After spritzing her face and dusting her lashes with some mascara, she headed back out. She wanted to nose around, see if she could get some information about Samuel and her mother. But where to start? She didn’t want to just randomly approach people and pepper them with questions. That would only make her look suspect, for sure. So how did she make it appear as if she were like everyone else in this town? Laughter drew her attention and she realized the community center—the seeming hub of the town—was alive and teeming with people.
Must be some kind of shindig going down tonight, she surmised. What better way to get involved than to jump in with both feet, right?
Absolutely.
She walked straight to the community center and filed in with everyone else.
Bo Fargo stood at the door of the community center at his usual post as people, smiling and laughing like the sheep they were, walked into the center for the nightly meeting. Bo nodded in greeting to a few but otherwise kept his expression neutral. It was no good to get too personal with these people because he never wanted to have to make a choice between loyalty to Samuel and his own feelings for someone else.
A woman—someone he didn’t know—walked by, her eyes scanning the crowd without recognition, plainly a newcomer. Not bad on the eyes, she was a brunette with a nice butt and just the kind of rack Samuel preferred. Maybe his hunting expedition wouldn’t be so difficult, after all. Newcomers were easy picking. They were eager to please, blinded by Samuel’s charisma and charm, and usually ridiculously flattered and awestruck that Samuel wanted to spend time with them. His mouth twitched with a smile. Good. Now that he had his quarry selected, he could put a plan into action. Knowing that part of his assignment was completed, his mind wandered to his own desires. It’d been a while since he’d bedded a woman. Maybe tonight he’d find one of his regular lays, women who didn’t mind spreading their legs for a little extra favor in Bo’s regard, and ease up on some of the tension that seemed to ride him harder than any of the women he picked up.
Speaking of which, Brenda Billings tried to walk by without being noticed, but he snagged her arm before she could get away.
“Nice to see you, Brenda,” he said, rubbing his thumb along her forearm, communicating his intent without having to spell it out for everyone to hear. She ducked her head and nodded with a slight tremble of her lip. “I haven’t seen you around. Everything okay?” he asked, not truly caring, but he liked to give the appearance of a protector. “I’ve missed your pretty face at the meetings.” The only reason he’d noted her absence was because he was horny and she was the best of his little stable of regulars. He liked the way her little body squirmed beneath the weight of his and the way she let him do unspeakably dirty things to her without complaint.
“I…I’ve been sick,” she said, pulling her arm free with a quick glance around to see if anyone had seen their exchange. He narrowed his stare. What happened to his docile Brenda? He didn’t dare draw too much attention here at the center, but he gave Brenda a look that promised a return to the subject later. “I have to get my seat,” she said, moving away with a halfhearted promise, “I’ll talk with you later.”
“I look forward to it,” he said under his breath.
Thrown off focus for a moment and his mood soured by Brenda’s subtle rejection, he stalked from his post and into the hall, where he tried to find the woman he’d seen earlier.
He found her, interestingly enough, sitting not far from Brenda.
Perfect. Now he could watch them both. His mood improved, but only once he envisioned having both women service him the way he knew Samuel did with his women. Samuel could get away with that because he was handsome, charismatic and powerful. Bo knew his place in the world. The only reason women allowed him between their thighs was because he was Samuel’s muscle. Without Samuel, he’d have nothing. It wasn’t the way he’d imagined his life at this point in his career, but he wasn’t the type to cry in his beer about what could’ve been. And right now, he wanted Brenda.
Whether she wanted him or not.
Darcy settled in her seat, a little bit in awe of the turnout for the nightly meeting. When she’d heard that the community met every night for some inspirational
blah blah
by Samuel, she’d expected a small contingent of people—maybe diehards—to show up. Not the whole freaking town!
Her reaction must’ve been noted, for the person beside her tapped her lightly and said with a friendly smile, “Amazing, isn’t it?”
Startled, she swung her gaze to the woman beside her and jerked a short nod, temporarily at a loss for words or maybe just words that weren’t laced with the extreme discomfort she felt by being surrounded by obvious cult members. “I had no idea there were so many…um…devoted people,” she finally said, eliciting a soft chuckle from the woman who had subsequently introduced herself as Pam Donnelly. “So, what happens at these meetings that’s so special?”
