shanna’s face screwed up in concentration. “I remember you telling me he did. But I don’t think I ever saw or heard him.”

“I did. Lots of times. It was why I quit believing eventually. As much as I wanted to please him, see what he saw, I couldn’t. But now . . .”

Shanna tilted her head. “Now what?”

Clare took a deep breath. She should be telling all this to her therapist. To Lia. To Eric. Hell, Adam would be a better choice than this traumatized woman. But would any of them understand it better? She didn’t think so. “I’ve been seeing things lately. Impossible things. And I’m worried that—”

“That you’re sick like he was.”

Clare deflated. “Yes.”

Shanna was quiet for a time. “I saw something once,” she said finally.

“When?”

“Not a long time before . . . the fire. It was one night after bedtime. I couldn’t sleep. I’d look out the window at the stars when I couldn’t sleep. You remember how bright the stars were when it was clear?” Clare nodded. She’d never encountered anything like the constellations wheeling overhead in the nights of her youth. And she’d known all of their names through her father’s love of Greek lore. “I was looking out the window and the stars went away,” Shanna continued.

“What do you mean, ‘went away’?”

“They were there, then it was like a blanket got pulled over the sky and they were gone.”

“You were having a dream.”

Shanna shook her head. “No. Because I remember getting up and going to the window to look out. It was getting cold at night and my breath fogged the window. The stars were gone and it was all black above the trees.” She sounded childlike, reverting to the night in question. “There were no clouds. It was clear out, but something came and covered up the stars and it made me afraid. I got back in bed and pulled the covers up so I couldn’t see. I was scared, but also excited because I thought maybe I had what Father had. That maybe I saw miracles too.”

Clare hesitated. “You understand he was mentally ill, right? Sick here.” She pointed at her temple. “Those things he talked about weren’t real. They were all in his mind.”

“You think I’m sick too?”

“I . . .” Clare wavered, unsure of what to say. How could she assure Shanna about her mental health when she couldn’t say the same about her own? “I think we were both under a lot of stress back then whether we knew it or not, and sometimes the mind can play tricks. Does that make sense?”

Shanna nodded slowly.

Clare rose and went to the bathroom to get a drink of water. Looking at her image in the mirror, she thought, I should be checking in here tonight. Except the doctors in the white coats are the wrong kind. I need the ones who specialize in people who see pink elephants and feel bugs crawling under their skin. Or impossible stairways and coins that disappear along with voices on telephones saying things they shouldn’t know.

She braced herself on the sink and poured the rest of the water down the drain before returning to the room. Shanna was gazing out the window, which was nearly a perfect pane of darkness framed in the wall. “You think we might both be sick like him?” she asked.

Clare returned to the chair and sighed. “I don’t know. You’ve never had any other hallucinations? Heard voices, anything like that?”

“No. The only other voice besides my own was Rainier’s. And he didn’t speak to me often.” Something in her voice caught Clare’s attention, a fluttery lilt that hadn’t been there before. She’d heard it before when certain women denied any existence of abuse within the cults they’d joined. Shanna looked away from the window and focused on Clare again. “How are we going to find my son?”

For now she allowed the change of subject without objection. “I followed up a lead today with the sheriff. I’m not sure if it’s what we’re looking for, but it might be.” She recounted the visit to the Parson camp, mentioning the hopscotch pattern last. “It’s a child’s game,” she said, explaining the concept when Shanna’s eyebrows drew together in confusion.

“So you think maybe they have my son? That they’re hiding Rainier?”

“I don’t know.” She lowered her voice, thinking of Wilt directly outside the door. “The sheriff isn’t convinced, but I feel like there’s some connection. There are too many coincidences. The good news is a friend of mine is coming here. Someone who’s worked on lots of cases like this. He’s very good at what he does.”

Shanna nodded, seeming to absorb everything. “The doctors said I could be released tomorrow. All of my wounds are healing. But . . .” Clare waited, watching the conflict go on behind her sister’s eyes. “But I’m afraid of leaving here. I’m afraid he’ll find me.”

“You’ll be under protection the whole time.” An idea came to her then fully formed. “We can even fly to Oregon and stay at my house until everything is—”

“No.” The inflection in Shanna’s voice made Clare stop cold. “No, I won’t leave until I find my son. Or until I know he’s—” She faltered and looked down to where her right hand was rubbing at the scars on her left wrist. “I can’t go.”

“Okay. No, you’re right, I’m sorry.”

They were both quiet for a time before Shanna said, “You’ll stay with me?”

“Of course.”

“And I’ll be safe?” All at once it was as if the years had melted away. She was at Shanna’s bedside again, telling her she would take care of her. And this time she meant to, no matter what.

“Yes. I promise.” She smiled. “I’m thinking Deputy Wilt will volunteer to guard us.”

Shanna returned her smile. It was tentative, but beautiful all the same. “He’s been very kind.”

“Good. That’s good.”

“Are most people like him? Are they kind or are they . . .”

How to answer such a question? Was the world essentially a good place or one where evil squirmed in the cracks of a thin mask covering up the worst of humanity? Was there enough light to make the struggle worthwhile, or was it perpetually twilight, full-dark only moments away?

“Most people are good,” Clare finally said. “But even good people can hurt you. You always have to be careful of who you trust.”

Shanna seemed to absorb this, and in that second Clare could see the little girl who had known only the darkest half of existence for most her life. “I trust you,” Shanna said.

* * *

A nurse ended up bringing in a cot at the close of visiting hours, and it was only after she’d left Clare realized how much she’d been dreading returning to her hotel room. There was nothing there, the voice in her head told her. It was all in your mind. If you see something right now, where will you run to? She didn’t know. If these were the initial symptoms of schizophrenia, she needed help. Needed to seek treatment as soon as possible. The longer she waited, the worse it would get. But a niggling thought kept resurfacing no matter how many times she pushed it away. All this had started early Saturday morning after her nightmare—almost at the exact minute Shanna had been found. Could everything be explained away through an inherited mental disorder? One laying in wait until the moment her sister had been returned to her life? Or was there something bigger happening beyond the scope of her viewpoint?

An idea struck her, and she stiffened. What if Shanna’s escape hadn’t been a coincidence? What if it had been timed perfectly? Had Rainier and whoever else he was working with orchestrated Shanna’s escape, possibly in an effort to bring her back into striking range? How long had they known where she was? She guessed it had taken them quite some time to track her down since her last name had changed, along with her address at least a half dozen times in the last eighteen years. What exactly had they been planning when Shanna got away? She felt like gears had been put into motion behind a veil concealing their movements, and to glimpse their parts was to understand the machinations as a whole.

Clare rolled over in the narrow cot and dismissed the idea. It was something a paranoid schizophrenic would think. Conspiracies existed, and there were multitudes of nefarious people floating in the flotsam of the world, but she was pondering something much different than anything so mundane. What her mind kept edging up against was the equivalent of heresy in the academic world.

The supernatural.

There, she’d acknowledged it, like being on your way to work and glancing at the corner where some poor person had been stabbed or shot the week before. Her belief in something beyond the realms of fact and science had ended shortly after the Refuge had burned down. The faith her father tried instilling in her was already thin as tissue paper. Since then she’d relied upon psychology and understanding the processing of events anchored deeply in emotional levels. She’d never given the mystical any credence. And she still didn’t. Everything she’d experienced could be explained by faulty genes handed down by her father. The rest could be synchronicity, which she did adhere to. If she woke up a thousand miles away at the same moment Shanna was being found by the authorities, then so be it. She woke up most nights, and sometimes several times. A coincidence was the greater likelihood, nothing more.

She shifted on the cot again, unable to get comfortable. Shanna slept on in the bed, a soft snore issuing from her every so often. There was always a logical explanation, no matter how uncomfortable it might be. Belief in something that wasn’t there was for people who couldn’t deal with that fact.

A nurse stepped into the room, silently checking Shanna’s vitals before slipping away again. The hospital had lost its daytime bustle and the relative quiet punctuated by the sounds of people nearby gave her a sense of reassurance. Her sister’s placid features were another layer of comfort, and she closed her eyes, finally dropping into sleep. Clare’s last thought as she drifted away was that it must’ve clouded over in the evening because she couldn’t see any stars outside the window.

Chapter Twenty-Two

She was walking down a set of stairs.

There was no handrail on either side, only unending curtains of blackness spinning and twisting like swirling ink if she looked at it too long. As she descended the air cooled and became damp. A smell enveloped her, making the contents of her stomach slew dangerously. Mildew and old decay. Familiar. When she looked down a sense of vertigo so strong overwhelmed her, it felt as if she were on the deck of a pitching ship.

Though she knew she was going downward, her feet were climbing the stairs.

When the treads appeared out of the murk each one was higher than the last, despite the fact she had the sense of dropping with every step.

She swayed, losing her balance, and listed toward the yawning darkness. She had an impression that the void was hungry and if she fell into it she wouldn’t only encounter the will of gravity, but also a waiting maw lined with teeth anxious to meet her.

There was something ahead, a faint light at the bottom of the stairs she was climbing. She stepped into her bedroom, the one she’d lived in until she was nearly fourteen. It was empty, her bed and desk gone, the window looking out onto the Refuge’s solid darkness. A single guttering candle stood in the middle of the room and she went to it, meaning to pick it up, but a voice speaking from outside the light stopped her.

“You shouldn’t have run,” her father said from beneath the door. He was lying on his side in the hallway, face pressed to the floor so that she could see the edge of his mouth and cheek as well as one eye. “Sacrifice is love. There is no greater act.”

She tried to speak but couldn’t make her lips or tongue form the words. Her arm throbbed where someone had latched onto it, and when she looked down one of her hands was pressed to the candle flame, the smell of cooking flesh floating up to her in wisps of smoke she inhaled in an attempt to scream.

Clare’s head jerked up from the pillow, mouth open to release the shout started in her dream.

Her eyes shot down to her hand, to the place where she could still feel the licking touch of flame, expecting to see fresh blisters burst and leaking. But there was only the old dimpled scars. Nothing more.

All of her air whooshed out at once and she dropped onto her back, letting reality seep in and claim her fully. “Damn,” she said quietly. The nightmare had been so vivid, so real. She’d had strong dreams before, but that one had hit an eleven on a one-to-ten scale. She recalled the sliver of her father’s face visible beneath her bedroom door and shuddered, pushing herself to a full sitting position.

Dawn was minutes away, the sky a sheet of gray and flat as a calm sea. Clare rose and left the room without disturbing Shanna, attempting to leave the nightmare’s cloying touch behind. She massaged a crick in her neck as she made her way down the hallways until she found the cafeteria. Two nurses and a lone doctor sat at separate tables, the physician’s bloodshot eyes and slumped shoulders enough to tell her he’d just come off the night shift. She ordered a coffee and grabbed a slice of toast with jelly from the buffet-style serving line. On the eastern side of the cafeteria a bank of windows looked out to the muted sunrise. Clare sat in a booth and ate her breakfast, watching the sun attempt to spear through gunmetal clouds and fail.

As she neared Shanna’s room again, plans for the remainder of the day coalescing in her mind, Clare spotted two men approaching from the opposite direction. One of them was Sheriff Hughes, fully uniformed and harboring a slight frown, while the other stood six inches taller and wore a faded plaid button-up as well as blue jeans and hiking boots. Adam Zimmer was powerfully built with wide shoulders and thick legs despite their length. His dark hair was unconventionally long for a government agent, falling nearly to his chin. He was what Lia would’ve called unhandsome. Not ugly, but not good-looking in the traditional sense. Adam saw her at nearly the same instant and a crooked smile pulled at his features.

“Hope you’re sharing,” Adam said, motioning to the coffee cup in one hand. He bent and gave her a quick hug.

“You wouldn’t want any of this.”

“I’d lick the bottom of a barista’s shoe at this point.”

“Late flight?”

“Early, late, it all blends at some point.”

Hughes cleared his throat. “Agent Zimmer was kind enough to swing by and let me know he was in the area.”

“Again, I’m here in an unofficial capacity,” Adam said. “I wear a size twelve but I won’t be stepping on any toes.” The look Hughes shot her said he wasn’t necessarily convinced.

“Shanna said she could be released today,” Clare said.

“That’s why we’re here, actually,” Hughes said. “If she feels up to it, I’d like her to show us where she was being held. I’ve got a team ready to go. Unlikely Rainier’s still there, but we might find something that points us in the direction he went.”

“I don’t know if she’ll be up for that.”

“We can wait if she’s not ready, but I’m sure you know time is of the essence.”

Clare glanced at Adam, who gave her a slight shrug. “Okay, let’s ask her.”

“Barnes, you can hit patrol for your last two hours,” Hughes said to the deputy standing nearby who had relieved Wilt. The younger officer jerked his head once and strode away down the hall as they filed into the room.

Shanna was awake and sitting up in bed. She registered each of them individually, her eyes lingering longest on Adam.

“Good morning, Shanna. This is Special Agent Adam Zimmer with the FBI,” Hughes said, motioning to Adam. “How are you feeling this morning?”

“Okay,” Shanna said, her voice small.

“It sounds like you’ll be able to leave here today, and I was wondering if you’d be up to showing us the location of where you were being held. Do you think you could do that?”

Shanna shrunk into the mattress, gaze sliding away. Her left hand worried at the scars on her right wrist. Clare stepped closer to the bed. “Hey, you don’t have to. You can take your time.” Shanna nodded. There was so much tangible fear rolling off her, Clare could feel it like heat. “It’s up to you.”

“Why do I have to go back there?”

“The police haven’t been able to find it. Rainier might still be there, and if he’s not, there may be clues as to where he went.”

“If . . . if we wait, he would have more time to get away, right?”

“That’s a possibility,” Hughes said, and Clare felt a shade of dislike color her view of him. She waited, watching her sister worry at the phantom bonds.

“Okay,” Shanna finally said. “I’ll do it.” She looked down at the hospital gown she wore. “But I don’t have any clothes.”

“We’ll get you some,” Hughes said, opening a file folder Clare hadn’t noticed up to that point. “On another note, I just received the preliminary DNA analysis both for the tissue we extracted from beneath your fingernails and in regard to your relation to one another. It takes weeks to get the full work-up, but I pulled some strings and got them to give me the basics fast.”

Clare became rigid, a cold steel rod suddenly in her spine. It was so quiet in the room the hum of the light fixture overhead was almost deafening.

“You want a minute alone?” Adam said, motioning to the door.

Clare glanced at Shanna, who sat like a statue in the bed. “No, that’s okay.”

“Since we don’t have any comparative DNA for Rainier I can’t say for sure the tissue matches his, but we are hopeful that the full results will give us something.” Hughes said, looking at Shanna. “That being said, the sample does belong to an unidentified male. In regard to the sibling analysis—” He shuffled the papers, then held them out to Clare. “Well, I’ll let you see that for yourselves.”

Clare reached out with an arm and hand that didn’t feel like they belonged to her. She was hyper-aware of her heartbeat, her breathing, of Shanna’s motionlessness beside her. She grasped the pages and they fluttered as she turned them around to read.

Most of the paper was filled with technical information and analytical verbiage that blurred together. At the bottom were headings of DNA markers lined up with columns of numbered alleles. Her gaze skittered down to where the numbers were followed by percentage symbols and her eyes fastened on the very last subset.

Percentage of shared DNA

Testing Range: 18% - 32%

Provided Sample Match: 25%

She read it several times to make sure the numbers didn’t realign themselves before looking up at Hughes, who wore a small smile. “The results are conclusive,” he said.

Clare looked over at Shanna, who hadn’t reached for the paper or even so much as glanced at it. Instead she was staring straight back at her with the same directness she’d had the first time they’d laid eyes on each other. The unreality that she was looking at her half sister washed over her with renewed force. “We’re . . . we’re . . .” Her voice kept failing her and she shook her head.

Shanna smiled and reached out to touch Clare’s face gently, wiping away a tear that had escaped from the corner of her eye. “Of course we are.”

Chapter Twenty-Three

Sheen hosted several women’s clothing stores, most of them tailored to summer tourist season, but none of them were open at the early hour.

Clare directed Adam to the Wal-Mart on the edge of town, where he pulled his rental SUV into a parking space nearest the building. Shanna sat in the back seat wearing a pair of hospital scrubs, the vehicle’s spacious interior dwarfing her slight form. She gripped the nearest door handle and breathed deeply through her nose. After Shanna had been discharged they’d loaded her into Adam’s SUV and rolled slowly through town toward their destination. Almost immediately Shanna had complained of feeling nauseous. Motion sickness. It had been over eighteen years since she’d ridden in a car.

“I’ll run in and be right back,” Clare said, turning in her seat. She had no intention of exposing her sister to the calamity that was sure to be waiting inside the store. “You’re okay staying with Adam?” Shanna gazed wide-eyed out at the sprawling structure, taking in the people streaming in and out of the doors. When she didn’t answer, Clare said, “Shanna?”

Shanna blinked, shooting a furtive look at Adam, then at her. “Yes. Okay. But don’t be long.”

“I won’t.” Adam gave her a brief reassuring smile. Clare stepped down from the car and waved at Hughes as she passed his cruiser.

Inside she picked out three pairs of comfortable yoga pants, two sweatshirts, six t-shirts in neutral colors, two pair of jeans, socks, underwear, bras, low hiking boots, and a light down-filled jacket. She guessed on all the sizes, holding the clothing up to herself and gauging how much lighter Shanna was. She’d never let herself fully imagine what it would have been like going shopping with Shanna, likewise other traditional and mundane rites of passage among teenagers and young women. It had all been too painful to consider what had been lost, but now the same thrill she’d felt before, the thrill of potential, was potent and she couldn’t help but smile when the cashier commented on the new wardrobe.

“Shopping spree?” the middle-aged woman said, winking as she rang her purchases up.

“For my sister,” Clare replied.

“Lucky girl. Wish I had a sister like you.”

Outside the sun made a brief appearance before gliding back behind the low clouds like an animal retreating to its lair. Adam had the radio on low when she climbed into the SUV, a local pop station playing quietly.

“She likes Taylor Swift,” he said, pulling out of the parking space.

“Who doesn’t?” Clare said, glancing into the back seat. Shanna’s attention was still focused on the store and the acres of parking lot. “It’s a lot to take in, isn’t it?”

“I never knew buildings could be so big. Books I read talked about skyscrapers; are they really that tall? They touch the sky?”

“They are.”

Shanna shook her head and Clare caught the gleam of tears in her eyes.

They stopped at Clare’s hotel, Adam carrying the shopping bags to her room while Clare led Shanna inside by the hand in his wake. The younger woman’s eyes were everywhere, drinking in the surroundings. Clare kept a close watch on her, waiting for a sign that the stimuli was becoming too much. Shanna trailed a hand on the stairway’s smooth banister. She touched the wall and stared at the long hallway filled with doors.

“It’s a really, really big house,” she said.

“Basically.” Clare stopped beside Adam, who had deposited the bags near the door.

“I’m going to check in, get two-oh-eight if possible,” he said, gesturing to the room next to hers. “You good?”

“We’re good. Meet you at the car.” He ambled down the stairs out of sight as Clare keyed the electronic lock open.

“This is . . .” Shanna crossed the room to the window and looked out before turning back around, taking the space in. “It’s beautiful.”

Clare laughed. “I’m glad you think so.”

“You don’t?”

“No, it’s fine. There’s just—” She was about to say, much nicer hotels, and caught herself. She was struck by Shanna’s childlike wonder again, and it gave her pause. Everything was new to her, every building and car a spectacle. Clare recalled the shock of experiencing the outside world after the fire, how simple noises like truck engines and barking dogs hurt her ears, how brazen colors were an offense to her eyes. And how over time she’d become accustomed, and eventually inured, to the what seemed alien to her at first. Before he died, Lucas had told her human beings were the most vile and amazing creatures on the planet. They were capable of both the greatest atrocities, and of overcoming them. Clare watched her sister do a slow turn next to the bed and had to agree with him.

“Here,” Clare said, bringing the bags of clothing inside. “Let’s get you cleaned up and see if any of this fits.”

* * *

Pale light dulled the forest to a muted green speckled with the first signs of fall. Clare gazed out the SUV’s window at the walls of trees lining the county road. There hadn’t been a driveway or mailbox in the last few miles, and besides the occasional swath of dark water glimpsed in the gaps of brush, the woods were impenetrable. Regions of wild mystery waiting only steps from human encroachment.

“True boondocks,” Adam said from the driver’s seat, echoing her thoughts. “Reminds me of Washington state. Old growth and no people.”

“Kind of a change from New York,” Clare said, grateful for the conversation. Her nerves were tightened like overtuned guitar strings, and the darkness between the trees wasn’t helping.

“I love it and can’t stand it at the same time. Would’ve helped if I grew up there, but upstate is a long way from the city, even if it’s only a two-hour drive.”

“At least you can take in the fresh country air on your vacation.” Adam snorted in reply and she glanced into the side mirror. The sheriff’s van carrying Hughes’s team followed a few car lengths back while ahead the sheriff himself led the caravan, his SUV kicking up twin rooster tails of dust.

Clare shifted in her seat and surveyed Shanna. She’d assisted her with a quick shower before they’d left the hotel and her hair was still dark and damp. It had hurt her heart when Shanna flinched after turning on the water, and it took them several minutes of adjusting the temperature before Clare could get her to step beneath the spray. She recalled the sickening lurch that had gone through her at the sight of the ugly, sutured wounds on Shanna’s back while rinsing her sister’s hair. Shanna had chosen a pair of jeans, a t-shirt, and a sweatshirt to wear afterward. Clare could tell the clothes would take some getting used to by the way Shanna kept picking at them and readjusting the beltline of the pants. “Doing okay?”

“Not as sick now.”

“That’s good.”

“The world’s so big. It just keeps going on and on.”

Clare imagined bringing her to the ocean and dismissed it. If a Wal-Mart amazed her, the Pacific would be terrifying. “We’ll take it slow. After this it’ll be small steps going forward.” Shanna nodded, then stiffened as she looked past Clare out the windshield.

“Think we’re here,” Adam said. Hughes had pulled onto the side of the road near a lone, leaning mailbox. A driveway jutted off into a growth of poplar, curving enough to hide the residence at its end.

“I remember this place,” Shanna whispered.

Adam drew alongside the sheriff’s vehicle and stopped as Clare lowered her window.

“This is where she was found,” Hughes said. “Any direction she can point us in is helpful.”

“We’ll take the lead and stop if and when she notices anything,” Adam said. Hughes scowled but nodded. Adam rolled forward as Clare put up the window. “I think we’re going to be BFFs.”

“I think he doesn’t care for federal input whether it’s official or not,” Clare said.

“I’m on vacation.”

Clare turned in her seat again. “Tell us if you see anything that looks familiar, okay?”

Shanna was staring out the window, taking in the road and voluminous barrier of trees. “It’s going too fast. I can’t tell.”

“Slow down,” Clare said to Adam, but he’d already pulled his foot from the accelerator. They coasted to a crawl. Gravel crackled noisily under the tires. Clare searched the growth lining the road—for what, she wasn’t sure. Every so often she threw a look back at her sister.

“I . . . I need to get out,” Shanna said finally.

“Get out?” Adam asked.

“Yes. It’s too fast. Can’t remember.”

Adam braked, placing the SUV in park. The sheriff and the van behind him mimicked them. Shanna struggled with the door for a moment, then stepped out onto the county road. She walked past the front of the vehicle and kept going, her arms crossed in front of her, hands clasping her elbows. Clare unbuckled, meaning to get out as well, but Adam put a hand on her forearm.

“Let her be for a minute.”

“Why?”

“Cop-sense is tingling.”

She didn’t want to stay in the car, but let go of the door handle. Not so much to humor Adam’s intuition, but because she thought maybe Shanna needed a moment or two alone. She’d been in the company of others, pestered by questions and prodded by doctors, the entire time since she’d been found. A few minutes of solace, even if it was retracing the path of her escape, might be beneficial.

“You’re sure about her?” Adam said as they crept along behind Shanna.

“Yes.”

“And you’ve considered Stockholm syndrome?”

“I have. But what would she be gaining by going along with Rainier all this time? Wouldn’t they have just skipped the state? Moved on and started another sect somewhere no one knew them?”

“Maybe.”

“This isn’t my first rodeo, you know. I’ve been watching for signs and symptoms, gone over everything she’s said and done so far. I was skeptical as hell at first, but now . . .”

Adam fell quiet for several minutes before glancing at her. “I’m not questioning your expertise. I’m worried about you.”

“I appreciate it, but I’m fine.” The lie came out all too easily. Adam knew about her anxiety, her compulsions and panic attacks, but she worried what he’d say if she told him about the hallucinations. Worried he’d make the same assumptions she already had. He would probably suggest she distance herself somewhat, at least until Rainier was apprehended and this was all resolved, and she couldn’t do that.

They’d gone another mile down the lonesome road when Shanna stopped.

Clare was out of the SUV and jogging to her side immediately. “What is it?” she asked, coming even with her sister. Shanna’s face was ashen. She looked as if she were in the grips of motion sickness again.

Slowly she pointed toward a towering white pine fifty paces off the road. The tree was misshapen, its northern side sheared and scorched from a lightning strike. “I saw that tree the night I ran,” Shanna said. Her voice was low and monotone, as if she were half asleep. “I ran toward it and found the road.”

Clare put an arm around her shoulders and looked back, nodding once at Hughes, who pulled even with them and climbed out. “Do you know how far it was?” Clare asked. “Do you know how long you ran?” Shanna shook her head. She was trembling now, her body a tuning fork inside Clare’s embrace.

“What do we have?” Hughes asked, stopping beside them.

“She remembers seeing this tree before finding the road,” Clare said.

Hughes eyed the pine, then made a quick motion to the van. The driver pulled to the side of the road and six deputies wearing ballistic vests piled out. They all carried AR-15s and wore the look of men both keenly on edge and excited at the same time. She didn’t care for the combination.

“Okay,” Hughes said, addressing his men. “We go in and spread out to a fifty-yard sweep. We go slow and careful. No sound. First one who spots a structure, call it out on the radio. We good?” Nods all around. Hughes turned back to them. “Two deputies will wait here with you until we’ve secured the area.”

Clare led Shanna back to Adam’s SUV. Deputy Wilt and another officer she hadn’t met sat in the van across the road. The wind gusted, leaves clicking together in a sound like thousands of voices whispering lies. When Shanna was safely inside the vehicle Clare watched the sheriff’s team cross the low ditch and spread out along the tree line.

Hughes gave a signal and they treaded forward, disappearing as one like a phalanx of ghosts into the green embrace of the woods.

Chapter Twenty-Four

“It shouldn’t be taking this long.”

Clare immediately regretted saying it. The simmering anxiety she’d felt earlier had become a rolling boil a half hour after Hughes and his team disappeared into the woods. She’d been trying to remain calm and collected for Shanna’s sake, but the waiting and increasing unease was getting to her. No cars had passed since their arrival and the day was darker, the clouds overhead thickening along with the shadows between the trees.

“It might’ve been quite a trek back through there,” Adam said. He seemed tireless, his gaze scanning continually back and forth across the forest and every so often sliding to the SUV’s mirrors. Despite not seeing a gun on Adam she’d never known him to go anywhere without concealing a weapon, and it gave her comfort since her own gun was stowed in the center console of the locked rental back in the hotel parking lot. Right then she wished she would’ve taken the time to retrieve it before they’d left. “They might not have found anything yet.” Adam lifted a hand to his temples and massaged.

“Headache?”

“I need caffeine.”

“Coffee’s on me when we get back to town.”

“You better believe it is.”

She glanced at him. “Thank you.”

“For what?”

“For vacationing here.”

He smiled. “Sheen, Minnesota, has always been on my bucket list.”

“What’s a bucket list?” Shanna asked. Clare and Adam both turned their heads at her voice. She hadn’t said a word since returning to the vehicle, her gaze flitting from her wrists to the trees and back again.

“It’s a list of things to do before you die,” Clare said. “‘Kicking the bucket’ is another way of saying ‘dying.’”

Shanna frowned. “That’s odd.”

Clare laughed. “It is.”

“Why would someone say that instead of dying?”

“So people can put a cute little spin on things that are uncomfortable to talk about,” Adam said. “It makes it easier for them.”

“Seems confusing not to just call things what they are,” Shanna said after a moment.

“You can say that again,” Adam said.

“Why?”

Clare and Adam burst out laughing. It felt good after the tension of the last few days. Shanna watched them, a bemused smile perched on her lips. Clare was about to explain what Adam meant when Wilt stepped out of the van and hurried to Adam’s window.

“Just heard from the sheriff,” Wilt said a little breathlessly. “They found the shack. It’s straight in a little over half a mile.”

“Any sign of Rainier?” Clare asked.

“No. Place is empty. They’re securing the area right now.”

Clare glanced at Adam and could see he was thinking the same thing she was. “Can you stay with Shanna while we take a look?”

Wilt cocked his head. “I’m not sure that’s the best idea.”

“Deputy, the woman next to me is one of only two FBI consultants on cult activities in the nation. It would be beneficial to the investigation if she were able to view the scene,” Adam said.

Wilt looked thunderstruck and torn. Clare felt sorry for him. She was about to try allaying any fears the deputy had of a rebuke from the sheriff when Shanna grasped her elbow.

“Don’t go in the woods,” Shanna said. “He’s in there somewhere. I can feel it.”

Clare took her hand. “Hey, it’s okay. The police are making sure he’s gone. And if he is still here, they’ll catch him.”

“But what if he gets you?”

“He won’t. Adam will be with me the whole time.” Shanna still looked doubtful. “Would it be okay if Deputy Wilt sat in the car with you?”

Shanna glanced in Wilt’s direction and considered it before finally nodding. “Be careful. He’s not a person anymore.”

A slither of dread wound through her guts but Clare fought to keep it from showing on her face. “We’ll be right back.”

