Danger in Numbers

by Heather Graham

  She drifted off, but awoke again, as if her thoughts had continued even into her sleep.

  She kept thinking of the words in Revelation.

  I looked, and there before me was a pale horse! Its rider was named Death, and Hades was following close behind him. They were given power over a fourth of the earth to kill by sword, famine and plague, and by the wild beasts of the earth.

  Sword, famine, plague and wild beasts.

  Its rider was named Death, and Hades was following close behind him.

  There were so many theories on what the words meant. None of the riders were real—they were all parts of the way life would come to be on earth. The white horse was the devil, the white horse was Christ; Christ and Satan were riding together, because the End of Days was nigh upon everyone. A seal had been broken.

  Her eyes flew open.

  Two.

  There were two of them, she thought. Two main leaders in the cult, or the murder company, whatever it might really be.

  And they were going to seek out four victims. One, the girl they had found on the cross. The crude spear had cut through her, like a sword.

  They would kill by...starvation? And then disease, and then...

  Someone might meet his or her death through a brutal animal attack.

  She lay staring at the ceiling, anxious for morning to come, wanting to share her theory with Hunter.

  She heard something. A scratching sound.

  She jerked up, listening.

  The sound was coming from behind her room, behind the motel. She crawled up and paused, listening. The noise continued.

  She set her Glock at the foot of the bed and slid quickly back into her suit pants and shirt, not bothering to button it. Then she moved toward the rear of the room to hear better, the Glock in her hand again.

  She heard a little clatter.

  The sound, perhaps, of a garbage can falling?

  She glanced to her side, to the connecting door.

  Hunter, in his suit pants, was standing there, listening, as well.

  “Is someone...spying on us?” she whispered.

  He shook his head. “I don’t think so. I think...”

  “Wilhelmina—Billie?”

  “Maybe. If she is in town, she must be surviving by hiding off the road. That might well mean she goes through garbage cans.”

  “It could be her, or raccoons,” Amy said practically.

  “Do you think it’s raccoons?”

  “No.”

  “You go around the office side. I’ll head out around the last room.”

  “I should approach her,” Amy said. “If it’s her.”

  “Because...you’re a woman?”

  “Because I’m less intimidating.”

  He nodded. “You get the raccoons, too.”

  She smiled and nodded, and they headed out together, leaving by her door, then splitting to go in opposite directions.

  The motel was quiet. Amy hadn’t glanced at the time, but she reasoned it had to be somewhere around three in the morning.

  She moved around the front of the motel, sliding quickly by the front door, and then around to the back.

  A concrete slab there held several bins—several for recycling and several for trash.

  One lay on its side, contents spilling from it.

  But there was no one there, human or otherwise.

  She saw Hunter at the far end hurrying toward her. He reached her and noted the downed bin, hunching to study the ground.

  There had been no rain. The earth was dry. There were no footprints that might be followed.

  “It was probably a person,” he said softly, looking into the dense growth of trees and bracken behind the motel.

  “Not raccoons?”

  “There would be little scratch marks—the earth is dry, but those would have shown. And there’s some garbage in here that I think a raccoon would have gone for, but a person wouldn’t think was still edible.”

  “Do you think she’s living in the brush back there? That’s dangerous.”

  He looked up at her from his hunched position. “Right. And a sad statement on whatever is going on. She’d rather face insects, snakes and more than whoever she’s afraid of.”

  “We should go after her.”

  “Run around in the snake-infested wilderness to try to find someone who knows the lay of the land and will be even more terrified if she sees us coming after her?” he asked.

  “We really need to find her.”

  “We do. But we won’t manage it tonight. Let’s hope she found something good, and try for a few more hours of sleep. We’ll need to get back in to talk to Pastor Colby tomorrow.”

  “All right,” Amy said, looking into the darkness of the night beyond the motel.

  “We’d need an army—and by the time we could get a troop of FDLE, cops and FBI out here, she would be long, long gone.”

  “Right.”

  “Trust me. Sometimes, people figure out how to come to us. We’ll have to make ourselves as visible as possible.”

  “Okay.”

  He stood. He was shirtless. Amy noted his chest was lean but extremely well-muscled, bronzed—nice. He should model for a denim company. For one frightening moment, she thought about just how attractive a man he was.

  In the physical sense. She was still weighing in on his character.

  “Great. Sleep. Let’s go for it,” she said, turning. As she headed back around the front of the old-fashioned motor inn, she remembered she hadn’t bothered with the buttons on her shirt, and started surreptitiously doing them up.

  The lights in the office were dim. She noted a sign on the office door she hadn’t read before. Office Closes at 10:00 p.m.

  “Wait,” she told Hunter, running back around the edge of the building.

  The owner’s ranch-style home was a couple hundred feet to the right and rear of the motel itself.

  The house was dark; a single light was on at the front, over a small, tiled porch.

  Hunter came up behind her.

  “I think we need to find out more about our host, as well,” he said.

  “Billie could be in there.”

  “If so, I think he’s helping her.”

