by G. K. Parks
“I hope so.”
“Me too.” Decker jotted down another note next to one of his bullet points. “Matt thinks the dead mules connect to the cartel. He’s hoping that someone from the Southside Giants will recognize them or be able to point us in the right direction. The team’s been scouring their background histories for links, but we haven’t found any that connect to the cartel or gangs operating in the area.”
“They connect to Wilde, and although we can’t prove it, this entire operation is predicated on the assumption that he’s running drugs independently or at the whim of the cartel. The question remains how do we prove it if we can’t get access to the evidence?”
He snorted. That had been the problem for the last nine months. “I’d like to believe that today shifted the tides. We know something’s there. We’re going to figure out what it is and how to get to it without tipping off Tim. He’s careful, Alex. If he so much as suspects you were up there looking around, I’d imagine he’d do whatever was necessary to protect himself and his business.”
“Then we’ll be careful.” I smiled grimly, realizing the reason for Decker’s anger wasn’t over my safety but the risk of losing access to the evidence. “I’ll be more careful,” I corrected.
He nodded. “Good.” He began to clear the table. “Do you think Anika went looking around upstairs and stumbled upon the truth? She said she wanted to show you something. Apparently, there was plenty upstairs for you to see.”
Shaking my head, it didn’t feel right. “The doors were locked, and whatever she had was small enough to carry. Maybe she discovered he was growing illegal substances.”
“I didn’t even recognize any of them, and kratom’s a hot-button topic at the DEA right now,” Decker replied. “It has to be something else.” He dropped the last few dishes in the sink. “At night, some of the guys go outside, light a fire, and smoke a joint. Maybe I should join them. Perhaps they’ll have something interesting to say.”
“What does Tim think about that?”
Decker sighed. “He knows it happens, but he doesn’t acknowledge it. Marijuana’s a grey area, especially in California. With all the dispensaries, it’s hard to say it’s wrong, especially when half the people in the commune have been given prescriptions for it at one point or another. He doesn’t want to come down hard against it and alienate anyone, but he has brought up using anything that alters our state of being as a crutch and not a true and honorable path toward enlightenment.”
“Meaning?”
“He doesn’t like it when his followers depend on something else to bring them peace and tranquility. He specifically urged me to avoid falling into the same trap as them, but perhaps he was afraid of what I’d learn.”
“Should you risk angering him now?”
“Probably not, but I can say that I wanted relationship advice from the guys. And that would go along with Tim’s directive from earlier.”
“Which was?”
“To keep you comfortable and sexually satisfied.”
“What a sicko.” I found it despicable that Tim wanted a say in controlling our intimate relationship. “In that case, you better go talk to some other men about our problems because I am far from satisfied.” I jerked my head at the door.
Twenty-eight
When Decker returned, I was curled up in bed, staring at a blank screen, daring someone to walk past one of the cameras and activate the feed. Since I’d been living in the trailer, the only camera that ever activated was the one near the bathroom. I had a feeling the others were no longer functioning, or the darkened corridors inhibited their use.
“Did you ever see Wilde sneaking into my dorm?” I asked, not bothering to turn at the sound of Decker knocking against the doorframe.
“No, but if he stuck to the opposite wall, he might not have been in range.”
“Or the cameras don’t work. Weren’t we going to splice into his security cams and piggyback off that feed?”
“Eve nixed that idea. The setup would be obvious. We’d be compromised.”
The mattress dipped down, and Decker curled around me, placing his hand against my side where my shirt had ridden up. He leaned over to see the tablet, and I dropped it to the bed.
“Jace, get off of me. You reek like hot trash.” I peeled his hand off my skin. “Are you high?”
“I didn’t inhale,” he teased. “So if I am, it’s just a contact high. Those are still fun though.”
Turning my head, I glared at him. “I’m not playing.” His eyes were on my scars, and I pushed him backward and tugged my shirt down. “Are you straight?”
“Alex,” he began.
“Are you straight?” I asked more forcefully.
He backed away, getting off the bed. “Yeah. I’m good.” He took up a spot near the doorjamb, deciding to respect my space. “I did some searching, but I didn’t find anything. I told the guys that you had lost a bracelet, but no one’s found anything outside. I’m guessing whatever Anika wanted to show you was with her when she disappeared.”
“Probably.” I searched his face for signs that he was intoxicated. “Did you search the dumpsters while you were out there?”
“And the compost heap.” He grabbed a change of clothes and headed toward the bathroom. “I’ll take a shower. Why don’t you try to get some sleep? I’ll take first watch.”
“Fine, but there’s no reason to watch. We have teams outside the fence that will notify us if anything happens. And I don’t believe the cameras work. You might as well get some sleep too. Who knows when we’re gonna move on this, and we should be sharp.”
Agreeing, he ducked into the bathroom, and I turned off the bedroom light. But I couldn’t sleep. I kept thinking about Anika and the other women under Tim’s spell. I had gotten to know all of them by name, but I didn’t know their stories. Reaching for my phone, I flipped through the photographs of Anika’s file, finding several lists that Tim had compiled. Aside from likes and dislikes, several pages were dedicated to secrets she had shared. These dated back to her college days, including things like the frat boys she slept with and the exam she cheated on. It also included intimate details about her life as a sex worker. Tim had blackmail on all of his followers. No one could ever leave without risk of exposure.
