So far the first day of the drive had gone fairly well. After leaving Blythe, Andy had sat in the front seat for a while reading his comic books, fiddling with the radio. She was glad he’d grown sleepy and retired to the back seat for a nap. If she had to hear Terry Jacks’ “Seasons in the Sun” one more time she was going to scream.
If all went well by this time tomorrow they’d be in the Texas heartland. They’d be in an untraceable car, and with the cash she had they wouldn’t have to rely on the use of her driver’s license to check into motel rooms. She wouldn’t need the credit cards. Besides, she only intended to check into the most out-of-the-way motels in the most remote towns they drove through. The group may be powerful, but they surely couldn’t stretch their tentacles that far. Once Tom discovered she and Andy were gone, Sam Garrison would be notified immediately. He would most likely alert what representatives they had in the major cities; Chicago, Las Vegas, Seattle, New York, Washington D.C., Boston, Miami. They were still spreading, and their numbers could very well spread within the next few years. Until then, she and Andy had to stay clear of the big cities.
It was a combination of her continuing sobriety and her realization of what she had gotten herself into when she sold her soul to them that caused her to take Andy and flee. But what really clinched it was what they intended to do with Andy. Tom had brought it up to her three weeks ago. She’d been appalled, but she couldn’t let Tom see it. She’d been making dinner when he mentioned it to her. Andy had been outside with Neil Lacher playing Dinosaurs. Maggie’s back had been turned to her husband as she mixed the casserole, so he didn’t see the expression on her face. Instead, she’d quickly composed herself and said, “I think you’re right. When do you think would be a good time?”
“I was thinking we could bring him in when he reaches thirteen,” he’d said, matter-of-factly. The Wall Street Journal had been opened in front of him on the kitchen table. “He’s eight now and we’ve already done the necessary preparations before we entered him in kindergarten. Let’s give him a chance to be a kid for awhile.”
Maggie grimaced as she remembered that conversation. She wondered if the boy would be scarred from before, from when she was so deep into the drugs and the counter-culture scene when they were living in the Bay Area. All kinds of strange people had walked in and out of their lives, and they’d had one close call back then that she didn’t like to think about now. Of course, he’d been young when that happened, barely a toddler. But he’d been exposed nonetheless. It certainly appeared that those times hadn’t affected him. By all means he was a normal eight-year old boy. He had no bad dreams, no violent mood swings. And with the exception of the occasional temper tantrum, he rarely flew into a rage over the most trivial things the way she heard victims of psychological abuse often did. She was certain Andy was a victim of psychological abuse; it was the only term she could think of to explain what he’d been exposed to.
Depravities.
But it had been at least four years since he’d been exposed to anything. The bigger the group got, the more they relied on secrecy. Plus, as Sam explained, those early years of exposing Andy to their activities were crucial. He ordered the boy to be watched by a sitter whenever the group got together now, but he must have still suffered some form of psychological tampering. After all, from the time he was four until just recently she had been a functioning heroin addict, despite the fact that she and Gladys Robles had cut themselves off from the hippies they’d hung out with. As Tom had explained, they were quickly moving out of the underground to the mainstream. The seeds had been sown and they needed to bear fruit. Between then and now, they had to assume the mask of normalcy. With that came a promotion for Tom at General Computer Systems. Maggie had gotten a job as a secretary at a law firm.
But she still retained the lifestyle she and Tom had led. Only she’d gotten deeper. Pot and LSD had been frequent indulgences when they lived in San Francisco and were ingrained with the hippie scene, and even though they got out of that social circle she couldn’t stop doing the drugs. Despite her change of appearance—trading in her bell-bottom jeans, paisley shirts and free flowing dresses for a business suit and skirts—she couldn’t go a day without a hit of something. And with her discovery of heroin it had only gotten worse. She’d still managed to get up every day and maintain some semblance of a normal working woman, but the people she interacted with could tell something was amiss. And when she’d gone through withdrawals six hours into her self-induced cold turkey kick of the habit three years ago, she realized she was in deeper than she would have thought. It had taken her another year and a half to finally kick her habit for good. But she did it herself. And she did it slowly, so as not to alert Tom and the others. Because even though narcotics use wasn’t promoted within the group, it wasn’t discouraged either. And because she felt that others thought of her as lesser than them, the “breeder,” her drug abuse wasn’t intercepted. In fact, she had the feeling they supplied her with the smack to keep her in a permanent state of denial. Nobody would believe a drug addict.