  “Why wouldn’t he have said something to us? And if she was being helped, why root through the trash?”

  “Maybe Billie needed more than what was given—proud people, even desperate, don’t take more than they need to. And just because we’re FBI doesn’t mean someone might trust us. If money like the kind Ethan Morrison has is behind any of this, we could be suspect—we could be on the take.”

  “I would never be on the take!” Amy said passionately.

  He grinned. “You know that. I believe that. But our witness may not. We’ll get someone on our motel owner tomorrow. I have access to records you wouldn’t believe. For now—”

  “Right. Be patient. Let people or things come to us,” she said. “Or we could just march up to that door.”

  “And do what? Demand entrance? We’d need a warrant. And again, by the time we could do anything, our ‘Billie’ could be long gone. And if you’re thinking about pounding a door in, give it up. I’m not losing a murderer in court because we made mistakes.”

  Amy sighed. “I know, I know.”

  He turned and headed around the motel again. She followed him. They reentered by her door and he headed straight for the connecting door to his room.

  He paused there and turned back.

  “The next time we hear raccoons, we have to move a hell of a lot faster. Good night.”

  The connecting door remained open. But he was gone.

  Amy sighed and threw herself on the bed, frustrated.

  And exhausted. While she was ruing the events of the night, she drifted to s
leep.

  When she woke again, the sun was shining through the drapes. She leaped up, glancing at the old clock on the bedside table.

  It was just after 8:00 a.m.—time to get moving, certainly.

  She started to make a mad dash for the shower, but when she reached the bathroom door, there was a tap at the connecting doors.

  She called out, “Ready in ten!”

  “Hey, no worries. I wanted to let you know I’m leaving a bag on your bed. Special Agent Ryan Anders drove all the way back here after agents from the Miami office gathered some things for us. Clean clothing is in the bag.”

  “Oh—thanks!” she called.

  She wondered how in hell agents in Miami knew what size she wore. But that wouldn’t have been a mystery for the tech department of an FBI field office, she supposed. Photographs, maybe? Or an educated guess.

  She closed the bathroom door. Time to get ready for work.

  * * *

  Hunter was impressed by Ryan Anders’s dedication to his new job. While Hunter worked out of the DC offices—and had spent time giving and receiving information from the Behavioral Sciences Unit at Quantico—Anders had drawn an assignment to the Miami field unit.

  Ryan had considered that to be icing on the cake—he was from a rural, north-central part of the state, far north of Disney and Universal Studios—and the concept of working by a beach was, to him, definite icing.

  That Ryan had made the drive down to Miami and back again and still had the appearance of having slept through the night was impressive. That he’d gotten a skeletal night crew to arrange for a change of clothing for Hunter and Amy, something Hunter hadn’t even thought to ask for, was excellent.

  Amy rapped on the connecting door, showered and dressed. Ryan was seated at the foot of Hunter’s bed, waiting on orders.

  “Ryan, thank you!” she told him. “This is great.”

  “Hey, I had one of those moms who thought that cleanliness was next to godliness,” Ryan said. “It was no problem.” He looked at Hunter. “What’s next?”

  “Sometime during the day, I’ll have you get to my hotel room and then—” he paused, then looked over at Amy “—if it’s agreeable to Amy, you can head to her place in Orlando to pick up some things. Amy, do you have a friend or someone who could put things together for you?”

  “Yes, yes, of course. A friend of mine is cat-sitting. She won’t mind,” Amy said.

  “Give her a call sometime during the day,” Hunter said.

  Amy hadn’t had a chance to wrap her hair up again yet. Her hair was long and shimmering, softly framing her face. Hunter caught himself staring. “Well, all right. We’re going to head straight back to the Unitarian church and find Pastor Colby. Ryan, head to breakfast at the diner. Linger and listen. I’ll be in touch as soon as we’re out.”

  “Okay. Am I dressed right for this?” Ryan asked.

  He was wearing jeans, a T-shirt and a tan bomber jacket.

  “You’re fine,” Hunter told him. “We don’t plan on denying you’re an agent. Just don’t mention it unless you find it necessary. We need to get eyes on this community.”

  “I’m Roman Catholic,” he said. “I can check out afternoon Mass if you want.”

  “Not a bad idea.”

  “I checked the times—six, eight and then six in the evening,” Ryan said.

  “Times for the working man and woman,” Hunter said. “Fine. Okay, so...let’s move. Amy, you set?”

  She nodded. When she’d said ten minutes, she meant ten minutes.

  “Ryan, get going to the diner. Amy, let’s stop by the office before we leave.”

  They headed out together, but Ryan headed for his car.

  Hunter noted that Ryan was driving a typical dark agency sedan; he was glad his was an SUV, blue instead of black. Not that it meant anything—he and Amy had clearly identified themselves as law enforcement officers, and it was likely Ryan would wind up doing so, too.

  But sometimes, when they were in a position where they weren’t ready to state who they were, there was something about agency cars—besides the tags—that gave them away.

