by Karen Rose
Daisy laughed. “Okay, fine. I appreciate you taking care of me. It’s just that I’m enjoying my independence. I don’t want to be . . . hovered over. Not anymore.”
“Good luck with that,” Sasha muttered and Daisy laughed again. Sasha was seventh of the eight Sokolov children, but only by a few minutes. Cash, her twin, never let her forget that he was older. The two of them had been Daisy’s playmates when their families had gotten together for the holidays or birthdays. Get-togethers that had come to an abrupt halt when Daisy’s father had whisked his family off to the ranch in the middle of nowhere.
Sasha had been one of the first friendships that Daisy had rekindled when she’d been freed a year and a half ago and the two of them had kept in touch over social media while Daisy had been in Europe. It had actually been Sasha’s idea for Daisy to move to Sacramento, but Daisy had managed to make her father believe it was his idea, prompting Frederick Dawson to ask Karl’s help in getting Daisy settled with a job and a place to live. Despite the missing years, she and Sasha had effortlessly fallen back into a close camaraderie.
“You don’t have to stay with me at your parents’ house,” Daisy told her. “You’ll just have to wake up early to get to work.” Sasha was a social worker with CPS, her office much closer to the house they shared with Rafe in Midtown than to the Sokolovs’ family home in Granite Bay.
Sasha shot Daisy a reproachful look. “I’m not going to let you be alone tonight. Not after the experience you’ve had.”
Daisy patted her hand. “Thank you. Can I use your phone, please? I want to call Trish and check on her. She was as shaken up as I was.”
Sasha handed her phone over. “What happened to your phone?”
“I had to give it to Rafe. He’s checking it for tracking devices.”
“Why?” Karl asked sharply.
Damn electric cars, Daisy thought, irritated. Too much silence allowed for easy eavesdropping. “I wanted to tell the station manager first, but he’ll just tell you, so whatever. I’ve been getting . . . suggestive voice mails and e-mails from listeners.”
“What?” The shouts came at Daisy from all directions.
Irina turned in her seat again to frown at her. “What kind of suggestive voice mails?”
“Oh, you know. Ones saying I’m pretty and they want to do . . . things. You know.”
Karl’s eyes were narrowed as he glanced at her in the rearview. “No, I don’t know, because you never told me!” he thundered.
“I’m sorry!” Daisy thundered back, then sighed. “I . . . should have. Sorry.”
“Why didn’t you tell us?” Sasha asked quietly.
“Because Tad said it was nothing. That everyone gets messages like that. I’m getting a new phone. Don’t worry. Rafe’s going to try to trace the messages.”
“They think your attacker was a listener?” Karl demanded.
“They’re exploring all possibilities.” Including the locket—with its photo that had Gideon Reynolds looking so haunted. “They booted me before I learned anything I didn’t already know. Which isn’t anything more than I already told you at the ER,” she finished firmly, because Karl and Irina had questioned her more thoroughly than Rafe and Erin had.
She could feel the combined force of three Sokolov stares as she bent her head to Sasha’s phone. “Stop looking at me like that,” she told them without looking up. “I need to remember Trish’s number and you’re making me nervous.”
“I have it in my contacts,” Sasha said, shaking her head. “We will talk about these messages later.”
“You’d better believe it,” Karl declared.
Sighing, Daisy found Trish’s cell number and dialed. Unsurprisingly, Trish answered on the first ring. “Hello? Sasha? Where is Daisy?”
“I’m here,” Daisy said. “I’m just using Sasha’s phone. I just got done with the cops and I’m going back to Karl and Irina’s. Are you okay?”
“Yeah. That lady detective made sure I got in my apartment okay. Not sure I’m going to sleep tonight, though. If there was ever a night I wanted a drink, this is it.”
“Me too,” Daisy confessed quietly. “If the urge gets too bad, call Rosemary. I’d say call me, but the police have my phone. I’m getting a new one tomorrow.”
“You finally told them about the creepy calls like I’ve been telling you to?”
