“Must not have been sleeping in the main house, huh?”
Again, Magda ignored her. “Then the Five stood up at an evening ceremony, said they’d packed their things, and that they were leaving in the morning. Desmond spoke, saying he understood their doubts, how mankind has learned to distrust gifts of purity, but if they wanted to leave, he wouldn’t stop them. Of course, by leaving, they knew what we all knew: when the day did come, their names would no longer be called.”
“And having your name called is important why?”
Magda didn’t answer, maybe lost under the weight of the concept. Was that the fear keeping a village of women on the top of a mountain, the reason she couldn’t wait to get back?
Caitlin prompted her once again. “Okay, after the big talk, you went to bed and—”
“The next morning, they were gone.”
“Sure, makes sense. That was the plan.”
“No, Caitlin, only their bodies were gone. Not their clothes or belongings. Their bedrooms looked the same as they had the days before.”
“Still not getting it.”
“Daya emerged that morning, rejoicing in the work of God. ‘They’ve ascended,’ she said, telling us how she and Desmond spoke with the Five after the ceremony, asking them to meditate in their beds and decide in the morning. Our lawyer, Gwendolyn—”
“I know Gwendolyn Funtimes,” Caitlin said.
“She stayed in the same bungalow with the Five, all night long.”
“Like you did, outside Linda’s door.”
For the first time, Magda looked over at Caitlin with a slight smile. “You did read my journal.”
Caitlin fought back the answer that came loaded and ready to fire. You shoved a key in a dead woman’s butt and left a note with my name on it. You’re damned right I did.
“Parts,” she said instead. “Are you saying the women disappeared?”
Magda nodded. “Ascended.”
“And became the Five.”
“I know you don’t believe—”
Caitlin held a hand up. “Let’s not stop for that. What happened next?”
“When everyone heard, doubts flew out the window and the departures stopped. Once again, we all walked the same path toward the Light.”
“Until Promise showed up.”
“Yes.” Magda’s eyes returned to the teenager in the back seat. “I was working a wellness welcome, and she arrived with a note.”
“What, from a teacher?”
The Dayans often received referrals, Magda explained. The people of the county didn’t all agree with their ways, but whenever a woman needed refuge, a whisper network of trusted allies showed them a way to God’s Hill.
“And who referred Promise?”
Magda’s brow furrowed. “Our allies are sacred, Caitlin. They often come from dangerous situations themselves.”
Caitlin hid a smile. Her mother and she shared a common belief after all: one should never betray a source. Still, she had a feeling she knew someone in the Larsens’ periphery who would notice a thirteen-year-old in trouble. The woman who’d slipped her a note in the Lumberjack the same night Magda had tried to make contact: Hazel, the bartender.
At first Magda had hesitated to shelter Promise, due to her age. “But I recognized the signs, both in her actions and in God’s will, so I presented her to Desmond for initiation.”
CHAPTER
44
“IT WAS AMAZING,” Promise said from the back seat, still lying down but obviously awake. “I felt so safe. And I learned so much.”
Magda put the journal back in the bag. “Try to sleep, Promise. We’ll be there soon, and we may not get to rest overnight.”
The girl sat up and leaned between the front seats. “Kind of hard when you keep saying my name. How far now?”
She reached for Caitlin’s phone, stared at the screen, then put it back in the console. “Your signal is bad. The map shows us just outside of Coquille. That was like an hour ago.”
Caitlin took her phone back. Sure enough, no signal. How many turns had it been? She was supposed to drop the pair off, but how was she going to find her way back?
She turned toward Magda, fighting off a sudden surge of anger, more at herself than her mother. She’d jumped face first into the woman’s story, completely losing track of the big picture, not to mention her surroundings. Because of what? Her need to get to know this woman who cared more about Promise Larsen than her own daughter? “Was this part of your plan?”
Magda looked confused. “What do you mean?”
Caitlin shook her head. “To get me out in the middle of nowhere in the middle of the night—”
“It’s not the middle of the night,” Magda answered, “and I know exactly where we are.”
