Vulnerable, no self-worth . . . ideal for a cult. Though she probably hadn’t brought them much material wealth, being accepted and feeling loved would have made her loyal. It was a minor miracle she’d broken free, actually. Most people don’t leave until things get so bad they just can’t excuse it anymore, they’re rescued . . . or they die.
I know part of the story she’s told me is true. But I strongly suspect that she’s still lying too. Maybe about small things; most people do. But she’s unnervingly good, and it’s impossible for me to judge whether she’s really being straight with me about the most important parts of her story.
“When did you get the backpack?” I ask that because I have nothing to lose, and it might rattle her.
It doesn’t. She blinks once, then says, “The day before he was supposed to meet me. Remy said it was an old one, he didn’t need it.” There’s a slight edge to it, though. Something that tells me I brushed a nerve. “I didn’t steal from him.”
“I didn’t mean to imply you did, Carol. What’s your real name?”
“Hicken—”
“I saw the name on the clock.”
She shuts up fast. Looks at me with a great deal more intensity than before. And I revise my assessment of her. She plays vulnerable with great skill. But she’s not vulnerable. Not where it counts. There’s an iron to her that shows only in flashes, and quickly vanishes beneath the camouflage.
She finally says, “I don’t know what my birth last name was; they never told me. My last foster family was called Sadler. So I guess Carol Sadler, not that it matters so much. I don’t even have anything to prove that. The church took it all when I joined.”
She says church unconsciously. Not cult. And I know she’s not talking about the little clapboard place where she was finding refuge with Pastor Wallace.
“What was it called? This church?” Cult.
She stares down for a long, long moment, then says, “It’s called the Assembly of Saints. Anyway. I’m really tired now. I need to sleep.”
Before I can even comment, she’s pulling back the covers and climbing in, still fully dressed. She pulls the covers and a pillow over her head and burrows in like she intends to vanish into the soft cotton.
I’m not going to get anything else from her tonight. I’ll try in the morning, but for now I leave it alone and go back to my computer. I send a summary of what I’ve learned to J. B., and document it in my online case notes. I make a note to investigate the name Carol Sadler, not that I think it’s going to lead me anywhere useful. By the time I’m done, I’m pretty exhausted, but I still need to check Sam’s voice mail.
I listen to what he reads me, and I open a document and run the message again as I type in names from the post he’s narrating. There are six. One of them is Remy Landry. If the post’s author is correct, five other young men have gone missing in the past few years. Just . . . vanished. Two left their dorm rooms at college and were never seen again. One was in high school and vanished after track practice. One on his way home from work. And the last one from a bar. Just like Remy.
I quickly run their names on J. B.’s proprietary company search, and there are open investigations into all of them. There’s no commonality of place; they’re all over the southeast. But they’re all white, fit young men of a certain age: the youngest is seventeen, the oldest is twenty-two.
I step out of the room, lean against the hallway wall, and call Sam. He answers on the second ring. When I check the time, it’s after one in the morning. “Hey,” I say. “You still awake?”
“Yeah, I was hoping you’d call. Can’t seem to sleep, even though I’m tired enough to crash like the Hindenburg.”
“Ouch.”
“Too soon?”
“Too accurate. Are you home?”
“No, we stopped at another hotel. I figure we’ll hang here until Kezia gives us the all clear. Which shouldn’t be too long, right? Bon Casey and Olly Belldene don’t sound like masterminds.”
I’m relieved he hasn’t driven straight back to Stillhouse Lake. Far too many unknown threats there. “Enjoy the room service,” I tell him. “I’m at a hotel too.”
“How’s the case going?”
“Interestingly,” I say. I press my back against the wall. There’s a headache forming behind my eyes, and I shut them for a moment. “She says she was supposed to meet Remy, and he was going to give her money to get out of Knoxville. But he never showed up, and nobody saw him again. And she’s got his backpack. Now that I know there’s a pattern of disappearances—thank you for that, by the way—I’ll hit her up with the other names in the morning and see what happens.” I debate for a second whether to tell him this, but plunge in. “She says she belonged to a cult. Well, she says ‘church,’ but everything about it screams ‘cult’ to me.”
“Oh.” I hear the shift in his voice. “Like Wolfhunter?” Wolfhunter had been a toxic tangle, but at the rotten heart of it had been a nasty cult, with a cruel philosophy of oppressing women. Chattel. Carol had said that. Most of the cult was dead; the leader, I’d heard, had gotten away. But surely that wasn’t the same cult that Carol meant. As far as I knew, it hadn’t been recruiting openly like this one.
“I don’t know,” I admit. “I can’t get her to tell me much yet.”
“She’s still with you?”
“Yeah. My plan was to get her information and then let her leave in the morning. Buy her a plane ticket and get her somewhere safe.”
“Maybe it’s the connection, but I’m hearing a silent ‘but,’” Sam says. I love talking to him. He’s always either just a step behind or a step ahead. I never have to wait for him to catch up. “You don’t believe her.”
“Not entirely, no. I’m afraid that she’s too good at playing the victim.”
“Do you think she had something to do directly with Remy’s abduction?”
“Maybe? I think there’s a whole lot she hasn’t said. Which means I can’t really afford to put her on a plane and have her drop completely out of sight. I don’t know what I’m going to do, exactly. I’m going to sleep on it tonight and decide in the morning.”
“I wish we were home together,” he says. “And I wish you weren’t on your own with this.”
“You’ve got my back.”
“Always.”
I let a beat go by. “How are they?”
“Sleeping,” he says. “And in the morning they’ll be missing you as much as I do.”
“Tell them I love them,” I say, and I hear the warmth flooding my voice. “And I love you too. Be safe.”
“Love you, Gwen. Be safe.”
I’m about to card back into the hotel room when I hear footsteps. I look up and toward the end of the hall where the elevators are; I’ve asked for a room close to the stairs, even though that’s also the one with the most risk of break-ins, because it presents a fast escape if necessary. I’m being paranoid, of course. There’s no way her cult could have traced us here.