Page 53 of Bad Blood
Shane looked from Sterling’s badge to me and then back again. “Holland Darby is on the FBI’s radar?” It was clear from the tone of Shane’s voice that he was trying very hard not to get his hopes up.
Agent Sterling let Shane’s explanation stand.
“What about the girl who was with you?” Shane asked. “Is she FBI, too? Is that why I just got a call from a buddy of mine that she’s out there, asking to join them?”
The girl who was with you. I’d had a plan to find out more about Kane Darby. But apparently, I wasn’t the only one. All roads in Gaither led back to the friendly neighborhood cult, and it didn’t take much profiling for me to figure out which of my fellow Naturals might have decided to follow up on that lead.
On her own.
Serenity Ranch was less of a ranch than a compound, surrounded by a ten-foot-tall fence on all sides. Agent Sterling parked her car outside the main gate.
“Stay here,” she told us.
Clearly, she wasn’t thinking straight. Lia was the closest thing to family that Dean had. Before he could latch his hand around the door handle, I reached out to stop him.
“I know,” I said. “Lia did something stupid, and you weren’t there to stop her. And now she’s in there playing a very dangerous game with very dangerous people. But you need to calm down, because you saw the way that Darby was with Shane. He wanted Shane to take a swing, and he’ll want the same thing from you.”
Power. Control. Manipulation. This was the language that Holland Darby spoke. It was a language that Dean and I knew all too well.
Dean’s entire body was tense, but he forced himself to breathe in and breathe out. “Lia was seven when her mother joined a religious commune,” he said, his voice rough in his throat. “Lia’s mom was in this country illegally, and after what she’d been through, the man in charge seemed like a savior.” Dean closed his eyes. “To Lia, he was something else.”
I thought of Lia, learning to recognize deception. Lia, learning to lie.
“Lia likes high places,” Dean continued softly, “because her mother let a man like Holland Darby stick Lia in a hole in the ground for days at a time. Because six-year-old Lia didn’t have a humble spirit. Because she wouldn’t take forgiveness when it was offered. Because she didn’t repent her sins.”
Dean forced himself to stop, but my mind was reeling at the implications. As a child, Lia had gotten locked into a battle of wills with a man who dealt in power, manipulation, and control. The kind of man who benevolently offered forgiveness, so long as you accepted that your salvation was his to give. From the moment Lia had seenthose peoplein town, from the moment she’d read about Serenity Ranch, she was a ticking time bomb.
Power. Control. Manipulation. Lia had known that approaching Holland Darby as tourists wouldn’t work. Approaching him as the FBI would only cause him to close ranks. But approaching him as a lost soul in need of redemption?
You’ll play his game better than he does. You’ll find out what he’s hiding. And if it costs you—whatever it costs you—so be it.
“I’m not going to take a swing at anyone.” Dean did his best to look like hewasn’ton the verge of letting his darkest self come out to play. “But I’m also not staying in the car.”
“Good,” I replied as the cult leader approached the gate where Agent Sterling stood. “Because neither am I.”
“How may I help you?” Holland Darby’s voice was pleasant and smooth, more powerful and magnetic than his son’s.
Agent Sterling didn’t so much as glance at Dean and me as we came to stand behind her. “I’m here for Lia,” she said. Her tone wasn’t argumentative. She was simply stating a fact.
“Of that, I have no doubt,” Darby replied. “Lia is a very special young lady. May I ask what your relationship to her is?”
On either side of the gate, Holland Darby and Agent Sterling stood with their arms hanging loosely by their sides. Both of them were preternaturally calm.
“I’m her legal guardian.” Agent Sterling went for the jugular. “And she’s a minor.”
If there was one thing that we knew about Holland Darby, it was that he took pains to stay just this side of the law. The wordminorwas his kryptonite, and Agent Sterling knew it.
You would hate to part with such a prize, but if she’s not eighteen…
“I haven’t been a minor for three months.” Lia came to stand behind the cult leader. She was dressed in a white peasant top and flowy white pants, barefoot, her hair loose and free.
“Lia.” Dean didn’t say more than her name, but there was a wealth of warning in that single word.
“I’m sorry,” Lia told Dean softly. “I know this hurts you. I know that you want to make it all better, to makeeverythingbetter, but there is no better, Dean. Not for someone like me.”
A masterful liar wove truth into deception. Lia could say the wordssomeone like meand mean them.
“I believe there is abetter.” Holland Darby took the opening that Lia had left him. “For everyone, Lia, even you.”
