Assassin's Promise, The Red Team Series, Book 5 (36 page)

He doubled back and followed Remi. He couldn’t see her or the ghost, but he could hear her moving at a fast pace through the woods. On the side of the mountain where they were, there was less underbrush to obstruct their way. Jagged rocks pierced the ground, sticking out at sharp angles.
 

He was about to call out to Remi to slow down and move carefully—he didn’t want her injured by missing a step and slipping down into the ravine below them—but a sharp cry from her told him he was too late.

Her flashlight was dancing around in a tight pattern as he reached her side, then it locked on one thing. “Oh, God. Oh, God. What is that? Greer, what is that?” Remi held the flashlight on the decomposing flesh of an arm.

The ghost stood where the feet of the body would be, a little down slope, and wept, the ethereal sound surrounding them as if it came from the hills themselves.

Greer knelt beside the body. He had no doubt the body was Sally. He’d found her at last. “Aw, hell. I’m so sorry, Sally. Rebecca.” He looked at the corpse’s dirtied blond hair, her head at a strange angle against a rock.

Remi scooted away, tucking her heels tightly against herself. “Is that her?”

“Yeah. I’m willing to bet it is.” He texted the coordinates and info to Max.

“What do you suppose she was doing out here, so far from the community?”

“I wish I knew.”
 

The ghost’s blue glow dissipated. Greer looked up to see if she was leaving them now that she’d accomplished her mission. She was walking away, heading toward the building site he’d identified on his app.
 

“I don’t think she’s done with us,” he said. He looked at Remi. “Are you all right?”

“I tripped on her arm. I-I’m fine.”

He gave her a hand up. “Then let’s get a little closer to that building.”
 

About a hundred yards out from the building, Greer found a hiding spot for Remi. “Stay here, stay hidden. I will come back for you. If for some reason I don’t, wait until the guys come for both of us. Be quiet. Keep your phone on silent.”

“Greer, don’t go in there. I have a really bad feeling about that place.”

“Yeah, so do I.” He caught her elbow, then moved his hand down her arm to the flashlight she held. He switched it off. She stood before him, shadowy and solid. He wondered if Sally and the healer had told each other the truth of their feelings. Had she died wondering if the man she loved loved her back?

“Remi.” He caught her face in his palm. She could no more see him than he could her. “I love you.”

She grabbed his wrist in both of her hands and moved her face into his palm. “Don’t you dare die in there, Greer Dawson. I have plans for you, ones that involve long years of me being afraid for you and you laughing at me.”

“I never laugh at you.”

“No, you don’t. And that’s why I love you.”

He leaned forward and kissed her lips, then pressed his mouth to her temple. “You are the best thing that ever happened to me, Remi.”

He took out his phone and dialed ops.
 

“Go.”
Kelan’s voice came over the line.

“We found Sally’s body.”

“We?”

“Remi and I. It’s near a collection of Quonset huts. They look abandoned, but I’m going to check them out.”

“I got your coordinates. I’ll send some of the guys your way.”

“It could be nothing, K. Let me check it out first.”

“Negative. Hold your position. Max, Val, and Angel are already near you. I’ll send them your way.”

“What were they doing?”

“Retrieving Lion and his boys. King got to them first.”

“Were they hurt?”

“No. Just gone.”

“Shit.”

“Hang tight, bro. The team’s on its way.”
 

“Copy.” Greer dropped the connection. He felt Remi’s hand slip into his. Though he couldn’t see her face, he felt the question she wasn’t asking. “King got Lion and his pride.”

“No. That is not good. Do you think they’ll be all right?”

Greer shook his head. “King’s a fucking hotwire. Who knows.” He and Remi went up the hill to the nearest forest service road to wait for the team.
 

Their big SUVs pulled up a few minutes later. They parked in a way that would let them head out fast if needed. Greer took Val’s keys and handed them to Remi.
 

“Get in the back and stay down. No one can see you through the tinted windows. If there’s a problem, get the hell out of here. Drive back to the Friends and wait for us. It’s too far to go back to headquarters alone.”

“Okay. Be careful.” She reached out for Greer’s hand. He held it for the length of a step, then let go. He watched until she was safely locked inside the SUV, then caught up with the guys.
 

