“Come on, we’ll escort you until I reach an officer who will take over for us. Casey, you must understand and accept that you might be in very real danger. If Morrison’s sons are in this, they’re taking orders from their father. They could see you as a terrible threat—and this group has a particular talent for making people disappear, until they want the bodies to be found,” Hunter said.
Tears stung Casey’s eyes. She wiped her hand across her face and nodded. “Okay, okay!”
She stood straight and went to open the driver’s side door to her vehicle. “Any particular way you want me to drive?”
Roger looked at Hunter, arching a brow.
“This will take us through the center of Maclamara and we can pick up one of the main roads once we’re through.”
Hunter nodded. “Casey, just keep driving.”
“Do I stop for red lights?” she asked with a sigh.
“Yes—the town does have one, I believe,” Hunter said, ignoring her nervous sarcasm. “But don’t stop otherwise.”
She got into her car. Roger and Hunter walked south toward his.
“That was harsh,” Roger said.
“She thinks that a family bond can save her. It can’t. I had to be harsh.”
“What did they find in the woods?” Roger asked. He didn’t wait for Hunter to answer. “Bodies?” he said.
“Bones, so far. You talk about your hostile takeover. I know it’s Ethan Morrison, good old Brother Darryl’s boy. He took everything they learned under Brother William and kicked it up a bunch of notches. I just wonder what the hell else is going on.”
“You mean the way that they’re playing with Revelation?”
Hunter nodded. They had reached the van; he headed to the passenger’s side and hopped in. Roger took the driver’s seat and checked the rearview mirror.
Casey was coming. She would drive through the town as she had said.
“How the hell can anyone figure out what they’re doing? The New Testament wasn’t written in English at the get-go. It was written in something called Koine Greek—that’s K-O-I-N-E. Then you have all kinds of languages and versions and the new Bible and the popular Bible... It can all mean anything,” Roger said.
“I know. And even if we had an answer to the closest version of what was meant, it wouldn’t matter, because our killers are using whatever interpretation they choose. But one thing is certain—they are killing, and torturing their victims before they kill them. And they have to be stopped.”
“We’re close, my friend, we’re close.”
“Yeah, too close.” Hunter gestured out the windscreen. “We’re coming up on the biker bar. I’m thinking, by now, the town knows that Phin Harrison is dead.”
Traffic signs warned that the speed limit through town was thirty miles an hour.
They had slowed appropriately.
So had Casey.
“We can get her safely through to the next county, but we’ll need help keeping an eye on her,” Hunter said.
He pulled out his phone and called Ellison. He had to wait a few minutes to get in his request; Ellison was ranting, upset about the bones being found. In his county. But he was also grateful that they had looked, grateful that he had asked for FBI help, for Hunter specifically.
Hunter assured him he was glad to be working where he was most useful, then he was finally able to ask for an escort for Casey, and someone to watch over her, as well.
“I’ve got it,” Ellison told him. “I’ll ask the FDLE if I need to, but we cops in connecting counties have a good rapport. I’ll have help. We’re good. I promise you.”
Ahead down the road, Hunter could see the biker bar.
“Hey, do you know anything about the bartender at the biker place in Maclamara?” Hunter asked him. “I know that several tech divisions have been checking out people for red flags, but that biker bar is where we met Phin, and the bartender was at the barbecue.”
He could see, as Roger slowed the van, that there were at least a dozen cars in the parking lot that day.
“Gilbert Bowles,” Ellison told him. “Yeah, I checked him out. A few speeding tickets on a motorbike. That’s all. Nothing there. He owns the business and works the business. It just hangs on—enough in profits to keep it going.”
“Thanks. What about his history? School, married, kids?”
“No college, school right where he is—in the neighboring county. Single, no children.”
“Thanks.”
“No problem. I’ll get right on your request. I’m not far from you. I’m headed to the woods, to look at human remains,” Ellison said dolefully.
“Right. Let me know if you have any problems. I don’t want to take the time to follow her unless I have to.”
“Right, my friend.”
They ended the call.
Hunter thought about the man he now knew to be Gilbert Bowles. He was one really big guy; there weren’t that many men who were several inches over his own six-three.
“You were asking about the bartender, the massive guy at the barbecue?” Roger asked.
He dropped his speed more, keeping an eye on the road ahead—and Casey. But she, too, had slowed down.
Curious to see the place, probably.
“Big guy, but that doesn’t mean he knows what he’s doing,” Roger went on. “Then again, fighting a smaller person... he could just sit on them and squash them.”
Hunter cast him a glare.
“Just saying. Big guys have the weight—if nothing else—to hold on to people. Then again, I saw Amy’s move the other day. She knows what she’s doing. She’s an impressive young woman.”
“Yes.”
“You think so, too.”
“Yes.”
“You know, some people have to have people a lot like themselves in their lives.”
Hunter groaned aloud, looking over at him. “Yes, I like her. I care about her. Yes, we make a great team.”
“On and off the playing field.”
“Roger, we’re tracking a deadly cult.”
“Killers. Yes, and you’ve done a damned good job of that all your life, kid. Like you make up for something with your folks. Your folks are good people, too.”
“Roger, I’m not trying to make up for everything. I love my parents. They were fooled, but then they showed tremendous courage.”