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  “Your mother wants you to stay with her, you know.”

  “What my mother wants isn’t as important to me as what I want.”

  Lorie let out a loud, low whistle. “I don’t know what they did to you at Haven Home, but I like it. The old Cathy would never have said something like that and meant it.”

  “The old Cathy no longer exists. I think she began dying the day Mark died.” She looked directly at Lorie. “I couldn’t say this to just anyone, because they wouldn’t understand, they’d take it the wrong way…but it took something as traumatic as Mark’s gruesome murder to finally give me the courage to become my own person.”

  Mark’s death and a year of therapy.

  Cathy took one final look at the porch and then ran her gaze over the neatly manicured lawn. “I’m ready to go now.”

  She followed Lorie back to the SUV. She had faced one of many demons that she had left behind a year ago when she had checked herself in at Haven Home, a mental-rehabilitation center outside of Birmingham. After the first six months, she had become an outpatient but had stayed on as a part-time employee in the cafeteria. Her mother and Mark’s parents had visited her several times and had brought Seth with them. She had missed her son unbearably, but she had known living with his grandparents had been the best thing for him until she was able to provide him with a mentally stable mother.

  Mark’s death had almost destroyed her, and only with Dr. Milton’s help had she been able to fully recover. She had gone into the intensive therapy blaming herself for Mark’s death and believing that his parents and Seth blamed her for not being able to save him. But Dr. Milton had worked with her until she had been able to admit to herself that the guilt she felt wasn’t because she blamed herself for not being able to save Mark. Realistically, logically, she knew that would have been impossible. She had done everything within her power. No, what Cathy felt guilty about, what she had had great difficulty admitting to Dr. Milton and to herself, was that she had never loved her husband. She had married him not loving him, and although she had tried to convince herself that she loved him, she hadn’t. She had cared deeply for him, had respected and admired him, but she had never been able to feel for Mark that deep, passionate love a woman should feel for her husband.

  “Do you want to stop by J.B. and Mona’s to see Seth?” Lorie asked.

  “No, not yet. I’m supposed to have dinner with them and Mother tomorrow, after church. I’ll wait until then.”

  “J.B. and Mona may not give Seth up without a fight.” Lorie inserted the key into the ignition. “I took the liberty of hiring Elliott Floyd to represent you, just in case Mark’s parents aren’t willing to turn your son over to you now that you’re well.”

  Gasping softly, Cathy snapped her head around and stared at her friend. “I don’t think a lawyer will be necessary. But thank you all the same. Seth is my child. I appreciate all that J.B. and Mona have done for him since Mark’s death, but you can’t possibly believe that they would try to take him away from me.”

  Lorie shrugged. “You never know what people will do. If for any reason the Cantrells think you’re unfit to—”

  “I’m fit,” Cathy said. “I believe that I’m better prepared to be a good mother to my son now than ever before, and I was a damn good mother in the past.”

  Lorie eyed Cathy with speculative curiosity. “You are aware of the fact that you just said damn and didn’t blink an eye, aren’t you?”

  Cathy smiled. “Surprised?”

  “Shocked.” Lorie laughed. “Know any other forbidden words?”

  “A whole slew of them. And sooner or later, you’ll probably hear me say all of them.”

  “I want to meet your Dr. Milton one of these days,” Lorie said. “I want to shake his hand and thank him for releasing the real Catherine Nelson Cantrell from that holier-than-thou prison she stuck herself in trying to please her husband and her mother and her in-laws.”

  “The days of my trying to please everyone else are over. I’ve come home to start a new life, not to rebuild my old one. I owe it to myself and to Seth to be strong and independent and live the rest of my life to the fullest, and that’s just what I intend to do.”

  Nicole Powell dreaded going home to Griffin’s Rest. She and her friend, Maleah Perdue, had been gone a week, just the two of them alone in a Gatlinburg cabin in the Smoky Mountains. They had eaten out a few times and done a little shopping, but mostly they had kicked back at the cabin and done little or nothing. They had watched chick-flick DVDs, soaked in the hot tub, taken long walks on the nearby hiking trails and pigged out on the array of bad-for-you food they had purchased at a local grocery store.

