JACK DROVE through Hillsdale and then Autumn Ridge, trying to formulate a plan. Driving helped him think better than pacing back and forth across a room did. It let Jack see things he wouldn’t otherwise: buildings, streets, parks, people. He would form connections and come up with new ideas, but so far determining how he would arrange for the capture of so many people in the next week was proving even harder than he’d expected.
Troy wanted him to get five.
Where in the world would he find them?
And when did Troy become so demanding?
One problem with communities like Hillsdale and Autumn Ridge was that neither was large enough for a man in his position to fully blend in with the crowd. Luckily for him, Jack had been born with an ordinary face and grew into a man with an ordinary build, and he wasn’t into flashy attire, tattoos, or piercings that would proclaim who he was like a neon sign in a window. He guessed this was part of the reason he had yet to be apprehended for his part in Randy Bellison’s attempted murder: he was just too plain for people to remember him.
Yet arranging for five human beings to be abducted would draw attention to the most boring-looking man on the planet.
On the plus side, these towns weren’t the type of place where law enforcement would expect such an illicit industry to take root. The longer their network stayed below the radar, the better.
When Jack had finally tracked down Graham, he’d been delighted to learn that the two of them had more in common than some measly strands of DNA and a penchant for the illegal. Graham had gained people’s trust before murdering them, and Jack gained their trust before having one of his colleagues snatch them away. (On certain occasions Jack himself took care of said snatching. It all depended on the circumstances.)
But the central question remained: where would he find five easily-missed people during the next week? He would have to work quickly, but fast work tended to be sloppy. He couldn’t afford to be caught.
If only Trish were still here to help out.
Trish Gunson, his late colleague, had been a reluctant recruit. She’d desperately needed the money and had resorted to finding vulnerable people at her college to send the traffickers’ way.
Then she found out she had some lethal heart defect, and when Graham mentioned how much it would hurt Randy if a victim died during an exorcism, Jack happily donated Trish to his grandfather’s cause. She’d always annoyed him, anyway, even though she did help get things done.
Jack had no desire to hang out at the college Trish attended. For one, he wasn’t a student; and secondly, few people would be in class this time of year.
Back to square one.
He supposed he could drive into one of the seedier sections of town to see if any troubled girls—or boys—were looking for work. He might be able to get one or two that way.
But not five, and not so soon. Because someone in that seedy part of town would notice if five of their neighbors disappeared all at once, and if they were feeling extra ambitious, they might report it to the police.
As Jack turned down another street, he caught sight of colorful, fluttering banners announcing a summer festival that would take place in a couple of days. He tapped lightly on the brake and leaned over to peer out the passenger side window so he could see them better.
10th ANNUAL AUTUMN RIDGE SUMMERPALOOZA!!! one banner proclaimed in glaring red and orange letters. RIDES! GAMES! FOOD! LIVE MUSIC! FUN FOR THE WHOLE FAMILY! FREE ADMISSION!
Hmm.
Jack checked his mirrors and threw the car into reverse when he saw the coast was clear, then pulled into the park.
The parking lot was empty save for some overflowing recycling bins. The park occupied maybe twelve acres of land, half of which was wooded. A patchy field containing a baseball diamond sat between the woods and the parking lot. No rides or booths had been set up yet.
He placed his chin on his hand. He’d been to enough fairs and town festivals to know that the promise of free entertainment often brought the dregs of society crawling out of the woodwork like a bunch of hungry roaches. Could he really pull off what Troy wanted him to do at an event like this? There would probably be security on hand.
And lots and lots of eyewitnesses.
Jack got out of the car and slammed the door, hearing its lonely echo against the adjacent houses and trees. He inhaled deeply and closed his eyes.
A husky voice spoke inside his mind. You’re never going to be able to do what Troy wants. You know that, right?
There was the truth, plain as day. Jack could see it now. Troy wanted him gone, and instead of saying it outright, he’d heaped this impossible task upon him that was guaranteed to fail. It took time to become acquainted with someone well enough to know whether or not he or she would be missed, and it took time to gain trust—even Graham had known that when he found people on whom he would later conduct his twisted experiments.
Or maybe Troy really was offering Jack a promotion. It was too hard to read the man’s mind.