She had to be careful when she finally weaned herself off drugs. By the time she was fully clean, they were living in Fountain Valley. Gloria and Henry Robles lived in a nice neighborhood a mile away, near Huntington Beach, with Gloria’s son Frank. A few other members were scattered around Orange County, some near the Santa Ana Mountains, but others were still situated in the Los Angeles area. Many more were still in the Bay Area. Samuel Garrison was headquartered there. Not to mention the close to one thousand members scattered across the country. But with their own local group she fared pretty well. She continued the meetings, handled some of the affairs, and worked a lot of behind-the-scenes administrative work. Tom usually worked that angle. After all, she had Andy to take care of.
That was her most important job.
The sun was almost gone now, the New Mexico sky dark and sullen. It would be dark in fifteen minutes. She looked at the map spread out next to her on the seat and noted that the next town was only ten miles away. She looked up at the road ahead of her, passing a FOOD, GAS, LODGING sign on her right. A motel. They could stay there for the night.
When she finally pulled into the parking lot of the motel—a small, weathered building consisting of a dozen cabins placed in a horseshoe around the main office—she was already beginning to feel that, despite the wrath she was sure to face from the group, she was certain she and Andy would escape. They had to. For his sake, for her sake, they had to escape undetected.
Because if they didn’t they would kill her. They’d never kill Andy, but they’d surely kill her. Without hesitation.
She sat in the car for a moment after killing the engine, listening to the ticking of the engine as it cooled down. The sound of traffic from Interstate 10 rose to her ears. If it weren’t for her getting sober, she wouldn’t have gathered her senses. Wouldn’t have suddenly found herself in the real world. Seen the insane theories and beliefs for what they were. She looked into the back seat at Andy, who was slowly beginning to stir. A normal boy by all accounts, no matter what they believed. Andrew Swanson was normal, not what they said he was, what they claimed he was. And it was because of the insanity of their assertions as to what Andy was, their hideous plans for him that caused Maggie to finally bolt from them in the first place. God help him if she hadn’t.
Andy sat up in the back seat and groggily rubbed his eyes. “Where are we?”
“We’re stopping for the night,” Maggie said. “We’re in New Mexico.”
“Oh.”
And as they walked to the motel lobby with their meager belongings to get a room for the night, Maggie began to look at the future for the first time with a sense of hope.
Chapter One
June 22, 1999,
Mission Viejo, California
VINCE WALTERS PANTED as he rounded the last stretch of his jog. The front of his tank top was soaked with perspiration. His armpits felt like hot patches as he slowed his pace. He was approach
ing Shadow Lane, and the trek to his home was up a slight incline through the upper middle-class neighborhood. Vince timed his pace, and then picked it up a bit as he ascended the slight grade that led up the street. He lived halfway down, left side. Almost home.
The early evening was still bright and sunny on this Tuesday afternoon. A light breeze blew in from the ocean. The breeze felt good against his sweaty skin. In another month it would be too hot to jog in this weather. He was building his system up quite well. Four months ago he wouldn’t have been able to jog two miles a night. Not that he’d been out of shape—he and Laura had had a work-out room in the house and he still owned the equipment. They’d used it regularly. But he hadn’t been much on cardiovascular activity at the time. The most he ever did was a few minutes on the treadmill every other night. Other than that it was light weight training, abdominal and pectoral exercises, and yoga. He’d been intending to take a martial arts class of some sort, but Laura’s death had interrupted those plans. He hadn’t thought about martial arts since then.
