After Ackerman’s call, Marcus had contacted Maggie and asked her to pick him up in the Yukon. They needed to take a little trip up north, and he wanted some time alone with her to talk about what had been going on between them. Then he had called Stan and relayed to him what Ackerman had learned from Crowley. They needed a possible location for the cult’s former compound and more information on the man called Conlan, who apparently went by the name of The Prophet.
He had also sent Andrew and Vasques over to investigate Crowley’s shop and see if the man could still be alive. The call had come back quickly that Crowley was dead. But he hadn’t been simply murdered, he had been nearly cut in half. Andrew had seemed extremely shaken by what he had seen, and that was saying something coming from a man who worked around the macabre on a daily basis. Marcus couldn’t help but feel responsible for Crowley’s death, but he couldn’t quite make himself feel sorry about it. Crowley had been found in a torture room of his own design, and they had also found tapes of the man abusing young boys. If anyone had deserved such an encounter with Ackerman, it was Vassago Crowley. And in some deep animal part of Marcus’s mind, he wished that he could have extracted the information himself.
Knowing that the compound was somewhere in Wisconsin’s Jefferson County, he had taken I-290 up to Route 53 and then across to Route 12. Along the way, they had passed through all manner of terrain, from suburban to rural to forest. They would be in Jefferson County within a couple of hours, just before sunrise. With luck, Stan would have a location for them by then.
Maggie had been silent for most of the drive, and Marcus couldn’t quite find the words to express his feelings. He drummed his fingers against the steering wheel and said the first thing that came to mind. “What’s the deal with you and this Rowland guy?”
“Why? Are you jealous?”
“We’re not teenagers, Maggie.”
“Only teenagers can be jealous?”
“I’m just saying that he doesn’t seem like a good fit for you.”
“You haven’t even met the guy.”
“I know the type. Rowland shouldn’t even call himself a satanist. People like that should just be honest and say that they’re selfish. How could you be interested in a guy who thinks that people should be their own god and only be concerned with their own desires and what makes them happy?”
She turned in the passenger seat to face him. The leather squeaked beneath her, and the movement stirred the scent of her perfume into the air. It was both sweet and fragrant, like orchids mixed with honey.
“Explain this to me,” Maggie said, “because I’m a bit confused. You’re not jealous because another guy asked me out: you’re simply worried about my soul.”
“Never mind. Forget I said anything.”
“I’m just trying to understand where you’re coming from.”
Marcus said nothing, and the silence stretched out.
After a few moments, she said, “Do you love me or not?”
The bluntness of the question shocked Marcus and made him hesitate. He wasn’t sure how to respond to something like that.
Apparently taking his silence as a negative, Maggie said, “I guess that’s my answer.”
“It’s not as simple as all that.”
“Yes, it is. Either you do or you don’t.”
“It doesn’t matter either way. You just don’t understand that. What did you think would happen? That we’d get married, have kids, and bring them along on cases? There was a time when all that I wanted was to be normal. Settle down with you and start a family. But I can’t do that, because I’m not normal. I’m just as broken as the men we hunt.”
“I can’t quit the Shepherd Organization, if that’s what you want,” she said.
“I don’t know what I want. But I know now that I can’t run from what I am.”
A long, cold silence accompanied them down Route 12 past houses and businesses and bare trees. They were all vague shapes at the dark edges of the headlights’ beam. The snowfall had tapered off as they drove, and the snowplows were out in force. They had already seen three of them along the way. But Marcus had heard that the worst of the storm was still on its way.