“Oh honey, having a nightly meeting is just one of the many ways Mr. Grayson keeps our community strong. When you’re not connected to your neighbor, it’s easy to let outside influences color your thinking. Mr. Grayson is all about health and clean living, morally, financially and ethically. Even environmentally! He’s a visionary, to be sure.” She lifted her exorbitantly expensive tonic-water bottle. “Did you purchase a bottle?”
Flushing in embarrassment, she shook her head. “I didn’t realize it was required.”
“That’s okay, honey. Just pick one up on the way out. Sales from the tonic water help keep our town special. Did you notice how clean our streets are? How fresh and new the playground equipment is?”
“Yes, actually, I did notice,” Darcy answered, remembering how creepy it had seemed even though, admittedly, on the surface, clean streets shouldn’t seem disturbing, but they were. And when coupled with everything Darcy had begun to learn about Cold Plains, it added up to
weird.
“It’s great,” she lied with a smile. “Cold Plains is so amazing.”
Pam beamed, happy with her response. “Have you met with Mr. Grayson yet? He likes to personally greet all newcomers to Cold Plains. Oh, and you’re going to love him. He’s very handsome but it’s more than that. He’s… I don’t know how to describe it. He makes you feel as if you’re the most important person in the room. Heck, in the world,” she gushed.
Darcy fought the urge to raise her brow. “He sounds like a very interesting person,” she said. “Maybe I’ll meet him tonight. Do I have to make an appointment?”
Pam smiled coyly and said something that chilled Darcy’s blood. “It’s likely he already knows about you. Mr. Grayson knows everything that goes on in his town.”
Darcy couldn’t resist. “That doesn’t seem a little…intrusive? I mean, people like a certain amount of privacy, right?”
“Well, honey, it’s not like you’re being spied on in the restroom.” Pam chuckled. “But a close community is a connected community, that’s what Mr. Grayson says. Oh, and that reminds me, did you get your health screening over at the urgent-care clinic? It’s not required, but it’s certainly looked upon with favor if you plan to put down roots here in town.”
“A health screening?”
“Oh yes, it’s very beneficial. When I had mine, I was a little overweight. Not now. Just look at me.” She gestured to her figure. “No lumps or rolls any longer and I feel great. Not that you have that problem, dear. You have a lovely figure. Mr. Grayson will certainly approve.”
It was the way Pam said it that made Darcy feel a little ill. Of course the woman had no way of knowing she was Samuel’s daughter, but even so, something about earning Samuel’s approval in any way made Darcy want to do something outlandishly reckless so there was no way he would ever approve. Maybe it was some long-buried need to rebel against the absent father figure in her life, but thankfully, self-preservation won out, and she wisely continued to smile and nod. “Well, I work for Dr. Black now, so perhaps he could do my health screening for me,” she said but was surprised when Pam shook her head.
“Oh no, honey. It has to be at the clinic,” she said firmly. “Dr. Black is a nice man but he’s not completely committed yet, so it’s best to conduct your important business at the clinic. But don’t worry, they have the best of everything there. You couldn’t be in better hands. In fact, just last week I had a dark sunspot removed from my shoulder that could’ve turned cancerous, and I barely have a scar from the laser.”
“If it wasn’t cancerous, why’d you have it removed? I’ve heard those lasers are painful.”
Pam laughed and waved away her statement. “It was so ugly. A little pain was worth getting rid of it. Besides, I wouldn’t want Mr. Grayson to think I wasn’t being health conscious by letting a little pain stand in my way.” The lights dimmed, signaling the start of the presentation, and Pam became giddy as a schoolgirl with a crush. “Ohh, here he comes.” The way Pam’s eyes lit up, Darcy amended her assessment. Pam did have a crush on Samuel. Gross.
She focused on the stage, determined this time not to faint. She wanted to get a good look at the man who had fathered her.
And possibly killed her mother.
