The Blood We Spill: Suspense with a Dash of Humor (The Letty Whittaker 12 Step Mysteries) (31 page)

I almost stumbled when he let me go, but I gripped
the table’s edge and watched him walk out the door. Gabriel let Eli pass
through the door first, then caught my eye and paused.

I braced for a reprimand, but his face softened.
He turned and followed Eli.

Chapter Twenty-Eight

A
fter breakfast,
I set off to find Beth again. She was sitting cross-legged on her bed, toweling
her thatch of fading, color-assisted auburn hair. My friend had jettisoned her
fake, emerald-green contacts before coming here, and the natural, khaki-green
irises softened her face. Worry lines had deepened around them, however. She
looked tired.

We needed to talk about Maggie, but I filled her in
on Eli’s dismissal first.

“Damn,” she said, biting her lower lip. “This is
not the time to lose one of the gang. Did he try talking Father out of it?”

“Unless you made him think it was his idea first,
I can’t imagine talking Father out of anything. And he’s not going to risk
Moses taking off to avoid another beatdown.”

“Good point,” Beth said with a sigh. “I almost
wish Eli hadn’t snapped. Not that I blame him. Still, as far as beatdowns go,
this was hands-down the most enjoyable thrashing I’ve ever seen.”

“Wouldn’t have missed it for the world,” I agreed.

“You know you’ll have to be doubly alert with
Mo-the-Molester. After his bones knit, anyway.”

I nodded. A pause hung between us. Then I met her
eyes.

“I want out of here too,” I told her.

“I miss Jimmy,” she said. “I miss twelve-hundred-count,
Egyptian cotton sheets and lavender-scented lotion and vanilla lattes.” She
reached over and gripped my hand hard. “I miss cookies. Dear God, how I miss
them.”

We started laughing.

“So are you ready to go? Or… ” I almost couldn’t
say it. “Do we track down that stupid girl, once and for all, and see if she’ll
come with us?”

Beth hesitated, opened her mouth, then stopped.
“Are we any nearer to finding her? I mean, do you really want to stick around
for another community gathering?”

I sighed. “I don’t think we’ll have to. I might
know where they might be.”

“Crap.”

“I know.”

“Okay.” She flopped back on the bed. “Where?”

“There are probably more cabins ringing the lake.
As thick as the woods are, it wouldn’t be hard to keep them hidden.”

“Why would they want to?” Beth sat back up.

“Meth.” I repeated what I’d told Eli. “We’ve
always wondered how the Elect could support itself.”

 She was nodding by the time I finished. “Son of a
female dog, that makes sense. But what are we supposed to do? Go rambling
around the wilderness looking for Meth Head Beauty and her Druggie Dwarves?”

I explained seeing Gabriel and Justus and the path
that led to the clearing. “Unfortunately, I don’t think we would be able to
find the way at night. Not even with a full moon.”

“I fail to see the unfortunate-ness in that.”

“Well, I don’t think it would be a good idea to
stumble onto their secret meth-lab lair in broad daylight. What are we going to
do? Tell ‘em we stopped in for lunch? Not to mention, our only flashlight
died.”

“You might have a point.”

We sat in silence for several moments,
contemplating the obstacles, not to mention the dangers.

“You know what?” Beth said. “Let’s just go.”

I cocked my head in a
what-did-you-smoke-for-breakfast expression.

“No, seriously,” she went on. “I’m sick of all
this sneaking around and hiding and… and… skulduggery.”

My mouth dropped. “Did you just say—”

“It’s a word,” she said, eyes narrowing to slits.
“And I’m sick of it.”

“You know what? I am too.”

T
his time I
dressed for the woods. I wore the one pair of jeans I had packed under a
calf-length skirt. I would have preferred boots, but tennis shoes would have to
do. Beth looked similarly bulky, and when we got past the isolation cabin and
ditched the skirts she uncovered gray sweats. Not the best protection against
thorn bushes and prickers, but better than exposed legs. We rolled the skirts
up and hid them on the side of the cabin. Beth hadn’t had her Naming Ceremony
yet, and she peeked in to see what she had missed. She turned a horrified face
to me.

“How did you stay sane?”

“Well,” I said. “I might have had some company.”

