Page 64 of Bad Blood
Dean didn’t elaborate.
“Thank goodness you’re home, Lia.” Michael strolled into the room. “Dean is awfully prone to talking aboutfeelingswhen you’re MIA.”
“Would this be an inappropriate time to say ‘aha’?” Sloane interjected from the floor. “Becauseaha!”
If Sloane had been even the least bit capable of guile, I would have thought she’d come to Lia’s rescue on purpose.
“What did you find?” I asked, earning a look from Dean that said he knew quite well that Iwascapable of throwing Lia a lifeline.
“I started with Lia’s drawings and compared them to satellite photographs of the Serenity Ranch compound.” Sloane stood, bouncing to the tips of her toes and walking the perimeter of the diagram she’d laid out on the floor. “Everything lined up, except…” Sloane knelt to point a finger at one of the smaller buildings on her diagram. “This structure is roughly seven-point-six percent smaller on the inside than it should be.”
“That’s the chapel.” Lia tossed her ponytail over her shoulder. “No specific religious ties, but you wouldn’t know that from looking at it.”
I could hear Melody’s monotone in my memory.In Serenity, I’ve found balance. In Serenity, I’ve found peace.
I turned my attention back to Sloane. “What does it mean that the building is smaller on the inside than it should be?”
“It means that either the walls are abnormally thick…” Sloane caught her bottom lip in her teeth, then let it go. “Or there’s a hidden room.”
I didn’t have to sink very far into Holland Darby’s psyche to conclude that he was the kind of man who hid his secrets well.That’s your serenity. That’s your peace.
“Unfortunately,” Agent Sterling said, “none of that gives me probable cause to search the property.”
“No,” Lia said, reaching into her pocket. “But this does.”
She pulled a small glass vial out of her pocket. The liquid inside was milky white. “Not sure what it is,” she said, “but Darby keeps his flock well-dosed.”
“He’s drugging them.” Dean’s stony face showed no signs of softening—toward her or toward the situation.
Agent Sterling took the vial from Lia. “I’ll get this to the lab. If it’s a controlled substance, I can get a warrant to search the compound.”
Beside me, Sloane stared at the vial. “I’d give it even odds that it’s some kind of opiate.”
Your mother died of an overdose. I profiled Sloane as a matter of instinct, but another part of me couldn’t help profiling someone else—somethingelse. Nightshade and whoever in this town had recruited him.
There’s a thin line between medicine and poison.
It took twenty-four hours for Agent Sterling to get her warrant and another hour after that for the FBI to secure the compound—and, more to the point, the compound’s owner. By the time Holland Darby and his followers had been sequestered and the five of us were allowed on the premises, I could feel the ticking of the clock.
Today is April fifth. The reminder thrummed through my veins as we approached the chapel.Another Fibonacci date. Another body.
Briggs hadn’t called us. He hadn’t asked for help. I shoved that thought out of my mind as I pushed open the chapel door.
“No religious iconography,” Dean commented.
He was right. There were no crosses, no statues, nothing to indicate a tie with any established religion—and yet the room was clearly designed to call to mind a religious space. There were pews and altars. Tile mosaics on the floor. Stained glass windows casting colored light into the room.
“We’re looking for a false wall,” Sloane said, pacing the perimeter of the room. She stopped in front of a wooden altar near the back. Her fingers deftly searched for a trigger, some kind of release.
“Got it!” Sloane’s triumph was punctuated by the sound of creaking wood, followed by the whine of rusted hinges. The altar gave way to reveal a hidden room. I took a step forward, but Agent Sterling strode past me. Her right hand on her weapon, she held her left out to Sloane.
“Stay here,” she said, stepping into the room herself.
“It’s narrow,” Sloane reported, peering into the darkness. “Based on my earlier calculations, it almost certainly runs the entire length of the chapel.”
I waited, the steady fall of Agent Sterling’s footsteps the only sound in the room. Dean came to stand on one side of me, Michael and Lia on the other. When Agent Sterling reappeared, she holstered her weapon and called for backup.
“What did you find?” Dean asked her.