Chapter 8
R
afe purposefully grabbed a beer even though Samuel frowned on alcohol use, another passive-aggressive snub at Samuel on Rafe’s part, and cracked it open with a long sigh for an equally long day. After double-checking doors and windows—he’d never been this paranoid before moving to Cold Plains—he settled into the high-backed leather chair stationed at his desk and pulled the photo of Devin from his wallet. He kept it with him, gaining a modicum of comfort having his image near, even though logically he knew it was an illusion. He didn’t know if his son was alive, whether he was being cared for or whether he was being abused in some dark basement. He tried not to let his mind wander on most days, but tonight, fatigue weakened his mental walls and fear ate him.
He’d put a few careful calls out today, asking about Abby and her role in Samuel’s life before she disappeared. So far, he’d gotten nothing. Sure, they remembered the woman, but no one remembered her being pregnant or if she’d been dating Samuel.
Not that Samuel dated. He selected beautiful women to “mentor,” which seemed a code for screwing their brains out at his convenience. He hated to think Abby had been one of his
mentorees,
but there was a reason Abby was eliminated, and that was the only reason Rafe could think of that would’ve put her in danger.
But then her pregnancy would’ve shown at some point, and he highly doubted Samuel would’ve been aroused by a pregnant woman. Was her pregnancy the reason she’d incurred his wrath? For all his matchmaking and supposed, professed love for families, he was particularly averse to children and babies. Of course this was something only his closest inner circle knew, and Rafe had only discovered this fact from a seemingly innocuous statement a patient had made one day.
“You know what I like most about Samuel Grayson?” Melissa Pedersen had stated one day during a wellness check for her pregnancy. Melissa was a mother of four already, with the bun in the oven making six because she was carrying twins. “He doesn’t pretend to be something he’s not,” she said, smoothing her hand over her large belly. “You know how politicians are always hugging and kissing kids that aren’t theirs, just to give off the impression they’re everyday kind of guys just like you?” Rafe nodded, curious as to where this was going. “But I think he’s perfectly fine admitting babies—or pregnant women—just aren’t his thing.”
Rafe pretended to listen to the babies’ heartbeats with his scope, but in truth, he was trained intently on what Melissa was blithely sharing. “And why do you say that?” he asked.
“Oh, because he gets this look on his face, almost like he’s scared or something of a pregnant belly.” She laughed as if that was either the cutest or the darndest thing, but the revelation gave Rafe chilling clarity. Melissa continued to prattle on, completely missing the sudden tension in Rafe’s body. “The look on his face was one of someone afraid an alien was going to jump out at him or something. It was funny watching this confident, sexy man get so… I don’t know, it wasn’t that he was freaked or anything—he’d never do something so rude—but you could definitely tell, he isn’t cut out to be a father. But that’s okay,” Melissa defended as if she’d realized someone might find what she’d said offensive. “Not everyone is cut out to do the work that he does. I imagine it takes a whole lot of concentration and time to keep a town like Cold Plains operating like a well-oiled machine, so it doesn’t bother me any that he’s not a family man.”
Rafe had nodded and murmured assent, but his mind had turned a few cogs forward. If Abby had been Samuel’s girlfriend and then gotten pregnant with another man’s child, that would be sufficient enough cause to enrage Samuel.
Of course it’d been only a theory, and one he hadn’t been able to prove, but he’d logged his findings in his cloud network files for future reference.
The quiet of the small house pressed on him until he couldn’t stand it any longer. He wanted to go to bed, but as tired as his body was, his mind refused to shut down. He felt so helpless, so ineffectual in that he hadn’t been able to find his son or find out who had killed Abby. It was times like this that he had to admit he was out of his element. He wasn’t a cop, for crying out loud, yet here he was, trying his damndest to solve a crime even the FBI was having difficulty in nailing. His chest tightened and he took a few deliberate breaths to shake loose the tension. Sometimes he wondered if that tight feeling was the need to scream his rage, grief and whatever else he had locked in there so he didn’t lose it on Main Street and get carted off by one of Samuel’s goons. Hell, that was probably the best way to find the infirmary, except he had an inkling that if he went down that road, he wouldn’t be coming back. He took a few more swigs and then dumped the rest down the kitchen drain.