“You don’t need to bother. She’s supposed to be celebrating your new job with us tonight. If she doesn’t show up for that, it will be time to call in the troops.”
“You have a point there. All right.” She didn’t mention the scrapings she had taken from Karen’s tub. There was no reason to make her worry needlessly. And if Karen had called in to work again, then she had to be okay.
Or someone was calling the school on her behalf.
“See you tonight, then,” Ashley told Jan, and rang off.
She showered quickly and dressed for work, feeling strange now that she didn’t have to put on her trainee blues in the morning. When she got out to the kitchen, Sharon had apparently given up the idea of going back to sleep; she was with Nick, leaning against him where he sat on a counter stool, both of them gazing at the newspaper.
“Have a good day, kid,” Nick told her.
“Thanks. You too.”
Jake thought he had probably made the drive to the prison in record time, and it still seemed like the longest drive he had made in his life.
As the first miles had gone by, he’d spent the time being angry, longing to do something physical to shake Ashley and make her understand.
The second half of the drive, he’d begun to question himself. Was he fanatical? Or did he have a right to be concerned? How do you not care when you’re starting to find that every moment that really matters is with someone who is determined to put her life on the line?
He arrived far too early and had to find the closest twenty-four-hour restaurant to the prison to sit and nurse eggs and coffee for an hour. As he ate, he jotted down notes on things he’d been thinking of. He drew diagrams of the area in which the bodies had been found. All the bodies. Bordon held the key. He’d always known it. And still, he found himself writing down information. Fact: the cult had existed. Three women associated with it had died. Fact: they had not found another group in any way similar to the People for Principle. Fact: most of the members of the cult had seemed truly oblivious of any wrongdoing, including murder. They had been humiliated and chagrined to discover that they had been fleeced. They had been eager to put the past behind them.
Fact: another woman was dead.
Fact: Nancy Lassiter, his partner, had been on the case. Had died during the investigation, though she had never been out to the property. Not that he knew about, anyway.
Fact: she had left his boat alive. And she hadn’t been seen again until her car had been discovered in a canal weeks later.
In a canal, near the property.
Fact…
He’d always felt that, of the members, if anyone could tell them anything, it would have been John Mast, who had vehemently denied any knowledge of any of the deaths, but who had admitted that he didn’t understand a great deal of the bookkeeping in the office he was supposed to manage. Mast had known something.
Fact: Mast was dead. He had perished in a plane crash. Or had he?
He drummed his fingers on the table for a moment, then pulled out his cell phone and dialed headquarters. Marty wouldn’t be at work yet; he might well still be sleeping. But one of the task force would be available.
He was connected with Belk, who assured him that he would investigate the plane crash immediately and find out if all the bodies had been positively identified.
He turned back the page of his notepad, rereading the note Ashley had left him. She was right. They needed to back off. He did want to stop her from becoming a cop, and he knew she still meant to go back and finish up at the academy someday. He couldn’t remember the exact figures, but he knew that somewhere in the United States, a law enforcement official was killed around every fifty-eight hours. Part of the job. He didn’t want her to be part of that job. Even if he was himself.
Idly, he flipped the notebook to the top page. There was a briefly executed but excellent drawing of an accident.
The accident she had passed on the highway, the one that had left Stuart Fresia in a coma. He frowned, studying the drawing. There was a figure in black, staring at the road. At the accident. A figure in black…
Black, like the members of People for Principle had worn.
As he stared at the drawing, his cell phone rang. To his surprise, it was the warden from the prison. His face grew grave as he listened.
“Is he dead?” he asked, his tongue thick as he formed the words.
“Living, but barely,” the warden replied. “They’re rushing him into surgery. I know how important you felt this meeting was. Come straight to the hospital. The doctors don’t give him much chance. He hasn’t been conscious and he may never be conscious again, but I’ll let you sit with him once he’s out of surgery, just in case.”
“Thanks.”
Jake ended the call, paid for his breakfast and headed out, feeling ill, fighting alternating waves of anger, disappointment and bitterness.