“Hot damn!” Delight flooded her features. “Eli? Of
course, it was Eli. Tell me—”

I shushed her. “Not now.”

“Okay, but later, right? You’ll tell me later?”

The giggles were a relief but short-lived.
Although we had put together a cover story for our presence on the path—just
going for a healthy walk, Father—it felt flimsy. If we really were on a trail
leading to a secret meth lab, we probably shouldn’t expect gullibility from
anyone who might discover us. Plus, not knowing from which direction someone
might pop up made us jumpy as hell.

The clearing was even scarier. The smattering of
scrub trees didn’t provide any kind of cover, and the memory of the grisly
discovery I had made in this spot kicked my heart up in a staccato burst. I
stopped and closed my eyes. I hadn’t had a panic attack since the waves that
had overtaken me the second night in isolation. Instead of fighting, I let go,
letting my muscles do what they might need to do, letting the fear come if it
had to.

It didn’t. Crows fussed with each other, raucous
and discordant, but the sound didn’t trigger an attack either. Twigs snapped as
Beth came to my side.

I opened my eyes. Still good.

Beth patted me on the shoulder and began to move
away, but I grabbed her. “Don’t go that way,” I whispered.

“Why not?”

“‘Cause that’s where I barfed up my juice after
finding Enoch’s hand.”

She skittered in the other direction and we
circled the clearing, keeping to the edges. I made several false attempts at
forcing my way through the thicket, but it was impenetrable. It took two
circles before I found it—a blind alley that, after a tight S-curve through the
dense foliage, opened onto another path.

Our jitters grew worse on the other side. We had
no credible reason to be on this side unless we had been specifically searching
our way to it.

The path broadened and the trees thinned slightly.
Enough so that we were able to spy the site before stumbling upon it. At the
first glance of human habitation, Beth and I scooted off the path, picking our
way up to the edge of the site where we hid behind a thick patch of bushes.

“How far do you think we’ve come?” I asked.

“My thighs are telling me at least two miles.”

I nodded and we crawled deeper into the bushes to
spy on the site.

Movies make spying from bushes look easy. What it
truly involved was crawling into the middle of the dry, brittle thatch, getting
stuck and scratched all along the way, and sitting on broken stems and exposed
roots. I also discovered there is no earthly way to part branches to peek
through without a cacophony of cracking, rustling, and snapping. If the noise
drew attention from anyone, I could only hope they would assume a bunch of
squirrels were having enthusiastic sex. On the positive side, the racket
covered the sound of Beth’s grunts and muttered curses.

Three buildings—a trailer home and two dilapidated
sheds, one on each side of the trailer. The ATVs had been parked near one of
the sheds and were covered with tarps. Although the area between the woods and
the buildings had been cleared and mowed at some point in the past, probably to
keep the mosquitoes at bay last summer, it wouldn’t be winning any prizes from
the DIY channel for curb appeal. Whoever the occupants were seemed to favor the
just-throw-it-out-the-door method of garbage disposal. Piles of tattered black
garbage bags had been piled along the side of the trailer. Raccoons or bears had
split them open, leaving empty beer and pop cans, used plastic milk jugs,
industrial cleanser jugs, and two-liter plastic pop bottles strewn across the
yard.

Beth tapped my shoulder. When I looked over, she
held her nose and waved her hand in front of it. I nodded. A thick, acrid
chemical smell drifted from the buildings. If they had put up a sign announcing
METH FOR SALE, it couldn’t have been more obvious. No wonder Father kept the
morons hidden.

Beth leaned over to whisper in my ear. “Now,
what?”

I shrugged. “We wait?”

She rolled her eyes but didn’t come up with a
better idea.

We settled down to wait. Despite a variety of
experimental adjustments, it proved completely impossible to find a comfortable
position. Squatting for more than eighteen seconds caused my thighs to send a
series of frantic alarms to my brain, threatening to self-destruct if the
position was held longer than seven seconds. Sitting meant attempted sexual
assault from the stubs sticking out of the ground. Kneeling was never an option.
My jeans cut the circulation off at my knees whenever I tried that.

Beth’s grumbling and shifting told me she was
experiencing the same level of pain and discomfort I was.

