“Darcy, honey, I’m dying. We both know that,” Louise said, her shoulders shuddering on a cough. “But before I go I have to tell you something that I’ve been carrying around since the day you came into my life.”
At that Darcy stilled, a knot settling in her stomach even as she tried to logically explain away the feeling. The doctors had warned her that the high-octane narcotics could cause erratic behavior. “What are you talking about?” she asked. “In the overall scheme of things, I’m sure it’s not as big as you think it is.”
“Darcy, listen, damn it.”
Her mother never cursed. “What’s wrong?” Darcy asked, settling to meet her mother’s stare.
A single tear oozed out from the corner of Louise’s eye, and she appeared to sag into the mattress a little farther, but she rallied with a brief show of strength as she clasped Darcy’s hand. “There’s a picture in my jewelry box,” she started, and Darcy shook her head.
“Mom, I’ve been in your jewelry box a thousand times. There’s no picture,” she said.
“There’s a false bottom. Open it and bring it to me.”
Darcy gaped. A false bottom? That unsettled feeling returned with a vengeance. Her mother was not the sort to hide things in secret. She’d been a PTA mom, for crying out loud. She’d baked cupcakes and cookies for bake sales and had volunteered on the safety patrol. She wasn’t the kind of woman who harbored secrets. Yet, here she was, knocking on the bottom drawer to find, yes indeed, it had a false bottom. She gave a gentle tug and the top popped up, revealing a single photograph, aged and yellowed, of a beautiful woman. She flipped it over, but there was nothing written on the back. She returned to her mother. “Is this it?” she asked quizzically, handing the photo to Louise.
Her mother took the photo and stared, her eyes filling. She passed a shaky hand over the image of the smiling young woman, and she closed her eyes, as if seeing the photo brought back painful memories.
“Who is she?” Darcy asked. What was going on? Wasn’t there enough tragedy in the Craven household without the added burden of some secret that she was fairly certain she didn’t want to know? She maintained a façade of calm, but inside she felt nauseous.
“Your biological mother,” Louise answered, that single admission kicking the bottom out from Darcy’s world as if the only mother she’d ever known dying from cancer wasn’t a big enough blow. “I’m sorry…you were never supposed to find out this way but there’s power in knowledge, and my darling sweet girl, you’re going to need all the power you can muster to stand up to that man.”
“What man?” Darcy asked hollowly, her bewilderment giving way to shock. “What are you talking about? You’re my mother. I don’t even look like her. This is crazy talk—”
“There isn’t a lot of time,” Louise cut in, yet was stopped short as a racking cough stole the air from her lungs. Darcy helped her drink some water, but it was several moments before Louise could speak again. Darcy’s thoughts were spun out on a surreal setting. Surely this was happening to someone else, not her.
“Darcy, your mother was a good friend of mine even though I was a bit older than she was. Her name was Catherine. She got pregnant at seventeen and entrusted you with me when she had to run. At first I thought she would return, but as the years went on, I realized she wasn’t coming back. I raised you as my own, and I couldn’t love you more than if I gave birth to you myself.” Louise’s weak grip on Darcy’s hand tightened and Darcy knew her mother wouldn’t lie. Still, it was a lot to take in and, frankly, Darcy was not above wanting to shut it all out and forget she’d ever heard it. “There’s more,” Louise said, the urgency returning to her voice. “Your mother was involved with a very dangerous man. And he’s only gotten more influential as time has passed. You might’ve heard of him. His name is Samuel Grayson.”
Darcy startled, the name jumping out at her from a recent news story on rising cult leaders. “That’s the man who’s running that town outside Laramie? The one who claims he’s found the secret to running a perfect society? He’s a nut,” she said, horrified.
Louise agreed with a weak nod. “The very same. He’s got a whole town of followers now, and there’s no stopping him when he’s got something in his sights. And I’m afraid for you.”
“Why? Does he even know about me?”
