by Mary Stone
Widening his smile, he offered her a nod of understanding. “Well, how about you give me a rundown of what type of system you’re using now, and I can see if there is a security gap that we can close up for you. Can’t be too careful nowadays.”
As Dana Young fixed her dark eyes on him, he wondered for a split-second if he had gone too far. If she grew suspicious, he had to be able to concoct a believable explanation for his curiosity.
The hint of annoyance that passed over her face was more of a relief than a deterrent. If she was annoyed, then Will’s act was working.
Smiling politely, she shook her head. “We already have mobile monitoring with our system. We have an app that we can use to set the alarms if we’re away, and we have a couple cameras.” She stepped forward and gestured to a motion sensor light above the door, and he noted a popular security company logo secured to its side. “That’s one of them, actually. We can see the footage on our phones when we aren’t home. Helps us keep an eye on the kids too.”
He’d already spotted the camera, but he wasn’t worried about it showing his face. This footage would all be erased within the hour, Jaime had assured him. Will didn’t know how that would happen, but if Jaime said it would, he believed him.
With what he hoped was a good-natured chuckle, Will nodded his understanding, then stopped himself. He was nodding too much. “Of course. I’ve got a daughter of my own. She’s not quite walking yet, but still. I get it.”
Every word was a lie, but the tale rolled effortlessly off Will’s tongue.
There’s a reason I’m here, he reminded himself.
Dana Young’s smile looked genuine this time. “Then I’m sure you understand how expensive children are. My husband and I are still paying off student loan debt from over a decade ago, so I hope you’ll understand that we can’t exactly afford to install a new security system when our current one is working just fine.”
Reaching into the breast pocket of his stolen uniform, Will retrieved a business card. “Of course. I completely understand.” Will held out the card he’d taken from the alarm technician’s vehicle. “Well, thanks for your time, Dana. I appreciate you answering the door today. If you change your mind or if you have any questions, just give us a ring.”
Her smile faltered, her arms coming up to cross over her chest. “How’d you know my name?”
Shit.
A real salesperson would never call a potential client by her first name, which was what had triggered her suspicious question. It was a rookie mistake. Will wouldn’t let himself devolve into a bumbling idiot, not when his interaction had gone so smoothly. He now knew to expect security cameras, motion sensor lights, and remote monitoring. If he let the façade slip now, he risked ruining everything he and Jaime had worked toward over the last few months.
Clearing his throat, he offered her a sheepish smile. “From physical phone books and online searches. It’s where we get information for sales visits like this. I assure you that our company didn’t buy your information or anything like that.”
Her lips formed an “o” as her arms dropped to cover her middle, her guard dropping with the movement, but not enough for him to ask about stepping in the house to see the current system. “I see,” she said. “Okay, then. Have a good night, Jared. Thanks for stopping by.” The smile returned to her face as she accepted the handshake he offered.
Her hand was damp. Nervous. Had some primary self-defense mechanism inside her sensed the werewolf at her door?
I’ll huff and I’ll puff…
Will smiled as he walked back to the van. Disaster had loomed close by, but Will was proud of how well he’d thought on his feet, exactly like Jaime’d taught him. He’d maintained his cover, got some crucial information. Not all the information he’d wanted, but enough to not feel like a complete failure.
When his mind turned back to the wide-eyed girl who’d answered the door, however, he felt the start of a pit in his stomach.
Clenching his jaw, he shook his head as he pulled open the door to the van. He couldn’t think about what he had to do. Not now. He was certain he would pull through when the time came to punish the sinners.
He began to whistle as he turned the key in the ignition. “The End” by Jim Morrison just about sprang from his lips.
The end of what? The question arose unbidden in his mind.
These sinners, of course. Sinners like that little girl, and the sin-filled woman she would never become. The end of their way of life.
This was for the good, he reminded himself. For good. For God.
Peace filled him again, and Will was smiling by the time he pulled to the end of the street. His reconnaissance may not have been as successful as he’d hoped, but one way or another, he would prove to Jaime that he was worthy of their sacred mission.
Later that night, he would make up for his failure.
17
Though Winter didn’t work in a field or on a construction site, and even though she’d spent the bulk of her day inside the FBI office, a shower at the end of a long workday still felt divine. And as much as she enjoyed showering with Noah, there was something to be said for not being forced to share the hot water with a six-foot-four man who was built like a linebacker.
Maybe someday, they’d live in a place that had one of the wide showerheads that pointed straight down. Until then, Winter would enjoy her solo showers when she had the opportunity.
Noah had offered to cook them dinner that night, and when he’d left to go to the store, Winter decided to pass the time with a relaxing hot shower. She’d entertained the idea of a bath, but she hadn’t indulged herself with a tub soak in years, and she wasn’t compelled to put forth the effort.
Humming the tune of a song Autumn had introduced her to during their most recent visit to The Lift, Winter rinsed the conditioner from her long hair as she let her mind go blank.
Well, she tried to let her mind go blank. But no matter the effort she used to push the thoughts from her head, her brain kept taking her back to the newest revelation in their case.
