The Prophet (Ryan Archer #2) (30 page)

“Are you the prick that gave the order to beat the shit out of her?” he said as he pounded Alexander’s face.
 

“I didn’t do anything,” Alexander managed to say.

Archer pummeled him again, breaking his nose. The sound the bone snapping echoed down the walls of the passage behind them.
 

Alexander clawed at Archer’s face, trying to get at his eyes.

Archer pushed his hands away and grabbed hold of Alexander’s head with both fists and bashed it against the ground.

“Say it!” he demanded, teeth clenched.

“It wasn’t me! I swear! It was Silas!
He
gave the order! Not me!”

Archer pulled the Beretta from his waistband and shoved the barrel into Alexander’s mouth. Alexander trembled, his face covered in blood.

Silas or Alexander? One of those two men had given the order to attack Smith, to beat her to within an inch of her life. They were the reason she was hooked to machines in ICU. In Archer’s world, there was a price to pay for that. He wanted to pull the trigger and send Alexander’s brain through the back of his skull and leave him there in the mud for the rats to feed on. And then, march up the hill and offer Silas Sawbridge the same treatment.

But then Archer saw a shadow and glanced up. Tatum was standing beside the storm grate, looking down into the hole, watching. She was soaking wet and covered in mud, her hair hanging in her face. In that moment, she looked much younger than her age. She looked like a scared child.

Archer felt the rage still pulsing through his body, but he took his finger off the trigger.
 

“I want to go home,” Tatum said to him, her voice small, and tiny, and frail.

“That’s a good idea,” Archer replied.

FORTY-EIGHT

The castle burned into the early hours of the following morning. By the time Webb got to the Goldings’ home, Sonny and Natalia were already there. They were in bed with Karla. Webb got down on his knees and they ran to him, both kids hugging his neck and then frantically telling him about their terrifying adventure.
 

“You are the bravest kids I’ve ever met,” he told them, smiling, eyes shiny with tears.
 

Webb kissed his wife on the mouth. She held his face with both hands and pressed her soft lips to his, and neither of them wanted that moment to ever end.
 

* * *

 
ICU was a ghost town when Archer arrived. He had no idea what time it was. He stood in the door and stared at Smith. She was sleeping. She looked the same as before. Archer was exhausted and wet. He sat in a chair at her bedside, eyes heavy, body aching.

Archer opened his eyes and realized he must have dozed off for a few minutes. Smith was looking at him. He smiled. She smiled back but there was sadness in her eyes.

He held her hand.

“How are you?” he asked.

“Everything hurts,” she said.

“You are looking better.”

“The men who did this, who were they?” she asked.

“They were bad guys. I took care of them. They can’t hurt you anymore.”

“Why would they do this to me?”

“They were sending me a message,” he said.
 

Her eyes lingered on him. The sadness was still there.

“Look at my face,” she said. “Look what they did to me.”

“I’m sorry, Diane. You will never know how sorry I am.”

She inhaled slowly. Then released the breath.

“I can’t remember the last time you called me Diane.”

A small smile wrinkled Archer’s face. “Honestly, I can’t either. I’m not sure where that came from.”

“Am I going to be safe living with you?” she asked, her eyes glassy.

“You will always be safe with me.”

“But as long as you do what you do, how can I believe that? Because there will always be more bad guys. And you can’t promise that you’ll be able to protect me from all of them.”

There will always be more bad guys
.

He couldn’t argue with that.

Silence lingered.

Smith closed her eyes for a few minutes, resting. Archer held her hand, eyes drifting to the window in soft focus. Part of him wished he had pulled the trigger and left Alexander’s body in the mud. Then he would know there was one less bad guy in the world.

Finally, Smith opened her eyes but didn’t look at him.

“I’d like to be alone now,” she said.

Archer stared at her a moment. He understood what she was saying. He kissed her forehead. Then he went home and tried to sleep. The bed felt very empty.
 

FORTY-NINE

Sleep. It didn’t last.
 

