He shook his head. “That’s not necessary. The ticketing office at the bus station closes at one this afternoon and it’ll take us two and a half hours to get up there, so we can’t make it up there in time today. We’ll have to wait until they open tomorrow, which means we can leave anytime after the pet thing is done.”
Her eyes widened and even in the dim light he could see that he’d delighted her. “You’re actually going to take me with you? I figured you’d be all”—she dropped her voice to a rusty, commanding bass—“‘No way, you must stay!’”
He laughed. “I figure you’re safer with me up there than staying here alone.”
That the Sokolovs would never allow her to be alone went unsaid.
Her smile dimmed as she studied him in the semidarkness. “Did you ever tell the police what had happened to you once you woke up in the hospital?”
He went still, his insides freezing. Which also took care of his hard-on. “Yes. But they couldn’t find the community. I didn’t know where they were and the cops weren’t going to authorize an all-out air search for a group no one had ever heard of on the word of one beaten-up teenager. I told them it was a town called Eden. I didn’t know then to call it a cult. I think the detective believed me, but he said that there was no town called Eden anywhere nearby. He said they sent out someone to search, but . . .” He shrugged.
“So you searched for them on your own.” She’d said it as a statement, not a question.
“You sound sure that I did,” he said.
“I am. You wouldn’t have let your mother and sister suffer if you could have stopped it. I take it you couldn’t find them, either.”
“No,” he said, humbled by her confidence in him. “I’ve been searching for seventeen years. All I know about the location is that I could see Mt. Shasta in the distance.”
She grimaced. “That doesn’t really narrow it down, does it? You can see the mountain for a hundred miles on a clear day.” Her brow wrinkled. “That’s, what? About thirty thousand square miles of search area? What about your view of the mountain? Which way did the sun rise or set? That will narrow it down.”
He hated having to go through this again. But he’d do it for her. “It changed a few times. The community moved a few times before I was thirteen. The mountain was to the west when I left, but they could have moved again before the cops got out there to look.”
“What about satellite photos?”
He shook his head. “I’ve spent countless hours poring over them, comparing the images season to season, year to year. I’ve seen no settlements that aren’t accounted for on existing maps.”
“Then they’re camouflaged somehow,” she murmured.
“That’s what I think, too,” he said. “The homes were small, just a few rooms each. Some had lofts where the kids would sleep.”
“Very Little House on the Prairie,” she said wryly. “Except, of course, for the slavery, the polygamy, and the rampant pedophilia.”
He almost smiled. “Exactly.”
“Could they have earth homes?”
“They might now. They didn’t then. The homes were basic plank construction. Concrete foundations. They’d break down the houses and move the used lumber to the new site and rebuild.”
“And the foundations would be easy enough to cover with dirt when they moved on. How many homes? And were they grouped close together?”
“Maybe twenty or twenty-five homes, and yes, they were very close together. My mother used to complain that she could reach out her window to borrow a cup of sugar from the woman next door.”
Daisy shrugged. “It wouldn’t be all that hard to hide under a camo tarp. Most of that land up there is heavily forested wilderness, a lot of it evergreen.”
“You know that area?” he asked, surprised.
She nodded. “It’s not too far from where our ranch was. Can I see your map later?”
“My map?”
“The one you’ve used to mark off the places you’ve checked.”
Again she sounded certain that he’d have one, and she was right. “It’s at my house. We can go there and pick it up on our way.”
She smiled at that. “I get to see your house?”
He felt a thrill of anticipation at being able to show it to her. He was proud of the renovations that he’d done so far. “Do you want to?”
“Yes. I do.” She tilted her head, her eyes narrowing curiously. “Did your sister remember any of the details of her escape?”
His gut abruptly tightened again, and he sucked in a pained breath. “No.”
She went quiet. “Not your story to tell?”
“No. I’m sorry.”
“It’s all right, Gideon. Can you at least tell me how old she was?”