Having nothing better to do, Jack walked toward the baseball diamond. Shiny bleachers sat beside it and Jack planted himself on the bottom row to brood.
He could always quit the business, go on the run from Troy, and find work elsewhere, but where would the fun in that be? Jack grew bored easily. He’d been that way for as long as he could remember. As a child his mother was often away at work, leaving Jack to fend for himself. Books, television, toys, and his sister had held little appeal for him, so he would hang out with the other children on their street. Jack had no emotional attachment to them. They’d simply been a means to an end.
One day when he was about ten, he and a younger neighbor boy named Tim had been walking down to a local ice cream shop when an unexpected voice in Jack’s head plainly said, “Make him eat dirt.”
An ordinary child would have been alarmed, but Jack welcomed the voice. He didn’t know why it wanted Tim to do such a thing, but it suddenly seemed like the best idea in the world.
“Hey Tim,” Jack said. “Have you ever eaten dirt?”
Tim halted on the sidewalk and turned. “Dirt?”
“You know, that brown stuff all over the ground.”
Tim’s cheeks had flushed. “Why would I do that?”
“The question is,” Jack said, “why wouldn’t you? It can’t hurt you. All it is is dead plants and stuff.” He grinned.
Tim looked uncertain. “It really can’t hurt me?”
“Nope. And let me tell you a little secret.” Jack leaned closer to Tim’s ear and whispered, “We can’t even grow up if we don’t eat dirt. We’ll just stay little kids forever and ever.”
“Are you sure?” Now Tim’s face had gone white, and the sight of it filled Jack with glee.
“I’m sure.”
“Have you ever eaten dirt, Jack?”
“Lots of times. It’s actually not that bad.” Jack pointed at a bare patch of earth next to the sidewalk. “Go ahead. Try some.”
“Okay.” Tim bent over, picked up a small clod, and held it tentatively in his fingers. “What if there’s bugs in it?”
“Who cares if there are? They add extra nutrition.” Nutrition was something Jack’s mother was always going on about, which probably meant it was supposed to be important.
Tim stared at the clod a moment longer, scrunched his eyes shut, and said, “Here goes!”
Jack watched in silent fascination as Tim popped the chunk of dirt into his mouth. His expression soured as he chewed, and Jack thought he’d throw up right there on the sidewalk. But then Tim shuddered and opened his mouth, revealing a brown tongue and bits of dirt stuck in his teeth. “That was nasty!”
Jack clapped him on the back. “The taste’ll go away in a minute. Now let’s get some ice cream!”
The feeling Jack had for the rest of that day was almost indescribable. He’d been able to convince someone to do something they never would have done otherwise. It was like he had a kind of power over Tim. For his entire short life, nothing had been under Jack’s control—the shady men his mother brought home, the new apartments to which they moved, the new schools Jack was forced to attend, the constant rules imposed on him by his teachers. Don’t talk in class, Jack. Don’t take Nicky’s toys. Don’t throw food at your classmates. Don’t don’t don’t.
Getting a taste of what it was like to take charge for once was a beautiful thing. And now that he’d tasted it, he wanted more.
After that he conducted similar experiments on other neighborhood children. He convinced a boy to run through the corner supermarket naked. He sweet-talked a girl into stealing a pack of cigarettes for him. He even got his own mother to buy him a brand-new video game system that he only played for a week before growing bored with it.
“Jack,” she said one day while folding laundry, “you sure have a way with words.”
Boy, did he.
In the present, Jack withdrew a quarter from his pocket and rolled it across his knuckles.
Five. How in the blazes am I supposed to get five?
I’M TRAPPED. I’m for sale. I’m trapped. I’m for sale.
Adrian’s thoughts were stuck on repeat, and she felt as though she’d be sick.
At one point the brown-skinned woman returned with sandwiches and water for the three occupants of the windowless room, but Adrian couldn’t eat. How could she in a place like this?
Marissa, the blonde, chided her in a low voice that wouldn’t carry beyond the walls of the concrete room. “Starving yourself isn’t going to help, you know.”
Adrian hugged her arms against her chest and kept rocking back and forth on her cot. “I never should have left him. I should have just stayed home.” Yuri had been right to advise her not to contact her children. If she’d stayed at his side like a good wife, she wouldn’t be here.