Clare and Adam exited the SUV and Wilt climbed into the driver’s seat, already speaking quietly into his radio, no doubt alerting the sheriff to their plans. That was fine, Clare thought as they followed one of the deputy’s trails through the grass and into the woods. Hughes owed them for pushing Shanna this hard so soon after her ordeal. There might be something critical inside Shanna’s former prison, something overlooked by others that would stand out to Clare. At least she hoped so.

The woods were a tangled mess. Low brush intertwined with young-growth trees, creating a living maze that scratched, cut, and bit any chance it got. The mosquitos added insult to injury. Adam cursed successively, each word punctuated by a soft slap as he attempted to defend himself from the insects. Clare brushed her arms and waved a hand past her head every few seconds. You’d never kill them all, only wear yourself out. She’d forgotten how ferocious they could be. She heard Adam say something to the effect of ‘seriously,’ and hid a smile as she ducked under a deadfall.

The sheriff’s team was easy to follow. In several places branches were broken and footprints were easily identifiable in patches of mud. Overhead the larger trees’ canopy created a leafy ceiling, blocking out most of the wan light. Other than the sound of their passage the forest was silent. Motionless. Clare caught herself glancing back, afraid each time Rainier would be there, stalking them, but each time there was only the wild closeness of the woods.

He’s not a person anymore.

Clare jumped at the sound of Adam’s voice. “I can’t believe anyone lived out here. The bugs alone . . .”

“You’d be surprised what people can get used to.”

“Nothing surprises me anymore.”

A swamp revealed itself to the right, most likely the origination of all the insect life, while an older pine growth took over opposite its shore. The trees began at head height and soared to over a hundred feet tall. It was like encountering a family by noticing the children first, then falling beneath the shadows of towering adults. It was easier traveling on the forest floor beneath the trees, and after only a few minutes’ walk, Clare noticed the shift of movement ahead. One by one the deputies became apparent amongst the foliage. The nearest spotted them and nodded once as they passed him.

For a few seconds Clare wondered why the men were grouped here beneath the largest of the trees. A semi-clearing stretched between two behemoth pines, ending in a culmination of dead branches fallen from above years before. Free of their needles, they resembled skeletal hands, curled inward. It was only after she noticed the tilled earth and recognized the outlines of a simple garden that she saw the shack.

It stood against one of the huge pine trees, the fallen branches serving as camouflage to the front and both sides. The walls were pitted and stained barn boards, long abused and weathered to gray by the elements. The roof swept at one angle without a peak, more branches interlaced above its ratty shingles. All said, the building couldn’t have been more than twelve by fifteen feet. There were no windows, only a single door cocked open, darkness beyond.

Clare could see nothing of the interior but even at a distance she felt herself faltering. The section of shadow beyond the door waited for her. She had the notion that it had been waiting for her for a long, long time.

She slowed, then stopped a dozen paces short of the shack. Adam stalled as well. “What is it?” he asked.

“I don’t . . . I don’t know. Something about the doorway.” She stared at it, an impression of being drawn away overtaking her. Not in this moment, but another.

The door swung all the way open, pushed from inside.

Hughes stepped out, registering them both.

The spell broke. Clare drew in a deep breath, sweeping at a crawling sensation on the back of her neck—hands encountering no insects.

“You really shouldn’t be here,” Hughes said, approaching them. He’d removed his hat and his hair was disheveled. His hands were encased by latex gloves. “You need to go back to the road.” Instead of replying, Clare moved past him toward the open door. Hughes followed with Adam trailing last.

She stopped at the doorway, mindful of not traipsing through a crime scene. In the few seconds it took for her eyes to adjust she experienced an assailing bout of vertigo that receded as fast as it arrived. For some reason she expected not the level interior of the shack beyond the door, but a pit, descending into pure darkness.

Instead she took in the simple layout, cataloguing everything her eyes landed on.

It was a single room, no barriers between the two beds against opposite walls. A rusting potbellied stove stood between them, a handful of kindling on the floor near its feet. A few chipped dishes sat beside an aluminum bowl half filled with black water. A rickety bookshelf holding several dozen tomes rested in the nearest corner. But what held her attention the longest was the bed to the right and what was fastened to the wall behind it.

Two stout ropes trailed down from where they were secured to firm beams, their ends terminating in braided loops darkened by blood and time. Two more ropes snaked from the bed’s simple footboard. These looked less worn and more stiff, as if Rainier had grown lax in his precautions and had left Shanna’s legs unbound in more recent years.

Clare glanced at the floor, dusty and ill-kept, and noticed splashes of burgundy on its way to becoming black. The blood trail began halfway across the room and looped to the door and across the entry.

The weight of the scene compounded on Clare, knowing Shanna had spent so many years here, each one a millennia in captivity of a madman. A seething anger glowed molten inside her, and she knew if Rainier were before her now, she would execute him without hesitation.

“I’m not sure how they survived out here,” Hughes said. “But I can see why we weren’t able to spot it from the air, it’s basically invisible. The areas we searched on foot were more south of here. She traveled a long way that night.”

“No sign of where he went?” Adam asked.

“Two of my men are following a footpath leading to the west. Looking at the GPS, it might meet up with a state access road a few miles over. A forensic team is on its way, so we’ll know more soon.”

Clare couldn’t stand looking at the tableau of suffering any longer. She was about to turn away when her eyes snagged on something beneath the bed sans tethers. “What’s that?” she asked, pointing to the edge of what appeared to be a wooden box. When Hughes didn’t answer her, she turned to face him. He was scowling again, deeper than he had at Adam earlier. “Sheriff?” she prodded.

Slowly he peeled off one of the latex gloves and drew out his cell phone. “It’s damned odd is what it is.” He opened his photo app and handed the phone over to her. Adam stepped closer, looking over her shoulder. “I snapped a couple dozen shots upon entering. What’s under the bed are the last four.”

Clare swiped through the pictures, all of them various angles of the shack’s interior with many close-ups of the bed where Shanna had been restrained. The last four images began with the same edge of the wooden box beneath the bed that was visible. The next two were shots of the box out in the open. It was handmade, hewn from what appeared to be scraps matching the walls. The sides were skewed and the top was hinged with rusted wire. A rough cross had been carved into the surface. Clare felt an uncomfortable lurch inside her and hesitated for a few seconds before swiping to the last photo.

The inside of the box was incongruent with its exterior. Red velvet had been fastened within, carefully arranged so there were no wrinkles or creases visible. Another, more carefully etched cross adorned the underside of the lid.

And in the bottom, resting in perfect rows upon the velvet bedding, were carved wooden coins gazing up like sightless eyes.

Chapter Twenty-Five

“To pay for passage into the underworld. You’re shitting me.”

Clare repositioned herself in the chair for the third or fourth time and leaned forward to brace her elbows on her thighs. “No, it’s not exactly like the myths. Our father believed in a mixture of religions—Catholicism, Greek mythology, ancient paganism. He thought the end of the world was coming, the end of days when the earth would fall into chaos before Christ returned. The coins were an offering to Charon, who ferries souls. The sacrifice at the Refuge was supposed to open the gates of death and kickstart Armageddon.”

They were sitting in Hughes’s office with the door shut. The air smelled of the outdoors from their clothing and boots where bits of grass and drying mud clung, some of it falling away to the cheaply carpeted floor. Upon seeing what was inside the box, Clare had been visibly shaken, enough so both Hughes and Adam escorted her back to the road and waiting SUV. Shortly after the forensic team appeared, Hughes had them tail him back to city hall for a few more “in-depth” questions, as he put it.

“And why didn’t you mention these coins before?” Hughes asked. He looked at her differently than he had previously—something subliminal yet vital having shifted in his gaze.

“I was a kid, I didn’t know what was pertinent or normal to the outside world. In retrospect, I should have detailed everything. Later, I came to see it as just another outlandish belief my father had. He was dead along with the superstitions, so why did it matter?”

“How about our chat yesterday? Didn’t think it was pertinent then either?”

Clare sighed. “No, I guess I didn’t. I can’t tell the future, I didn’t know we’d find these coins.” An image of the coin she’d found on the sidewalk flitted through her thoughts and she grimaced, glancing out the office window to the waiting area. Shanna and Adam sat on a couch at the far end of the room. Adam had made Shanna some tea, which she only held and wasn’t drinking. Adam said something to her but she didn’t answer him, wouldn’t look his way. “I was preoccupied at the moment.”

“Look, I’m not trying to come down on you, but I need all the pieces here to see how they fit together.”

“But you are coming down on me. What difference would it have made to the investigation if you had known about the coins? Would that have helped you find my sister all those years ago? Would you have thought Rainier was alive if you’d known about them?” She knew better than most about missing pieces. How they could crawl under your skin and take up residence there, whisper things to you late at night when all you wanted was sleep and it was a thousand miles away. She sighed. This was getting out of control. “I’m sorry I didn’t mention the coins before.”

Hughes stared at his desk and finally nodded. “Okay. I’d say it doesn’t really change anything, but I don’t know that either. Either way, we’re here now. Everything about this doesn’t feel right.” He paused, then said, “My deputies followed the footpath leading away from the shack. It met up with the state road like we thought it might. They found a little hidden niche a short distance away, a bunch more of those dead branches piled up and tire tracks leading onto the state road.”

“His vehicle.”

“Looks like that’s where he kept it. The state road is a mirror of the one where Shanna was found, only less used. If he didn’t have a four-wheel drive, he would’ve been hard pressed to get in and out of there, especially in the winter.”

“I have a feeling he didn’t travel much. From what Shanna said they ate mostly venison and vegetables he grew in the garden. He wouldn’t have wanted to draw attention to himself by leaving often.”

“We’re working on the tire tracks now. Should have at least a general idea of what he’s driving soon.” He waited a beat. “I’d ask your opinion about where you think he’s gone, but I already know what you’ll say.”

She appraised him for a second before saying, “There are numerous cases where kidnappers or sadists hold their victims somewhere remote and continue living another life in society, sometimes for months or years before anyone catches on. But Rainier was a follower, he belonged a hundred percent to my father’s cult. He wouldn’t have known the first thing about leaving the fold and returning to civilization. That’s why he took Shanna where he did. The fact that they survived so long there without anyone noticing is because of his mentality, not in spite of it. If he hasn’t fled the state, he’s hiding close by in deep seclusion, which would cause him to leave his vehicle somewhere remote while he continued on foot.” She paused. “Otherwise he’s being hidden. There were quite a few people who left the cult in those last few months. Rainier might have stayed in contact with any one of them. Maybe they didn’t go very far.”

Hughes sat forward and shuffled a few papers to one side of the cluttered desk. “We’ve already searched the Free Spirit Disciples’ camp. My hands are tied until something new arises. We’re devoting every ounce of manpower to finding Rainier. We’re coordinating with the state police and following up every lead that arises.” He said the last few words staring intently at Clare. “We will find him.”

* * *

The first patters of rain fell as they stepped beneath the hotel’s awning and crossed the threshold. Shanna paused for a moment in the doorway, watching silver pools beginning to form on the cracked parking lot, the slow and steady drip from the canopy’s edge. She had a wistful, faraway look about her that faded as Clare put a hand on her shoulder.

“You okay?”

Shanna nodded. “I like the rain.”

The lobby was deserted except for the desk clerk, who gave them a small wave as they entered. “I’ll be making rounds every so often,” Deputy Wilt said, stopping at the foot of the stairs. “The hotel employees were given pictures of Rainier and the police dedicated a patrol to the area, too, so don’t worry, you’ve got good protection. If you plan on going out, just let me know.”

“Thank you,” Clare and Shanna said almost in tandem. They shared a look and Clare looped her arm in her sister’s, escorting her up the stairs. Adam followed, drinking deeply from a tall coffee he’d picked up on their drive back.

When they made it inside the room Shanna settled into a chair beside the little table and looked out the window. She’d quit picking at the clothing for the meantime and Clare hoped she was getting used to it. As Clare was about to mention a shower for herself, Shanna’s eyes traveled down to the tabletop and settled on the file folder containing the reports regarding the Refuge. Clare started forward, meaning to put it away, but stopped, watching her sister finger the manila cover.

“It’s all about what happened?” Shanna asked without looking at her.

“Yes. Everything they knew at the time. They’ll want to add more now—things you can fill them in on. You don’t have to read it if you don’t want to.”

Shanna began to open the folder but let it fall closed again. “I don’t want to, but I feel like I should.” She gazed up with the beseeching look of a child Clare was slowly getting used to.

She pulled out the chair opposite her sister and sat, taking one of Shanna’s hands in her own. “You don’t have to ask permission anymore. If you don’t want to do something, you don’t have to. And the same goes for what you want to do. I know it’ll take time for it to sink in, but you’re free now.”

Shanna seemed to absorb this, then said, “I can still see his shadow. He kept the candles on his side of the room. The light would shine behind him and throw his shadow across onto my wall. I keep seeing it out of the corner of my eye like he’s always there.”

Clare squeezed her hand. “He’s not. If I have anything to say about it, he won’t ever be in the same room with you again. There’s going to be a deputy constantly in the hotel with us and Adam is right next door. Nothing’s going to happen to you.”

Shanna released a shuddering breath. “Okay.”

A knock came from the door adjoining the next room and Clare stood to answer it, knowing full well it was Adam on the other side. Yet as she unlocked it and began to pull the door open she expected the dank stairwell to be there—the deformed shadow growing ever closer at its bottom. Or maybe it had made it to the stairs by now and it would be at the top, grinning and reaching for her as soon as the door swung wide.

Adam stood in his room, arm outraised to knock again. No basement stairway, no twisted horror. Just her friend. “Everything good? You look pale,” he said.

“I’m always pale.”

“Mind if I come in?”

Clare glanced at Shanna, but she was no longer on the chair. She’d curled herself on the far side of the bed and was motionless. “Hold on,” Clare said, and went to her sister, drawing the blanket crossways over her. “I’m going to be in the next room with Adam, okay?” Shanna’s eyes were heavy-lidded, dropping closed even as she nodded. “I’ll leave the door open.” The urge to kiss her sister’s brow nearly overcame her, but she settled for brushing an errant strand of hair away from her face. Clare guessed she was asleep before she’d left the room.

Adam’s quarters mirrored their own, albeit already messier. His bag was open and drooled clothes onto the floor beside the bed. A laptop case lay against the farthest wall and the computer itself was open on the tabletop beside two miniature bottles of whiskey. “Made yourself at home, I see,” Clare said, dropping into one of the chairs.

Adam pried the concealed holster loose from the back of his jeans and set it on the table beside the whiskey bottles. The black eye of the Sig Sauer pistol within glared at the far wall. “I’m on vacation,” Adam said, sitting across from her. He uncapped one of the small bottles and poured it into the remainder of his coffee. He sipped deeply. “Sweet nectar of life.”

They sat quietly, Clare fidgeting with a frayed thread dangling from the hem of her sweater. “So what do you think?” she asked finally.

“I think it’s one of the craziest circumstances I’ve ever heard of,” Adam said, uncapping the second liquor bottle. “The fact they survived out there all this time and that she escaped . . . it’s insane. And you—I mean, really, how are you? No bullshit.”

“I’m . . .” She paused. It was a great question. How was she? She felt like the thread on her sweater. Pulled loose and out of place, frayed at the end and ready to break. “I’m treading water.” She sat forward and started rolling the empty whiskey bottle back and forth on the table, subconsciously counting each rotation. “I feel like I’m dreaming. Like all this is going to slowly fade and lose its color and I’m going to wake up. And I think if I do, it might be cruelest nightmare I’ve ever had.”

Adam considered the other whiskey, then the coffee, before downing half the little bottle straight. “I know you’ve fought your share already, but this is a whole new animal altogether.”

She nodded, thinking of what Shanna said earlier about Rainier’s shadow following her. “It’s going to take a lot of time, for both of us. It’s like she’s been brought back from the dead. Like that Tom Hanks movie where he’s on the island.”

“Cast Away. Love that flick. It comes on TV and it’s game over for the afternoon. But you have an advantage Helen Hunt didn’t.”

“What’s that?”

“You aren’t married to a dentist.”

She laughed. “No. No, I’m not.”

“How is Eric, by the way?”

The thought of him and the notion she might be calling him her fiancé soon sent a nervy ripple through her that wasn’t unpleasant in the least. “He’s good. Busy, but he’s set on coming here if I’m not home soon.”

“Tell him next time I’m out your way I’m taking him to Highlands and we’re playing eighteen. And this time I’m getting him drunk beforehand so he won’t kick my ass.”

“I’ll tell him.”

Adam finished his whiskey and appraised her. “You look tired.”

“Number one of twenty thousand things you should never say to a woman.”

“Umm-hmm. I don’t really mean on the outside.”

That caught her off guard, and the little bottle she was rolling slipped free and fell to the floor. As Adam retrieved it she wondered how much he’d surmised concerning her state of mind. “It’s like an old wound reopening that never really healed,” she said quietly.

“And the coins? How do they fit into all this?”

“I already told you, my father believed—”

“I know what he believed. I’m talking about the look on your face when you saw that picture on Hughes’s phone.”

Adam’s gaze was a solid thing. She’d seen him use this type of look before, usually through the filter of a video while he interviewed a current or former cult member. Could he see the tumult going on inside her head? See her battling with what to tell him and what to hold back? She swallowed, her mouth dry as a dune. “There were twenty-two coins in the box.” She hesitated, telling herself he would pronounce her crazy if she continued, but forged on anyway. “When we went out to Parson’s camp I counted twenty-one people living there.”

Adam frowned. “You think the coins are for them?” She nodded, barely. “And the extra one?”

“It’s either for Shanna or her son.”

He drank the last of his coffee and set it down. “When I was undercover on narcotics before the bureau there was this little café in Brooklyn I liked. I’d go there for breakfast some mornings, but mostly I’d go to read on weekend evenings or any afternoons I’d have off. They had great coffee. So this one day I notice a woman across the café. She’s pretty with dark hair and reading a book. Good enough, I think, I’m all hers if I can get the nerve up to ask her out. So the next time she’s in there a few weeks later I notice she’s moved a few seats closer to mine. I do the same, slowly closing the gap. Something out of a romantic comedy, right? Eventually we end up sitting beside each other and I start up a conversation. She’s great, really smart, funny, loves to read. Finally I mention our little courting approach we did from opposite ends of the restaurant and she busts out laughing. You know why?”

“No.”

“She had sensitive eyes and the sun that time of year kept invading the table she was sitting at. She was moving to avoid getting blinded, not because she was aware of me at all.”

Clare smiled. “Do all guys think the world revolves around them?”

“Not this one, but I’m a detective, right? I’m astute in observations. But in the end it was a coincidence. Nothing more.”

They sat quietly watching one another for a time before Clare said, “They’re exactly the same as the coins we carved. Exactly.”

“I get that. But what I’m trying to say is, maybe the number isn’t important. Maybe twenty-two is a number of power or some happy horseshit Rainier believes in. Have you asked Shanna about it?”

“Yes. She didn’t know what was in the box. Only that he’d take it with him whenever he left.” She reached out to start rolling the whiskey bottle again, but stopped herself. “Parson looked at me like he’d been expecting me to show up in his yard one day. Like he knew exactly who I was.”

“Okay, we don’t know a lot about the guy and his followers, I’ll give you that. What else did you notice out there?”

“Parson and his family all live in the biggest house, common in fringe sects, but there’s no main worship hall, which is strange. Maybe they meet in Parson’s home. No regimented dress either. No physical abuse signs, no hesitation about entering their homes or sense of hostility toward outsiders.”

“So maybe they are as hippie-ish as their name implies. Not too many boxes ticked on the old cult chart.”

“See, that’s what I keep coming back to,” Clare said, sitting forward. “They’re a religious fringe group, right? But where are the typical signs? Parson has a ministry near a larger city, then up and moves to the middle of nowhere on a whim—why?”

“Because he heard the Lord’s calling. That’s what they all say.”

“Right, which is almost always bullshit. Yet he doesn’t implement any of the signature standards most cults employ.” She hesitated. “There were a few people who left before everything went to hell at the Refuge. Maybe Parson was one of them and I just don’t remember him.”

Adam crossed his arms and looked darkly at the floor. “Let me do some digging. I know the sheriff did his own but I’m not sure how far he pushed it. At the very least we might be able to eliminate Parson and his groupies from the mix. But right now I have to agree with him that we don’t have anything to push on.”

“Something’s off about those people. That place. I can feel it.”

“But you said yourself they don’t have much in common with a typical cult.”

“No, but—”

“Listen.” Adam’s voice lowered and he sat forward. “We’ll check into them, but I worry having your sister suddenly back in your life, having all this shit from the past suddenly sprung on you again might be clouding your judgement. I just don’t want us to be making leaps where we shouldn’t be, that’s all.”

Clare started to protest again, but then nodded. Adam wasn’t going to move on Parson’s group any more than Hughes was. At least not yet. At the same time her mind was a thousand miles away. She hadn’t spared a thought about the individuals who had taken their leave of the cult before the mass suicide in the intervening years. But now they could be anywhere, be anybody, and she wouldn’t know. She brushed back the disturbing notion and focused instead on the plan she’d begun forming that morning. She’d already made a decision to go ahead with it and was working out how to execute it when Adam said something else that pulled her back so fast she got the equivalent of mental whiplash.

“Sometimes I wonder what everything would have been like if my mom and brother would’ve stayed with Dad and I. I wonder if we could’ve patched up our life and had something more normal.” He smiled sadly. “Second chances and all that nonsense.”

“How long’s it been since you spoke to them?”

“Almost ten years. My mother’s still involved with an offshoot of the cult and my brother . . . well, he might as well be dead.”

“I’m sorry.”

He nodded. “But that’s nothing like this. Anyway, you should get some rest too. Guessing sleep’s been a limited commodity lately.”

“I’d love a nap but don’t think I could sleep.” Clare stood and headed for the door. “You hungry? Think I’ll go out and grab some food for us.”

“Starved,” Adam said, pulling his laptop closer. “I’ll start digging on Parson and Rainier, see if I can get anywhere and maybe run up an offensive bill from the mini bar at the same time.”

“You are on vacation.”

“That I am.”

She paused at the doorway. “So whatever happened with your diner romance?”

It elicited the grin she was hoping for. “That’s the damnedest thing, she only drank decaf. It didn’t work out.” They both laughed and she was about to leave the room when he spoke again. “Hey, what I said about second chances a minute ago? They’re not nonsense. Not at all.”

Clare nodded slowly, giving him a last smile before going to check on Shanna. She’d shifted in her sleep and faced away from the windows now. Clare watched her for a few moments, fixing her presence in her mind as if her sister might wink out of existence as soon as she looked away. In the lobby she threw a quick wave at Wilt, who stood beside the desk, assuring him she would be back soon.

Outside the rain had tapered to a gentle mist, the scent of wet earth and leaves adding to the notion fall was waiting not far ahead. She turned the heater on high after starting the car and sat motionless with the air rushing over her face. Was she really going to go through with her plan? It was dangerous and she’d be breaking more than a few laws in the process. She’d almost talked herself out of it when she pictured the hopscotch grid, its lines scuffed away in an attempt to hide they’d ever been there in the first place. She saw the first coin becoming a button, the second disappearing into thin air.

She wasn’t going insane. Wasn’t going to end up like her father. She’d prove it to herself after dark.

Clare squeezed the steering wheel hard enough to turn her knuckles white, then put the car into gear and pulled away from the hotel.

Chapter Twenty-Six

“What is this?”

Shanna stood looking down at the open box, the smell of pepperoni, sausage, and tomato sauce wafting up from inside.

“Pizza,” Clare said, pouring them glasses of pop from a two-liter bottle and prying apart the paper plates she’d picked up while running errands. “And it’s pretty much the best thing in the world besides wine.”

“Did you bring some of that too?” Shanna asked.

Clare and Adam shared a smile. “Let’s take it slow. We’ll see how Coke and deep dish sits with you first.”

They dined in Clare’s room, which was now Shanna’s as well. There was no way she was letting her sister stay in a room alone, even if it were the one right next to hers. As far as sleeping arrangements, maybe she’d talk to the front desk about getting them accommodations with double beds. At the moment she was more worried about how Shanna would take to food she’d never laid eyes upon, let alone digested, before.

Shanna tentatively took a bite of pepperoni and chewed, eyes roving about the room. “This is . . .” Clare waited, worried any second the pizza would make a reappearance in the form of an upchuck. “. . . very good,” she finished, immediately taking another, larger, bite.

“It’s not New York pizza, but it’ll do,” Adam said, perched on the bed with his own slice.

“Pizza is better in New York?” Shanna asked.

“Best in the world.”

“That’s debatable,” Clare said.

“Them’s fightin’ words.”

Shanna had been awake when Clare returned from the other side of town, arms full of food and drink, the other purchases she made tucked safely away behind the front seat of her rental. Her sister had looked fresher, more there than before she’d napped. Clare had already been running through the options for Shanna’s deprogramming. There were several institutes she worked with that were versed in treating ex-cult members, but in Shanna’s case she’d not only been subject to a caustically controlled upbringing, but also to the severe trauma of captivity and abuse. Basic deprogramming wasn’t going to be sufficient.

Lia, Clare thought as she watched Shanna finish her very first piece of pizza ever. Lia will be able to help her. She made a mental note to text her friend later. God, what would Lia say when she found out what was happening? All Clare knew was it would involve incredulous swearing. A lot of it.

Shanna stifled a petite belch and blinked at the remaining pizza. “I want more but I’m too full.”

“The struggle is real,” Adam said, grabbing another piece.

Shanna picked up a cup of pop, smelled it, and took a small sip. Her face constricted and she coughed, setting the cup back down. “I don’t like that.”

“It’s an acquired taste,” Clare said, pouring her a glass of water.

Shanna didn’t seem to hear her. Her gaze was birdlike, flitting across the contents of the room without ever fully settling on anything. One hand began tugging at her opposite wrist.

“Think I’ll get a little more work done,” Adam said, taking his rapidly disappearing piece of pizza with him into the next room. Whether he had noticed Shanna’s increasing discomfort or not, Clare couldn’t tell, but she guessed it was the former and he’d made himself scarce to allow them time alone.

Shanna finally stared out the window, her hand continuing to knead the scarred ring of her wrist. The day’s rain had moved on and now only an overcast afternoon sky hovered above the trees.

“Would you like to go outside?” Clare asked. “Is this all too much?” She motioned to the room. Slowly Shanna nodded.

They made their way downstairs, Clare offering her arm partway to the lobby. Shanna took it without a word and a warmth buffeted her heart. Wilt was seated in one of the overstuffed chairs before the hearth reading a magazine when they approached and told him of their plan. He said he’d wander along behind them. “Won’t even know I’m there.”

On instinct, Clare turned left out the front doors and led them around the side of the hotel to the overgrown and tree-studded rear lot. She’d spied a narrow trail running between the two properties earlier and they took it now. Judging by the general direction she thought it might encounter the river at some point. She hoped it would.

Shanna’s tension appeared to ease the moment they stepped onto the trail. The tightness of her grip on Clare’s arm lessened and she walked without their hips and legs actually brushing with each step. Clare stole glances at her from time to time. In profile Shanna resembled their father, the sharpness of his features prominent in her own, and Clare wondered how she’d ever second-guessed their relation.

Shanna glanced at her. “Why are you looking at me?”

“Because I’m so glad you’re here.”

The path narrowed to the point where they had to walk single file to edge past the reaching branches of trees before it widened out and joined another, more beaten trail looping across a clearing. At the end of the clearing the land dipped away and the river appeared as a great sweeping curve of water rushing over a series of miniature falls. Someone had erected a half attempt at a fence and they paused near it, looking out over the drop. Wilt, good to his word, ambled a hundred yards to their left, inspecting a row of pines jutting from the soft soil near the riverbank.

Shanna breathed in deeply, closing her eyes. “This is better. I’m sorry. The room is very nice, but all of a sudden it was really small. It’s all so different.”

“I understand.”

“He used to take me outside. I can’t remember if I told you that. He would tie a rope here,” Shanna touched her stomach. “And let me walk beside him. He’d let me help weed the garden in the summer and collect the vegetables in the fall. We’d go on walks, but never far. He said it was dangerous out in the woods.”

“And it was, for him, if you’d gotten free. And you did,” Clare said, squeezing her hand. “You fought and got free, and that rope is gone.”

“I can still feel it. Just like the ones around my wrists.” Clare didn’t know what to say so she hugged her instead. When she released her, there was a sheen of moisture in Shanna’s eyes. “I named him Hector. My son. I remember Father reciting the Iliad and saying Hector never wanted the war that came to him, but he was brave and fought anyway.”

Clare’s throat tightened and she had to fight back her own tears. “We’ll find him. I promise.”

“I know the odds of him being . . . being alive aren’t good. But I need to know. I have to.”

Clare thought of telling her what she was planning on doing once night had fallen, and struck it down. Shanna would want to come. Would insist on it. She was drawn back from her thoughts as Shanna spoke again.

“I’ve read about beautiful things,” she said slowly. “My books talked about love and caring. About good over evil. But is that how the world really is? Or is it like the ropes?” She touched one of her wrists.

Clare opened her mouth to reply, to ensure her there was beauty to witness—the kindness of strangers, friends and their trust, sunrises that shrunk worries and problems to their relative size. But her eyes fell on her sister’s scarred wrists and when she closed her hands she could feel her own wounds, healed but forever present.

In the end she wasn’t able to say anything.

Chapter Twenty-Seven

They hadn’t spoken since leaving the riverbank, its swirls and eddies mirroring Clare’s mind.