Jason Ellis and Alice Lexington’s files contained similar things, but I hadn’t divulged much to Tim. And the things in Jace’s file were all part of his cover, so I hadn’t given any of it much thought. But Tim spent time cultivating close personal relationships with everyone. I doubted it was for altruistic reasons.
“Dammit.” I sat up, scrolling through the photos again for the image of the file folders. He had to have something on Anton Shrieves and Vincent Harbring. However, if he had folders on them, they weren’t inside the filing cabinet. I cursed again, flopping backward onto the mattress.
For the next hour, I tossed and turned, contemplating what Tim might have on everyone, what transpired in that spare bedroom, and where the staircase led. Somewhere in the midst of my contemplation, Jace knocked on the bedroom door.
“Can’t sleep?” he asked.
“No.” I turned on the lamp and sighed. “What about you?”
He shook his head. “I can’t get the case out of my mind. Do you want to watch some TV?” He held out the tablet like a peace offering. “It normally helps numb my brain enough to send me into a coma for a couple of hours. There are times that I’d kill for an actual television, but Wilde is very adamantly opposed to them.”
“Yeah, he’s afraid his followers will wise up and decide that there’s more to life than an eight by ten cell and three meals a day.”
“Those dormitories aren’t even eight by ten.” Jace came into the room and sat on the far edge of the bed. “If you don’t want me in here, we can go to the living room.”
“We’re both adults, and I hate that couch.”
“Just the couch? Or maybe me too?”
“I’m ambivalent toward you.” I cracked a smi
le. “It’s why you needn’t worry about me jumping your bones.”
“Ooh, big word,” he teased, tapping the streaming app and handing me the tablet to make a selection. “We can talk about it if you’d like.”
“I wouldn’t.”
“Figured.” He fell silent, but it was a heavy, oppressive silence. After scrolling through several pages worth of shows, I found a sitcom from the nineties and hit play. We watched the first episode and half of another in complete silence. “Apparently, mindless television isn’t going to do the trick.”
“Then go buy a dirty magazine and lock yourself in the bathroom,” I suggested.
He lay back in bed and put his arms behind his head. “You get really uncomfortable when you think I’m going to try to have an honest conversation, and you do whatever you can to deflect and derail. You hate getting close to anyone. So you say these things to try to get me to leave you alone or leave the room.”
“So you got the message. You just choose to ignore it.” I powered off the tablet and put it on the dresser. “If you want the bed, I’ll sleep on the couch. I don’t mind.” I got up to leave, but he grabbed my wrist.
“I’d like you to tell me about when you were shot.”
“What?”
“C’mon, let’s trade war stories. I told you about the frag grenade. It’s your turn.”
“Tonight’s not the night to do this. Too much is going on with the case.”
“I know. And if you fall asleep, your nightmares are bound to wake us both up. So let’s talk about it before it happens.” He stared at me. “You said that your current nightmare only started after you took this assignment. What about before? You mentioned that you used to have other nightmares before this. Were they due to the various scars?”
“Don’t you think Wilde’s been breaking me down enough as it is?”
“I’m not trying to break you down, Alex. I’m trying to get you to open up about your past. It’s the only way you will ever be able to move beyond it. I promise that once it happens, the nightmares will stop, just like they did when you came to terms with being tortured and almost dying.” He stared at my wrists. “That’s why you don’t even see the scars anymore, but the ones on your back and side, those you hide and conceal. Why?”
“They don’t fit with my cover.”
“And they’re fairly fresh, at least in your mind.” He sighed. “Look, it might be easier to sneak upstairs and get a look around if one of us was sleeping in the main facility. You’re the only one who can possibly do that, but it can’t be like it was when you first arrived. You were exhausted and likely to slip up and make a mistake. I need you solid, and that means that you have to suck it up and face your demons head on.”
“And you’re just the therapist to help?” I shot back.
He grinned. “Actually, no. I’m not your therapist. I’m more of a friend, which means I don’t have to wait for you to reach some kind of revelation on your own. I can just point shit out and let you figure out how to deal with it. Won’t that be fun?”
“Not particularly.” But I wanted the nightmares to stop. I didn’t want to spend another night watching Martin almost bleed out, not after what I’d seen in the upstairs bedroom or what I imagined must have happened to Anika. “Okay, but don’t screw me up more than I already am.”
He snickered. “Is that even possible?”
* * *
The days were blurring together. The only constants were the morning and evening sessions with Tim. Everything else was erratic. Tim was hosting various recruitment functions over the course of the next few weeks, making his schedule even less predictable than usual. He’d come and go throughout the day at random intervals, and his followers were constantly milling about the main facility, working the program even harder than usual. From morning until night, each of the multipurpose rooms remained in use with different group activities and enlightenment quests. The dining hall was running nonstop. Even though Tim had said the kitchen was open twenty-four hours, I had never seen so much activity in and out. It was as if this was intentionally orchestrated to prevent another trip upstairs.
