“You’re pushing down an adrenaline rush.” Michael took his time reading Agent Sterling. “You’re frustrated. You’re scared. But more than anything, beneath the Agent Veronica Sterling mask, you look the way a thrill seeker does frozen at the top of the roller coaster, hovering on the verge of plunging down.”
Agent Sterling didn’t bat an eye at his commentary. “We’ll have to reassess the risk,” she said again. I knew that she was thinking about Laurel. About Scarlett Hawkins. About collateral damage and the true meaning of risk.
“I’m not going anywhere,” I said, my voice as intense as Sterling’s was calm. I’d spent years berating myself for the holes in my memory—for the fact that I couldn’t remember half the places my mother and I had lived, for the fact that I hadn’t been able to tell the police a single thing to help them identify the person or people who had taken her. I wasn’t leaving Gaither, Oklahoma, without answers—about my mother, about Nightshade, about the connection between the two.
“I’ll quit the program if I have to,” I told Agent Sterling, my throat tightening. “But I’m staying.”
“If Cassie’s staying,” Sloane said mutinously, “I’m staying.”
Dean didn’t have to say that he was staying, too.
“I do find Cassie borderline tolerable,” Lia commented casually.
“It would be a shame to leave borderline tolerable behind.” Michael smiled in a way that wasn’t really a smile, his skin pulling tightly against the remnants of bruises.
“Judd.” Agent Sterling turned for backup, her voice tightly controlled. I wondered if Michael could hear a full spectrum of emotion underneath that control. I wondered how close Veronica Sterling was to becoming the woman she’d been before Scarlett was murdered—someone who felt things deeply. Someone who acted before she thought.
Judd looked at me, then at each of the others in turn, before casting a sideways glance at Agent Sterling. “First rule of raising kids, Ronnie?” he said, in a way that reminded me that he’d had a hand in raising her. “Don’t forbid them from doing something if you’re certain they’re going to do it anyway.” Judd’s discerning gaze landed back on me. “It’s a waste of a good threat.”
An hour later, Agent Briggs still hadn’t returned Agent Sterling’s call.
Today is a Fibonacci date, and Briggs isn’t answering his phone. I wondered if he was knee-deep in a crime scene—if it had begun.
“We need some ground rules.” Agent Sterling had checked us into Gaither’s one hotel, assigning Agent Starmans to continue trying to get through to Briggs as she briefed the rest of us. With controlled and precise movements, she laid a collection of small metallic objects on the coffee table, one after another.
“Tracking beacons,” she said. “They’re small, but not undetectable. Keep them on your persons at all times.” She waited until we’d each picked up a beacon—about the size and shape of a breath mint—before continuing. “You go nowhere alone. You’re in pairs—or more—at all times, and don’t even think about ditching whichever of us is on your protection detail. And finally…” Agent Sterling pulled two guns out of her suitcase and checked to make sure the safeties were on.
“You know how to handle a firearm?” Agent Sterling looked at Dean, who nodded, before she shifted her gaze to Lia. I wondered if the two of them had been trained to handle weapons before I’d joined the program, or if Agent Sterling had singled them out because of experiences in their pasts.
Lia held her hand out for one of the guns. “I do indeed.”
Judd took first one gun, then the other from Agent Sterling. “I’m only going to say this once, Lia. You don’t draw your weapon unless your lives are in imminent danger.”
For once, Lia bit back her smart-mouthed reply. Judd gave her one of the guns, then turned to Dean.
“And,” he continued, his voice low, “if your lives are in danger and you do draw your gun? You’d better be prepared to shoot.”
You’ve already buried your daughter. I translated the meaning inherent in Judd’s words. Whatever the fallout, you won’t lose us.
Dean’s hand closed around the gun, and Judd turned eagle eyes to Michael, Sloane, and me. “As for the rest of you hooligans, there are two types of people in a town this size: people who like talking and people who really, really don’t. Stick to the former, or I will jerk the lot of you out of here so fast you get whiplash.”
