Page 63 of Bitter Falls

“How did you hear?” I ask him.

“Friend in the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation gave me a heads-up. They got an abduction alert from the Staties; there’s an agent on his way to you now. What do you know?”

I tell him, while the state police officers look at me impatiently; Lustig’s an old friend of Sam’s, fiercely loyal, and with his position in the FBI he might be of immense help right now. Or not. It depends on where he is and what he’s doing. But he takes it all in, and then says, “You think Remy Landry’s disappearance is connected to other similar cases. And a cult.”

“Yeah, I do,” I say.

“Well, we looked into those cases, but we were never able to pull any commonalities together. And we never heard of any cult in connection with it.”

“I’d say it’s a pretty damn solid lead, considering theytook my son,” I snap, and immediately regret it; none of this is his fault. I brought this to my own doorstep. “Any way you can help?”

“You got tracking chips in your kids?”

“On their phones.” Lanny’s old one is at the bottom of the lake, but she’s got a brand-new disposable; I make sure my kids are never out of contact. “Can you track Connor’s?”

“Staties will try, they’ve got the ball, but I’ll help any way I can. Even if the phone’s off, we can still expedite the tracking.” He pauses, and his deep voice gets a little deeper. “Gwen. You know the chances they’ve still got that phone with them aren’t very good.”

“I know,” I say. If the cultists have a pattern of abductions, like I believe they do, then they’ve learned to be methodical about covering their tracks. Leaving no trace.

Which is why keeping my agreement with Jasper Belldene is so vitally important right now.

I appreciate what the authorities are trying to do, but I’m desperately impatient to bedonewith them. I talk to Kezia; I still can’t tell her the whole truth, but she agrees to take Lanny’s amended statement about the incident up on Killing Rock. She’s really not happy about that, and she pushes Lanny hard, but my kid doesn’t waver. That allows Olly Belldene his freedom, or at least a far less dire charge to plead away. I don’t care what happens to Bon; he can rot in jail. He isn’t part of the deal.

As soon as the police—local, state, and Tennessee Bureau of Investigation—finish with us, I tell them I need to get Vee and Lanny somewhere safe and away from here. I admit, I play the posttraumatic shock heavily; it’s not entirely an act either. They agree, on the condition I tell them where I’m going. I lie glibly about a motel in Knoxville, and give them the address when I look it up on the internet. I turn over the house keys. We’re already packed to go, but I make sure I collect every gun in the house, especially the Browning, which was left behind. After I identify it and get J. B. on the phone to verify that it’s a work-issued weapon, they let me keep it.

J. B. asks me what she can do, and I tell her to throw every single resource at finding Carol. I don’t intend to turn her over to the cult, but I want toknowwhere she is. If the Belldenes’ drone stops working, I may need a plan B.

Interestingly, the police don’t seem to trust me as much as they should, considering we’re the victims. The TBI agent tails me to Knoxville and the motel; I register for a night, and we go to the room. I watch from the window until he leaves, then order the girls back into the car.

Jesse Belldene’s been following us too. He’s better at it than the TBI agent; I spotted his muddy, nondescript Jeep tagging along on the road out of Norton, but he was skillful at staying just at the edge of sight, and the TBI agent was so intent on us that he probably never looked behind him. When we get down to our SUV, Jesse’s Jeep is idling next to it. He just nods to us and exchanges a guarded glance with Lanny. I don’t like the look of the man, but he seems polite enough when he says, “Thanks for helping my brother out with the cops. He never wanted y’all hurt, swear to that. Bon got carried away. Olly’s a dumbass, but he ain’t evil.”

Lanny gives him a wary nod. Truce. He winks at Vee. “Want to ride with me, pretty gal?” he asks her. I fully expect Vee to say yes; everything I know about her—including the fact that she’s familiar enough with the Belldenes to go to them for help—tells me she will. But she doesn’t. She just shakes her head and gets in the back seat of the SUV with my daughter. Lanny takes her hand and clings to it desperately. My head still hurts, but the painkillers I’ve taken are doing their job of keeping it to a dull roar.

“You okay?” I ask my daughter softly as I drive, tailing Jesse’s muddy bumper. “Lanny?”

She sniffs and wipes her eyes and says, “Sure. I’m fine, Mom.”

“No, you ain’t,” Vee says. “And it’s okay, Lanta. You don’t have to be okay. You know that, right? You’ve got people.”

Lanny takes a deep, uneven breath and drops her head onto Vee’s shoulder. I blink as I start to put the relationship into a new light. I’m pretty sure I don’t approve. “Do you think Connor and Sam are okay?” Lanny asks me. The vulnerability in her voice makes me forget my objections. For now.

“I think Sam will do everything in his power to be sure they are.” That’s not an answer, but I don’t want to lie to her. Not about this. “Baby, I think I should take you to Javier and see if he can let you stay with him while I do this—”

“You’re thinkin’ the Belldenes might hurt her,” Vee says. “They won’t.” She sounds utterly sure, and I give her a long look. “They do what they need to do, but there’s a code. They’re not about to break their word and hurt Lanta. Besides, I’ll look after her.”

It’s strange, but...I believe her. “Why did you come, Vee?” I ask it gently. Without accusation. “Really. What happened to you?”

Vee looks away, and for someone like Vee, who’s always on guard and armored, that’s as good as a wince. Her expression is still and quiet, and when she answers, her voice is neutral. “There was a girl in that foster home. Younger than me. Real young. She...she ran away and got herself hurt.” She swallows. “Was my fault. She kept followin’ me around, treatin’ me like hersister. I wasn’t, we just had rooms in the same house is all. I told her we wasn’t never goin’ to be sisters.” Her rural Tennessee accent is so thick it’s hard to understand her on the last of that. She pauses, and I realize that she’s crying—fat, silent tears sliding down her cheeks. “I just—I couldn’t stay there after. I wanted to be—” She doesn’t continue. Lanny puts her arm around her. Vee takes a deep breath and wipes her face with an impatient swipe. “I had to be on my own is all.” I hear the armor going back on, almost an audible clank of metal plates.

“Vee,” I say. “You aren’t on your own. You don’t have to be.” Vee—fierce, independent, wildly unstable Vee—needs someone to care, and I do. I have since I met her, even though she unsettles me, even though I worry about her influence on my daughter. “You came to us for a reason, and it wasn’t to get reward money like you told Sam. Right?”

She shakes her head, and I see the effort it takes for her to force the grin. “Good idea, though, ain’t it?”

“I have to ask this, honey, and I need you to be completely honest with me. Do you know where Vernon Carr really is?Exactlywhere?” Because if she does, it’s possible that’s also where they’re taking Sam and Connor. We could get there first.

But I can see it in her face before she says it. “No, ma’am. I know he’s got to be at that Assembly compound. But as to where it is...” She shakes her head. “We never were part of those people. Momma always stayed away. She was real glad when Father Tom pulled out of Wolfhunter.”

“Okay,” I tell her. I’m disappointed, but I let it go. “I mean what I said, Vee. You’re safe. You’re not on your own.”

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