There was a click.
Reese unwound the cord from around her arm and stared at the phone.
The front door banged.
“Richard?”
“Yes.” He came into the kitchen. “What in the world are you doing?”
“Trouble just called,” Reese said. “And her name is Miranda.”
“What are you talking about?” He was on the floor, crouching beside her, serious as anything.
“Can we trace a call that just came in?”
“Yeah, we can do that.”
“Then let’s,” Reese said. “Quickly. I just got a call from a girl in trouble—Chris gave her this number. But she couldn’t give me an address. Either she doesn’t know where she lives, or she just couldn’t remember it. I think the first. Wherever it is, Chris and Tyler were just there.”
“Were?”
“She said someone took them away. She sounds terrified.” Reese sighed. “And someone else is dead. She gave me a name: Rick Brodie.”
“It’s something to go on,” Richard said.
Reese closed her eyes and leaned her head against the side of the counter. In a moment she would find fight, drive, energy.
In this moment, all she wanted to do was let the world spin on its own for a little span of time. Richard knew everything she knew. She wasn’t alone.
The responsibility wasn’t hers alone.
The door banged again, and she smelled hamburgers and fries. April and Nick were home. Richard was already up, making a call to figure out where the girl had contacted them from.
* * *
They were on the road in less than an hour: Richard, Mary, and Reese. He had traced the call to a property in the country forty miles east of the village and north of Lincoln. He had traced the name too. That hadn’t been hard: Rick Brodie had been the subject of a missing persons report since his truck was found wrecked by the side of the highway with no trace of its driver three days before.
The same highway where two policemen had just been brutally, bloodily murdered.
Reese stewed on the news as they drove. She sat in the backseat, staring out at the countryside, thinking of Chris and Tyler.
Thinking more, she had to admit, of Chris. But it was Tyler she reached out to. Tyler she tried to find some connection with. She wished he had been around longer, had been able to master some of the abilities unique to Oneness. Other than their sense that he was still alive and okay, none of the cell had felt anything much from him since he and Chris had disappeared.
She allowed herself a sigh. Despite Richard’s call to prayer the other night, despite the connection with the children’s homes, despite it all, part of her had still been hoping that the boys had just gone off on their own somewhere—an extended fishing or hiking trip. And had been insensitive enough not to tell anyone.
Part of her had still been hoping they would just arrive home, browner and more muscled and stubborn about admitting they shouldn’t have gone off and worried everyone like that.
They had enough pieces now that she couldn’t cling to that hope anymore. Pieces—but nothing that fit together. Not yet. She had been forming a picture of what might be happening in Brass, with the teenager at the children’s home, but Miranda had thrown the whole thing.
Miranda and the killings.
After Richard traced the call, she had called the twins. They had seen the news and were already on the alert. Alex had been around the house all day, they said, sullen and dark but not acting. He’d made it pretty clear he despised them both and wanted nothing to do with them, although they were trying to reach out in friendship or at least make him curious enough about them that he might try to recruit them or something. They didn’t think he could see that they were Oneness.
It was right that they were in Brass, watching that front, but Reese wished they were here too. Watching her back. Brandishing their swords in the battle.
That battle was coming, she had no doubt in the least.
Their route took them by the site of the murders, and they slowed to a crawl. That whole side of the highway was blocked off; traffic was being routed over the median and down the other side. The highway wasn’t usually inordinately busy, but enough truck traffic went through, and the highway had been closed so long, that it was backed up for over an hour.
Reese sat alert in the backseat, scanning the highway, the air, the police who were still there checking out the scene. The sense of evil was overpowering, and she could see blood on the pavement.
Splattered so far.
She shuddered and said a prayer.
And as the traffic finally began to pick up pace and Richard hit the gas again, he said, “Tyler was there.”
“Are you sure?” Mary asked.
“Yes. I could feel his presence.”
“He’s not still there?”
“No, I don’t think so.”
“He’s not . . .”
“He’s not dead, no. Not one of the victims. But he was there.”
Mary let the silence hang for a moment. “You think he saw it?”
“I hope not. I hope he closed his eyes.”
Reese felt her eyes filling with tears. They stung.
Their exit wasn’t much past the site of the killings. They drove onto a narrow two-lane highway into barren fields dotted with farms. It should be another good half-hour.
No wonder Miranda doesn’t know where she lives, Reese thought as she looked around at the desolate stretch of country. She lives nowhere. It wasn’t good farmland out here; it was too rocky. Farmers had to wrestle their crops up from the soil and coax them into maturity, walk them into harvest like fragile and needy children. But they did it, here as everywhere. Those who love the land will always find a way to work it.
Her mind went back to Tyler and Chris. How long had they been out here? What had they been doing? What on earth had even brought them out here?
And where were they now?
