Dark Prison: A Dark Falls, CO Romantic Thriller

by Lori Ryan

  He opened his mouth, planning to ask her if he could drive her home or take her to get something to eat or whatever she needed him to do for her in that moment.

  He didn’t have the chance. A uniformed officer came up behind them.

  “Captain Scanlon, Detective Sevier asked me to pick you up. He said to leave it up to you whether you want to come back to the church or go home.” The officer took a phone out of his uniform pocket. “He also said to give you this.”

  Eve nodded at the man and took the phone, before turning back to Kemal.

  “Tell your dad I had to leave but I’ll give him a call soon.”

  Kemal nodded, not saying anything as he watched her walk away. He was an idiot like that.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  “I need to make a stop on another floor first,” Eve said, punching the button for the maternity floor.

  The officer only nodded and stood slightly behind her as they stared at the door. A few minutes later, she was led to Camille’s door by a nurse. She left the officer outside and poked her head in. Another nurse was in the room, checking monitors and tucking a blanket around Camille.

  “I don’t have a milkshake but I promise to bring one soon,” Eve said.

  Camille looked small and frightened covered by a blanket. “My mom is coming.”

  Eve went to stand by the bed and took Camille’s hand. “That’s good. I’m sure she’s going to be relieved to see you.”

  Camille’s eyes filled with tears and her voice shook when she spoke. “I don’t know. I brought this on myself and now I’m pregnant and I’m everything she said I’d always end up being. I’m only sixteen and I’m going to have a baby.”

  Eve squeezed the girl’s hand. “There is nothing, absolutely nothing that you did to bring this on yourself. The reverend and his wife are responsible for this, not you. You thought you were safe going to the church. You had every right to think you’d be safe there. What they did to you was wrong but it’s on them, not on you. Your mother will know that.”

  Eve just prayed she was right. If the woman didn’t know it, Eve would damn well school her in it. The question was answered minutes later when the hospital social worker showed Camille’s mother in.

  The woman didn’t bat an eye at her daughter’s stomach. Eve would guess the social worker had prepared her ahead of time. Eve watched the reunion for a minute, as mother and daughter hugged and cried. She watched Camille’s mother run her hands over her daughter’s face as though she needed to reassure herself the girl was there. Eve didn’t blame her. She couldn’t imagine the pain of not knowing where your child was.

  Eve slipped out the door and headed down the hall. She had work to do.

  Hours later she sat in her car not ready to go into her apartment.

  Or maybe it was just the fact she wasn’t sure she could make it up the stairs. She’d spent longer than she should have at the church. She really only needed to be there to identify the woman who had hit her in the head the day she was taken, but she’d stayed on while they swept the church for the other missing women.

  Samantha Greer had been the only one to be killed and they still didn’t have the full story on that. Richard and Faith Richardson weren’t talking.

  The other missing women were all living as full members of the church, all married to longtime members, all with children of their own. If Eve was right, though, she suspected the children raised by Faith and Richard were birthed by the women they kidnapped. Based on what Camille had told Eve, she would bet the women were kept in the basement for years until they earned their way out.

  And earning their way out apparently meant they were brainwashed because the women denied it all and refused to leave the church. Since they were all now adults, there was nothing she could do about it. So, she’d been forced to tell the parents and foster parents of the kids that they couldn’t see them yet. That she’d do her best to get the women to agree to see them in time. Maybe with the reverend and his wife behind bars, the women would come around.

  Most of the reverend’s children were adults so they were able to stay on the compound, but social services had removed Anne, who was only ten, and her brother Jesse, who was fifteen from the church. They would be placed in foster care while their older siblings went through the necessary steps to become approved to foster them.

  But the church wasn’t the only thing on Eve’s mind. She hadn’t been able to stop replaying the scene with Kemal and the officers outside the church. She had replayed it again and again.

  Did the officers see the reverend coming down the church steps and assume he was the good guy? Or did they see Kemal’s black skin and the way he was reaching for Eve and assume he was doing something wrong?

  Yes, the officers had kept their heads and listened to her. They’d made the right decision in the end, but if she hadn’t been there, would things have gone that way? She had felt the tension in that moment. Felt the heavy weight of being on the other end of an officer’s gun and not knowing how the altercation would play out.

  Eve didn’t have any answers to all the questions swirling in her head.

  She leaned forward, putting her head on the steering wheel and letting out a long slow breath.

  She was beyond exhausted.

  A knock on her driver’s side window had Eve bolting up, one hand going to her service weapon. Her heart flew into overdrive and didn’t stop when she saw Kemal on the other side of the window.

  She reached and shut off the engine before opening the door. She swung her legs out, but remained seated, facing him.

  “Waiting for me?” he asked, mimicking her words to him when she’d found him waiting outside her apartment building only a couple weeks past. They were weeks that seemed like a decade.

  Eve let out a breath. Part of her wanted to say yes. That she was waiting for him. Hoping he’d come. “Just working up the energy to get inside.”

  Kemal knelt, meeting her eyes. “How are you doing?”

