“And did you ever see strangers? Did anyone from the outside ever come to Eden?”
“Not that I saw, though when there were pods, there was a lot of excitement, and then Adrian would go away for a few days.”
“Pods?”
“The children born to the women of Eden,” Sam said quietly.
Baldwin took a deep breath. “Kaylie, did you ever see any large quantities of drugs moved around the farm?”
“I don’t know.”
“The reason Doug went to Eden in the first place was that we had charged Curtis with drug possession and distribution. There was a marijuana farm next to the land Eden owned. He went to find out if Curtis was selling drugs. Did you ever hear about this?”
“Drugs? No.” Kaylie looked absolutely shocked. She dropped her legs to the floor and sat forward, all shyness forgotten. “I thought you knew. Eden wasn’t selling drugs. They were selling pods.”
Chapter
41
Near Lynchburg, Virginia
ADRIAN DIDN’T WANT to be here. He wanted to be in D.C., at the house of the doctor, planning how he was going to wrap the wire around her long, delicate stalk of a neck and rip it tight. Feel her kicking, spasmodic and faint, then drop her body on the ground and walk away. He might even get a chance at her man. His size, his strength—yes, he would be a challenge, but Adrian would best him.
And then he’d be left face-to-face with Kaylie, the one who was prophesized to ruin them all.
He could stop it. Stop their ruin, their demise. If Curtis would let him.
But Curtis had other plans. Curtis had been blessed with a great vision. Her fiery sword was sent to eliminate the last connection between them and the girl. Then, and only then, would he be allowed to follow his own rules. Make his own choices. Slip the thin wire around the doctor’s neck and make her see God.
He found himself becoming aroused, and forced the thoughts of her away.
He liked the night sounds. The chirp of the crickets and the high-pitched screech of the bats and the slither of the snakes through the soft leaves. He sat cross-legged in the woods and watched the house go to sleep. At 10:00 p.m., the target had turned off the lights downstairs, but it was past midnight now and there was still a lamp burning in the master bedroom.
He was tempted to go ahead, but with everything that was happening, the target could be prepared, waiting for him, and the last thing he needed was a gut full of shotgun pellets before he finished his job.
McDonald wasn’t going to be as easy as the others. Adrian wouldn’t be surprised if he’d been warned by now, to watch his back, shut things down. Get out of town—he certainly hadn’t listened to that warning. Not that Adrian was shocked by this. Fred McDonald wasn’t a very smart man. Cunning, yes, but he had always overestimated his own intelligence. And underestimated Adrian’s control.
He thought back to the previous day with bitterness. He’d listened to the raging wash of the waterfall and known the girl was gone. Stupid, stupid, stupid, letting her get away from him. Surely she was dead—the cliff was at least one hundred feet high, the water spilling over the edge into what looked like an eddy pool. He’d fought his way down and searched for hours, but the water had washed her away. Washed her clean.
Your sins are gone now, Kaylie. But they are not forgotten. Never forgotten.
It was his fault, and his alone. He’d taken one look at her and just like the first time he’d laid eyes on her, her glowing hair so like that of the woman he loved, he wanted to play, to pull the wings off the proverbial fly. A huge mistake, not his first with the girl. He should have knocked her on the head, gathered her up and carried her back to Eden. Where she belonged.
Where she’d still be if she hadn’t escaped with Doug.
Just thinking of him made Adrian’s stomach knot. Traitor. Stealing their finest for himself. How he’d managed it was beyond Adrian, but he had, snuck her off into the night without a backward glance, not to be heard from again until a month ago, when Adrian saw him driving down the road. What were the odds? Really? He’d followed him to the cabin. He knew where he was, and reported back to Curtis. But not before leaving his old friend a note, hammered into the wood of his bedroom door.
I’m coming for you. Don’t make me kill you. Do the right thing.
His first act of betrayal in twenty-five long years.
Curtis had been furious with him when he shared the news. Doug was dead. Kaylie, well, he didn’t know. Alive, or dead, he was without her.
Curtis knew there was one way to draw her out. Adrian had completed the task, then headed south again, to finish what he started. Even though he disagreed with Curtis’s plan.
He felt that if Kaylie was still alive, she would have gone to the doctor. He’d found the evidence in Doug’s cabin. They’d picked this woman, this stranger, to see them to the end.
But Curtis wanted all ties to Eden eliminated instead.
He knew in his core this was a grave mistake, and told her. She threatened him with eternal damnation, and instructed him to do her bidding, then return to Eden.
And in all things, the Great Mother was to be obeyed. So he marched forward, with doubt in his heart.
Adrian wasn’t a starry-eyed seventeen-year-old anymore, seduced by the power of physical love and the honeyed words of an insane succubus. He knew exactly what Eden was, exactly who Curtis was and how the group funded itself. He’d helped with the management of those funds after Curtis realized he had a facility for numbers, and he’d grown their meager savings into a little more than ten million dollars over the years.
There was no redemption for Adrian, nor did he particularly want it. He’d done awful things on his own, and worse under Curtis’s instruction. Alone, he’d been a monster. Together, the two of them became horror incarnate, creatures more evil, more depraved, than anything he would have become on his own.
