It is not your time to die yet, granddaughter.
The words make Cara colder than the ice around her: equal blessing and curse.
You have protected the canyon. You have the thanks of the First People.
Beneath the rush of pride and gratitude, Cara understands that there is an ultimatum coming.
But you cannot stay here. Here is no longer safe for you. And it is not your land.
Cara knows this is true, and fair. But the fear of what is outside, waiting for her, is almost too much to bear.
The goddess’s voice is implacable.
The white rapists are in charge now. They are raping the Mother, and all the mothers, and all the daughters. They are raping the land. They are raping the planet. All of us. All of us.
There is wetness on Cara’s cheeks, on her throat.
“I can’t. Grandmother, I can’t—”
Listen. I will tell you what may be.
Cara swallows, silences herself. The tiny, magnificent being continues.
A woman can put a stop to the Great Pretender. A woman who wears the white man’s skin. Who can walk the corridors of power.
Cara struggles to understand, struggles to answer with her mind.
But how can I? When everyone knows my name—
Do not think, Spider Grandmother orders. Listen. You will know when you know. They have woven a web. Cut one thread and the whole will unravel.
The old woman’s eyes are bottomless, shining like obsidian.
The young are rising up. You must not fail them.
Cara gasps as the pile of corpses in the corner suddenly moves.
The hunter on top is still alive.
The old woman goes over to him and kicks him viciously, then grabs his arm. Cara can hear bones snap as the shoulder breaks from the ancient one’s sheer, unthinking strength. She extends his arm to Cara.
Take his hand.
Cara flinches back.
Take it. You must read the secrets of the Glittering box. You will need what is inside.
In some part of her mind, Cara knows what she is saying. As long as the hunter is alive, she can use his thumb to unlock his phone.
She struggles to her feet. The furs fall away and she realizes that underneath them she is wearing a hunter’s parka.
The pockets are heavy, and when she slides her hand into the right one, she finds a phone inside.
She approaches the pile of bodies on shaking legs, and kneels beside it.
The hunter on top is nearly blue with cold, more corpse than human, but she can see his lips move in a shallow breath.
She reaches for his arm, grasps his hand, uses his thumb on the Home button.
Then she drops the almost-dead arm and scrambles backward in the snow, away from the bones and corpses.
She looks down at the unlocked phone. And taps the Settings button to remove all security.
Chapter Forty-Four
Roarke jolted awake.
His dream slipped away from him like a wave retreating on sand. He kept his eyes shut and reached for it with his mind.
His first thought was Mother Doctor. Some warm and slightly terrifying female presence . . .
And then it was gone, replaced by awareness of cold, stiffness, a cramp in his neck. He opened his eyes. He was in the front seat of his rental SUV. Through the windshield, dawn shimmered in silver and purple over the sheer cliff wall of the San Jacinto/Santa Rosa range.
He sat up gingerly, feeling every muscle in his body complain. He’d slept in the car, down the street from Ortiz’s house.
Okay, this is absolutely off the rails.
But Ortiz’s SUV was still in his carport. He hadn’t gone out last night. No one had come to him.
Cara was probably safe. For now.
“Get a grip,” he told himself softly.
But he reached for his phone, checked the email inbox he’d given Parker.
His heart started to race as he saw there was an email from an account he didn’t recognize. From Ortiz. It had to be. No one else but Parker had this email address.
He clicked on it, read the terse message.
Tuesday delivery will work. Send update when package is in hand.
“When package is in hand.”
When. The rush of relief was instant.
So the bounty hunters didn’t have her yet.
And this email proved he’d scared Parker into passing off the dummy email account to Ortiz as belonging to one of the hunters.
He would see any message from Ortiz with instructions for delivery. And Singh could get to work monitoring Ortiz’s communications and tracking the hunters’ location.
And then what? his mind whispered.
He couldn’t go after her.
He couldn’t go after her.
