"Bambi," Ruth warned quietly.
"But she should know. Tessa, we believe that the Everlasting Sin is the one committed by those who believe that our lot in this life is punishment and atonement. We believe that denigrates Jesus and what He did for us. We were washed clean of sin when He died for us. This life we"re given is ours to enjoy."
Tessa waited, and as she"d expected Bambi"s expression clouded over. "There are people who want to punish us for that belief. People who are afraid."
"Afraid of what?"
"Afraid of Father. Afraid of his gifts. Afraid he knows the truth."
"Bambi." This time, Ruth"s voice was firm, and this time the younger woman fell silent, her head bowed in submission.
With a slight smile and friendly eyes, Ruth told Tessa, "Obviously, Father inspires fierce loyalty in all of us. But, pleasecome and see for yourself. Visit our church. We hold services on Sunday, of course, and on Wednesday evenings, but the church is the physical center of our community as well as the spiritual center, so people are there most of the time, involved in one activity or another. Children as well as adults and young people. You"re welcome to come anytime."
"Thank you," Tessa said. "I"ll think it over."
"Please do. We"d love to have you. Even more, Tessa, we"d love to help you through this difficult time."
Tessa thanked them again and then saw them politely from the rather formal living room to the front door of the sprawling house. She stood in the open doorway until the ladies" white van disappeared down the long, winding driveway, then closed the door and leaned back against it.
"Bishop was right," she said. "It"s the Florida ranch they"re most interested in."
"Yeah, he has an annoying habit of being right." Special Agent Hollis Templeton came out of another room that adjoined the s.p.a.cious foyer, adding in a thoughtful tone, "I don"t think Ruth meant to let that slip, though. The way we set it up, that Florida property isn"t obviously yours; the fact that the Church of the Everlasting Sin even knows about it smacks of the sort of intrusive background check most people wouldn"t be at all comfortable with. Especially from a church."
"It also says something about the extent of their resources."
Hollis nodded. "One of the many things we"re not happy about. To get the kind of information the church seems to be able to get so quickly and easily, the good reverend"s connections pretty much have to be national."
"Homeland Security?"
"Maybe, scary as that possibility is. But even though he hasn"t said so in so many words, I think Bishop"s worried it might be somebody in the Bureau."
"Which explains why Haven is out front on this one?"
"Well, only partly. It made more sense on several counts to have a civilian organization involved, especially given our dearth of evidence against Samuel or the church. Haven investigators can go places and ask questions we just can"t, not legally. In a situation like this, that ability isn"t only vital, it"s critical."
"So John told me," Tessa said. She inclined her head slightly in invitation and walked out of the foyer.
Hollis followed the other woman into the big, sunny kitchen and nodded when Tessa gestured questioningly at the coffeemaker. "Please. I"m still jet-lagged."
Tessa hunted in a still-unfamiliar pantry for the coffee and didn"t respond until she found it. " Eureka. Why jet-lagged? Don"t you guys work out of Quantico?"
"Most of us, yeah, but I was out in California on another case. He didn"t admit it, but I don"t think Bishop expected the church to move so fast or to be so insistent once they made contact with you. You"ve only been here a couple of weeks, after all. From our research and experience, it usually takes a couple of months for them to even begin to gather a potential new convert into the fold."
Measuring out coffee without looking at Hollis, Tessa said, "It took months for Sarah, didn"t it?"
Hollis slid onto a bar stool at the kitchen"s island and clasped her hands together on the granite surface, frowning down at a chewed thumbnail. "It did. But her cover wasn"t quite as enticing as yours is."
"Is that why I was placed here even before anything happened to her?"
"Well, the plan was to have multiple fronts, as it were. To use every avenue possible to find information and, hopefully, evidence. We couldn"t be entirely sure, from the outside, just what sort of background or situation would prove to be the most attractive to the church and Samuel. And not every agent or operative is going to be working the same way or be able to gain access to certain levels of the church hierarchy. Sarah wasn"t able to get near any of Samuel"s closest advisers in any meaningful sense, but she was still able to gather valuable intelligence. And able to get a couple of the kids out."
"Have they found her?" Tessa asked quietly.
"No." Hollis waited until Tessa got the coffee going and faced her before she added deliberately, "The bodies always turn up downstream. Sooner or later."
Tessa looked at her for a moment, then said, "It takes a while, I"m told. To build that sh.e.l.l around your emotions."
Unoffended, Hollis smiled slightly. "Sometimes. But it"s usually all smoke and mirrors. None of us would be in this line of work if we didn"t care deeply. If we didn"t believe we were making a difference."