With every step they took retracing their path, she tried summoning words of comfort and assertion that the world wasn’t all Shanna had experienced. Wasn’t even what she herself had gone through. Not completely. She’d found a semblance of stability in her life, albeit one that swayed from time to time under gusts of anxiety and full-blown hurricanes of panic. But there was always light after the storms. Eric was the greater source of the illumination—a glow in his easy and quiet manner she’d held onto for years. She’d always been half afraid of the love she felt for him, sure at some point it would go away, while at the same time terrified of what it would mean if it didn’t. She wanted to comfort her sister and tell her someday what she’d gone through wouldn’t define her, but felt too hypocritical to say anything of the sort. For now all she could offer was a shoulder of support, and what she would attempt after the sun fell below the horizon.

Now, with the uppermost angles of the hotel’s roof coming into view, she recalled something Shanna had said in the SUV before she’d ventured into the woods with Adam.

“What did you mean earlier when you said Rainier isn’t a person anymore?”

Shanna’s pace slowed and Clare matched it. She waited, letting her take her time. Dimly she was aware of Wilt farther down the path pausing as well to give them privacy.

“Before, when you asked if I’d ever heard anything or hallucinated, I said no. But that wasn’t really the truth. I don’t . . .” Shanna started, and grimaced. “I don’t know if it was real.”

“What?”

“It was a while ago, I don’t know how long. It was raining, I remember that. A thunderstorm. That’s what woke me, thunder. Normally it was always dark at night; Harold didn’t like wasting candles. But that night, when the thunder faded away, I could see the room, and I could hear something too.” Even though it was still daylight and an armed sheriff’s deputy stood only fifty yards away, Clare felt a creeping sense of unease. She resisted the urge to glance around at the brush hemming the path in. “Harold was in the farthest corner, and he was kneeling and rocking back and forth. He was talking, whispering. And that’s when I heard it.”

“What?” Clare’s mouth was dry.

“The other voice. Something was whispering to him, or with him. I couldn’t tell. Then it went dark, like someone had blown the candle out, but Harold didn’t do it because he was still talking. When it was dark again it felt like . . .” Shanna’s voice trailed off and she looked away.

“What did it feel like?”

“Like there was someone else in the room with us.”

A breeze came up, coursing through the trees, and it didn’t take much of Clare’s imagination to hear a voice within the branches. “What happened then?”

“I pretended to sleep and I heard Harold get into bed. After a while I fell asleep for real, but I was afraid. I thought that whoever he’d been talking to was still there, watching me to see if I was faking or not.”

Clare felt like she’d been injected with some paralytic venom. Her thoughts kept returning her to the basement, to their father speaking to the pit in the floor, to the voice saying her name as she fled up the stairs.

“Are you okay?” Shanna said. She’d grasped Clare’s upper arm, and for a split second the sight of her hand there dredged another memory up. A hand holding tightly to her arm right where Shanna’s was, except the hand was different—the fingers longer, knuckles rugged. And it hurt.

“Yeah, I’m . . . I’m okay. That sounds like it was a really bad dream.”

Shanna studied her for a moment and let go. “I tried telling myself it was the next morning. But dreams and awake feel very different.”

Clare silently wished she could say the same, but as of late the two had begun to bleed into one another. She started walking again and Shanna followed suit. “Sometimes nightmares are so real they follow you into waking. It’s really frightening, but in the end they can’t hurt you.”

As they neared the hotel and the path opened up to the clearing Shanna said, “I’m sorry for not telling the truth right away.”

“It’s okay. I’m glad you told me now.”

“Did you ever hear anything like that?”

“No.” The lie came so abruptly Clare didn’t have time to think about it. She gathered herself. “No, nothing like that. I think with everything that’s happened the stress has accumulated and it’s leaking out through places it shouldn’t. That’s all.”

She seemed to absorb this. Clare was in the process of fabricating another affirmation that wasn’t solely for her sister’s benefit when Shanna slowed and pointed. “What is that?”

Clare took in the glass structure growing from the rear of the hotel and wondered how she’d missed the solarium before. “It’s a pool room,” she said.

Shanna wandered in its direction. “What’s a pool room?”

“It’s like an indoor pond or lake where people can swim.”

“Like in The Great Gatsby except inside?”

“Yes.”

They approached the thick glass rising up from a concrete patio that didn’t look like it had seen a broom or leaf blower in ages. Shanna pressed her hands against the glass and looked inside. Clare did the same. The room was rectangular, the pool itself sitting closer to the opposite side while a spacious hot tub steamed near the emergency exit on the right.

“I didn’t like the ending of that book. It made me very sad,” Shanna said after a time.

“Me too.” Clare glanced at her sister, how her forehead was pressed against the glass, how wide her eyes were. “Why don’t we go in? I’ve got something you might like.”

They linked arms again and left the ghostly prints of their hands on the glass behind.

* * *

Shanna perched on the edge of the bed after stripping off her shoes and socks. Even with the several bathings she’d received since being found, her feet were still stained dark from years of the shack’s dirty floor. Clare took out her phone and sat down beside her, hitting the wake button. The background screen was a shot of her and Eric when they’d traveled to wine country the year before. They were leaning against a railing overlooking a vineyard at sunset, arms around each other’s waists.

“He has a nice smile,” Shanna said.

“He does, doesn’t he?” She recalled they’d both been a little squiffy off a few glasses of excellent cabernet.

“Will you marry him?”

The question was so innocent and sudden it threw her completely. “I . . . I don’t . . . I’m not sure.”

“Is he a good man? Someone you can trust, like you said?”

“Yes.”

Shanna nodded once. “Then it’s good you found each other.”

The simplicity of the statement shot straight to her core and lodged there. Clare spent another few seconds looking at the background photo before tapping the music app. She scrolled and found the album she was looking for, a compilation of classical music she sometimes put on to soothe her nerves. Within the album she located the song she was looking for and hit play.

Music flowed out of the phone’s speakers, tinny but still beautiful. Shanna blinked at the device and leaned forward. “What is that?”

“It’s called ‘Pachelbel’s Canon in D.’” Clare tried handing the phone to Shanna but she didn’t reach out to accept it.

“Is it like a television? I don’t like television.”

“Kind of. But if you just want it to play music, that’s all it’ll do. Here, it’s okay.” She picked up one of Shanna’s hands and placed the device in it, showing her how to touch the screen and maneuver between songs. All the while the intermingling violins poured from the phone, low but swelling. She smiled, watching her sister sway slightly to the music. Adam leaned into the room through the connected doorway a second later and motioned to her.

“I’ll be right next door,” she said, squeezing Shanna’s shoulder.

There were a few more liquor bottles surrounding Adam’s laptop when she approached the table in his room. “What? Pizza makes me parched,” he said, noticing her look. He swept the empties to the side.

“So what did you find?” she said, settling into the chair opposite him.

“Okay, you want current stuff or history?”

“History. Let’s work our way forward.”

“Harold Davis Rainier. Born nineteen sixty-seven to George and Helen Rainier of Star Lake, Minnesota. George was a welder and died in seventy-four of lung cancer when Harold was seven. Helen worked at a laundromat and when she lost her job a year later, mother and son headed south to Brooklyn Park, then on to Sheffield. They were there for a few years, then they’re off the map until Helen kicks the bucket in eighty-eight. She was buried in Lakeville Cemetery without fanfare. According to the obituary she was survived by her only son, no other family or friends mentioned. Harold went on to attend Fairfield University, where he eventually—”

“Met my father. I know that much,” Clare said. “Okay, so nothing shocking in his backstory, a young kid looking for a father figure meets up with Simon Kinley and the rest is history.”

“Appears so, though I am intrigued by the missing years between adolescence and university. Think I’ll tap a resource who owes me some favors. He has . . . a different set of parameters he can use to gather intel.”

She stared at him. “A hacker.”

“He prefers ‘digital desperado.’ Don’t ask, he’s from Texas.”

“All right, what else?”

“Started digging into the Free Spirit Disciples before I flew out, but really at its heart the sect is the Parson family. Their background is a little more interesting than Rainier’s. Steven Jones Parson, born in nineteen sixty-two to John and Eileen Parson of Maple Ridge, Minnesota. John was a Protestant minister and lost his clergyhood when he got caught with his hand in the collection jar. He was also discovered in communion with a barely legal choir girl around the same time.”

“You’re enjoying the religious double entendres, aren’t you?”

“Let me have my fun. John’s parish boots him in disgrace and amidst the turmoil, Eileen goes for a walk off the roof of a five-story department store. John takes young Steven and moves several towns over to Valley Falls, and there proceeds into a spiral of alcoholism until his eventual demise in nineteen eighty-nine. Steven apparently heeds the call of the cloth, either because or in spite of his father’s past, and opens up his nondenominational church in nineteen ninety after spending some time bumming around the local art scene in Minneapolis. Steven and Margaret are married in ninety-two and their children, Daniel and Felicity, come along in ninety-four and ninety-five respectively.” Adam sat forward, peering over the top of his computer. “Now this is where things get interesting. In two thousand five, Steven takes a page from Daddy’s playbook and decides to skim quite a sum off the church books. Nothing’s conclusively proven and the lawsuits go nowhere. The Parson family packs up in late two thousand six and purchases forty acres of secluded wilderness in northern Cairn County, Minnesota. Presumably with the skimmed money.”

“So the Refuge and the disciples missed each other by five years.”

“Yep. The whole thing smells of cod.”

She thought for a moment. “My father, Parson, and Rainier were all around the same age, but Parson never attended the same university as my father and Rainier, correct?”

“Nope. Not on record, anyway. It’ll be interesting to see what the desperado turns up. I’ll send over the request tonight. He works fast, should have some more info in the next few days.”

“Do I want to know why a hacker who calls himself the desperado owes you favors?”

“You unequivocally do not.” Adam grinned, looking pleased with himself.

She listened for a second, hearing the soft echo of piano keys in the next room. Shanna had moved on to Mozart. “So you mentioned current stuff too?”

“Yeah. It was the books Rainier brought for Shanna that got me noodling. I’m sure the good sheriff is following up the same line of thinking, but I thought I’d do it anyway in case he didn’t. It was too far away to see if the spines had any library barcodes on them, so I made a couple phone calls to the two nearest libraries and had them check Rainier’s name in the system. I didn’t think he’d be dumb enough to register himself like that and he wasn’t—no Harold Rainier ever checked out books in a hundred-mile radius of here. Next I put in calls to the bookstores. There’s four in the area, two in strip malls and two secondhand shops off the beaten path. I emailed them all the sketch of Rainier and described him over the phone. Heard back conclusively from three of the four—they’ve never seen him.”

“He could’ve had most of the books before the fire. I’m guessing he wouldn’t have wanted to expose himself unnecessarily just for entertainment.”

“Right. He’s a sick bastard, but he did have the wherewithal to know Shanna needed some form of escape to keep her sane.” He paused, lowering his voice. “How is she, by the way?”

“Considering everything? Remarkable. She’s . . . very tough.”

“Runs in the family.”

She smiled, looking down at her hands. The scars there sobered her. “Thank you for all the research. Backtracking the books was a great idea.”

Adam shrugged. “Aw, shucks.”

She rose and gestured at the next room. “I better check in.”

“Sounds good.”

“Okay if I leave the doors open tonight?”

“Fine with me. I’m still on East Coast time so I’m shot. Turning in soon.”

“Okay. See you in the morning.” She left the door in their room open six inches and took comfort knowing Adam was only feet away. Clare was about to ask Shanna how she was liking the music, but stopped short. She was curled up the bed, eyes closed, a fan of hair over her face. The phone, resting on the pillow beside her head, played softly on.

She debated on trying to get Shanna undressed and under the covers, but decided in the end to just fold the comforter over her. She lay on the bed next to her sister and stared at the ceiling, mind freewheeling. There was something hidden tying the two cults together, she just wasn’t seeing it. She figured the natural conduit was Rainier and Parson, but how they connected was also wreathed in fog. Despite living a hundred-odd miles apart in generally the same time period, what else did they share in common?

A love for control for one. A fervent belief for two. Beyond that, she couldn’t say.

Her phone chirped, startling her. It was Eric, checking in. It would be around their supper time out there, the sun beginning its descent to quench itself in the Pacific. She yearned for the sound of the gulls and crash of the surf so badly at that moment she would’ve given anything to stand on the soft sand and let her bare feet sink in to the ankles.

She took the phone into the bathroom and shut the door as to not disturb Shanna or Adam. Eric picked up on the second ring.

“How’s the sunset there?” she asked quietly.

“Dim without you. How’s the northwoods?”

“Just plain dim. We’ve made some progress though.” She related the events of the day, finishing up with what they’d learned regarding Rainier and Parson. He was quiet for a time when she’d finished.

“Are you being careful?” he finally asked.

“Yes. Definitely.”

“I mean, what are the chances this guy’s going to come after Shanna?”

“I don’t know, but it’s not likely. Given how everything went down when she escaped I’d say he’s scared to death right now. He had an opportunity to follow her to the house where she was found, but didn’t. That says he’s a coward. I’d guess he’s in hiding right now but he’ll reveal himself soon.” Her mind slid to the item tucked behind the seat of her rental before coming back to the conversation.

“Still, he’s mentally unbalanced. You don’t know what people like that will do.”

You have no idea, honey. “No, you’re right. But we have good protection. Doors are locked, and everyone and their brother is on the lookout for him. By the way, Adam says hello and that he wants a rematch at golf.”

Eric laughed. “Tell him he’ll have to actually play golf first. Whatever he did last time was nowhere near it.”

Clare stifled a giggle. “Oh, I’m totally telling him.”

“Good! Hope he can use his pistol better than a nine iron. On another note, is he that much better company than me?”

“No, of course not.”

“Then why’s he there and I’m here?” The playful jab was belied by something in his voice.

“He’s here on an unofficial-official capacity. He wanted to help.”

“So do I.”

“I know you do.”

There was a drawn moment before Eric sighed. “No, I get it. I’m just missing you, that’s all. Jealous Adam is sleeping next to you and I’m not.”

She laughed again. “He’s sleeping in the next room.”

“Thank God for small favors.”

She quieted. “I really miss you too, honey.”

“Listen, I have the presentation tomorrow, then I’m booking my flight for Thursday. Unless something changes drastically, it sounds like you might be there awhile.”

She hesitated before sighing resignedly. “It’s a plan. I don’t want you to have to come all the way out here, but I want to see you too much to tell you no.”

“Wouldn’t listen anyway.” When he spoke again his voice had lost the warmth of before. “How have you been feeling since you got there? Any panic attacks?”

She swallowed. Part of her wanted to spill everything, tell him of the stairway that wasn’t there, of the coin that vanished from the room, of the memories circling her mind like sharks in dark water, only the tips of their fins visible. But she couldn’t. Not yet. If she told him those things she might say what she was intending on doing tonight, and that wouldn’t fly at all.

“Nothing I can’t handle,” she said. It was as close to the truth as she could get.

“I’m worried about you. I’ve had this edgy feeling since you left. And I know it’s everything that’s happened along with us being apart, but it’s almost this compulsion to just fly out there and bring you home no matter what it takes. Total masculine overreaction, I know, but it’s there nonetheless.”

Clare closed her eyes. “Don’t worry.”

“I’ve never asked you this before because it isn’t my place and you’ve always known how to cope best with your challenges, but I’m going to ask now. If things get scary or weird, run away, all right? Don’t think about what you should do or what’s right, or anyone else. I want you to run away. Run to me.”

It felt like a hand was slowly encircling her throat. She struggled to answer. “I will. I’ll run away.”

* * *

Her phone read 1:25 A.M. when she finally climbed out of bed. She’d turned out the lights and lain down after hanging up with Eric, deceit draping so heavily across her shoulders she’d barely made it to the bed. She’d promised him, said she would keep herself out of harm’s way at all costs. Except he didn’t know she’d already done that when she was thirteen. She’d run away and left the one person in the world who needed her most behind. It was only through the chance turning of the universe she’d gotten a second chance. She wasn’t going to run anymore.

Clare stood in the center of the room, listening. Shanna hadn’t moved a muscle since falling asleep and Adam’s room was dark, soft snores issuing from within. She made her way to the door and eased back the locks, wincing as the mechanisms released. When no lights came on and nobody said her name, she sidled through the door’s opening and pulled it gently shut. She waited again, listening for sounds of stirring both from inside the room and from the lobby. All was quiet.

The hallway led past the sweeping stairway and she skirted the opening quickly, throwing a glance down into the lobby. Deputy Wilt had changed shifts at some point and another uniformed man sat in the chair before the cold hearth, eyes on a phone in one hand.

Clare hurried down the hall, past closed doors, heart galloping wildly even though she wasn’t breaking any laws. Not yet, at least. That would come soon enough.

The stairs leading to the first floor were well-lit and empty. She took the steps two at a time and hesitated only half a second at the bottom before pushing out through the hotel’s side entrance. She half expected an alarm to blare even though she knew better. With the entrance secured behind her she half jogged around the side of the building, keeping to the edge of the parking lot’s lights until she was even with her rental.

Five steps and she was at the driver’s door. Inside.

She panted as if she’d sprinted a mile. Through the lobby’s glass doors she could see the deputy glance once around, then return to his phone. She’d made it.

The box containing the Nikon camera and telephoto lens was still behind the seat where she’d put it. She’d picked it up while out getting dinner that afternoon. The idea, which had taken root on the ride back into town after seeing the picture of the coins on Hughes’s phone, guided her toward the electronics store in the mall while she waited for their pizzas to be made. During their conversation earlier she’d been afraid Eric would bring up the purchase at any second, possibly noticing the debit in their online account.

Gee, honey, why’d you spend four hundred ninety-six dollars at Northern Electronics?

And what would she have said? She wouldn’t have told him the truth—that she was planning on getting the evidence she knew Parson and his group were hiding. Wouldn’t have told him she was going to be breaking several laws while doing so. No, she would’ve made something up.

Lies and illusions were becoming easier for her. Maybe she was her father’s daughter after all.

Clare shoved the thought away so hard she almost felt it tip and shatter in the corner of her mind. She was nothing like him, and yet . . . they shared some of the same mental anguish. The difference was her father hadn’t received any help while she’d spent years in therapy and took medication. His illness had pushed him over the edge and led him to commit atrocities, while hers crippled her personally at times but for the most part she’d struggled and won a hard-fought life that she loved. If only he would’ve gotten help, things could have been so different. Yet the past had led her here, to this moment. This decision.

There’s still time, she told herself in a voice that sounded very much like Eric’s. You can go back inside and pretend you were never going to do this.

She sat still for thirty seconds, counting every one of them, before keying the ignition and pulling out of the parking lot into the night.

Chapter Twenty-Eight

The darkness was a solid thing beyond the glare of her headlights.

She swept down the narrow county road, gravel popping beneath the tires a background soundtrack to her passage, the lonesome dirt lanes and empty miles of wilderness pressing in upon her like the night itself.

The steering wheel felt slick in her hands and she dried her palms on her pant legs. The urge to find the next wide spot in the road and turn around was strong, but she couldn’t. Hughes had no intention of investigating Parson’s camp any further, and even Adam had thought the number of coins Rainier carved might be coincidence. Without evidence of the men’s connection, the law’s hands were tied. So it was up to her to gather proof on her own. All she needed was a picture of Rainier, Shanna’s son, or even a vehicle that hadn’t been there on their first visit. With something that damning, Hughes would have no choice but to move forward with a raid, or it might be enough to convince Adam to do something in an official capacity. She was ready to be charged with a crime and accept the consequences if it led to Rainier’s capture. First and foremost for Shanna and her son’s sake, but also because of what Eric had mentioned on the phone earlier in the evening.

There was something coming. She felt it too. It was like lying on a set of train tracks and feeling the thrum of an approaching engine through the iron. She wanted nothing more than to find Shanna’s son and take the two of them far away from here before they were all run down by whatever was speeding toward them.

The road bent to the left and she took her foot off the gas. The drive was somewhere just ahead. If she wasn’t careful she’d blow right by it.

There. Clare slowed the rental but let it coast past the lane disappearing into the woods. A few hundred yards beyond was an approach, long since abandoned and grown over with weeds and brush. She guided the car onto it, wincing at the scrape of branches against paint, until she was sure the rental wouldn’t be noticeable from the road. Using only the dashboard lights to see by, she unboxed the camera and lens and added batteries. She’d purposely bought the same make she owned back home, so in under five minutes she was ready to go.

The rusty-hinge creak of crickets met her, louder than she ever remembered from her childhood. The slight breeze from earlier in the day had become a steady wind tossing the tree tops. As much as she disliked the sound, it would provide cover as she moved closer to the camp. Clare touched the holster and pistol at her back once, twice, making sure it was there, slung the camera around her neck, and set off up the deserted road.

When she turned onto the camp’s driveway she had a momentary paralyzing fear someone was standing ahead in the dark. She didn’t see anything but felt it. The back of her throat burned with acid. She waited, eyes chasing shadows that seemed to slink in and out of the woods. When no one confronted her she started up the drive, hand lingering near the gun at her back.

The night was dark enough to dull details, but she could make out the two tire ruts defining the lane. She kept to the right side, stepping on the shorter grass to muffle her footsteps. On three instances she paused, sure she’d heard someone approaching through the woods, but each time nothing appeared out of the gloom. Her stomach was a tightened mass of nerves and she had to keep wetting her lips, which dried out immediately. A few minutes later another sound blended with, then overtook, the chirring of insects.

The hiss and snap of fire.

She could make out its glow now, a ruddy orange backlighting the opening at the top of the lane where the trees drew away and the clearing began in earnest. Without slowing, Clare sidled off the drive and into a gap in the woods, carefully weaving through a nest of thorns that picked and snatched at her clothes. Within the rim of forest she drew closer to the camp until a stand of low pines afforded her enough protection to observe without the fear of being seen.

The fire ring in the center of the clearing flared with light. The bonfire leaped ten, then fifteen feet into the air before receding like a blazing spray of surf. She counted seventeen people gathered in the glow and placed the camera to her eye, zooming in on each of their faces.

Rainier wasn’t among them. Neither was a boy around the age Shanna’s son would be. She hadn’t spotted Parson or his family either.

Clare snapped off half a dozen shots of the circle, then retreated back into the safety of the trees. She moved slowly and carefully, stepping over fallen logs and dead branches, all land mines waiting to expose her position to anyone within earshot. Halfway to the nearest structure she realized an oversight she should’ve planned for. Mosquitos. They swarmed in the hundreds, brushing against her face, needling at any exposed skin while drilling directly through the fabric of her shirt. She mentally cursed herself for not purchasing bug spray while preparing for the reconnaissance.

When she’d neared the closest cabin she waited until a chorus of laughter rang from the fire ring before hurrying across the gap between the woods and the building. She came to a stop below a darkened window and slowly peered over the sill.

The interior was devoid of life. An unmade bed, some dishes cluttering the table in the kitchen, a scattering of books on the small table by the front door.

Clare sidled back into the woods and moved to the next cabin. And the next. They were dark and empty, the only lights she could see in the entire camp belonging to the Parsons’ household several doors down. If Rainier was here, that’s where he would be. She knew it as simply as knowing which direction the sun would rise in the morning.

Someone strummed a guitar near the fire as she picked her way through the forest’s edge. There was a burst of laughter, then scattered applause before one of the men began playing and singing an off-key rendition of “The Sound of Silence.” Clare came even with the Parsons’ home and surveyed the rear of the structure for a moment before breaking cover and rushing toward the nearest window. She was three steps from the wall when the window flared with light.

Clare threw herself to the ground, trying to keep the camera from smashing against the earth while huddling as close to the building as she could. Past the slamming of blood in her ears she heard footsteps come closer to the window, then a muffled voice behind the glass.

“What?”

“I don’t know. I thought I seen something moving out there.”

The first voice sounded like Daniel Parson while the second was female, but younger than Margaret. Clare squeezed her eyes shut, willing herself to become smaller. If they opened the window and looked down, they’d see her. There was nowhere to hide.

“Come on. Dad’s ready,” Daniel said.

“Okay, I just had to grab my sweater.”

A groan of a dresser drawer, footsteps, then the light extinguished from the window.

Clare sagged, letting her forehead press into the cool grass. When she could get her muscles to respond, she sat up and peeked into the room. The space was small and functional. A narrow bed close to the wall along with a desk and chair beside the door. A long, ornate mirror hung above a low dresser. A full-length dress dangled from a hook in the wall. She was about to duck away from the window and move on when something made her stop.

The front end of a toy truck poked from beneath a blanket overhanging the bed.

With hands that didn’t feel like her own, Clare raised the camera and sighted through the viewfinder, centering on the truck. She snapped off a series of pictures, wishing she could use the flash but knowing it would only blind the shot through the glass, not to mention announce her presence like a beacon.

Clare sidled down the building, one thought repeating over and over in her mind. Shanna’s son was here. The truck had to be his toy. If she could get a photo of the boy himself, it would be more than enough for Hughes to raid the compound. She slowed and dropped into a full crouch and was about to look into the next darkened window when a door opened and slammed at the front of the house. She crept to the nearest corner and peered around it.

The Parson family strode away from their home toward the fire ring. Steven and Margaret led the way while their children followed. Felicity, the only member Clare hadn’t laid eyes on so far, was slight and stoop-shouldered. The ring of people parted as they neared and thankfully the man singing and playing the guitar quieted. The Parsons began to mingle, circumnavigating the fire. Clare watched for another few seconds, not seeing a small shape of a boy, then ducked back behind the house. She looked into all the windows she could reach. The house was orderly and clean from what she could see by the single light left burning above the small stove in the kitchen. There was nowhere a grown man could conceal himself and nothing other than the toy truck to indicate a child inhabited the space. She glanced down the row of smaller, darkened buildings. Maybe he wasn’t staying with the Parsons. Out of caution they might have him in another house, concealed even in the dead of night. She was in the process of deciding how best to access the other structures when the camp’s yellow dog padded around the corner of the house beside the Parsons’. It stood watching her for a motionless second. She froze, not daring to blink or breathe. The dog’s ears slowly raised and it took another step.

“Good boy,” she whispered. The dog let out a vicious growl and lunged toward her.

Clare stumbled back and turned, barely catching herself from falling. Any second she’d feel teeth sinking into her calf, feel the jerk of the dog’s head as he tore a piece of her free. She risked a glance over her shoulder as she sprinted toward the tree line and saw the dog hit the end of the rope tethering it to the house’s porch. It jerked back mid-bark and fell to its side before leaping up to strain at the end of the leash.

Clare ducked beneath the low branches of a young basswood and skidded to a halt. Her vision thudded in time with her heart and her lungs heaved—panic a live wire in her center. The dog continued to bark, springing at the end of its rope over and over.

“Shut up, Monty!” a man yelled from the fire ring. The dog yapped again. “I said, quiet!” The man strode closer and landed a kick in the dog’s haunches. It yelped and cowered, slinking out of sight around the front of the house. The man glanced in Clare’s direction, scanning the trees for a second before returning to the throng of people.

Clare let out a stuttered breath and swatted at a mosquito near her ear, watching the group around the fire. What were they doing out in the middle of the night? None of them were drinking. There was no music besides the godawful guitar, which thankfully remained silent. It looked as if they were just chatting, enjoying one another’s company.

Clare waved away another battalion of mosquitos and stood to leave. She’d pushed her luck far enough and she had evidence now, even if it was thin. She’d convince Hughes and Adam. They’d get Shanna’s son back and everything would be okay. But only if she left now.

“Children of the Almighty!” Steven Parson’s voice boomed through the clearing, stopping her cold. “Sons and daughters of trial and tribulation, I am honored to be with you tonight.” The group murmured in response. Parson stood close to the leaping flames. He shifted as he spoke, an energy in his movements, and Clare could imagine him preaching from the dais of his church long since shuttered. “We are beyond fortunate to see these days past, and those to come. To be instruments in the great unfolding truth. The world was created from darkness, and to darkness it will eventually return. But not before the prophecy is fulfilled.” Parson began pacing past the others, who had formed a tighter ring around the fire. “We have seen proof with our own eyes. Felt the presence and watched events foretold come to fruition. It is not in vain that we follow in footsteps created before us. The path we tread is true and right and we will not be swayed or led astray.” He paused and Clare felt the air tighten in the clearing as if something immense had passed overhead. “We see when others do not.”

“We see.”

“We see when others turn away.”

“We see.”

“We see the glory and the everlasting.”

“We see.”

Her knees gave way and she put her hand out to brace herself. The ground met her unkindly, but it was real, something tangible and at odds with what she was hearing. Still her father’s words rang in her ears, an echo across two decades.

The group bowed their heads while their leader turned his face to the darkened sky. Parson’s arms stretched out in supplication, and he began to sing. The group sang with him.

He is the only, the everlasting one

Forever guiding, laid low his only son

No darkness encroaches, his will is the light

Eons unbroken, unto paths beyond night

One of her father’s hymns.

Clare’s vision doubled and she felt a familiar wavering.

Felt the ground giving way. She was falling, and it was cold. So cold she couldn’t feel the tips of her fingers or—

—Shanna’s hand in her own. The snow had stopped in early evening and the sky cleared off, sending the temperatures tumbling way below zero. They stand huddled in a group as the wind knifes its way through the clearing, through their clothes, cutting against their skin. Clare squeezes her sister’s hand but it is like gripping ice. She shivers violently but keeps singing as their father’s eyes fall upon them. It’s sometime in the early hours just before dawn, the coldest it will be all day. The stars are shattered arctic ice above. The tips of her ears are on fire and yet their father motions to keep singing. He grins like a wolf, waving his arms in time with the words he wrote.

It will be over soon, she tells herself. They’ve been outside for a long time and even the adults behind Father are shifting and stamping their feet to stay warm. When Father gives the sign, they can go back inside out of the cold and get warm. Crawl back under the covers they were pulled out from and—

Shanna’s hand pulls away from hers. Clare stops singing and looks at her sister, who is swaying in place. She isn’t singing anymore either. There is frost on her delicate eyelashes and her cheeks are gray.

“Shanna?” Clare asks. The other children have fallen off-key and a few have quieted, watching with widened eyes.