And he had reveled in their glory.
Curtis had been searching for Doug and Kaylie for years—violently upset at their betrayal, wanting retribution, but continuing laser-focused on maintaining the health and harmony of the remainder of her flock. Now there would be no rest until she was back in the arms of her great Mother. This time, Curtis must be the one to steal the blood from her veins, to take the strength of the girl into her own body.
So it was written, and so it must be done.
There was one problem. And this was Adrian’s fault, his folly, his responsibility. Before Doug died, he had exposed them, which threatened the thing most sacred to Curtis.
Lauren.
Just the thought of her made him smile.
Lauren was Curtis’s daughter, and the rightful heir to Eden. Just as Curtis had taken over from Susan, her mother, when she was no longer capable of bearing children, Lauren would inherit the flock from Curtis. Lauren was the only child who was allowed to stay in Eden. She came from Curtis’s womb, which had before then been untouched by the joy of an embryo.
Lauren was perfect in all respects, a honey-haired beauty with light, cornflower-blue eyes. The only pod that really mattered.
Lauren was meant to be a mystery to them all. Curtis had managed to become pregnant without lying with Adrian, or any other of the men.
Lauren was the Immaculate. Pure, unsullied. The chosen one. It only happened once in a generation, when the great leader fell pregnant without the sperm of a mate. They were always girl children, and they were always destined to be the heir. It had been happening this way from the beginning.
Despite his deep belief in the covenants of his religion, Adrian, well schooled in biology, knew it was impossible for a female human to become pregnant without sperm.
Though it was great sacrilege, Adrian believed Lauren was not immaculate. As the great father to many of Eden’s children, he was aware of his powers of procreation, knew
how many bellies he’d caused to swell.
He knew she was his child.
He wasn’t allowed to have these thoughts, and was very careful never to give them a voice. But as Lauren grew tall and her hair became the color of wheat and her eyes took on a slightly almond shape, Adrian saw his mother in her face.
And he felt pride, for while the rest of Eden believed Curtis, believed in Lauren’s immaculate conception, he knew the truth. And with all that he was, he loved her.
Thinking of Lauren had him off track, as usual. He knew he’d fathered many, many children over the years, but he’d never seen any of them grow past the first few days of infancy.
He shook off the memories, the maudlin excuses. He had screwed up, royally, and he had to find a way to make things right. Over twenty-five years of service, with everything happening the way it was dictated by the stars and the moon and Curtis, had made him complacent, and sloppy. Doug would be his undoing.
His reverie was interrupted. The light in the bedroom went out, drawing his attention back to the house.
His pulse picked up. Two in the morning now, and the night had gone silent with its sleeping. He walked with a hunter’s stealth into the backyard, climbed over the fence. McDonald didn’t have dogs, the idiot. Dogs were the best deterrent, though Adrian knew many ways to circumvent them. A juicy steak laden with ketamine was his favorite method. He recognized the irony—humans were fair game, but he would do most anything to avoid killing an animal.
But there were no dogs here, no electronic monitoring or well-armed security system, just the peaceful certainty of a man who slept with a Remington shotgun within easy reach that he could handle any and all situations that might arise in the night.
He’d never experienced a nightmare like Adrian, though.
He was across the lawn in five short seconds, walked directly to the back door, used a simple set of lock picks to open it.
He stepped inside, testing the air, smelling, feeling, seeing, tasting, using every one of his predator’s senses to ascertain the situation.
He was in the basement. His eyes adjusted to the murky interior, and he started across the room toward the stairs. The house had three floors, and a wide, curving staircase wound to the upper floors.
He’d just put his foot on the first riser when he heard the deep, unearthly metallic clang of a shotgun jacking a shell. His body coiled and his heart nearly stopped.
“I’ve been waiting for you, you big-assed son of a bitch.”
And the man pulled the trigger.
As he fell, Adrian thought of the light that was his great Mother, and the strawberry blonde girl who had set him on the path of the damned.
Chapter
42
Washington, D.C.
THEY WERE GOING in circles, and Fletcher was getting frustrated.
Rachel Stevens had been missing for over twenty-four hours and the window to find her safe and unhurt was rapidly closing. The media firestorm was at a fever pitch. Every news station, local and national, had trucks parked across D.C.—at the snatch site, at FBI Headquarters, in the Stevenses’ neighborhood—their satellite dishes pushing constant updates into the D.C. night. Blame would be next, aspersions toward law enforcement, most of whom hadn’t slept and had barely eaten for the past day as they searched for the child.
At least they hadn’t made the connection between Kaylie Rousch and Rachel Stevens yet. That would drive them into a tsunami.
Fletcher was on his way to Bethesda again to talk with Rachel Stevens’s parents—the mother was back from her overseas assignment and Fletcher wanted a chance to go at her face-to-face—when he got the call. They had a break in the case, and he needed to get his butt back to the Hoover Building.
