Ritual Sins (2 page)

They’d put her in a room far at the end of one
hallway. The woman who’d shown her there was pleasant enough, and to Rachel’s annoyance she didn’t appear to be particularly brainwashed, despite the pale cotton outfit she wore, which resembled a cross between men’s pajamas and a karate gi. She tried to press one on Rachel, something she flatly refused, and tried to lure her to a hot springs for purification.

“Not in the mood,” Rachel had drawled. “I took a shower this morning.”

“You’ll feel wonderful. Like a new person,” the woman, who’d identified herself as Leaf, said.

“I like the old person just fine,” Rachel said. “When do I see Luke?”

“When he’s ready. He spends most of the day in prayer and meditation. I’m certain he’ll grant you an audience as soon as he’s able. In the meantime he would want us to make you welcome at Santa Dolores.”

Rachel looked around her, at the plain walls, the kiva fireplace, the narrow bed with the white cotton coverlet. “Not very sybaritic, is it?” she observed.

“We aren’t here to indulge our senses,” Leaf replied. “We’re here to fine-tune them. To open ourselves to everything.”

“You can’t do that on a single bed.”

Leaf smiled at her. “We do not indulge in drugs,
alcohol, sex, or any toxins. This is a place for purification and learning.”

“No sex?” Rachel echoed. “What about husbands and wives?”

“They welcome the chance to concentrate on their spiritual rather than their physical needs.”

“Great,” Rachel said. “My mother never spent a celibate week in her life.”

“Celibacy is not a requirement,” Leaf said. “It’s merely a suggestion. If we wish to follow the master, then we should emulate him.”

It took a second for this to sink in. “You’re telling me Luke Bardell is celibate?”

“Of course.”

“Of course,” Rachel echoed in disbelief. “You know, there’s a problem with celibate religions. No little followers to keep the faith going. The Shakers found that out.”

“We aren’t a religion, we’re a philosophy. And children aren’t allowed here. They’re too young to understand our teachings. Luke says we must take care of our worldly responsibilities before we nurture ourselves.”

“A cult leader with a republican conscience,” Rachel muttered. “What next?”

“It’s not a cult.”

“Yeah, I know. Not a religion, not a cult, just a way of life,” Rachel said, tossing herself down on
the bed. It was narrow and hard, like a bed of nails. It suited her mood.

“Dinner will be at six o’clock. We’re all vegans here, but our cooks are very skillful. I know you won’t mind.”

The only thing worse than a vegetarian diet was its stricter form, vegan. Rachel sighed. “It’ll be fine. I don’t really care much about food. In the meantime I think I’ll take a little rest.”

“Perfect,” Leaf said. “I’ll come back for you at suppertime.”

Rachel lay very still on the bed, listening as Leaf’s sandaled feet disappeared into the thick silence. She’d left the damn uniform behind, and Rachel stared at it, wondering if she had the energy and the anger to dump it in the trash. She didn’t.

She looked at the wood-paneled ceiling overhead. She’d done her research well—this facility was less than four years old, built with the best that money could buy. It was worth millions, all thanks to the spiritual leadership of a man who’d spent three years in prison for killing a man during a barroom brawl.

Luke Bardell had risen far and fast in the twelve years since he’d walked out of Joliet Prison on parole for manslaughter. And now no one could touch him, no one would even dare try, including the parole board who should have thrown him
back in jail for violating the rules of his parole long ago.

No one would dare try to touch him, but Rachel Connery. And she was going to bring him down.

As soon as she found out who her ally was. Who had sent that warning letter.

She’d worn high heels as a stupid little act of defiance. She wasn’t going to go exploring in them, she wasn’t going to put on those damnable sandals that Leaf had left behind either, even though they looked like they might fit. She would go in her stocking feet, roaming the empty halls of Santa Dolores, and see whether she could come across the elusive Luke Bardell. She wasn’t going to await his summons for a papal audience. She was going to find him, now. And remind herself just how human he was.

She should have known it would be a waste of time. She passed a good half dozen of the brainwashed—people who looked a her and smiled and murmured some crap about “blessings.” But Luke Bardell was nowhere to be found. No one stopped her from going into any room, including the large, stark room that looked designed for large meetings or human sacrifices. But there was no sign of their mysterious, illustrious “master.” And no sign of anyone who seemed to know or care who she was.