"Is that why you got in?"
"I was dragged in. More or less." Hollis"s smile twisted a bit. "When your entire life changes, you build a new one. But when that change happened to me, I was lucky to have kindred spirits around me, people who understood what I was going through. Just like you were lucky when they crossed your path."
"It was easier for me," Tessa said, adding, "My abilities weren"t triggered by trauma."
"Adolescence is trauma," Hollis pointed out.
"Of a kind, sure. But nothing like what happened to you."
Musing rather than revealing much of herselfor, perhaps, revealing a great dealHollis said, "In the SCU, my experience isn"t so unusual. Not even the degree, really. The majority of the team went through some kind of personal h.e.l.l, coming out the other side with abilities we"re still trying to figure out."
Tessa recognized the courteous warning and shifted the subject back to answer Hollis"s implicit question. "I didn"t find kindred spirits because I went looking for them; Bishop found me. Years ago. But I didn"t want to be any kind of cop, he left, and I thought that was the end of it. Until John and Maggie got in touch."
"And you decided to be a cop without a badge?"
"Mostly, I haven"t been. Investigating, but not in any sort of dangerous situation. Not like this one. Not with people dying. There"ve been eight bodies found in this general area, right? So far. Eight people killed the same way. The same very unnatural way."
Hollis nodded. "Over the past five years, yeah. That we know about, anyway. If we knew for sure probably more."
Tessa didn"t move from her position but leaned back against the counter and crossed her arms in a gesture that wasn"t quite defensive. Hollis took due note of that and asked herself for at least the third time since she"d arrived here hours ago if John Garrett, the director and cofounder of Haven, had made a wise choice in sending Tessa Gray on this particular a.s.signment.
She was a little above medium height and slender, almost ethereal, an impression emphasized by her pale skin, fair hair, and delicate features dominated by large gray eyes. Her voice was soft, almost childlike, and when she spoke it was with the absolute courtesy of someone who had been raised to be polite no matter the circ.u.mstances.
Which made her sound as vulnerable as she looked.
She was supposed to look vulnerable, of course; that was part of the bait for the church. Without family, lost and alone after the sudden and unexpected death of her young husband only a few months previously, burdened by business concerns she had inadequate knowledge to handle on her own, she was just the sort of potential convert the church had a history of aggressively pursuing.
Although never before this aggressively, Hollis mused, at least as far as they knew. And the question was why.
What was it about Tessa that Reverend Samuel and his flock considered so important? Was it only the property in Florida, highly valuable to Samuel for a reason that had nothing to do with the value of the land? Or was it because he had, somehow, sensed or otherwise discovered Tessa"s unique abilities?
Now, there was an unnerving thought. The idea that your ace might be in plain view for all to seeand other players to usepushed the possible stakes much, much higher.
Given what they were reasonably sure Samuel could do, it made the stakes potentially deadly.
"I"ve never been sent in undercover," Tessa said. "Not like this, with a whole other life to remember."
Hollis cast the useless speculation aside. "Second thoughts?"
A little laugh escaped Tessa. "More like first thoughts. I mean, John explained the situation, and Bishop filled me in on what happened last summer in Boston and a few months ago in Venture, Georgia. They both told me how dangerous it could bewould probably be."
Not a big believer in sugarcoating, Hollis said, "Yeah, if Samuel is who and what we believe he is, there"s a pretty good chance a few more of us won"t be left standing when it"s all done. Even a.s.suming we win."
"Do you doubt we will?"
"Honestly? Having some idea of what he can do, I have more than a few doubts."
Tessa frowned. "Because you"ve already faced him, fought him?"
"Not exactly. Not even by proxy, really. He just wanted me out of the way. Bishop believes he"s afraid of mediums and that"s why he sicced his pet killer on me in Georgia."
"Why would Samuel be afraid of mediums?"
"Well, think about it. If you were responsible for dozens of brutal deaths, would you be all that anxious to have someone around who could open up a door and allow your victims to pay you an extremely unsettling visit?"
"Probably not."
"No. In Samuel"s shoes, neither would I. We figure that"s the reason, though more because it makes sense than because we have any kind of solid proof."
"But that"s the one ability we"re pretty sure he doesn"t want. If he is who and what we believe he is."
"Safe bet. In fact, my semieducated guess as a profiler-in-training is that the reverend"s terrified of finding out for certain that with the reality of spirits come all the other traditional trappings of an afterlife many of us are raised to believe in. Accountability. Judgment. Punishment."
"Is there?" Tessa asked, figuring a medium would know if anyone would.
