When Shadows Fall (Dr. Samantha Owens #3)

Half an hour later, Baldwin’s GPS unit, a device he called Lola—because what Lola wants, Lola gets—told them their exit was ahead.

Anne Carter lived on forty acres of prime horse country in Fauquier County. Once they exited the highway, it was a bucolic drive—emerald fields and black fences supplemented by stacked field stones; muscular black and brown horses let out to graze. Gold Cup, the biannual steeplechase event, was coming up in a couple of months, and Sam wondered how many of these beauties would be running.

The country morning wasn’t as unbearably hot as it had been in the city, and Sam was enjoying watching the horses scamper about, playing in the fields. They were in Civil War country, the rolling verdant hills still masked with the slightest haze of early morning fog, and despite the clear sense of health and happiness around them, Sam couldn’t help feeling the shadow of those lives lost.

Carter’s drive was flanked with stone pillars and a twin row of poplars, evenly spaced on either side of the drive to create a multidimensional picture as they drove toward the house. The circular drive held two Range Rovers and a convertible BMW similar to Sam’s own, and had plenty of room for more. The cars surrounded a small fountain with a bronze statue of nymphs dancing in the spray.

Carter’s home was breathtaking, a slice of old Virginia. The house was set right in the wave of a hill; three stories of fieldstone with black shutters and a black roof, four chimneys pointing up to the sky. There was an arbor visible behind the house, rows and rows of grapes running away from the expansive backyard.

Sam thought she wouldn’t mind having a working vineyard on a century-old horse farm. She wouldn’t mind it a bit.

Anne Carter met them at the front door wearing a riding habit, the knee-high boots worn and muddied from an early morning ride. Her hair was short and white, eyes as bright blue as Sam had ever seen, her eyebrows still dark despite the white hair, which was slicked back under a headband so it wouldn’t interfere with her helmet. Her lips had a hint of red lipstick.

Everything about her, from her house to her barns to her clothing, was no-nonsense and elegant, a lethal combination. Even her accent was as cultured and Southern as the environs.

“Come in, come in. Let me get you something to drink. It’s so beastly hot out there. I can’t wait for fall. Just a few more weeks and there will be a bit of relief.”

She ushered them into a casual wood-paneled den and made sure they were comfortably seated before handing out tall, cold glasses of tart lemonade.

Baldwin introduced himself and Sam.

Once Carter settled across from them, she said, “I just can’t believe what I’ve been hearing. The news this morning is full of excitement. Kaylie Rousch is alive, and Doug Matcliff was, too? We’d given up on him. I was so torn up when I heard the news. That he was out there alone, thinking we hadn’t been in place to help him? It’s such a shame. Such a damn shame. And with all this hoopla, I hope this means you’re on the right track to find the Stevens girl?”

“About that,” Baldwin said. “I don’t mean to jump right in—”

“Oh, by all means. We don’t have all day. You’re on a case. I don’t miss it, that’s for sure. The pressure, the horror, the intensity day in and day out. I loved what I did, but I was also happy to retire, to buy this farm with my husband and live out here in the quiet where the worst things we have to worry about are whether the grapes are ripe or the horses lame.”

Realizing they were waiting patiently for her to finish, she said, “I am so sorry. Forgive an old woman her ramblings. Please, do go on.”

Old woman. She couldn’t be a day over sixty, and Sam could tell immediately she was as sharp as a tack. So why the artifice?

Baldwin merely nodded. “It’s no problem, ma’am. Doug Matcliff wrote to Dr. Owens, and told her he was going to be murdered, and then, of course, he was. We’ve located, and now lost again, Kaylie Rousch. She’s the one who indicated Matcliff had been checking in regularly to no avail for at least a year after they escaped the NRM.”

“Oh, call it by its rightful name, Dr. Baldwin. Eden is a cult, and always was. That woman, Curtis Lott, was as bad as Jim Jones as far as I’m concerned. Letting all those people kill themselves in that barn. She will surely burn in hell for her actions.”

“I understand you’ve been involved in investigating cults before. You were on the task force that went into Jones’s Guyana compound after the mass suicide, correct?”

Her eyes grew distant. “Yes, I was. What a scene that was. Jones was the worst sort of fraudster, a drug-addled predator preaching peace, love and harmony among the races, all the while bleeding his followers dry, getting them high and raping their children. We had a chance to take him out once but couldn’t get authorization. Think how many people could have been saved if someone had been willing to make the hard choice.”