“We’ve been here long enough,” I whispered. “If
anyone was going to come out, they would have by now.”

Beth glanced at her watch. “We’ve been here twelve
minutes.”

Huh.

The cabin door flung open, and we both jumped,
causing our hiding place to convulse with rattling leaves. Justus glanced over.
I closed my eyes and sent telepathic “squirrel sex” messages. Beth grabbed my
wrist, and I almost wet myself. She pointed at Justus, and then made a gun out
of her finger, squeezing off a couple of rounds. Did she want us to shoot him?
That seemed kind of drastic.

But no. She was only alerting me to the fact that
Justus was armed. Armed?
What the hell?

Justus walked around the side of the cabin in the
direction of the ATVs and shed. Although he looked them over, he didn’t stop
but walked the perimeter. Thankfully, he moved in the opposite direction from
our bush. He circled the trailer and strolled to the remaining building. I
hadn’t noticed, but a padlock dangled from a latch on the door. He tugged it,
making sure it was solid. We heard thumping from inside the shed. Justus said,
“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” and pounded on the door three times in response.

Wide eyed, Beth and I stared at each other.
Someone
was…
      

Gabriel emerged from the trailer. Eyebrows pinched
in a knot that was sure to cause a headache, he joined Justus at a spot midway
between the cabin and the shed. Gabriel glanced at the locked shed before
turning to the younger man. He said something to Justus, who shrugged and
seemed about to answer when the door opened yet again, and the barrel-chested
dude came out holding a bowl and jug of water. Gabriel shushed Justus with a
hand signal. Barrel Chest made a sour face and pointedly ignored them as he walked
past.

He stopped in front of the padlocked shed and
tossed a “Well? I’m waiting…” look at Justus. Justus sauntered over and pulled
out a key.

The calf muscles in my right leg start to bunch. I
hissed.
Not now
.
Not now, not now, not now!
Beth shot a worried
look at me and I mouthed “cramp.” Her eyebrows practically merged with her
hairline.

“Not
now
.” Her whisper was a soft as a
breath, but I could tell she was secretly yelling.

I squinched my eyes at her and tried to straighten
my leg. I had to swivel and lean on my left side, easing my leg out of the back
of the bush. I slowly rotated my foot, trying to keep the muscle loose. Losing
my balance, I slid sideways, making the bush rattle. We froze. Moving my head
so slowly my neck creaked, I peeked out.

Gabriel stared straight at us. Next to me, Beth’s
breathing quickened into short, blessedly quiet, pants. I had an atavistic fear
of looking too closely at Gabriel’s eyes, but I couldn’t look away, either.
If
I don’t see him, maybe he won’t see me.
I settled for staring at his cheek.
Hands on hips, he squinted at our bush.

Squirrel sex, I thought
. Oh, please, squirrel
sex.

Justus chose that time to walk back. He said
something, then turned to stare at the spot that so fascinated Gabriel. Gabriel
shook his head as though clearing it. Then he placed his hand on Justus’
shoulder and steered him over to the ATVs. Father’s newly appointed
second-in-command appeared to be giving orders, pointing at different vehicles
while keeping his hand on his sentry’s shoulder. In fact, Father’s
second-in-command appeared to be creating a diversion.

We took it. 

W
hen we got back
to Megiddo, Beth went to lie down. I knew I would never be able to settle down,
but I didn’t want to hang around the office in case I ran into Maliah. Instead,
I headed for the comfort of the kitchen, hoping Jala was working. I wanted to
soak in her straightforward cheerfulness. Talitha was there, too, working on a
pasta hot-dish of some kind, and a woman I didn’t recognize was running dishes
from the breakfast rush through the dishwasher. Having gotten up at dawn, I was
startled to realize it wasn’t even lunch yet.

A choir of squeals greeted me as I walked in the
side door. I’d meant to just slip in and hang in the background, but the
excitement of the Naming Ceremony and the fight made that a ridiculous thought.
Baara heard the chattering and came trotting over from the laundry area. She
brought the crisp aroma of bleach, her hands damp and reddened.

A brief verbal wrangle ensued while each woman
sought to steer the conversation to her juicy topic of choice—Moses and Eli,
Eli and me, or Rachel.