GODDESS OF THE MOON (A Diana Racine Psychic Suspense) (58 page)

Okay, so he’s
maybe
playing it straight
. Still, Lucier felt like he
stood on the fifty-yard line
at
the
Super Bowl game, with all eyes on him. In another couple of hours, dawn would light the sky, but right
then
the area
was
as
dark as pitch.
No l
ights
anywhere to give away their position from above.
Crane and Compton money had created an entire town
―no, a world―
including
their own
water supply, c
onstruction, and power source.
How did they accomplish this faux utopia without anyone exposing them?
Money.
It was all about money.

Seth
carr
ied
out
the youngest
child
with
the
other two trotting alongside
. He signaled Lucier to take the driver’s seat and hopped in. The older boy got in back, curled into a ball, and went to sleep. The little girl
sat on her daddy’s lap and
cuddled her father
and younger brother
. A bomb
wouldn’t
wake the
little boy
.

“Drive,” Seth said. “Go back to Maia’s apartment the way we came. As long as I’m here, you’ll be safe.”

Lucier turned the cart around. “What happens next?”

“I’ll fly you out of here, but it won’t be easy.”

“You know I’ll find this place and bring
back
the FBI, don’t you?”

Seth didn’t say anything for a long moment. “It really was a noble idea in the beginning,” he mused, “but something went wrong. What do they say? Power corrupts; absolute power corrupts
absolutely.” He drew a breath.

“
Y
ou went along,” Lucier said.

Looking straight ahead, Seth Crane was a master of silence
, but
oh how his silence spoke volumes. His daughter squirmed in his arms, and he planted a kiss in the midst of her blonde curls.

“My father is a formidable man, Lieutenant, and my mother is in thrall to all he offer
s
. It’s not a complicated structure. My siblings and I were taught to love and to pleasure. We were instructed to read the great books of the world, to learn philosophy and metaphysics. Those higher planes of learning were the gods we worshiped.”

Lucier wondered whether love and pleasuring went on within the household, but he didn’t ask. He
didn’t
want to know. “
W
hen did Satan enter into it?”

“
Satan was presented no differently than other gods in other religions.
” Seth pointed.
“
Turn here
.
”

Lucier pulled up to the back door
and stopped
.

“
How can I explain something I grew up with and believed in? Were we all brainwashed? Were you brainwashed in the religion you grew up with? Somehow I doubt you see it that way, any more than I did.
I
still believe in
much of what I’ve been taught
―love, beauty, intellectual pursuit
.
” He shrugged. “
Hedonistic? Probably, but n
o one
discard
s
the teachings of a lifetime
easily
.”

Unless
his whole family
is
wiped out in one ho
rrific moment
.

“Like I said, the noble experiment went terribly wrong.”
Seth handed the young boy to Lucier,
then
leaned over his seat to wake Phillip. The boy got up without question and followed the two men into the house and to Maia’s door. She took Leo from Lucier, kissed his cheek, and laid him on the bed; Seth did the same with Iris.

Maia went to Phillip. He pulled back, and she leaned down and put her hands on his shoulders. “Would you like to leave here, son?” she asked. Tears
filled his eyes and he nodded.

Seth crouched by Maia’s side. “Phillip, I know you’re sleepy, but I’m going to ask you a question, and it’s important you answer truthfully. You don’t have to name names, but I’d li
ke you to say yes or no. Okay?”

Phillip nodded
. He
rubbed his eyes and yawned.

Lucier noticed the boy hadn’t spoken one word since Seth brought him out
of
the dormitory. Phillip did seem reserved for a boy his age, and Luci
er began to
understand
Maia’s concern.

Seth fingered through Phillip’s hair and gently held the back of his head.
“Has anyone here touched you or done anything to you in an inappropriate way?”

T
he boy’s
chin quivered.
He stood with his
arms rigid at
his side
s
, avoiding eye contact
with Seth
.
He neither moved nor looked for solace to either of his parents
when he started to cry. I
n fact, he backed away
from
his father
, who reached out for him.

Seth swallowed hard, and his jaw tighten
ed
in concert with a fiercely pulsing vein in his temple.
He
pulled the distressed child to him and wrapped him in his arms. Maia sat in semi
-
shock with the back of her hand across her mouth.

“Let’s get to the plane,” Seth said. “I’ll get to the bottom of this when I
return
.”

“You’re coming back?” Maia asked. “Now that you know, how could you?”