“I heard about Lion,” he said to Max.

“Yeah.”

“We’ll find them.”

Max didn’t answer at first, but it was ugly when he did. “Your girl Sally’s dead. We didn’t find her in time. Half the kids from the Friendship Community are missing. We haven’t found them. King’s a fucking expert at disappearing people.”

“So we find King and get our answers.”

“Oh yeah. Bet your ass we’re gonna find him.”

“What’s going on here, G?” Angel asked.

“Remi and I followed a ghost here. There’s a girl’s body on the hill below. I think it’s Sally’s remains. She’s near three Quonset huts that look abandoned. I haven’t checked them out. Could be nothing. Could be something.”

“A ghost brought you here?” Val asked. “What’ve you been smokin’, G?”

Max pursed his lips and shook his head. “He’s been getting visits from a ghost for a while.”

“Shit.” Val smiled at him. “Maybe you should read my cards or something.”

Greer waved his hand. “I’m over it. Let’s go.” He started down the hill.
 

The forest was dark. None of them had night-vision goggles. They walked the perimeter of the site. The windows in each of the buildings were boarded up. The huts were dark and quiet. They switched on their flashlights and immediately saw fresh tire tracks.
 

“Doesn’t look exactly abandoned,” Angel muttered.

They split into two teams, Max and Greer taking the nearest hut, Val and Angel the farthest. Greer and Max flanked the door at one end. On Greer’s signal, Max opened the door. Greer raised his gun and flashlight, pointing both into the cavernous space. Long sheets of plastic hung from rods, separating cots. The cots weren’t empty. The monitors attached to the occupants were dark. The place had a rancid odor of death and human waste.
 

“Shit. Shit. Shit,” Max snapped. “Greer, get outta here. I think we found where the smallpox came from.”

Just as Greer started to retreat, he noticed one of the bodies move. “They’re alive.”

Max grabbed his arm and pulled him out of the building. “We’ll call it in. We aren’t equipped to deal with it. We don’t know what they’ve got.”

Halfway to the other hut, they met up with Angel and Val, who’d made the same assessment. Max called it in to Kit. Greer went to the third hut. There were no cots inside. What he saw was a thousand times worse. It was a deep pit half filled with bodies in various degrees of decomposition. He backed outside and shut the door.

What the hell had happened here? He thought of Sally’s body just up the hill. Had she come from here? Was she trying to get away? Were these the missing Friends kids?

“Max.” Greer’s voice was raw. “We got a mass grave, too.”

“Aw, hell.”

Greer helped an emergency worker haul the last victim up the hill to a waiting emergency vehicle. He was strapped to a backboard so they could navigate the steep hill. The guy began to rouse and struggle against the restraints and blanket.
 

Greer freed a hand to set it on the guy’s leg. “Be calm. We’re here to help you.”

The guy started to weep silently. What a terrifying experience he’d come through. Hopefully, the hospital he was being transported to would be able to reverse whatever had been done to him.
 

A paramedic with a gurney was waiting at the top of the steep slope. Greer hoisted his half of the backboard onto the mobile cot. He was about to turn away when the victim stopped him.

“She did it.”

“Who? Did what?” Greer asked as the medics wheeled him away.
 

“Sally. She found help. She left to bring back help.”

Greer slipped his gloved hand into the young man’s. “Yes. She did. She was very brave. I’m sorry it took us so long to get to you.”

A tear slipped over the guy’s cheek. Greer watched as he was stowed inside an ambulance. When the ambulance pulled away, he moved down the slope to the spot where they found Sally. Her remains were being bagged for removal. She hadn’t come far, physically, from the site of her torture, but she’d moved worlds to reach out to him.
 

Maybe she had believed his promise of help after all.

Chapter Thirty-Five

Greer knocked on the Haskel’s door. Mrs. Haskel opened it. Fatigue shadowed her eyes. In just the few days since the outbreak was discovered, she’d aged a decade. It was as if she’d stepped outside the walls of her Shangri-la world and time caught up with her.

“Mr. Dawson.”

He tried to smile, but he didn’t have it in him. He knew she was hurting. She and several others in the community had spent the day pouring over forensic reconstructions made of those found in the mass grave in order to give preliminary identifications for the families missing loved ones.
 

