The Perfect Outsider

by Loreth Anne White

  Jesse inhaled deeply. He had to try another tack.

  “How far is it into town?” he said

  “A few hours on foot.”

  “You said you were a part-time paramedic. You spoke about a cult of Devotees and this being a safe house. Did you bring the occupants in here—did you rescue them all from Samuel Grayson’s cult?”

  “Jesse, I—”

  “Please,” he said. “Help me. The more I know, the more it might jog my memory.”

  She raked her hands over that gorgeous red hair. She was unsure about him, yet she cared, too. She was a good, strong and fascinating person, clearly with a keen sense of duty that kept a fire burning in her.

  “June, you said earlier that you do what you do because of your husband—that’s why you wear his ring, as a symbol. Can you tell me about him? What happened?”

  She glanced toward the photo on the dresser.

  “Is that him in that photo? Is that your son?”

  Her eyes flashed to him with such a sudden fierce and crackling energy it took him aback.

  “If you need anything else,” she said coolly, “just call out to the guard outside.” She turned to leave, her shoulders tight, and Jesse saw that her hands were fisted at her sides.

  “June, please, talking to me might help me figure out who I am. I—I need you to talk to me.”

  She stilled, her back to him. And she stayed like that for several beats.

  Jesse came up behind her and he placed his hand on her shoulder. It was slender, her muscles tight.

  “June,” he said very softly, turning her around, and he saw tears pooled in her eyes.

  “Come,” he said, sliding his hand down her arm and taking her hand. “Come sit down.” He tried to lead her to the bed.

  But she shrugged him off and swiped the tears from her face.

  “I’m tired,” she said crisply. “That’s all.”

  “Tired of doing what you do?”

  “Look, it’s been a long day.” She reached for the door. “Please, just stay in here tonight. I’ll have something worked out by tomorrow.”

  “What were their names—your husband’s and son’s?”

  She seemed suddenly frozen.

  “At least you have your memories, June,” he said quietly. “I have nothing but the present.”

  “That’s how he does it, you know. Samuel finds the chink, then he pries it open, makes you talk, and then he’s got you.”

  “That’s not what I’m doing, June.”

  “And how would I know?”

  He hesitated a beat. “You wouldn’t.”

  She studied him, and he could see the intelligence in her features. He also wanted to kiss her mouth. Damn, he wanted to take her in his arms, do a lot more.

  But as the thought occurred to him, he was slammed by an image of a dark-haired woman, screaming, in pain. And in his mind he heard a child crying—terrible cries. And he felt desperate, helpless. Responsible. Then there was just blackness—an awful, aching void of nothing.

  The blood drained from his head. He reached up, touched his stitches.

  “Are you all right?”

  Her gaze shot to her. “I don’t know.”

  She hesitated. “I’ll talk to you, Jesse, but only if you eat while I do. You need to eat something. Is that a deal?”

  He snorted softly at the power shift. “Deal.”

  June moved to a chair near the stove and sat. Light from the flames inside flickered like soft copper fire over her hair. She released a big breath of air. “I feel bad enough as it is about locking that door—I suppose I owe you. I just wish I could trust you, that I had some kind of proof you don’t belong to Samuel.”

  “Believe me, I’d like to know, too.”

  “Case rested for locking you up.” But a smile curved her lips when she said it, and Jesse’s heart stalled for a nanosecond.

  “You should do that more often,” he said quietly.

  “What?”

  “Smile.”

  She flushed, and his blood heated. Jesse seated himself at the small table where she’d placed his food. He picked up the knife and fork. “See? Eating.”

  “My husband’s name was Matt,” she said quietly. “Matt Farrow.”

  “He was a pilot?”

  She nodded, hands tight in her lap.

  “It’s difficult to talk about?”

  She nodded again, eyes glimmering, her nose going slightly pink. Then she lurched to her feet.

