When Shadows Fall (Dr. Samantha Owens #3)

“The girl’s talking, so we’re taking advantage of it. Are you ready for this?”


“Nothing you say at this point will surprise me. Lay it on me, sister.”

“Wanna bet?”

“A beer.”

“You’re on. Eden wasn’t selling drugs. They’re in the baby-making business.”

“What?”

Jordan gave him a strained grin. “You should see the look on your face. You owe me a beer. From the briefing Baldwin just gave us, which was only a few minutes long, Adrian Zamyatin was used as a stud, for lack of a better term, getting the women of Eden pregnant, and then they’d sell the children. Called them pods, if you can believe it.” Her nose wrinkled, and he couldn’t help noticing it made her even cuter, but she clearly found all this disgusting. “There could have been hundreds over the years.”

“Who’d they sell them to?”

“We’re still working on that.”

“This is good news for Rachel Stevens, though, isn’t it? She’s only ten years old. It’s not like she can have a kid.”

Blake flushed. “Don’t be obtuse, Detective. Just because she can’t fulfill whatever bizarre quota system they have doesn’t mean they can’t start trying.”

“Of course. Sorry. Stupid of me.”

She yanked her ponytail holder out of her hair, which spilled loose around her neck. She rubbed her forehead. “No, my apologies, Detective. Can I call you Fletcher?”

“Fletch is fine.”

“Fletch, then. I’m a bit on edge. As it turns out, you may be right. The Rousch girl described her early days in Eden, and while it wasn’t pleasant, the sexual abuse didn’t begin right away. She’s helping Baldwin with some geographical profiling right now. He’s walking her through every detail about where they were so he can see if there’s a pattern to their movements over the years, so we can extrapolate where they are now. We’re also looking at every recent land purchase in Maryland and Virginia to see if anything with their corporate profile comes up.”

“What do you need me to do?”

“Find this man for me.” She tapped the picture of Adrian Zamyatin. “He’s the key. There used to be a pattern to his kills, four people garroted, then a girl goes missing. It seems all jumbled together now—there were two garrotings and a strangulation, then Rachel went missing. We can’t find anything else that fits the pattern. Something’s different this time.”

“Has anyone looked at his connection to Matcliff? Outside of the cult, I mean?”

She blew out a huge breath, as if deciding how much to say. “We’ve run into some issues. Too many threads to pull, too little time. We have to focus on finding Rachel before it’s too late. Kaylie Rousch is telling stories that would make your hair curl. Five other little girls most likely went through the same thing. I want to be sure nothing happens to this one.”

“I get it. But here’s my armchair profile, for what it’s worth. Matcliff was strangled, not garroted. That screams personal to me.”

Jordan Blake had nice eyes. They were brown, not too dark, with flecks of green and blue in them when you saw her up close. She was close right now, staring at him while her brain processed what he’d said. “You think this Adrian knew him somehow? Outside of the time they spent in the cult?”

He nodded. “Either that or the Rousch girl isn’t telling us the whole truth. Has she been vetted at all? Positively ID’d? Anything she said verified?”

“We’re working on it. We’ll need DNA to confirm for sure. And hundreds of babies sold is both vague and a lot to track down.”

“Have you ever worked a slavery case before?”

“No, I haven’t. Have you?” She sat down in the chair next to him, still making that intense eye contact.

“No, but ‘selling’ equals a commodity. And it’s not like this is a common commodity. There’s a black market for organs. Why not babies?”

She leaned back in the chair. “Jesus.”

“Yeah. My thought exactly. You track who might be buying and selling kids, and we might get a little closer to the truth.”

She stared at him for a minute, chewing on her lip. “Where do you suggest we start?”

“Easy. The will. We’ve figured who several of the beneficiaries are. Anne Carter was Doug’s FBI boss. Thurber is his old partner. Curtis Lott—the leader of Eden. Zamyatin—our killer. Arthur Scarron was a beneficiary, but he was already dead, and his wife was nearly killed in his stead, so she must have known something, whether she realizes it or not. Frederick McDonald is the only one left, and we don’t know what his connection is yet. Why don’t we get someone to ask Miss Rousch who the hell he is? And see if she can’t tell us about this Lauren chick while she’s at it.”