“Yes.” Daisy sighed. “I’ll text you when I have my new phone number.”
“Was that locket important?”
“I think so, but I don’t know why.” She had a sudden thought. “Listen, can you send the pictures you took tonight to my e-mail address? I’d like to have them for my files.” Trish had had the presence of mind to take photos of her throat, the scene, and the locket. If Rafe was going to block her from all of the good information, she’d have to look on her own.
“Sure. Call me tomorrow so I’ll know you’re okay. Say hi to the Sokolovs.”
Ending the call, Daisy gave Sasha back her phone, met the family’s collective stare, and asked the question she’d been dreading. “Did you tell my father about tonight?”
“No,” Irina said, surprising the hell out of Daisy. “We knew the ER was a precaution. It would have frightened your father more to hear it from us. He’ll need to hear your voice when you tell him, to know for certain that you are unharmed.”
“Thank you. I was planning to call him.” She was. Mostly. “I’ll call him before I go on the air tomorrow.” She tilted her head, eyes narrowing when it looked like Irina would argue with her about going to work. “Rafe said someone would take me in to the station. I assumed that meant him or Detective Rhee.”
“Karl?” Irina asked. “Is this acceptable?”
He shrugged. “Not really, but we’re going to have to trust Rafe to keep her safe.”
Daisy shared a side-eye with Sasha, who was biting back a smile. “Welcome to my life,” Sasha whispered loudly.
“As long as I keep my freedom. Everything else is negotiable.”
SACRAMENTO, CALIFORNIA
FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 17, 12:00 A.M.
It’s time to talk about them, Gideon thought. He’d tried to find them. Tried to bring them to justice. He’d failed. But I was just a kid then.
The FBI had also tried and failed. The community had hidden itself far too well. They also hadn’t had any leads. He hadn’t known of any escapees other than himself and Mercy, but now Eileen had escaped. She had to have—otherwise her locket would still be around her throat while she toiled in the community.
And that you killed a man? He wasn’t going to share that. Duh.
And Mercy? Are you going to tell them about her? No. He couldn’t do that. Not without her permission. It would be like violating her all over again.
“Gid?” Rafe prompted.
Gideon sighed. “Just . . . processing. Seeing this photo was a shock.”
“We could tell,” Erin said dryly, but not unkindly. “Why?”
“Do you have the photo I gave you?” Gideon asked Rafe.
Rafe pulled it from his pocket and laid it on the table, next to the locket, turning the silver heart so that the etching showed.
“Wow,” Cindy said quietly. She glanced up. “This tattoo . . . This is you?”
“Yes.” He’d had the tattoo covered as soon as he’d found Mercy. It had served its purpose, quickly connecting them as kin when there’d been no documentation for either of them. A DNA test had confirmed Gideon’s claim later, but at the time that had taken months.
“They’re the same,” Erin murmured, gesturing between the tattoo and the locket. “The designs. Why are they the same?”
“They’re not exactly the same,” Gideon corrected. “The olive tree on the tattoo has thirteen branches. The locket’s olive tree has only twelve. It’s the symbol of a new religious movement in Northern California.”
“A cult,” Erin said flatly. “You lived in a cult.”
“Yes,” he answered simply, then explained the purposes of the locket and tattoo and the ages of the recipients.
“They married off twelve-year-olds?” Erin asked, visibly repulsed.
“No. Only twelve-year-old girls.” Gideon proceeded carefully. There were too many personal details he didn’t wish to share. “Boys became men at thirteen. They took on more responsibility in the community and entered . . . special training.” The words stuck in his throat and he had to force them out. Special training. It had sounded so amazing. And for some of the boys it must have been, because they’d continued to smile and joke. Or maybe those boys had just been better able to shove the truth down where no one could see.
“Special training?” Rafe asked, as if he was afraid of the answer.