  “It shouldn’t be,” she snapped and began to pace the room, her long legs sexy as all hell in those jeans. An image of getting those sheepskin boots off her flashed through his mind. On the back of it came the faceless image of the dark-haired woman. His pulse quickened.

  “Why shouldn’t it be difficult?”

  She spun to face him.

  “It’s been five years, Jesse. Matt and Aiden have been gone that long now. I—I’ve been fine—dealt with it.”

  “You’re still wearing his ring, June.”

  “I don’t mean that I want to forget him. I mean I thought I’d put the grief into perspective, that I’d gone through the stages. But…I don’t know. It’s just hurting at the moment. I don’t know why.”

  Jesse set his knife and fork down slowly, a sense of loss filling him, as if June was reminding him of something. He heard the baby screaming again in his memory somewhere. Then he saw an image of a hospital. He felt the guilt again. The name Samuel Grayson began to circle in his head.

  “Is the food not good?”

  He stared at it—vegetable lasagna and salad. “No, it’s great, I…thought I was remembering something, that’s all.” He glanced up at her.

  She assessed him for a beat, then reseated herself beside the stove. “My son’s name was Aiden,” she said.

  “How old was he?” Jesse asked quietly

  She inhaled deeply. “Jesse, I really don’t want to do this, not with you. I’m beat. This whole thing…this day…no sleep…it’s just left everything a little raw. I’m not usually like this.”

  “What whole thing?” he said, a kind of desperation rising in him.

  She turned her face away from him, stared at the flames in the little window of the stove.

  “Finding you,” she said finally. “Finding you has messed everything up. I… Jesus, I’m sorry, Jesse, but my actions, the fact I brought you here instead of going on an official search—it’s made my cover thin. It could cost lives. And I don’t know what the hell to do with you.”

  “Cost lives?”

  She looked at him. “Samuel is dangerous. He’s a murderer. The feds know it but they haven’t managed to get enough on him to lay charges and prosecute.”

  He took a bite of his vegetable lasagna, chewed as he digested what she’d said. And in part of his brain he wondered if she was vegetarian. He liked his meat—venison. He stilled. It was another small snippet of revelation. He had a sudden image of blood, warm on his hands. And then it was gone.

  “So you work as a paramedic and a SAR volunteer in Cold Plains,” he said. “This is your cover. Meanwhile, in the dark of night, you bring people to this…cave place, whatever it is.”

  “That pretty much sums it up.”

  “And you were searching for Lacy and her kids when you stumbled upon me.”

  She nodded. “I should have been on an official search for Lacy on the other side of the mountain—it’s a long story. But I couldn’t just leave you down that ravine.” She swore. “Now a crooked cop is going to look deeper into me and my background and people I care for are going to get hurt or killed.”

  “June?”

  “What?”

  “Thank you. For saving my life.”

  She raised her arms as if in defeat. “And where does that get me—us—now?”

  “Maybe I can help you.”

  Surprise darted through her eyes. Then she said, very quietly, “Jesse, you could still be a mole.”

  He scooped up the last mouthful of lasagna
and chewed, watching her.

  “Tell me about Matt,” he said.

  She slumped back in her chair.

  “He was a helicopter pilot who flew SAR missions. It’s how I met him, on a search. We married young. Well, I was young. He was quite a bit older than me, and we had Aiden. We were good together.” She sat silent awhile. “PTSD is a little-acknowledged fact of SAR life, and there always comes one mission that gets to you for some reason. That day came for Matt, a seasoned veteran, when he was called out to look for another chopper that had gone down in the Cascades. The search turned into a recovery mission. The craft had crashed into the side of a mountain in heavy weather. No survivors. The pilot was a close friend of Matt’s—brothers-in-arms kind of thing. And it was a pretty gruesome recovery effort. It cut Matt up big-time.”

  She sighed deeply. “And it left him questioning the meaning of it all, life. One of his friends suggested Matt go with him to a church meeting. That meeting led to another, and then another, and pretty soon, he was sucked in by a religious cult.” Her eyes narrowed and Jesse could see she was struggling.