  They headed for the motel office. Martin Sanders was behind the counter, as he had been the day before. There was a stool back there he was sitting on, busy on a computer while also petting the large gray cat lying at the computer’s side.

  “Beautiful cat,” Amy said.

  Sanders beamed. “She’s Kitty—just wandered in one day and stayed. Probably because we fed her and fell in love with her.”

  “She looks like a Maine coon,” Amy said.

  “I think so, too. Of course, we don’t know anything other than she wandered into the right place,” Sanders said.

  Amy stroked the cat. Good move, Hunter thought. Sanders seemed to like her.

  He looked over at Hunter. “Was everything all right?” he asked.

  “Oh, yes, thank you, very comfortable,” Hunter said.

  “Good, good!” Sanders beamed, but then he frowned. “Oh, okay—so you’re staying on?”

  “Is that all right?” Hunter asked him.

  “Of course. I figure you’ll have your rooms another few days?”

  “That would be great,” Hunter told him.

  “Was anything wrong?” Sanders asked.

  “Actually,” Amy said, “we were just hoping you didn’t have any problems around here.”

  “Problems?” Sanders appeared honestly confused.

  “We thought we heard someone or something out at the trash last night,” Hunter told him.

  “Oh, well, we do have raccoons.” He laughed. “At least I’ve only had raccoons! The ranch about five miles south of here, they came out one morning to find a big old gator in their swimming pool. Now, we’ve never had anything like that. Of course, we don’t even have a pool, so couldn’t have a gator in one. Not to worry—we keep our eyes on the trash, and yes, we do get critters in it now and then. Sorry if they woke you.”

  “No, no, not to worry,” Hunter assured him. “We just figured if you did have trouble, you’ve been great to us and we’re here—well, we wanted to help out.”

  “That’s good of you, folks. But no, not unless you want to arrest a few raccoons.”

  “Not on the list today,” Amy said lightly. “Hunter, this is the most gorgeous cat.”

  “Is Kitty a boy or girl?” Hunter asked, stroking the animal, as well. He was standing so close to Amy that he felt her warmth.

  She smiled as they shared the silky touch of the animal—even if it was an act, in a way.

  And he noted how much he liked it when she smiled, that her eyes glimmered. He’d thought her severe. He realized now she was just dressing for the job.

  “Kitty here is a girl, but she won’t be having any kittens. I hate to think of all the animals that don’t have families. Pet owners need to be responsible, right?”

  “I absolutely agree,” Hunter assured him. “Well, we’d better get going for the day. Thank you, and again, we’re here, you know, if you need help with anything.”

  “Sure—and thank you!” Sanders said.

  Amy sighed softly, leaving the cat. When they were in the car, she asked, “Well?”

  “Something.”

  “Something evil—or something good?”

  “I don’t know yet. What did you think?”

  “Hard to hate a guy who wants to be a responsible pet owner.”

  “True. But we did put away a serial killer once who donated huge sums to his local shelters. He went out of town to murder people.”

  “Don’t go blowing all my faith in humanity,” Amy said lightly. “The jury is out on Sanders. Maybe he saw us running around the motel last night and was prepared for the questions.”

  “Maybe he’s protecting someone—as in our Billie.”

  “Tha
t is possible. But why not let her come to us?”

  “He could still not be sure about us. Some people don’t trust cops, agents or law enforcement in general.”

  Amy nodded and then said thoughtfully, “We’re near the church. Back to Pastor Colby. I had the impression that Detective Mulberry was familiar with this area. But I don’t think that he knew anything about Morrison having given the church money.”

  “I agree. I’ve known Mulberry a few years, but not that well. And remember, he’s been called out here before, but he’s working a big county. You might ask if he knows more about that church when we meet with him next.”

  “You don’t care if I do ask?”

  “Not in the least. I’d like any info we can get.”

  “I’m going to call John’s daughter—although John seems to have his phone! Still, if he’s sleeping, I don’t want to wake him.”

  He nodded as he drove, and then listened to Amy’s side of the conversation.

  John was sleeping. He was doing very well; it had been a “minor” attack and he had been lucky.

  When she finished the call, he was parking at the church.

  There were several cars in the lot. Hunter wondered if they had one of their group sessions going on.

  The church door was locked; they walked around the side where the long building stretched out. The office door was open.

  Karyl was at her desk. She looked up with a welcoming smile.

  Hunter thought it faded a bit when she saw who was there, but she rallied quickly.

  “Hey!”

  “Hi, Karyl,” he said. “Is Pastor Colby in?”

  “I’m afraid not. He’s not due in today until lunchtime.” She stood. “I have my youth group gathering. That’s the way our structure works. I’m new at this, and I get the youth groups. I’m not complaining—I love the youth groups. But I’m afraid I have to get to it now.” She walked toward them, making it clear she needed to leave, and so did they.

  She stopped halfway, though.

  “Did you find her, by any chance? Did you find Billie?”

  “No, I’m afraid not,” Amy said. “She hasn’t come back here, right? Do you think she might be part of your youth group?”