Archer rose before first light and sat on the deck with coffee. The dawn arrived at its usual leisurely pace. He watched the light of morning slowly change through the trees at the back of the house. He took his coffee and sat on the bottom step with his bare feet in the grass. His mind was busy.

The trees haunted him. That’s where the men had come from. The men who had violated Smith and her home. They had crept up the stairs to the patio door and found her alone, naked and defenseless, in bed. The men had been sent by the church, by Silas Sawbridge.
 

Silas had needed to get to Jimmy Cloud, because Jimmy represented enormous potential for the future of the Church of the Narrow Gate. But how do you get to a man like that? One of the five most recognizable faces in the world. Not an easy task. The solution had come in the form of his child. His fifteen-year-old daughter, plagued with a mental disorder that made her vulnerable to an organization in the business of selling snake oil. And how do you get to
her
?
 

Archer sipped the coffee. Stared at the trees. Walked through the events of the past week in his mind. Ran through the cast of characters. Replayed dozens of conversations. He remembered the box on Webb’s desk that had been mailed to the LAPD. The hoodie. The photos of a teenager’s bare belly that Jimmy had ID’d as Tatum, but that hadn’t made any sense.

He thought about Shay DaVine in the pool at Jimmy’s home in Malibu. The bikini and that amazing, camera-ready body. Her empty life filled with empty days. The bottle of vodka. The slight slur of her speech. The apparent detachment from her emotions with alcohol in her bloodstream. The way she had undressed Archer with her eyes. He remembered the roll of money under Cecile Espinoza’s bed. Five grand in a sandwich baggie. Cecile’s phone calls to the Salt Lake City number.

He could still smell the putrid water at the reservoir. The image of Danielle Robbins’s body floating facedown in the dark, scummy shallows was still burned into his brain. Her dark hair floating around her head. Her swollen body. The exposed flesh where insects had already begun to feed.

Archer walked across the lawn. He had heard so many tales of those hills being populated by rattlesnakes but had yet to see one. He stood at the edge of the trees. Turned and stared back at the house. The puzzle in his mind slowly began to take shape. The final picture was coming into focus.
 

He called Webb and woke him up.

“I had just gotten back to sleep,” Webb said, rubbing his eyes with the back of his hand. “Special Agent Coffman got to me first.”

“What have they found?”

“Still no sign of Silas.”

“There is no way he got out,” Archer said.

“Perhaps not, but we still don’t have a body.”

“I will drive out there later.”

“How is Smith?”

“Resting,” Archer said. “How are Karla and the kids? I’m happy for you and happy they are safe.”

“Everyone is exhausted. It’s been traumatic. I think we will all lay low for a few days.”

“That’s probably a smart plan,” Archer said.

“You know, you didn’t have to burn down the whole damn castle, Archer.”

“It just needs a fresh coat of paint, is all,” Archer said. “It’ll look as good as new in no time.”

“Have you slept at all?”

“I closed my eyes. But I spent most of the night thinking.”

“What did you figure out?”

“I will explain later.

* * *

Archer parked the Land Cruiser at the curb and sat on a park bench. It was noon and already hot. The sky was clear. He had made a phone call and waited twenty minutes for Cory Overstreet to arrive.

She smiled and waved when she saw him. Archer waved back.

Cory was wearing cut-off jean shorts and a T-shirt of a hip-hop artist. She leaned in for a hug. She smelled of strawberry lotion.

“So, Tatum’s safe?” she said as she sat beside him on the bench and folded her legs under her.

“Safe and sound,” Archer said, nodding. “She’s home with her father.”

“That’s
so
awesome,” she said.

“Those people were trying to take her out of the country last night. If they had succeeded, I doubt we would have ever seen her again.”

Cory’s eyes were wide. She placed her hands in her lap. “That’s freaky scary.”

“Yes, indeed,” he said.

“She’s been my best friend a long time,” she said. “I would have missed her so much.”

“Is that true?’ Archer asked.

Cory looked at him like he had pie on his face.

“Hell yes!”

“Tell me something. How fun is it having a friend whose father is so special? He is rich, famous, adored by everyone. That makes Tatum special by proxy. She has her own level of fame just by being Jimmy Cloud’s kid. If I was her friend, that would make me pretty jealous, regardless of how much I liked her.”