  She ran through the myriad ways she could answer that question. Jumpier than she should be. Kicking herself for putting herself in such a stupid position when she went to the church alone, and grateful she’d done it because she’d at least gotten Camille out of there.

  She blew out a breath. “I’m tired.”

  Kemal put out his hand, palm up. Eve slipped hers into it and wished, not for the first time, that things could be easier between them. Because being with him felt right in so many ways.

  He pulled her to her feet and shut her car door, taking her keys from her hand to lock it before leading her toward the building.

  Eve didn’t fuss or fight over the way he was taking care of her. It felt good. She leaned into him and he put an arm around her and held her as they walked into the building.

  She let him continue to take care of her, watching from the couch as he warmed up a can of tomato soup and made her a grilled cheese sandwich.

  Kemal balanced plates and bowls when he joined her minutes later on the couch. They ate in silence. Eve thought of the milkshakes she’d promised Camille. She would bring her one the next time she visited her.

  Kemal put his bowl and plate back on the coffee table and leaned back, throwing an arm over the back of the couch.

  “You got yourself out,” he said quietly.

  Eve nodded, not really sure she could speak right then without crying. She wasn’t a woman who cried. It just wasn’t her. She always had to hold herself together, to stay calm in the face of danger, to lead her detectives and let them know they could count on her to be the rock in their department.

  She’d been holding it together all day but she was a little tired of keeping herself glued up in one piece.

  “You had to be scared,” he said.

  She nodded again.

  “Come here,” Kemal said, pulling her to him.

  Eve let herself go, feeling his strength and warmth as he wrapped his arms around her. She broke, letting the tears come, feeling the panic and f
ear of the last four days wash over her. The feeling of being helpless, drugged, the lack of control. It had been riding her as she worked with her detectives at the church and it was haunting her still.

  “You were coming for me,” Eve said into Kemal’s chest when her sobs had stopped.

  “I was.”

  Eve put a hand to his chest. “Thank you.”

  “You got yourself out,” he said again and Eve nodded. She’d been telling herself that over and over. It was how she was coping with the anxiety that kept welling up inside her when she let her guard down.

  He held her for a long time, running one hand up and down her back.

  “I felt it,” she finally said. “I felt that moment when things could have gone horribly wrong with those officers holding a gun on you instead of the reverend.” It was another bit of the helplessness she’d been feeling. She’d felt helpless when she was down in that secret prison, but she’d also felt it again when she and Kemal had faced down those officers.

  “It’s the way life is for a black person. I know people don’t want to believe that. I know white people think we make this up. That we exaggerate the way our everyday lives are, but it’s there. We have to wonder every time we get pulled over for a traffic violation, if this is something we’ll walk away from. If we have a problem in our neighborhood, we have to weigh the chances that we take in calling the cops for help. Will it really help or is it going to lead to more trouble?”

  “I hate that you can’t trust that police officers are there to help you. I don’t believe those officers had it in their hearts or minds to harm you because you were black. I don’t think they set out to discriminate.”

  “I don’t necessarily think that either,” he said. “But it happened all the same.”

  Eve hated this. “I wish I had a solution for you.”

  She heard Kemal take a deep breath. “I was wrong to try to push you away from my dad. I know I’m too controlling when it comes to him. I get that and I’m working on it. I don’t know that things between us will ever be easy, or that we’ll ever have the answers, but I want us to try. I don’t want to give up on what we could have.” Kemal held her gaze and what she saw in his eyes gave her hope.

  Eve pressed her lips together, forcing herself not to cry again. She wanted that. More than he could know.

  “Is that a yes?” Kemal asked.

  Eve nodded, lips still pressed tight.

  A wide smile spread over Kemal’s face and he pulled her to his chest again, leaning down to kiss the top of her head. “You a hot mess, woman.”

  Eve couldn’t help it. She laughed at that. And then she let him hold her for a long, long time.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  Eve looked at Faith Richardson as she laid out the images of the women who’d vanished into the church over the decades. Faith didn’t look like the same woman she’d met weeks ago. She was now dressed in the distinctive bright orange tee shirt and orange and white striped pants of the Dark Falls Jail. Eve had heard rumors that the church was going to be able to pull together the steep bail the judge had set for the reverend and his wife, so she’d wanted to interrogate the woman before she was released.

  The visit Eve got from the reverend’s oldest daughter and another member of the church that morning had had something to do with this interview also. Eve now had a good idea of what had happened in that basement, but she wanted a confession.

  It looked like two days in jail had cowed the woman some. The rigid posture and haughty gaze were gone, almost as though the woman had shrunk in on herself.

  Eve placed current photos of the kidnapped women on the table, then laid the pictures of the girls they’d been when they disappeared over them.

  She waited a minute before setting out photos of the Richardson children underneath each of the women she suspected were their biological mothers.

  “Do I have those right?” She said, tapping one of the pictures of the children. “I wasn’t sure if this one belonged to Susie or Katie.”

  Some of the steel came back to the woman. “Those are my children.”