  “It wasn’t like Matt was weak,” she said. “But what I just didn’t get at the time is that you don’t have to be somehow weak or stupid to be sucked in by a cult. And there was my guy—an über A-type personality, a total daredevil who was so in control and command of his own environment—being sucked in by the ministerings of some cult leader.”

  “What did you do?”

  She snorted. “I tried to talk sense into him. Then we argued. The arguments got worse. Then I went to some meetings in an effort to see what in hell he was talking about. And—” she shook her head. “I still didn’t get why my intelligent guy couldn’t just snap out of it. But that’s not how it works, I’ve learned. And then the church wanted money. Matt was starting to dig into our savings, giving everything we’d worked for together to the cult. I’d lost him, Jesse. He spent more and more time away from home. And I began to worry about Aiden. He was only three years old at the time, and Matt started taking him to the church meetings. And when Matt started talking about us all moving onto the church’s rural compound in the mountains, I drew my line in the sand. I told him he had to choose between our marriage and the cult, because he was bleeding us dry.”

  June rubbed her face. “I thought—I honestly believed, at the time—that it was a matter of making a decision, that Matt was strong, and that he would make the right choice. But that evening I was called out on a missing Alzheimer’s case. I took Aiden to my mom’s house and she promised to get him to day care in the morning.

  “When I went to pick him up the following evening, they told me Matt had come earlier in the day and taken him. I knew right away he was taking him to the cult compound. I called the cops. It turned into a huge manhunt. Matt went into the woods. I used the dog I had at the time, tried to track them.” Her eyes began to gleam with emotion.

  “I tracked the whole night.”

  She sat silent awhile.

  Jesse pushed his plate aside.

  “What happened?” he said, his voice hoarse.

  She snorted softly. “Matt reached a helicopter base in the next town and he took Aiden with him in one of their choppers. The police took a helicopter up, followed him. I—I knew he wouldn’t have taken Aiden up with him unless he was totally desperate, not thinking. Otherwise he’d have known there was a finite amount of fuel, that he’d have to set down, that the police would pick him up when he did.”

  “He crashed?”

  She nodded.

  Wood popped in the fire.

  “I’m so sorry,” he said. He felt lame.

  “I learned a lesson that day, Jesse. A brutal lesson about the psychological power of cults. I learned that you can’t just snap out of it, that you need professional help to do so. If I’d gone about it a different way, found counseling, helped Matt deal with the real reasons he’d gone to the church in the first place… Because, in retrospect, he was suffering from critical-incident stress. I didn’t see it, and he certainly was too macho to talk to me about what was going on deep in his head. I loved him, and I should have found a way to help him. Instead, I gave him an ultimatum that pushed him over the edge. I killed him and my son.”

  “June—”

  She raised her palm and shook her head. “It is my fault. I don’t care what people say.”

  “So now you help others out of cults, and you do it in memory of Matt and Aiden.” Or do you do it to try and assuage your own feelings of guilt—is it the only thing you can do now, June?

  She nodded. “I learned everything I could after that. And I started working for EXIT, an international network of like-minded professionals and volunteers who help families get loved ones out of cults and into halfway houses, safe places, where they can access deprogramming or exit-counseling. I move around the country, operating safe houses where necessary.”

  “And that’s how you came to Cold Plains?”

  “Yes.”

  “Who brought you here—I mean, which family?”

  “In this case the existence of the Devotees came to EXIT’s attention via one of the escapees, Mia Finn, who was brought in for deprogramming. She’s now the sister-in-law of the FBI agent investigating Samuel. Samuel’s believed to be responsible for orchestrating the murders of at least five women and possibly others.”

  “This is dangerous.”

  “That’s an understatement.”

  Jesse’s respect, his attraction to June, mushroomed.

  “I can’t believe I’d be working for a guy like Samuel,” he said.

  “Yet you mentioned his name. You said you had something urgent to do. You have a tattoo.”