“—knowing damned well I won’t have a clue how to get back to civilization.”
“Relax, Caitlin, I’ll draw you a map—”
Caitlin’s hands strangled the steering wheel. “Don’t call me that. You didn’t name me.”
“Of course I did.”
“Matthew Bergman named me Caitlin—”
“Because I asked him to—”
“—after his great-aunt Catherine.”
Magda crossed her arms. “Right. His Jewish great-aunt with the name of a Catholic queen.”
Caitlin’s father had told her all kinds of stories about his great-aunt. “That’s right.”
“Bullshit. Caitlin Flaherty was my best friend in high school. I spent every second I could at her house until some junkie knifed her in MacArthur Park.”
“My ass.”
Promise spoke up. “Guys?”
Magda continued. “She was the sweetest girl I’d ever known, and some crackhead robbed her while we were waiting for fake IDs.”
“Hey, guys,” Promise repeated, louder.
Caitlin laughed. “Great, I’m named after a crackhead.”
Promise tapped on Magda’s shoulder. “The light.”
If the girl thought some random Dayan reference would calm either woman down, she was wrong.
Magda was almost yelling. “That’s not what I said. Her parents packed up and moved to Calabasas or some-fucking-where, and I never saw them again. After that, everything went to hell.”
“The headlights,” Promise yelled. “There’s a car coming.”
Caitlin’s eyes had been fixed on the road in front of her but somehow still missed the flickering lights coming down through a grove of trees to the far right, maybe half a minute away.
“Shit,” she said, looking for a shoulder.
Magda brought the assault rifle up. “Kill the lights and pull over.”
“No way,” Caitlin said. “You get down and we’ll drive right past.”
“It’ll be too late.”
Caitlin looked over and growled. “Get. The. Fuck. Down.”
By the grace of God, or the Light, or the righteous anger pulsing through Caitlin’s veins, her jacked-up, gun-toting mother sank down into her seat.
Caitlin held her breath and concentrated on the road before her, hyperalert and ready to floor the accelerator if necessary. She eased into an uphill curve toward the right at the same time the opposing vehicle came down the hill.
The other driver clicked their high beams to standard, revealing a fifteen-year-old blue or black sedan with a primer-gray hood carrying a man behind the wheel and a woman in the passenger seat.
If either of them cared about Caitlin’s truck, neither showed any interest during the two brief seconds of passing. Caitlin continued up the hill, and the sedan’s taillights disappeared into the night.
“No big deal,” she said, her held breath escaping with a little less control than she’d hoped.
Promise rose and looked behind them. Magda sat up like she hadn’t been prepared for a battle.
“There’s a gate on the left at the top of the hill. Drive past until you see a break in the trees. We’ll get out there.”
“Fine,” Caitlin said,
ready to be done with the whole thing.
She slowed near the top of the hill until her headlights caught a reflector stuck to the edge of a yellow metal gatepost. After another hundred feet, the dark gap of a dirt road broke through the tree line.
“Looks like the party’s over,” she said, turning off the main road into the darkness and stopping the truck twenty feet into the forest.
Promise started gathering her belongings.
Magda stayed in place. “There are so many things I want to say—”
“My father,” Caitlin said, not letting the woman steer the conversation anymore. If their time was short, she wanted at least that one question answered. “Who was he?”
“You have to understand. I made a promise—”
“Not to anyone who’s ever given a shit about me. Who was he? Another porn star? Some random bar hookup? Mick Jagger? Who?”
“I know I haven’t been there for you, but I promised I’d go my entire life without telling anyone this secret.”
“You told Desmond. In your diary, you said you told Desmond.”
“That was a cleansing between me and God. This information won’t help with your anger. I’m sorry I involved you in any of this. After you helped that girl in Indiana, I thought maybe now you’d be ready, maybe even able to join me on my voyage—”
Whether out of disbelief or pure ego, Caitlin couldn’t help but interrupt. “You read my book?”
