The Prophet (Ryan Archer #2) (22 page)

Shay pushed off the side of the pool, floating out into the middle, arms outstretched, hands brushing the surface of the water. Her long hair floated around her head. “I’m delighted by that news,” she said. “Thank you for coming all the way out here to tell me.”

“I’m surprised Jimmy didn’t call to tell you himself,” Archer said.

She smiled up at him, her eyes undressing him. “I’m as surprised as you are,” she said.

Archer had heard enough. He turned for the house.

Webb checked his watch. Then he smiled down at Shay DaVine, her long, fabulous legs treading water. “Please let us know if you hear from your husband,” he said. “We look forward to seeing your family reunited very soon.”

Shay smiled at him, then submerged herself beneath the water.

Webb left before she came up for air.

* * *

Webb and Archer had driven separately. Cory climbed into the truck beside Archer, and Webb stood at Archer’s door to powwow a moment about what to make of their conversation with Shay.

“That was interesting,” Webb said.

“She was drunk,” Archer said.

Webb nodded. “I could smell it on her. The thing I took away was that the alcohol made her feelings toward Jimmy and her stepdaughter a bit more transparent.”

“She could live without the girl,” Archer commented.

Cory propped her feet on the truck’s dash. “She doesn’t care an ounce about Tatum,” she said. “Doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure that out. She’s been a gold digger from the day she met Jimmy. Every woman in this town with a boob job like that is a gold digger. I was born and raised here, so I know all about women like her.”

Cory slouched in the seat and diverted her gaze from them, staring off toward the ocean.

Webb’s cell rang. He glanced at the display.

“Jason Eckhart,” he said. He answered the call. It was a brief conversation. “He wants to meet,” Webb said to Archer.

Archer nodded. “I’m burning daylight, so tell him he’ll have to keep it short and sweet.”

Webb told Eckhart to meet them at the office.

THIRTY-ONE

Jason Eckhart was flirting with a jogger in the parking lot when the Prius and Land Cruiser arrived. The jogger was a twenty-something with the body of a twenty-something, and she was laughing at whatever he was saying. Eckhart was smoking a cigarette and gesturing with both hands. He spotted Webb and Archer and excused himself, but not before she grabbed his hand and scribbled her phone number on his palm.

Eckhart ran to the elevator and caught the door before it closed.

“Do you ever give it a rest?” Webb said.

Eckhart grinned. “What do you mean?”

“I mean with women.”

“I’m getting old, man. There’s no time to rest. I’ve got to score while I can still—” Then Eckhart noticed Cory and cut himself short.

Rosemary was waiting for them and she didn’t look happy. She pulled up a digital photo on her desktop computer.
 

“Tom, you are going to want to see this.”

It was a single shot of two children seated on the floor, their backs against a beige wall, paper bags covering their faces. There were shadows on the wall behind them, obviously the silhouettes of the men holding them captive. Webb immediately recognized his children and their clothing, even without needing to see their faces.

There was a message superimposed over the image in large font.

THEY ARE SAFE FOR NOW. BE SMART AND MIND YOUR OWN BUSINESS.

Webb didn’t say a word. He simply marched into his office and shut the door behind him. A few seconds later Rosemary’s desk phone rang.
 

“Just give me five minutes alone,” Webb said from his desk.

“You got it, boss.”

Archer and Eckhart drifted to the conference room to get started on whatever it was that Eckhart had wanted to talk about. There was a long mahogany table surrounded by chairs. Archer stood in one corner and leaned against the wall. Eckhart sat in one of the chairs and propped his feet on the table.
 

“I’ve been looking into the background of this Sawbridge character,” Eckhart said. “He had done more by the age of thirty than most people accomplish their entire lives. But there are some gaps and unanswered questions. Sounds like an interesting fellow, if you ask me.”

“Dangerous?”

“Probably. Depends on your perspective. I think he’s more of a showman than a religious figure. I read everything on him I could find, which wasn’t much. The church he founded is very secretive and extremely protective of him. Seems like they take their privacy more seriously than they do whatever dogma they preach. It’s very cultish.”

Archer nodded.