If there was anything he knew about Cara, it was that she could take care of herself. And weirdly, the sense of danger that had gripped him for most of the day yesterday had dissipated. Maybe all it had taken was to see Ortiz for himself.
“Do your job,” he told himself softly. And like it or not, the job was in Santa Barbara. He’d let Singh do the tracking for now.
There was also the best reason for going back to Santa Barbara. Leaving meant that he wouldn’t be tempted to do something truly insane, like kill Ortiz.
It was early Saturday morning; there would be the lightest traffic he could hope for in Southern California. He could take a break somewhere along the way. There were truck stops on the 101 that had showers.
He took one more hard look at Ortiz’s house . . . then turned the key in the ignition and hit the road.
Somewhere near Riverside, he stopped for coffee and a bathroom, washed his face, and stretched his legs as he waited for a breakfast burrito.
He’d only been back on the freeway twenty minutes when his phone buzzed.
He grabbed for it, expecting Singh. But it was Epps’ voice on the other end.
“That frat boy president? Stephens? He went missing last night.”
Chapter Forty-Five
The road to the Stephens home was up the same canyon road as the route to Andrea Janovy’s. As Roarke drove past the Mission again, he found the proximity vaguely worrisome. If Topher really was missing, Roarke himself may have given Janovy and/or Bitch ammunition to go after the kid, by mentioning the KAT house to Janovy to begin with.
But that would mean Janovy had actually found something incriminating on Topher.
Following the satnav’s tinny prompting, he turned up a winding road. The Stephens home was a newish Santa Barbara mansion perched on a cliff, looming over the city. Roarke rolled up in the looped driveway and parked behind Epps’ rental car. An unmarked car, clearly a law enforcement fleet model, stuck out like a sore thumb beside a couple of gleaming luxury vehicles.
As Roarke got out of his own rental car, he checked the dummy email account again. Nothing more from Ortiz or the bounty hunters. Or from Singh.
He felt the relief of it. Then forced himself to put his anxiety for Cara out of his mind.
A housekeeper opened the front door, and Epps was right behind her to meet him. They stepped into a vast entry hall with marble floors and columns, a double curved staircase. More like a museum lobby than a private home.
Epps stepped close to Roarke, spoke quickly, low. “There’s a detective from Santa Barbara Sheriff’s CID here, too. And Sandler. He was here before I was. ‘Supporting the family,’ the man says. They called him first, then he called me, thinking he’d get you, no doubt.”
Roarke nodded. “But there’s still no ransom demand, no contact from anyone at all claiming to have abducted him?”
“Nothing. Kid didn’t show up for Mom’s birthday breakfast downtown, that’s all, and now they can’t get hold of him. Thing is, the Taus had a big blowout last night. Valentine’s Day. I don’t even want to think about the hangovers, right?” Epps shook his head. “You figure some of those clowns won’t wake up till next week. But the Stephenses are a
bout ready to call out the National Guard.”
Roarke saw his point. It didn’t make any sense.
Epps added, “I sent the Isla Vista cops over to the Tau house to make sure they didn’t clean anything up.”
“Good work.”
“Yeah, you’re welcome, but I’m standing down now. I’m sure Mom and Pop will be more comfortable talking to a—ranking agent,” Epps said, managing to keep a straight face.
Roarke caught the subtext. “That bad?”
Epps nodded silently toward a framed photo on the wall, a stock political contributor photo of a man in a power suit shaking hands with the new president. Which said it all.
“But hey. They did let me in through the front door.”
Topher’s parents were in the luxurious living room. Mr. Stephens, he of the political photo, was standing. His wife was seated on a sofa behind him. A perfectly matched couple: tailored, polished, Botoxed. The one percent. Fraternity boys and sorority girls hooked up, got married, and grew up to be this. “Consolidating the wealth” was what Janovy had said.
Kirk Sandler stood at the window, and the powerfully built Latino perched awkwardly in a too-small chair was obviously the sheriff’s detective.