  The past year had been difficult for Maleah. Her older brother, Jack, had been critically wounded on his last assignment in the Middle East. She had spent weeks at his bedside, hoping and praying that he would survive. He had, but at a great cost. He had undergone several surgeries to his face and neck to rebuild what the explosion had ripped away.

  During their stay at the cabin, Nic and Maleah had confided in each other, sharing things that they wouldn’t or couldn’t share with anyone else. In the two years that Nic had been married to Griffin Powell and had been co-owner of the Powell Private Security and Investigation Agency, she had become acquainted with all of their agents. Only a handful of their employees were women, and of those few, Nic had bonded with only two, Maleah and Barbara Jean Hughes.

  “Have you decided what you’re going to do? Are you going to talk to Griff and tell him how you feel?” Maleah asked as Nic pulled her Escalade up in front of the huge iron gates at Griffin’s Rest. Two massive stone arches, with bronze griffins implanted in the stone, flanked the entrance.

  Nic rolled down the window and said her name. The identification security system instantly recognized her voice and activated the Open function on the gates. This voice-ID system was new here at the Powell compound.

  Once they were inside the estate and the gates closed behind them, Nic glanced at Maleah. “I can talk to him and try to explain, but he won’t understand.”

  “He might. You won’t know until you—”

  “I know. Believe me. He will not understand. I can’t ask him to choose between Yvette and me.” She could, but she was afraid to ask her husband to make that choice, because deep down inside she wasn’t completely certain that he would choose her.

  “It’s not a matter of choosing between the two of you,” Maleah said. “Not really. It’s a matter of making him understand how you feel.”

  “I feel jealous, and Griff doesn’t understand why because Yvette is his friend, because she’s like a sister to him, because he owes her his life. He’s not in love with her. He’s in love with me, but…”

  “But recently you feel that he is putting her first. You’re his wife. You have every right to expect him to always put you first.”

  Nic heaved a heavy sigh. “Griff has become so involved in whatever it is that Yvette is doing with that project of hers, that school or laboratory or sanctuary or whatever the hell it is, that he has all but turned over the running of the Powell Agency to me.”

  “I still don’t see why you won’t take my suggestion and get involved in Yvette’s project yourself, if for no other reason than to find out what’s going on. And it would give you more time with Griff.”

  “I suppose if I insisted, he’d ask Yvette to include me, but she’s been so secretive about the whole thing, and whenever she comes for dinner and I mention the project, she clams up.”

  “Look, none of this is my business, except that you and I are friends and you’ve shared your concerns with me,” Maleah said. “But you’re Griff’s wife and co-owner of the Powell Agency and of Griffin’s Rest. You have every right to know what kind of operation Yvette Meng has going on in those buildings that Griff had built for her less than a mile from your home.”

  “I just don’t want to come off sounding like a jealous wife, even if that’s what I am. But if I don’t get some of t
his off my chest pretty soon, I’m going to explode, and that won’t be good for me or my marriage.”

  “So talk to Griff. Talk to him tonight.”

  Nic nodded. Maleah was right, of course. These feelings had been growing gradually, beginning with the day Griff told her that he would be constructing a housing complex for Dr. Yvette Meng at Griffin’s Rest, a place where some of her gifted “psychic” students would be safe and protected from the outside world.

  But when Yvette had arrived six months ago to oversee the project, Nic’s concerns had escalated, and not without foundation. Even though she didn’t doubt Griff’s love for her, she couldn’t shake the suspicion that neither he nor Yvette had been totally honest with her about their past relationship.

  She trusted Griff as she had never trusted another person in her entire life. She loved him so much that sometimes it frightened her. That combination of love and trust was now being tested.

  He did not deserve to live. He was like the others, pretending to be good when, in his heart, he was evil.

  I have to punish him.

  That’s what You want me to do, isn’t it, God?