He tried to banish those thoughts. That’s what the jogging was supposed to be for, to keep him from thinking so much about Laura. But he had, and that tiny infraction, that little mention of her in relation to his past physical exercise habits, brought his thoughts back to her again. Started the whole thing over again:
Their meeting at Corporate Financial where they’d both worked. Their courtship. Their marriage five years ago.
Their love. God, how he’d loved her…
He still didn’t know how it happened. He tried to take solace in the fact that it was an honest accident, but he still didn’t understand how it could have happened. Laura had been a good driver; a safe driver.
Laura Walters had just left her office and was entering the south-bound on-ramp of the 5 freeway at Ortega Highway. The on-ramp was long, and the evening rush hour had been over, so traffic was flowing moderately. Laura had left work late that night after having been in a meeting most of the day and catching up on things in her office. She’d entered the on-ramp and by all accounts was driving at a normal speed when her car, a black Nissan Maxima, suddenly left the on-ramp, plunging fifty feet down the incline.
She hadn’t been going that fast. But then she hadn’t tried to stop, either. It was almost as if she’d made a slight error in judgment and driven off the on-ramp by sheer accident.
Hard to believe when that particular on-ramp was one of the most well-lit in Irvine.
Which only left one other possibility—that Laura had intentionally steered her car off the on-ramp.
Vince could not believe that. Neither could her friends or family. Laura Walters had loved life, loved her job, and most important, loved her husband. She wouldn’t have deliberately killed herself.
Something must have stolen her attention from her driving for one brief moment, a fraction of a second.
She’d been killed immediately upon impact.
Vince’s breathing grew heavier with the exertion of his running, but thinking about Laura also helped bring it on. Vince quenched the thoughts away as he sprinted faster up the street, heading for home. He concentrated on the movement of his limbs, the steady pace of his breathing—in and out, in and out—as he ran, and then he was jogging up the driveway of his house. He fished in the pockets of his shorts for his keys as he went up the walk to the front door.
He let himself in, panting heavily. The descending sunlight spilled through the sun-roof in the living room, creating a dazzling effect of light that splashed across the coffee colored carpet. He closed the front door and trudged through the living room, removing his tank top with one quick motion. He threw the garment on the sofa and headed for the kitchen. Beyond the kitchen, the dining area lay in shadows but he paid it no mind as he opened the refrigerator and took out a bottle of Evian. He drank, gulping down the cold water. He wiped his forearm over his sweaty brow. His throat was very dry so he drank some more, taking his time at it and letting the water quench his thirst.
When he caught his breath he put the Evian bottle on the counter and exited the kitchen, moving through the living room, past the family room with the enormous entertainment center they’d built up over the years, and up the stairs to their bedroom. His bedroom. He still couldn’t get used to calling it his.
He stopped at the threshold, looking at the bedroom. By his standards it was in shambles. They both used to keep the house immaculate. Now there was no point. The sheets were pulled down over the king-sized bed and bunched down at the foot. Underwear and socks from the past week were scattered along the floor near the foot of the bed. His shirts, likewise, were strung here and there on the floor without regard to landing. Only his slacks were hung up with some form of neatness in the closet. He could feel the sweat almost vibrate on his body as he stood at the bedroom doorway. I must smell like a pig, he thought. That helped veer him away from what he was on the track of thinking about. Instead, he headed into the bathroom for a shower.