“What’s wrong? Keep singing,” their father says. But Clare doesn’t look at him. Fear has leapt up and grabbed hold of her heart. Shanna turns her head and tries to say something, but tips forward instead. Clare catches her before she can fall and the younger girl’s weight leans completely against her.

Clare sags but manages to stay upright. She wraps an arm around her sister and begins moving toward their house. She’s got to get her inside and warm. The other children move aside as they pass, Shanna’s legs barely holding her.

A hand grasps Clare’s arm, hard enough to hurt, and she looks up into the face of their father. Except it is not their father. Simon Kinsey is no longer there. Now whatever madness lies within him has taken over completely and wears him like a suit of clothes. His eyes burn with horrid inner light and his mouth is a rictus of gritted teeth. “Get back in line and sing,” he hisses.

Clare lurches away, breaking his hold, and hurries faster toward their house. She has to get Shanna inside. She’ll die if she doesn’t. They’re almost to the door when Father grabs her again, but this time she can’t escape. To her surprise he doesn’t haul her backward to where they were singing into the night, but forward, through the front door. Clare loses her grip on Shanna and her sister slips to the floor, but at least it’s across the threshold, the little woodstove in the corner throwing heat that rolls across her skin in stinging, blessed waves. Shanna says her name weakly but Father is thrusting her onward through the house, not in the direction of her bedroom, but past the kitchen toward—

As soon as she sees where he’s taking her she begins to fight.

She sets her feet, wrenches her arm, begins to yell, but it does no good. His hold is frigid iron on her arm as he drags her toward the closed door, the door to the basement, which seems to open on its own like a mouth awaiting a meal.

Clare rested with her face pressed against the rough earth. She blinked, eyelashes raking dust into her eye and she coughed, the buzz of mosquitos intermingling with the final refrain of the hymn.

They were singing her father’s hymn.

There was a disjointed second where she couldn’t tell when she was. Her thirteen-year-old self blended with her current mind and she was both and neither as the world sawed on its axis. All at once time snapped back into place and she could hear Parson speaking again, his voice a drone like that of a much larger insect than the ones hovering about her head.

Clare pushed herself upright and managed to get her feet beneath her. She had to get out of here, had to get away from these people. They were definitely in league with Rainier, and why the hell had she ever come here alone? As she tentatively stood a branch from the nearest tree caught on the camera strap and she grasped the device, trying to untangle it. Her finger hit a lever on the camera’s top and there was a quiet click, then she went blind.

Everything was white. An incandescent blizzard.

Her synapses fired, computing what happened even as she stumbled backward, feet tangling. I hit the flash. I hit the fucking flash! The hope that the group hadn’t noticed the flare of light was dashed a half second later even as she was regaining her balance.

“What was that? In the woods!”

“Someone’s over there!”

The yellow dog added its voice to the chorus of shouts, the sound of many feet coming in her direction. Through the white veil her vision had become she saw points of brightness flicking on. Flashlights.

She ran.

Brush and tree limbs slashed at her, raking her face, her arms.

Something snagged the camera strap again, almost dragging her off her feet. The strap suddenly gave and the camera was yanked out of her hands. She fumbled blindly trying to find its shape in the dark, but her fingers closed on nothing but sticks and leaves. Voices called out, closer than before, much closer. She swept the ground one last time in desperation before turning to run, leaving the camera behind.

The forest began to ebb back into reality, shapes and shadows solidifying. Her breath was acidic every time she inhaled, scorching her lungs. Ahead, the border of the clearing appeared, and beyond that the driveway leading to the road. As she angled toward it a brilliant light shone directly across her path, more shouts coming from the left. Clare changed course, moving deeper into the trees.

Her foot came down on a rock and her ankle tilted, within a hair’s breadth of twisting completely. She stumbled sideways and kept going, biting back a cry of pain as something jabbed into the meat of her thigh.

The wind howled in the trees. More shouts came from the clearing and the flashlights’ glares slid behind her. She had to get out of the woods, had to get to the road, get to the car.

An opening in the brush appeared on the left and she swung through it, running down a small bank and into the openness of the driveway. She poured on the speed, running all out, letting the adrenaline boring through her veins push her faster. Her legs burned and she wished beyond anything else she’d accompanied Eric on more of his runs over the years.

Clouds parted and moonlight filtered down, illuminating the county road ahead. Any relief she felt came apart as a man’s voice called out from behind her. It sounded as if he were only steps away. She could almost feel his fingers tangling in her hair, dragging her down.

Her feet hit the gravel road and she leaned into the turn, pushing past the cramping agony in her chest. Fifty yards to the turnoff where she’d parked.

Thirty.

Ten.

She ran down into the ditch, splashing through muddy water and up onto dry ground before slamming against the rental’s door. Her fingers skittered there uselessly for a beat before they hooked the handle and yanked it open.

Clare dropped into the seat and slammed the door, hands digging at her pants pocket, a second of distilled panic when she felt no keys there. Flashlights cut through the trees like white blades. They were halfway down the drive and coming closer.

“Come on!” she said, furiously digging as her fingers finally closed over the keys.

It took two tries to get them in the ignition.

The engine fired and she threw the car in reverse.

The first people appeared at the mouth of the lane, streaming onto the county road. Dirt flew from her tires as she hit the gravel, spattering the undercarriage like gunfire.

She slammed the transmission into drive and floored the pedal.

Dust sprayed behind her and lights flared in the rearview and side mirrors. She risked a glance back and saw dark figures running after her, then slowing, stopping as they receded from view.

Then she was around a bend in the road.

A long, hitching breath escaped her, which became a moan. Black stars appeared at the edges of her vision and she bit down on the inside of her mouth hard enough to draw blood. The feeling of faintness receded.

They hadn’t seen her. At least not enough to make a positive ID. They might’ve seen she was a woman, but that was all, she’d been too far ahead of them. And her vehicle? She doubted they’d gotten a good look at the license plate but couldn’t be sure.

The car’s headlights speared the night, thrusting it aside as she sped through it. As more and more distance formed between her and the camp it dawned on her she’d never checked to see if this road met up with any other county byways or if it simply terminated. There was no way she could go back the way she came, first and foremost because they might be following her in a vehicle right now.

Clare pressed the gas a little harder and sent up a silent pleading for the dirt lane to lead anywhere but a dead end.

Chapter Twenty-Nine

When she pulled the car to a stop in the hotel’s parking lot and shut off the engine, Clare finally released the steering wheel from the death grip she’d held since escaping the camp.

The dregs of adrenaline left her system and she melted into the seat. She counted the rows of windows. The number of cars in the lot. How many times her heart beat in a minute. It was much fewer than it had been a half hour before.

The road had eventually petered out onto another equally forsaken county lane, though when she stopped to think about it she hadn’t spotted any road signs displaying a number, much less a name. She might’ve been on the moon for as much life and activity she’d seen, or for how much cell signal there was, for that matter. Her maps app wouldn’t even load. After following the second road for a time it ended near a questionable wooden bridge she drove across before she could second-guess herself. Several miles later, as the road narrowed to a track encroached by reaching branches and she’d thought she would have to take her chances turning around, it had opened up and joined with pavement. She’d spilled out somewhere west of Sheen and found her way back to the city’s lights easily enough.

The unreality of what she’d seen and heard continued to wash over her, creeping up like floodwater in her mind. There was no denying the connection between Parson’s camp and her father’s cult now. Rainier had been the conduit between the two, handing down her father’s beliefs and instilling them somehow in an entirely new group of people. The question was why?

Her stomach churned at the thought. Parson himself had made it abundantly clear—they believed the end of days was still on its way despite the fact doomsday hadn’t occurred after the sacrifice at the Refuge. She shook her head. It was beyond common in cults like her father’s, and now Parson’s. An end date would be set by the leader. There would be preparation and waiting as well as proselytizing to those who were on the fence about committing themselves fully to what was coming. And when the eventual day of destruction arrived and passed without the world ending, the leader simply moved the date forward, claiming some divine occurrence had caused the delay. It happened over and over while the leader strained for control and dominance, and the saddest thing was most cult members remained faithful to their prophet’s vision despite the truth in front of their eyes.

She recalled a few people drifting out of the cult prior to her father’s final descent into madness. It always enraged him when they left. Now, with the benefit of hindsight, she knew it probably reminded him of her mother leaving. Somewhere deep in Simon Kinsey, that particular abandonment had never been processed or accepted.

Parson’s camp was on a verge, she decided. A precipice she’d witnessed firsthand and studied via multiple cases in the intervening years. The cult was about to take another step. What it might be she could only guess at, but it was nothing wholesome. Nothing good.

She sighed, trying to refocus her thoughts on how to proceed even as her mind tipped toward the memory that had bowled her over in the forest. She’d forgotten the night Shanna nearly collapsed from the cold. It had been during their last winter at the Refuge before the fire. Their father had roused them from bed at an ungodly hour and brought them outside to sing, and little Shanna had gotten so cold. She remembered their father’s anger, how he had seemed like someone else completely when she’d broken rank and tried to get Shanna to safety. How he’d dragged her through the house toward the basement and—

It was like coming to a cliff in her head. The recollection ended there.

And despite a yearning to recall what had happened, a part of her was glad.

Clare closed her eyes and breathed deeply several times. What she needed to do now was figure out how she was going to explain the scratches on her face and arms along with the thousand or so bug bites covering her body. Adam and Shanna were sure to notice. And what would she tell them? The truth. But she couldn’t. At least not Shanna. Not yet. She didn’t know how she’d react. The loss of the camera was a weight in her stomach. Her only proof, narrow as it was, was gone.

She cursed quietly and opened her eyes. For the meantime she’d take a chance and fill Adam in. He’d be nuclear at what she did, but he’d have to understa—

The wind nudged clouds away from the moon, revealing the twisted man standing at the edge of the parking lot.

Clare jerked, blinking and leaning forward.

He was gone.

No, no, it wasn’t possible. He’d never been there in the first place. She was seeing things again. Whoever that man was, he was in Oregon—over a thousand miles away. And he hadn’t looked the same. He hadn’t been bent and twisted like the first time she’d seen him. This phantom had been tall and straight, not a hint of warped posture.

She shook her head, staring again at the spot where he’d been. Nothing. Just the woods. Nerves, she told herself. Afterimages from the adrenaline rush. She needed the security of her hotel room. Needed sleep. That was all.

When she gathered the courage to climb out of the rental the assurances weren’t strong enough to keep her hand away from the gun at her back, or from half running across the parking lot to the hotel’s front door.

* * *

She risked a shower after making it to the room without encountering the deputy on watch. The desk clerk had merely nodded at her as she ascended the stairs. So far so good.

When she stepped out of the shower she saw her fears confirmed in the trip’s telltale marks across her body. Mosquito bites peppered her neck, shoulders, and arms. There were a few minor scratches on the right side of her face, but she might be able to conceal them with makeup. The worst injury was where a sharp stick had jabbed into her thigh. The area was already a deep red, on its way to purple, and the center had leaked some blood. Clare cleaned it the best she could and put a small bandage she found in the bottom of her purse over it.

When she opened the bathroom door Shanna was standing inches away, swaying on her feet.

Clare bit back a cry of surprise and let out a long breath instead. “Jesus, you scared the hell out of me.” When Shanna said nothing, only stared vacantly over one of Clare’s shoulders, she grasped her sister’s arm and guided her toward the bed. “Honey, what are you doing? Are you okay?”

Shanna let herself be led and settled on the edge of the bed. Her eyes were glazed and she continued to rock slightly like a child trying to self-soothe. Clare felt her forehead for a fever but the skin was cool and clammy. “Shanna?” Nothing. No response.

She was in some kind of trance. Maybe a waking nightmare. What were you supposed to do with people who were sleepwalking? Wake them up? Get them back into bed? Clare took one of her sister’s hands and was about to lead to her the other side of the bed to tuck her back in when Shanna spoke. At first it was so quiet Clare couldn’t make out what she was saying, but as she leaned closer the words became clear, and her skin prickled with goosebumps.

“He is the only, the everlasting one. Forever guiding, laid low his only son. No darkness encroaches, his will is the light. Eons unbroken, unto paths beyond night.”

“Shanna,” Clare breathed, her grip on her sister’s hand tightening. “Stop. Wake up.”

Shanna’s voice was monotone. Robotic. She finished the hymn and started again, looping the words so that they blended together—faster and faster until it was a steady stream and Clare grasped her shoulders and shook her.

“Stop!”

Shanna’s gaze gained depth and she blinked. “He was here.”

“Who?”

“The Ferryman. He was standing right over there.” She pointed to the far corner near the entrance, which was heavy with shadow but nothing else.

“Everying okay?” Adam asked from the next room.

“Yeah . . . yeah, just a nightmare,” Clare managed before focusing on Shanna again. “You were dreaming.”

Shanna shook her head. “He was here, Charon was here. He was singing.”

Clare hugged her, partially for comfort but mostly to hide her own expression, the way her hands were beginning to shake. “Let’s lie back down,” she said after a moment. Shanna crawled beneath the covers and Clare settled in beside her. After an interminable span of time Shanna’s breathing became deep and slow. Clare waited several more minutes before rolling to her back to stare at the ceiling.

What were the chances of Shanna reciting the exact hymn Parson’s group had tonight? How many zeros were after that decimal point? It couldn’t be a coincidence. There was no way. So what was the connection? Shanna had been asleep when she left, asleep when she came back, and dreaming. Dreaming about Charon being in the room.

He was singing.

Clare shuddered, throwing a look at the far corner again, half expecting something to be standing there. She returned to what Shanna had told her the day before, how it had felt like someone else was there in the shack the night Rainier was whispering to himself. It sounded like something a disturbed person would say. And wasn’t the display she just witnessed more evidence of that? Wasn’t it possible both of them could be succumbing to the same illness their father suffered from? Both of them seeing things that weren’t there, hearing hymns that might’ve been something else?

Her breath caught. How sure was she that she’d heard the hymn tonight at Parson’s camp? Very. She hadn’t hallucinated it. Hadn’t hallucinated Shanna repeating it either. But for a moment the possibility felt frighteningly real. Could she even say with full certainty she’d left the room and gone out to the compound? Maybe when she’d woken Shanna from a dream she’d been waking from one herself.

No. Clare inhaled deeply, trying to calm the galloping of her heart. She wasn’t losing her grip on reality. She’d gone to the camp, seen the toy truck, heard the hymn, and Shanna had repeated it. She cemented the facts in her mind, fighting against the conflicting thoughts trying to upend them like brutal waves on a sea.

She threw a look at her sister in the dark, took in the familiar profile again and tried thinking of an alternative to madness. For a moment she considered the mythic figure their father had claimed to be in contact with. What if Charon was real? That everything he had ever said was true? Clare rolled to her side, facing the wall. She couldn’t accept that. Any of it. There was an explanation for Shanna’s fugue, and it didn’t have anything to do with the supernatural. She just needed to figure out what it was.

Shanna shifted in her sleep, letting out a soft moan. Clare found her hand in the dark and held it. Shanna’s eyes fluttered open for a moment. A tired smile formed on her lips upon seeing Clare, and she slipped away again.

The window behind the hotel’s heavy curtains had begun to gray with morning light by the time Clare finally succumbed to sleep. In the recesses of her mind, voices singing a forgotten hymn followed her down to darkness.

Chapter Thirty

She woke to a dry, rasping whisper. Someone saying her name.

Clare opened her eyes to sunshine. The drapes had been pulled away from the window and a blue eastern sky shone into the room. The rasping came again and she sat up, fully expecting something to be crouched at the foot of her bed, grinning. Instead she saw Shanna seated at the table, paging through the Refuge’s case folder, the paper scratching against the table as she set it aside.

“Good morning,” Clare said. Shanna jumped as if caught doing something embarrassing. “Sorry, didn’t mean to startle you.”

“I was just . . .” She motioned to the folder. “It’s so strange to read the words. They don’t—” She struggled for a moment. “They’re not enough.”

Clare knew what she meant. The clinical descriptions and diagrams didn’t encompass the weight of what had happened. The horror. “Are you okay?” she finally asked. Shanna nodded and shut the folder. “Do you remember what happened last night?”

“No. What do you mean?”

“You were dreaming. You said Charon was in the room.”

Shanna’s eyes darted around as if looking for him in the daylight-dappled space. “I did?”

Clare nodded. “You recited one of the old hymns. You said Charon was singing.”

Her sister’s expression tightened. “I don’t remember that.”

“Have you ever dreamed something like that before?”

“No, but I . . .” She struggled, one hand working at the opposite wrist as she looked down at the file folder. “I dream about the fire. About the smell of what was in those cups. All of it . . . it feels like it happened to someone else.” She was quiet for a long time. “I want to see it,” she said finally.

It took Clare a second to realize what she meant. “No, honey. You don’t want to go back there.”

“I have to see it. Otherwise it doesn’t seem real. It was so long ago it feels like a nightmare.”

“Let it be that, then. You already had to bring us back to the place you were being held. There’s nothing for us there.” She hadn’t meant to say us. It had come out on its own. Only then did she register the quickened pace of her heart. Was she pushing back against Shanna’s idea of returning to their old home solely for her sister’s sake? Or because she was afraid of going back to that place? Not afraid, that’s not the right word. It was Lia’s voice in her head now, speaking in her knowing way of someone who was already five steps ahead that drove Clare nuts sometimes. Mostly because her friend was typically right. Terrified is the better term. You’re terrified of going back there. And not just because the place scares you, it’s because of what you’re afraid you might remember.

“If you really think we shouldn’t. I just don’t know how it will ever go away.” Shanna said quietly, looking at the floor. Clare was about to reply when a soft knocking came from Adam’s door, which she noticed was now closed.

“Come in,” she said.

Adam poked his head into the room. “Good morning. Or should I say, nearly noon.”

Clare grabbed her cell phone from the bedside table. It was well past eleven. “Shit, sorry I overslept.” She noticed a missed call from Hughes along with a text message asking to give him a ring when she could.

“Don’t worry, we didn’t miss much at the continental breakfast. Jesus, what happened to your face?”

Clare brought a hand up to her cheek. “I must’ve scratched it in the woods yesterday.” Adam and Shanna studied her for a drawn moment. She could feel them noticing the bug bites that hadn’t been there the evening before and cut Adam off as he started to say something more. “Hughes called, better call him back. Might be something important.”

Adam nodded slowly. “I’ll let you get dressed.” He disappeared into his room and shut the door again. Clare ignored Shanna’s stare and climbed out of bed. As she began dressing in a pair of jeans and a t-shirt the hotel phone rang. She hesitated a moment before picking it up.

“Hello?”

“Ms. Murdock?”

It took Clare half a second to identify the voice on the other end of the line, and as soon as she did a spike of anger drove through her center. “How did you get this number?”

“That’s really not important, is it?” Brynn Johnson said. “What is important is where you were last night.”

Clare faltered, feeling as if the floor had dropped out from under her. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“You do. Let’s stop this charade, shall we? I just want to ask you a few questions for my article. That’s all.”

“I don’t have anything to say to you.” She’d already taken the phone away from her ear when the reporter spoke again.

“It’s your sister, isn’t it? The woman who was injured? It’s Shanna, right? She’s not dead.”

Clare hung up the phone, her hand trembling slightly. “Who was that?” Shanna asked.

Clare fixed a smile and shook her head. “Nobody. Nobody important.” She turned and headed for the bathroom before Shanna could say anything else. When the door was closed behind her she leaned against it, weighing out what had just happened. Johnson must’ve followed her to Parson’s camp. Whether or not she knew why was hazy, but God, she’d guessed correctly about Shanna. Hughes had been right about her, she was tenacious. But just how tenacious remained to be seen. Would Johnson go to Hughes with the information regarding Clare’s little nighttime escapade? She didn’t know, and really there was nothing she could do about it now. She’d be damned if she would be blackmailed into giving Johnson what she wanted. Only pain would come of a story being printed concerning Shanna and where she’d been the intervening years. And right now pain was the last thing either of them needed.

When she’d applied a little makeup to the scratches on her face and put her hair up in a bun, she dialed the sheriff’s number, hoping against hope he wouldn’t tell her he had a formal complaint sitting on his desk from the Free Spirit Disciples or a tip from an anonymous source about her trespassing.

“Hughes.”

“Sheriff, this is Clare.”

“Good morning. The county psychologist would like to meet with Shanna again and do a follow-up assessment. Gauge how she’s adjusting to everything. Would you be able to come into the station at some point today?”

She nearly sagged with relief. “Sure. That’d be fine. We’ll grab a bite to eat and head your way. Say one?”

“That’s fine. See you then.”

She hung up, trying to infer from his tone if he’d been withholding anything. Had someone called in a complaint and he was fishing to see if she was nervous or sounded guilty? Maybe he wanted an excuse to see her in person. She couldn’t tell one way or another.

“Did he have any news?” Shanna asked, pulling her out of her reverie.

“No. The doctor who spoke to you in the hospital wanted to meet with you again to see how you’re doing. Is that okay?”

Shanna considered it. “Yes, that’s fine.” She still appeared downtrodden.

“How about we get some food first. Are you hungry?”

The clouds drew away from Shanna’s features and a smile shone through. “Starving.”

* * *

They dined at a bistro overlooking the river. The day was gorgeous and humid, such a change from the prior cooler weather Clare instantly regretted wearing pants. The patio was sun-drenched but mostly empty of other diners. Their accompanying deputy sat at an adjacent table, his reflective sunglasses shining so that it looked as if two silver coins covered his eyes.

Shanna ordered a BLT with fries and ate with utter relish and abandon, washing everything down with three glasses of sweet tea. Clare picked at her chicken salad and attempted to avoid Adam’s pointed gaze. He kept trying to catch her eye, as if they sat across an interview table instead of a picnic bench.

When they’d finished they headed to city hall and filed inside, finding the county psychologist waiting outside Hughes’s office, a briefcase in one hand. He introduced himself as Dr. Latten, shaking hands with Clare and Adam alike. He was a small man, balding with a dull fringe of red hair above his ears. He greeted Shanna warmly and she seemed at ease with him as he showed her into the nearest room and closed the door. Through the window in Hughes’s office Clare saw the sheriff speaking on the phone. He caught her eye and motioned that he’d be out momentarily. She wondered if he was talking to Parson about a female intruder on their property the night before. Wondered if the notes he was jotting down were her rental’s license plate number.

Before her paranoia could climb to even greater heights, Adam gently guided her away from the office doors and out into the high-ceilinged lobby. A set of chairs rested by a tall window looking out to Sheen’s main street. They went to them and sat.

“Where the hell did you go last night?” Adam said quietly.

“How do you know I went anywhere?”

“Because you didn’t get those scratches yesterday and you slept till almost noon. I’m not stupid, Clare. Spill it.”

She sighed, glancing around the lobby to make sure they were alone. “I went to Parson’s camp to see if I could spot Rainier or Shanna’s son there.”

Adam sat back and looked over her shoulder. Wouldn’t make eye contact.

“I know, I know. But I knew there was something off about those people. Hughes wasn’t going to do anything and you—”

“And I what? I’m already working outside the law here. But that wasn’t good enough for you,” he said, finally looking at her again. Clare swallowed. She’d seen Adam angry before and it was an intimidating experience. He seemed to grow larger, to loom over her even from where he sat. “I’m trying to help you and your sister, and you run off into the goddamn woods in the middle of the night to do a stakeout? Je-zus.” His jaw clenched, then relaxed. He sat back in his chair and shook his head. “Are you going to be charged with something in the next few minutes? I just want to know what to expect.”

“I don’t know. I don’t think they saw me. I had a camera and lost it out there.”

“Christ.”

“But there’s nothing tying me to it. They might’ve seen my license plate, I can’t be sure. There is one other thing, this local reporter must’ve followed me. She tried hinting at blackmailing me this morning on the phone if I wouldn’t give her an interview.” Clare relayed her first encounter with Johnson and waited while Adam processed everything. When he remained silent she pressed on. “I know. But in my defense I was getting a lot of pushback regarding Parson’s group and the coins. I didn’t feel like I had a choice.” Adam started to speak but she cut him off. “I saw a toy truck in Parson’s house.”

“A toy truck.”

“Yeah, like a little kid would play with. A little boy.”

“Clare, listen—”

“They were singing one of my father’s hymns.”

“What?”

“My father wrote hymns. He used to make us sing them, mostly in the middle of the night. I think it was a litmus test to see who was devoted and who wasn’t. He watched to make sure we knew all the words. He made us sing for hours sometimes. Those people were singing one of his hymns in the middle of the night. The only way they could’ve known that song was through Rainier.”

Adam watched her and she felt the small hope she’d had earlier begin to wither. She knew that look, one she’d seen from countless therapists and counselors in her childhood and early twenties. It was pity, distrust, and a little fear all rolled into one.

“There was a man,” she said, voice beginning to quaver. “The first time I saw him was . . . was in Oregon. He was lurking around our house. I spoke to him and he said some strange things to me. And last night I think I saw him outside the hotel near the woods.”

Adam studied her for another moment. “You’re sure?”

“I don’t know.” She shifted in her seat. “I thought I saw him, but . . .”

“But what?”

“I don’t know. It was dark and I’d just come from Parson’s camp. I was frazzled, but I think it was him.”

“I really hate to ask this, but are you still on a medication?”

“What? Yes, but that doesn’t change what I saw. You think I imagined it?”

“I didn’t say that, but you’ve been under extreme duress. The mind can do things—”

“Don’t tell me what the mind can do,” Clare snapped. Adam recoiled slightly and she was immediately sorry, but he’d nudged a raw nerve. The same thing she’d been wondering all along—were the things she was seeing real, or all in her mind? “It has been stressful. But I’m not imagining things.” I hope.

Adam seemed to digest this. “Obviously we can’t go to Hughes with this, and your story about the hymns and the toy truck won’t be enough to convince him anyway. Until we have something concrete tying the two cults together we won’t be able to get a search warrant. Hopefully my guy will unearth something useful. In the meantime, here’s what we do—we talk to Hughes about moving you both to a safe house. It’ll be good no matter if there’s someone actually watching you or not now that Parson might know you were spying on him last night. We’ll tell Hughes our concerns and leave out the part about you going off into the woods on your own.”

She started to speak again, but Hughes stepped into the lobby and moved toward them. “How is everyone today?” he asked as he approached.

“Doing okay,” Clare said. She glanced at Adam, who gave her a slight nod. “There is one thing we wanted to talk to you about.” She told him about seeing the twisted man near the woods the night before, changing her story so that she’d spotted him while getting some fresh air prior to bed.

“And this isn’t the first time you’ve seen him?” Hughes asked, shifting his gaze from her to Adam.

“No. I think I saw him at the hospital, too, on Shanna’s floor.” The lie came out unimpeded and she saw Adam look away. “We’d all feel safer if we moved out of the hotel as soon as possible.”

“Why do you think he’s a threat?”

“Both times when he noticed me seeing him he took off. Like his cover was blown.”

“You already have an armed guard and patrols going twenty-four hours a day.”

“Even so.”

Hughes studied her for a moment. “Let me see what I can do. I have a place in mind but I’ll have to do some checking beforehand. Think you could describe this guy?”

“Yes.”

“I’ll call our sketch artist in this afternoon. You can swing back through around four to meet with him. This is the most work he’s had in years.”

“Thank you, Sheriff.” Hughes grunted in response.

“No hits on the APB?” Adam asked.

“No. Nothing,” Hughes said. “It’s like he dropped off the face of the earth. My guess is he had another hideaway somewhere in the deep woods he’d been keeping just in case something like this happened. We did have some luck identifying the tire tracks leading away from the shack onto the service road. They match a tread made through Bridgestone back in the mid-eighties and early nineties. It would’ve been concurrent with the model car registered to Rainier at the time. The state police have been extremely cooperative. If he’s on the road somewhere in the state, we’re gonna get him.”

Clare smiled and nodded, knowing full well that wasn’t the case. She guessed it was more Hughes trying to reassert a semblance of control for her and Shanna’s comfort. Any irritation she felt was diminished by the fact she’d misled him as well. One lie traded for another.

She was drawn back from her musing by Dr. Latten’s appearance outside the interview room. He pulled the door shut behind him, leaving Shanna inside. “How is she?” Clare asked.

“Very good. Remarkably well for someone who has endured what Shanna has. She’s talking a lot more than when I first met her, really opening up. You’re who she credits with getting her through the worst of those years. She ‘kept you close,’ as she puts it.”

“We’re doing our best to make up for lost time.”

Latten motioned to Hughes’s office. “Mind if we utilize your space for a minute, Sheriff?”

“Go ahead.”

She followed the doctor into the office while Adam and Hughes remained near the lobby’s archway. Latten pushed the door mostly shut and perched on the only edge of Hughes’s desk that was clear. “I wanted to ask if Shanna has been experiencing any nightmares or terrors.”

“Yes. She had one last night, actually. It was like she was in a trance.”

“That’s common. Many victims experience stress within sleep or sleeplessness in general. Unfortunately, it’s part of the recovery.” He paused, shifting slightly where he sat. “Have you noticed anything else about her behavior? Anything strange?”

“Like what?”

“Like disorientation or bouts of euphoria?”

“No, not really. Other than being in awe of the outside world. Why?”

“It’s the fact of how well she’s doing that’s concerning me. Shanna has undergone extreme duress and in most of the cases I’ve dealt with, victims are much more removed. They retreat into themselves because that’s the only way they know to keep themselves safe. Shanna seems to be opening like a flower instead.”

“I thought you said she was doing very well.”

“And she is. It’s remarkable.” He waited, watching her.

Clare thought of the weeks and months after the night of the fire. How she’d felt outside herself, as if she were someone new slowly becoming aware of the world around her. “You think she’s hiding something?”

“I’m not saying that. People process trauma differently. But regardless, be on the lookout for any signs of overload. The last thing we want is for her to regress. I wasn’t pleased upon learning our good sheriff pressed her into backtracking her escape route.”

