White Heat (3 page)

“Sorry to disappoint you,” he said when he'd let her squirm long enough.

He wasn't leaving, and it came as no surprise. As Milt's first operative, Nate had all but built Department 6 into what it was. Rachel couldn't see him moving on anytime soon.

“Then we're stuck. But you don't need to worry about me, so spare yourself the headache.”

When he simply stared at her, she sat back. Glaring at each other wasn't going to help. “What names will we use in Paradise?”

A muscle flexed in his cheek, but he revealed no other outward sign of anger or dissatisfaction. “We'll keep our first names. Our last will be Mott.”

“Mr. and Mrs. Mott.”

“That's right.”

Still intent on creating a situation more to her liking, she blew out a sigh. “We don't have to say we're married, you know. We could go in as brother and sister.”

“That wouldn't allow us to share a room. I need to be close. Just in case.”

Close was precisely what she wanted to avoid.
Close
would bring turmoil. “Just in case…what?” He hadn't been there to protect her on the last drug job. No man had. And she'd done fine.

“Just in case,” he repeated.

Obviously, she wasn't going to get a better answer. “How long have we been married?”

He shoved a manila folder at her. “Here are the details Milt's provided so far.”

Grabbing both files, she put them in her leather satchel and got to her feet. “The Arizona desert in the middle of July. White heat. Sounds great. When do we head out?”

His eyes glittered with frustration. “First thing tomorrow.”

Rachel felt some of the determination drain out of her. “That soon?” Usually they had a few days to gather facts, get into character, make travel arrangements. Milt established the infrastructure and provided what he could to support their covers—like fake ID and other documentation—but they had the freedom to add the finishing touches themselves.

“Robert Wycliff has offered a hefty bonus if we make quick work of it. Milt knows he's already late on this one.”

And far be it from Milt to let any consideration outweigh money. “I see.”

Nate collected the remainder of the documents he'd brought into the room. “I'll pick you up bright and early. Six sharp.”

At five foot seven inches and one hundred and twenty-five pounds, she felt dwarfed as he stood. It was all she could do not to keep her mind from flashing back to how the difference in their sizes translated horizontally. “We driving or flying?”

“Driving. It's a good ten hours from L.A., but having a rental car in such a remote area will be too conspicuous. I figure we'll want a vehicle that's broken in, one that doesn't scream Hertz.”

“Your truck?”

“My truck.”

The very mention of it evoked the scent of engine grease and pine air freshener. It also brought back her acute sense of shame when he'd curtly explained that she'd assumed too much and took her home the morning after their night together.

“I'll be ready.” With a mock salute, she started out of the room, but he called her back.

“I almost forgot.” He skirted the table to hand her a small, crushed-velvet box he'd pulled from the front pocket of his jeans.

Rachel didn't need to open it to know what was inside. As much as she told herself she'd learned her lesson, she still sometimes dreamed of getting a ring from him.

But not in any of those dreams had it happened like this.

Without even looking inside the box, she dropped it in her satchel.

“Don't you think you should see if it fits? You'll have to wear it tomorrow.”

Feeling as though a vise was squeezing her chest, she dug out the box and peered inside.

The diamond was tiny, the band plain. A similar ring could've been bought at any number of stores for around five hundred dollars, even less at a pawn shop. But she would've been happy to receive a plastic ring from a gum-ball machine, if only it held any of the usual symbolism.

“Well?” he asked.

She took it out and slid it easily onto her finger. The fit was loose but with a little tape she could fix that. “This is the best you can do?” she said with a grimace
as if she hated the ring as much as the thought of wearing it.

He gave her a grin that wasn't meant to be sexy but managed to look that way. “What can you expect from a lowly cement contractor?”

She supposed his cover would have to involve a job that required manual labor. How else would he explain all those muscles? “Can you actually pour cement?”

“I can do anything,” he said.

She knew he was teasing but, from what she'd seen, that was true.