“I don’t know,” Louise admitted, a shudder wheezing from her frail chest. “But I couldn’t let you face the future without knowing. There’s a possibility…that he may have done something to Catherine.”
“How do you know?”
“I haven’t heard from her in a long time, years, actually.”
Darcy swallowed. “You…had contact with her?”
“Not truly, honey. A postcard here and there. Just something to let me know she was all right. I never had an address or a phone number. She was scared that if she was too close to you, he’d find you. She loved you so much, she wanted to make sure you were always safe. But the last postcard came years ago. I’m afraid something happened to her, and the only person who would’ve had reason to hurt her was Samuel Grayson. You have to promise me you’ll stay away from that man. He’s evil.”
Darcy nodded. At that moment she’d have agreed to anything to ease the torment in her mother’s eyes. That was two days ago. And her mother was gone. She was alone.
Something toxic burned in Darcy’s chest—a combustible mixture that was equal parts rage and grief with a healthy dose of insatiable need to know the truth about her mother—and she knew she’d lied to Louise.
She had to know where her mother was, had to know if she was safe and she had to know what part Samuel Grayson played in this whole twisted drama that had somehow attached itself to her formerly happy life.
Darcy wanted answers—and nothing was going to stop her.
She shifted in her coach-class airplane seat, wishing she’d had the extra money to spring for at least the business class to accommodate her long legs, but pushed her discomfort aside to take in every detail of her birth mother, Catherine. Even though the picture was more than twenty-two years old, Darcy could tell her mother had been beautiful. If only she’d inherited her fine bone structure, she lamented privately. The only physical attribute she seemed to have been gifted with of her mother’s was her blue eyes. She lightly traced a finger down the curve of her mother’s cheek, wondering what she’d been thinking when the picture was taken. How had Catherine gotten mixed up with someone like Samuel Grayson? Darcy had unearthed a few news articles on the man. On the surface, he seemed legit, but the cultlike following creeped her out. According to the news clippings, Cold Plains was his utopia. Except everyone knew a utopia was an illusion, so how did Samuel keep everyone happy and playing along? It smacked of an M. Night Shyamalan movie. Where was the freaky twist?
Darcy closed her eyes and tried not to let the grief that hovered on the edges of her sanity creep in. She couldn’t lose focus. Any semblance of a normal life had shattered when Louise had dropped her bombshell. And, if the truth were known, chasing after answers kept her from acknowledging her bone-deep grief over Louise’s death. It was too soon, too quick. They’d had no time to prepare. The cancer had moved in quickly, without mercy. Before they’d known it, Louise had been given a death sentence. In spite of her closed eyes, a trail of moisture leaked from them, and she wiped it away on her sleeve.
“Are you okay, honey?” the woman next to her asked, a kind expression on her middle-aged face. “I have some tissues if you need some.”
Darcy smiled at the kindness. “Thank you. I’m all right. I’m just tired. Stuff’s getting to me, I guess.”
“Might help if you talk about it. I’m a good listener.”
Darcy withheld a sigh. It was a nice offer, but it wasn’t as if she could actually share what was going on in her life. She smiled briefly to let the woman know the offer was appreciated but gave a little shake of her head, murmuring her decline.
The woman nodded and let her be. Darcy was thankful for
the window seat. At least she could watch the states go by in shades of green, gold and blue as she flew from her cozy world, where everything had once made sense, to her new existence, where danger lurked side by side by the secrets she felt compelled to uncover.
Likely, it was stupid—reckless even—and the very thing Louise had cautioned her against.
But she couldn’t stop herself. Maybe there was a slim chance that Catherine was still alive and Darcy could help her.
Then again, maybe Catherine was dead, and Darcy was heading straight into the arms of the man who’d snuffed out her life.
It was a cruel coin flip of possibility.
But she wasn’t turning back. Hell no, she wasn’t turning back.
Chapter 3
Rafe’s smile faded as soon as his last patient walked out the door and climbed into his car, his attention riveted to the man waiting patiently, a seemingly placid expression on his otherwise rugged face.