She didn’t even know where “here” was.
Neither did Marissa. She told Adrian she’d been there roughly three days, the Asian woman for two. When Marissa first awakened in the room, four teenage girls were there with her. None of them had spoken English. Illegal immigrants, Marissa guessed. They probably had either been restaurant workers or farmhands.
According to Marissa, two big men and a haughty-faced woman had come to the room and looked each of the women over. The woman had nodded and said, “I’ll take these four.”
The men had handcuffed the teenagers and led them sobbing from the room. Marissa never saw them again.
Adrian knew that the people who took the girls would be back. It was only a matter of time before they took her, too.
Adrian said, “Starving might be easier than whatever’s outside that door.”
Marissa shook her head. “It takes weeks of no food before you die. Besides, maybe it won’t be that bad. Whatever they’ll do to us, I mean.”
Adrian gave her a doleful stare. “Honey, how old are you?”
“I’ll be twenty-three next week. Some way to spend a birthday, huh?” Marissa shrugged. “The way I see it, the worst they could do is sell us to an illegal brothel. It might suck, but at least we won’t be dead.”
“You’re a very naïve girl.”
“Oh yeah?” Marissa stood up. “I’d rather have ten men a night than be murdered, and if they wanted that, we’d already be dead.”
“They could be holding us for ransom. My husband—”
Marissa shook her head. “They’d be out of their minds to hold me for ransom. My parents don’t have two cents to rub together. I haven’t even talked to them in three years.”
Adrian sighed. It was foolish to think someone in Oregon would have recognized her as Yuri’s wife and abducted her in order to collect ransom money. Even if she hadn’t run off, Yuri wouldn’t have parted with his beloved wealth just to save her.
She felt a little wistful at that realization. Wealth was Yuri’s one true love and had been all along. Adrian was simply a thing to be used for Yuri’s convenience. Should she really have expected any different after what she’d done to her children?
Adrian picked up the sandwich and bit off a corner. It consisted of bologna and cheese so dry she could hardly swallow. “There has to be a way out of here.”
“There is. Through that door. When they take you with them.”
Awhile later—one hour, two hours, Adrian couldn’t tell—the metal door swung open. Instead of the buyers Marissa described, a beady-eyed man and two with guns entered the cell.
Adrian averted her gaze and pretended to take great interest in the floor.
“This is all you’ve got?” the beady-eyed man asked.
Please just leave, Adrian prayed.
“Wait a few days, and we’ll have more,” one of the other men said.
“I don’t have a few days.” Beady Eyes let out a terse breath. “I was hoping for younger. A john blew my youngest one’s head off last night and I don’t like having empty rooms.”
“Maybe you should start screening your clientele before letting them into your establishment. What you see is what you get.”
Adrian found herself hoping against hope that the man would either leave empty handed or take the other women instead, which made her wonder if she was just as much of a monster as the people who had imprisoned them.
“Fine,” the buyer said. “I’ll take these two.”
Adrian refused to look up as Marissa and the Asian woman were cuffed and led from the room.
Her stomach turned. Please don’t hurt them. Please, please don’t hurt them.
The heavy door swung shut and locked her in.
For the first time since she’d come here, she was alone.
She would not remain that way for long.
BOBBY RAN his hands over his face.
He had failed. Miserably. It had been a mistake to take Randy’s place as the Servant, especially since Randy hadn’t died after all. Randy could have found someone else to follow in his footsteps, preferably someone who didn’t know the meaning of fear and had no past sins that could be thrown back in his face at inopportune moments.
At least the entity that called itself Thane didn’t greet him upon his return home. He had enough to deal with without angels or hallucinations dropping in unannounced.
Bobby sank onto the squashed second-hand couch.
Do you trust in me?
A lump rose in Bobby’s throat. He couldn’t lie to the Spirit. “I want to.”
You have no reason to doubt.
“I’m not good enough for this. You can’t expect me to drive demons out of people when I’ve got this…this little punk inside me wanting to hurt people.”
You have been forgiven.
Bobby blinked an embarrassing tear from his eye. “Okay. So what am I supposed to do?”
Relax your mind.
“Can you tell me who kidnapped that woman?”
You know it in your heart. Relax your mind.