Fletcher dodged through the suburbs into the Washington streets, the ever-familiar white marble and snapping American flags, worrying about Sam and the Matcliff case, and about young Rachel Stevens. Worried about the case that wasn’t his, the clouded eyes of a young man, staked to a dock to drown. Worried himself right into an upset stomach, stopped and fanned the flames with a Super Big Gulp of Diet Coke. He finally had to dig some antacid tablets out of the glove box to calm things down.
He blamed it on getting older, this worrying, not being able to turn off his emotions as well as he used to. When he was on patrol, and even in the early days in homicide, he was the iceman, able to stomach the most obscene crime scenes imaginable—and in D.C., there were plenty—without a qualm.
But five or so years ago, he’d felt a change. Cases began coming home with him at night, seeping into his dreams, following him on his runs. He’d done the rational thing—too much drinking, too many affairs, a toot here or there, until his wife got fed up and left him, taking his only child with her. His ex was remarried now, and had just had twins with her new husband.
They’d patched things up recently, and that made him happy. He’d gotten himself straight, done his job with his son, refocused his attention on his career. He’d been a man about it all. But the darkness was always with him now, the edge. It wouldn’t let him forget how close he’d come to throwing it all away.
Sam Owens was the biggest reminder of them all. She got to him, the way she handled herself, her grace in the face of the abyss. She hadn’t let herself be sucked in, and damn it all, he wouldn’t, either.
God, what was he going to do when he was homicide lieutenant? He was turning into a full-blown mother hen. Maybe that’s why Armstrong had tapped him. He knew things had changed and Fletcher was going to be a little more attentive to those around him.
Traffic was terrible—the Redskins had a preseason game—but he barreled through, his spinning light and wailing siren forcing cars to the side of the street. He finally made it up Pennsylvania Avenue, parked and rushed into the Hoover Building just in time for his second briefing of the day on the missing girl.
Agent Blake met him in the lobby, clearly excited. She hurried him through the check-in process but wouldn’t tell him what was going on, just said there was a development.
The word hung heavy in the air. He knew the tiniest bit of intelligence could alter the direction of an investigation, and hoped this was good news.
The conference room she took him to this time was on another floor, and it wasn’t quiet and calm, but frenetic. There were several screens on the walls—aerial topographic maps, what he thought must be video camera footage from the snatch site. A close-up shot of a footprint in cement and a cigarette butt. A large photograph of Rachel Stevens on her last birthday, the most recent full-frontal shot her parents had. Agents and techs flowed in and out of the room. They were in constant contact with Thurber, who, despite John Baldwin’s dictate, was back on the case and parked at the Stevens house.
They sat Fletcher at the table and shoved a stack of photographs in front of him. Blake crossed her arms and said, “Detective Fletcher, do you recognize this man?”
He flipped through them. The photos weren’t the highest quality, and he had to squint to make out the man who was circled in red. He was a male Caucasian with a broad face, buzz-cut blond hair and light eyes. He wasn’t fully facing the camera, but Fletcher didn’t recognize him, said so. Blake plopped another photo down.
“You sure?”
This one was clearer, face-front. It was black-and-white, clearly taken many years earlier. The picture gave a sense of the man’s stature—he was big. Really big.
Something tickled the back of Fletcher’s brain. “Wait a minute. He does look familiar. I think I questioned this guy years ago. He was loitering around the homeless down by Whitehurst. There’d been some disappearances, and we were watching the area closely. He seemed to be around a lot. Homeless said he was a high school kid who brought them food and blankets, but I thought he was shifty. Is this our suspect? Who is he?”
“Your file says his name is A
drian Zamyatin.”
“Another one of the names in Matcliff’s will.”
“Right you are. He also seems to be a rather prolific serial killer who’s managed to stay under the radar for a very, very long time. Detective Davidson sent this—” She set a picture from a home security camera in front of him, time-stamped the previous afternoon. “It’s from Ellie Scarron’s house. They believe he was her attacker. We ran it through the NGI facial recognition system, and it spit out a match. When we entered his name into our national crimes database, we found your old case file.”
“Lucky I took good notes back then.”
“No kidding.” Jordan swooped her hair back from her face into a ponytail. The formal attitude relaxed. “So we’ve put everything into ViCAP, right? Nothing pops. Then we started adding in the other geographical areas where the Eden NRM settled over the years. Bam. The computer pegged a very troubling scenario that matches our earlier assumptions. Not only is there a girl missing from each of these towns, but there’s a series of unsolved murders in each, as well.”
“Nice job. How many are we talking?”
“We’ve managed to tie twenty together so far, and those are just the cities who’ve entered their case data into ViCAP. There could be more.”
Fletcher let that sink in, whistled softly. “Seems our Adrian Zamyatin gets around. Have you told Dr. Baldwin about this?”
“Oh, yes. He called a bit ago. We’ve confirmed this man was a part of Eden. An integral part.”
“How did you confirm this?”
“Your friend Sam’s been entertaining Kaylie Rousch for the past hour.”
Fletcher sat back in his chair. “Man, I miss all the fun. When’d she show up?”
And why hadn’t Sam called him? Why had she gone straight to John Baldwin, profiler extraordinaire?
When Shadows Fall Page 21