“In the church,” Gideon said and it came out far more curtly than he’d intended. God, he hated this. Hated exhuming this vile pus. “They’d study the scriptures and the church policies. Thirteen was also the start of apprenticeships.” Apprenticeships. His stomach threatened to heave at the memory. “There was a smithy, a tanner, a cobbler . . .”
“Like a TV western,” Cindy murmured.
More like a horror movie. “Thirteen was also the start of inclusion in the hunting trips. It was a self-sustaining agricultural community. They kept chickens, pigs, a few head of cattle for beef, and a few dairy cows. And there was venison when hunting was successful.”
“Electricity?” Cindy asked.
“Only in certain areas. Specifically the church office and the homes of the pastor and a few of the higher-ups. They had generators.”
Erin was frowning. “So when did the boys marry?”
“When they’d built a house of their own. Boys started building when they were eighteen. It was done in their spare time, after their normal chores and daily work. Some finished sooner, especially if their apprenticeships were construction-based.”
Erin studied him. “What was your apprenticeship?”
Gideon’s lips curved bitterly. “Metalsmithing. I was to make the lockets, among other things.”
“You were?” Cindy asked. “What happened?”
“I escaped.”
“Lucky you,” Cindy breathed.
Yeah. Lucky. I’m so sorry, Mama.
Erin leaned in. “How?”
“I hid in the bed of a truck that was going to town. Slipped out and hid behind a bus terminal.” Almost true. Gideon drew a breath and let it out. Just stay chill. You’ve done nothing wrong. Well, other than kill a man. “I was thirteen.” And one day.
“And then?” Cindy asked, her eyes soft with compassion.
“I was sucked into the foster system.” And that was all he planned to share about himself. He tapped the photo of the girl. Of Miriam. Eileen. “She was in my class at school in the compound. We were friends. She turned twelve a few months before I did. She was married to him.” He pointed to the enlarged wedding photo. “His name was Edward McPhearson. Or that’s how I knew him. Names were kind of fluid in the community. She dropped out of school on her twelfth birthday. All the girls did. They were to be wives, not scholars.” He said that last part mockingly, remembering Eileen’s tears when she realized she would have to quit school. “Eileen loved learning. She was so smart.”
“Eileen?” Rafe interrupted.
“That was her birth name. The name she preferred to be called.” But only by those she trusted. Her mother. And me. “‘Miriam’ was the name given to her by the community. We had a lot of Miriams.”
“You said she was so smart,” Erin said. “Why ‘was’?”
Because the Eileen he’d known died the day she’d been forced to marry Edward McPhearson. She’d become a shell, her eyes vacant. “I don’t know if she’s dead or alive. That this locket was around another man’s throat means she’s either dead or has escaped and the locket somehow left her possession.”
Rafe chimed in. “Gideon told me earlier that this chain was not the original, that the original would have been heavy and welded to her so that she would have had to cut it off.”
“My God,” Erin murmured. “Like a slave.”
Gideon only nodded. Exactly like a slave.
“The locket’s silver,” Cindy said. “She could have pawned it. If she escaped.”
“Maybe.” Gideon stared at the locket, McPhearson’s handiwork. It would have been one of the last lockets the bastard made. “I guess it depends on how long it took her to get out. If she was there a long time, the locket would have been difficult for her to part with. It’s hard to explain. For the women, the locket became a charm. Kept them safe. Kept them spiritually connected to the rest of the body. That’s what the community called itself, the body.”
“That’s creepy,” Erin said.
Gideon shrugged again, not sure how else to describe the locket’s importance. “Of course it is. But that’s how it was. Like the rabbit’s foot you happen to carry and then one day you’re in a car accident. You’re okay and part of you attributes that to the rabbit’s foot. You’re afraid that if you take it off, the next accident will kill you.”
“I had a necklace like that,” Cindy admitted. “It belonged to my grandmother. She always said it was her talisman and left it to me when she died, saying it would keep me safe. I wore it through my entire adolescence.” She smiled fondly. “Then the leather cord snapped one day and I lost it. I searched everywhere. Never found it. I kept expecting something terrible to happen. It took weeks before the fear passed. I was seventeen at the time. I can see how a person could build that kind of attachment, especially if that connection is underscored by authority figures.”