“His father walked out when he was kid, then he and his mother were taken in by some priests. Then when he got older he disappeared for a few years. The sources I read make it look like he traveled around India for a while, and that’s where he really transformed into the man he is today,” Eckhart said. “He is a skillful manipulator and control freak. And he’s a master hypnotist. He studied the art of putting people into deep, long-lasting trances during his sojourn in the East.”

“Much easier to keep your flock in line when they are all a bunch of zombies,” Archer said, putting his arms out in front of him and walking across the room like Frankenstein’s monster.
 

“Precisely.”

“But it still doesn’t make him a criminal.”

“Technically, no. I’m still working on that. But so far he’s clean.”

“What about the Mercedes and the two dead guys?”

Eckhart made the shape of a gun with his hand and aimed the finger-barrel at Archer. “We have a name. It wasn’t easy but Interpol came through on one of those guys. Dolf Walvoord. Born in East Germany. Former military. Educated at a university in London. Details are sketchy. He was not a citizen of this country. It doesn’t appear that a work visa or green card was issued. So, no one is sure how he got here, where he lived, or where he might have been employed.”

“Any ties to Sawbridge or the church?”

“Negative.”

“Any connection to HMI or NTW?”

“Not a thing.”

Archer was standing in the open doorway, arms folded over his chest. His thoughts were divided between Smith, Danielle, Webb’s kids, and Sawbridge. He didn’t like having his focus so fragmented. It was a challenge to blank Smith from the forefront of his mind. Focusing on her wasn’t productive. It simply made the fury in him rise and then there was nowhere to go with that unwanted energy. Cory was talking to Rosemary. Rosemary was seated cross-legged on her desk and they were smiling at each other, apparently knee deep in girl talk. Archer studied the way Cory moved, the way she gestured when she talked, the way she appeared hypnotized by the more mature, gorgeous African-American woman. Watching Cory made him want to find Danielle, to be able to finally have a conclusion to the mystery of her disappearance. He was convinced that Tatum’s, Cecile’s, and Danielle’s fates were all related to the Church of the Narrow Gate. All he lacked was proof.
 

“The cars? The cell numbers?” Archer asked.

Eckhart shook his head no. “Still nothing.”

Archer heard a cell phone ring and glanced out toward Rosemary’s desk. It was Cory’s phone. She had a hand extended, inspecting Rosemary’s necklace. He could read her lips. “That’s
hot
,” she was saying. Rosemary smiled.

Cory answered the phone, then her expression shifted. She made eye contact with Rosemary, then her eyes searched for Archer.

“That’s Lucy,” she said.
 

Archer turned and took a step toward her.

“She thinks she may know something about Danielle,” she said.

THIRTY-TWO

Lucy was smoking a cigarette. She had put on prescription glasses, and with the hair bob she looked like Daphne from
Scooby-Doo
. The cigarette was a camel and looked huge in her tiny hand. She was seated on the grimy floor of a bus depot, huddled against a wall. Archer waited outside while Cory went inside to fetch her. She’d been crying, and the tears had made her eye makeup run. She walked straight past Archer without a word.
 

“Baldwin Hills Reservoir,” Cory said as the three of them loaded into the Land Cruiser.

Lucy rode in the back with the cigarette. There wasn’t much room but her boney little ass didn’t require much.

Cory leaned over and spoke to Archer as the wind hummed around them.

“She won’t say who called her,” Cory said.

“A friend of a friend?” Archer said.

Cory shrugged. “Nobody wants to get involved or get in trouble. But Lucy was closer to Danielle than any of the rest of us. People know they were pretty close. If anyone was likely to hear something, it would be her.”

The Baldwin Hills Reservoir was a water storage basin located on a low hilltop and had been built by the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, beginning in the late 1940s. In 1963, a leak in the dam flooded hundreds of homes, due to having been built on a fault line. Now all it held was rainwater.
 

Archer turned off the road and parked in the weeds.

“I’m going to suggest that you girls wait here. Let me take a look around. If I find her, it’s probably best you don’t see her,” he said.