Bobby understood now. Last week when he and Phil tried to figure out where Randy went to confront Graham, Phil helped Bobby move into an altered state of consciousness that helped Bobby determine where Randy could be found.
He supposed he could try a similar tactic now.
Bobby lay on his back across the cushions and took slow breaths. Blond guy. He needed to learn the identity of the blond guy.
He imagined he was walking along a sandy shoreline, and his consciousness wavered.
Relax, Bobby. Relax.
He put one foot in front of the other. Waves lapped against the sand to his left. The sun’s blazing orb hung in the sky and seagulls circled and wheeled through the air around him.
At first Bobby could still feel the cushions pressing into him at the same time he was walking down the beach, but then the former sensation ceased.
The sound of soft footsteps accompanying his alerted him to the fact that he wasn’t alone.
He jerked his head to the side, not quite surprised to see his father, the late Ken Roland, walking beside him. “You’re back,” Bobby blurted. “Just like when I did this before.”
“But the question is,” Ken said, “did I ever really leave?”
They continued walking.
“Dad?” Bobby asked after a time, casting his father a shy glance as his bare feet marked passage of their stroll through the sand. It felt like more than a decade had melted away and Bobby was a child again—albeit one whose mind was filled with very un-childlike thoughts. “Can I ask you something?”
Ken halted and planted his meaty hands on his hips. He looked just as he had in life. Thinning hair. A keg-like stomach that resulted from too many trays of late-night nachos. Eyes that twinkled even when he wasn’t smiling. “Sure thing. What’s on your mind?”
“Well, I was wondering.” He broke off, not certain how to put it without the words coming across the wrong way. “I know I didn’t hold up to your standards.”
Ken’s eyebrows rose in surprise. “What in the blue blazes are you talking about?”
Heat rose in Bobby’s face. “I mean, you always went on and on about car stuff and working hard to be—what was it? A ‘productive member of society,’ and I ignored you just so I could do my own thing. I know you thought my music was a waste of time.”
There. He said the words he’d wanted to say for years but couldn’t.
Ken studied him. “Playing that guitar of yours made you happy though, didn’t it? And that’s what mattered to me more than anything.”
Relief loosened some of the tightness in Bobby’s chest. “You mean you’re not mad at me?”
“Mad?” Ken laughed. “Course I’m not mad at you. Maybe I was worried about you becoming some sissy boy who couldn’t do a thing for himself, but I was wrong about that, wasn’t I?”
Bobby cast his gaze toward his feet. “I suppose so.”
“You suppose. Bobby, what you did for those people is the best I ever could have asked of you.” He was smiling now; his eyes twinkling more brightly than ever. “We’re all proud of you. Not many could have done it.”
“I was only doing what was right.”
“Bobby, people are faced with choices every day of their lives. If you count the number of them who do the right thing instead of the things that are best for themselves, well, let’s just say they won’t be leading many polls.”
Bobby remained silent, and they resumed their journey across the sand. The gentle waves lapping against the shore were almost hypnotic. “Have you always been watching me?” he asked after a length of time that could have been either a minute or a hundred years.
“Always.”
“Charlotte and Jonas, too?”
“Of course.”
“Can I ask you something else?”
“I’ll bet I know what it is.”
“Why is it that every time I try to meditate like this, I see you?”
A laugh. “Just because, son. Just because.”
“And are you really here, or is this just a dream?”
“That’s for you to decide. But does it matter?”
“I guess not.” Bobby sidestepped a scuttling crab. There was something else he needed to know, but it had fled his mind.
“You need to love your mother,” Ken said.
This was quite possibly the last thing he’d expected his father to say. “What?”
“I mean it. No matter what’s happened, and no matter what will happen, you need to love her if it’s the last thing you do.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Yeah, you do.”
The beach vanished, and Bobby was back in his living room.
In his mind he saw the face of Jack Willard, whose dishwater blond hair shined in the light spilling through the trees in the woods behind Graham Willard’s house.
His mind scrambled to make sense of it.
Mystery Woman. Blond guy. Kidnapping.
He began to sweat. How could he have not realized that Jack Willard was the one who’d taken the woman? And if Jack could be callous enough to work with Graham, there was no telling what he might do to the poor woman who came to Oregon all the way from the Midwest for reasons Bobby had yet to learn.