  “You raised them, yes, but when we get DNA tests run, I’m sure we’ll find out you stole them.” Eve didn’t know yet if they’d be able to get court-ordered DNA tests done. She suspected they’d be able to on the younger children, but the adults would be difficult. She had a feeling the judge wouldn’t order them to take the tests if they didn’t want to.

  “I adopted them.”

  “Did Samantha Greer feel that way? Did she feel like you adopted her child or that you stole it?”

  Faith was playing the part of the fierce mother protecting her cubs now and it was a role she seemed to relish. “Those girls weren’t ready to be mothers. They hadn’t found their way into the Grace of the Lord yet. I raised their babies for them because they knew they weren’t ready to do it yet.”

  Eve switched gears. “Did you help Richard kidnap them?”

  If Faith’s jaw clenched any tighter, she would crack a tooth. She didn’t answer, though. She had the nerve to sniff as though the question was beneath her. As though she’d been the one to live in piety and grace, and Eve was somehow desecrating that by drawing attention to the truth.

  Heaven forbid someone call you out for kidnapping and abusing young women.

  “Did you know that he was going to rape them before you helped him kidnap them or did that come as a nasty little surprise?”

  Faith sat stock still.

  Eve was getting nowhere so she went with her best ammunition. “Your daughter came to see me today. Hannah.”

  Faith stilled at the news, her features pinched.

  “I actually had assumed she was one of your natural children. She and her brother were born before Samantha Greer went missing, so we thought she belonged to you. But she brought another woman with her.”

  Faith didn’t answer so Eve continued.

  “Prudence Nelson had quite a story to tell. We missed her in our search of the files. She went missing thirty-one years ago. And she gave you your first two children, didn’t she?”

  Faith started shaking her head, lips pressed in a tight line as though she might be able to make this go away.

  “Prudence told Hannah her real name. Told her how the reverend kidnapped her. That you knew he had her in the basement. It was five years before you let her out. Let her live as part of the church. That’s a sick type of twisted. To make your captives live with you for the rest of their lives, free but not free.”

  It must take a hell of a lot of brainwashing to make that stick. To make those women stay instead of trying to get out.

  Eve could see Faith weakening. The woman’s eyes were wet and her expression was hollow.

  Eve pointed to the picture of Samantha. “Samantha gave birth to your oldest son Ezra, didn’t she? Ezra isn’t your child. He’s Samantha’s son. Did you hit Samantha over the head and kill her?”

  Faith kept shaking her head. “It wasn’t like that.” Her words were a whisper. “She was going to take Ezra.”

  Eve switched from interrogator to confidant, consoling Faith. “She was going to take your son from you?”

  Faith swiped at tears on her cheeks. “She was going to tell Ezra who she was. She said she was ready to raise him, that she wanted him back.”

  Eve pushed a tissue box toward Faith. “Tell me.”

  It never ceased to amaze Eve. When a suspect hit the point where they made the decision to talk, they talked. And talked. And talked. There was a dam breaking kind of thing that seemed to happen and they opened up.

  Over the hours, Faith told Eve everything. From the first kidnapping to the minute Samantha decided she wanted her child to know who she was.

  The reverend kept his victims in the basement raping and abusing them until they were utterly brainwashed—and, Eve would bet, until they aged out of his preferred range. After that, he introduced them as new members of the church and the women joined the congregation, living on the compound
and marrying other members of the church.

  Faith hadn’t known about the first woman until she got pregnant. Faith hadn’t been able to get pregnant. When she discovered what her husband was doing, she so desperately wanted a child, she let it go on. Listening to her, Eve could tell the woman had convinced herself the reverend was someone helping these girls. Like he was truly helping them find God. It made Eve’s stomach lurch at the realization that he’d utterly brainwashed everyone, Faith and his victims. Except Samantha.

  Years after she’d been released from the basement, Samantha had found herself again somehow. Maybe it had been her fiancé who gave her the courage, but whatever it was, she’d come to her senses.

  Samantha had told Faith she wanted to talk to her and the two met late one night on the building site of a home next door to the church. Samantha told Faith she wanted to be a part of her child’s life. Samantha thought they could tell him she’d been too young to be a mother so Faith was raising him. He would have been a teenager at that time and Samantha thought he was old enough to understand.

  Things had gone south when Faith refused.

  Samantha wasn’t as brainwashed as the reverend thought she was. She told Faith she would tell the congregation how she’d really come to the church. She said she’d tell her fiancé and he would support her.

  Faith hit her in the head and then shoved her body into a hole in the basement of the house. She sealed the hole and then flooded part of the goat barn on the compound’s property. Since they relied on the goats for food and the income they made selling cheese, the building of the house was put on hold, just as Faith hoped it would. By the time the church men got back to building it, there would have been no tell-tale odor from the body. Eve had to hand it to her. It was a smart way to cover what she’d done.

  Eve would guess the soil under the house had something to do with why the body had saponified, preserving the way it had. She remembered Dr. Grundholdt saying it had to do with soil content and moisture.

  When the house was being renovated recently, Faith moved the body to the cemetery, hoping it would be gone and buried for good.