ELLIE STILL HAD official business to conduct, and Cody wasn’t allowed to accompany her. Cody drove home with the federal agent who had driven him here.
Sebastian had told her the location of the blood farm, as well as where to find the hidden access area and the code. She shared none of that with Roland. The moment she did, he would send her on her way to be interrogated by a bunch of pencil pushers while he went off to the blood farm, to claim all the glory.
She wasn’t seeking glory. She wanted to see the blood farm.
“Where?” Roland snapped, his face red with anger.
“Downieville,” Ellie said.
“The hell’s that?”
“The guy was dying. I didn’t ask for directions.”
“Address?”
Ellie hesitated.
Roland glared at her, incredulous. “What, you thinking you and I are just going to waltz in there and free ’em? I need support staff, make travel arrangements. Give me the address. Now.”
“Our Lady of the Immaculate Conception,” she said. “And if you’re thinking of just leaving me here because you’re pissed off, don’t. You’ll need an access code. I’ll give it to you when we get there.”
Roland was on his phone as they drove out of the parking lot. He didn’t put the call on the car’s Bluetooth, so she couldn’t hear the conversation. Ellie guessed he was talking to his boss or some other higher-up; he kept saying “sir” as he brought the person on the other end of the line up to speed about the recent developments. Whoever he was speaking to must have been pleased, because Roland’s voice grew lighter, and the tension he’d been carrying in his jaw and shoulders relaxed a bit.
Roland hung up, tossed the phone in the cubbyhole. “This boy, Jonathan Cullen,” he said. “Who is he?”
“My twin brother.”
Roland shifted in his seat, thinking. “Your file says you’re an only child.”
“My file is missing a lot of important facts.”
“Such as?”
“Let’s start with my name,” she said. “It isn’t Ellie Batista.”
Ellie had never heard of Downieville, had no idea where it was. A quick Internet search on Roland’s phone told her it was a “census-designated place” in Sierra County, which was in the northern part of the state and bordered Nevada. It had a population of fewer than two hundred people, and the town had no restaurants or grocery stores. That was all the information she got before Roland took his phone back to answer an incoming call. He spoke cryptically, so she couldn’t glean anything from his conversation.
Reaching Downieville by car would take nine hours. Roland, through the FBI’s LA field office, had made arrangements to borrow, under the government’s law enforcement assistance program, a helicopter from the Homeland Security Division of the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department, located at the airport in Long Beach.
The helicopter, painted green and gold, was the same type of amphibious aircraft used by the president of the United States, and by the navy for search-and-rescue missions, medevac, and shipping. It was called a Sea King, and in addition to being able to handle any type of weather conditions, the helicopter was known for its speed. They made it to a landing pad just outside of Downieville in under an hour.
A black Jeep Cherokee with tinted windows drove up to them. The driver got out and handed the vehicle off to Roland. Ellie thought it was odd that no one had accompanied them during the flight, and she didn’t see transport of any kind nearby as they drove onto the main road. She suspected Roland had sent an advance team to scope out the church.
The bright sunshine of Ventura County was gone; here in Sierra County, the sky was overcast, and the weather was different, chilly and windy. But there were no fires, and the air smelled fresh and clean, a welcome relief from the past forty-eight hours. It had a transformative effect, too. The physical and mental exhaustion from yesterday’s events that had turned her blood to sludge—all of it had been blown aside.
But that wasn’t the reason why she was sitting up straight in her seat, feeling wide-eyed and alert. A part of her kept wondering if Sebastian had been playing her. What if he had told her an elaborate lie to shut her up and get her to bring his daughter to her so he could say goodbye? She had tried. By the time she had driven Grace to him, Sebastian was already gone. But what if there was no blood farm here? And if there was, why was it all the way up here?
Downieville felt like a small rural town in Vermont—deep green valleys and hills of pines and oaks so tall, they obscured the mountains and kept out sunlight; the kind of quaint, small homes made of weather-blasted wood you’d find in New England. The only thing missing was snow. They passed through a tiny downtown area of homey mom-and-pop stores, an old theater, and a gas station, and in the blink of an eye it was gone, and they were once again driving down an isolated stretch of road, surrounded by trees.