There was no questioning that order. I could hear the military man in Judd’s cadence, his tone.
“This is an information-gathering mission,” Sloane translated. “If we see a hostile…”
Do not engage.
The best place to find people who wanted to talk was the local watering hole. In this case, we quickly zeroed in on a diner. It was just far enough away from the historic part of town to serve primarily locals, but not so far that they didn’t get the occasional tourist—perfect.
MAMA REE’S NOT-A-DINER. The sign above the door told me pretty much everything I needed to know about the establishment’s owner.
“But Cassie,” Sloane whispered as we stepped into the restaurant. “It is a diner.”
A woman in her early sixties looked up from behind the counter and gave us the once-over, as if she’d heard Sloane’s whispered words. “Help yourself to any table you’d like,” she called after she’d finished studying us.
I opted for a booth by the window in between a pair of senior citizens playing chess and a quartet of even older women gossiping over breakfast. Sloane wasn’t kidding when she’d said the average age of Gaither’s citizens was on an incline.
Lia and Sloane slid into the booth beside me. Dean and Michael took the other side, and Sterling and Judd helped themselves to stools at the counter.
“We don’t do menus.” The woman who’d told us to take a seat—Mama Ree, I was guessing—set five waters down on our table. “Right now, it’s breakfast. In about ten minutes, it’ll be lunch. For breakfast, we have breakfast food. For lunch, we have lunch food. If you can think of it, I can cook it, so long as you’re not expecting anything fancy.”
She said fancy like it was a dirty word.
“I could go for some biscuits and gravy.” Dean’s Southern accent got a smile out of the woman.
“Side of bacon,” she declared. It wasn’t a question.
Dean was nobody’s fool. “Yes, ma’am.”
“French toast for me,” Lia requested. Ree harrumphed—my gut said French cut too close to fancy—but wrote down Lia’s order nonetheless before turning her attention to me. “And for you, missy?”
Those words took me back. This wasn’t my first time at the Not-A-Diner. I could see myself in a corner booth, crayons spread out on the table.
“I’ll have a blueberry pancake,” I found myself saying. “With strawberry sauce and an Oreo milkshake.”
My order caused the unflappable woman to pause, as if that combination was familiar to her, the way the apothecary garden had been to me.
You’re not the type to gossip with outsiders, I thought. But you might share some interesting tidbits with one of Gaither’s own.
“You probably don’t remember me,” I said, “but I used to live in Gaither with my mother. Her name was—”
“Lorelai.” Ree beat me to it. Then she smiled. “And that would make you Lorelai’s Cassie, all grown up.” She gave me another once-over. “You favor your mother.”
I wasn’t sure whether that was supposed to be a compliment—or a warning.
Get her talking, I thought. About Mom. About the town. About Mason Kyle.
“I don’t remember much about living here. I know it was probably only for a couple of weeks, but—”
“A couple of weeks?” Ree raised both eyebrows so high that they nearly disappeared into her graying hairline. “Cassie, you and your mama lived here for almost a year.”
A year? I felt like she’d punched me in the stomach. I could forgive myself for forgetting a couple of weeks out of a largely trans
ient childhood, but a year? An entire year of my life that—if I’d even remembered the town’s name—might have given the police a lead on my mother’s case years ago?
“You were a bitty thing,” Ree continued. “Six or so. Quiet. Well-behaved, not like my Melody. You remember Melody?”
The second I heard the name, I got a flash of a young girl with pigtails. “Your granddaughter. We were friends.”
I never had friends. I never had a home. These were the truths of my childhood.
“How’s your mama doing these days?” Ree asked.
I swallowed and looked down at the table in front of me. “She died when I was twelve.”
Another truth of my childhood that had turned out to be a lie.
“Oh, honey.” Ree reached out and squeezed my shoulder. Then, with the no-nonsense manner of a woman who’d raised multiple generations of children, she turned to Sloane and Michael and took their orders.
You know grief, I thought. You know when to comfort and when to let things be.