  He inhaled deeply. “I’m obviously here in connection with Samuel, or the town. That’s why you need to unlock that door for me, June, let me go and find out why I’m here.”

  “Let me sleep on it, Jesse. You need sleep, too.” She got up and made for the door.

  He got up and grasped her wrist. “June—”

  She turned. She was so close. And he could see the rawness of the emotion glimmering in her eyes, in the slight pinkness of her nose. Her eyes darkened and he could see physical attraction. The notion hung suddenly, tangible between them.

  Fire crackled and popped softly in the stove.

  “What?” she whispered, her voice thick, and Jesse was suddenly unable to tear his attention from her lips, the way her breathing was making her chest rise and fall. And before he could even think to finish his sentence, he leaned in and he kissed her mouth.

  She jerked back, eyes wide in shock.

  But before she could say a word, a loud banging sounded on the bedroom door.

  June spun around just as the door was flung open by Brad, shotgun in his hand, his face white.

  Sonya was right behind him, her eyes bright with fear, a radio in her hand. Molly was at her side. She pointed straight at Jesse, arm outstretched.

  “It’s his fault!” yelled Molly. “He brought them here!”

  “What’s his fault?” said June. “What’s going on?”

  “Davis just called in,” Sonya said. “A posse of five henchmen is approaching the rock crevasse that leads to the tunnel. He could hear them talking. He thinks they said something about a mole in the safe house.”

  “See?” yelled Molly, borderline hysterical. “You shouldn’t have brought him here. He’s leading them in somehow.”

  June shot a glance at Jesse

  He was tense, eyes narrowed and hard as he stared at Molly.

  “It’s not possible,” June said. “Jesse has no way of contacting—”

  Davis’s voice crackled suddenly through the radio in Sonya’s hand. June took it from her, stepping out into the passageway. Brad started to close the bedroom door.

  Jesse placed his hand on the door, stopping it from closing. “June, let me help,” he said.

  “Are you crazy? It’s your fault they’re here!” Molly kicked the bedroom door closed in
his face, and he heard the key turning in the lock.

  His muscles strapped tight in a band across his chest. He jiggled the handle. Locked.

  Cursing, he swung around, glared at the windowless rock walls, listening to the sound of urgent talking fade down the passage. He raked his hand angrily over his hair, frustration burning through his blood, and he swore again. He felt as though he’d entered some kind of surreal universe, being trapped in a cave room by a woman and a motley assortment of kids and adults with guns.

  He could break down the door, do something rash, which was what he was pumping to do right now, but he had little doubt that that trigger-happy Molly kid would blow him apart with that twelve-gauge before he was out.

  Maybe henchmen arriving would be a good thing.

  * * *

  There was better reception in the kitchen where the radio could pick up waves through the windows from the portable repeater June had rigged up outside.

  “June to Davis. Can you repeat? What’s going on?” June released the key, tension winding tight in the kitchen. She glanced at the others gathered around her.

  The radio crackled to life. “Davis to safe house. Five armed henchmen combing the woods.” He spoke quietly, as if he wasn’t far from the men.

  “They came close to the crevasse entrance but veered south before discovering it. I followed them for about two miles. They’re actively searching for something with hunting spots—all are armed. Are you getting this, June?”

  “Loud and clear. Go on, Davis,” June said, releasing the key again.

  “I heard one say something about a mole on the inside and that they were waiting for the mole to make contact.”

  Ice shot down June’s spine. She keyed the radio.

  “Are you sure?”

  “That’s what it sounded like. Over.”

  “Are they still moving south, away from the tunnel entrance?”

  “Yes.”

  “Go back and guard the tunnel entrance, Davis. I’ll send someone to relieve you in an hour. Copy?”

  “Copy.”

  Molly’s eyes were huge. “Do you want me to go relieve him? I’ll go now.”

  “You need sleep,” June said crisply.

  “Sleep—are you crazy? With them out there?” She flung her arm out in the direction of the hill.