I didn’t have to sink very far into Holland Darby’s psyche to conclude that he was the kind of man who hid his secrets well. That’s your serenity. That’s your peace.
“Unfortunately,” Agent Sterling said, “none of that gives me probable cause to search the property.”
“No,” Lia said, reaching into her pocket. “But this does.”
She pulled a small glass vial out of her pocket. The liquid inside was milky white. “Not sure what it is,” she said, “but Darby keeps his flock well-dosed.”
“He’s drugging them.” Dean’s stony face showed no signs of softening—toward her or toward the situation.
Agent Sterling took the vial from Lia. “I’ll get this to the lab. If it’s a controlled substance, I can get a warrant to search the compound.”
Beside me, Sloane stared at the vial. “I’d give it even odds that it’s some kind of opiate.”
Your mother died of an overdose. I profiled Sloane as a matter of instinct, but another part of me couldn’t help profiling someone else—something else. Nightshade and whoever in this town had recruited him.
There’s a thin line between medicine and poison.
It took twenty-four hours for Agent Sterling to get her warrant and another hour after that for the FBI to secure the compound—and, more to the point, the compound’s owner. By the time Holland Darby and his followers had been sequestered and the five of us were allowed on the premises, I could feel the ticking of the clock.
Today is April fifth. The reminder thrummed through my veins as we approached the chapel. Another Fibonacci date. Another body.
Briggs hadn’t called us. He hadn’t asked for help. I shoved that thought out of my mind as I pushed open the chapel door.
“No religious iconography,” Dean commented.
He was right. There were no crosses, no statues, nothing to indicate a tie with any established religion—and yet the room was clearly designed to call to mind a religious space. There were pews and altars. Tile mosaics on the floor. Stained glass windows casting colored light into the room.
“We’re looking for a false wall,” Sloane said, pacing the perimeter of the room. She stopped in front of a wooden altar near the back. Her fingers deftly searched for a trigger, some kind of release.
“Got it!” Sloane’s triumph was punctuated by the sound of creaking wood, followed by the whine of rusted hinges. The altar gave way to reveal a hidden room. I took a step forward, but Agent Sterling strode past me. Her right hand on her weapon, she held her left out to Sloane.
“Stay here,” she said, stepping into the room herself.
“It’s narrow,” Sloane reported, peering into the darkness. “Based on my earlier calculations, it almost certainly runs the entire length of the chapel.”
I waited, the steady fall of Agent Sterling’s footsteps the only sound in the room. Dean came to stand on one side of me, Michael and Lia on the other. When Agent Sterling reappeared, she holstered her weapon and called for backup.
“What did you find?” Dean asked her.
If any of the rest of us had asked the question, Agent Sterling might not have responded, but given their history, she was incapable of ignoring Dean.
“A staircase.”
The staircase led to a basement. Not a basement, I corrected myself when it had been deemed safe enough for us to enter. A cell.
The walls were thick. Soundproof. There were shackles on the wall. There was a decomposed body in the shackles.
A second body lay on the floor.
The room smelled of decay and death—but it didn’t smell recent.
“Based on the level of decomposition and taking into account the temperature and humidity levels in this room…” Sloane paused as she ran the numbers in her head. “I’d guess our victims have been dead between nine and eleven years.”
Ten years ago, my mother and I had left Gaither.
Ten years ago, I’d seen a body at the bottom of the stairs.
“Who are they?” I asked the question that everyone was thinking. Who had Holland Darby chained up under his chapel? Whose bodies had been left here to rot and fade away?
“Victim number one is male.” Sloane stepped closer to the body still shackled to the wall. The flesh was nearly nonexistent.
Bones and decay and rot. My stomach threatened to empty itself. Dean laid a hand on the back of my neck. I leaned in to his touch and forced my attention back to Sloane.
“The depth and thickness of the pelvic bone,” Sloane murmured. “The narrow pelvic cavity…definitely male. Facial bones suggest Caucasian. I’d put height at around five foot eleven. Not a juvenile, and no signs of advanced age.” Sloane studied the body for another thirty or forty seconds in silence. “He was shackled postmortem,” she added. “Not before.”
You built this room for something. For someone. I took in the size of the room. You chained this man’s body, even after death.
“What about the other victim?” Agent Sterling asked. I knew her well enough to know that she’d already developed her own theories and interpretation of the scene before us, but she wouldn’t contaminate a second opinion by letting us see even a hint of what that interpretation was.
“Female,” Sloane answered. “I’d put her age somewhere between eighteen and thirty-five. No visible sign of cause of death.”
“And the male?” Agent Starmans asked. “How did he die?”
“Blunt force trauma.” Sloane turned to Agent Sterling. “I need to go upstairs now,” she said. “I need to be not here.”
Sloane had seen plenty of bodies, plenty of crime scenes, but since Aaron’s death, victims hadn’t just been numbers to her. Slipping an arm around her, I led her up the stairs. On the way, we passed Lia, who stood with her back up against Michael’s body.
As Sloane and I made it up into the fresh air, I heard Lia’s ragged whisper. “He put them in a hole.”
YOU
Without order, there is chaos. Without order, there is pain.
That’s Lorelai’s chorus, not yours. You are chaos. You are order.
Five stands before you, sharpening his blade. It’s just you and him. Two had his turn yesterday, a dozen burns on your chest and thighs. And still, you wouldn’t tell them what they wanted to hear. You wouldn’t tell them to eliminate the problem, to take whatever steps necessary to rid Gaither of the FBI.