by Jen Blood
“Over there,” he said, nodding vaguely toward another table. I looked, and saw Ren seated at a table with Sarah and Therese and a few others I didn’t recognize. She wore a red summer dress that went beautifully with her skin, her hair up and just the right amount of makeup tastefully applied.
“Listen, I was hoping I could talk to you for a second,” Bear said. I shifted my focus back to him.
“Isn’t that what you’re doing?”
He rolled his eyes. “Right. Yeah. Well… Um. I just… Ren and I were thinking, and I guess we’re just going to stay over here for the night. On the mainland, I mean.”
All my goodwill vanished into the night at once. “Oh? Where were you planning on doing that, exactly?”
He wet his lips. Cleared his throat. “We’re eighteen, so… It’s not like I’m asking. I just wanted to make sure you could cover me if I wasn’t there tonight. I already talked to Sarah and Therese, and they said they could handle it.”
“Well, then, there you go. I guess you’re good.”
He bit his lip. “And you’re cool with it?”
I laughed at that. I couldn’t help it, thinking of the eighteen years we’d spent growing up together. All the agony he’d put me through. All the agony I’d put him through, for that matter.
“I’m cool with it, Bear. You’re going to a hotel?” I guessed.
“Yeah. I got reservations.”
“And you have protection?”
The eye roll this time wasn’t nearly as dramatic as I’d expected. “Of course.”
“And you remember our talk about consent?”
He sighed, but his eyes remained serious when he replied. “She can say no anytime. Doesn’t matter where we are or how far we’ve gotten. The choice is always hers.” He frowned briefly. “I wouldn’t hurt her, Mom. Not for anything.”
“I know that.” I reached across the table and squeezed his hand. Jack was still talking to the others, so I took advantage of the extra minute or two. “Have you thought about what happens next? When she goes back to California?”
He hesitated, but I could tell that this wasn’t a new question for him. “We actually wanted to talk to you about that.”
“We?”
“Ren and me. She… Well, she was going to tell you herself. But she’s decided to take a gap year. You know—not go to school for a year?”
“I know what a gap year is, thank you. What does her father say about this?”
“She hasn’t told him yet,” Bear admitted. “But… I kind of was thinking maybe I could do the same thing. I know I’ve started all this stuff out on the island, but ever since Ren left it’s been…” He stopped, searching for words.
“Awful?” I supplied.
He laughed. “Yeah. Kind of. I just… There’s all this stuff I want to see, and I want to do, and she’s been talking a lot about the, uh… You know, the powers or whatever? The things I can see. And you and I never really talk about that, but…I kind of want to know more. Like... I saw Mr. Monroe that night, at Julie’s place? And I freaked out... I thought he was dead. But if I’d understood what was going on, if I had actually talked to him, maybe we could have gotten to him sooner.”
“He’s all right,” I reminded Bear. “He’s going to be fine.”
“That’s thanks to you and Phantom, not me. I just need to figure out what it’s all about. What I can do. And if I can help people, somehow.”
“And you’re going to do that with Ren? Where?”
He shrugged. “I’m not sure yet. She’s got a couple of places she wants us to visit. Some guy she wants me to talk to. I guess mostly it’s just…us, figuring out what we want and who we are.”
I nodded, fighting an unexpected surge of emotion. I stuffed it back down, and kept my voice even when I looked at him. “When would you go?”
“We were thinking we’d work here together through the summer, and that way I can make sure everything’s set and the animals are taken care of. We can help train anybody new you want to bring on board.” He looked at me seriously, his brow furrowed and his dark eyes that much darker. “If you don’t want me to go... I mean, if you need me—”
I squeezed his hand and shook my head. “No. It’s good that you’re doing this—this is what you should be doing. I mean, I don’t know if talking to a shaman and traveling the globe with your girlfriend is exactly what you should be doing… But you should be exploring. You shouldn’t be worrying about me. I’m okay.”