“Both.”
A warm smile came to Caitlin’s face.
Magda reached into a bag at her feet. “Then I read this.”
She pulled out a familiar paperback: Caitlin’s torn copy of She Taught Me to Fly, the one with a lifetime of resentment scribbled across its pages. Her smile cooled in an instant.
“You’re not ready for the voyage, Caitlin, just like Maya wasn’t ready to be your mother.” She shook her head. “Like I wasn’t ready to be your mother.”
Her hand lingered on the door handle. “I’ll pray that we’ll meet in the Light, my crystalline bird, and in that Light, you’ll know that not a day went by that I didn’t love you, as much as I could.” She squeezed the handle, and the truck cabin’s light came on. “Until then, forget you ever found me.”
“Damn it,” Caitlin said. “Close the door.”
“It’s better this way—”
“Shut the door.” Caitlin reached over and yanked the door shut. “That car’s back.”
She’d caught the distant glare of headlights as a flash in her side mirror coming from the same direction as they had. Since nobody’d been behind them for miles, the other car must have turned around.
She overrode the truck’s auto-light function and drove up the dirt road in only the moonlight that spilled down through the tall trees.
Branches whipped against the large truck’s windows, and more than one lurch convinced Caitlin she might end up purchasing her rental rather than returning it with a broken axle, but after what felt like an hour-long minute, Magda grabbed her arm.
“There, drive around back.”
The road broke out of the tree coverage into a clearing serviced by a paved road, undoubtedly linked to the yellow gate at the bottom of the hill. What looked like an unlit one-room cabin sat at the end of the clearing, separated from the forest by a narrow strip of grass on one side. Caitlin took the truck around the cabin, where a detached sheet-metal garage stood, open and empty.
“Pull in and shut the door,” Magda said, already half out of the truck.
The sixty-five-year-old hit the ground running with her assault rifle in hand, looking as deadly as any soldier Caitlin had ever known. The woman vanished around the cabin before Caitlin had the truck in park.
“Promise,” she said.
“The door,” Promise answered, popping out of the truck almost as quickly as Magda.
Caitlin killed the engine and got out, aware of her heart pounding through her chest. Promise stood to the left of the door, trying to untangle a length of chain from a metal holder.
“It’s looped,” Caitlin said, joining her and taking over, lifting the loop of metal links over its restrainer. When it was free, they both tugged on the chain, working together to lower a retractable roll door inch by inch.
The door fell faster than Caitlin expected, racing toward the garage’s concrete floor with a loud whir until slapping down on the pavement, leaving the women in total darkness.
“Shit.” Caitlin patted her pockets for the phone she knew she’d left in the truck. “We need light.”
She took a step toward the truck, but Promise grabbed her. “Wait, listen.”
Caitlin tried to pick sounds out over the quick pace of their breathing. Sure enough, footsteps crunched through dry grass.
They held each other in the darkness.
There was another gun in the truck, the handgun Promise had used in Bandon, plus light, bags, and her phone. Still, Caitlin couldn’t move from the spot.
A door in front of the parked truck opened with a loud crack and a rectangle of moonlight, then Magda stepped inside. “It’s safe, for now. They drove up past the gate but turned around at the washout.”
Promise ran across the room and fell into Magda’s arms. Caitlin watched the old woman comfort the girl yet again. For whatever reason, this time didn’t hurt as much.
“The washout,” she echoed, remembering Magda had said the Dayans had abandoned the northern entrance after a landslide. “So I’m driving my truck back down that hillside.”
“Unless they’re dumb enough to come up after us in a car,” Magda said.
Promise raised her head but didn’t leave Magda’s arms. “If they’re my daddy’s friends, they’re dumber than that. You should stay the night, Caitlin.”
Caitlin shook her head. “I should go now. Worst case, they follow me, expecting you to be with me, then leave when I head to the airport.”
Magda put some distance between herself and Promise. “That’s not the worst case, and you know it.”