Cory twisted her face like he was nuts, then giggled. “That’s not how it is, dude. Not at all. I was born and raised in this town. Fame and fortune mean nothing to me. Seriously, dude.”

Archer’s gaze settled in the middle distance. His arms were stretched out across the back of the bench.
 

“Cecile had the connection to Alexander and the church, and Danielle was her friend. Now both of them are dead.”

“Yeah? So?”

“Why would anyone want to kill Danielle? How would they have connected her to Cecile? After all, Danielle had lots of friends.”

Cory shrugged. Shook her head.

“I saw the way you and Shay reacted to each other the other day at Tatum’s house in Malibu. You were clearly not comfortable being there. And she was getting drunk very early in the day, like a person trying to wash away uneasy emotions.”

“What kind of emotions?”

“Guilt.”

“Guilt about what?”

“You tell me, Cory. I think you and Shay share the same attitude about Tatum.”

Cory snorted like that was the most ridiculous thing she had ever heard.

“And what attitude is that?” she asked.

“Shay resents sharing her famous husband with his kid. And you get tired of her being seen by the world as anything more than a fifteen-year-old girl same as you. She’s just a kid, and you know that, but to the world she is royalty.”

Cory went quiet. She stood up and took a step toward the sidewalk.

“So?” she said. “What is your point?”

“My point is, you didn’t commit any crime, but you arranged for certain people to meet and for relationships to form, with the intent of Tatum Cloud quietly going away. That was the hope, anyway. And it almost worked.”

After a long moment, she turned to him and looked hard into his eyes. Then she smiled.

“You’re right. I didn’t commit a crime. I’m just a girl, playing the kind of games girls play. Beside, you can’t prove anything.”

“What about Cecile? What about Danielle? How does that make you feel that they died because you were playing a game?”

“I just try not to think about it,” she said. “Things like that, I shut them out.”

His eyebrows went up. “Good luck with that,” he said.

“Are you going to tell anyone about what you think you know?”

Archer stood and glanced at his truck, then back at the teenager in the cut-offs.

“Do me a favor?” he said.

“Okay, what’s that?” she asked.

“Grow up, and soon, before you kill somebody else.”
 

FIFTY

The Dodgers were playing again. The game was on the flat screen above the bar and being ignored by everyone. Dewey was pouring drinks and talking on his cell phone. It was a quiet afternoon. Archer wandered in and sat at the bar. He stared at the beer signs and placed his hands flat on the counter, allowing a moment for the impulse to pass. He closed his eyes and took a deep breath. Then he ordered a bottle of water and watched a pitch break high and outside.

“You look like crap,” Dewey said.

“I won’t argue with that,” Archer said.

He removed the cap and took a long drink of water. Then replaced the cap and stared at the mirror. Smith was home. She was healing and doing better but had made a few life decisions during her stay at the hospital. The conversation at the dining table hadn’t lasted long. He had kissed her forehead and put all that he owned in a duffel bag and tossed it in the back of his truck. Then he had sat behind the wheel for a few minutes to catch his breath.

Dewey’s brother, Larry, a biker with tats everywhere from the neck down, challenged Archer to a game of pool. And because he had nowhere to be and nothing better to do, Archer grabbed a cue from the wall and ran the table twice while Larry polished off a bottle of Coors and cursed.

Halfway through the third game, the door opened and a woman walked into the bar. Archer was playing solids and made a nice shot, sinking two of his balls and lining up the next. Larry was leaning against a wall and shaking his head. Then his eyes drifted across the room to the woman in the sundress, and his jaw dropped. The woman walked over beside the table, purse hung from her shoulder, and folded her arms over her chest.

She smiled at Larry. “Would you mind if I finished this game for you?” she asked.

Larry didn’t hesitate to hand over his cue. Then he found a seat at the bar and tried not to stare at the two of them.

Archer leaned against the table and felt his pulse rise.

Maya smiled at him.

“You look amazing,” he said.

“How long has it been since I kicked your ass at pool?” she said.