  Yes, yes, I hear You. I accept that it is my purpose in life to rain hellfire and brimstone down on the false prophets.

  I will do Your bidding, Lord. I will seek out those who profess to do Your work and instead are in league with the devil. The liars. The blasphemers. The adulterers. The most vile of all sinners, those who transgress against Your holy word.

  I didn’t understand completely, not at first, but I do now. I cannot wait for them to reveal themselves to me. I must search for them and do so with all diligence.

  Give me the strength to do what I must do. Show me the way. I am, now and always, Your obedient servant.

  What?

  Yes, Lord, I see him. And I know him for what he truly is. The priest has harmed dozens of little boys, and he’s gotten away with his crimes over and over again. He must be stopped. He must be punished.

  Chapter Two

  Jack had gotten, at most, a total of two hours’ sleep. He was still occasionally having nightmares about his last Rangers’ assignment, and since his return to Dunmore, old boyhood nightmares had resurfaced and gotten all mixed up with the ones about the war. These days if he got four hours of sleep and didn’t wake in a cold sweat, he called it a good night.

  He had slept in his old room, on the same antique double bed and lumpy mattress that were almost as old as he was. If he stayed, he’d have to buy a new mattress. He hadn’t ventured into any of the other upstairs rooms yesterday, but if he intended to air out the place, he would have to go into every room, including his mother’s bedroom, a room she had shared with Nolan.

  Tossing back the musty blanket and sheet, he got out of bed, stretched, scratched his chest and tromped toward the bathroom down the hall. After taking a leak, he peered into the dusty mirror over the pedestal sink and barely recognized the man looking back at him. He was no longer the teenage boy who had run away from Dunmore to escape his tyrannical stepfather, nor was he the angry man who had returned five years ago for his mother’s funeral. Although the surgeons had done an excellent job, the left side of his face would never be the same. He would never be the same. He was still reasonably young—just turned thirty-seven. And despite his extensive injuries, the doctors had put Humpty Dumpty back together again so that he was strong and healthy. And although his career in the army was over, he now had a new job that offered him a chance to start over, to build a new life.

  Out with the old and in with the new. Starting today.

  Jack dressed hurriedly in faded jeans and a gray T-shirt, then headed up the stairs to the third story. He opened all the windows that hadn’t been painted shut and descended the stairs, back to the second floor, and went from room to room, tying back curtains and lifting windows to let in the fresh springtime air. When he reached his mother’s bedroom, he paused, steeled his nerves and opened the door. Except for the massive pieces of burl walnut furniture that had been in this room for generations, Jack didn’t recognize anything. The room was as cold and dreary as his stepfather had been, the walls an off-white, now faded, the wooden floor unpolished for only God knew how many years. Heavy, brown brocade drapes closed out all light from the row of windows, and a matching bedspread covered the antique bed, the bed in which his maternal grandmother had been born.

  As he closed his eyes just for a second, memories of his childhood flashed through his mind. He and Maleah running into their parents’ bedroom and jumping into bed with them. His beautiful blond mother’s arms opening wide to embrace them. His big, rugged father smiling as he ruffled Jack’s hair and planted a kiss on Maleah’s forehead.

  Jack marched across the room, reached up and yanked the drapes, rods and all, from the windows and left them lying in dusty heaps on the floor. Morning sunlight flooded the room. He managed to open two of the four windows. As he stood and looked at his handiwork, he knew then that this would be the first room he would clear out, clean and restore.

  With the windows open and the house airing out, Jack went down the back stairs and into the kitchen, which hadn’t been remodeled in a good twenty years. He’d made a stop at a mini-mart on his way into Dunmore yesterday and picked up a few supplies, enough to tide him over for a few days. All the nonperishable items remained on the kitchen counter, where he’d left them last night.

  After searching through the cabinets, he found the coffeemaker, washed it thoroughly and then put on a pot of coffee. Once the strong brew was ready, he poured himself a cupful and headed out the back door.

