“Sugar,” Occam said, “what are the chances that they would make you stay if you went back inside?”
I had never been called sugar, and the endearment sounded wrong on my ears, but he had also called my cat sugar, so maybe the word was just a Texan thing. I pressed my lips together and dropped my eyes to the laptop screen, thinking about his question. That was actually fairly likely. I didn’t want to go in, no matter what the benefit. Not ever again. Except . . . If I could get my sisters off the compound, I’d go in. I’d risk it.
“They’d make her stay,” JoJo muttered, the rings that pierced her lips moving. “I’d like to kick ’em in the nuts.”
So would I, but I’d never have said so aloud. An unwilling smile tugged at my lips.
Watching me, JoJo said, “Tell you what. We get the chance and no one’s looking, I’ll hold the new preacher down and you can kick him in the nuts.” I laughed, shook my head, and covered my mouth. The others laughed too, mostly at me, not at JoJo, who clearly said such things all the time.
But if I got the chance alone with Jackie Jr., in the proper circumstances, I’d prick his skin until he bled, and give him to the woods. Which would be far more satisfying, and far more permanent, and that thought made my insides quiver with a sense of dismay at my own cruelty. So I didn’t answer, keeping my eyes on the computer screen, where they couldn’t read my intent in my expression, and not meeting Tandy’s gaze, which might indicate a deeper understanding than I wanted. I shook my head and wished I’d left my hair down to cover my face when I tilted my head forward. “Sister Erasmus says the winter storage cave has been set off-limits to the churchwomen. It isn’t anything to do with the HST or a kidnapping, but it is different. I can show you if you have a map of the compound.”
And boy howdy, did they have maps! Amazing satellite maps, so clear that I could identify every building and pathway, and even people who were walking. There were maps from summer, with a leafy tree canopy, and maps from winter with bare branches revealing the ground. The maps turned the focus of the meeting from me to the compound of the church. I showed the team where the three cave entrances were, all hidden beneath canopies of tall hemlock trees that were still growing when most of the Appalachian Mountains’ hemlocks were dying from the hemlock woolly adelgid. It was an aphid-like insect that fed on hemlock sap. The trees were alive, possibly because of me, though I didn’t tell the team that. It wasn’t any of their business that I’d tended the trees when I was little and willed them to live and be strong, long before I had known I had magic.
“This is the entrance to the smallest cave,” I tapped the map. “When the FBI and the state police raided the compound, they didn’t find it, so it never got inspected or investigated. This is where the seeds and the winter supplies are kept. The canned goods, the stored grain, the stuff the women need. The others are here, and here.” I pointed to the bigger caves, closer to the main part of the compound, closer to the chapel and the home of the preacher. “They have weapons and farm equipment and generators and ammunition and suchlike in them. Survival stuff. The one in the middle has a water source and is the place where we’ll—where they’ll—hole up when the government comes to attack.” I thought for a moment before adding, “Not that it helped when the government actually did come to attack. Anyway, all three caves have reinforced poured concrete walls set just inside the entrances and steel core doors built into the walls. The plan was to bring down the cave walls outside of the fortified entrances with planted charges and then open passageways to the caves to either side. The tunnels are mostly finished, and it won’t take long to chip a ways into the other caves.
“Some say that there’s an entrance to deeper caverns from the center cave, but I wouldn’t know. My best thinking is that only the inner circle of churchmen would know that, and I have no way of finding that out.”
“Planted charges? And if the roof comes down when the charges go off?” Rick asked.
I shrugged. “The menfolk debated that possibility, but they figured that wouldn’t happen because God wants them to survive. So far as I’ve seen, they might be right, because God hasn’t stopped the evil done by so many of the church’s menfolk. Not that they think of it as evil, but . . . I do.” Quietly in the back of my mind, I had always thought it, despite the Scripture that said, “Thou shalt not judge.”
The others were discussing the backsliding men Sister Erasmus had seen—the Dawson men—and how they might, or might not, fit in with the kidnappings. And how to find out more about them without having photos or fingerprints or anything else. I let them talk, learning about options that included cameras outside church property, trained on the road, drunk-driving checkpoints, again with cameras but this time on the officers’ vests, and half a dozen other ways. The churchmen would have been appalled at the legal ways to surveil the road leading into the compound. I thought it was amazing.
We were nearly finished when Rick received a call on his cell phone. Another girl had gone missing.
EIGHT
He said, “No witnesses, and she may have wandered off, or taken off with a boyfriend, but no one has heard from her. And her cell phone was found a block from where she was last seen.
“The FBI hit the twenty-four-hour window without the return of the first girl. The ransom was paid, and there hasn’t been any activity, which violates traditional HST procedure, which provides for return of the abducted within one hour of receipt. As you know from Spook School, when this window of time elapses, there is, statistically, a drastically reduced chance of warm-body rescue. After that, it usually means a recovery attempt, not a rescue.”
“Warm body?” I asked.