“That’s two of us.”

“I understand the necessity, but at what cost to Shanna?” Latten frowned. “In any case, it may have sped along this man’s capture. I believe once he’s apprehended Shanna will begin making even bigger strides. Closure is a powerful thing.”

“Anything else we should be aware of?” she asked.

“Stability is crucial for her recovery. Integration into everyday life should be measured. An overload could cause major setbacks.”

Clare recalled the anxiety Shanna had experienced in the hotel room the day before. “We’ve been trying to take it slow. It’s so hard to know what to say or do sometimes.”

“The most important thing is listening, letting her be the guide going forward. Think of it this way: Shanna’s been lost for years, both in the physical and mental sense. But the idea that just because her body is here doesn’t mean her mind has kept up. She has to find her way out of the woods herself. Your job isn’t to lead her, but to follow and hold her hand when she needs it.”

Clare thought of Shanna’s request that morning and felt a ripple of dread course through her. She imagined them together standing beneath the reaching arms of a dark forest, the sky blotted black with clouds. There would be no signs guiding their way, and the doctor didn’t need to worry about her trying to lead Shanna out of the dark, because she was lost as well. They would have to find their way out together.

“Thank you, Doctor.”

“You’re welcome. I’d like to continue to see her for as long as she is in the area, and is comfortable with me treating her. I assume eventually you will take her home with you, but until then she will need support.”

“Of course.”

“She’s very strong. She’s going to make it. You both are.”

As they left city hall and walked toward Adam’s rental she watched her sister—how she drank the world in with her eyes, how some color had returned to her features.

When they’d climbed inside the SUV Adam glanced at her, starting the engine. “Hotel?”

Clare sat for a time, gazing out at the sun-dappled buildings, the way the breeze nudged some of the scarlet leaves from a maple down the street. She heard Adam say her name and she turned, finding Shanna’s steady gaze on her as well. “Not yet. We have to go somewhere else first.”

Chapter Thirty-One

The road leading to the Refuge reminded Clare of a clogged artery.

Washed out in places and overgrown, the drive was slowly returning to nature’s embrace. After only a hundred yards Adam had to lock in the SUV’s four-wheel drive, the tires thudding over exposed rocks and fallen limbs. Clare gripped the door handle tightly, partially to keep herself steady amidst the rough terrain, but mostly because the voice in her head had been right.

She was terrified.

Shanna had been visibly thankful after Clare directed Adam north out of town, the city streets giving way to cracked pavement, then to gravel. Despite her sister’s appreciation, Clare still wasn’t sure it was the correct choice. Dr. Latten’s warnings about an overload continued to toll like a bell in her mind. Maybe Shanna believed seeing the place where they’d spent the first decade of their lives would put something to rest for her. Clare hoped so. As far as she was concerned, if she never laid eyes on it again it would be too soon.

“So you donated it to the state?” Adam asked as they navigated around and partially over the top of a fallen pine tree. Its branches crackled like dry bones beneath the tires.

Clare’s mouth was dry. She glanced at the center console but there was no water bottle there like she typically kept in her own vehicle. “Yeah. It came to me and I had the paperwork drawn up for the state to take it over about the same time we moved out of town.” Behind them the deputy piloting a cruiser followed Adam’s path around the partial blockade.

“Could’ve sold it.”

“I didn’t care about the money. I just wanted it out of my name.” Adam took the hint and fell quiet. Clare shot a look at Shanna in the backseat. Her sister stared out the window at the passing scenery, hands folded in her lap. A doorway had cracked open in Clare’s mind after the meeting with Latten and a hint of doubt had slipped through. During the ride she’d retraced every conversation and interaction she and Shanna had shared since reuniting but could find nothing alarming in any of them. Nothing that set off warning bells. And what was it she should be on the lookout for? She’d already gone over Stockholm syndrome, but Shanna’s behavior didn’t fit that type of scenario. Maybe the joy at being reunited and Shanna’s progress had blinded her to some underlying threat or issue. Or maybe her sister was simply strong, like Dr. Latten had said.

Shanna glanced at her, perhaps feeling the weight of her gaze, and Clare looked away, focusing on the road ahead.

It was easy to see where the forest fire’s boundary began. They rounded a curve in the trail and all at once the taller, old growth of the woods gave way to a lush slash of poplar half its height. Shrubs blanketed the forest floor and a smattering of pine trees grew through them, standing at least twenty feet tall.

The burn had culled the dead and dying remnants of the forest, leaving behind fertile soil new life had taken root in. It was cruelly ironic the devastation that hindered her for almost twenty years had left a new thriving environment in its wake.

All at once the surroundings took on greater depth. Familiarity. Clare’s grip tightened on the door handle.

They were almost there.

The path led up a low grade as the trees drew back, exposing a wider clearing. The new growth dwindled as they pulled farther into the open space. Fewer and fewer trees sprouted from the soil and the underbrush became sparse. The ground itself was a gray char, old ash barren and flat.

Adam pulled to a stop at the widest part of the clearing. “You okay?” he asked her, shutting off the engine. Clare counted the letters of the vehicle’s dashboard emblem three times, tethering herself to the warmth of the leather against her skin, how her heart sounded in her ears.

Finally she nodded.

They climbed out into the heat of the day. A haze hung over the Refuge’s clearing like dust that wouldn’t settle. It was silent save for the low throttle of the deputy’s cruiser as he placed it in park. Shanna rounded the vehicle and came up beside her, interlacing her fingers in Clare’s.

“Are you sure about this?” Clare asked.

“Yes. I think so. Don’t you feel it?”

Clare wanted to tell her no. But she did. She felt the atmosphere of the place, and she wasn’t so sure it was only due to the breadth of her apprehension. The clearing felt sentient. She could almost hear its voice, slithering through the straggly brush and brown reed grass.

welcomehomewelcomehomewelcomehome

Shanna squeezed her hand and started forward.

They walked together through the stilted foliage, past the place where the workroom had sat. There wasn’t even a hint of its presence anymore, just a spot on the ground tangled with leaves and dead vines. Clare wondered at the desolation. Why hadn’t the foliage grown back like the other scorched acres?

Adam followed them at a distance as they ventured farther into clearing. Here was the Johnsons’ house, their son Andrew only four when he was fed a glass of poison. Here the Eckles’ cabin; Mary and Brandon had been expecting their first child before that night in September. Clare could still feel the kick of their baby through Mary’s stomach when she’d been allowed to hold her hand against it.

Across the glade the barest patch of ground in sight rested beneath the shade of a towering oak. The oak was dead, killed by the fire, but stood in defiance of its peeling bark and skeletal branches. They approached the bare ground and Clare stopped short, letting go of Shanna’s hand. Her sister looked back at her a question on her face.

“The worship hall,” Clare said. Her voice was hushed, and she realized she was keeping it low as if someone unseen might be listening.

Shanna walked slowly around its border, pausing every so often to study a part of the ground. When she reached what used to the rear of the building she stopped and turned in a circle. “The back door was here,” she said. “He grabbed my hand and pulled me out this way.” Clare imagined the double doors open to the hall’s darkened interior, the pews holding the slumped shapes of people. And candlelight in the darkness illuminating her father’s face.

Shanna touched her arm and Clare jerked, unaware she’d returned to her side. “Okay?”

“Yeah,” Clare said. “Sorry. Are you all right?”

“I think so.” She looked around again. “It’s smaller than I remember.”

To Clare it didn’t look smaller. It appeared to go on forever. Wordlessly they walked on, slowly passing ghosts of monuments. Here was a blackened boulder that had sat at the front of Stephanie Thomas’s quarters. Her little girl, Anna, had been developmentally delayed and held Clare’s hand from time to time when they walked back from worship. Here was a stunted growth of tag alder where Shanna’s friend Abigail used to live with her parents. Shanna paused at her friend’s home. A tear slipped from one eye and Clare squeezed her arm before letting her have a moment alone.

Adam stood at the far end of the clearing, closest to the vehicles. The deputy accompanying them had never exited his car. Adam gave her a small wave and she returned it. Ahead the ground became rocky and uneven. She took a few steps and slowed, recognizing the rock for what it truly was.

Shattered concrete.

This was the foundation to their home.

It looked as if it had been broken apart by a machine and mostly hauled away, but whoever had done the job had been careless, leaving chunks sticking from the earth here and there. They looked like broken teeth.

Clare glanced away. The urge to turn around and go back to the car was like gravity, but she fought it. Closure was a powerful thing, Dr. Latten had said. Something she’d never had. She looked at Shanna, still standing beside the dust of her friend’s house. If Shanna was strong enough to be here, to bear witness to this place after everything she’d gone through, she could do it as well. She was supposed to be the older sibling, the caretaker, the protector. She could do this.

Clare steeled herself, touching each individual fingertip to her thumb, counting as she ran through them over and over, and stepped across where the house’s threshold used to be.

She moved amongst the bits of rubble, taking note of what appeared to be the remnants of a campfire near the corner of where her bedroom had been. A few charred beer cans were visible within the ashes. The sight emboldened her. Other people had come here, spent an evening in this haunted clearing, drank and reveled in the fact they were alive in this place of death. It lessened the weight she’d felt since climbing from the vehicle. She took another step and looked down.

The ground sloped away sharply, ending at a depression in the earth. This was what was left of the basement. The very lowest spot would have to be the pit her father had dug and prayed to. As she watched, the depression crumbled inward, raining sand and stone down into a hollow in the earth. She told herself she’d disturbed the soil by approaching, told herself the deepening pit wasn’t what it looked like, that it would stop any second.

It didn’t.

If anything, the collapse gained speed. More and more ground dropped away until a dark hole sat fathomless at the end of where the basement used to be. Where her father had knelt in the dark and spoken to something that wasn’t there. It wasn’t there. None of it was there.

Clare felt herself step forward even though every fiber of her being cried out to retreat. It was like she had no power over herself. Like she wasn’t moving solely on her own, but instead being dragged forward. Dragged toward the yawning hole. Dragged—

—down the stairs, her father’s hand holding fast to her arm. She tries to cry out, tries to yell for Shanna, who still lies beside the front door, tries to call for Charity, tries to plead with her father to stop, but she can’t. She’s empty of will, filled to the brim with fear.

He pulls her down the last few stairs onto the packed earth floor. The same diseased smell hits her, cloying and pungent. Meat gone bad in the sun.

“You must learn devotion, Clare,” her father says. And his voice is what finally frightens her so much she does cry out. Because it is flat calm, like a pond on a still day. There is no emotion in it, no anger and no sympathy. “You must see the greater picture if you’re to ever be filled with love.” He draws her up to the pit in the floor and uncovers it, tossing back the boards so that it opens like a lid over a vacant eye socket.

“No, please, Daddy, please, please don’t, please don’t,” she says. Her chest is so tight it’s hard to get the words out. When her father finally faces her his features are as devoid of life as his voice. He is someone else.

“Sacrifice is love,” he says, and pushes her into the waiting pit.

She cries out, but it’s cut off because she hits bottom after only falling eight or ten feet. The floor is damp, almost muddy, and she sinks into it. Clare rolls to her side, gazing up at the rectangle framing her father. He is a shadow, tall and angular, and he moves with fluid grace as he bends and closes the hatch in the floor, cutting off the dim light completely.

Clare screams.

It’s not a conscious act. She has to release the terror of seeing the light extinguished. She screams again. Screams incoherently and then with words. Begging to be let out. She pushes herself up and stands, moving to the pit’s wall below the trap door. It is smooth, carved by innumerous shovel strokes. There are no handholds, no ladder. Nothing to climb up with.

Breathless, she totters back, stopping and staring at the hatch. It will open, any second her father will pull it back and retrieve her. The punishment has been dealt. She’ll do whatever he asks if he pulls her out of here. Her feet slowly sink in the soft floor, but she doesn’t move. She watches for any hint of light, for the slightest sound, but there is nothing.

She doesn’t know how long she waits. Eventually she calls out again, and again. No one comes. There is only darkness. Silence. Clare finally sits, tucking herself into the tightest ball she can. It’s cool but not cold in the space, but she shivers anyway. She thinks of her bed above, of the stove and its warmth, of Shanna lying half frozen in the doorway. She can’t sit up any longer and lies down, tucking one arm beneath her head. Only then, when her mind has quieted, does she remember the voice she heard before. The one coming from this place. She looks around but it does no good. The only thing she sees are kaleidoscopic colors dancing in the pure dark.

She wakes without knowing she fell asleep. Sitting up, she holds a burst of hope that slowly dwindles. The hatch is shut and she’s still alone. Clare rises and goes back to the nearest wall below the opening, tries finding handholds in the earth, and when there is none, she attempts to dig her own. But the wall is packed too hard and her fingers are bloody after only minutes of scraping. She wonders how long it’s been. How long until her punishment is done. She’s hungry, so it must have been hours, even though it feels like days. Father wouldn’t leave her too long. He wouldn’t forget about her. Even as she thinks it, the notion sends a fresh bolt of terror through her. What if he does forget? What if Shanna and Charity forget her too? What if no one remembers her and she dies alone down here in the dark while the world continues on above?

A noise yanks her free of her thoughts. She turns toward it, not knowing if she really heard anything or if she imagined it in her frantic state. Clare listens, the quickened chug of blood in her ears the loudest sound.

There. Straight across from her. A scuffling. Like some kind of small animal. Could there be something down here with her? Is that what her father has been keeping hidden? Something dangerous and wild and full of teeth and hunger?

She listens until her feet begin to numb. Nothing. It was just dirt falling down from the opposite wall. Considering the confines of her prison, she places a hand against the earthen wall and draws a vertical groove in it with her thumb. The first step she takes is hesitant, but the next is more sure. She counts as she walks.

One.

Two.

Three.

Four.

Her hand encounters a corner. She turns with it, counting the steps again.

One.

Two.

Three.

Another corner. She finds the counting is helping. It’s drawing a picture of the pit in her mind. Not a horrible, torturous place. Just a hole in the ground her father dug because he isn’t well. She’s known this for some time now. Like little Anna Thomas, who needs someone to always watch after her, except not the same. Scarier because he sees things and speaks to people who aren’t there.

One.

Two.

Three.

Four.

Five.

A corner. The next span is the same as the second wall. She turns the last corner and after only a single step finds the groove she made in the dirt. It is only a box in the ground. Empty except for her. The panic ebbs and she feels emboldened. Not only because she’s overcoming her fear, but her father’s will as well. He put her here to punish her for helping Shanna. He’ll never expect her to withstand it. But he doesn’t know she’s strong, strong like her mother. Like she imagines her mother must be.

Clare starts around the rectangle again, carrying the comfort of knowing its parameters.

One.

Two.

Three.

Four.

The corner.

One.

Two.

Three.

Four.

She falters. Four steps? No. She must’ve miscounted. She backs up until she can feel the corner again.

One.

Two.

Three.

Four.

Five.

Clare halts, her throat cinching closed. She takes another step, hand still on the wall.

Six.

Seven.

Eight.

She makes a choking sound and it echoes over and over in the darkness, as if an abyss stands before her.

No. No. Nonononono.

Clare retreats, keeping her hand against the wall for support, focusing on the coarse dirt sliding beneath her palm. She tries calming herself, but even as she attempts to think of daylight and the smell of the clearing in spring, she counts her steps backward.

One.

Two.

Three.

Four.

Five.

Six.

Seven.

Eight.

No corner meets her hand.

Nine.

Ten.

Eleven.

Something reaches out of the darkness and brushes her shoulder. She screams and skitters away, running in the opposite direction now.

Twelvethirteenfourteenfifteensixteenseventeeneighteennineteentwenty

A whisper in her ear, her name spoken by an inhuman tongue. It’s keeping pace with her, saying her name over and over in a way that makes her want to stop. Stop and sit down and give in.

Clare.

Clare.

Clare—

—Clare?” Adam said, and the world materialized around her.

They were standing in the middle of the old basement a few steps away from where the pit had once been. It wasn’t a gaping hole anymore, only a lower place where sediment had settled over time. She looked around, mouth trying to form words that wouldn’t come. Shanna stood upslope, left hand worrying at the opposite wrist.

“Are you okay?” Adam asked. He held her by the upper arms, his hands strong and solid. She felt like sagging into him, needing to hold onto another person.

“I’m . . . I need to sit down,” she managed. Adam guided her back up to level ground and she sat on a large rock partially buried in the soil. Adam and Shanna waited before her, an audience of two she wasn’t ready to acknowledge. When she finally felt able to speak, she said, “He put me down in that hole in the ground as punishment. For helping you that night when it was so cold. Do you remember?”

“You brought me inside while everyone was singing,” Shanna said. “You disobeyed him.”

Clare nodded. “I don’t know how long he left me down there but I panicked and thought . . . I thought there was something down there with me. Some monster. And the pit seemed bigger than it should’ve been.” She gazed up at them. “I didn’t remember it until now, until coming here. I never knew where my counting compulsion started. But it was there, in that hole.” She gave the depression a glance and looked away. “It’s how I’ve been coping all these years. Making sure things were right and true.” Tears spilled free of her eyes and Shanna sat down beside her and held her hand.

“I’m sorry for making us come here,” Shanna said. “I thought it would help.”

Clare sniffled and wiped at her face. “Me too. I guess I wasn’t ready.” She stood and wavered for a second before heading toward the SUV. All at once this place was too much. All of the sights and scents were overpowering. Knowing where her counting compulsions came from did nothing to calm her. Instead her mind spun with the memory of the pit. It was impossible, but the recollection felt so real, so true. She clung to the idea that a sick, cruel man tortured a little girl and that girl’s mind had tried to cope with it the best way it could. The other possibility was the sprawl of madness. There had been nothing down there in the dark with her, and the pit hadn’t changed. It was impossible.

Her hand scrabbled at the door handle and she yanked it open, pulling herself into the passenger seat. Adam and Shanna silently climbed in as well. As they pulled in a small circle she gave the clearing a final look and swore it was the last time she’d ever lay eyes on this cursed place.

Chapter Thirty-Two

The sketch artist was waiting for her in one of the two interview rooms adjacent to Hughes’s office.

His name was Barry Tillman—an older man with receding, feathery white hair and long, delicate fingers she couldn’t help but watch as he took notes and began mapping the outlines of a face on a sheet of white paper. He had her first describe the twisted man as best she could. What were some defining features that stood out to her? Did he have any distinctive marks, scars, tattoos? She was shown a folder filled with headshots, all marked with letters and numbers beneath their frames. Clare picked out three different pictures, selecting features from each of them that made up the man’s face in her mind.

When they were finished Barry said he would do a general sketch, then send it to her, and she could give him feedback about any changes. Clare thanked him and headed outside to where Adam and Shanna waited in the SUV.

As she crossed the parking lot Clare realized the weight she’d hoped would be lifted by coming here and exposing herself to the past had only become heavier. All of the therapy she’d had over the years contended that by facing one’s fears, the fears themselves would lose their power and hold over the subject. She would have never agreed to going back to the Refuge if she’d known the memories it would stir up. By identifying the trauma that had brought about her counting she’d shone a light on the boogeyman, and instead of exposing the monster as a harmless childhood fear she’d seen the gleam of its eyes and teeth.

When she reached the SUV Adam was outside, leaning against one fender. His expression stopped her in her tracks.

“I’m going home,” he said quietly. “I was really hoping I could help you, and I’ve tried, but this isn’t going to work.”

“What do you mean?”

“You’re too close to this, Clare. You’re taking chances when you shouldn’t and you’re not thinking clearly. I understand why, but I’m afraid you’re going to get yourself hurt or worse, and my being here isn’t helping.” He grimaced. “I can’t risk my career for this. I’ve already gone out on a limb and I don’t want to push it any further. That was reckless what you did last night.”

“I know what I saw, what I heard.”

“And if so? What if they would’ve caught you? What then?” He shook his head. “I’ll let you know if I find anything else, but I have to step away from this. You should think about going home too. Take Shanna with you.”

“She won’t leave without her son.”

“Then go without her.”

“I will not leave her again.” The steel in her voice cut through the air between them.

Adam stared at her. “I’m sorry,” he said, and climbed into the vehicle.

She stood there for a beat, unable to move before finally walking to the passenger side.

They rode in silence back to the hotel, the mood heavy and cloistering. When they arrived she led Shanna up to the room without saying anything to Adam. Next door, she could hear him packing. After fifteen minutes or so his exterior door snapped shut and it was quiet.

“Is everything okay?” Shanna asked.

Clare swallowed, trying to steady her voice before she spoke. “Yeah. Everything’s going to be fine.”

* * *

After changing into more comfortable clothes, they dined in the hotel restaurant. It was deserted except for them and two construction workers drinking beer at the bar. They sat at a table in the farthest corner beneath a mounted pheasant perched on a log. The waiter was polite and enthusiastic, and the food was surprisingly excellent. Clare had the lemon garlic perch while Shanna tried a bacon cheeseburger, declaring after a single bite it was the very best thing she’d ever tasted. Clare had several glasses of the house cabernet and offered Shanna a sip, who pulled a face so comical after swallowing, Clare burst out laughing. It felt good despite the events of the day, perhaps in spite of them. A low-grade anger throbbed whenever she thought of Adam’s departure, and yet he wasn’t wrong. She had taken a chance, but what would he have done in the same situation? He’d come here of his own volition, tapped into sources without her asking, and now he’d left them to fend for themselves.

But he isn’t wrong.

She glanced at Shanna, wishing she could whisk her away from here tonight and knowing she would never agree to it. She would no more leave her son behind than Clare would leave her. They were bound together and would see this through one way or another.

The deputy on duty came through, giving them a small wave before heading off on a circuit of the hotel.

As they ordered desert, Clare felt a certain calm descend over her. She didn’t know if it was the food, the wine, or simply the warmth of her sister’s company, but the stress of the day began to ebb. Maybe it was simply committing to the path they were on. There was a solace in resolution, no matter if you were heading into hell or not.

When the piece of chocolate cake the size and approximate weight of a brick was set before them, Shanna’s eyes lit up. “Never mind,” she said between bites. “This is the best thing I’ve ever tasted.”

When they were finished they left the restaurant and walked down the long first-floor hallway to the lobby, pausing before they entered the main area at an intersecting corridor. “Pool,” Shanna read from the sign with an indication arrow pointing to the left. She looked at Clare. “Could we go look at it?”

“Sure. Why not?”

The pool room was completely empty and only half of the overhead lights shone on the motionless water. Clare led Shanna to the whirlpool’s edge and sat down, removing her shoes and socks. She motioned for Shanna to do the same while rolling up her pant legs. “If we didn’t have to keep your stitches dry we’d get all the way in,” Clare said, letting her feet and legs dangle in the water. The whirlpool’s jets weren’t on but it was sufficiently heated so that Shanna’s eyes widened as she lowered her own legs over the side.

“Like a really big bathtub,” Shanna said.

Clare remembered the small, flimsy bathtubs from the Refuge, and smiled. “Exactly.”

The glass walls were dusky with late evening light. Only the soft clunk of the pool’s filter broke the silence.

“Can you see the ocean from your house?” Shanna asked, staring at the pool’s flat surface.

“Yes. From the second floor we can.”

“What’s it like?”

“It’s . . .” How to describe something as profound and elemental as the sea? She decided she couldn’t. “You have to see if for yourself.”

“Do you think . . .” Shanna stopped. Looked away.

“What?”

“Nothing.”

“No, what were you going to say?”

“When this is over, do you think we could . . . I mean . . . if it all works out, could we stay with you?”

“Of course. I’m not letting you out of my sight again.”

Shanna smiled, but it slowly slipped from her face. “What about Eric? Won’t he—”

“He’ll love you.” She was about to say something more, to offer something supportive about finding her son, when her phone announced a text. “Speak of the devil,” Clare said, seeing it was Eric. Her thumb was too wet from the moisture on the floor to use her thumbprint scanner, so she had to punch in her phone’s code.

Presentation went great. Call when you can.

“Mind if I talk to him really quick?” she asked Shanna.

“No, it’s fine.”

Eric picked up on the second ring. “Hello, love.”

“Hey there. Are congratulations in order?”

“I think so. It went really well. The group was impressed with the analysis.”

“That’s great. And they should be, you worked hard on it.”

“Mark Flanagan, the vice president, floated the idea of a retainer at the end.”

“Are you kidding? That’s wonderful!”

Eric laughed. “It is, it really is. I’m excited. But I’ll fill you in on all the boring stuff when I see you, which will be in about twenty-four hours. I booked the first flight out tomorrow at eleven. Couldn’t find anything earlier. How’s it going there?”

Clare turned to look at Shanna, who was leaning over the whirlpool and staring at her reflection. For a moment she had an uncomfortable sensation she couldn’t name. It was the way Shanna was watching herself, as if she didn’t recognize the woman looking back at her from the water.

“Honey? Did I lose you?” Eric said.

“Huh? No, sorry.” She turned back to look out the glass wall, where her own reflection met her. The same sense of dislocation overcame her. Something was wrong. For several seconds she was frozen, mind unable to buffer and arrange her thoughts correctly. She’d forgotten something. No, not forgotten. Overlooked. It was a sliver in her mind that wouldn’t reveal itself, only drove in deeper the more she tried working it free. And the most inexplicable thing was she kept thinking of Manda, the little girl who she’d met last week after her lecture. She kept seeing Manda and her mother walking away down the street, presumably back into the arms of fellow cult members. But why she’d be thinking of that now was a mystery. “It’s just been a long day,” she finally managed. “I didn’t sleep well.”

“You sound tired.”

“I am.”

“Everything else is good though? Nothing crazy going on?”

She closed her eyes. “Nope. All quiet here. We did go out to the place where we grew up. The Refuge.”

“What?”

“Yes, but we’re okay. It was . . . necessary, I think. Especially for Shanna. I’ll tell you about it tomorrow.”

“You sure you’re all right?”

“I’m fine.”

There was a silence on the line that might as well have been Eric contradicting her. “If you say so.”

“I do.”

He paused again and she hoped he wouldn’t press the subject any further. “Can’t wait to see you,” he finally said.

“Me either. Call me in the morning before you leave.”

“I will. I love you.”

“Love you too.”

She hung up and stood facing away from Shanna for a moment, unable to say why she was afraid to turn around. It was only her sister there, sitting beside a pool of water. She tugged one last time at the mental sliver before letting it go.

Shanna was looking across the room at the far wall when Clare returned to the whirlpool’s edge. The sun had dropped below the western tree line and the sky was bruised to the color of Clare’s wine at dinner. “It’s all so beautiful,” Shanna said. Clare sat beside her and they watched the color deepen to purple, then fade to black.

Shanna yawned widely, covering her mouth with the back of her hand. “Let’s get you back to the room before you pass out,” Clare said, helping her up. Her own weariness was painting delicious pictures of the soft bed and pillows waiting above.

As they left the pool area and stepped into the hall someone approached them from the direction of the restaurant. It took Clare a beat before she recognized who it was. Brynn Johnson held up her hands as Clare began to back away, pulling Shanna instinctually behind her. “Listen, Ms. Murdock, I just want to talk, to both of you, actually. Just a few questions. There’s no reason to keep stonewalling me.”

“Shanna, go upstairs,” Clare said over her shoulder. When Shanna hesitated, she added, “Now.” Shanna moved away through the lobby, throwing a last look back at them.

“Listen, I understand you’re probably dealing with a lot, but—” Johnson began, but Clare cut her off.

“You have no idea what we’re dealing with and if you have any decency you’ll respect that and leave us alone. I’ve spoken to the sheriff about you badgering us. The next step is a formal complaint.”

Johnson smiled and moved closer, lowering her voice. “But you wouldn’t really want to do that, would you? Not after last night. What were you doing out there, by the way? Revisiting your childhood memories? Singing some old songs?”

It felt like a glass of ice water had been dumped into her veins. “Stay away from us,” Clare said, and left her standing in the hallway, glancing back only once to see Johnson had started off in the other direction. She took in a deep, steadying breath and let it out, taking some comfort Johnson hadn’t attempted to follow her up to the room. But the reporter’s reference to songs had shaken her to the core. Hughes had said she was tenacious, but how much did she truly know about the cult? About them singing in the dark?

A new email chimed on her phone, bringing her free of her thoughts, and she paused in the lobby to read it after seeing it was from Barry Tillman. The attachment was the mostly finished sketch of the twisted man. She was stunned at the likeness the artist had created. He’d captured the man’s eyes and straight teeth so well it instantly brought her back to the day she’d spoken to him outside their home in Oregon. She could almost feel the menace coming off the picture. The only thing she noticed for feedback was the thickness of his eyebrows. She’d email Barry once she got to the room.

“Have a good night,” the clerk called as she passed the check-in counter. Clare was about to respond when she paused, returning to the desk and holding her phone across to the woman behind it.

“You haven’t seen anyone around lately who looks like this man, have you?” Clare asked.

The woman picked up her glasses from the desk’s top and put them on, squinting slightly at the screen. She glanced at Clare, then back at the picture. “Are you police or something?”

“No, but he’s a person of interest with the sheriff’s office.”

“This is different than the other guy we were supposed to be on the lookout for. Are they together or something?”

“Possibly.”

The clerk gave the picture a final look before frowning. “Can’t say for sure, but it looks like the guest in two-twenty-one.”

“What?”

“He checked in a few days ago. He’s the only other one on the second floor besides you all.”

Clare’s heart did a strange double tap against her breastbone, then sped up as if she’d just sprinted a mile. “He’s here?”

“As far as I know. Is he dangerous?”

“Call the police,” Clare said, reaching for her gun, but it was upstairs, tucked beneath a layer of clothes in her suitcase. “Tell them to hurry.”

She didn’t wait to see if the clerk would do it. The stairs looked like Everest as she approached them and she had to steady herself on the banister. A swarm of dizziness engulfed her, then passed, and she hurried up the steps, a silent pleading repeating in her mind that the clerk had been mistaken. That it was only someone who looked like the twisted man.