A
ccording to the dossier Milt had created, they'd start this job by moving into a mobile home in Portal, Arizona, a small town five miles east of Paradise. Not only would Rachel keep her first name, she'd keep her age—twenty-eight. But that was about it. Under her assumed identity—Rachel Mott—she came from Utah instead of California. She had four siblings living in and around Salt Lake City. She'd married Nate three years ago, after meeting him at a Jazz game.

There was a little more—her schooling, her previous job at a child-care facility, information about their families and backgrounds. But as Rachel studied the dossier, she felt her anxiety increase. Going undercover with Nate would be even more difficult than she'd thought. How would they pull it off? There were details husbands and wives knew about each other, intimacies shared, that couldn't be faked. And what about body language? Ever since the night she'd surprised him in his bed, Nate had been careful not to come within three feet of her.

“Crap.” Finding the remote on her nightstand, she muted the television and sat in silence for several seconds. Should she call him? See if she could convince
him to postpone the trip for a day or two? With more time, maybe they could talk Milt into letting her infiltrate Ethan's cult on her own.

If she didn't make her argument now, Nate would be at her door, packed and ready to go, in six hours.

“I've got to try.” Safety was a concern Nate would listen to. He always looked out for his team. It wasn't just his SEAL training; it was part of his makeup. He'd fight Milt on those grounds if no other.

Feeling a fresh burst of confidence, she reached for the phone and dialed his number.

He answered on the first ring.

“He won't let us off the hook,” he said. “And I'm sleeping. Don't bother me again.”

He didn't sound as if she'd awakened him. His voice wasn't the least bit gravelly. But the
click
and subsequent dial tone told her he'd said all he was going to say on the subject.

Angry that he'd known the reason for her call before she could even say a word, she slammed the phone down and went back to the dossier. “This won't work,” she mumbled. For instance, she might say that her brother was gay and he might call the same brother a womanizer. What then? There was no way they could script every detail ahead of time. Going undercover was all about ad-libbing. Trying to do this together could make it unravel. And Ethan was a dangerous man. Those letters to Manson confirmed it.

Rachel glanced at the stack she'd set to one side. The hero worship exhibited in Ethan's earlier writing gave her chills. Had he really admired a man who'd used others, mostly women—except for Tex Watson—to brutally murder seven people? A lot of psychopaths admired killers because they themselves fantasized about com
mitting the same kinds of acts. Was Ethan capable of such heinous crimes?

Putting the dossier on her nightstand, along with her fake ID, which had been tucked inside it, she picked up the letters and read them again. They were more than a decade old. She had no way of knowing if they still reflected Ethan's thoughts and attitudes, but they gave her a glimpse into the psyche of the man he'd once been. He talked about Spahn Ranch, where Manson had lived when he ordered the murders. He compared it to a place he'd find for his own “spiritual family,” a place where he could “operate beneath the awareness of the outside world.” Except for one letter, he ignored Manson's fascination with the Beatles and their music, but he quoted several of Manson's favorite verses from the Book of Revelation 9:2, 3.

“I have this power,” Ethan wrote. “I can feel it taking root in me. I can make scorpions of locusts. What would you have me do?”

Wishing she had Manson's reply, she flipped to another letter, this one dated August 4, 1998. Here, Ethan began by thanking Manson for his latest response and quoting Revelation 9:4.

“I have the mark,” Ethan informed Manson. “My people will freely take it upon themselves. They will be God's avengers against the wicked. They will avenge
you.
”

That was where the brand came in, Rachel mused. He went on to quote verse 17.

“You will be free,” Ethan promised Manson. “I will make you free.” He'd closed that particular letter by quoting one last verse.

“You have passed that key to me.”

“‘You have passed that key to me,'” Rachel repeated. What did he mean by that? Did he feel as if he was taking over where Manson had left off?

That was a terrifying thought….

She chewed anxiously on her lip as she read the only letter in the pile that had been written by Manson.

“You know, a long time ago being crazy meant some
thing. Nowadays everybody's crazy. And you're crazier than them all.”

