“Honestly, Maureen Rousch is a miserable excuse for a human being, but what did she have to gain by telling us this? She certainly wasn’t interested in currying favor. And Kaylie has shown herself to be less than honest.”
“You think we’re running into a setup?”
She chewed on a fingernail for a second, thinking. “Kaylie was abused, abandoned, raped. She spent the past decade on the run with a disgruntled ex-cult member who has an ax to grind against the FBI. She showed up at a very convenient moment, dumped a lot of fascinating information on us that we’d be sure to immediately follow up on, including claiming Rachel Stevens was her child. Then she attacked me, stole my clothes and money and disappeared. What if she’s not what she says? Or who she says?”
“Then we need to be especially careful going forward.”
“I still don’t understand why Doug Matcliff chose me, of all people, to drag into this.”
“We may never know the answer to that, Sam. But thank goodness he did, because without you, we wouldn’t be aware of any of this. It might have been years, or never, until we put it all together. We all owe you one.”
Xander called as they raced into D.C., Baldwin speeding across the George Washington Bridge, the flasher spinning on his dash.
The connection wasn’t great and she didn’t catch the first few words. Then he came into range.
“...tell them to be very cautious. These people have serious ammunition. I made five guards with AK-47s, AR-15s, sidearms and grenades on the western front. Assume there are more around the periphery.”
“Where are you now, Xander?”
“Three clicks south of their compound. They have it locked down completely. You’re going to have to fight your way in.”
“We can’t do that,” Baldwin said. “We have to try to negotiate with them. We can’t just go in there blasting.”
“They don’t look like the negotiating type, Baldwin. I’m looking for a way to breach the perimeter. I’ll call you back if I find anything.”
“Xander, pull out. We’ve got this. I can’t have you getting hurt,” Baldwin said.
Xander laughed. “I’ll worry about my own skin. There’s a lot of land to protect. I’m sure there are going to be a few ingress routes they can’t cover. I only count twenty people, but they’re all heavily armed. I’ll be in touch.”
“Stand down, Sergeant,” Baldwin shouted, but it was too late; he was already gone. “Damn. Does he do that often?”
Sam nodded. “Ignore the orders of those in charge to do it his own way? That would be a yes.”
Baldwin pulled into the garage below the Hoover Building. “Get him back on the phone and tell him to get his ass out of there. We can’t move against them effectively if we have a civilian in the mix.”
Sam shook her head. “He’s an asset, and he won’t stand down. You know that. So use him. He knows what he’s doing and he’s got the eyes of an eagle. You get him tied in to the strike team and he’ll get your people in and out without them getting killed. This is what he does best, Baldwin. Trust me.”
He tapped his hand on the steering wheel. “I suppose you’re going to want to come along for the ride, too?”
“Of course. You may need me.”
She didn’t mention she was only good at working on the dead. She hoped there wouldn’t be a need for her particular skills.
*
As they suited up, June Davidson called with more information.
Baldwin put him on the speaker.
“Two things. Ellie Scarron woke up an hour ago. You aren’t going to believe the story she just told me.”
“Let me guess,” Sam said. “Her husband was funding an illegal adoption ring, run out of the law offices of our friend Mac Picker.”
Davidson was clearly caught off guard. “How’d you figure that out?”
“It’s a long story. But we think Kaylie Rousch is Rachel Stevens’s mother, and she, along with a number of other women who were a part of the new religious movement the FBI’s been tracking called Eden, were being impregnated and forced to give up their babies.”
“And they’ve been running this out of Lynchburg? Under my nose? Son of a bitch!”
“It looks that way,” Baldwin said. “We don’t know how deep this goes, Detective, so watch your back. Our forensic accountants are gathering everything they can from the law firm’s databases, so do not, under any circumstances, tell anyone what we suspect. Our paramount issue is finding the NRM and recovering Rachel Stevens alive. Then we’ll go around the back end and mop up the rest. Are we clear?”
“So what am I supposed to do down here, just twiddle my thumbs while y’all rush in and save the day?”
“No. I want you to start taking apart Scarron’s life, and see where and if it matches up with Doug Matcliff.”