All eyes turned toward the door as the agents entered.
Epps made quick introductions. “Mr. Stephens, Mrs. Stephens, Detective Huerte, this is Assistant Special Agent in Charge Roarke.”
Stephens nodded at Roarke curtly. The mother was silent and seemed out of it. Roarke took a discreet look at her eyes. Her pupils were tiny. Opiates, he’d bet. Prescription pain pills. Oxy. Percocet.
“Mr. Stephens, Mrs. Stephens, I’m sorry to have to meet under these circumstances. As Agent Epps has no doubt told you, I was on the road—”
“Can we just get to it?” Stephens’s voice was an aggrieved whine.
“Of course,” Roarke answered. “Here’s the thing. It’s still morning after what I understand was a big party last night. Yet you seem very convinced that some kind of harm has come to your son.”
“Isn’t that fucking obvious?” Stephens snarled.
Roarke was impassive. “I’m sorry, sir, but it isn’t. Your son is an adult. Technically he’s not even a missing person yet.”
Stephens flicked a hand at Epps without looking at him. “We’ve been through this with your man. Topher would never have missed his mother’s breakfast.”
This bit of hypocrisy was coming from a man who was obviously a product of a frat himself. He had either a short memory or a long history of denial. How the hell do they know he isn’t just passed out somewhere?
Stephens clearly picked up on Roarke’s skepticism. “He hasn’t called. He hasn’t responded to texts. None of his brothers—his Tau brothers—have seen him.”
“And there’s been a rash of hostage attempts in the Santa Barbara area over the last six months,” Sandler supplied.
Roarke and Epps turned to the sheriff’s CID, Detective Huerte. The detective nodded. “That’s true. But as I’ve explained to Mr. and Mrs. Stephens, this doesn’t look anything like those ransom scams. What those perps do is track their targets’ whereabouts online. When the target is out of contact for whatever reason, they call the target’s family and demand an immediate ransom. The callers sometimes represent themselves as members of a drug cartel or corrupt law enforcement. They can be very convincing. But there’ve been no phone calls here. No ransom demand.”
Roarke looked at Stephens. “That doesn’t sound related to me. So why are you so sure that it’s a hostage situation?”
Stephens bristled. Everything seemed to make this man defensive. “I didn’t say it was a hostage situation. I said foul play.”
Roarke turned to include Mrs. Stephens with his next question. “Is there a specific reason you think your son would have been targeted for ‘foul play’?”
Mrs. Stephens blinked, a small flinch. Mr. Stephens was instantly livid.
“What the hell are you implying?”
“I’m mystified that you’re jumping to the conclusion that foul play is involved. You haven’t been contacted by anyone claiming that they’ve hurt your son—”
“The timing says everything. That attack on the colleges and universities specifically targeted fraternity members. Two of the boys in the Tau house were already attacked. The way that mannequin was slashed up . . .” For the first time, Stephens faltered. “And now Topher . . .”
“But you all seem to be seeing that vandalism as having a direct relevance to your son. Why?”
Sandler broke in. “He’s the fraternity president. That alone could make him the target of retaliation for any number of slights or grudges.”
There was a vague logic to that, although something Stephens had just said bothered Roarke in a way he couldn’t put his finger on.
What he was sure of, sure enough to stake his whole reputation on, was that Stephens and Sandler knew a whole lot more about the situation than they were telling.
But he nodded, pretending to go along, and spent the next ten minutes running through the standard questions as if he really believed this bullshit. Hoping that somewhere along the line, someone would slip up and give the agents a clue to what they all were so frantic about.
“Does Topher have a girlfriend? Is he fighting with anyone? Has he received any threats? When was the last time you saw him in person?”
The answers they got back were standard, too. “No one steady for a while, now. No. No. A week ago.”