Once Ree made her way into the kitchen, Michael offered an observation.
“She was fond of your mother, but there’s anger there, too.”
If my mother and I had lived here for nearly a year, what had made us hit the road again? And what, exactly, had my mother left in her wake?
Our food arrived, and I spent the entire meal trying to decide how to get Ree talking. I needed details—about my mother’s life in Gaither, about Mason Kyle’s.
As it turned out, I didn’t have to ask Ree to talk. Once we’d finished breakfast, she pulled up a chair. “What brings you back to Gaither?” she asked.
Murder. Kidnapping. Centuries of systematic torture.
“We brought Cassie’s mom’s ashes,” Lia answered on my behalf. “Lorelai’s body was discovered a few months ago. Cassie said this was the place she would have wanted to be lain to rest.”
I’d already admitted to not remembering much about my time in Gaither, but Lia was Lia, and Ree believed every word out of her mouth.
“If there’s anything I can do for you,” Ree said plainly, “Cassie, honey, you just let me know.”
“There is one thing.” This was the opening I’d been waiting for. “If my mom and I were here for a year, that’s the longest we ever lived anywhere. I can’t remember much of it. I know my mother loved it here, but before I scatter her ashes…” I closed my eyes for a moment, allowing the real grief that lived inside me to make its way to the surface. “I’d like to try to remember why.”
I wasn’t anywhere near Lia’s caliber as a liar, but I did know how to use the truth to my advantage. The longest we ever lived anywhere. I can’t remember much of it. I’d like to remember why.
“I don’t know how much I can tell you.” Ree was nothing if not frank. “Lorelai was the type to keep to herself. She swept into town doing some kind of balderdash dog and pony show, claiming she was psychic—helping people ‘connect to their dead loved ones,’ reading fortunes.” Ree snorted. “The city council wouldn’t have let her stay for long, but Marcela Waite is a sucker for that kind of thing, and she’s known for three things around these parts: loose lips, a rich, dead husband, and a tendency to badger city council members until they give her what she wants.”
So far, this story was a familiar one.
“Your mama came in here two or three times those first couple of weeks, with you in tow. She was young. Skittish, though she did a good job hiding it.” Ree paused. “I offered her a job.”
“Waitressing?” I asked. I’d worked as a waitress at a diner before Briggs had recruited me to the Naturals program. I wondered if some part of me had remembered my mother doing the same thing.
Ree pursed her lips. “I have a bad habit of hiring waitresses who’ve seen the ugly side of life. Most of them are running from something. I never knew what that something was for Lorelai—she didn’t volunteer the information, and I didn’t ask. She took the job. I gave her a good deal on rent.”
“The blue house with the big oak tree,” I said softly.
Ree nodded. “My daughter had recently vacated the premises. I had Melody and Shane with me, so it seemed a shame to let the house go to waste.”
Vacated the premises. I translated those words based on the way that Ree had said them: As in, took off and dumped her kids with you.
It was easy to understand why Ree might have had a soft spot for a young single mother struggling to support her daughter.
Home isn’t a place, Cassie. My mom’s litany had stayed with me for years, but now I heard it differently, knowing that—however briefly—we’d had a home once.
“Was my mother close with anyone?” I asked Ree, memories swirling just out of reach. “Involved with anyone?”
“Your mama always did have an eye for good-looking men.” This was Ree, trying to be diplomatic. “Then again, she also had an eye for trouble.”
Not that diplomatic.
Ree narrowed her eyes at Dean. “You trouble?” she asked.
“No, ma’am.”
She turned to Michael. “You?”
He offered her his most charming smile. “One hundred percent.”
Ree snorted. “That’s what I thought.”
The door to the restaurant opened then, and Widow’s Peak from the apothecary museum walked in. Ree smiled when she saw him, the way she had when Dean had ordered biscuits and gravy.
“You remember Shane?” Ree asked me. “My grandson.”
Shane. I could feel a memory hovering just out of reach. Ree started to stand.
