“I still think we should seriously consider going to William,” Frank urged. “Tonight, if possible.”
“Who’s William?” Tracy asked.
“That’s not your concern now,” Frank said, dismissing her question. He was looking at Vince. “I went through Mike’s shit after I called you and found William’s phone number. Haven’t gotten around to calling him yet.”
“It’s pretty late,” Tracy said, her voice low, soft. “It might be best to wait to call him in the morning.”
“She has a point,” Vince said. “What time is it?”
“Well after midnight,” Frank said. “Okay, we call him at eight o’clock sharp.”
“What do we do next?” Vince joined Tracy at the desk.
Frank regarded the couple. As much as he didn’t like having Tracy Harris here, he was stuck with her. He sighed. “I guess we crash here tonight and wait for tomorrow.”
Mike was sprawled on one side of a king-size bed. “You guys want to sleep on the floor, you can have some blankets and an extra pillow.” Frank picked up a pillow from the bed and threw it at Vince. “We should probably get some sleep.”
Which they did after a few hours of lying in the darkness. Frank lay down on his side of the king sized bed staring up at the ceiling. He’d checked the lock on the door and the windows, and they were secure. Vince and Tracy settled down on the floor in the clothes they were wearing. They were using one of the pillows from the bed, a cushion from one of the chairs, and a sheet. Frank didn’t look at them and made no attempt at starting a conversation as they lay in the darkness, waiting for sleep to come. He was still angry with Vince for breaking their pact and bringing Tracy into the fold. The fewer people who knew about their investigation of the Children, the better. Especially now that their security appeared to be breached.
He thought about the breakin at Mike’s. As much as he tried to tell himself that it could be a random act, that Carol might have been the victim of a crime unrelated to the cult, something told him that wasn’t the case. Something had happened there. And it had happened when the three of them were flying to Pennsylvania. Frank wondered if Mike and Carol’s kids knew their father was leaving town; he wondered if they’d tried calling their parents or stopping by in the past few days. How many kids did Mike and Carol have anyway? Frank tried to remember. Two sons, maybe a daughter. They were all within his age range, so they were probably married with families of their own now. Surely one of them had to still live in the area. Even then, it might still be a day or two before one of them got suspicious and decided to drop by mom and dad’s to pay an unexpected visit.
The rasping sound of snoring made Frank turn his head to the floor. Vince was asleep. Tracy’s eyes were closed but Frank didn’t think she was asleep yet. He turned back and closed his eyes, thinking of Mike and Carol and their kids, his own wife and kids, and hoping that letting Tracy into the fold wasn’t going to do any more damage than was already being done, and then he was asleep.
Chapter Eighteen
WHEN MIKE PETERSON woke up he did so slowly. It felt like he was trying to swim to the surface of a lake that was heavy with sludge. He heard Frank’s voice, caught a glimpse of light in the room and opened his eyes, blinking. Vince’s voice cut through the din. “He’s waking up.” He opened his mouth, tasting sour spit in the back of his throat. He raised himself up on his elbows, trying to shake the drowsiness from his system. Frank and Vince were hazy silhouettes, and as they became more refined he made out a third shape as well.
“How do you feel?” Frank came into focus. “You okay?”
Mike shook his head and cast his gaze around the room. Vince was standing at the foot of his bed with a woman dressed in blue jeans and a wrinkled white blouse; she gave him an encouraging smile. He focused on the woman, confused. “Who are you?”
“This is Tracy Harris,” Vince said, stepping forward.
“It’s a long story,” Frank said, waving his hand in front of Mike’s face. “How you feeling? Woozy? Sick to your stomach?”
Mike turned to Frank, confused for a moment. “No.” Last night’s events swam back into focus and he felt a sudden emptiness in his stomach. Then it hit him suddenly, like a Mack Truck hurtling at eighty miles per hour. “Carol…”
He sat up, the room coming into focus now. He swung his legs over the edge of the bed and stood up. “Where are we, what’s going on?”
“Easy there, fella,” Frank said. He took Mike’s shoulders and eased him back on the bed. “We’re in my motel room.”
“Frank called me last night and told me what happened,” Vince said hastily, looking nervous. “This is Tracy Harris… my girlfriend…”
The implications of what happened became implicitly clear to Mike; he’d flipped out over Carol’s disappearance, Frank had acted quickly and gotten him the hell out of there and slipped something in the glass of water he’d offered last night to knock him out. In the meantime, Frank had called Vince at home and—
“Hi, Mike, sorry to barge in like this,” the woman said, positioning herself in front of Vince as if shielding him from a potential verbal assault. “I know you guys had this agreement to keep all that was going on between yourselves, but I kinda got tired of being left out of everything, especially since the people you’re dealing with tried to kill me too. I think I have every right to know what the hell is happening, so I kind of invited myself along for the ride. Sorry to shock you like this, but that’s the short version. Want to hear the long version?”
Mike regarded her for a moment. She was standing in front of him, arms folded across her chest, waiting for his response. Her posture, her facial expression, the way she carried herself told him that she was strong-willed and wasn’t going to take no for an answer. On the other hand, Vince looked like somebody was going to hit him at any moment; he refused to meet his or Frank’s gaze. Mike sighed. “Christ.”
“Thanks for bringing Mike up to speed,” Frank said, his tone of voice suggesting to Mike that sometime last night the two of them had sparred verbally. Frank didn’t look too happy and he looked bone tired, too. “That’s it in a nutshell, man. She’s in.”
“Great, just great,” Mike muttered.
“I’m sorry,” Vince said, still looking sheepish.
Tracy ignored Vince’s meek demeanor. “This affects me as much as it affects Vince. I’m not trying to jeopardize anything. All I want is the truth.”
The truth. And what was that? Mike looked up at Frank, not even caring that Tracy Harris was in the fold now. Only wanting to know what had happened to Carol. And his family—hell, his son and daughter-in-law and granddaughter lived a mile away. What if the cult got them, too? “I don’t care,” he said. “I just want to know where Carol is. I’ve got to find her.”
“We will,” Frank said, clapping him on the shoulder. “We’re gonna get started on that this morning.”
“What time is it?’
“Almost eight-thirty,” Frank said.
Mike nodded. He felt tired, drained, but that was most likely the effects of whatever Frank had given him to help him sleep last night. Strangely, he didn’t feel that over-powering sense of panic when he discovered Carol had been kidnapped. He felt a strange sense of calmness. Thank God Frank had been thinking quickly last night when he came to the house to get him; he’d been acting on pure emotion and there was no telling what might have happened if Frank hadn’t been there to restrain him from doing something stupid.
“Okay,” he said, closing his eyes to stave off the tension headache he could sense was coming. He pinched the bridge of his nose. “You didn’t call the police, right?”
“Nope,” Frank said.