By the time she gave up and headed back for
her room her mood had not improved. She was hungry, she was hot and tired, and whether she liked it or not she was going to change out of her city clothes into something more comfortable. She wasn’t certain that she’d brought anything suitable, and she’d go around stark naked before she’d dress up like the karate kid, but a shower would revive her for her quest. A quest she had no intention of failing.

It was late afternoon, and her room was filled with shadows when she reached it. There was no light switch on the wall, and she cursed beneath her breath as she stumbled into the gloom, the door swinging shut behind her, sealing her in.

“Goddamn place,” she muttered. “No goddamn light switches, no goddamn meat, no goddamn messiah when you go looking for him.” She flailed around for a lamp on the bedside table. She found one, only to discover that it was an oil lamp.

“Shit,” she said out loud. “And no goddamn electricity.”

The flare of the match was dazzling in the inky darkness, and Rachel uttered a little shriek, mesmerized by the light as it traveled toward a lamp. A moment later a dim illumination filled the room, growing brighter by the moment, and the man shook the match out and tossed it in the round stucco fireplace.

“You were looking for me?” Luke Bardell said.

She would never forget nor forgive her initial moment of panic. She’d gone in search of him, to face the lion in his den. And instead he’d invaded hers.

He was as mesmerizing close up as he was from a distance. It wasn’t something as simple as physical beauty, though he had that in abundance. An elegant, narrow face, wide gray-blue eyes that looked at her with astonishing compassion, a nose and chin strong enough to give his angelic face masculine character, and a mouth that could seduce a saint.

He sat on her bed, ignoring the straight-backed chair, his long legs stretched out in front of him. He was wearing one of those baggy cotton outfits, though his was pure white instead of the pale colors the others wore. He had one of those tall, lean bodies that looked almost gaunt, and yet only a fool would underestimate the strength and power beneath the loose-fitting white tunic. His hair was very dark and very long, and it flowed down his back, and he watched her with his large, elegant hands folded quietly in his lap, watched her with faint curiosity and not the slightest hint of apprehension.

“How’d you get in here?” she demanded, not caring how hostile she sounded. “You scared the hell out of me.”

“We have no locks at Santa Dolores,” he said in
a tranquil voice. “We don’t use harsh or profane language. It’s an infectious poison, just as surely as drugs and alcohol and animal flesh are.”

She resisted the impulse to tell him to fuck himself, she wasn’t sure why. “Sticks and stones may break my bones,” she murmured.

He raised his eyes to look at her, and she met his gaze with complete self-control. No wonder he was able to have otherwise intelligent adults eating out of his hand. Those eyes of his could make an iceberg melt.

But Rachel was frozen harder than an iceberg, and thoughtful looks and soulful eyes left her unmoved.

“You’re very angry with the Foundation of Being, aren’t you?” he said, not moving from her bed. “You think we took advantage of your mother.”

“No.” She began unfastening her silk jacket, determined not to be intimidated by him. “I think
you
took advantage of my mother. You seduced her, convinced her to leave her money away from her only child, and then you act as if you’re the misunderstood victim.”

His smile was slow and oddly unsettling. “I’m celibate.”

“So they told me. I don’t believe it.”

“You were asking, Rachel? Why did you want to know?”

The dark wouldn’t show the faint color that
rose to her cheeks, she thought with sudden gratitude. “They volunteered the information.”

“How very odd,” Luke said, swinging his long legs around and rising from her bed. He was very close to her in the small room, and she realized he was quite a bit taller than she’d realized. She didn’t like tall men. But then, she didn’t like short men, or average men either, she reminded herself. There was nothing to be nervous about. “They must have divined somehow that you wanted to know. There are no coincidences in this life. No accidents.”

“Life is nothing but one long accident,” Rachel snapped, immediately regretting her impulsiveness. “If my mother hadn’t met you, she wouldn’t have fallen under your influence, and I wouldn’t be a pauper.”

“Yes,” Luke said gently, reaching up and touching a strand of her short-cropped hair. It was an oddly intimate gesture, one that left her frozen in place. “But you still wouldn’t have your mother, would you?”