Oneness was Reese’s joy, her identity and her whole life. But never had she been so frustrated by its limits. Frustrated that she couldn’t just reach out and find Tyler in the Spirit, irrespective of distance. Frustrated that she couldn’t draw Chris in, against his will, just make him part of her. She wanted that. Wanted him to be part of her. More than she was even willing to admit.
They found the farm without difficulty. It was down another road, one that essentially functioned as a private drive, but there was nothing else around and it was easy enough to spot. Two miles down that dirt road and around a bend, and they saw that the police had gotten there first.
Six squad cars sat in the wide drive at the front of an old farmhouse that sprawled more than it should, like it had been added onto more than once. Split-rail and stone fences marked off fields where corn, soy beans, and perhaps some other crops were growing. A green tractor sat abandoned in the soy field right next to the house, and the yard was likewise caught in still life—gardening tools lay in the large garden, kittens mewed where it looked like children had dropped them, a windmill creaked slowly in a barely existent breeze. The sense of heaviness and grief was palpable.
Richard pulled off to the side of the road rather than parking in the driveway. No people were in sight; everyone had to be inside.
“To pry or not to pry,” he said.
“I don’t think we have any choice,” Mary answered.
“I wish we’d beaten the police.”
“So do I.”
Reese shifted in the backseat. “Should we wait till they leave? Seems a little unwise to connect ourselves to the community right now.”
Richard was frowning. Reese saw the expression and realized it wasn’t in reaction to anything she had said.
“What?” she asked.
“There’s Oneness here,” he said. “Can you feel it?”
Reese stilled herself and tried to reach out for connection. She felt nothing. “No.”
“I’m not imagining it,” Richard said, but he sounded like he wa
s trying to assure himself. “But something’s . . . wrong.”
“There’s a man dead here,” Reese reminded him. “And at least one very scared little girl calling us for help. I’d say a few things are wrong.”
The frown didn’t ease up. Then he said, in a tone that made Reese stop and still her soul again, and forget to breathe for a moment, “What if David isn’t the only one?”
Silence.
Mary cleared her throat. “What do you mean?”
“What if David isn’t the only member of the Oneness to turn against us? There is Oneness here. I can feel it . . . him. But something about it is very wrong.”
“Reese, the girl you talked to,” Mary said. “Did you get any sense that she was one of us?”
“No,” Reese said. “She didn’t say anything to indicate she was, and I didn’t feel any connection. She just sounded scared out of her head.”
Richard opened his car door. “Let’s get in there.”
“What about the police?”
“We’re going to assume they’re on our side. The girl called them too.”
“What are we going to tell them about why we’re here?” Reese pushed.
Richard met her eyes. “The truth.”
“I don’t want to get the kid in trouble.”
“She’s already in trouble. Come on.”
Mary and Reese followed Richard without another protest. He headed for the front door of the house like he belonged here, like he’d been called in on an investigation and everyone would know it. In the short time she’d known him, Reese had been impressed again and again by his authority. Richard did everything like he had a right to do it and went everywhere like he had a right to be there. As, it seemed, he did.
Gravel crunched under their feet, and the sounds of birds and insects in their summer symphony created a peace that was incongruous, totally out of keeping with the atmosphere of pregnant, dangerous stillness.
The wooden porch echoed under their steps as they climbed it, and Richard paused and listened at the door. They could all hear voices within. He looked at Mary and Reese, shrugged, and pushed the door open without knocking.
They walked right into the middle of a meeting. Roughly thirty people were quickly identifiable as the community: men, women, and children were all dressed conservatively, looking like something from another age, and except for a couple of the men and one of the women, they looked stunned. Reese’s heart lurched as she realized how many of these were children—comparatively, the community really only had a handful of adults. One of the girls, a young teenager, fixed her eyes on Reese with an expression somewhere between hope and terror. Miranda, Reese thought. She was sitting glued to the side of an older woman who was most likely her mother. The woman’s face was sweet and open, and marred at the moment by fear and by grief. The community members were all seated, arranged around several tables in a large dining room.
The police, by contrast, were standing. There were nine; Reese guessed others were elsewhere on the property. Their guns rode prominently in their holsters, and one had been writing notes.
At the head of one table, with two policemen standing on either side of him like guards, was a tall, black-bearded man whose eyes were blazing.
He was Oneness. Reese knew that in a heartbeat. Richard had been right.
And he had been right about something else: something about the man was very, very wrong.
Another David.
Her heart thought it might break.
He glared at them with hatred in his eyes. He knew who—what—they were. And he hated them.
Why? Reese thought in his direction. What are you thinking? Why would you leave us—why would you fight against your own family, your own body?
“Who are you?” one of the police asked.
“My name is Richard . . . Richard Clark,” Richard said, holding out his hand.
The officer didn’t shake it. “What are you doing here?” he asked. “We’re in the middle of an investigation.”
“I’m aware of that. And I’m happy to answer your question, but maybe not in front of all these people.”
