Outside Anson stopped and eyed the rain that was dripping onto the front porch.
"Porch roof leaks," he said.
"I know. I'll get to it. Got other priorities inside that need to be fixed first. Namely the plumbing. Speaking of which, you okay with supervising the plumber tomorrow?"
"Leave it to me," Anson said.
"Promise me you won't tell him how to do his job."
"'Course not. But I'll keep an eye on him."
Anson went down the front steps and walked quickly through the light mist. At his front door he paused to raise a hand in a casual good night and then he disappeared into his house.
Max closed his door and went back into the kitchen. He thought about the day Anson Salinas had, quite literally, crashed into his life.
He had been a terrified ten-year-old kid and he had not been alone. There were seven other children with him. They had all been locked in the old barn for the night. Quinton Zane always locked them up for the night.
Zane said it was for their own protection. He said it was to help them overcome their fears. He said it was to make them strong.
But what they really feared was Quinton Zane. He was the real-life monster in their world; the young, charismatic, terrifying leader of the cult.
On the night that shattered Max's childhood forever, Zane told his followers that he'd had a vision in which he would soon disappear. And he did-but not before he had triggered a series of explosions that set fire to the buildings in the compound, including the barn where the kids slept.
Max and the others awakened to find themselves locked in a structure that was in flames. And then, as they huddled together in the middle of the barn, frozen in terror, aware that they were going to burn alive, a hero arrived to rescue them.
Anson Salinas, the chief of police of the nearby town, had used his vehicle to smash through the old barn door. He leaped out from behind the wheel, rounded up all eight kids, crammed them into the SUV and roared out of the blazing barn. Moments later the entire structure came crashing down.
Several of the adult members of the cult perished that night. Max's mother was one of them.
Ultimately the social workers were able to track down relatives for five of the eight kids. But three boys-Max, Cabot Sutter and Jack Lancaster-were all officially orphaned.
They had gone home with Anson Salinas the night of the fire because there was nowhere else for them to go. And in the end, they had stayed.
When it became clear that they were all headed for the foster care system, Anson had pulled some strings, twisted a few arms and completed the paperwork that made him a licensed foster parent.
Max cranked up the computer again and took another look at the data he had collected on the two murder victims and the three women who had been raped. Why had Louise Flint considered them so important she had hidden the file in a suitcase in a storage locker?
Now there was a connection to another rape victim-Jocelyn Pruett.
There was always a pattern. It was up to him to find it.
After a while he closed down the Louise Flint file and opened the one that he always checked before going to bed-the one labeled Quinton Zane.
He knew that each of his foster brothers also kept an open file on Zane. They rarely discussed the contents of the files with anyone outside the family. In the past, others, including his ex, had labeled the three of them obsessed and accused them of being paranoid. There were times when Max figured the critics were probably right.
He and his foster brothers had each paid a price for their pursuit of the ghost of Quinton Zane. In his case, the obsession had almost gotten him killed on his last case at the agency. It had destroyed his career, and his marriage had gone down in flames-collateral damage. He was well aware that as far as his former colleagues and his ex were concerned, he was no longer merely obsessed, he was burned out. They were convinced that he was at high risk of seeing patterns where none existed.
No one at the agency wanted to work with an obsessed, paranoid individual. No smart woman wanted to be married to one.
Over the years he and Cabot and Jack had pulled up occasional rumors, whispers and hints that indicated Zane was still alive. But they had never been able to nail down anything substantial. They had never found enough to reveal a pattern.
He closed the file and checked his e-mail before he powered off the computer. His in-box was empty except for the one e-mail that had come in a month back. He still could not decide whether to archive it or dump it into the trash, so he just let it sit in the in-box.
The message consisted of only two sentences and a signature.
Please be advised that you are not to contact me again. If you ignore this request, I will direct my attorney to take legal action against you.
It was signed Davis Decatur.
His biological father.
CHAPTER 12
Charlotte awoke to the ringing of her phone. For a few beats the reality of the gray light of dawn meshed with fragments of a dream in which she walked through a series of empty, fog-filled rooms searching for Jocelyn.
The phone rang again.
Jocelyn. Maybe she was calling to check in at last.
She pushed the covers aside, swung her legs over the side of the bed and grabbed the phone. The screen name read Cutler. For a split second she didn't recognize it. Then she remembered that Max had given her his card and she had entered his name and number into her contacts list.
"It's a little early," she said.
"We have another problem," Max said.
It occurred to her that he sounded as if he had been awake for some time. She tightened her grip on the phone.
"What?" she asked.
"Jocelyn Pruett is not at the convent on St. Adela."
Something inside her went very cold. She stood up quickly.
"How can you possibly know that?" she asked. "There's no phone at the convent. Jocelyn said her own phone would be off the whole time because there would be no cell service and no Wi-Fi available."
"Are you sure of that?"
"Yes. Look, last night I sent a text to Jocelyn on the off chance that she might have found a way to check her messages. I told her I had some bad news about Louise. There was no response."
"How did Jocelyn book the retreat?" Max asked.
"She used a travel agency that specializes in various kinds of exotic trips and retreats. They book vacations all over the world that focus on yoga and meditation experiences-that kind of thing."
"I just got off the phone with the chief of the St. Adela police department. He was very helpful. I told him we had an emergency on our hands and that we had to get in touch with Jocelyn Pruett immediately. He sent one of his officers out to the convent."
Charlotte closed her eyes. "I'm an idiot. I never even thought about contacting the local cops."
"You're not an idiot. You would have come up with the idea eventually. Yesterday you were still trying to wrap your head around Louise Flint's death."
Charlotte opened her eyes. "Thank you for making excuses for me. Are you certain Jocelyn isn't on the island?"
"As certain as I can be without getting on a plane to St. Adela."
Charlotte sank back down onto the edge of the bed. "Oh, my God."
"The sister in charge informed the officer that, yes, Jocelyn Pruett had booked a monthlong retreat and, yes, she had arrived and checked in on schedule."
"What?"
"But she checked out the following day."
"Crap."
"Evidently she could not tolerate the lifestyle."
"No kidding." Charlotte brightened. "Maybe she checked into a beachfront hotel instead."
"The sister didn't know where Jocelyn went, only that she was gone. And before you ask, no, Pruett is not staying at any of the local hotels. The police chief looked into that possibility."
Charlotte breathed deeply, allowing the implications to sink in.
"Jocelyn never meant to stay there at the convent," she said. "She intended to disappear all along."
"That's how it looks," Max agreed. "Evidently she planned to remain invisible for at least a month, but she didn't want you, or anyone else, apparently, to worry about her."
Charlotte was tempted to take his crisp, impersonal tone of voice as a sign of heartlessness, but something told her that it was just evidence of business as usual for Max. Finding answers was what he did for a living. As far as he was concerned, he was simply updating her in the most efficient manner possible so that he could get on with his job.
"She bought the ticket to St. Adela and went so far as to actually check in to the convent so that anyone who tried to search for her online would be satisfied that she had traveled to the island," he said. "Most people would assume that she was where she was supposed to be."
Charlotte gripped the phone very tightly. "Most people like me, you mean. But you took matters a step further. You checked with the local police. Why didn't I think of that?"
"You didn't call the St. Adela police because, until yesterday, there was no reason for you to think that your stepsister wasn't where she said she would be," Max said.
So now he was reading her mind, too.
"But you automatically assumed that Jocelyn probably wasn't where she was supposed to be, is that it?" she asked.
"I didn't assume anything one way or the other. I just like to verify details whenever I can."
"So my stepsister really has gone off the grid."