by B. J Daniels
“Thank you, but I need to get back to Gilt Edge,” Flint said. “What about you, Colt?”
He knew the sheriff wasn’t asking just about lunch or returning to town. “I’ll see what Lola wants to do,” he said, after taking a last look at the small unmarked grave before heading back toward the main building.
“If Lola is determined not to stay with us, I just hope she’ll get the help she needs,” Colt heard Jonas tell the sheriff. “I’m worried about her, especially after your visit. Clearly she isn’t herself.”
* * *
LOLA SHOVED AWAY the cup of tea Sister Rebecca had tried to get her to drink. She’d seen Colt and the sheriff go out to search the complex with Jonas. “I know you hid her the moment the sheriff punched the intercom at the gate. Please...” Her voice broke. “I just want to see her so I know she’s all right.”
Sister Rebecca reached over to pat her hand—and shove the tea closer with her other hand.
Lola jerked her hand back. “You can’t keep her. She’s mine.” Tears burned her eyes. “Keeping a baby from her mother...”
“You aren’t taking your medication, are you? It makes you like this. You really should take it so you’re more calm.”
“Brain-dead, you mean. Half-comatose, so I’m easy to manipulate. If you keep me drugged up, I won’t cause any trouble, right?”
“You wouldn’t have left here if you’d been taking your medication.” Sister Rebecca shook her head. “You know we were only trying to help you. I should have been the one giving you your medication instead of Sister Amelia. She let you get away with not taking it and look what’s happened to you, you poor dear.”
Lola scoffed. “As if you care. And Sister Amelia didn’t know anything about what I was doing,” she said quickly, fearing that the next beating Amelia got could kill her. “I was hiding them under my tongue until she turned away.”
The woman nodded. “Well, should you end up staying here, we won’t let that happen again, will we.”
“I’m not staying here.”
Sister Rebecca said nothing as the front door opened and Colt came in. Through the open doorway, Lola could see Jonas and the sheriff standing out by the patrol SUV. She could tell that Jonas had convinced the sheriff that she was crazy.
Standing up too quickly, Lola knocked over her chair. It clattered to the floor. Dizzy, she had to hang on to the table for a moment. When the light-headedness passed and she could let go, she started for the door. But not before she realized Colt had seen her having trouble standing.
She swept past him, determined not to let the sheriff leave. Her baby was hidden somewhere in the complex. Jonas had had one of his followers hide her. The sheriff had to find her. Lola had to convince him—
At the sound of a baby crying, she stumbled to an abrupt stop. “Do you hear that?” she called down to the sheriff from the top of the porch steps. “It’s my baby crying.” He looked up in surprise. So did Jonas. Both seemed to stop to listen.
For a moment, Lola thought that she had imagined it. Fear curdled her stomach. She felt Colt’s hand on her shoulder as he reached for her. She could see that they believed Jonas. Her eyes filled with tears of frustration and pain.
And then she heard it again. A baby began to squall loudly. The sound was coming from the laundry. She shrugged off Colt’s hand and ran down the steps. Jonas reached for her, but she managed to sweep past him. Grace. It was her baby crying for her. She knew that cry. She’d heard it in the middle of the night when the sisters had come for her breast milk. Somehow Grace had known she was here.
“Lola, don’t,” Jonas called after her. “Sister Rebecca, help Lola. She’s going to hurt herself.”
She could hear running footsteps behind her, but she was almost to the laundry-room door. Sister Rebecca had set off an alarm. As Lola burst into the room, a half dozen women were already looking in her direction. Lola paid them no mind. She ran toward the woman holding the baby.
Inside this room with the washers and dryers going, though she could barely hear the baby crying, all Lola could think about was getting to the woman before they hid Grace away again. Reaching the woman, she heard the infant let out a fresh squall as if the mother had pinched the poor thing.
Lola grabbed for the baby, but the woman swung around so all she got was a handful of dress cloth from the woman’s shoulder.