The second-floor hallway was deserted. Clare shot a quick look to the right before starting for their room, wondering where the deputy on duty was. There was no time to find him now. She had to get to Shanna, had to get her out of the hotel.

When she reached their room Clare tried sliding her key card into the reader but the door wasn’t latched. It swung inward at the pressure and she froze in the doorway.

Shanna sat on the end of the bed across the room. The twisted man stood beside her, a long, serrated blade against her throat.

Everything slowed.

Each thought collapsed into the next. She tried to speak, to move, but she was locked in place.

“Come in, Clare,” the man said. He smiled at her, revealing the straight whiteness of his teeth. He stood tall, without a hint of angle to his posture. “We were just talking about you.”

She fought down a powerful urge to run and stepped into the room, keeping her hand on the doorknob as the door shut. “The police are on the way.”

“Maybe they are. But we’ll be gone long before they get here. Apparently there was a breaking and entering across town.” He grasped Shanna’s hair and pulled her to her feet. She whimpered.

“Don’t hurt her!” Clare said, eyes flitting to her suitcase three steps away. There was no chance she’d be able to retrieve her gun in time to do anything except get Shanna killed.

As if he were reading her mind, the twisted man said, “Do anything stupid and her head comes off. It’ll probably roll right to your feet. The last thing she’ll see is you looking down at her.”

The borders of Clare’s vision began to smolder with darkness and she gripped the doorknob harder. She couldn’t pass out now. There was no telling what he’d do then. A crimson shine coating the back of his hand caught her eye and she noticed the blade itself looked like it had been hastily wiped clean. A red droplet hung from the pommel.

“What did you do?” she asked, unable to look away from the blood.

“Let’s walk, shall we? All will be revealed in time.” He started forward, keeping the knife tucked into the hollow of Shanna’s neck. “Run and I’ll cut her. Scream and I’ll cut her. Do as I say and neither of you will be hurt.”

Clare sized him up and immediately knew she wouldn’t have a chance at disarming him. He was too tall and rangy-looking. She didn’t think Shanna’s decapitation was an idle threat either; she believed he was capable of it. But there was still the option to run. In a second he’d be within reaching distance and would be able to grasp her as well. For now she was free. She could run down the hallway and stairs to the front door and outside. She could escape.

I could run away again and leave her behind.

All resistance drained from her.

“Open the door,” the man said. She obeyed.

They stepped into the hallway and he motioned toward the waiting stairway at the end of the corridor. He meant to take them out the way she’d slipped free of the hotel the night before. The thought that he’d been watching her then came and went as she felt the cold and powerful grip of his hand on her arm. “We’re going to stroll out of here without a fuss,” he murmured to them. “No harm, no foul, as they say.”

“Where are you taking us?” Clare asked, every fiber of her being wanting to yank away from his hold.

“Someplace special. You’ll see.”

“To Rainier and Parson?” She glanced down, noticing a splash of red on the carpet outside a door. The blood glistened, not yet dry. It led into the room, disappearing below the door, and she wondered if the twisted man had found the deputy on duty first. Clare looked away, faintness trying to cloud her mind with mist. They had to get away from him before he got them to the parking lot. If he forced them into a vehicle, they were lost.

Her mind whirred, eyes flitting to the stairway corridor they were approaching. As he led them to the top of the stairs Clare spotted a fire alarm pull on the wall. It was on her side, within reach as they closed in on the first step.

Terror clenched her gut as she casually reached out and hooked a finger over the pull and yanked as they turned onto the stairs.

There was a click, then a strobing flash of light accompanied by an electronic blast of alarm. The twisted man jerked and spun slightly toward her, the knife dropping a few inches away from Shanna’s throat.

Clare threw all her weight against him, reaching for Shanna at the same time.

The man grunted, losing his grip on her as his balance disappeared. He slipped down a stair, sweeping an arm out and grasping the railing.

In one motion Clare yanked Shanna out of his reach and pistoned her leg out, her foot connecting with his chest as he lurched back toward them.

For a second he was suspended there, arms cartwheeling, feet on the edge of the top stair. The knife swung out and cut a line of fire in Clare’s forearm as their eyes met, and Clare saw surprise mixed with pure hatred in his.

Then he was plummeting backward, his neck and head cracking into a step’s edge, feet coming up and flipping over again before his body slammed into the landing below.

Shanna shuddered against her and Clare pulled her close as they looked down at the slumped form.

The twisted man climbed to his feet and started back up the stairs.

Two steps up he paused, swaying, and looked down at his empty hands. A pattering sound filled the stairwell and the lower half of his shirt and beltline began to sodden with red. He reached down and touched the handle of the knife where it protruded from his right side, just beneath the ribs, but didn’t attempt to pull it out. He raised his head to look at them and opened his mouth as if to say something before stumbling backward and sitting down hard on the landing, his back against the wall. His chest heaved twice and he was still.

When the man didn’t so much as twitch, Clare turned to Shanna and began checking her over with shaking hands.

“Are you okay? Did he get you?” Clare heard herself ask. Shanna stared at the man’s slumped form at the bottom of the stairs and wouldn’t meet Clare’s gaze. Wouldn’t answer any of her questions. She might as well have been asleep with her eyes open.

When she was sure her sister hadn’t been cut, Clare examined her own wound. There was little blood, the gash not nearly as deep as she’d feared.

“Come on,” she said, guiding Shanna away from the stairway. She found her hand and held it, and didn’t let it go even after she was sure the sound of sirens wasn’t only in her head.

Chapter Thirty-Three

Clare stared at the stain on the wall and stroked Shanna’s hair.

They were on a lumpy couch in one of the interview rooms at city hall. Shanna lay along its length, using Clare’s lap as a pillow. She’d been asleep for nearly an hour—since Hughes had left in the company of two very serious-looking city detectives. She glanced at the clock hanging near the door. 6:00 A.M. They’d been in this room for the better part of eight hours now and the walls were closing in.

Her eyes returned to the stain across the room like a tongue seeking out the newly formed hole of a missing tooth. It was dark, as if the hand that made it had been covered in grease, and curled in a spiral. Like the tail of a lizard. A chameleon, perhaps.

Chameleon, that’s what the twisted man had been.

She recalled the coldness of his hand on her arm and took a deep breath, fighting back the urge to begin counting. At least for now. Ever since Hughes had deposited them in this room she’d been scanning through the timeline of the last week, searching for another instance she’d noticed the twisted man lingering near their house or on the college campus, but there was nothing. She believed now it wasn’t that he hadn’t been there, only that she hadn’t seen him. And what did it mean for everything that came afterward? He’d already been watching her when Shanna escaped early Saturday morning. Already disguised as a vagrant. Already waiting. Already . . . in place.

Her mind slipped and skidded over various questions but kept coming back to the fact that she’d begun having the hallucinations almost exactly the same time as everything else was happening. She didn’t know how that was possible outside of chance . . . yet a part of her believed it wasn’t. That everything was tied together in a way she didn’t yet understand.

And the twisted man was dead, so there would be no answers from him.

She shifted slightly, trying to find a more comfortable position without disturbing Shanna.

Someone passed quickly by outside the door, their footsteps fading. She wondered when either the detectives or Hughes would return. She’d repeated her statement to them at least four times in the early morning hours after being brought here from the hotel. Each time they’d asked her to go over it again while Shanna sat beside her, silent, catatonic. Dr. Latten had been called in and spoke with them both as well, but even his calm demeanor and placid voice couldn’t bring any response from Shanna. She’d retreated somewhere within herself—somewhere, Clare guessed, locked tight with years of barriers and fortifications. There would be no drawing her out until she was ready.

Clare glanced at her cell phone lying on the table. She’d called Eric in the early morning hours between interviews, waking him from a dead sleep. Despite trying to assure him they were okay, he’d panicked. The first time she’d ever heard him leave the stable, shallow end of the pool where he normally stayed and go off the deep end. It had taken her the better part of ten minutes to calm him down, feeling a strange sense of juxtaposition. Was this how Eric normally felt dealing with one of her many rough patches? It was bizarre doing the comforting instead of being comforted.

When he’d finally calmed down he began checking for earlier flights but there hadn’t been any before his previous booking at eleven. For the meantime, his itinerary would stay the same.

“I knew something like this was going to happen,” he’d said shortly after she’d explained what had transpired at the hotel. “You and Shanna need to get the hell out of that town. Come home.”

But she explained that if she were to leave, she’d be leaving alone. Shanna wouldn’t abandon her son until she knew his fate, one way or another. He must have known better than to ask Clare to leave her behind because he’d grudgingly relented, telling her if he were able to arrange any earlier travel, he’d let her know.

Now she willed her phone to ring. For it to be Eric saying he’d caught an earlier flight and was already in Minneapolis, on his way north. In that moment she wanted nothing more than to have his arms around her and feel the strength of his love as he spoke reassuringly in her ear.

The urge to call Adam came and went after she’d spoken to Eric. She’d gone so far as to pull up his number before putting her phone away. He’d made his choice and she didn’t want him coming back out of a feeling of obligation now.

Shanna drew in a stuttered breath and shifted on Clare’s lap. A second later she opened her eyes, blinking at the harsh fluorescent glow. She sat up slowly and looked around the room as if she had no idea how she’d gotten there.

“Hey,” Clare said, smoothing a few errant strands of hair behind her sister’s ear. “Feeling any better?”

She was sure Shanna wouldn’t say anything, would go on residing behind her internal walls, but her response was almost immediate. “A little. I dreamed it all again. But it really happened, didn’t it?”

“Yes. It happened.”

She was quiet for a time. “I thought I was going back there. To the house in the woods. That’s where he was bringing us, wasn’t he?”

“I don’t know. But the important thing is he didn’t. And he can’t hurt you anymore.” Clare brushed aside Shanna’s hair.

“You’re hurt.”

Clare glanced down at her arm. A paramedic had cleaned and dressed the cut, but the small bandage had come loose while Shanna dozed. Clare patted it back in place. “It’s fine. Doesn’t even hurt. Do you want to sleep some more?”

“I want to, but I don’t think I can.”

Clare gazed at her sister, wanting to ask the question she’d been holding back since the police had placed them in the back of a cruiser and whisked them here in a glare of red strobing light. Did you ever see that man before? She knew what Shanna would say. Knew the only person she’d seen in her years of seclusion was Rainier. But if only she recognized the twisted man, even from a picture, it would close the endless loop of thoughts circling her mind.

As she was about to ask the question, the door opened and Hughes strode inside. “How we doing?” he said, settling himself on a chair near the interview table.

“Okay. Getting stir-crazy in here,” Clare said. “Shanna’s doing a little better though.”

“Are you?” Hughes asked.

“Yes,” Shanna replied in a small voice.

“That’s good. Very good.”

“The deputy who was on duty, did he . . .” She could still see the splash of blood leading beneath the hotel door, could still smell its coppery tang. “Did he have a family?” Clare asked slowly. She didn’t want to know, and had to at the same time.

“A wife. No children.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Me too. On a number of levels.” He cleared his throat. “Okay, here’s what we know so far. The guy’s name, at least the one he went by to check into the hotel, was Daryl Julius Saint. The ID he had on him was of the same name. No hits so far in the criminal database, but we’re still running his prints. From what we can tell he ambushed Deputy Thorenson in the hallway and dragged him into his room. Then he made his way down to your room. Maybe now that Shanna’s able to tell us, we can figure out what happened from there.”

Shanna swallowed and Clare gave her an encouraging look. “When the woman stopped us in the hall, Clare sent me up to our room. I was using my key when the man . . . he came up behind me and pushed me into the room. He said I had to be quiet otherwise he’d kill me. He made me sit on the bed and he told me to wait, that Clare would be along soon and we’d all go somewhere together.”

“He didn’t say where?” Hughes asked.

“No.”

Hughes was quiet for a time, then shifted his attention to Clare. “And you’re absolutely sure it was the same man from Oregon?”

“Yes. He was disguised before, trying to look like a homeless person.”

“And you never saw him prior to that?”

“No.”

“He must’ve been watching you, waiting for just the right moment when you were apart.”

The thought sent a shudder through her. “What about Brynn Johnson?” She’d conveyed her concerns about the reporter to Hughes as soon as they were safe, stressing the fact the woman had approached her only moments before Saint had made his appearance.

Hughes paused. “I’m afraid that wasn’t Brynn Johnson you saw in the hotel.”

The room was silent as what he said sunk in. “What do you mean that wasn’t her?”

Hughes tapped his fingertips on the tabletop. “When we went to Ms. Johnson’s residence this morning there was no answer at the door. One of my deputies spotted what looked like blood on the floor through a bedroom window.” Hughes stopped, glancing up to meet Clare’s eyes. “We found her body in the basement. It appears she’s been dead for several days.”

The internal vertigo enveloped her again and she thought she might be sick. “That’s . . . that’s not possible. If she was dead then who. . .”

“We don’t know. Someone who knew you wouldn’t recognize Brynn Johnson by sight. Someone who wanted to keep tabs on you right out in the open.”

“Oh my God.”

“My theory is she’s working with Rainier and Saint. I’m guessing her showing up at the hotel last night was specifically to get the two of you separated so Saint could strike.”

Clare put an arm around Shanna, who stared blankly at the floor. “This was all planned. Everything. From the moment I got on the plane.”

Hughes sat forward, resting his arms on his knees. He looked old then, much older than he had when she’d first laid eyes on him at the hospital only a few days ago. “My theory is when Shanna escaped they were already watching you, since you saw Saint outside your home. After that they were frantic to try and get the both of you, given that they murdered an innocent woman just to assume her identity. I want to apologize since I didn’t believe we had anything beyond Rainier to worry about here, but that’s obviously not the case. I know you felt strongly about it so I sent a couple men out to Steven Parson’s camp this morning to ask a few more questions. They brought a picture of Saint as well, so we’ll see if anything happens there.” She wanted to say something then, to tell him about what she’d witnessed at the camp in the middle of the night, but couldn’t get herself to form the words. By the time she’d worked up the courage the moment had passed and Hughes had moved on. “In the meantime, we’re getting you both out of here.”

“Where?” Clare asked.

“A safe place. Somewhere no one would know to look.”

“I won’t leave. Not until you find my son,” Shanna said. Her voice had gained some strength and she sat straighter, her shoulders pulled back as if ready to be challenged.

“Don’t worry, the place isn’t far away. And we’ll be taking all the precautions available until everything is sorted out. I know you mentioned your boyfriend was flying in today, but for now the fewer people who know where you’re at, the better.”

“No, I want Eric with us when he gets here.”

“Until we know more it’s not a good idea.”

Clare shook her head. “He’s not a risk.”

“He may not be, but if someone’s been watching your house they might be keeping tabs on him. He could lead someone right to you.”

She started to argue again but felt Shanna touch her arm. The beseeching look in her sister’s eyes said everything. As much as she longed to see Eric, Hughes was right. It might put them at a greater risk. Slowly she nodded. “Okay.”

“As soon as he’s here I’ll meet with him and figure out a way to reunite the two of you,” Hughes said. “Deputy Wilt will be stationed with you first and I’ll be calling in a favor to a close friend who used to be a state police detective. He and I and Wilt will be the only people who know where you are. I trust the two of them implicitly. You’ll be safe.”

The turbulence of the last few days caught up with her then. Her life had never been steady by any stretch of the imagination, but now she felt completely untethered, drifting amidst a dangerous sea in a storm without land in sight. Only the tightening of Shanna’s hand in her own kept her from completely breaking down.

“When do we leave?” Clare asked.

Hughes stood and went to the door, opening it before glancing back at them. “Right now.”

Chapter Thirty-Four

When they pulled out of the sheriff’s garage, Clare saw the humidity of the day before had coalesced into a hovering gloom of clouds staining the sky a deep gray.

Light rain pattered the windshield of Hughes’s SUV as they cruised through town and doubled back along a side street before turning east. “Making sure we’re not being followed,” Hughes said, guiding the vehicle past an abandoned rest stop, its façade lined with cracks and half-hearted graffiti. Several cars back Deputy Wilt’s cruiser followed, its headlights two yellowed stains in the falling rain.

Clare and Shanna both rode in the back seat, fingers interlaced. Shanna hadn’t said anything further upon leaving the interview room and being herded toward the garage where they were loaded into the vehicle, all without seeing another soul. Clare wondered dimly how the city detectives would take to the idea of their witnesses being placed under protection at a location even they weren’t privy to. She decided she didn’t care. As Hughes had said, the fewer people who knew where they were, the better.

They traveled along the highway for nearly half an hour before swinging onto a county road. None of the cars following them turned save for Wilt’s, and before long signs of habitation became less and less, as if they were traveling back in time.

“The place we’re going to is my cousin’s,” Hughes said over his shoulder several miles later. “He’s a dentist in Florida. We grew up together and he’s kept the family cabin for the weekends he gets up here in the summer. Truth be told I don’t think he’s made it the last few years, just pays to have it cleaned and aired out each season. Once in a while I’ll go up here and do a little fishing.”

“It’s on a lake?” Clare asked.

“Yep. Toll Lake, it’s called. Used to fish it a lot as a kid.” Hughes met her eyes in the rearview mirror. “You’ll be safe there.”

The road they were on forked, and they veered right onto a well-kept dirt track. Two mailboxes stood at the juncture, one of them tipped to forty-five degrees and rust-eaten. The land climbed and the drive with it. Birches and tall basswoods stood like sentries on the rolling hills. A hawk swooped into view, then away through a gap in the trees. Clare wondered at the sheriff’s choice of safe house. It was definitely secluded and would be nearly impossible to locate unless someone knew exactly where to go, but that was the crux as well. If they needed help it would a be a long time coming.

She watched Hughes for a bit, thinking of the people who had left the cult in those last days. He looked at her again in the mirror, their eyes meeting for a moment before he shifted his attention back to the road.

She counted the number of bumps the vehicle traveled over as a distraction until glimpses of a lake appeared through the trees’ canopy to the left. A minute later the drive split again and they turned in the direction of the water, which revealed itself fully at the crest of a hill where the foliage opened up into a small yard. Toll Lake seemed to be nearly circular, with only a jagged bay cutting into the wood line to the west. At the top of the clearing stood a single-story house overlooking the water. A large three-season porch faced the lake, while the rest of the house seemed to support it in the form of large windows and short eaves. Rain dripped from the entryway overhang and ran from downspouts.

“Here we are,” Hughes said. He climbed out and opened the door for them as Deputy Wilt pulled to a halt on the far side of the SUV. Hughes carried their baggage for them, having retrieved it from the hotel prior to departing. Clare and Shanna hurried through the drizzle to the front door and waited while Hughes unlocked it and let them in.

The interior was spacious, with vaulted ceilings and natural wood everywhere. A stone hearth stood in a living room that flanked the three-season, affording unobstructed views of the lake.

“Only one other house out here,” Hughes said, setting their bags down at the quaint kitchen’s edge. “Far as I know the owner comes here even less than my cousin.”

Shanna walked through the kitchen and living room, pausing to study some photographs lining the mantle. She moved to the expanse of windows and looked out at the lake, standing motionless with her back to them. Hughes leaned closer to Clare, his voice lowered. “Is she going to be all right?”

“She’ll be fine. She might still be partially in shock. This will be good,” she said, motioning to the house. “She likes it quiet, more simple.”

Hughes nodded. “Travis grabbed a little food before we left and there should be clean linens on all the beds. I’ll be back sometime tonight and I’ll notify you of any developments. It doesn’t look like it, but the place has pretty decent cell reception.”

“Thank you, Sheriff,” Clare said.

“We’ll get this all resolved for you. Get you both back to regular life.”

“Whatever that is.” They shared a small laugh. Hers felt forced.

Wilt appeared in the doorway holding a pair of grocery bags and Hughes directed him to the fridge, while Clare went and joined Shanna by the window. “It’s pretty here,” Clare said after a time. “We’re safe now.”

Shanna took her hand but wouldn’t look at her. They stood side by side looking out into the gray, their reflections gazing stolidly back.

Chapter Thirty-Five

The house was chill and Clare couldn’t seem to make the thermostat work—who knew if the heating was even turned on yet—so she built a fire in the hearth instead.

When she lit one of the long matches from the upright stand on the mantle she stared at it for a time. Years ago she couldn’t have held a match like this. It would’ve sent her into a spiraling panic attack. But now she could control fear’s impulse at the sight of flame, could appreciate it for what it was. Fire was beautiful in a cruel way. It danced and spun to its own unheard opera, but it bit and chewed too. It cleared all in its path, ate everything away to ash, and also renewed life through fortified soil. At least everywhere except the site of her father’s cult.

Clare set the match beneath the delicate pyre she’d built in the hearth and watched the flame grow. The land where she and Shanna had lived those first formative years was still mostly dead, the foliage unable, or unwilling, to return.

Unwilling? She shook her head. Plants didn’t choose where to grow. They couldn’t discern good from bad. They either flourished or died. Just like people. The reason the growth hadn’t taken root in that place was something she didn’t care to think about. The image of the Refuge’s border was incongruently wrong when compared to wherever else the forest fire had touched. It was almost like the ground hadn’t allowed itself to be subsumed along with the rest of the scorched acreage. Like it had chosen to stay the way it was. As if it were waiting for something. Waiting for—

Clare shook herself free of the trance she’d been in. The fire crackled merrily and she added several logs, heat beginning to seep into the room. She stood and caught movement outside the large windows facing the lake. Deputy Wilt strode slowly across the lawn through the rain. He wore a dark slicker and paused every so often to observe the water’s disturbed surface.

“You okay?” Shanna asked. She was sitting in an overstuffed chair, reading a book she’d plucked from the shelf beside the windows.

Clare smiled. “Sorry, lost in my thoughts.” She crossed the room and sat in a wicker-backed chair opposite her sister. “What are you reading?”

“A mystery. It’s about a family that goes missing in the wilderness and a detective who was having an affair with the mother before she disappeared. It’s a little scary.”

“Maybe you shouldn’t read that one.”

Shanna shrugged, looking out the window to where Wilt paced along the tree line. “Do you think the sheriff is right?”

“About what?”

“That we’ll ever go back to normal life?”

“Yes. I do.”

“But what is normal? I’ve never known normal.”

Clare grimaced. “You’re right. It took me a long time to even understand what that was. I watched people all around me who seemed to have it figured out. They went to school, to jobs, had relationships, and lived like nothing was wrong. I knew I wasn’t normal, the way I was looking at the world, how I was seeing it. But slowly it became clearer, like my vision was getting better and better. Eric was a big part of that. After Lucas passed away I didn’t really have anyone besides my friend Lia. Now there are bad days. Really bad sometimes. But there are good days too. And great moments—wonderful moments that are worth fighting through all the bad.”

Shanna seemed to absorb this. “And do you still think we’re sick like Father was?”

“I don’t know. I’ve always had my own struggles, and you will too. Father had his. I think maybe we’re all broken and the best we can do is find ways and people who make us feel whole again.” The wind came up off the lake, making the house creak. The fire flared, sending more heat into the room. She rose and squeezed Shanna’s shoulder. “Want some tea? Or coffee? You haven’t tried coffee yet.”

“I’m okay.”

In the kitchen she found some stale light roast on the top shelf of a cupboard. As long as the caffeine hadn’t dried out as well, she’d be okay. She needed something to keep her awake. Adrenaline and stress had done the job so far, but now with the rain pattering on the roof and the gray light softening everything, sleep was like gravity weighing her down. She couldn’t succumb though, not yet. Maybe once Eric was here she’d allow herself rest. She’d feel safe then.

Glancing at the clock, she realized they hadn’t spoken prior to Eric’s flight, the last contact they’d had only a few quick texts back and forth hours ago. He’d be in the air by now, probably nearing the end of his flight. The thought bloomed a warmth in her center and she decided to call him anyway and leave a message he could listen to as soon as he touched down.

When his voicemail picked up like she knew it would she told him they were at a safe place and that she’d contact him this afternoon after he landed about how and when they’d be able to meet up. She ended the call by saying she loved him and had to fight back the emotion it brought.

The coffee was flat and almost briny but she drank it anyway, relishing the surge of caffeine. When she returned to the living room Shanna had fallen asleep in the chair, her head tipped at an uncomfortable angle to one side.

“Here, honey, let’s get you into bed,” Clare said, helping her to her feet. She guided her down the hall to the first door, into a small bedroom with a single window overlooking the lake. The linens were fairly fresh and Shanna sunk into the bed, allowing Clare to cover her with a heavy comforter. She watched her sleep for a time, then drew the door partially closed and went back to the living room.

Someone stood in the kitchen dripping rain.

Clare bit back a scream and squeezed her eyes shut. “Jesus. You scared the shit out of me.”

“Sorry,” Wilt said, taking a step back to the kitchen’s threshold. “I just came in to check on you guys and didn’t see anyone out here.”

Clare let out the tension coiled in her chest with a long breath. “Shanna’s sleeping. We’re fine.”

Wilt nodded. “Okay, good. Sorry to startle you. I’ll be ranging around or in my cruiser. Just stick your head out the door if you need anything.”

“We will, thanks.”

The deputy stepped outside, pulling the door shut behind him. Clare sank to the sofa, her limbs weak. Damnit, he’d scared her. She tried taking a sip of coffee but she couldn’t stomach it anymore. Besides, now she was on the flip side of the equation and needed something to calm her nerves instead of stimulate them.

After tossing another log on the fire she went back to the kitchen and checked a few cabinets before opening the narrow pantry and finding what she was looking for. The vodka bottle was half full and she debated for a moment before pouring a few fingers into a glass with ice. She didn’t think Hughes would mind, and if his cousin threw a fit on his next visit she’d send a new bottle gift wrapped. The thought made her huff a quiet laugh.

The fridge held a two-liter of cola and she topped the glass with it, taking her drink back to the living room after checking the front door’s locks. She didn’t want the light-footed deputy coming in unannounced and startling her again, no matter how well his intentions.

Clare sipped her drink and watched the rain. The fire popped and the vodka did its work ironing out her wrinkled nerves.

Her eyelids drooped. She blinked hard, focusing on the water dripping off the porch’s roof. It was pretty, rhythmic in a hypnotizing way. She always liked watching the rain, and many days there was plenty to watch in Oregon. Her home now. She could almost imagine she was there on the couch in their living room instead of here. Even the fireplace matched somewhat, despite it being wood instead of gas. Any second Eric would come in from his run and complain about the rain cutting his route short. They’d go upstairs and undress and make love in the afternoon dimness and fall asleep holding one another. She could almost feel his arms around her.

She drifted.

Shadows moved behind bedsheets suspended on a clothesline. Instead of the bright summer sun shining and drying the linens’ dampness, moonlight glowed overhead, except Clare couldn’t see it when she looked up. The moon was missing from the sky and so were all the stars. The inky blackness spanning between the points of light had consumed them. Now it was only solid darkness above.

The sheet nearest her snapped in the breeze and she noticed one of the shadows behind it becoming clearer, more defined. It was a little girl. Someone she knew. Her sister.

Shanna pressed herself against the sheet, the outlines of her face set in relief, patches of deep black over her eyes and mouth. Pale white arms rose into view, hands cupped together. And for some reason Clare began backing away, not wanting to see what her sister held.

“Something different,” Shanna said, and Clare could see her mouth moving through the sheet. “It’s something different.” She opened her hands and a many-legged shape squirmed there. It had made a nest of her flesh and its children burrowed and feasted.

Clare opened her mouth to cry out and tried to run at the same time, but fell to the ground, and kept falling.

Falling.

She jerked awake, slopping some of her drink onto her lap. She sucked in a huge breath, completely stunned at her surroundings for half a second. Gradually the memories eked back in. She’d drifted off. Hadn’t meant to, but the lost sleep from the night before had been too much.

Clare set the drink aside, wiping at her jeans where the cola and vodka had spilled. All was quiet, the steady drip of the eaves the loudest sound. The fire had burned down and she went to it, stoking it with another piece of wood. How much time had passed? She couldn’t have been asleep too long, but with the muted light of the storm it was hard to tell. She searched for her phone, spotting it on the kitchen counter.

Late afternoon. She’d slept several hours. That would account for the wooziness. She rubbed at her eyes and jumped when the phone came to life in her hand. She recognized Hughes’s number and answered.

“All okay there?” he asked somewhat breathlessly.

“Yeah,” she said, clearing her throat. “Shanna’s sleeping and Wilt’s outside.”

“Good. There’s been a development.” Clare’s grip tightened on the phone and she leaned against the counter. “We just received a tip from someone in Farrell that they spotted Rainier’s vehicle heading into an old property outside of town.”

“Farrell, where’s Farrell?”

“Little town three hours southwest.”

“They were sure it was his car?”

“Gave us the license number exactly. And something else too.”

“What?”

“They said they couldn’t get a good look at the driver, but there was a kid with him in the passenger seat.”

Clare’s heart surged. “Oh God.”

“I’m on my way there and we’re in contact with the state police. They’ve set up checkpoints on all roadways. He won’t be able to slip away this time.”

She went to the sofa and sunk into it. “Who called it in?”

“Someone local. Sounded like they didn’t want to get involved but had seen the car’s description on the news.”

Clare’s thoughts swirled. “Why would Rainier go there?”

“No way of telling yet. I’ve got someone working on the place in question. Might be some distant relation of his we hadn’t made a connection to yet. In the meantime we’ll be putting a team together to observe and then move on him when everything’s a go. I touched base with Wilt a while ago, he said everything’s fine. I’ll keep you posted when we know something more.”

“Thank you, Sheriff.”

“No problem.”

“Be careful.”

There was a long pause. “I definitely will. For everyone’s sake.”

She lay her phone on the couch cushion and stared at it. Should she wake Shanna? It almost seemed she didn’t have a choice. It was utterly wonderful knowing her son might be alive, but also deeply chilling that he was in the possession of the man who had held her captive all those years—someone deranged enough to try killing her when she’d escaped. What would Rainier do now if he became aware the net was closing around him?