The officer looked askance at him for a moment, then jerked his head toward the front door. “Step outside,” he said.
He followed them out, and Reese and Mary introduced themselves. It felt odd to use their last names—they being a convention most of the Oneness gave up except when speaking formally with outsiders, as in this case. The policeman introduced himself as Lieutenant Mitch Jackson.
“Now, why are you here? And what’s your connection to these people?”
Richard looked at Reese and nodded, indicating she should talk.
“I got a phone call this morning from one of the children here,” she said. “A girl named Miranda. She told me a friend of ours had given her our number and that someone had died here, and she was scared.”
“Someone did die here,” the officer confirmed. “Truck driver named Rick Brodie. He’s been missing for three days.”
“That’s the thing—so has our friend,” Reese said. “The one who gave Miranda our number.”
The officer’s skepticism transformed instantly into interest. “So your friend was here?”
“He must have been. And possibly another. They’ve both been missing for the last three days.”
“I don’t remember any other report being filed,” Jackson said.
“We didn’t file one. We thought they might just be on a fishing trip or something and hadn’t mentioned it. But this isn’t exactly fishing country.”
“But you think they have some connection to Rick Brodie.”
“Well, he was here, and so were they—or at least one of them.”
The officer took out a pad and pen. “Can you give me their names?”
“Chris Sawyer and Tyler MacKenzie. Chris is the one who gave her the number.”
“What do you know about their disappearance?”
“Not much,” Reese said. “We . . . realized they weren’t at home several days ago and had a bad feeling about it. We haven’t been able to reach either of them since then. Chris has a cell phone, but we haven’t been able to get through.”
“What did he drive?”
“Excuse me?”
“His car,” the officer said. “What did he drive?”
“Ford pickup,” Richard said.
“Blue?”
“Yes. Why?”
Jackson pocketed his notepad and nodded. “I’d like you to come around the back and see if you can identify something for me. And then I’d like to know more about that phone call. Everything you can remember.”
* * *
They stood in the barn minutes later, staring wordlessly at the wreck of Chris’s truck.
The front end was smashed up, though both seats were intact and it looked like anyone who had been inside should have been able to get away safely. The front right tire was twisted.
“They carried it here,” Richard said, raising the end of the statement into a question.
“Seems that way. I don’t think you could drive it with the front wheel well busted up like that.”
Reese’s brain was whirring, pulling pieces together. “The truck accident on the highway the other day. That was Rick Brodie’s?”
“That’s right. And this is the missing piece as to what exactly happened to him. The truck was wrecked but he wasn’t there to ask about it, and no one had a good explanation for what had happened. We talked to dispatch at his company and they told us he seemed perfectly awake and aware just half an hour before we estimate the accident happened.”
Staring at Chris’s truck was making Reese sick to her stomach. She told herself, over and over, that he had gotten out. That they both had gotten out. Tyler wasn’t dead, they knew that through the Oneness, and Chris had been fine enough to give Miranda a phone number.
But where were they now? They sure hadn’t driven away.
“Have you searched the truck?” Richard asked.
>
“Not personally. We just found it an hour ago. Some of my colleagues had a look-see. You expecting anything?”
“Yeah,” Richard said. “Chris’s cell phone. That would explain why we haven’t been able to reach him.”
“Listen,” Jackson said, “if your friend was mixed up in anything, best you tell us about it up front. A man is dead. Your friend’s truck being here doesn’t look good. They pulled it out of a wreck on the highway, left the truck but took the driver, and never called to report anything. I think you’re smart enough to figure out the implications.”
Richard answered slowly. “Chris and Tyler weren’t involved in anything . . . not like you’re thinking. But they were looking for someone who is. If you want a murderer, they aren’t your guys. But it’s possible that if you find them, you’ll find your killer.”
“Oh, we already have our killer,” Jackson said.
“You what?”
Jackson clammed up, looking guilty. “Of course, that’s up to the coroner to confirm.”
“Those people?” Mary blurted out. “Those sweet people inside?”
“Not everyone in there is sweet,” Jackson said. “Look, I might as well tell you . . . said a little too much already. As far as we can tell, Brodie died from something they gave him. They had him all bandaged up and taken care of, and he’s only been dead not more than a day. Died this morning, is my guess. That’s what they said. Most of them are playing totally innocent, but somebody in there knows what they were drugging him with and knows they gave him too much.”
He shrugged. “Or maybe they just killed him in ignorance, and it was manslaughter. Any way you look at it, they shouldn’t have been playing god.”
Reese let her eyes wander back to the truck, at once so familiar and so terribly wrecked. In the dust and dirt of the barn it looked like it might have been there for ten years, but it was too new—too fresh. She started to picture the crash but wouldn’t let herself go there.
She needed to talk to Miranda.
She turned to Lieutenant Jackson. “Sir, that girl, Miranda, called me. I’d like to talk to her.”
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