The team had run tests on the samples I’d taken from Tim’s medicine cabinet, but they were all legal herbal supplements. Fortunately, Ben had given us a USB drive. As soon as we plugged that sucker in, data would be uploaded, opening a backdoor into the hard drive that would enable us to monitor Tim’s usage in real time. Carlo and Eve finally decided on a device that would disrupt all electronics within a ten foot radius. Any camera feed would get snowy, and everything from cell phones to radios would short out while the electromagnetic pulse was activated. It could potentially raise suspicions, but with the comings and goings, it was the fastest and easiest means of bypassing Tim’s security measures without drawing undue attention to ourselves by powering down the entire facility.
Most days, Wilde dragged Jace along to run errands and bolster community support for the co-op. From the way Wilde was pitching the Church of Perpetual Light, one would think they were really hurting for membership and funds. According to Decker, my cover’s case would be coming up on the docket sooner than originally planned. It would encourage Tim to ask for a sizable donation. However, the desperation seemed to be about more than just money, and I wondered if eliminating Anika had caused some kind of unforeseen harm. It was impossible to tell, so Decker was doing his best to remain close to Wilde. Except for the few days that Jace had a shift at the gas station, he spent more time with the religious leader than his fake girlfriend. I might have pointed out once or twice that Decker was Wilde’s bitch when the shrink turned drug enforcement officer was being particularly annoying, but he laughed it off as a well-known fact.
My cover’s phone rang, and I glanced at the number. “Hello?”
“You have an hour until he returns,” Jace whispered.
“Okay, I’ll see what I can do.”
I tucked the electronic disrupter in my pocket and palmed the USB. The only caveat was I had to deactivate the disrupter before booting up the laptop. Hopefully, I was correct in believing that Tim didn’t have a camera in his room. After exiting the trailer, I entered the main facility. A pilates class was in full swing, and an addiction meeting was being held in the adjacent room. The kitchen was alight with activity as Hannah and her clique experimented with recipes for the weekend bake sale. Several others were meditating in the various quiet spaces.
Moving to the bottom of the staircase, I spotted two people within visual range, but their eyes were closed. Hoping that they would remain that way, I flipped the switch, causing the lights to flicker and go out. In broad daylight, the change wasn’t noticeable, and the two Perpetual Lighters nearby didn’t seem to notice. Tiptoeing up the steps, I crouched down and picked the lock to Wilde’s room. Slowly nudging my way inside, I went straight to the computer, keeping my head on a swivel just in case there was someone in the room. Powering off the disrupter, I waited thirty seconds, like Ben instructed, before opening the laptop and pressing the power button. I plugged the USB in the side, entered a few commands in the dialog box, and waited for the download bar to fill. Then I texted Ben for confirmation.
We’re in, he replied.
Unplugging the USB, I hit the power switch and closed the laptop lid. After reengaging the disrupter, I slipped out of Tim’s room, glancing toward the other doorways. I should have plenty of time to explore the file room or the hidden staircase, but a voice from below stopped me in my tracks.
“Alex?” Sarah called.
From the sound of her voice, she was on the staircase. Reaching behind me, I figured I’d hide until the coast was clear, but Tim’s door had shut, reengaging the lock. Shit. The cameras were on the fritz, and I’d been made. I needed a feasible lie, and I needed it now. Slowly edging toward the staircase, I looked down to find her big brown eyes staring up at me.
“Hey, have you seen Tim?” I furrowed my brow and flipped the device off before taking another step. “I looked everywhe
re, but I can’t find him. I needed to talk to him about something personal.”
She raised an interested eyebrow. “He doesn’t like us to go upstairs without his permission. You need to come down from there.”
“Right.” I shook my head as if I knew that and had forgotten. “Sorry. It was just really important.”
“What is it?”
I shook my head again. “It’s about Jace.”
“Is everything okay?”
“I just really wanted to talk to Tim in private. Do you know where he is?” It was better to ask questions than answer them.
She laughed. “The last time I saw him, he was on his way out with Jace.”
“Great,” I replied sarcastically. “If you see him before I do, can you ask him to talk to me when he gets a chance? He’s been so busy lately. I just feel disconnected, and he always knows what to say or do to ground me.”
She nodded. “No problem.” Before I could escape, she cleared her throat. “I was actually looking for you. A few of us thought it’d be best to clean out Anika’s room and donate or repurpose the few things she left behind. Do you want to help? Her departure really hit you hard, and I thought if there was something you’d like to keep as a memento, you should get first pick.”
I smiled. “Thanks, but you were closer to her. I shouldn’t interfere.” My wheels were turning. Having unfettered access to Anika’s room might just uncover whatever piece of evidence she had to show me.
“Nonsense. The two of you were instant friends.” She grabbed my hand and led me down the corridor to the dorm. “Go ahead and get started. I’ll grab a couple of bags so we can separate her belongings into different piles.”
Less than an hour later, we finished sorting the items that remained. I had checked inside everything from her makeup compact to the pockets of her jeans, but nothing surfaced. Whatever she wanted to show me was long gone.