Jack had finally extracted himself from the others, and was headed our way. Bear caught sight of him, and gave me a look.
“I told him if he hurts you, Monty and I will beat the snot out of him,” my son said.
I laughed, taken aback at that. “I don’t think you need to worry about that.”
“No,” he said. He eyed Jack speculatively as he stood, surrendering his seat to the older man. “I don’t think so, either. Ren and I are gonna get going. See you out on the island tomorrow?”
“You will,” I confirmed.
“How’s it going, Bear?” Jack asked.
“Can’t complain. Don’t keep her out too late, okay?” he said. I watched him walk away, and I barely recognized him as the awkward, shaggy-haired little boy I had raised.
Jack looked at me. “What was that about?”
I took my beer from him, and took a long, long pull before I set it back down again. “It seems like we’re both growing up,” I said.
“Oh?” He sat opposite me, in the stool Bear had vacated. “Is that a bad thing?”
I studied him a moment. A lock of dark hair had fallen over his forehead, almost in his eyes. I resisted the urge to brush it away, and contented myself with settling my hand in his on the table top. “It has its good points.” I hesitated. The tables had been cleared away on one side of the bar, and a growing knot of people had gotten up to dance. I watched Bear and Ren leave the building, hand in hand. I took another pull from my beer, and a long, steadying breath.
“Do you know how to dance?” I asked.
He smiled. “I do. Did you want to...?” He nodded toward the dance floor, and I hesitated. He caught on after a second and tightened his hold on my hand, studying me all the while. “You don’t dance?”
“I grew up in a house where dancing was off-limits, because of Jesus.” He raised his eyebrows at that, and I waved him off. “A story for another time. But then I had a baby when I was fifteen. And then I raised that baby, and started a business... There hasn’t been much time for dancing, so far.”
“I can see how that might happen.”
I bit my lip. There was a spark in his eye, a hint of danger there that was more intoxicating than the beer. “But you know how to dance.”
“I know how to dance, corazón,” he said softly.
“Good.” I stood, allowing myself one more steadying breath, and pulled him to his feet. “Then you can teach me.”
Turn the page for a free sample of All the Blue-Eyed Angels, the first novel in the bestselling, now-complete Erin Solomon Pentalogy. There, you’ll get more background on Special Agent Jack Juarez and K-9 search and rescue handler Jamie Flint, who makes her first appearance in the Erin Solomon series in book two, Sins of the Father.
Jonestown. The Solar Temple. Heaven’s Gate. In the summer of 1990, the Payson Church of Tomorrow joins the ranks of those infamous cult suicides when thirty-four members burn to death on a small island off the coast of Maine. At ten years old, Payson member Erin Solomon watches helplessly as the church and its congregation are reduced to ash and embers.
More than twenty years later, Erin is an accomplished investigative journalist when she receives word that she has inherited Payson Isle... and all its ghosts. She returns to Maine to learn the truth behind the tragedy that has haunted her since childhood, aided by the rakish mentor who’s stood by her side since she was a teenager, her trusty mutt Einstein, and a mysterious stranger with his own dark past.
Soon, Erin is enmeshed in a decades
-old conspiracy rooted in lust, delusion, and betrayal, as she fights to unearth the secrets of the Payson Church of Tomorrow—secrets someone will kill to keep buried.
Prologue
AUGUST 22, 1990
On my tenth birthday, I am baptized by fire.
I race through a forest of smoke, ignoring the sting of blackberry brambles and pine branches on sensitive cheeks and bare arms. Up ahead, I catch a glimpse of my father’s shirt, drenched and muddy, as he races through the woods. I follow blindly, too terrified to scream, too panicked to stop.
A figure in black chases us, gaining on me fast. At ten years old, raised in the church, I am certain that it is the devil himself. He wears a hooded cloak; I imagine him taking flight at my heels, reaching for me with gnarled fingers. I run faster, my breath high in my chest, trees speeding past. The air gets thicker and harder to breathe the closer we get to the fire, but I don’t stop.