Rafe locked the door and flipped the sign that said his little practice was closed for the evening, and any emergencies should be directed to the urgent-care clinic. “Any news?” he asked, but by the grim tensing of the man’s mouth, Rafe had his answer. “He’s here. I know it. That sonofabitch has my son somewhere in this little creepshow of a town, and it’s killing me that I’ve been unable to find out where.”
“Keep your voice down,” Hawk Bledsoe, an FBI agent who’d grown up in Cold Plains before it became the stomping ground of Samuel Grayson, the man Rafe was sure had Devin hidden somewhere, warned. “You know it’s not safe to go running your mouth without consequence. I came to tell you there’s someone new in town, and I think as soon as Grayson takes a look at her, he’s going to be on her like stink on crap to recruit her as one of his breeders.”
Rafe grimaced at the crude term that had sprung up at the realization that Grayson fancied himself a matchmaker of sorts and always sought out the best-looking candidates to match up in the hopes that their progeny was equally perfect aesthetically.
“Not my problem,” Rafe said, hating himself for being such a cold bastard, but if he worried about every single person who stumbled into Grayson’s clutches, he’d go insane. He was here for one reason: to find Devin and then get the hell out.
But in the meantime, he had to play the game. He’d shown up in Cold Plains three months ago, pretending to want to relocate to the picturesque town, even going so far as to appear interested in the ridiculous garbage Grayson preached every day in his seminars—all in the name of finding his son.
It hadn’t been as easy as he’d thought when he first started. He figured someone was bound to talk eventually, but Grayson ruled with an iron fist and fear rode shotgun with these people. So far, he’d gotten nowhere. When he discovered that Bledsoe was an undercover FBI agent, he’d been relieved to find someone who wasn’t drinking the crazy juice, but thus far, even Bledsoe had come up empty.
“She’s young and she needs a job,” Bledsoe continued as if Rafe hadn’t spoken. “Don’t you need a receptionist to handle your phones?”
“I hadn’t planned on staying this long,” Rafe grumbled, not exactly answering but not denying it, either. True, he was running himself a bit ragged trying to keep his office as self-sufficient as possible, not because he was a control freak, but rather, he needed to be able to trust the people he worked with, and frankly, trust was in short supply in this town.
“How do we even know she’s not a Devotee?” Rafe asked, referencing the people who followed Samuel Grayson, marching along like good soldiers in Grayson’s utopian army.
“We don’t. But this could be a good way to gain some additional insight if she is. If she’s not, think of it as good karma points.”
Rafe looked away, caught between his urge to protect an innocent person and keep a healthy distance away from anything that might distract him from finding Devin. “How do you know she needs a job?”
“She arrived yesterday. She’s staying at the hotel and I heard through the grapevine that she’s asking around to see if anyone’s hiring. I’ll make it known to her that you’re looking for a receptionist. Do me a favor and hire her. Do yourself a favor and hire her. You’re looking a little frayed around the edges, and you need to stay sharp in this shark tank or you’ll get eaten.”
Rafe nodded wearily and rubbed at his eyes. “Right. So, still nothing out there about Devin?”
“Not a word. But someone knows something. They’re just scared to talk. We’ll find him,” Bledsoe assured him, and Rafe tried to take comfort in the fact that he wasn’t searching alone, but he was no closer to the truth than he was when he’d stepped foot in this town.
Sure, on the surface, Cold Plains looked like a dream come true, the perfect place to settle down and raise kids, but if you scratched the surface of that perfect veneer, a whole lot of what-the?-Oh-my-God appeared like dirty bubbles in a stagnant pond.
“Maybe we ought to call in reinforcements, you know? Tell the feds what you know so far… Maybe it’s enough for an indictment.”