“Rick’s shorthand for living and still human,” T. Laine said. “He has personal experience in that department.”
“Not relevant to today’s briefing.” Rick stepped into the back room. When he returned, he pulled behind him a whiteboard on a wheeled stand. It had been divided in two with a marker, and a photograph hung on each side, with pertinent information beneath, like height and weight. I knew without being told that they were the missing girls. Rick passed JoJo a sheet of paper with two names written on it and an address for an FBI Web site. “JoJo, you type faster than the rest of us. Will you merge and update our files?”
JoJo grunted and said, “Sure. Make the black girl play secretary,” but there wasn’t any heat in the words.
Tandy smiled as if he was feeling pleasure from her. He said, “Not secretary. Computer geek and all-around IT specialist.”
JoJo said, “I can live with that, if I can have the superhero name of SuperGeek or SuperHacker. Or maybe Diamond Drill.” The last one made no sense to me, but I didn’t ask, continuing my practice of sitting still and silent and learning by listening.
Amused, Rick said, “You gave up that lifestyle, Diamond Drill.” JoJo’s full lips spread into a wicked smile, and I didn’t understand the humor. Rick said, “Because of the expired window, we’ve been asked to meet in person with the FBI.”
He tapped the left side of the whiteboard and the photo that hung there. “Let’s recap everything for Nell and update our board. Girl One was taken from school grounds following cheerleading practice,” Rick said. “Witnesses and security cameras indicate that three males jumped out of a white panel van, no plates. Slight dent in the rear passenger-side panel. All three wore hoods and gloves. They grabbed the girl and threw her into the van. The van has since been confirmed to be a 1994 Dodge Ram panel van.” He looked at me, “This is the stereotypical kidnapping I was talking about. It fits the textbook, nonfamily, political, ransom-style kidnapping. It required planning and an intimate knowledge of the girl, her whereabouts, and her schedule, all of which was posted to social media.”
JoJo whispered a curse under her breath, her fingers tapping on her laptop keyboard so fast it sounded like rain, a steady drumming.
“Girl Two disappeared after ballet class. Her mother had engine trouble and was late to pick her up. No witnesses. Cell phone left behind. Private security cameras two blocks away caught sight of a panel van matching the description in the first kidnapping, no plates. There was no confirmation of the small dent, due to camera angle and low def, but it’s assumed at this point that the girl was taken by the same people. That will be confirmed when and if they get a ransom demand.”
I remembered what I had read on the government study about stereotypical kidnappings. “So some kidnappings are crimes of opportunity,” I said, “but these kidnappers have treated this like a hunt.” Rick looked at me curiously. I lifted one shoulder and said, “The church is pretty good about planning things. They’re hunters. Hunters plan, stalk, build duck hides and deer stands to wait, watch, attack, and kill. Hunters are patient. These people are hunting humans, so they track their prey, but instead of tracks in the ground or spoor or territory marking, they track social media. Right?”
Rick gave me a small nod, and a flush of pleasure sped through me. “The FBI is also looking into whether the discarded cell was synced to a stranger’s.”
“Why do you call them Girl One and Girl Two. They got names,” I said, frowning at Rick. “Names and histories and pictures.” I pointed at the boards. “Rachel Ames and Shanna Schendel.”
“He does that for me,” Tandy said softly. “It’s . . . difficult for me to work cases. Any cases. Everything is so personalized, everyone on the team feels the pressure. It can hit me hard.”
“In training, we learned how to work together,” T. Laine said. “It’s all business, no emotions allowed. At least not in front of Tandy.”
“Oh.” That made some kind of sense. Strange sense, but sense. “Did the girls know each other?” I asked.
“They both attend Farrington High School and had French class together last year, but there isn’t anything else to connect them, not that we’ve been able to discover, beyond that casual acquaintance.”
I studied the pictures of the two girls, both pretty, looking vivacious and happy and fulfilled. And . . . soft, somehow. Not exactly innocent. Just untried, unpunished, as if they had lived easy lives. By the time I was their age, I had buried one sister-wife and been married according to church law for years. My sister Priss had married and had a baby on the way by the time she was fifteen. Looking at the faces of the missing girls, I felt odd and old and worn, as if I were fifty years old, not twenty-three, feelings I stuffed deep inside as all good women are taught to do from an early age, and plastered a smile on my face, hoping Tandy hadn’t noticed my change in emotions. This was going to be problematic, working with what had to be a human lie detector.
Rick’s cell made a tinny burbling sound and he picked up. “Special Agent LaFleur.” He made a face and walked into the bedroom, shutting the door. The others talked and Tandy made a pot of coffee while I experimented with the laptop, opening the new file JoJo had sent, with all the information updated on the abductions. Once I got the file opened, I could see everything the FBI had on the girls, and I could also watch JoJo work in real time, updating and editing as she went. As the others said, this was “so freaking cool.” When Rick returned he said shortly, “The feds say we have permission to take a look at the kidnap crime scenes. Gear up. We’ll eat on the way.”