The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want.
I can hear him behind me, three or four steps back at most, his breath coming hard and his hands getting closer.
I skid into the clearing certain that I’m safe now—I’ve reached the church. The church is always safe.
But today, nothing is safe. Flames climb the blackened walls of the chapel, firemen circling with hoses to keep the surrounding forest from burning. My father has arrived ahead of me—I find him kneeling in front of a pile of rubble just feet from the flames. His shoulders shake as he cries.
He maketh me to lie down in green pastures. He leadeth me beside the still waters.
I go to him because I know no one else will, and wrap my arms around his neck. When I scan the tree line, the man I felt behind me just moments before is gone. Now, there is no one but the firemen, the local constable, and my mother with her doctor’s bag and no survivors to heal.
I pray in my father’s ear, whispering words of comfort the way he always has for me. There is a smell that sticks in my throat and turns my stomach, but only when my mother comes for me, trying to pull me away, do I realize what that smell is.
He restoreth my soul. He leadeth me on a path of righteousness for His name’s sake.
A coal black, claw-like hand reaches from beneath the pile of burned debris where my father weeps. A few feet beyond, I see a flash of soot-stained white feathers, china-blue eyes, and a painted smile that seems suddenly cruel. I stay there, fixated on the doll, until my mother takes me in her arms and forces me away.
She sets me on the wet grass and places a mask over my face so that I can breathe. The oxygen tastes like cold water after a long drought. I sit still while the rain washes over me and my father cries and the church burns to the ground.
I’m just beginning to calm down when I feel a presence like warm breath at the back of my neck, and I turn once more toward the trees.
The cloaked man stands at the edge of the woods, his hood down around his shoulders. Rain plasters dark hair against his head. Water drips down high cheekbones and a thin, sharp nose.
Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil.
The words of my favorite Psalm stutter in my head—Thy rod and thy staff, they comfort me.
The man in black turns his head, his dark eyes fixing on mine.
My cup runneth over.
He puts a finger to his thin lips and whispers to me through the chaos.
“Sshhh.”
More than twenty years will pass before I pray again.
Chapter 1
I returned to my hometown of Littlehope, Maine, on a wet afternoon when the town was locked in fog. A cold rain filled the potholes and pooled on the shoulder of coastal Route 1, ensuring that I hydroplaned most of the drive up from Boston. I hadn’t set foot in Littlehope since my high school graduation, when I left the town behind in a beaten-to-hell Honda Civic with the vow that I would never return.
That was fifteen years ago.
Littlehope is a fishing village at the end of a peninsula on Penobscot Bay, about two hours from Portland. It’s known for Bennett’s Lobster Shanty, the Ladies Auxiliary Quilting League, and a small but determined band of drug runners who rule the harbor. Littlehope also happens to be ten miles as the crow flies from the island where thirty-four members of the Payson Church of Tomorrow burned to death and where, a decade later, my father hanged himself in their honor.
They say you can’t go home again. In my case, it seems more apt to ask why the hell you’d ever want to.
I walked through the front door of the Downeast Daily Tribune just after eleven o’clock that Wednesday morning. The Trib has delivered the news to three counties in the Midcoast for over fifty years, from an ugly concrete block of a building on Littlehope’s main drag. Across the road, you’ll find the Episcopal Church, the local medical clinic, and the only bar in town. My mother used to joke that the layout was intentional—locals could get plastered and beat the crap out of each other Saturday night, stumble next door to get patched up, and stop in to see the neighborhood preacher for redemption on Sunday morning.
The first job I ever had was as Girl Friday at the Trib, fetching coffee and making copies for the local newshounds, occasionally typing up copy when no one else was around or they were too lazy to do it themselves. Walking through the familiar halls that morning, I soaked in the smells of fresh ink and old newspapers, amazed at the things people are usually amazed at when they come home after a lifetime away: how small the building was, how outdated the décor, how it paled in comparison to my golden memories.
