“Good timing,” Steve said by way of a greeting. “I just left Nicole’s house. The TV crew was there.”
“Any chance you know what she told them?”
He felt his frustration rise when Steve answered in the negative. For the past week, Steve’s reports had been abnormally terse. It might be time to send another minion to replace him.
“Is there something you’re not telling me?” Martin asked.
“Of course not,” Steve assured him.
Martin was aware of Steve’s violent past-the robberies, the bar fights, the unpredictable attacks of anger he used to have before finding the church. Still, Steve had never given him cause for worry. More than perhaps any other devotee of Advocates for God, Steve had truly changed. And he was loyal.
“I stayed in the truck while the crew went in the house,” Steve was saying. “It’s a big place. She must have done pretty well for herself-money-wise, I mean.”
“So that’s all you have?”
“For now, but I’m tailing the TV crew. They just dropped off two guys and a bunch of equipment at a warehouse and are weaving through downtown San Francisco now. I figure if I stay on them, I might be able to overhear something. What specifically should I be listening for?”
“You know how we talk about people who don’t understand Advocates for God? Who try to say the worst about our good works? Well, Nicole might be the worst enemy this church has. Given a platform on a national TV show, she may be tempted to attack our beliefs. To make up lies about either AG or me personally. I need to know what, if anything, Nicole reveals about her time at UCLA.”
Though Martin typically gave away no secrets, it had been impossible to rely on Steve as his eyes and ears without trusting him with at least some background information. So Steve knew that Nicole had been an early member of Advocates for God who left on bad terms. He knew that Nicole’s college roommate Susan Dempsey had been murdered, and that her death was the focus of this television show that had Martin concerned about unfavorable news coverage.
Martin had no plans to reveal anything more. After all, that had been his mistake with Nicole-letting her know a side of him that she was not ready to see. At first, when she quit school and left town, he kept waiting for the other shoe to drop, questioning whether he had done enough to ensure her silence. But then months became years, and years became close to two decades.
And now this stupid show. He had watched the first special and knew how thorough they were in their reporting. Would Nicole be able to get through this without her association with AG coming to light?
“But the show is about Nicole’s roommate,” Steve said. “What does Susan Dempsey’s murder have to do with AG?”
“You are asking more questions than you should, Steve.”
Martin spoke with his usual chilly confidence.
“My apologies,” Steve said cautiously. “I’ll keep watching. Wait, they’re stopping now at some high-rise hotel. Yeah, they’re getting out. I can tell which one’s in charge by the way she’s giving orders-a woman in the front passenger seat. I’ll park and get a bead on her on foot. See what I can find out.”
“You do that, Steve.”
35
It was barely seven o’clock in the evening, but Nicole was already at her bathroom vanity, washing off the heavy layer of makeup she’d worn for the cameras today. Gone, too, was her tailored black sheath dress, replaced with her usual ensemble of yoga pants and a hoodie.
When she was done patting her face dry, she opened her eyes to find Gavin’s image behind hers in the mirror.
“That’s my wife,” he said, wrapping his arms around her waist and giving her a kiss on her freshly scrubbed cheek. “You looked beautiful today, but I always prefer you like this.”
She turned to face him and returned his embrace. “I’ve never been beautiful. The makeup certainly helps, but I don’t understand how anyone can put up with all of that work every day.”
“You’ve always been beautiful to me.”
“Please, when you met me, I still looked like a dorky teenager. I guess I should be grateful now that I’ve always looked young for my age.”
Gavin was smiling to himself.
“What’s so funny?” she asked.
“Telling that TV producer about how we met. It’s been a long time since I thought about that. We owe our marriage to that fake ID of yours.”
“I had that ID because of Madison. She got them for Susan and me so we could go celebrity-watching on the club scene.”
“I can’t even picture you doing that.”
That, Nicole thought, is because you never knew me when I was a follower. A lemming. The girl whose own parents knew she would get “lost” on her own. The one who started spending more time with the crooks at Advocates for God than with her own best friend.
“Are you done with your work?” she asked.
“Just a couple e-mails, and I’ll be yours for the night.”
“Sounds good. I’ll start dinner. Lasagna sound good?”
“Delicious,” he said, giving her another buss on the cheek.
He padded down the hall to his office, while she made her way downstairs to the kitchen. As she chopped some fresh basil for the pasta sauce, she replayed her conversation today with the television crew. Nicole thought that she’d done a good job talking about Madison, Keith, and Frank Parker, the three people who were truly under suspicion. But before they’d even spoken about the investigation, Laurie had launched all those questions about why Nicole had left college and moved to the Bay Area. She even seemed a little too curious about the fact that Nicole had given Gavin a fake name when they first met.
Did she know that Nicole had been using that fake identification for more than wine purchases after she fled Los Angeles? Did she already know about Advocates for God?
No, it was impossible. Nicole had never even spoken the words “Advocates for God” or “Martin Collins” since she left L.A. She was too terrified.
Maybe Keith Ratner had told the producers about Nicole’s association with AG. After all, she was the one who first introduced him to the racket. No one in Advocates for God would refer to it as a racket, of course. They called it a religion. They said they were committed to “good works.”
That was so long ago that sometimes Nicole had a hard time remembering when exactly Susan had started to feel so much animosity about Advocates for God. At first, Susan was supportive. Just like Susan had her theater activities and computer work without Nicole, Nicole was finding a new network of friends in what she had initially described to Susan as a “volunteer group” focused on “serving the poor.” But when Nicole began to advance farther into the circle-and began soliciting donations from wealthier students like Susan-Susan questioned the church’s ongoing demands for money.
It was the very beginning of spring semester, sophomore year, when Nicole told Susan that she had started seeing Martin Collins over the holiday break, not just as part of the group, but as his girlfriend. She expected Susan to be worried about the age difference: Nicole, having graduated early from high school, was only eighteen, and Martin was twenty-nine. But Susan’s concerns ran deeper. She said Advocates for God was a fraud. That Martin was lining his pockets with money meant for the poor. That he was enlisting vulnerable people to treat him like God. She said she felt like Nicole was slipping into “another world.” That she was “brainwashed.” She asked why a twenty-nine-year-old man would be interested in a college sophomore in the first place.
“How can you know anything about Martin when you’ve never met him? How can you judge AG when you refuse to learn anything about it? No wonder Martin says you’re trying to corrupt me!” Nicole had yelled. It was their very first argument.