He was there to burden her with yet another young face needing a name—Sally.

Mrs. Haskel stepped aside and invited him in. Sitting at her table were half a dozen people he hadn’t seen around the village. The community was crawling with outsiders now, so there were lots of people coming and going he didn’t recognize.
 

Mrs. Haskel made the introductions. He was stunned to learn that her visitors were former Friends who slipped away during their tithes rather than commit crimes. They were adults now, in ages ranging from early twenties to mid-thirties. She knew them, knew their families. Some had come back too late—their parents and siblings had passed from the smallpox.

All of them wanted to stay for good. Mrs. Haskel had had them checked out by the FBI. Greer couldn’t wait to tell Remi. This new development meant that these returning members could help the village navigate the current crisis, perhaps even offset the numbers of adults needed to foster all the kids orphaned by the disease or the arrests of their parents.

Why wasn’t Mrs. Haskel smiling? “This is good news,” he said.

She nodded. “It’s wonderful news. I spent the day with parents who got the terrible confirmation that their children will never be returning.” She looked at her visitors. “And now others who lost their kids long ago have them back again. It’s a gift.”

“I’m sorry to add to your burden, but I have one more girl I hope you can identify for me.” Greer showed her the reconstruction of the girl he and Remi found on the hillside.

She took the large photo. Her hands shook as she looked at it. “Yes. I know this girl.” She looked up at Greer. “Was she also in the mass grave?”

“No. She was outside the building, on the hill. She fell and broke her neck. We think she had gotten out and was going for help.”

Mrs. Haskel nodded. Tears filled her eyes. “This is—was—Rebecca Morris. She has no one to mourn her. She was an orphan when she left for her tithe.” She handed the photo back to him.
 

Sally
.

“She has me. I will see that she has a proper headstone for her ashes.”

Mrs. Haskel nodded. “She and the doctor wanted to marry, even though it had been decided that she would marry the woodcutter because the WKB demanded it.” She shook her head. “So many lives ruined so needlessly.”

“What will happen to the Friends now?” Greer asked, though he doubted enough time had passed to answer that.

“We will continue,” one of her visitors said as he came to stand next to Mrs. Haskel.

Another from the group joined them. “We’ll return to our core values. We’ll still do tithes, but they will be visible to the whole community, in service to our community. They won’t be sin tithes anymore.”

“That way we’ll keep ourselves from becoming blackmail fodder for anyone like the WKB,” a third returning member said.

Mrs. Haskel gave Greer a sad smile. “Many of us wanted to end the way we were doing things. Especially when the WKB got so involved in our community. We didn’t know how to stop it without destroying ourselves. In the end, it destroyed us anyway.” She looked at him. “We should have fought sooner and harder—” she nodded toward the picture he held “—before so many innocent lives were thrown away just so we could protect our guilty ones.”

“The FBI hasn’t associated you with any crime, Mrs. Haskel.”

She shook her head. “I was a coward. I got pregnant early so that I wouldn’t have to do my tithe. But don’t mistake me. I’m as guilty as everyone else. I knew and did nothing.”

Greer sighed. He looked from her to each of her visitors, hoping they could in fact put the village back together again.

“Thank you for ID’ing Rebecca. I’ll see that she and the doctor are laid to rest together in your cemetery.”

* * *
 

Greer stepped in to Remi’s cabin. She looked up from her laptop, then hurried over to him. “What’s wrong?”

He showed her the photo of Sally’s reconstruction. “I asked several people if they knew her. They all did. She was Rebecca Morris.”

Remi reached out and touched his arm. “I’m sorry. I was hoping she was one of the ones who just ran away.”

“She was a fighter.” He shook his head.
 

“She came and got you.”

Greer huffed a rushed breath. “Man, did she. First time a ghost has ever been useful.”

Remi’s phone rang. She picked it up from the table, then sent Greer a panicked look. “It’s my department chair.” She wrapped a hand around her stomach as she answered the call.

He felt her fear. This was the week she should have returned to work. He went over to the bowl and pitcher, then brought back just the bowl. “Just in case,” he whispered with a grin, hoping the call didn’t make her puke.