  He had faced one demon—his mother’s bedroom. How many times had he walked by her closed door and heard her crying?

  He might as well face another demon, the one that made repeat performances in his nightmares. Standing in the middle of the backyard, he stared at the old carriage house, now little more than a dilapidated, unpainted hulk. He was surprised a high wind hadn’t already toppled the rickety structure. His father had kept his fishing boat there, nothing fancy, just a sturdy utility boat with a 5-HP 4-cycle motor that they had taken out on a regular basis for their excursions on the nearby Tennessee River. Nolan had sold Bill Perdue’s boat less than six months after his marriage to Bill’s widow. Jack and Maleah had watched from the kitchen window as the new owner hitched the boat trailer to his truck and drove away. While holding his arm comfortingly around Maleah’s trembling shoulders as she cried, it had been all the thirteen-year-old Jack could do not to cry himself. Selling their father’s boat had been the least of Nolan Reaves’s crimes, but it had been a forerunner of things to come.

  Jack inhaled deeply, taking in the sweet smell of honeysuckles covering the back fence. His stepfather had kept the wayward vine cut to the ground, calling it an insect magnet and otherwise worthless. Jack allowed his gaze to travel over the overgrown shrubbery and the ankle-deep grass. Nolan had been a stickler for keeping the yard neat. Flowers were not allowed, despite the fact that Jack’s mother had loved them. He would never forget the expression on her face when Nolan had cut down every bush in her beloved rose garden and then dug up the roots and burned them.

  Jack finished his coffee, set the mug on the ground and marched toward the carriage house. He swung open the wooden gate that led from the backyard to the gravel drive. The closer each step took him to the side door of the carriage house, the louder and faster his heart beat. The last time his stepfather had beaten him, he had been a sophomore in high school and had just turned sixteen. He had stood there and taken the punishment Nolan Reaves administered with such deliberate pleasure. A strap across Jack’s back, butt and legs. That time, the beating was not to atone for a mistake Nolan believed Jack had made, but one he thought Maleah had made. Three years earlier, after the first time Jack saw the bloody stripes across his eight-year-old sister’s legs, he had made a bargain with the devil—from that day forward, he would take his own punishment and Maleah’s, too. The deal had seemed to please Nolan,
who took a sick delight in beating the daylights out of Jack on a regular basis.

  Jack’s hand trembled—actually shook like he had palsy—when he grasped the doorknob. Son of a bitch! Old demons died hard. He was a trained soldier, an Army Ranger, one of the best of the best, and yet here he was acting like a scared kid.

  The boogeyman is dead. Remember? And even if he were still alive, there would be no reason to fear him.

  He tightened his grip on the doorknob, turned it and opened the door. Nolan had always kept the door locked. Jack had no idea where the key was or even if there was a key. Neither he nor Maleah had mentioned the carriage house when they had discussed the possibility of him living here.

  Leaving the door wide open, Jack entered the dark, dank interior of his teenage hell. In the shadowy darkness, he could make out the workbench, the rows of waist-high toolboxes, the table saw, the push mower, the Weed Eater and various other yard-work devices. His gaze crawled over the dirt floor, around the filthy windows and cobweb-infested walls, to the triangular wooden ceiling. He stopped and stared at the row of menacing leather straps that hung across the back wall. He counted them. Six. At one time or another, Jack had felt the painful sting of each strap.

  “You don’t have to do this, you know.” Lorie Hammonds poured herself a second cup of coffee, laced it liberally with sugar and cream and set the purple mug on the bar that separated the kitchen from the den.

  Cathy glanced at a silk-nightgown–clad Lorie as she hoisted herself up on the bronze metal barstool, picked up her cup and took a sip. Lorie was thirty-five, a year older than Cathy, and sophisticated and worldly-wise. She was also beautiful in a voluptuous, sultry way that drew men to her like bears to honey. Her long, auburn hair hung freely over her bare shoulders, streaks of strawberry-blond highlights framing her oval face. She stared pensively at Cathy, a concerned look in her chocolate-brown eyes.