Charles Manson had been in and out of prison ever since he was a teenager, and his activities before and after the Tate murders were well documented. How, then, could the FBI and the Danville Police Department have missed a figure as menacing and conniving as Manson had once been?
Aiden’s got his work cut out for him on this case, she thought. Maybe the time had finally come for them to enlist the help of Autumn and her firm.
Their suspect had to have a history of brushes with the law, or at least a history of associating with those who had criminal records of their own. Who were they? Were they just some unassuming civilian, or were they someone who held a position of power—someone like Cameron Arkwell? Was their lofty social status the reason they preferred to operate behind the scenes?
The infamous cult leader behind the Jonestown Massacre had presented himself as a civil rights leader in the beginning. It wasn’t until after over nine hundred people had willingly died at Jim Jones’s urgings that the truth of his mania came out.
Both men had been sick, along with those who followed them.
The idea that the sick mind behind the deaths of the many innocent people in the Danville mall was still hiding in plain sight was more unnerving than the prospect of a distant armored compound.
Winter was unnerved. What if the maniac hiding in plain sight now was the brother she once loved?
Still loved?
Would always love?
She shivered under the warmth of the water. She didn’t know. God help her, she didn’t know.
As she turned off the water, Winter mentally scolded herself. The FBI was doing all it could to uncover the identity of the supposed ringleader, and she wouldn’t advance their search by needlessly stressing herself over the details.
Ava Welford was a tenured agent in the Cyber Crimes Division, and her expertise combined with Ryan O’Connelly’s experience in the criminal underworld would undoubtedly point them in the right direc
tion.
The world wasn’t the same place it had been in the days of Charles Manson and Jim Jones. Advances in technology, coupled with the advances in investigatory techniques made deranged men like Manson and Jones easier to spot than ever.
Jones and Manson had been active in the days before the Behavioral Analysis Unit was formed, before the age of the internet, and before the massive criminal databases that catalogued offenders of all shapes and sizes.
Feeling a bit more relaxed, Winter wrapped her hair in a towel before she dressed in a t-shirt and capri sweatpants. Once she finished combing her hair, she flicked off the bathroom light, padded over to her bed, and flopped down onto the plush mattress. Most of Noah’s furniture was of higher quality than hers, but she maintained that her bed was far more comfortable.
With a slight smile at the thought of the time they’d spent together in his bed, she grabbed her phone off the nightstand. Noah’s message to tell her he was on his way back from the store had been received only five minutes ago, but her eyes were drawn to the email notification in the corner of the screen.
As if her heart knew something her brain didn’t, it started beating harder as she pulled up the email app and squinted at the subject line, or the lack thereof. She didn’t recognize the address or the domain, and she immediately suspected that the message had been sent from a disposable account.
She’d learned from Ryan and Ava that hackers and other shady characters used disposable email domains to route messages to their primary email, as well as to send messages that couldn’t be traced back to them. Once the message was sent, the email account disappeared.
She assumed at first that the email had been sent by a scammer in an effort to trick her into entering her credit card or social security number, but the message made no such request.
“No subject,” she murmured to herself. As she tapped on the message, she half-expected her phone to be taken over by an advanced virus that had somehow defied all the safeguards she kept in place.
Hello, Winter. It’s been a few months since we’ve talked. You might not remember me, but I sure remember you. I’ll see you soon, sis.
As she took in a sharp breath, she felt like her brain had left her body in those few seconds. At the bottom of the cryptic message, a link had been pasted. She knew better than to follow links from strange emails, but the sender had referred to her as sis. There was only one person on the planet who referred to her that way.
Before she could second-guess the wisdom of the decision, she tapped the blue hyperlink.
The webpage was bare bones, and she was reminded briefly of the appearance of the forums that Ryan frequented on the dark web.
As her gaze settled on the photo that took up the body of the post, her jaw went slack and her heart pounded in her ears.
A black cat firework.
The same firework that had been stuffed into a handful of dead rats that Justin had left behind in their childhood home in Harrisonburg. The same firework he’d thrown at her on the Fourth of July before their parents had been killed and he had been kidnapped.
The only people who knew the significance of the firework were those who worked for the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Stella Norcott, one of the bureau’s lead ballistics experts, Autumn, Aiden, and Noah. They were the only ones who knew about the summertime prank in which Justin had thrown black cats at Winter’s feet.
And, of course, Justin. Her baby brother.
The baby who wasn’t a baby anymore.
Maybe wasn’t even human. More a monster?
Winter wasn’t sure how long she laid at the foot of the bed, her stare fixed unerringly on the screen of her phone. If it hadn’t been for the light knock followed by the creak of the front door swinging open, she might have held the position for the remainder of the night.
“It’s me.” Noah’s voice jerked her back to reality.
With a start, Winter sat bolt upright before she all but leapt to her feet, the towel that had been wrapped around her head falling to the floor. Her pulse rushed through her ears as the cold creep of adrenaline nestled in beside her heart.
Noah hadn’t scared her. She knew it was him and knew he was coming back.