She was still standing there, minutes after the door closed behind him.

T
hey met in secret, the Grandfathers, with solemn faces and dignified demeanor. All of them, men and women alike, sat cross-legged on the rough floor, hands turned upward toward the sky as they waited for enlightenment. Even the outsider, the one who would never belong to their exalted group, sat in respectful silence.

They could be seen, perhaps, if someone tried hard to find them. But they couldn’t be heard. The Grandfathers met often, to discuss the financial well-being of the Foundation of Being, the uncertainty of the future, the wondrous change Luke Bardell had wrought in their lives.

As they did now. Alfred Waterston looked at the Grandfather next to him, his jowly face serene and determined. “How are we going to arrange Luke’s death?”

And the outsider carefully, politely, raised his hand.

So he’d won the first encounter, Rachel thought, staring at the rough wooden door. It made no difference. If she were a quitter she wouldn’t have come to Santa Dolores in the first place. There were things she couldn’t let rest in peace, and the occasional setback was nothing she didn’t expect. Besides, somewhere among these happy smiling people she had an ally.

He was right, of course, there were no locks on the doors. She wedged the straight-backed chair under the door handle, closed the shutters on her deep-set window, and began to strip off her clothes. If she viewed it objectively, it might not even be considered defeat. She hadn’t responded to the mesmerizing effect Luke Bardell was supposed to have on most people. She hadn’t even been tempted. She’d faced the enemy and survived. That in itself was a triumph.

The bathroom was small and utilitarian, a stall shower, toilet, and small sink, but the hot water was plentiful, and she stood beneath it for long, sybaritic minutes, letting it sluice over her, trying to soak away some of the edginess that threatened to consume her. She didn’t want to lose the tension and anger that fueled her, but she needed calm and control above all things. Luke Bardell
and the Foundation of Being were formidable enemies. She needed every advantage she could muster.

The pastel cotton pajamas had disappeared during her foray, and she wondered who had taken them. The mint-green had never been her color in the first place, and she pulled on jeans and a T-shirt with a certain amount of defiance, finger-combing her short-cropped hair. The rooms at Santa Dolores didn’t come equipped with mirrors, probably to discourage vanity, but Rachel knew exactly what she looked like without having to check. Her clothes were deliberately shapeless on her too-thin body, her face pale and makeup-free, her eyes viewing the world with doubt and suspicion. There was nothing to inspire interest or desire in any but the most desperate, the most perverse.

She was out of place in this dream world. That in itself was nothing new. There was no longer any place on this earth that felt like home to her. From her earliest years she’d felt like a guest in her mother’s various apartments and townhouses, and the series of boarding schools she’d attended hadn’t been much better. She hadn’t the gift for making friends, unwilling to trust anyone enough to get close to them, so there’d be no other families to visit. From the time she’d left college she’d lived in a series of apartments, each one more spacious and anonymous than the previous one, ending up
in a large, empty set of rooms in Manhattan’s East Seventies.

Less than a year ago it looked as if things might change. Her MBA from Harvard had stood her in good stead, providing her with a series of managerial jobs that she’d undertaken with cool efficiency. She’d just resigned her most recent one, emerging with a healthy savings account to augment the trust fund she’d grown up with, and she’d done one of the few capricious things she’d ever allowed herself. She’d packed a small bag with only the bare necessities and taken the next, shockingly overpriced flight to Spain.

It made no sense—Spain had never held any particular interest for her. But she’d arrived on a blisteringly hot, sunny day, rented a car, and driven until she was too tired to drive any longer, ending in a tiny village at the tip of a small peninsula. She’d found a house for rent, and there she’d stayed, hidden from the world and from her mother, for three long, glorious months, doing nothing but lying in the hot sun and eating fresh fruit and bread and cheese, letting the years of fear and anger bake out of her until she was dangerously close to being happy.

The house, belonging to an elderly grandmother in Andalusia, was for sale. And Rachel returned to New York full of an unlikely hope. She would
make peace with her critical mother. She would liquidate some of her stocks, buy the house in Spain, pack up her spartan belongings, and move back to the first home she’d known, with the first friends she’d ever had.