Gideon nodded. “Thank you. That’s exactly what it was like.”
She put another evidence bag on the table. “What about this?”
The shredded fragments of the second photo. “After her first husband died, Eileen—or Miriam as she was called by everyone else—would have been given to another one of the men.” Gideon pointed to the paper bits. “That would have been the second wedding photo. If she did escape, it’s possible that she cut it up herself. Especially if he was abusive.”
Not all of the men were violent. But enough were.
Gideon cleared his throat. “If you can manage to put this back together, I’ll try to identify the second husband.”
“What about this compound?” Erin asked. “Where is it?”
Gideon glanced across the table at Rafe and found his oldest friend studying him sadly, understanding in his dark eyes.
“I don’t know where it is,” Gideon admitted. “I looked, after I escaped.” And recovered. “But I never found it.”
“We went together,” Rafe added. “I never knew what we’d gone looking for, just that taking those car trips up to Mt. Shasta were important to Gid. He didn’t have a car, but I did, so I drove. I eventually figured out that it had to do with his family in some way, but . . .” He sighed. “We should have looked harder.”
Gideon shook his head. “It was pretty hopeless. Like a needle in a fucking haystack.” Back then and every time he’d searched since. He’d never stopped searching.
“What landmarks can you remember?” Erin asked, clearly primed to solve the mystery of the missing community. If it were only so simple.
“Mt. Shasta,” he told her. “I remember seeing it in the distance.”
“Then we have a general idea of where to start,” Erin said with a certainty that seemed like common sense, but that really was not.
Gideon prepared himself to explain, once again. “It might, except that they move.”
Cindy’s eyes widened. “The whole community? They just move?”
“Yes. They moved twice when I was younger. Each time, I could still see Mt. Shasta, just different views. My mother said it was
because the land no longer produced enough vegetables, which was what she’d been told. I was only six at the time of the first move, but I was eight at the time of the second and remember hearing whispers among some of the women that the land was ‘cursed,’ that we were being punished.”
“For what?” Rafe asked, frowning.
“I don’t remember anything about the first move, but the second one happened the day after a man was accused of stealing from the food stores. Whether he did or not, I have no idea, but looking back, I’m thinking it’s more likely that he tried to escape. The man who’d ‘stolen’ was brought before the community, all beaten up. He might have been unconscious, but definitely was unable to speak. They announced his crime and that he was being ‘banished.’ I remember the audible gasp from the adults. Several of them cried—but silently. He was dragged through the gate and into the forest. Nobody ever saw him again. The next morning we woke up to find the community garden was dead. The leaders claimed it was punishment for the man’s theft, but it was probably weed killer of some kind.”
“Did anyone call them on the bullshit?” Rafe asked.
Gideon shook his head. “Speaking out was punished even more severely than stealing, and after seeing what happened to the man who’d allegedly stolen, no one was willing to risk it. Anyway, we moved and had to prepare new gardens for a fall crop, but it was a lean winter. I remember going to bed hungry a lot of nights and my mother crying about it, but there wasn’t anything she could do. The following year, no one stole anything—or tried to escape—and we had a big crop.”
“That makes sense,” Cindy said thoughtfully. “It would be a way to reinforce control over the community through fear. And subsequent deliverance from that fear.”
“It worked. I don’t remember anyone else being punished that severely for anything until the night I got away. Later, I went back to the last area I remember, found the view of the mountain, but there was no sign of them.”
“Did you tell anyone?” Erin asked.
“Yes.” Because even though he might have gone to prison for killing McPhearson, he wanted his mother and Mercy to be safe. Once Mercy got out and their mother was gone, there was no need for truth. Just vengeance. Which was why he’d never given up searching. “I told a cop when I was first found and he couldn’t find them, either. It’s a big country up there. Lots of places to hide a small community.”