Page 57 of The Psychic

The doors to the Heart of Sunshine Church were locked.

Harley watched as Cooper pounded on the panels, then looked like he was about to try to throw his shoulder at the thick oak panels or shoot his way in with his sidearm.

“Don’t!” Harley grabbed his arm and shook her head.

Then, assured that he wasn’t about to do himself bodily harm, she knocked urgently on the door and called, “Help! Help me!” in a sobbing voice. “I need the Lord’s help!”

She kept knocking and crying loudly.

Within minutes the locks slowly clicked open and the door cracked. A woman wearing a cloak, blond hair visible, peered out from the aperture, light from behind throwing her in relief and spilling into the twilight where Harley stood wringing her hands, Cooper in shadow.

“We … we’re … the church isn’t open,” the woman said, eyeing Harley with curious suspicion. “Our father is busy …”

“My baby!” Harley clutched her stomach. “I’m losing my baby and I can’t go to a hospital. I need help!”

“Your baby?” The door opened further.

Harley didn’t wait. Barreled her way in. Cooper made a sound of protest, but Harley was already inside an anteroom of some kind. The doors to the church itself were open and though the blond woman rushed to close them, Harley had already dashed through and was running down the aisle.

“No! Stop! Don’t! You can’t go in there! Stop!” the woman screeched wildly while Cooper was using his most soothing voice. It never worked on Harley. Fingernails on a chalkboard.

And still the woman was screaming.

Harley raced down the row between the pews. The empty pulpit was front and center before a raised altar. Overhead a huge wooden cross had been suspended over a wide portrait of the sun, beams radiating from its golden center.

She hesitated only a second as there were doors on either side of the nave.

Left or right?

She chose left, mainly because she was leaning toward right and that felt wrong.

Something in that thought was screwy. Whatever. She just kept moving, ignoring the voices and footsteps behind her and slipped through the door to a darkened hallway with doors on either side.

Well, shit.

She hesitated, then noticed a dim light shining at the far end of the hall where a door leading to the exterior had been fitted with a glass insert.

She headed that way. The light was murky and faint but she pushed the door open.

Winter cold slapped her face and the dark of dusk was creeping over a two-story barn-like building with one small window on the second floor and a few scant panes, which appeared to be covered, on the first. The long, rectangular structure seemed to end at what appeared to be a garden area.

But her eyes were drawn to the flickering illumination coming from the second story. Maybe candlelight?

Harley set her jaw. She’d come to find Emma. And she’d had enough of these fakey religious types at last summer’s camp.

She exited the church and ran lightly across wet grass to the rather featureless adjunct building, her toes dampening through her Nikes.

She caught glimpses of light through cracks in the curtains covering the windows on the lower floor.

That illumination was steady and even, so Harley supposed the building did have electricity, if only on the first floor.

As she neared a metal door, she peered through a gap in the dark, obscuring curtains and noticed at least one overhead bulb.

She tried the door.

Locked.

Damn.

She pounded her fist on the metal panel, then glanced behind her. No sign of Cooper, the woman or anyone else. No sign of the “father,” or was it “Father”? Was their leader considered God?

And Emma was in their clutches? Not to sound too dramatic, but hell.

“Who’s there?” a voice from within called.

Harley and Cooper had tersely gone over what they knew about Mary Jo and the Heart of Sunshine Church as a means to hold down their panic over Emma. Now, she jerked her jacket in front of her face and cried through the fabric, “Rebekkah.”

“Rebekkah?” a woman’s voice said with obvious doubt. Oh crap, what if Mary Jo was already inside? But the voice returned. “Sister, is that you?”

“Yes!”

Within seconds the locks clicked and the door swung open.

Harley charged inside … to a room of woman and children of various ages sitting on wooden benches scattered over the old plank floor.

And in the center of the room, the overhead light shining down on her blond hair, her braid slung over her shoulder, looking for all the world like Elsa from Frozen about to cast out ice fractals, was Emma.

Harley felt her knees go weak in relief.

“Hi, Harley,” Emma said in her flat way, as almost everyone else in the room stayed momentarily motionless, frozen themselves. Emma continued. “They don’t want to stay here anymore. They don’t like having sex with him. He doesn’t ask nicely.”

“He doesn’t ask at all,” a woman with red hair and dark eyes stated fiercely.

“Where is he?” asked Harley. The door had closed behind her but she glanced back at it.