My comrade-in-arms, Einstein—part terrier, part Muppet, and so-named not for any propensity toward genius but rather for his unruly white curls—padded along beside me, ears and tail up, his nails clicking on the faded gray linoleum floor. Plaques and photos decorated the concrete walls, some dating back to my teenage days with the paper. I passed two closed doors before I reached the newsroom—the last door on the right, with yellowed Peanuts comics taped to the window and the sound of a BBC newscast coming from within. Einstein’s tail started wagging, his body shimmying with the motion, the second he caught scent of the company we were about to keep.
“Settle, buddy,” I said, my hand on the doorknob—though in fairness the words were probably more for me than him. The dog glanced up at me and whined.
I opened the door and had only a second to get my bearings before I was spotted; it’s hard to be stealthy when a bullet of fur precedes you into the room. Daniel Diggins—aka Diggs to almost everyone on the planet—greeted my mutt with more enthusiasm than I knew I would get, crouching low to fondle dogged ears and dodge a few canine kisses while I took stock of the old homestead.
The computers had been updated since I’d been there last, but were still out of date. The desks were the same, though: six hulking metal things with jagged edges and scratched surfaces, buried under the detritus of the newspaper biz—piles of paperwork, oversized computer monitors, and half-eaten bags of junk food. A couple of overweight, graying reporter-types were on cell phones on one side of the room, while Diggs and another man stood at a desk that had once been mine. Behind them, a wall-mounted TV was tuned to MSNBC.
Before Diggs straightened to say hello, the other half of the duo locked eyes with me. Though we’d never met face to face, it was clear from the man’s pointed glare who he was—and that, unlike me, he had not been looking forward to this meeting.
“Are you planning on saying hello to me at all, or is this visit gonna be all about the dog?” I asked Diggs, if only to break the sudden tension in the room.
“It’s always all about the dog,” Diggs said. “You should know that by now.” He stood and enveloped me in a warm hug. I held on tight, lost in a smell of wool and comfort that would forever be associated with the best parts of my youth.
“How’re you doing, kiddo?” he asked. The words were quiet, warm in my ear—a question between just the two of us before I got started. I stepped out of his embrace with what I hoped was a businesslike nod.
“Good. I’m good.”
“Good,” he said. “And the drive was…?”
“The drive was fine, Diggs.”
He smiled—a slow grin that’s been charming women around the globe for as long as I can remember. Though I hadn’t visited Littlehope in over a decade, Diggs and I never lost touch. Our latest visit had been a few months before, but he looked no different than he always does: curly hair stylishly unkempt, his five o’clock shadow edging closer to a beard than I’d seen it in some time. He was toying with me now. Diggs likes that kind of thing.
When it became clear that I wasn’t playing along, he nodded toward the other man at the desk.
“Noel,” Diggs said. “This is Erin Solomon. Erin, Noel Hammond.”
Hammond extended his hand to me like someone had a gun at his back, and we shook.
“Nice to finally meet you, Noel. Thanks for coming.”
“Diggs didn’t give me much choice.”
So, Diggs had come through again—this time by delivering a much-needed source at my feet. “Yeah, well, he knew he’d have to put up with my bitching otherwise. It won’t take long.”
“This is about your book, then?” he asked.
I glanced at Diggs, making no effort to conceal my displeasure. “You heard about that?”
“The whole town’s heard about that,” Hammond said. “It was the lead story in the paper about a month back. The book deal, you inheriting Payson Isle… Everybody knows about it.”
I raised an eyebrow at Diggs, who raised his hands in surrender. “It wasn’t my call, Solomon—there was no way I could keep it quiet. I figured you’d rather I do the write-up than somebody else.”
He was right about that, at least. Still, I wasn’t thrilled to think the entire Trib readership was in on my business. I suppressed a sigh and told myself to get over it. I was sure it wouldn’t be the last surprise I had in this investigation.
“So, where do you want to do this?” Hammond prompted me.