When he emerged fifteen minutes later he felt better, much more refreshed. He walked nude to the bureau and fished around inside for a pair of shorts. He found a pair of white boxer shorts with Bart Simpson imprinted on them. He put them on and paused at the mirror over the bureau for a moment. He ran his fingers through his damp hair, surveying himself. He’d lost weight since Laura’s death, but at least he didn’t look sickly anymore. For awhile he’d been really out of it; rarely eating, never exercising, doing nothing but driving around his and Laura’s favorite haunts, roaming around the empty house crying over her loss and feeling sorry for himself. When he’d returned to work he’d thrown himself into his job, staying at the office at times till eleven o’clock at night. His employees raised questioning eyebrows but never said anything. They were giving him his space. Even his best friend Brian Saunders, who’d hired him almost ten years ago, said nothing, but let it be known that if he ever needed for anything—and I mean anything—that he was there. Vince realized this and appreciated it. And he somehow found the strength to work through the loss.
He even started dating again. Something he thought he would never be able to do. He was currently seeing a woman Brian hooked him up with at a business function. Tracy Harris. He liked her, and he could tell Tracy was wildly attracted to him. It felt good. But it was hard getting used to. He was taking it slow, one step at a time.
He stepped back from the mirror and examined himself. He was gaining some color again, and while he wasn’t the golden tan he’d been of his youth, it was an improvement. His muscle tone had crept back and, with a combination of getting back into his eating habits and exercise, he’d been able to bring his weight back up. Only this time all caution had been thrown to the wind in regards to his food intake. Where before he wouldn’t have been caught dead eating beef, he craved McDonald’s and Carl’s Jr at least twice a week now. The jogging and assorted other cardiovascular exercises he’d implemented helped to burn off some of the extra calories and fat he was getting.
He smiled at his reflection in the mirror. Doing good!
He turned away from the mirror and noticed the blinking light of his answering machine. He wondered briefly if it was Tracy. Curious to hear the message, he crossed the bedroom and pressed the PLAY button. The tape rewound.
The voice that came out of the speaker wasn’t one he recognized. It was a male and appeared hesitant. “Uh…Mr. Walters? This is Officer Tom Hoffman from Warwick Township in Lititz, Pennsylvania. I’m the Chief of Police here in town. Could you please return my call as soon as you can? It’s very urgent. My number here is…area code 717-626-1500. Don’t worry about the time difference. I’ll be up, and I’ll be home. Please call me…thank you.” The sound of a phone being hung up, and then silence.
Vince looked down at the answering machine, puzzled.
Lititz, Pennsylvania. His mother lived there—at least, as far as he knew she did. He hadn’t spoken to her in over five years, and the last time he had she’d still lived there. Since then, he tried
not to think about her, much less keep in touch. She’d made it clear to him the last time they’d spoken that he was pretty much not wanted in her life.
He stood before the dresser, the message echoing through his brain. The only explanation he could think of why a small town sheriff from his mother’s town would call him was if something had happened to her. He reached for the answering machine and scrambled for a pen and scrap paper as the tape rewound. He replayed the message, jotted down the number, then sat down on the bed and put his hand on the phone with sickening dread.
What else could it be? he thought. Something’s finally happened to her. She finally went over the edge from overzealous religious nut to bona fide psycho. Maybe she killed a gynecologist. Or maybe her church group turned into one of those militias and the FBI was holding her and her friends on weapons charges. He stopped the mental debates on what possibly could have happened, and picked up the phone to call Pennsylvania.
The phone was picked up on the fifth ring. “Hello?” It was Mr. Hoffman’s voice.
“Officer Hoffman, this is Vince Walters returning your call.”
“Oh, yes, Mr. Walters.” Recognition immediately set in the lawman’s tone of voice, as well as a tinge of hesitation, as if he had bad news and didn’t want to be the messenger. “Thank you for calling me back.”
“What’s happened?” It was the first thing he could think of to say. Why else would a law enforcement official from Lititz call? It was ten o’clock at night in that part of the country. It had to be his mother.
“I’m afraid I’ve got some bad news for you, Mr. Walters,” Hoffman said, gravely.
“Please, call me Vince.”
“All right, Vince.” Tom Hoffman paused. Then he took a deep breath, as if he was composing himself. “I’m afraid I’ve got some bad news,” he said again. His voice cracked slightly.
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