“Thirteen.”
“She would have been married for one year.”
He swallowed hard. “Yes.”
“Okay,” she murmured. “I can imagine the rest.” She raked her fingers through Brutus’s fur, petting the dog gently, and Gideon couldn’t tear his eyes away. He wished that she’d pet him that way. Again. Because she had the night before. She’d stroked his hair and his beard and his back. So very gently. Nothing in his life had ever felt so nice.
“Gideon? Gideon?”
He yanked his gaze from her hand petting Brutus to meet her eyes. “What was that?”
“I asked if you’ve talked to any of the other escapees from Eden?”
His mouth fell open. “What?”
“Other escapees. Have you connected with them?”
It was like a sucker punch, leaving him breathless. He shook his head. “There weren’t any others. Only me, Mercy, and Eileen.”
She unfolded her legs from beneath her and came to sit next to him, putting her laptop on the coffee table. “I found two, both boys. Well, they’re young men now.”
He stared at her, openmouthed. “How? How did you find them?”
She gave him a serious side-eye. “I majored in journalism, Gideon. I know how to find stuff. This wasn’t even that complicated. Just time-consuming.”
“You’ve been awake for two hours.”
Her eyes softened. “And you’re an FBI agent who’s been free for seventeen years?”
“Well . . . yes.”
“Have you ever looked for other . . . escapees or survivors or whatever you want to call what you are?”
“Yes, many times. I searched online for tattoos like mine and lockets like my sister’s, but I never found anyone.”
“All right.” She covered his hand where it rested on his thigh. “I know you can’t share Mercy’s story, and I’m not asking that. But did she tell you how they explained your disappearance?”
“Yes.” It had been one of the few things she had told him. “Pastor told them that I’d attacked McPhearson and murdered him and they’d banished me as punishment.”
“What did that mean exactly?”
“That they took me into the wilderness, tied me to a tree, and left me there to die. Ostensibly I would have been attacked, mauled, and consumed by animals.”
Daisy gasped. “Dear God.”
He shrugged. “Pedophilia was apparently A-okay. Murder was not.”
“Was . . .” She hesitated. “Was your mother punished for getting you out?”
Yes. He had to bow his head against the sudden pain. I’m sorry, Mama. “How did you find the two escapees?” he asked, his voice hoarse and heavy.
Her eyes filled with sudden tears, because he’d answered the question without saying a word. “I searched newspapers in the Northern California area for teenagers with tattoos. Also a generic search for specific tattoos with olive trees and cross-referenced Eden.” She grimaced. “There are a lot of olive tree tattoos.”
“So you just searched manually . . . with your eyes.” He blew out a breath when she grinned at him.
“With my eyes?” she asked, chuckling.
He rolled his own. “I know I’m not making sense. I meant, do you have software to search picture files for details?” Because he had used software and had still found nothing.
“No to software, yes to eyes. I can focus on things faster than most people.”
“And for longer,” he murmured, thinking about the puzzle she’d zoned in on for hours the day before. He straightened abruptly, turning to see her laptop screen. “Show me the two you’ve found.”
“I haven’t actually tracked them down to a current location yet. One of them could have changed his name by now. I can e-mail these links to you.”
“Please,” he murmured, hoping like hell that there were really others. Every escapee was one more person who no longer lived in hell.
SACRAMENTO, CALIFORNIA
SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 18, 6:30 A.M.
Mutt gave a little shake when they came into the house, marched straight to his bed, and curled up with what sounded like an irritated grunt. He liked to walk, but maybe not this much. They’d done the path to Daisy’s house twice more.
She was home, because both of the last two times he’d walked by, there had been lights on in her apartment. But there had also been lights in the third-floor windows and he’d seen a man walking around up there. He hadn’t even attempted to approach the house. He had no interest in breaking and entering to grab Daisy Dawson, especially if a scream would draw the attention of whoever lived upstairs.