Some sort of drink had been spilled on the bottom half, making the rest impossible to read. That was disappointing, especially because Ethan's next letter revealed growing frustration. It seemed to be in response to Manson's rebuke, or maybe there'd been a letter or two in between; the dates were three months apart. The gist of what he'd written suggested that Manson wasn't living up to his prophet status, wasn't guiding young Ethan as he wanted to be guided. Ethan was getting angry.

“You and all those Beatles songs, man. What was with that? What did the Beatles have to do with God? You're full of shit, you know? Yellow Submarine, my ass. Where were you when Helter Skelter started? Safe at the ranch.”

Did that mean Ethan would be a different kind of leader? One who actively participated instead of watching from afar?

“The only thing you had right were the women. The women are where it's at.”

Twisting her new wedding ring around her finger, Rachel read that line for the third time. Ethan had a fascination with women, probably because he felt more capable of bending them to his will. His mother had defended him and protected him against his father's criticism, hadn't she? Maybe he thought he could manipulate all women as easily as he'd manipulated his mother.

That was why she should do this job by herself. She had a better chance of appearing pliable without a hulking male at her side. And once she gained Ethan's trust, it'd all be over. She'd bust him like she had so many
drug dealers, shut him down as quickly as possible, so none of the other women in his commune would suffer as Martha Wilson had suffered.

She could imagine victory, but the satisfying image dissipated as the clock on the wall continued to tick. Five hours and counting…

It was too late to fight Milt's insistence that Nate go with her.

 

In this part of the desert, night was nearly as hot as day. And the air hung heavy. There wasn't so much as a slight breeze or a rustle—just the scrape of Bartholomew's shovel. His efforts, sounding abnormally loud because of the silence and the rockiness of the soil, made him wince with each scoop. A tent filled with his fellow Covenanters stood only a few yards away. If someone woke and heard him, came to investigate, he'd have an even bigger problem on his hands….

But he wasn't accustomed to this type of labor, and at forty-seven he was no longer young. Digging strained his back and made his arms feel so weak he could hardly keep going.

Taking a break to conserve his strength and catch his breath, he leaned on the shovel and gazed toward the little cemetery on the hill, half a mile or so away. It'd been established when Paradise was built as a mining town back in the early 1900s and it still had some of the old headstones jutting out of the bare soil beneath a paloverde tree. Thanks to a bright moon, Bart could almost make out the largest one. Except for the fact that the ground would be even harder, he wished he could dig this grave out there.

But burying Courtney Sinclair beyond the fence that
encircled the commune wasn't safe. It would be much more difficult to keep track of who came and went. What if someone noticed the disturbed earth and told Courtney's parents? They'd already come to Paradise several times, looking for their daughter. Ethan had covered well, but Bartholomew had a feeling the situation was far from over. The Sinclairs weren't going to give up and go away. Maybe Courtney claimed to have been unloved, that her parents were the worst parents ever, but her mother, at least, seemed quite devoted.

That just went to show that the girl didn't have a clue about people. She was—
had been,
Bartholomew corrected as he glanced with distaste at the limp figure wrapped in a blanket at his feet—barely seventeen.

But he'd tried to warn her. She wouldn't listen. The Sinclairs no doubt had the same problem with her. The black lipstick, fingernails and clothing, the earrings lining the rim of each ear and the metal rod through her nose—they all designated her as a rebel. And the scars from the cutting she'd done on her arms took it to a rather desperate level. She'd been deeply unhappy, hadn't acclimated when her family moved from Texas. A lot of children, forced to take a backseat to a step-parent, resented it. Bart had been raised with a step-father himself, knew what it felt like to deserve more yet receive less. But he'd left that old identity behind. There was no more Francis Williams. He was simply Bartholomew now. An apostle to the Holy One.

Courtney had been offered a home in Paradise. She could still be here, as alive as he was, if only she'd played by the rules.

A light went on in the Enlightenment Hall where he lived with the Holy One. Twisting around, he stared up
at it. Was Ethan worried? Was he frightened by what had occurred with Martha and then Courtney?

He hoped not. Ethan needed to remain stable or they'd both lose everything.

Drawing his exhaustion and concern inside himself, he returned to his digging.