"Yes," Hollis answered simply.
"h.e.l.l?"
"Some version of it. At least for monsters like him. And isn"t it ironic? The only thing Reverend Samuel could preach with complete conviction and total honesty from his pulpit is the truth of Judgment Day. And that"s the one thing he"s spent twenty years making very, very sure his church denies."
Washington , D.C.
"So that"s his Achilles" heel?" Senator Abe LeMott sat utterly still at his desk, hands clasped atop his neat blotter, and studied the man in one of his visitor"s chairs. "The one thing he fears?"
"We believe so." Special Agent Noah Bishop matched the older man in stillness, though his steady gaze was, if anything, more watchful. "He had every chance to take the abilities of one of our strongest mediums. Instead, he tried to have her killed."
"She was also bait for a trap, was she not? Bait for you?"
"Bait. We"re not entirely sure what his ultimate aim was. We can"t be. All we can know is what happened. Dani was the one he attacked, the one whose abilities he tried to take, most likely because he knew those abilities could be used as offensive weapons. Maybe he didn"t go after the rest of us because he believed we weren"t so vulnerable. Maybe he can only take one ability at a timeor that was his limitation then. Maybe it was all a test of our strengths. And weaknesses. Maybe our abilities weren"t important to him because he already has his own version of them."
"That"s a lot of maybes."
"Yes, I know. I did warn you, Senator, that there"d be no quick or easy answers, not if we want the whole truth. But we did get the man who murdered your daughter with his own hands."
"And do you believe, Agent Bishop, that the man who commands or wills another to act for him is any less guilty of the act committed?"
"You know I don"t." If anything, more guilty.
"Then you know why I can"t be satisfied by the capture of that evil creature clawing the walls of his cell as we speak."
Bishop nodded. "Believe it or not, Senator, I want the man behind that killer as badly as you do."
"Oh, I do believe that." LeMott"s smile was hardly worth the effort. "He"s the first real threat you"ve faced, isn"t he?"
"The Special Crimes Unit"
"Has withstood many threats over the past few years, yes. I don"t mean to detract from that in any way or demean your considerable accomplishments. The SCU has faced evil in most of its incarnations, including many killers, and usually defeated them. We both know that. But this is a different kind of threat. A far, far more dangerous threat to you and your people. From all the evidence available, this killer means to use your own tools, your own weapons, your own advantage against you. And though you certainly have him outnumbered, his advantage is that it hardly matters how many agents you send after him."
"It"s not the number, Senator, it"s their training and skills versus his."
"And their abilities versus his? Abilities he wants? Abilities he can apparently take from them by force without even laying a finger on themand then use those abilities against them?"
"We don"t know what he"s capable of. But what happened in Georgia may have taught him at the very least that he lacks the ability, the strength, to take anything he wants. He has limits just like the rest of us. Weaknesses. Vulnerabilities. He"s certainly not all-powerful. Not invincible."
"We can both certainly hope not. But it does seem clear, Agent Bishop, that your enemy knows you at least as well as you know him and quite probably better, especially if he tracked and watched Agent Templeton as long as the photographic evidence you discovered in Venture suggests."
"We don"t know that he tracked any other member of the unit."
"You don"t know that he didn"t."
"No. If it comes right down to it, there"s no way for us to be absolutely certain that he was the one doing the surveillance. Those photographs could have been taken by a private investigator hired for the purpose."
"A private investigator too dim to realize his target or targets were FBI agents?"
"Maybe that"s why we only found shots of Hollis. Maybe whoever it was decided that it was just too risky to follow and photograph agents of the federal government."
"More maybes."
Bishop was keenly aware that he was, as he had been for many months now, dealing with a powerful man who had nothing left in his life except a raging grief and an obsession for revenge.
Not justice for his murdered daughter, not anymore. Abe LeMott wanted revenge. For the loss of his daughter. The loss of his wife. For the destruction of his life.
Which made him hardly less dangerous than the man they both wanted.
So Bishop chose his next words carefully. "Whatever he may or may not know about members of the SCU, what we know is that he does have at least one weakness, one vulnerability. Where there"s one, there"s more. That"s been true of every criminal, every evil, we"ve ever fought. It"s true of Samuel as well. We"ll find those weaknesses. And we"ll find a way to exploit them."
"Before you lose any more of your people?"
"I don"t know. I hope so."
LeMott"s eyes narrowed. "You haven"t seen the end of this, have you? No vision of how it all turns out? You and your wife?"
"No. We haven"t."
"But you won"t let that stop you."
"No."