“Like you, Maia, I’m a little late coming to the party. There are other kids here. I need to find out who’s doing what and why. What’s more important, who knows, and why they’
ve let it continue
.”

“Don’t forget the stolen babies,” Diana said.

Seth
met her gaze
. “I haven’t.”

“I’m coming
back
with you,” Lucier said.
“With the authorities.”

Seth fixed his eyes on Lucier and nodded.

Lucier checked his watch. Four a.m. They’d never
get to the plane
before the sky turned light. “Anyone at the
airstrip
?” he asked Seth.

“I doubt it.
T
wo pilots
are
on call, and one or the other will make the round-trip when summoned. There’s always a
small
plane
here
and a
helo
in case of emergency. My father and I are the only people who fly. He rarely does any more.
” He waved his hand at Lucier. “
Follow me.”

Seth drove one of the carts with Maia and their children. Phillip still sniffled, but he clung to his mother like a little boy terrified to let go. Lucier and Diana hopped in the back of the other cart. Cal drove with Anat and her baby in front. If one didn’t know the situation, they looked like three couples with the
ir
kids out for a
night
time
drive around the golf course.

H
ow many more planes were at the disposal of Crane Corporation and Compton International
?
Was there a contingency plan to evacuate everyone if the need arose
, a
nd if so, where would they go? He
only
hoped
Diana
, the children, and
those
at risk
were
out of there
before
he found out.

E
scape

S
teel grunted along holding the arm he wrenched in his persistent effort to loosen the back of the headboard.
H
is shoulder was killing him, the foot he used as a battering ram to break the door lock didn’t feel much better, and his
wrist
might be
broken
. He put the pain aside,
driven
by
so much
rage
for the damn cop.
With no idea where the
son of a bitch
had gone
, he decided to wake Slater for the verbal lashing he’d get for letting his prisoner subdue him
―with a l
emon
meringue
pie, for
chrissakes
. The more he thought about it, the madder he got.

The villas were empty unless one or the other boss men showed up. Slater came less often and usually alone, but he stayed longer
―
three or four days. Steel wasn’t exactly sure of Slater’s position. He wasn’t a Crane in name or by marriage
, b
ut he acted like it. Steel didn’t like the man’s attitude, as if everyone in the room
had
just crawled up to vertical from all fours except him. Most of the women at the compound would do anything for him, though Steel
couldn’t
understand why. It was as if the man had some kind of magnetic hold on them.
A
s a guard
,
Steel’s job description fell short of thinking. He did what he was told, and he’d
screwed
up royally.

* * * * *

L
ucier
held Diana’s hand
in
the
back
seat
of the golf cart while
Cal followed Seth onto a bumpy
path
shrouded with an ov
erhang of trees. “Are there any accessible phones anywhere, Cal?”

“
All the links
to the outside
are
coded. That’s the one thing I haven’t been able to crack.”

“What about in the airstrip? There has to be
communication equipment
.”

“Same,” Cal said.
“
Locked
and inaccessible.
Believe
me,
whenever I had the chance, I
tried.”

Damn
.
These people had thought of everything.
With an endless source of money, t
hey’d
constructed buildings that blended into their surroundings
,
hiding it from the world
.

Seven or eight
minutes
later
, they came to an airfield carved out of the mountains. A large camouflage-painted hangar sat
at one end o
f
a
runway
lined with recessed lights
that rivaled any Lucier had seen. A helicopter sat to the right
on a helipad
with a removable cover
, and
a
turbo prop
took up one space
inside
the two-plane
hangar. Lucier knew little about planes
, though h
e’d
flown
both
in a
similar
plane and a chopper to survey
hurricane
damage.
This one seated maybe a dozen people.

Seth
drove the cart
to the right of
the hangar and
jum
ped
out
. He waved everyone to follow. “The
re’s always more than enough fuel to get us back to New Orleans
, but we’d better hurry.
They’ll know the kids are gone first
. They
’ll check
for the rest of us
.
”

Cal parked beside Seth’s cart. Diana helped Maia with the children, and Lucier followed Seth into the hangar with the others close behind. Seth rolled a stair tru
ck to
the entry door of the plane. “
I
need to get the key to open the door, and we’ll be out of here within ten minutes. He separated one key from his ring. In the far corner of the hanger, he slipped the key into a locked cabinet and opened the door
.
He
searched
frantically
inside.

“Shit
,” Seth said
.
“
The
key’s always here
.”