Cory started to protest, then relaxed and settled back into her seat, folding her legs under her. Lucy was staring off into the distance, sucking on the Camel as if her life depended on it. Archer shut his door and started off down the hill.

Cory watched him for a minute, then turned in her seat.

“Ugh,” she said, curling her lip. “I hope he doesn’t find anything.”

Lucy was afraid to speak. She was determined not to cry anymore.

Archer hiked down to the rim of the cement reservoir. A breeze buffeted him, toying with the tail of his shirt. The sun had never really come out, and every once in a while thunder rumbled, as if to not let anyone forget that rain could begin at any moment. The water basin looked like an enormous abandoned swimming pool in someone’s backyard. There was standing water in one end, beer cans and garbage floating on the glassy, dark surface. The other half appeared muddy, with untended clumps of grass and overgrown with weeds. He had no idea how deep the water down there might be. He stood at the edge and scanned for any sign of Danielle.

He eased down over the edge, carefully traversing the cement slope. Then he stood in the muck at the edge of the water. The water wasn’t deep at all—perhaps two feet at its deepest point. He spotted Danielle floating along the opposite edge. She was facedown in the marshy water. What he saw didn’t look human, just a lump with hair, but he didn’t need to see her face to know it was her. He felt the familiar macabre twist in his gut, and took a moment to catch his breath before calling the police to retrieve the body from this sad, lonely place.
 

* * *

Alexander found Silas praying in the garden. The garden was a special source of peace and tranquility Silas had recreated from a place he had visited in India decades earlier. Plants and flowers had been imported from around the world, along with fish for a small pond where a series of walkways intersected. Silas would wander for hours, lost deep in thought and prayer, and had even been known to sleep there. He was never to be disturbed. Only Alexander was authorized to interrupt his solitude.

He found Silas kneeling, head bowed, surrounded by lush vegetation, dappled in sunlight that fell through a canopy of trees. A menagerie of birds had nested in branches, and their calls filled the air as much as the sweet scent of blossoming roses and lilacs.

Alexander approached with reverence, standing a discreet distance away in patient silence until the great man had finished conversing with the Lord.

“Silas,” Alexander said, standing at the top of four wide steps. He was eager to speak to the leader of the church.

Silas remained in prayer a moment longer. Then his eyes flicked open. He breathed deeply, as if surfacing for air. Then he turned to find the source of the voice that had spoken his name.
 

“The men are waiting,” Alexander said. “It’s getting late in the day and they haven’t yet received their orders.”

“How are the guests?” Silas asked.

“Tatum and her father are in their rooms.”

Silas nodded. “Good. What did you do with Jimmy’s car?”

“I had the Ferrari delivered here. It is parked in back.”

They started up the path together.

“A momentous evening lies before us,” Silas said.

“Are you concerned at all about the ceremony?” Alexander asked.

“As long as Victor does his job, there should be no reason for concern,” Silas said, not in an attempt to reassure his second in command, but rather simply stating a fact.

“How are you feeling?”

They walked shoulder to shoulder up the path, Silas standing nearly a head above his protégé.

“I’m feeling strong,” Silas replied. “Both inside and out.”

“That is very good to hear, Silas. I’m truly very pleased to hear you say that.”

“Enough about me,” Silas said. “Let’s take care of business.”

The elevator opened and Silas stepped out ahead of Alexander. The fleet of black Mercedes were parked in a row, fueled and ready. Standing behind the cars were two rows of men—each of them armed, trained, and deadly. Victor Klosko had assembled the crew on short notice at the behest of his employer after a severe tongue lashing. The Markovich/Walvoord fiasco was not to be repeated. Klosko had assured Silas that security for tonight’s event would be flawless.

Klosko had long ago installed cameras in the garden so that he could watch Silas pray. He had emerged from his office mere moments before the two men arrived in the elevator. He stepped forward to make his presentation.

“The countdown has begun, Victor,” Silas said.

Victor nodded. “We are ready, Silas. You have my word.”

“Hmm.” The look in Silas’s eyes was not one of confidence.

“I have fifteen men to oversee the church grounds. The castle will be safe tonight. We are prepared for any and every eventuality.”