“Lola, stop.” It was the sheriff’s voice as he stepped between her and the woman with the child. “May I see your baby,” he said to the woman.
Chapter Six
Colt watched the woman with the infant look at Jonas standing in the doorway. The leader nodded that she should let the sheriff look. Colt held his breath as the woman turned so they could see the baby she held. The infant had stopped crying and now looked at them with big blue eyes fringed with tear-jeweled lashes.
“Grace?” Lola whispered as she tried to see the baby.
“May I?” the sheriff asked, and held out his arms.
After getting Jonas’s permission, the woman released the baby to Flint. He carefully pulled back the knitted blanket the infant was wrapped in. Colt found himself holding his breath.
The sheriff peeked under the gown the baby wore. Colt knew he was looking for the small heart-shaped birthmark that Lola had told him about. He checked under the baby’s diaper. His shoulders fell a little as he looked up at Lola and shook his head. “It’s a little boy.”
“No,” Lola cried. “I heard my baby. This isn’t the baby I heard crying. It can’t be. Sister Rebecca pulled the alarm. She warned them to hide my baby.” She looked from the sheriff to Colt and back again before bursting into tears.
Colt stepped to her and pulled her into his arms. She cried against his chest as he looked past her to the sheriff. He’d watched the whole thing play out, holding his breath. The baby the sheriff had taken from the woman was adorable and about the right age. Was it possible Lola was wrong about the sex of the infant she’d given birth to? Maybe the baby hadn’t died.
But Lola had been so sure it was a little girl. She’d convinced him. And there was the tiny heart birthmark that Lola had seen on their daughter. But what if she was wrong and Jonas was telling the truth about all of it?
Now he felt sick. He thought of the small grave next to Lola’s parents’. He felt such a sense of loss that it made him ache inside. He pulled Lola tighter to him, feeling her heart breaking along with his own.
As the sheriff spoke again with Jonas, Colt led Lola out of the laundry and down the path toward his pickup.
“I heard her,” she said between sobs. “The first baby I heard. It was Grace. I know her cry. A mother knows her baby’s cry. Sister Rebecca pulled the alarm to warn them so they could hide her again.” She began to cry again as he led her to the truck and opened the passenger-side door for her. “Please, Colt, we can’t leave without our baby.”
He tried to think of what to say, but his throat had closed with all the emotions he was feeling, an incredible sense of loss and regret. It broke his heart to see Lola like this.
Lola met his gaze with a look that felt like an arrow to his chest before she climbed into the pickup. As he closed the passenger-side door, the sheriff walked over. “You all right?” Flint asked.
All Colt could do was nod. He wasn’t sure he would ever be all right.
“I think we’re done here,” the sheriff said. “If you want to take it further...”
He shook his head. “Thanks for your help,” he managed to get out before walking around to the driver’s side of his pickup. As he slid behind the wheel, he saw that Lola had dried her tears and was now sitting ramrod straight in her seat with that same look of surrender that tore at him.
He started the engine, unable to look at her.
“You don’t believe me. You believe...” She stopped and he looked over at her. She was staring straight ahead. H
e followed her gaze to where Jonas was standing on the porch of the main building. There was both sympathy and pity in the man’s gaze. “He’s lying.” But Lola said it with little conviction as Colt started the pickup and headed off the compound.
* * *
LOLA CLOSED HER EYES and leaned back against the pickup as they headed down the mountain road. What had she expected? That Jonas would just hand over Grace? She’d been such a fool. Worse, she feared that they’d made things worse for Grace—not to mention the way Colt had looked at her. Leaving them alone with Jonas had been the wrong thing to do. She knew what that man was like. Of course the sheriff would believe anything the leader told him. But Colt?
“What did Jonas tell you?” She had to ask as she squeezed her eyes shut tighter, unable to look at him. “That I’m crazy?”
“He said your baby died. That it was a little boy. He showed me the grave.”