Twenty minutes later, after not passing a single house or car, Roland turned left and made his way down a paved road that led deep into a pastoral valley that looked like it belonged in another century—the Old West, where everyone carried guns and rode horses. Maybe she thought that way because of the church. It was small and rectangular and painted white, including the roof—more of a house than a church if it weren’t for the spire holding a small plain black cross. She could see a mountain range and part of a river, but she didn’t see a single vehicle except theirs, and there were no people here, no homes, nothing but the church.
Roland killed the engine, and pocketed his keys as he got out. He jogged toward the church’s rustic barn door, and by the time Ellie shut the car door he had already slipped inside. On her way, she saw a bronze plaque set in stone informing people about the history of the town’s first Catholic church. She saw 1862 and FIRE and REBUILT (1876) before she opened the door.
The inside was tiny. Twelve pews made of knotted pine, six on each side, sat in front of a simple all-white altar. The plain stained-glass windows looked old, and the statues of the Virgin Mary and Jesus stared down toward the carpeted floor, away from the eight men dressed in camo. Their gloved hands held assault rifles and they wore military-grade tactical vests and belts equipped with flex cuffs and flash-bang grenades. They all wore helmets equipped with night-vision goggles except for the one Roland was talking to, a man twice his size and twice as tall. He had a black buzz cut and sharp features, and his eyes were set back deep in his skull and looked like two small marbles. The man kept glancing over Roland’s shoulder, at her, as she approached. Everyone did. They had all stopped talking the moment she entered.
Roland turned to her and said, “Lead the way.”
Ellie walked down the center aisle, the men filing in behind her, and moved past the altar, to the white-painted door with the plastic EXIT sign above it. She opened the door and moved down a hallway no longer than ten feet.
She hadn’t been raised Catholic, but she had known plenty of Catholics growing up and had picked up on a lot of things. The room she found herself in was called a sacristy—the Catholic version of “the greenroom,” the place where the priest waited before mass started. It was also used to store his vestments and whatever other religious items he used during the service, but those were long gone. The only items inside this windowless white room were a bare wooden desk bolted down to the floor and, nailed to the wall, a black crucifix that matched the one on the spire.
Ellie turned her attention to the old fireplace. The soldiers were filing into the room. She held up a hand.
“You can’t be in here,” she said. “Everyone needs to back up into the hallway.”
“Why?” The question came from the guy with the black crew cut.
Must be the point man, she thought. “We won’t have enough room,” she replied, kneeling in front of the hearth. She had reached her right hand up, inside the chimney, her fingertips feeling for the loose brick when she saw that the man hadn’t moved. “I can’t do this if you guys don’t back out.”
Roland said, “Do what she says.”
Ellie removed the loose brick. Then she reached inside the cavity, found the lever Sebastian had described, and pulled. When she moved back to the archway leading into the hall, she had to push them back.
She expected to hear the rumble of some machinery—gear workings, a hum of a motor, something. She heard a creak, and the floor directly in front of her rose quietly, stopped at a forty-five-degree angle.
A set of steps faced her now. She saw a keypad, and a vault door made of steel.
Roland grabbed her by the arm and said, “You don’t know what’s down there. Let them handle it.”
“Okay.”
“Give them the code.”
She did.
The point man went down first. The others fell in line. She couldn’t see him entering the code, but she barely heard the soft beep as he keyed in each number. Blood was pounding in her ears, and her breath was coming short and fast.
The vault door opened.
The men rushed inside, weapons hot.
She heard them shout orders to drop to the ground. She heard people’s screams and gasps and knew she had found the farm—knew there were carriers down there. Roland kept a fierce grip on her arm as she heard a crash against the floor. She thought she heard doors slamming open and doors being kicked open, but she didn’t hear any gunshots.
It got very quiet. She thought, maybe even imagined, she heard someone crying, a young girl, maybe. The sound was lost behind heavy footsteps. The point man appeared below and, looking only at Roland, said, “All clear.”
