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.”