She stopped herself there, knowing exactly what he would do, what he was capable of. Maybe she should wait to tell Shanna. In a few more hours they might have much better news. In the meantime she could rest; she’d been through so much already. Clare was about to get up and find where she’d left her drink, maybe take a look out the front door to check on Wilt, when her phone chimed again. It would be Hughes, his voice a low husk, and he wouldn’t need to tell her the words. She’d know. Someone had made a mistake and Rainier caught wind of what was happening. He would be dead and Shanna’s son along with him. With a trembling hand she picked up the phone.

It was Adam’s number.

“Hello?”

“Probably the last person you want to hear from today, huh?” Adam said.

She sighed. “No, there are a few other people still ahead of you.”

“Guess I deserve that. But you have to understand—”

“He tried taking us last night. The guy I told you about, he was staying at the hotel. He tried taking Shanna and I.”

“What?”

Haltingly she recounted the events of the night before, stopping to gather a measure of calm every so often. When she was finished there was a stunned silence on Adam’s end.

“Holy shit.”

“Yeah. My sentiments too.”

“I’m . . . Clare, I’m sorry. I didn’t doubt what you’d seen, but it was getting out of hand.”

“Listen, we can talk about this later,” she said, moving to the door and peering out into the gray wash of afternoon. The yard was empty save for the cruiser. She could just make out Wilt’s shape behind the wheel. “Are you back in New York?”

“No. Minneapolis.”

She paused. “What are you still doing there?”

“Not sure. Had a feeling I shouldn’t leave yet. Weird, huh?”

“Yeah.”

“I was about to book a flight last night and thought I should hang around for a few more days for some reason. Glad I did now. I’ll be heading back your way in a few minutes.”

“You don’t have to do that.”

“I know. I want to. At least then I can apologize in person, because you were right about Parson and his group.”

She found her glass and held it but didn’t take a drink. “Why, what happened?”

“The digital desperado, that’s what happened. He finished his digging and came up with the missing link. You remember Rainier and his mother moved to Sheffield, then went dark until she died?”

For a beat she had no idea what he meant. With all the events in the last two days she’d half forgotten about Adam’s hacker. Then it came rushing back. “Yeah, there was nothing until she was buried.” She searched for the name of the cemetery and it finally surfaced. “Lakeville, right?”

“Yes. And do you know where Lakeville Cemetery is?”

“No.”

“It’s midway between Sheffield and Valley Falls.”

“Where Parson and his father moved?”

“Correct. Now of course digital receipts back in the days of yore are basically nonexistent. Most contracts and agreements were typed up, filed, and forgotten in some dusty cabinet, which is exactly the case here. Luckily my guy has great instincts and was able to track down the son of the owner of a tenement building where Parson’s father ended up renting a little hole in the wall for the last decade of his spiraling life. The son still had his father’s rental agreements and was able to scan and email them to the desperado for a small sum. One of them was of a particular interest. On October fifteenth, nineteen eighty, John Parson cosigned a lease with one Helen Rainier.”

Clare was struck silent for a moment. “They lived together?”

“Bingo. From what I can deduce, Helen and John must’ve met one another and hit it off. They rent a place together and we have Harold Rainier and Steven Parson, both teenagers at the time, living shoulder to shoulder for upwards of six years.”

Clare took a long drink. She needed it. “Stepbrothers.”

“In all but the legality of marriage. Which is why it was so hard to match Rainier’s mother and Parson’s father—they never got hitched. In fact, that one rental agreement tucked away in some basement was the only thing tying them together. They must’ve parted ways just before both of them shuffled off their mortal coils because there’s nothing indicating any payments for burial from either side.”

She moved to the window in the entry, checking on Wilt again. He hadn’t moved from his car. Systematically, she began testing the locks. “So after the Refuge burns down, Rainier locates his long-lost brother and convinces him to scam his congregation and move north to start his own commune.”

“Spot on as far as I can tell. If Parson’s not hiding Rainier he sure as hell knows where he is.”

Clare nearly slapped her forehead. “I didn’t tell you. They think they found him.”

“Who? Rainier? Where?” There was tension in Adam’s voice now.

“A town called Farrell three hours southwest from here. Someone called in his car and plate numbers. They said they saw him going into an old property outside of town. He had a kid with him.”

“Who made the call?”

“Not sure. Hughes said it might’ve been anonymous.” Silence hung on the line connecting them, and she could feel gears turning within it. “Do you think it’s a decoy? Like the fake burglary call Saint put in before attacking us at the hotel?”

Something clattered and banged on Adam’s end and he grunted. “What’s Hughes’s number?” She rattled it off to him. There was more commotion from his end. “I’m going to call him and let him know what we found about Rainier and Parson. How many deputies does he have up there with you?”

“Just one.”

“Shit. Okay, I’ll have him send a couple more units just in case.” He paused. “Got your gun?”

Her eyes shot to the suitcase across the room. “Yeah.”

“Good. Keep it handy. I have friend who’s an agent here in the city. I’ll talk to him and see if I can get some support to go after Parson and his group. Until then, keep the doors locked and your phone nearby.”

Her heart had begun beating faster. She scanned the rain-flecked windows. “No one knows where we are.” She said it as much to reassure herself as Adam.

“Can’t be too careful. I’ll be in touch.” Then he was gone.

Clare listened to the water dripping in the downspouts. The quiet crackle of the fire. Her heart continued its increased pace, and her nerves thrummed. Rainier and Parson were connected, just as she’d suspected, but it went much farther back than she could’ve ever guessed. Back before Rainier had ever met her father and became drawn into the folds of his madness. But with the revelation came an entirely new set of disturbing questions. Like why hadn’t Rainier started a new life with the help of Parson after surviving the cult’s destruction? Why hide in the woods, keeping he and Shanna both isolated? Unless Parson wouldn’t have condoned the abuse and twisted relationship. But that didn’t really hold water either. Not if he were willing to yank up his family’s roots and start a new life in the north for Rainier. There was something deeper going on beneath the surface, something that had started years and years ago and was just now coming to fruition. But what?

Her head spun. She needed to sit down. Needed to finish her drink. Needed Eric.

Eric.

“Shit,” she swore, looking at her phone. He’d be nearing or in town by now and wanting to know where to find her. She frowned. Why hadn’t he called after landing? She checked her text messages but there was nothing new after their previous conversation in the morning. She dialed his number and began pacing across the living room. Hearing his voice would do her good. Maybe she’d have him meet up with Adam when he arrived and they could figure out what to do next, how to reunite them, because she needed him.

“Hey, I’m almost there,” Eric said into her ear when he picked up a second later.

“Wh . . . what?”

He laughed. “I made really good time even though your directions were kinda crappy.”

Clare slowed her pacing and stopped between the kitchen and the living room. “What are you talking about?”

Eric was quiet for a moment. “Your safe house. You gave me directions to where you’re at. You texted them to me.”

She shook her head. Couldn’t help it. “Honey, I never sent you anything.”

“Yes, you did. Right after I landed. You texted and said you couldn’t talk but I should follow these directions and make sure no one was tailing me.” She could hear the quiet hum of his rental’s engine in the background. “Are you fucking with me or something?”

“No, what? No, there’s just—” She yanked the phone away from her ear and opened her messages app. She scanned up and down their conversation.

Nothing. No directions. No replies. Nothing.

When she brought the phone back to her head Eric was talking again. “—way the hell out here but I thought that was the whole point.”

“There’s something wrong. I didn’t send you those directions. There’s nothing on my phone.”

“It came from you, honey. I’m looking at it right now.”

“I don’t care if it came from me, I’m telling you I didn’t send you any directions. I don’t even know how to get here.” Clare walked on not-quite-there legs to her suitcase and opened it, digging furiously through the clothes. She checked twice before sitting back on her haunches and staring stupidly at the strewn shirts and pants.

Her gun was gone.

This wasn’t happening.

It was as if she’d just gotten off an amusement park ride. The floor shifted beneath her feet and the walls expanded and contracted as if they were breathing. “Go back to town and wait for Adam, he’s on his way up north. Something’s wrong.”

“What is it? Who sent the directions?”

“I don’t know, but you have to turn around.”

“I’m only a mile away though. I can be there in a minute.”

“Eric, please. Just do what I say.”

Clare hung up, her thoughts a mass of unmeshed gears. She pried herself free of the encroaching paralysis and moved to the hallway. She had to get Shanna up. Hughes was in on everything, after all. That or someone hacked her phone and used the GPS to find where they were. Whatever was happening, they needed to run before it found them. She shoved into the room and froze, staring dumbly.

The bed was empty.

Clare’s heart dropped, stopping cold for half a beat, then rocketed to triple speed. “Shanna?” She knelt on the floor, looking beneath the frame. Nothing. The closet was empty as well, save for a few wire hangers that swung when she yanked the door open. “Shanna?” Her voice cracked and died as she hurried out of the room and went down the hallway, flinging doors wide.

Bathroom. Empty.

Second bedroom. Empty.

Master bedroom. Empty.

“Shanna!” No answer. The house was a tomb.

Clare hurried to the front door, expecting it to be wide open, but it was still locked tight. Had the deadbolt been thrown earlier when she checked the door? She couldn’t remember. She had to let Wilt know what was happening, had to find Shanna.

The rain felt like needles of ice. They lanced through her thin shirt and slid across her exposed skin in frigid trails. The yard was quiet, a haze of moisture obscuring the lake’s edge. Shanna was nowhere to be seen. Clare jogged to the cruiser. It wasn’t running as it had been earlier. The fact fell away amidst her panic, as did the angle of Deputy Wilt’s shape against the door. He’s taking a nap, she had time to think before rapping hard against the glass. He didn’t move.

“Deputy, there’s something wrong,” she said. Wilt’s head didn’t turn toward her, his face hidden by his baseball hat. “Goddamnit,” she swore, and yanked the door open.

Her next words were cut off as something warm drizzled across her pant legs and shoes. Wilt tipped toward her and she reached for him, catching his shoulder out of instinct. His hat fell off and she saw.

Saw the blood sheeted down his shoulder and chest to where it had pooled in the vehicle’s doorjamb and footwell.

Saw the red scribe below his chin opening wide like a ragged second mouth as his head tipped back.

Saw the vacancy of his open eyes.

She let him go and stepped back. Wilt tipped the rest of the way free of the car and landed with a terrible dead sound. His arm swung bonelessly over the top of his head and he lay still. Clare tried to draw a breath in but her lungs refused it. Her chest hitched as if she were drowning.

The ground tipped, then rushed up as she sat down hard and began crawling backward, part of her freewheeling mind registering all the blood covering her lower legs. It looked as if she’d waded through a red lake.

A voice was crying out inside her head, telling her she had to stand, had to run. Run down the drive because Eric was coming, he’d be here any second, and they had to get away. Had to get away before whoever did this found them. And somehow, before a shape moved from behind the cruiser into the pale light, she knew exactly who that person was.

Shanna walked toward her, smiling beatifically. Blood stained both her arms to the elbows and dripped from the tip of the fillet knife she held in one hand.

Clare skittered back and Shanna followed, walking slowly through the rain plastering her hair to her skull. “Clare, it’s okay. You don’t have to run,” Shanna said.

Clare continued backward, trying to get to her feet and failing again. It was as if she’d been drugged, but instead of a chemical racing through her bloodstream it was fear, disbelief, betrayal. “You . . . you killed him.”

Shanna glanced back at Wilt’s form hanging half in, half out of the car. “Yes. I didn’t want to, you have to know that. I didn’t want any of this. It was all supposed to be different. We were supposed to go with Daryl at the hotel. Wilt and the other deputy weren’t supposed to be involved.”

Daryl. Daryl Saint. Clare managed to push herself onto her feet and swayed upright. “You planned it.” And even as she spoke, the larger implications engulfed her like the wings of a massive bird of prey, talons digging deep. “All of it.”

“It was for you,” Shanna said. “Everything. We needed you to believe. To complete the circle. It was all for you, Clare.”

A thousand thoughts cascaded through her mind, avalanching until she was lost in a sea of white with one beacon shining through it. The only clarity within reach. “You called me Clare. Not Clara.”

Shanna slowed, then stopped. “I did, didn’t I? I guess I forgot. We all forget, don’t we? You know that.”

Clare drew in a shuddering breath. “You’re not Shanna.”

The woman shook her head, a pleading look on her face. “No. But I am your sister.”

Clare tried to spin and run, but arms wrapped around her from behind. They were strong, unyielding. They held her fast as she convulsed, trying to shake herself free. A cloth was shoved over her face, the harsh bite of chemicals racing deep into her open mouth and sinuses.

She tried to hold her breath but already a fog began descending over her senses, coating her nerves, draining strength from her muscles. The world grayed further as she sank to the ground, the arms around her holding tightly as she tried to turn her head away from the choking cloth, but it clung to her mouth and nose like something alive.

Clare drifted into herself, deeper and deeper, as if she were a submarine dropping below pallid waves. The raindrops became stars in a night sky as the darkness between them grew, flowing outward until the light was gone completely.

Chapter Thirty-Six

There once was a girl who didn’t believe.

Oily darkness.

Smoke. Something burning.

Pain.

Clare blinked. Fluttering images of dancing light. Heat. Spinning dizziness. She inhaled air tinged with smoke and turned her head to vomit. Her stomach crushed upon itself, doubling and redoubling the agony in her skull.

She was seated, legs splayed out in front of her, shoulders against something narrow. A tree? Her hands were behind her back, fingertips numb. Clare managed to sit upright again, a thin line of drool stringing from the ground to her lower lip. Her memory was awash in muddied images. They’d left the hotel after the man had tried taking them. She’d stopped him. Hughes had brought them to a . . . house on a lake and then—

“The girl was frightened of what she couldn’t see,” a voice whispered somewhere over her left shoulder. She could feel the passage of air from their lips on the back of her neck. Clare tried to turn but pain detonated in the base of her skull, racing up, then down over her forehead and stabbing into both eyes. She winced and let her head rest against the tree’s rough bark. A dozen yards beyond the V of her feet a fire burned. The flames sputtered and leapt as someone outside the ring of light tossed on another log. Sparks took flight like a swarm of bright insects and extinguished themselves in the darkening sky. Above the tree line in the far distance the horizon was a leached blue-gray.

“Her faith became broken and she dreamed of things that weren’t real. Of a world that never was or will be.”

“Shanna,” Clare croaked. But that wasn’t right either. The last of the recent memories came rushing back, rushing like blood, and she saw the woman who had called herself Shanna walking toward her, scarlet staining her shirt and arms, a knife in one hand she’d used to butcher Wilt with. “Who are you?” Clare finally managed after working up enough spit to swallow.

“I’m your sister, Clare. You know me. You remember.”

Clare strained against the bindings at her wrists but all the effort produced was more numbness in her fingers that began spreading up into her hands. Even as she relented, her body slackening against the tree, the woman’s words conjured an image. One she’d had several times since this horrible journey began. It was the splinter in her mind, the one irritating and prodding, telling her she’d overlooked something crucial.

She saw a little girl looking over her shoulder as she walked away down a street, her mother’s hand pulling her along.

Manda. The girl from Shining Rock Church. The church and the girl were important. Slowly, something Sandy had said came back to her regarding her sister Beverly’s inclusion in the cult: “I could tell right away he wasn’t what he said he was when we first met him. But he fooled her. Got her to move to that ranch they have and cut ties with everyone else. She had Manda a year later.”

All at once the splinter in her mind came free.

Shining Rock was a polygamist group. Most, if not all, of the children were sired by one man—the leader of the cult.

If she hadn’t been sitting down, she would’ve fallen. She made a choking sound in the back of her throat and thought she might be sick again.

“I think you’ve finally gotten it,” the woman said. “Simon Kinley wasn’t just your and Shanna’s father, he was the father to all of us. Every last child was his. And we all sang in the dark. He wanted to be sure his gift was passed on to the next generation, so he had many children.”

The woman came into view and seated herself a few feet away. Most of her face was wreathed in shadow and she held something in one hand. “It’s good you know now—know our father’s legacy—but there’s still one more thing you’ve forgotten. You need to atone, and to atone you have to remember.” She set the object she held at Clare’s feet. She hadn’t noticed any details before in the low light, only that it was a softly rounded shape in one of her hands. Now, as it rolled over to face her with its dark button eyes and tattered fur, she saw what it was. Shanna’s stuffed animal, the one she carried almost everywhere. The one she called—

—Mrs. Mary, we forgot Mrs. Mary,” Shanna says, and Clare turns to shush her for the second time since sneaking out of the house. The Refuge’s grounds are dark and still, but that doesn’t mean anything. One of the grown-ups could be anywhere. And if they’re seen, their little escape act will be over. Clare pulls Shanna to the nearest tree trunk and grabs her by the shoulders. Even in the near dark she can see how scared her little sister is. But it’s necessary. Something bad’s happening, happening tonight. All they’ve got is in the bag over Clare’s shoulder, everything they’ll need to get away from their father’s influence. Aside from the money she pilfered from the desk in the master bedroom, a set of clothes for each of them, a little food and water—the only thing they have is time. And it’s running out.

“We can’t go back, not now. Do you understand me?” Clare says, glancing quickly around the tree trunk. Had she heard something? A door shutting near the worship hall? They have to be extra careful when passing the building, as it is the only place she’s seen any activity in the last twenty-four hours. Many of the adults and quite a few of the kids had gone inside, but none had come out. It gave her a sick feeling to think about why. “We have to keep moving. Remember I said we’d ride in a car?”

Shanna starts to cry, tears spilling delicately down her cheeks. “But . . . but Mrs. Mary is on my bed. I can’t leave her behind. I can’t, Clara.”

“Listen, do you trust me?” She waits until her sister gives the slightest of nods. “Then we have to go now. Something terrible is happening and if we don’t leave it’s going to happen to us. I’ll make you a new Mrs. Mary when we’re safe. Right now we have to go.”

She doesn’t wait for a reply, just grabs Shanna’s hand and peers around the tree quickly before hurrying past the darkened front of one of the houses. No lights come on, pinning them to the ground as they run past, and her stomach lurches again at the thought of why she hasn’t seen anyone since earlier that morning.

They stop behind one of the big rocks they’ve played king of the mountain on for years, then race behind a stand of pines on the edge of the clearing across from the worship hall. Ahead is the dark silhouette of Harold Rainier’s car on the side of the drive heading out of the commune. She checked to make sure the keys were in it the day before, and they were. Clare knows she must turn the keys until the engine starts, she’s seen it done, then pull the lever near the wheel, and the car will go. She’ll steer it and get them free of this place, free of their father’s fevered gaze, free of the fear hanging over them like a moldering sheet. But before she does, they’ll need a distraction.

She drags Shanna down behind the car’s rear fender, searching the darkness, but there’s no movement, no sound except the wind nudging the trees. “Okay, stay here. Don’t move from this spot, do you understand me? I have to do one more thing, then we’ll go for a ride.”

“B-b-but Clara, Mr. Rainier won’t let you drive his car.”

“He said it’s okay. Father and Charity will meet up with us later.” Clare avoids the doubtful crease forming between Shanna’s eyes and sidles up to the passenger door window to look inside the car. It’s dark but she manages to spot the shine of keys hanging from the ignition. Setting her bag on the ground, she laces its strap into Shanna’s hand. “Hold this and don’t let go. I’ll be back in two minutes.”

“Two minutes?”

“Yes. I promise. Count the seconds out.” She squeezes Shanna’s hand one last time and gives her a peck on the cheek before launching herself from behind the car.

She runs as quietly as she can but her footfalls sound like thunder in her ears. Or maybe it’s her heartbeat. She can’t tell, she’s so afraid. The only thing driving her onward is the greater fear of what will happen if they stay.

Past Abigail’s house, past the boulder, past their own home—the only house in the entire clearing that still has lights on inside. Behind the house and into the woods she runs. She runs until she nearly trips over the gasoline can and lighter she stowed there the night before. The two items are concealed behind a small log beneath several handfuls of dead leaves.

Just a small fire, she tells herself, dumping out a pungent stream of gas onto the dry ground. Enough to distract the grown-ups so they won’t notice one of the vehicles is gone. When the can is empty she holds the lighter down near the leaves and flicks it.

Once.

Twice.

The third time it catches and fire leaps from the lighter’s tip and doesn’t stop. It expands so quickly and brightly she lets out a startled cry and trips over her own feet. The ground is aflame in seconds and the wind rushing through the trees only pushes it faster, makes it leap higher. If she’d been on the opposite side of where she’d poured the gas, the flames would’ve engulfed her. Clare watches, transfixed and helpless as the fire rushes outward like something alive toward their house.

Someone will see it soon. She has to go.

She’s on her feet and running again, her lungs pulling in air tinged with smoke, but she doesn’t slow. Instead she runs faster, pushing herself to the brink of collapse because this is the moment of truth. If she can do this, if she can get them away from here, everything will be all right. She can feel it. It’s as close to faith as she’s ever come and she thinks of her mother breaking free of this place and runs faster.

The car looms ahead.

Ten more steps.

Five.

Two.

She skids around the side and stoops low, already whispering. “Okay, give me your hand, Shanna.”

Clare freezes, staring at the rumpled shape of the bag near the rear tire, but there is no little girl holding it. Shanna’s gone.

She spins in place, searching the darkness for her sister. “Shanna? Shanna?” Across the clearing the crackle of flames is louder, almost a roar. A loud whump comes from behind the house and the light grows exponentially. Clare tears her gaze away from the spectacle and scuttles along the ground around the car, then rises, relief blooming through her. Shanna must have gotten scared and climbed inside. But when she presses her face to the glass, first on the driver’s side, then on the passenger, her sister isn’t there. Her mind is filled with a high-pitched squeal of panic. Where could she be? She told her to stay here, to count the seconds. Why would she—

But then she knows. The certainty of it is a stone sinking fast through her center, all the way to the bottom of her stomach.

Mrs. Mary. She went back for her stuffed bear.

Clare sprints away from the car, a new fear carrying her faster than she’s ever ran before. The fire has spread arms of flame into the forest surrounding the commune. It climbs into the largest oak beside their house and flares through its topmost branches. To the left the face of the worship hall nears and she sees the main doors are open. Then she’s past, yelling Shanna’s name now because it’s the only thing that matters.

The wind gusts and sends a veil of smoke and soot coursing past her. Clare coughs and stumbles on something before righting herself. Ahead, their house is an inferno. She marvels at how fast the fire has spread. It licks and walks across the walls, moving up and beyond the height of the chimney. The windows have shattered and she realizes the sound she’d heard earlier had been the other cans of gasoline igniting beside their generator.

The heat tightens the skin of her face even at a distance and she brings an arm up to shield herself. “Shanna!” she screams into the blaze. There is no reply except for things popping as they burn. Clare mounts the stairs, and ducking her head, makes it to the door. She grasps the door handle with both hands and pain erupts in her palms like nothing she’s ever felt. It is blinding, searing agony and she screams, falling backward as her hands begin to blister. “Shanna! No! Shanna!”

Then someone has her by the upper arm, gripping so hard it hurts. She’s dragged away, pulled back from the all-consuming heat where her sister is burning. She fights, kicks, squirms, and screams Shanna’s name as fire gushes out of the broken windows like reverse waterfalls. Yet the hand holding her arm is relentless. It draws her ever backward from the blaze.

“Everything will be well,” her father says from somewhere that sounds miles away. “Come with me, Clare. Close the circle.” Her legs give out completely and her father loses his grip. She falls to the ground, one hand landing on a bulbous rock. She grabs it without thinking. “You’re not leaving me,” he says. “No one’s leaving me ever again.” When she feels his hand on her shoulder, she turns and swings her arm with all the hatred, all the fear, all the will he’s tried to steal from her, and feels the rock connect with something.

He stands staring at her, bright red blood sheeting down the side of his head where she hit him. It shines in the firelight as if lit from within. Simon Kinley staggers backward, a look of confusion crossing his face. He tries to say something but falls before he can get the words out. Even amidst her terror and ever-rising reservoir of guilt that is becoming a flood inside her, Clare feels a stab of sorrow for him. He is her father, and in that fleeting second before she turns to run, she sees herself walking with him, hand in hand, down the long drive of the Refuge. It was years before the cult grew to what it is now. He had been of a calmer mind then and his hand had felt so sure and comforting around her own as they walked together.

Clare watches him roll to his back and lie still as another gust of wind pushes past her, feeling as if a massive oven door has opened close by. She drags her gaze free of her father and looks at the burning skeleton of their home. Shanna is lost somewhere within it, and it is her fault. She started the fire and Shanna is dead because of her.

Clare stumbles backward and turns, unable to look at the fire, unable to look at her father lying on the ground fully in its path. She hurries into the woods, shoving branches and brush out of her way.

The night swallows her whole and she embraces it because it is not accusing or condemning. It does not know what she did. The night does not remember. She will mirror its darkness. She will forget.

And as each image tries to rise into full view, she banishes it. Shoves it away, down to a blackened place inside her where there is no fire, where there is no memory, where there is only darkness.

Her face was wet and she couldn’t draw in a breath. Clare gazed around blearily, looking at the woman seated nearby.

“You remember now, don’t you, Clare? You see what your lack of faith brought. I saw what you did that night.”

More logs were dropped onto the fire by phantom hands and the flames ate higher into the air. By the light, Clare saw where they were.

The Refuge.

To the right she made out the cracked and uneven shamble of concrete and past it the blackened face of a boulder. On the left the raggedy growth of tag elder where the woman who sat before her now had paused to weep on their prior visit. Paused to weep, not at the former home of her friend, but at her own.

“Abigail,” Clare whispered.

There was a moment of silence only the crackle of fire filled before the woman laughed and clapped her hands. “It’s so good to hear you say my name. You don’t know how long I waited for that.”

Abigail moved closer and clasped her arms around bent knees. She looked like a child again, one Clare hadn’t laid eyes on in almost two decades. She could see the differences between the woman and her sister now that the veil of hope had been drawn away and revealed the truth. They were subtle, but there. Abigail and Shanna had looked so alike back then. Like sisters, which they had been. They’d all been sisters and brothers, and Clare had been the eldest, the one all the other children looked up to. The one that should’ve taken care of them, saved them.

“Why?” she asked finally. “Why pretend to be Shanna?”

“For you, Clare. So you’d come home. So we could close the circle. It took us so long to find you. Years and years. You hid yourself well and we couldn’t risk exposing who we were so we had to be careful while we searched, while we grew.” Abigail reached down and touched her wrists as Clare had seen her do so many times before. “When we finally located you I wore ropes for months to make these. Harold cut me the night I was found. It hurt so badly, you don’t know how bad it hurt, but we had to make it look real. There was no other way to get you back. Daryl watched you and was there just in case you refused to come home after I was found. Harold wanted you to come on your own. His hand was only forced to bring you here like this when we had no other choice.” Abigail’s eyes softened in the firelight. “We wanted you to believe. I tried telling you about the voice we both heard, Charon’s voice, but you denied it. The sickness you think is in your mind are his signs, Clare. Charon is reaching out to you, beckoning to join the circle. He left his obols for you to find.” Clare saw the wooden coins she’d found and shook her head as if to clear it of the images. To deny them. “The only path is free will. Choice is everything.” Abigail leaned closer and her face fell into full shadow. “Sacrifice is love.”

Out of the darkness came a commotion and several figures appeared, two guiding a third between them toward the fire. Clare sucked in a breath and felt it shudder out in a quiet “No” as the light revealed the group.

Steven Parson and Harold Rainier stood watching her, their eyes cold even in the glow of flame. Each held the arms of the third man whose hands were bound before him, his face badly bruised and bloodied, but she would’ve known it anywhere.

Eric.

He saw her and his eyes flew open wide. “Clare! Are you okay?”

“I’m fine,” she said through a sob. Then to Abigail, “Let him go. You have me, that’s all you need.”

“We need more than your body, Clare,” Rainier said as he approached. Other people loomed out of the darkness behind him, members of the Free Spirit Disciples. The woman who had assumed Brynn Johnson’s identity smiled at her and waved. She also caught sight of Margaret Parson and her two children nearby, the firelight turning their emotionless visages into masks. A much smaller figure joined them, stopping beside Margaret. The boy was young, maybe five or six, with dark hair and large eyes. He watched Clare before shifting his gaze to Abigail.

“Your son,” Clare managed.

Abigail nodded. “A gift from God, and tonight a gift unto Him.”

Clare tried to form a response but Rainier knelt before her and she saw the younger man she’d known within the creases and wrinkles of his face. His gaze still held a predatory edge and she felt herself stiffen and lean away as he reached out to touch her. “Child,” he said quietly. “Don’t be afraid. That was always your burden. Faith is the remedy to fear. I wish you’d learned that long ago.”

“Let us go,” Clare whispered. “Please. I’ll do anything.”

Rainier smiled. It was like watching a reptile try to grin. “We’re counting on that.”

He rose and strode back to Margaret Parson, who held out something. He took it from her and returned to Clare, taking his time like a man on a stroll in a park. “Do you know what this is?” he asked, holding out a tattered book. It was small, the size of a pocketbook, its cover leather, darkened with time.

She stared at it for a beat before nodding. “My father’s Bible.”

“You’re right, Clare. But did you ever look inside it when you were a child?”

“No. He never let me. He never let anyone.”

“Right again. This was his salvation, all our salvations, but it was also the ledger of his prophecies. He divined the planes coming out of the sky. The burning buildings. He knew before it happened and sermonized it to all of us because Charon told him. You remember.”

“No.”