“Did my mother know a man named Mason Kyle?” I asked before she could leave.
Ree stared at me. “Mason Kyle?” She shook her head, as if trying to clear it of memories. “I haven’t heard that name in twenty-five years. He left Gaither when he was, what? Seventeen or so? Long before your mama came to town, Cassie.”
As Ree made her way toward the counter—and her grandson—one of the older women at the table behind us clucked her tongue. “Shame what happened to the Kyle family,” she said. “Downright tragic.”
“What happened?” Sloane asked, twisting in her seat.
The old man playing chess on the other side of us turned to look at her. “Got killed,” he grunted. “By one of those people.”
What people?
“Poor little Mason wasn’t more than nine or so,” the tongue-clucking woman said. “Most people hereabouts think he saw the whole thing.”
I pictured the little boy from the photograph, then thought of the monstrous killer he’d become.
“Enough.” It was clear from the tone in Ree’s voice and the immediate reactions of those around us that her word was law. With a nod, she turned back to her grandson. “Shane, what can I get y—”
Before the question was out of her mouth, Shane saw something out the window. His whole body tensed, and he slammed out of the diner and charged into the street.
I looked out the window in time to see him striding toward a group of a dozen or so people. They walked in lines of four. Various ages. Various ethnicities. Every single one of them was dressed entirely in white.
Shane attempted to approach a girl standing behind the others, but a man with thick hair—ink-black and shot through with gray—stepped in front of him.
“Going to go out on a limb,” Lia said, her eyes locked on the oncoming confrontation, “and guess that those people are emissaries from the friendly neighborhood cult.”
Those people. That was the phrase the man playing chess had used to describe the murder of Mason Kyle’s family, thirty-some-odd years before.
Michael tossed three twenties on the table, and all five of us made our way out the door.
“Mel.” Shane tried to sidestep the man with the graying hair. “Melody.”
“It’s all right, Echo,” the man told the girl Shane had addressed as Melody. “Speak your truth.”
A girl I almost recognized—the way I’d almost recognized Shane—stepped forward. Her e
yes were on the ground. “I’m not Melody anymore,” she said, her voice light and wispy, barely more than a whisper. “I don’t want to be Melody. My second name—my true name—is Echo.” She lifted her eyes to her brother’s. “I’m happy now. Can’t you be happy for me?”
“Happy for you?” Shane repeated, his voice catching in his throat. “Mel, you can’t even talk to me without glancing at him to make sure what you’re saying is okay. You gave up college—college, Melody—to join the soul-sucking cult that stole our mother away from us when we were kids.” Shane’s fingers curled into fists. “So, no, I can’t be happy for you.”
“Your mother was lost.” The man in charge addressed those words to Shane, his manner almost gentle. “We attempted to provide solace, offer her a simpler way of life. I was as grieved as you were when she chose a different path.”
“You’re the reason she left town!” Shane exploded.
His opponent’s demeanor never wavered. “Serenity Ranch is not for everyone. We cannot help everyone, but those we can help, we do.” He glanced at Melody, so subtly that if I hadn’t been looking for it, I wouldn’t have noticed.
“I’ve found my Serenity,” Melody recited, her voice expressionless, her eyes glassy. “In Serenity, I’ve found balance. In Serenity, I’ve found peace.”
“Are you on something?” Shane demanded before whipping back around to the man he’d confronted. “What did you give her? What have you been giving her?”
The man stared at and into Shane for a moment or two and then bowed his head. “We must be going.”
“We’re about three seconds away from Draco Malfoy over there throwing a punch,” Michael said, his voice low. “Three…two…”
Shane punched the man. As the cult leader wiped blood off his lip with the back of his hand, he looked at Shane and smiled.
It didn’t take Agent Sterling long to dig up information on Serenity Ranch. The man in charge was named Holland Darby. He’d been investigated by local authorities dozens of times going back more than thirty years, but no proof of wrongdoing had ever been established.
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