Ellie didn’t know what she had expected to find buried in the earth underneath the church—a prison, maybe. Some sort of dungeon or holding pen with very little light. What she found reminded her of the play areas she’d seen those giant tech companies use to lure bright minds to come work for them: a wide-open space containing comfortable sofas and beanbags and a full kitchen and classic arcade games and games like foosball and Ping-Pong. A place where you could come and relax and unwind.
This brightly lit playroom—she didn’t know what else to call it—had high ceilings and was longer and wider than a basketball court. It did, in fact, have a half court at the far, far end. She found pinball machines, and a built-in fish tank that took up a good length of wall. She found shelves holding books and games, and the flat screens hanging on the walls—there were so many of them—soundlessly played movies and TV shows and were connected to Xbox and PlayStation game systems. The couches, sectional sofas, armchairs, and recliners scattered across the room were empty of people, littered with wireless headsets and game controllers. The people who had been sitting in them were all lying facedown in the center of the carpeted room, their hands clasped behind their heads, and struggling not to look at the weapons aimed at them.
“Stand down,” she told the men.
They ignored her.
She looked for Roland, saw him coming out from a door that led into a neatly furnished bedroom. “Tell these guys to take it out of overdrive, will you?”
Roland didn’t have a chance to answer. The point man said to him, “We checked the bedrooms, the exercise rooms and bathrooms and closets, the place they use to draw the blood. This is all of ’em.”
Ellie moved to the carriers. There were eighteen of them—some as young as teenagers, others her age if not older. Five of them were males who seemed to be roughly her age, and of those, two had the same brown hair as her brother. They all looked well-fed.
The one with the rumpled white collared shirt and wearing jeans and socks had, she thought, her skin tone and also shared the same features as her brother. Same button nose and full lips.
Ellie took a knee beside him. She touched his back, felt him flinch, his muscles as hard as iron. He was physically fit, in great shape. Everyone here was—just like the two carriers she’d seen months ago at Sophia Vargas’s home in Brentwood.
Looking at him—at everyone—and seeing how healthy they were, how well cared for, triggered a memory of words Sebastian had said to her that morning at his home, at the table, when she inquired about his blood farms. I don’t like that term, Sebastian had said. It implies that I treat my carriers as livestock, which I don’t. You’d be surprised by how well they’re treated.
Sebastian had been telling her the truth.
“It’s okay,” Ellie told the carrier. “You’re safe.” Then she addressed the others: “You’re all safe. My name is Officer Ellie Batista. I’m with the LAPD. I’m working with a federal task force. You’re all safe now. It’s over.”
Roland spoke to the point man: “Tell them to bring the truck around. Back it right up to the front. Have them do a final sweep of the area first, make sure everything’s locked down.”
Ellie turned her focus back to the man lying on the floor. “I’m going to pull down the collar of your shirt. I just want to take a quick look at your neck, okay?”
The man didn’t answer, didn’t flinch as Ellie gently moved his collar down.
He had a patch of light brown skin on his neck—what doctors called a café au lait birthmark. It looked like a pair of drip marks sitting on top of each other.
Her brother had the exact same birthmark.
At least that was what her memory told her. What if she was wrong? What if she was—what’s the word?—projecting?
“Are you Jonathan Cullen?”
He didn’t answer—didn’t look at her, his gaze flicking between all the weapons aimed at him and the others.
“You’re safe now. I promise,” Ellie told him. “Are you Jonathan?”
“No. You’re thinking of somebody else.”
A part of her screamed yes, this was her brother, while another part, an overwhelming part, told her he was telling her the truth, because, really, what were the chances that J.C. could still be alive after all this time? And when Sebastian had said no, he didn’t recognize the boy in the picture, Ellie had believed him because, again, what were the chances?
But here was the birthmark, staring back at her.
It has to be him.
Ellie said, “Your mother always called you Jonathan, but everyone else called you J.C. You had awful earaches—so bad that you were going to get ear tube surgery. When you were little, you wore these bright orange floaties on your arms at the pool, and then even in the bath, because you were terrified of water. You wore a swimmer’s mask because you hated getting water in your eyes, and you wore that, too, in the bathtub when Mom had to wash your hair.”
His eyes slid to hers, and right then Ellie knew. She could tell by the way he was looking at her.
“Who are you?”
“I’m Ellie,” she said, smiling. “Your sister.”