“Either way, it gives you more time.”
Magda shifted her weight from hip to hip. Even in the dim light of the garage, Caitlin saw a look she instantly recognized as skepticism on her mother’s face, having made the same face many times.
Caitlin crossed her arms. “I can take care of myself. I’ve done it my whole life.”
Promise looked up at Magda as if she expected a fight.
“Fine.” Magda handed the girl the assault rifle. “Promise will scout the trail to make sure it’s clear.”
“She’s thirteen—” Caitlin started, stopping when the girl ejected the gun’s ammo cartridge, studied the number of rounds in the clip, then slammed it back in place.
“There’s a bluff to the left of the trail, before the switchback,” Magda said.
Promise spun toward the door. “I know.”
“Two shots fast if there’s trouble.”
“Got it,” the girl answered, already out in the night sky.
“Don’t you dare engage,” Magda called after her.
Caitlin couldn’t be sure, but she might have heard Promise reply one last time with a single word: Duh.
“Unbelievable,” Caitlin said. “You’re gonna send that kid down a hill in the middle of the night with an assault rifle.”
Magda turned toward the door. “Somebody’s got to draw you a map.”
CHAPTER
45
DESMOND CHECKED THE satellite phone’s history.
The cleanup of the previous night’s incursion and motor pool fire had kept him busy all the way until his evening ceremony and unable to break away from the nervous women. He’d missed Tanner’s call from Los Angeles by two hours.
He tore through the bag that kept the phone’s charger, found the instructions Daya had left for retrieving voice mail, then entered the code.
Tanner’s message lasted only five seconds.
“Shit, man, there’s someone here, and she says you sent her to see Linda’s room. Call me b
ack now.”
If there’d been any doubt in Desmond’s mind as to whether his world was going to end, Tanner’s brief warning sent it up in a puff of smoke. A day after Magda’s investigative reporter daughter—who knew way more than she should about the organization—broke out of a containment room and stole crucial financial files from Daya’s office, someone, a woman, had shown up at Linda Sperry’s LA home. If they knew about the money, they’d know that Linda Sperry still received, and even cashed, checks from her husband’s investments, despite being dead for years. Plus, Caitlin Bergman had been on-site. Who’d talked? Who’d broken his trust? The newest initiate, Eve, the medical examiner’s daughter?
They’d lain together after the Climb, as he did with all new Daughters. Had she regretted the experience? Their age difference? His performance? He’d been distracted, and even the blue pills hadn’t helped.
Perhaps Promise Larsen? Had she figured out Daya’s reckless scheme to extort her father? Did it even matter?
Daya was gone, most of the Daughters as well. The ones that remained were years past their beauty or worse, succumbing to the pitfalls of age, and the local police seemed to be letting the Larsen family get away with murder.
The Dayans were done. It was time to pull the cord, grab what could be grabbed, and get out of the God business. But what to do about his Daughters, the witnesses to it all? Sure they were loyal now, but would they stay that way when confronted with Linda Sperry’s body, or the Five? Eventually they’d realize how they’d gifted their money away, cut off their families, and betrayed their marriages, all because of a man named Desmond Pratten.
With Daya gone, the only person who knew his true identity was his lawyer, Gwendolyn Sunrise. In no way did he question her loyalty, but who knew what the others had divined over the years. There were only two ways this could end if he stayed around—either in prison for embezzlement or in prison for murder. At his age, what would be the difference? As for the Daughters, wasn’t an end to all things what they really wanted?
He reached for the bottle of Mexican Valium in his safe, pocketed two for himself, then placed the rest on a cart near the door.
The TV in his bedroom, the only set on God’s Hill, had shown nonstop coverage of a spreading wildfire for the last hour and a half. He grabbed a multitool from his desk drawer, then followed the coaxial cable from the TV to the closet, where the satellite signal entered the room. One firm snip and the aerial coverage of the bright-red flames in the dark night turned into a solid rectangle of blue.
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