“The men have separate living arrangements off site,” said a woman with a shorn head.

“Our father is preparing a room at the church,” an older woman added.

“For what?” asked Harley. “Left or right side of the pulpit as you face the altar?”

“For me,” said Emma. “But I don’t think I’ll have sex with him.” She reached forward and accepted a wicked-looking utility knife from the red-haired woman. “But I won’t let him cut off my hair. I think I’ll kill him.”

Ronnie shivered against Sloan’s warmth as he held her close, standing outside the Langdorf mansion as two officers swarmed into the house and subdued Carlton, who was on the floor, clutching his knees and howling how it was her fault.

Her, being Ronnie. She’d come when she wasn’t invited!

he’d insisted. She’d attacked him! She’d drugged his aunt after being summarily turned away.

She was after the inheritance. She was a sham, a fake, a bullshit psychic!

He’d thrown out an arm and pointed at Ronnie while they were trying to handcuff him. “She’s a fucking lunatic! Look at my dear aunt!” His voice had broken and he’d wept vociferously. “Look what she did to her! Arrest her! Not me! HER! Look! Look!”

They’d all glanced toward the spot where Marian had slid down the den doorjamb and was lying half in, half out of the room.

EMTs had arrived on the heels of the police and while Carlton kept screaming that they were making a mistake, arresting the wrong person, Marian had been loaded into an ambulance and it had raced down the driveway, lights flashing, siren winding up.

Ronnie had given her statement to a uniformed officer with Sloan at her side and now they were outside in the curved driveway, a cold December mist falling.

“He—Carlton—must’ve given her something,” Ronnie said through chattering teeth.

“She was normal … seemed fine, but then I heard the dog … Is there a dog?”

Sloan said, “I don’t hear one.” He was holding her, his arm tight over her shoulders, but she felt the tension radiating from him, his muscles tight. His attention was split between tending to her and taking charge of the scene.

“Marian doesn’t like dogs, so there’s no dog …

” she murmured. She glanced toward Carlton on his knees, hands cuffed behind his back as he forced the police to drag him to a patrol car.

“He put the bat on my doorstep,” Ronnie said, hitching her chin in Carlton’s direction. “Ask him what he did to Angel.”

Sloan glanced down at her. “He’s responsible for the bat?”

“Yes.” She nodded, glaring at Carlton, who was being hauled to his feet. “Marian mentioned that they have a colony roosting in the walls of the house.” She glanced up at Sloan. “And he did something to Angel.”

“This is something you’ve seen, I mean did you witness it? Or did you envision it? Or did Carlton admit it?”

“I just know it,” she bit out. “And no, Carlton didn’t admit it, but he was shocked and looked guilty as hell when I brought Angel up. I know he did something to him, but I don’t know what.”

Sloan’s eyes darkened with concern. “You’re sure you don’t need a doctor?”

“I’m fine,” she insisted once again. Sloan had wanted to pack her off to the hospital, and had said as much, but she’d refused.

“You could be concussed.”

“Do I seem concussed?” Sure, her head ached like a monster, but she was clearheaded.

He reluctantly capitulated, saying, “Okay, then, if you’re sure.”

“I’m sure!”

“Fine. We’ll pick your car up later.” To the officers, he added, “I’ll meet you at the station in a bit. I’ve got something to check out.”

Sloan tucked Ronnie into the passenger side of his Bronco.

“Sure you’re okay?” he asked again and she sent him a dark, don’t-go-there look.

“Okay, okay,” he said, palms up as he backed away from the SUV.

She yanked the door closed. It warmed her heart that he so obviously cared, but she felt a restlessness, a desire to hurry, a driving, gut-clenching need to find Angel.

If they could.

For his part, Sloan, though certainly solicitous, was as intent as she, unrelentingly stern. Maybe he sensed, as she did, that Carlton Langdorf had actually murdered Angel. She hoped to God she was wrong, but the gnawing fear inside her was destroying all hope.

“Angel’s car hasn’t moved from our parking lot,” she said as Sloan started the engine and hit the gas.

“Then that’s where we’ll go.”

“What are you doing here?” Atticus Symons demanded imperiously as he glared at Cooper from the podium of the church.

The preacher had appeared from a door on the right and crossed toward a lectern on the dais.

He was wearing robes tonight, more ceremonial than the last time Cooper had crossed with him.

Some kind of rite was about to go down. Cooper could feel it. Didn’t like it.