Bledsoe shook his head, the motion definitive. “No. We’ve got smoke and mirrors when it comes to Grayson. He’s popped out of worse, smelling like a rose. He lets others take the fall and then walks away. If we go off half-cocked out of fear and desperation, it’ll end badly for everyone. And trust me, the man is not only slippery but dangerous. It wouldn’t surprise me if he were to pull the plug on everyone, going down in grand, Waco, Texas, style. We don’t want to add to the body count. Stay the course. We’ll get him. But in the meantime, just chill and keep doing what you’re doing. Grayson likes you. He thinks you’re getting ready to pledge. That’s good. His guard will be down. Eventually something will slip. That’s when we’ll find what we’re looking for—evidence to take him down—and your son.”
Rafe swallowed his emotions. His son. Was he even still alive? Every child he saw on the street that was the same age as his son at this point made him do a double take and wonder. He didn’t put it past Grayson to have a child killed—the man had no soul—but Grayson did everything for a purpose. So if Devin was still alive, it was for a reason. And it might be desperate, wishful thinking, but he knew in his heart that Devin was alive somewhere—or maybe it was just that he had to believe that or go crazy.
Darcy had never seen a cleaner street. Usually even the nicest cities and towns had little bits of trash that the street sweeper missed, but not Cold Plains. The dark asphalt looked fresh, newly poured, and the crosswalk paint fairly gleamed. It was as if trash wasn’t allowed and anyone who had the audacity to carelessly litter was vigorously dealt with. Darcy shuddered at what her imagination conjured. She’d done a fair amount of homework on Samuel Grayson and Cold Plains before she’d purchased her plane ticket, but there hadn’t been a whole lot out there. A Google search had pulled up some historic photos of the town when it was merely a spot in the road, a trading outpost really, and she’d managed to find a few street views from the Google maps, but the town had maintained a rural atmosphere. Certainly charming to the eye at first glance, she thought wistfully. Too bad there was something rotten in Denmark. She adjusted her purse, where her mother’s picture lay tucked in her wallet, and set out to wander around, looking every bit the happy-go-lucky tourist.
Somewhere, a deep resonant bonging startled her, and she realized the noise was coming from an impressive three-story building of marble and glass, directly ahead on the main street. A man must’ve noticed her shock and confusion, because he tapped her on the shoulder with a warm smile. “New to Cold Plains?” the man asked.
“Oh, uh, yes, actually. What’s going on?” She motioned to the people starting to file toward the building.
A smile wreathed the man’s face. “It’s time for the noon session. You’re in for a real treat. Do you believe in fate?”
No. Not really. “A little, I think,” she lied, curious to see where this fruitloop was headed. “Why?”
“Because fate brought you to Cold Plains. And now you�
��ll find out why. Come.” He held his hand out to her, and she wondered if this was how the victims of Jim Jones fell under his charm. All it took was one step.... Well, she was here for answers. She pasted a bright smile on her lips and accepted his hand. He grinned. “You won’t regret it. Samuel’s sessions are almost magical. So inspiring.”
Samuel Grayson… A dangerous chill touched her skin. Time to meet Daddy.
Darcy entered the community center and allowed her awe to show. “Wow, this is some fancy place for such a small town,” she said, taking in the huge fresh spray of flowers gracing the entry and the sweet fragrance they gave off. “Who pays for all this?” she wondered out loud.
“Needs are met as they are needed,” the man said by way of answer, which to Darcy’s mind wasn’t much of an answer at all. Maybe the man was a politician. He directed her to an empty seat. “Enjoy and be transformed.”
And then he melted into the crowd, which was okay by Darcy, because truthfully, the guy was creeping her out more than a little. Maybe it was because she wasn’t accustomed to such overt polite behavior from total strangers, or maybe she was just more of a city girl than a country girl and didn’t know how to react when someone wasn’t flipping her off or stealing her cab. Either way, she was happy to sit and simply observe unnoticed for the time being.
She scanned the crowd and immediately noted a striking commonality: it was the congregation of beautiful people.
Not a single unattractive person milled about. So much for diversity, she thought uneasily. It was probably an odd coincidence. How could a whole town be comprised of models?
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