She let out a muffled cry and opened her eyes. Staring straight ahead at the narrow dirt road that wound down the mountain, she said, “Is that what convinced you I was lying?”
“Why didn’t you tell me you were on prescription medication?” Colt asked.
She let out a bark of a laugh. “Of course, my medication. What did he tell you it was for?”
“He hinted it was for schizophrenia and that after your breakdown—”
“Right—my breakdown. What else?”
He glanced over at her. “He said you were fired from your teaching job.”
Tears blurred her eyes. She bit her lower lip and drew blood. “That at least is true. I resisted the advances of the school principal. When some materials in my classroom went missing, I was fired. Three days later, I heard that my parents had died. Perfect timing,” she said sarcastically. “I’m not a thief. I wouldn’t give in, so she did what she said she would, she fired me, claiming I stole the materials. It was my word against hers—even though it wasn’t the first time something like that had happened involving her. I had planned to fight it once I took care of getting my parents remains returned to the California cemetery. So what else did Jonas tell you about me?”
“That you’re a troubled young woman.”
“I am that,” she agreed. “Given everything that has been done to me, I think that is understandable.” Ahead she could see Brother Elmer waiting at the gate for them. Elmer was her father’s age. When she’d first arrived at the compound, she’d asked him what had happened to her parents and Elmer had been too terrified to talk to her. She’d only had that one opportunity. Since then Elmer had kept his distance—just like the rest of them.
“Stop up here, please,” Lola said, even though the gate was standing open.
Colt said nothing and did as she asked.
She put down the truck window as Colt pulled alongside the man. Elmer met her gaze for a moment before he dropped his head and stared at his feet. “Elmer, you know I’m not crazy. Help me, please,” she pleaded. “You were my father’s friend. Tell this man the truth about what really goes on back there in the compound.”
Elmer continued to focus on the ground.
“Okay, just tell me this,” she said, her voice cracking with emotion. “Is Grace all right? Are they taking good care of her?” She didn’t expect an answer. She knew the cost of going against Jonas. Everyone did. If she was right and Jonas had had her parents killed...
Elmer raised his head slowly. As he did, he grabbed hold of the side of the truck, curling his fingers over the open window frame. His fingers brushed her arm. His gaze rose to meet hers. He gave one quick nod and removed his hands.
“You should move on now so I can close this gate, Sister Lola.”
* * *
COLT BLINKED, TELLING HIMSELF he hadn’t just seen that. His heart beat like a war drum. He swore under his breath. He’d seen the man’s short, quick nod. He’d seen the compassion in Elmer’s eyes.
Jonas Emanuel was a liar.
Colt wasn’t sure who he was more angry with, Jonas or himself. He’d bought into the man’s bull. He’d believed him. But the man had been damned convincing. The grave. The pills. The crying baby that wasn’t Grace.
Shifting the pickup into gear, he felt as if he’d been punched in the gut numerous times. He kept seeing that tiny grave, kept imagining his son, their son, lying in a homemade coffin under it—just as he kept seeing Lola sobbing hysterically in his arms after hearing what she thought was her baby crying.
“Lola.”
“Please, just leave me alone,” she said as she closed her window and tucked herself into the corner of the pickup seat as he pulled away, the gate closing behind him. When he looked over at her a few miles down the road, he saw that anger and frustration had given way to emotional exhaustion. With the sun streaming in the window, she’d fallen asleep.
Colt was thankful for the time alone. He replayed everything Lola had said, along with what Jonas had told him. He hadn’t known what to believe because the man was that persuasive. Jonas had convinced the sheriff—and Flint Cahill was a shrewd lawman.
But as he looked over at the woman sleeping in his pickup, he felt his heart ache in ways he’d never experienced before. He would slay dragons for this woman. He wanted to turn around and go back and...