“You do. Don’t lie.” Clare fell silent, fighting against the memory. But it remained unchanged no matter how she assaulted it. “And at the end of his life, his Bible came to me.” Rainier bent closer and she could smell his unwashed skin. “The Ferryman is real, Clare. He is the doorway and speaks of what’s to come. Your father was the conduit before, channeling his message. Now I’m Charon’s prophet and it’s my duty and honor to carry out the sacrifice you withheld all those years ago. Your brazen selfishness was all that kept us from earning glory on high, but tonight that will be amended and all will be forgiven.” He straightened and turned back to the crowd of people. “Tonight the circle is completed and we will finish what our brother Simon began. The sacrifice to herald the Lord’s second coming.” He spread his arms wide. “And it shall come to pass afterward, that I will pour out my spirit on all flesh. And I will show wonders in the heavens and on the earth, blood and fire and columns of smoke. The sun shall be turned to darkness, and the moon to blood, before the great and awesome day of the Lord comes. We will heed the call and give what’s been asked. We see when others do not.”

“We see.” The group responded as one.

“We see when others turn away.”

“We see.”

“We see the glory and the everlasting.”

“We see.”

Rainier faced her. “Charon has tried revealing himself to you, Clare. He has reached out and you’ve denied him. You are not sick, you are blessed.”

Her thoughts skittered across the hallucinations she’d experienced. But were they? Were they all in your mind? Rainier bent closer to her again. “Join us, Clare, in giving thanks, in giving the ultimate sacrifice, the ultimate love. Make amends for your sins and follow your father’s path you turned away from before.”

“My father was sick.” Clare spoke slowly and clearly. The ache in her head had eased, whatever chemicals they’d used to render her unconscious finally leaving her system. As she stared around at the faces watching her she continued to work at the knot binding her hands. She’d loosened it some while Rainier had been proselytizing and could almost feel how the rope was tied. If she could keep him talking there’d be a chance of getting free. “He hallucinated constantly and one of his hallucinations told him to sacrifice his entire congregation. He killed them all, he killed his children.”

He smiled benevolently. “That’s where you’re mistaken. They sacrificed themselves willingly, all except for you.” He laid a wooden coin with a cross carved into it on the leg of her jeans as two of the disciples brought something out of the dark and set it by the fire.

It was a tall metal canister, the kind that held refreshments at faculty picnics she and Eric had gone to over the years. One of the men unscrewed the top while the other held a stack of plastic cups.

“The sacrament is ready,” Abigail said. “Will you complete the circle, sister?”

Clare’s jaw worked and her eyes shot to Eric, still standing in the grip of Parson. “No,” she whispered.

Rainier sighed. “I was afraid you would remain faithless, even in witness of your father’s prophecies and the presence of Charon. That’s why Abigail told Eric where to find you at the lake. I knew we needed something to persuade you. Since your belief is weak, I will strengthen it.” Rainier nodded and Parson drew out a pistol and put it against Eric’s temple.

“No!” Clare yelled, yanking against the bindings holding her.

“You love him,” Rainier said. It wasn’t a question, but Clare answered anyway.

“Yes.”

“Then this will be a simple choice. Take the sacrament and he will live. We have no reason to hurt him because in an hour’s time this world will have no dominion over us.” One of the men who had carried the container neared and handed Rainier a cup of yellow liquid. Even at a distance she could smell the cloying sugar mingling with a sharp chemical scent underneath. Rainier held the cup out to her. “Take the sacrament, Clare, and we will spare the one you love.”

“No, Clare! Don’t!” Eric yelled, straining against Parson’s hold. “Don’t do it, honey. We’ll get out of this. I promise.”

She smiled. Even here in the darkness, surrounded by her past, on the brink of death, he was still positive. Still assuring her everything would be okay. But it wouldn’t.

She sat for a long time, looking first at Eric’s pleading features, then into the fire. “You’ll let him go?” she asked Rainier finally.

He nodded and she could see no deceit in his eyes. “He is of no consequence to us, but you are. Your father’s blood flows through your veins. We will all take the sacrament and release him once you’ve proven your faith.”

She shuddered, smelling the powerful poison only inches away. She knew it would hurt from studying not only her own family’s cult, but that of others who had succumbed in similar ways. But would it hurt more than knowing Eric would die because of her? Because she’d come into contact with him and drawn him into her fucked-up orbit she called a life? No, it wouldn’t hurt more than that. What did she have left besides him? Shanna was gone along with the rest of her family, and she couldn’t bear anymore guilt. Wouldn’t bear it.

She locked eyes with Eric across the fire. “You were the best thing that ever happened to me. I love you always.” She nodded to Rainier, who brought the cup to her lips. Her father had been right about one thing: sacrifice was love.

“NO!” There was a commotion on the other side of the fire as the cup touched her lower lip and was drawn away. Eric had flung himself sideways, knocking Parson to the ground. The older man tried raising the gun but Eric was already moving, throwing a powerful kick into Parson’s stomach. The air whooshed out of the former pastor and the gun fell from his hand. In one motion Eric scooped it up and backed several steps away from the group, pointing the weapon first one way, then the other. “Let her go! Now!” Eric said. “Or I swear to Christ, none of you will have to drink that fucking Kool-Aid.”

Clare’s heart surged, then skipped a beat as a shot rang out.

A dark spot appeared on Eric’s chest that quickly began to spread in a stain down the front of his shirt. He glanced down, blinking at the hole boiling blood, then looked back up at Clare.

She couldn’t move. Every muscle in her body was locked tight. Slowly her eyes tracked to the right, where Margaret Parson stood holding a large revolver in a two-handed grip. She fired a second time, the gun bucking up, flame shooting from the muzzle.

Eric shook with the slug’s impact and he sat down, the pistol falling from his hands as a second blood blossom appeared on the lower right of his abdomen.

“No! Nonononono,” Clare wheezed. She rocked forward and tipped to the side, losing sight of him. But she couldn’t look anymore because her eyes were squeezed shut, and if she couldn’t see him it hadn’t happened, if she couldn’t see it wasn’t true.

Clare sobbed into the dirt, the rough ground jabbing at her tear-soaked face. She didn’t know how much time passed. Didn’t care. Eric was gone.

Hands grasped her shoulders and she tried resisting their touch, but they were insistent and brought her upright against the tree again. Abigail looked into her eyes, still holding her. “It’s time, Clare.”

Parson stood in front of the fire, framed by his family. They blocked her view of Eric’s body. Clare looked at Margaret, at all of them, sending as much hatred as she could through her gaze. “You’re all damned. If there’s a hell, you’ll burn in it. And I’ll be glad.”

“Your bitterness is temporary,” Rainier said, kneeling close once again. “You’ll have all of eternity to give your apologies. You’re a part of the circle bringing the light, and only unto death will you learn the truth.”

“You’re insane,” Clare said. “All of you.”

Abigail shrank back with the fierceness of her voice, but Rainier only shook his head. “Clare. Always the doubting Thomas. And just as the apostle Thomas required proof, so do you.” He leaned closer to her and she shrank away, but still his whispered words were clear. Clare listened, first incredulous, then mortified, and at last reeling internally—her mind like the firestorm that had scorched the ground she sat on now.

“You’re lying,” she managed.

Rainier brought the cup into view once again. “I am the way and the truth and the life.” He held out the cup to her, pushing it closer, and closer.

With a final pull, Clare yanked the knot free her fingers had continued working on since Abigail sat her upright again. The binding came loose and she brought her hands around and up, jamming the poison-filled cup into Rainier’s face.

He released a strangled squawk of surprise and fell back. Abigail reached for her and Clare raked her nails down the other woman’s face, shoving her away even as she gained her feet.

For the second time in her life, Clare turned her back on fire and fled into the darkness.

Chapter Thirty-Seven

The woods met her as before, silent and welcoming.

This time Clare knew she was pursued by something more than horrific memories and ran full out, swiping blindly at branches and sticks attempting to block her progress.

Someone was coming after her, footsteps pounding out of sync with her own in the detritus. Whether it was Rainier or Abigail or someone else, she didn’t know. Had the poison been enough to disable Rainier? How far would they chase her? That question was answered easily enough as she thought about the lengths they’d gone to bring her back into striking distance, back into the circle.

A deadfall appeared before her and she slid beneath it rather than try climbing through its jutting branches. Something jabbed at her shoulder and she felt her skin tear. As she rose and hurried on she caught a hint of movement in the shadows behind her.

Clare angled right, aiming as well as she could in the direction of the Refuge’s access road. But would they be waiting there already? Would they have it blocked off and grab her as soon as she stepped out in the open? If so, they’d bring her back to the clearing beside the fire and make her drink a cup of that poison, and if what Rainier had told her was true she couldn’t do that, wouldn’t do that because—

Stop it. He’s insane. They all are. He was lying to get her to do what he wanted. That was all they cared about, fulfilling the prophecy that should’ve died with her father.

In the distance came a shout, a man’s voice there and gone in the night before the report of a gun. Then another. What was happening back at the clearing? Another person cried out, a woman’s voice, high and keening, either in pain or sorrow.

The small ravine came out of nowhere. Clare had half a second to register she was going to fall, then she was dropping. Only three feet, but it was enough to slam the air from her and double her vision for a moment. The woods tilted, then leveled.

Hurried footsteps. She had to get up, had to move before—

“Stop running, Clare. You’re always running,” Abigail said. The other woman stood on the edge of the small drop looking down at her. “Aren’t you tired?”

Clare was lightheaded and nauseous, but she managed to speak. “Fuck you.”

Abigail stepped down beside her and Clare recoiled. Her cheek where Clare had scratched her was a mask of blood. “I’m helping you up.”

“Don’t touch me.”

“You don’t understand because you don’t believe, Clare. You never accepted what you perceived. Don’t you remember how the stars went away when we sang? The Ferryman did that. It was an offering of our faith and he accepted it.”

Clare groped in the darkness and found a solid length of wood buried in the long grass. She brought it up and half-heartedly swung it at her sister. Abigail leaned back, easily dodging it. “Leave me alone.”

“We can’t, Clare. Don’t you see that?” Rainier appeared out of the darkness, his voice the only thing giving identity to the darker shade beyond Abigail. “You, Abigail, and young Hector close the circle. You’re the last of Simon’s blood.”

Another cry came from the direction of the Refuge. “What’s happening back there?” Clare asked, trying to gauge which direction to move in.

“They’re fulfilling the sacrifice,” Rainier said, stepping closer. Something long and curved glinted in his hand. “And time is against us.” She could see only the vague outlines of his eyes, could feel the weight of his gaze. “I know you think I’m cruel and mad, but the madness is the outside world. One where greed and faithlessness have infected people like the diseases they are. It’s become unclean and unfit for believers like us. There is no hope of saving them, there is only our purpose. The end will come no matter what, Clare. I assure you of that.” He held out the thing in his hand and now she could see the knife’s thick blade and ornate handle. “There is nothing for you in this world.”

The last expression on Eric’s face filled her mind. How he’d looked down at his lifeblood pouring out as if he couldn’t believe it was happening.

Clare gritted her teeth and brought back the piece of wood, and was blinded.

“Drop the knife!” The owner’s voice stood a dozen feet away, hidden behind a high-intensity beam of light, but she recognized it immediately. “Drop it, or I will shoot you,” Adam said, taking a step forward.

Rainier glared into the flashlight’s glow. His mouth was a downturned rictus exposing most of his yellowed teeth. Abigail was frozen in the ravine as if unsure of which direction to move.

“Sir, I’ll ask you one more time—” Adam began to say, but was cut off as Rainier lunged toward him.

Two shots in quick succession. Rainier threw up his arms as if in one last supplication and collapsed in a heap, his skull misshapen from Adam’s bullets.

Something landed in front of Clare. In a haze she bent forward to pick it up, but Abigail snatched it first.

Her sister straightened and looked her directly in the eye. “You’ll understand one day, sister. When the earth is a scorched cinder floating through the nether, then you’ll know of faith, but it will be too late.” She brought Rainier’s knife up to her throat.

Clare leapt forward, not thinking, only moving. She caught Abigail’s arm and yanked the blade away from her neck, both of them losing balance and falling to the weed-choked ground. Abigail released a strangled cry, trying to gain enough leverage to bring the blade back to her throat, but Clare fought her. A deep, and very dark, part of her whispered to let go. To let this monster destroy herself. But another part could still see Shanna in the curve of her cheekbone, the set of her eyes.

Then Adam was there, pinning Abigail’s hand holding the knife to the ground with a boot. He pried the blade free and she released a primal howl of defeat. She bucked again, trying to shake them off, but Adam put a knee on her chest and after another few seconds, she quieted.

“Clare, there’s zip-tie cuffs in my back pocket. Get them for me, will you?” Adam said, grabbing Abigail’s wrists. Clare fumbled along the back of Adam’s pants until her fingers encountered two loops of plastic. She held them out and Adam quickly slipped the ties around her sister’s thin wrists and tightened them.

“You don’t know what you’re doing,” Abigail said as Adam brought her to her feet and began searching her for other weapons. “You’re damning us. You’re damning us all!”

“You have the right to remain silent and I suggest you exercise it,” Adam said, as Clare slumped against the ravine’s wall a few feet away. Colors raced across her vision and she pinched the soft webbing between her thumb and forefinger as hard as she could until they went away.

“Clare. Clare!” Adam said. She snapped free of her trance, unaware she’d been drifting. “Grab my light and walk behind us. Can you do that?”

“Yes. I think so.” She found the high-intensity light shining through the grass where he’d dropped it and picked it up as Adam hauled Abigail free of the depression. He guided her sister past Rainier’s body, and as she came even with Clare she dug her feet in and stopped.

“The first chance I get I’ll make the sacrifice and go through the door,” Abigail said quietly, her voice a husk of before. “You know the door well enough, you’ve been there once before.” Her sister smiled and the drying blood on her cheek cracked. “Someday you’ll go through it, too, and close the circle.”

Adam shoved her forward and Clare stood motionless, staring at Rainier’s body and not seeing it until Adam called for her and she followed them back the way she’d come.

* * *

She sat on the stump of a tree, listening to the rising and falling wails of sirens in the distance. They’d be here soon, Hughes along with them at some point, but she guessed she’d be gone by then.

Her eyes traveled over the scene still lit by the bonfire’s glow.

A half dozen bodies lay in a semi-circle around the flames, their feet pointed inward like some macabre geometric design. Several others were strewn less neatly across the ground, fallen with limbs akimbo in the throes of death. Apparently the ones around the fire had begun drinking the poison mixture as soon as she’d escaped the clearing. They must have taken her flight as a bad sign and decided to proceed with the evening’s plans, perhaps at Rainier’s instruction before he had followed her and Abigail into the forest. The others, Adam and the agent who had accompanied him to the clearing had shot in self-defense. Among them were Parson and his family. They lay together, their bodies intertwined with Margaret on top of them as if to shield them, her face turned away—a bloody exit wound glistening between her shoulder blades. Clare wondered if it had been Margaret’s voice she’d heard crying out at the sight of her fallen husband and children, and at the same time didn’t feel an ounce of sympathy. Hector’s small shape lay beside them, feet tipped apart, face mercifully hidden by shadow. At the very edge of the fire’s reach the surviving members of the cult sat with their hands fastened behind their backs as Adam and the other agent continued to secure the last of them. Abigail stared at her across the distance, firelight dancing in her eyes as if a furnace burned within her skull.

Clare took in the night sky, which had cleared in the last hours. Stars gleamed coldly down and she glanced away, unable to bear their flickering indifference she’d once thought beautiful.

Eric lay where he’d fallen, apart from the other sacrifices but akin to them in a way. They all had died for something. He had died for her.

She rose from the stump, knowing she shouldn’t move, not caring. Slowly she approached the man who she’d shared a life with up until an hour ago, and knelt beside him. His face was bloodless but serene, eyes closed, head tilted back. He could’ve been sleeping. She brushed his cheek, feeling the coldness of his skin, and thought of their home, how they’d never inhabit it together again, how she would never feel him holding her in the night, how she wouldn’t get a chance to answer the question he’d never be able to ask.

She cried quietly, her vision prismatic with tears. “I’m so sorry,” she whispered.

The sirens became louder and louder until strobes of blue and red light began to fall across the scene. More voices rising with questions, shouting orders, and all the while she held his hand, knowing it would be the last time.

“Clare.” Adam’s voice was low and tender. He didn’t need to say anything else. It was time to go. She leaned forward, kissing Eric once on the cheek, and began to rise before another wave of sorrow could wash her away, but paused.

“I would’ve said yes,” she whispered so quietly only she could hear. “I would’ve said yes.”

Chapter Thirty-Eight

8 Weeks Later.

“Are you still having the dreams?”

Clare pried her gaze away from the window in Lia’s office. The sky was overcast, a fine rain having fallen earlier that morning, one day lining up before so many others like it in a Pacific Northwest autumn. “Not as much,” Clare lied. She’d dreamed Abigail was standing at the foot of her bed in the small hours of the night before and woken to the quick intake of her own breath readying itself to be a scream. Last night she’d been able to keep from crying out. She’d call that progress.

“That’s good,” Lia said. She was drinking again today, something amber and peaty in a small glass on the table near her elbow. “The sooner you believe she won’t ever be able to hurt you again, the sooner the dreams will go away.” Clare didn’t know if she believed that but nodded anyway. Lia saw her eyeing the Scotch and gestured to it. “Sure you don’t want some?”

“No, I’m good. Thanks. Been trying to cut back.”

“Me too,” Lia said, taking a deep sip. “When did you hear from Adam last?”

“Two days ago. His first day back on full duty, actually.” Over the weeks interceding the night at the Refuge and now she’d learned of what had transpired after hanging up with him while she’d still been at the house on Toll Lake. After calling Hughes to give him the information linking Rainier and Parson, Adam had driven straight to the house to find Wilt slain in his cruiser, along with Eric’s abandoned rental car on the side of the driveway. From there he and his friend Daniel Rhymes, the FBI agent from the Minneapolis office, had raided Parson’s camp only to find it empty and abandoned. About the time Clare had been waking up to a terrible headache and the smell of smoke, Adam had connected the remaining dots and directed Hughes and his men to meet him at the Refuge’s site. The yelling and shooting she’d heard only minutes after escaping her bonds had been Adam and Rhymes making their appearance in the clearing. Twenty people had died that night, including Eric. Six had opened fire on Adam and Rhymes while the other thirteen were already succumbing to the poison they’d consumed—a deadly concoction of a sports drink laced with nitrogen fertilizer. Rhymes had been grazed by a bullet on the right leg, but other than that they’d come away unscathed. Adam had spent two weeks on leave under department evaluation for his actions. In the end he’d been reprimanded, but cleared of any charges.

“Wasn’t supposed to have been involved off duty,” he told her over the phone the first time he’d checked in on her. “Rhymes got his ass in hot water for me, too, but he’ll be all right. I heard his supervisor is nominating him for a commendation.” They’d had a dozen conversations like it over the weeks and Clare knew it didn’t solely have to do with the investigation they were both still answering questions for. He was nudging the supports of her mind like you’d test the strength of a bridge over a deep valley. She always ended the calls assuring him she was okay. “As good as I can be,” were her exact words. But there were days when she’d lose time just staring at a blank space on the wall, and nights when sleep was an alien thing she had trouble recalling. At those moments she wasn’t okay, wasn’t anywhere near it. She’d started the fire that had killed Shanna. And no one else knew but her. The knowledge had always been there, wrapped in layers of denial and guilt like a rotten seed in her core. But even now with the memories exposed, the burden didn’t go away. The truth was heavy when you had to carry it alone, and she couldn’t tell anyone what had actually happened.

So in the cold and dark hours before dawn she’d think of Abigail’s words, think of the doorway she spoke of, and it would be all she could do to keep from leaving the hotel room she was staying at and simply start driving and never stop. Because running still felt like the safest thing to do.

“All of your stuff packed?” Lia asked, seeming to read where her thoughts were treading.

“Yeah, moving company’s coming later today. I should be in the new place before dark.” She’d sold her and Eric’s home, couldn’t stand the sight of it anymore. Every floor and wall was drenched in memories, and all of them hurt. She’d found a quaint Cape Cod only minutes from Eric’s parents’ place and bought it after the first viewing. She would have never considered it but for John and Ellen’s insistence to have her closer by. She’d half expected them to refuse to speak to her after returning from Minnesota, but they’d welcomed her with open arms, literally holding her as she wept the first time they’d met face to face after Eric’s death.

“Shorter drive here,” Lia said. “You’re just around the bend.”

“Is that a psychiatry euphemism?”

“If I wanted to say you’re insane, I’d just say it. We go too far back to beat around the bush.”

Clare smiled. It was rare recently, but felt good when the urge was real enough to follow through on. “Still on this side of the line, huh? Doesn’t feel like it sometimes.”

Lia finished her drink. “Listen to me. You’re more stable than almost everyone else who comes through my front door, current and ex love interests included. Everything you experienced has an explanation. The intrusive memories, which were also repressed, account for the things you saw and heard. Do you know the amount of stress recalling all those past events can cause? It’s incalculable, different for each person. And the fact that you’re sitting here and not in a mental ward is proof positive you aren’t losing it.”

The mention of a mental ward brought Abigail to mind again for the third or fourth time that morning. On the second night of captivity in a state holding facility, she’d tried making a noose out of the jumpsuit she wore. The guard assigned to Abigail’s block had found her unconscious but breathing. She’d recovered with no lasting brain damage and had been transferred to a secure mental hospital in the southern part of the state where there was twenty-four hour a day monitoring. Currently she awaited a trial where she was sure to be found not guilty by reason of insanity. All a judge and jury would have to do was listen to her testimony, the beliefs about the nearing end of the world, the Ferryman himself, and it would be case closed. Her sister would spend the rest of her days medicated to the gills in rooms with mesh embedded in the windowpanes.

“Rainier was mentally ill, like your father was. What they did was heinous, but there’s no denying their illnesses contributed to their actions.” Lia said gently. “You struggle with your own issues, but you got help. Look how far you’ve come from where you were. You’re a victim, Clare. But more importantly, you’re a survivor.”

Clare looked out the window and was quiet for a long time. Distantly she could hear the cry of gulls and the crash of surf. “He knew things,” she finally said.

Lia sat back in her chair and reached for her glass, frowning at its emptiness. “Rainier knew where your mother was because your father told him.”

In all the years since that night in September when fire ravaged the landscape along with her memory, she’d never found a trace of her mother. Clare had always assumed after leaving the cult she’d changed her name and slipped into the anonymity of a new life, never looking back at her past or the child she left behind. It had given her hope and clarity as a child and a melancholy ache as an adult. But in reality, she’d never left the Refuge.

Clare herself had been able to direct the forensic pathologists to her mother’s final resting site. It was deep beneath the earth where their former house had stood. Directly under a depression that had once been a pit in the floor of their basement where a little girl had spent a long time alone in the dark.

Her mother hadn’t escaped, she’d been murdered by her own husband.

Clare still shuddered to think she’d been living above her mother’s grave. “And Rainier told me,” she murmured, looking up at Lia who watched her. “Right before I escaped he leaned in and whispered that she’d been faithless and my father had killed her and put her in the ground under the basement. He said all the faithless were going to burn because the world was going to end soon.”

“Your father said the same thing.”

“He also predicted the attacks on 9/11.”

Lia shook her head. “We’ve gone over this, you must’ve been confused about when he did his sermon. My guess is it was on the morning of the attacks and he was listening to a radio no one knew about. That’s how he wrote down all the terrible things in that Bible of his. He wasn’t predicting the future, he was listening to the news and feeding it secondhand to his followers.”

Her father’s Bible had been analyzed, and through Adam, Clare had learned the ink used to write entries noting mass murders and natural catastrophes prior to 9/11 had been made before her father’s death and not afterwards by Rainier’s hand for use as a prop. But that didn’t disprove Lia’s conclusion. Simon Kinley might’ve had a hidden radio or television he kept up on the news with. But as far as she knew none of the other members had possessed contact with the outside world that would have negated the power of his prophecies. What did it matter if he predicted a deadly earthquake in California when none of his disciples knew whether or not it had come to pass?

“They believed him,” Lia said, continuing her argument. “You know better than anyone that’s the bedrock of a cult. Blind faith.”

Clare nodded, looking away again to the window, trying to gather the courage to tell Lia the other thing Rainier had whispered in her ear that night. The thing she couldn’t explain away no matter how she tried. But before she could open her mouth, Lia spoke again.

“Speaking of blind faith, that woman came in with her daughter from Shining Rock Church.” For a moment Clare was adrift as to who Lia was referring to, then the memory of Manda and her mother, Bev, came rushing back. She hadn’t thought of them since the image of Manda’s face had triggered the revelation of her own family’s secret.

“They did?”

“Uh-huh. The mother was a real hardcase at first, almost walked out the door twice, but I got her to calm down and by the end of the first session she was crying her eyes out along with her daughter. We’ve met four times in the last two weeks and it looks like they might’ve broken away for good. That church sounds like hell on earth.”

Hell on earth. Rainer had whispered those exact words to her before saying something else. Something she’d thought at the time was just a lie to catch her off guard and manipulate her. But it hadn’t been. God in heaven, it hadn’t been.

Clare started as Lia grasped her hand. She’d crossed the room and knelt beside the chair without her noticing. “Hey, are you okay?”

Clare squeezed her hand back and lied to her friend for the second time that morning.

* * *

A breeze swept in from the west, carrying air so thick with salt and brine she could almost feel it accumulating on her face as she made her way down to the water’s edge. She’d left Lia’s place twenty minutes prior, stopping to get herself a coffee before heading to the house where she would begin a new stage of her life. A stage she hoped to fill with a foundation of stability to build on. She would need it for what was to come.

The turnoff had caught her eye as she was leaving town and she’d swung onto the cracked pavement, following the winding road down to a deserted beach strewn with the high tide’s leavings. The summer tourists had departed and any locals who normally frequented the beach in the colder months were absent as well. The sea had a heavy chop and white water crested ten feet high, crashing against the biggest rocks interspaced on the shoreline.

Clare made her way to where the surf glided to a stop and receded again, taking off her shoes and relishing the cold shock of the sand and water on her feet. It made her think of her old mantra that helped combat the past when it came calling. The tide seemed to even say it as it rose and fell away.

Here and now. Here and now.

She closed her eyes and focused on the ocean’s voice, but over it she could still hear Rainier’s words, so close and clear she could almost imagine the breeze was his breath in her ear.

“Your mother is buried beneath the ground where your house used to be. It was the first secret your father ever told me. She was faithless, and like all disbelievers she was struck down. Now I’ll tell you another secret. The life you’re carrying will not survive. You’re already being punished for your lack of belief. Don’t punish everyone else further. The Ferryman has shown me what will come, and it will be hell on earth. You don’t want to witness that, Clare. Be thankful your baby won’t have to witness it either.”

Clare placed a hand to her stomach. She hadn’t believed him. Hadn’t believed until she’d begun to get queasy in the morning hours when she couldn’t sleep. A week ago she’d finally broken down and bought a test after telling herself it was stress keeping her period at bay. The few minutes it had taken for the small plus sign to show up in the test’s little window had been the longest of her life.

Hope and terror alternated through her like electrical current when she’d seen the result. And almost immediately she’d been struck dumb by the revelation.

There was no way Rainier could’ve known she was pregnant when she herself hadn’t been aware. Besides, she would’ve barely been a week along. There was no test she knew of that could determine pregnancy that early, and regardless she hadn’t submitted to any. But it was the other half of his prediction that bothered her even more, that she was going to lose the baby in some way. She’d gone to her doctor several days before and they’d done the available tests to determine if the baby was healthy. “So far, so good,” he’d told her. “But of course it’s very early.”

What would it mean if Rainier’s prediction came true? What if she lost the baby? The thought was terrifying on multiple levels. Even now she could feel the creeping paralysis of panic freezing her in place.

Clare took a deep breath of sea air and let it out, opening her eyes. Thinking too hard about how Rainier had known didn’t do any good. It brought questions churning to the surface of her mind she didn’t want to address, that she couldn’t address. It was so much easier to tell herself he’d been guessing, trying to throw her off and break her down to get her to succumb to the cult’s sacrifice. And that’s what she told herself in the dead of night when the wind shoved at the eaves and sounded like a voice outside the window. It was the only way she held onto her sanity.

For now she would be thankful to have even a small part of Eric with her in the days to come. She would carry his love and memory forward and share it with the person inside her when they arrived.

With a final look at the sea, Clare turned and headed back to the car, leaving footprints in the sand behind her.

Acknowledgments

Thanks goes out to my family as always, I couldn’t do it without you guys. Thanks to my agent Laura Rennert—so grateful to have such an intelligent and all around excellent person in my corner. Thanks to my editor Jacque Ben-Zekry who makes my stories infinitely better and always pushes me to level-up as a writer. Thanks to Matt Iden, Matt FitzSimmons, Richard Brown, and Steven Konkoly—besides being excellent writers and great friends you are all beyond generous with your time and insight. And thanks to all the readers who continue to make what I do possible, the stories are nothing without you.

About the Author

Joe Hart is the Wall Street Journal bestselling author of thirteen novels and numerous short stories. When he’s not writing, Joe enjoys reading, working out, watching movies with his family, and spending time outdoors.

Learn more about Joe by following him on Twitter @AuthorJoeHart or connect with him at his website www.joehartbooks.com.

Also by Joe Hart

The Dominion Trilogy

The Last Girl

The Final Trade

The First City

The Liam Dempsey Mysteries

The River Is Dark

The Night Is Deep

Novels

Lineage

Singularity

EverFall

The Waiting

Widow Town

Cruel World

Obscura

I’ll Bring You Back

Novellas

Leave the Living

Short Story Collections

Midnight Paths: A Collection of Dark Horror

Something Came Through: And Other Stories

Short Stories

“The Line Unseen”

“The Edge of Life”

“Outpost”

“And The Sea Called Her Name”

“The Exorcism of Sara May”

Comics

The Last Sacrifice

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

Text copyright © 2020 by Joe Hart

All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the author.