It was the message, the sudden need to hide it, keep it all to herself that had her so shook.
Six months ago, she would have been inclined to keep the bizarre message to herself for fear that Noah would fret over her mental wellbeing. Back then, she’d been so fixated on a bizarre vision she’d had of Aiden saying “trust no one” that she’d been inclined to follow his words to the letter.
Now, after all she and Noah had been through together, she realized the value of his emotional support. In a way, he and Autumn both kept her tethered to reality when her past reared its ugly head.
Slipping in to a robe and brushing the damp strands of hair over her shoulder, she hurried down the hall to the living room and the front door. She loved him. More than that, she trusted him and could rely on him, both physically and emotionally. She wouldn’t hold this message from him for even a second.
Noah’s green eyes went wide as he spotted the panic that was undoubtedly etched across her face. “Whoa, are you all right, sweetheart?”
Winter opened her mouth to respond, but she wasn’t sure how to answer the simple question. “I…I think so, yeah. But, well, no. Not really. Yes and no?” She blew out a long, frustrated breath. “Is that a real answer?”
He stepped out of his shoes before wrapping an arm around her shoulders, pulling her into his warmth. “Kind of. It’s okay, though. It was a stupid question. What happened?”
She allowed him to lead her into the kitchen and settle her into a chair. After he set the reusable grocery bags on the counter, she shoved the phone in his face.
The light from the screen glinted off the whites of his eyes as he scanned the message. “Sis? Is this…?” He left the question unfinished as his gaze met hers.
With a quick nod, she tapped the link to display the photo of the firework. “It says to check back in a few days.”
Noah sucked in a breath through his teeth. “Jesus, a black cat? That’s…that’s really him then, isn’t it?”
Winter nodded. “It has to be. Stella, Aiden, and Autumn are the only others who know about the black cats.”
Leaning against the counter, he combed a hand through his dark hair. “Shit. You’re going to take it to Agent Welford, right?”
Winter closed the email and locked the screen, pushing the phone across the counter. “Yeah. But with this investigation taking off, I doubt she’ll have time to look into it anytime soon.”
Noah draped an arm around her shoulders to pull her into an embrace. As she let herself meld into the safety of his arms, the rush of adrenaline started to recede, leaving her physically and mentally exhausted. “What do you think he means by ‘check back in a few days?’”
“Hard to say, darlin’. Maybe it means that he’s finally ready to talk to you.”
Winter tightened her grip around him. “Wouldn’t it be nice if it was that easy?”
Though Noah’s suggestion made logical sense, part of Winter knew that being reunited with her little brother would be anything but easy. In fact, just thinking of him felt like a raging storm coming at her from a distance.
She closed her eyes against the thought that had been coming to her for days. Weeks. Months.
Justin was a storm.
And he was baring down on her.
18
Once the security salesman left, Mariah Young’s evening went back to the same school night routine she and her older sister, Sadie, had come to expect. After Mariah and Sadie finished their homework, they each completed their daily chores, and then they sat down to watch television and play video games.
Today had been Mariah’s P.E. day at school, and all she wanted to do was curl up in the corner of the couch to watch Supernatural. Mariah’s mom and dad had told her that the show was for older kids, but they liked it
too, so they let her and Sadie watch the episodes on Netflix. Mariah thought they were just glad that she and Sadie had grown out of all their kids’ shows, though they still watched SpongeBob and Pokémon.
Earlier that week, Mariah had learned that Pokémon wasn’t even technically a cartoon. Since it was written and drawn in Japan, it was an anime show. The new, unfamiliar term had made her feel very grown up whenever it left her lips.
Mariah had always liked the characters’ big eyes and colorful hair better than American cartoons, anyway. There were other anime shows on Netflix, but she and Sadie hadn’t watched any of them yet.
As Mariah pulled a super soft microfiber blanket up to her chin, Sadie flashed her a questioning glance. “What do you want to watch, Ry?”
From beneath the blanket, Mariah shrugged. Other than their mom and dad, Sadie was the only one who called her Ry anymore. “We can watch whatever, just not any more of that stupid show about the guy who’s always trying to show off how macho he is.”
With a giggle, Sadie nodded and flicked on the television. “That show is stupid.”
When Mariah was younger, she and Sadie used to fight like cats and dogs. They’d always bicker over whose shows were for babies, or who should get the honor of being player one in Mario.
Their rooms upstairs were right next to one another, and they wouldn’t hesitate to bang on the walls when they heard even a murmur of noise. Their parents said that the arguing drove them insane, and a couple times, they’d even made Mariah and Sadie sit down on the couch to hold hands after they’d gotten into a fight.
But ever since Mom and Sadie went to the Riverside Mall that night, things had changed.
Mom, Dad, and Sadie’s teachers called it trauma. Even now, close to a year afterwards, Sadie still went to see her counselor every week.
At first, Mariah had been jealous that Sadie got to go hang out with a cool lady and drink a soda each Wednesday, and she’d pestered her mom to let her see a counselor too. Then, one time, Mom had let Mariah go with Sadie to see her counselor.