He couldn’t let his emotions get the best of him. He never had before. But this woman had drawn him from the moment he’d met her. He thought about the fear he’d seen in her eyes that first night. There’d been no confusion, though. If anything, they’d both wanted to escape from the world that night and lose themselves in each other. And they had. He remembered her naked in his arms and felt a pull stronger than gravity.
Would he have believed her if she’d told him on that first night what was going on? Probably not. Look how easily he’d let Jonas fool him. Colt was still furious with himself. He would never again question anything she told him.
Glancing in the rearview mirror, he wasn’t surprised to see that they were being followed. Everything she’d told him had been true.
So where was the child he and Lola had conceived? He couldn’t bear the thought of Grace being in Jonas’s hands. But he also knew that they couldn’t go back there until they had a plan.
As he slowed on the outskirts of Gilt Edge, Lola stirred. She shot him a glance as she sat up.
“Before we go back to the ranch, I thought we’d get something to eat,” he said, keeping his eye on the large dark SUV a couple of car lengths behind them.
“There is no reason to take me back to the ranch. You can just pull over anywhere and let me out.”
“I’m not going to do that.”
“I can understand why you don’t want to help me, but I’m not leaving town until—”
“You get Grace back.”
She stared at him. “Are you mocking me?”
“Not at all,” he said, and looked over at her. “I’m sorry. I should have believed you. But I do now.”
Tears welled in her eyes and spilled down her cheeks. “You believe me about Grace?”
“I do. I saw that armed guard who let us through the gate. I saw him nod when you asked him about Grace.”
She wiped at her tears. “Is that what changed your mind?”
“That and a lot of other things, once I had time to think about it. That first night, you were scared and running from something, but you weren’t confused. Nor do I think you were confused the next morning. You checked my wallet to see who I was. You considered taking the four hundred dollars in it, but decided not to. Those were not the actions of a troubled, mentally unstable woman. Also, we’re being followed.”
Lola glanced in her side mirror. “How long has that vehicle been back there?”
“Since we left the compound.”
She seemed to consider that. “Why follow us? If they wanted to know where you lived...”
“I think they are more i
nterested in you than me, but I guess we’ll find out soon enough. That’s the other thing that made me believe you once I was away from Jonas’s hocus-pocus disappearing-baby act. I saw guards armed with concealed weapons around the perimeter of the compound. While there might not be any razor wire and a high fence, that place is secure as Fort Knox.”
“So how are we going to find Grace and get her out of there?”
“I don’t know. I haven’t worked that out yet.”
She looked at him as if afraid of this change in his attitude. “The sheriff believes Jonas.”
“I don’t blame Flint. Jonas is quite convincing. He certainly had me going.”
Lola let out a bitter laugh. “How do you think he got so many people to follow him to Montana? To give him all their money, to convince them that to find peace, they needed to give up everything—especially their minds and free will.”
“Why wasn’t he able to brainwash you?” he asked as he glanced in the rearview mirror. Their tail was still back there.
“I don’t know. The meditation, the chanting, the affirmations on the path to peace and happiness? I blocked them out, thinking about anything else. Also, I didn’t buy into any of it. I was surprised my father did. It’s one reason I didn’t see them for so many years. My father wrote me and I spoke with my mother some on the phone, but there was no way I was going to visit them on the compound and they never left except to move to Montana with SLS.”
“How was it your father was one of the founding members if it wasn’t like him to buy into Jonas’s propaganda?”
“My father would have done anything to make my mother happy. That’s why he didn’t leave after he quit believing in Jonas. He wouldn’t have left her there alone. I’m sure he finally saw what my mother couldn’t. That Jonas was a fraud. I feel terrible for those lost years.”
“The man at the gate...”
“Elmer? He and my father were friends. It’s possible that, like my father, he has doubts about SLS and Jonas. Also, not everyone is easily brainwashed into believing everything Jonas says. They might believe he has a right to my child because he says so. But that doesn’t mean some aren’t sympathetic to a mother losing her baby, our baby, to Jonas.”