Roarke knew that the frat brothers would almost certainly have more useful details about last night and about Topher’s habits than his family would know—or admit to. But he continued on to the more emotional questions.
“What was his mood? Was he worried about anything? Anxious? Depressed?”
“You’re implying suicide now?” the father demanded, at the same time the mother lifted her chin to respond, “Of course not.”
“I wasn’t implying suicide, no. But if there is some personal issue we should know about, we’ve got a much better chance of finding your son before . . . something happens. So if there’s anything you can tell us . . .” He allowed his eyes to connect briefly with Mrs. Stephens’s gaze. “We need to know.”
“We’ve told you what we know,” Mr. Stephens said, with barely concealed rage. “Now what are you going to do?”
Roarke turned to Epps. “You have Topher’s phone numbers, his home computer, his bank account numbers?”
Epps gave him a nod.
“The Sheriff’s Department is monitoring for activity on all those accounts,” Huerte added.
Roarke saw Epps grimace. The protocols about adult missing persons never seemed to apply when the missing person was the offspring of wealthy citizens.
But Roarke nodded thanks at Huerte, swiveled back to the parents. “We’ll question everyone at the frat house, everyone who attended the party that we can find. We’ll work the house as a crime scene.”
Even as he said it, he knew how daunting the prospect was. He remembered Isla Vista parties. They were looking at potentially hundreds of attendees.
But that means someone saw something, right?
Stephens was looking at him balefully. “Get to it, then.”
The agents left the house, but Roarke stopped beside the cars in the driveway.
“Let’s wait for Huerte.”
Epps nodded, and glanced back at the house wryly. “Well, they’re lying their asses off.”
“Except for one key thing. They absolutely believe something happened to the kid.”
Epps looked at him sharply. “You think Bitch took him? Or—something?”
It was the $64,000 question.
The organization—entity—whatever you wanted to call it—had never done anything like it before. One or more of its affiliates may have committed murder—the pimp and john killings in the Bay Area and in other places around the country remained unsolved. But if Bitch had organized those killings or had anything to do with
them other than using the media to call attention to them, that link had not been proven.
Roarke shook his head. “I think if Bitch did something, we’d already know. Why would they take Stephens and not publicize it? And why him? Such a small fish in the grand scheme of things. If they were going to send a statement, wouldn’t they pick someone more high profile?”
He was thinking aloud. The truth was, he had no idea. He finished, “I’ll tell you for damn sure, though, I’m sick of everyone knowing more than we do.”
The agents turned as the front door opened and Detective Huerte came out. He moved down the steps toward the agents, and Roarke stepped forward.
“Detective Huerte, has the Sheriff’s Department received any rape complaints against Topher Stephens or the Tau house?”
Huerte glanced at Epps. “I told Agent Epps. Not that I know of. Is there something you guys know?”
“Just that there’s bound to be something,” Roarke advised him. “If you can dig deeper, that’s the place to dig.”
“I’ll get on it.”
“We’ll head over to the Tau house and check in later.”
Chapter Forty-Six
She wakes up drenched with sweat, weak from the fever. But it has broken.
The light is dim. There is no cave. There is no snow. The walls around her are wood plank, familiar.
She is in the cabin at the bottom of the canyon. In her own bed.
She sits straight up, looks quickly into the corners of the cabin. There is no pile of bodies, either.
No. Those are elsewhere. High at the top of the spire.
She goes cold with the thought of it.
Madness.
She is accustomed to signs and portents, to the physical manifestation of nature, to hidden forces given concrete form. But this . . .
She thinks of the—Dream? Encounter? Vision? Approaching it carefully in her mind, not letting the full thing in at once.
Did any of it really happen?
But at least some of it was real. She wears the hunter’s parka. And when she slips a hand into the right pocket, there is a phone. In another pocket there is a Taser. No—two of them.
It is all there. Everything but the bodies.
Hunger Moon (The Huntress/FBI Thrillers Book 5) Page 15