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To Derek, it looked like a Discovery Channel special on viruses and how they invade healthy cells. Then the scene appeared to dissolve to white as if someone poured liquid disinfectant to “bleach out” the contents. In its place were highlights of Luke killing and dismembering the Asian prostitutes. It ended with For Gaia, with Love.
And finally, the home video concluded with Luke reading from a prepared script…
“Welcome, serpents. By the time you see this, you’re too late to stop the Ascension. Gaia, Artemis, the lesser goddesses and I have gone to Mount Olympus, leaving this despicable, disease-ridden world for Python and his FBI underlings to rule. Bow to your superiors and accept your defeat.”
With that, the final frame burst into flames, disintegrating into a pyramid of pictures. At the apex was a picture of Lillian—younger, vibrant, and obviously in good health—with a simple caption: Gaia. Below that in the hierarchy were pictures of Sloane and Luke, captioned Artemis and Apollo, respectively. At the bottom of the pyramid was a picture of each of the kidnapped women, captioned with the name of the goddess she embodied.
A moment passed, and the entire sequence started again.
Forcing himself to keep it together, Derek crossed over and examined the desk. Beside the laptop stood only one other object—a children’s book on Greek mythology. Derek picked it up and opened it. The inscription read: To my little Apollo. Obviously, a gift from Lillian when Luke was a boy. The book was well-worn, signifying it had been read often. There was a chapter on each goddess, complete with an illustration. It was like a textbook, except presented with clear, elementary school simplicity.
At this point, Derek had every drop of proof he needed. The lab in Quantico had called earlier and confirmed the DNA match. So they now had both fingerprint and DNA evidence. And now this sick, twisted video.
The problem was, he had no idea where Luke Doyle was.
The bastard was smart. There wasn’t a shred of information on him in this apartment that Derek hadn’t already obtained elsewhere—his military record, his school transcript, his employment records from Bellevue. Not a damned thing that could provide a clue as to his whereabouts.
Ditto for the phone records they’d obtained by court order. Neither Luke’s nor Lillian’s phones had revealed anything. No calls had been made, either to or from their home or cell phones, since Sloane’s disappearance.
A credit search on both the Doyles had proven equally useless.
No addresses that the Bureau didn’t already know about. So if that country house really existed, it hadn’t been bought under either Luke’s or Lillian’s name. Piles of bills and credit-card statements in the kitchen—all with one word scrawled in large, red letters: PAID. No outstanding balances. None.
Eerily, it looked as if the Doyles were paying off each and every one of their debts to society.
Its finality made Derek’s skin crawl.
CHAPTER
THIRTY-ONE
They were out of time.
Judging from the amount of morphine Luke was administering to his mother, and his own statement that he expected her to pass in a day or two, it was clear that Lillian had made a rapid downhill slide since the evening of her party. And it didn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that once “Gaia” had moved on, the rest of them would follow close behind.
They would be sacrificed in an elaborate ritual, no doubt dismembered piece by piece using a combat knife. Luke had been honing his carving skills on those prostitutes he’d killed. And the fact that he’d implied that Sloane was the only “goddess” strong enough to listen to him describe the details of
their ascension didn’t bode well for his planned methodology.
Sweat broke out on Sloane’s forehead, drenched her back, as she visualized the thick blade of a Bowie knife and what it could do. A hell of a lot more damage than a switchblade.
Vivid recall took over. The excruciating pain of razor-sharp metal piercing her flesh, severing her nerves and blood vessels. The intolerable agony, the sickening sight of blood gushing from her palm, flowing onto the ground until she blacked out—it was a nightmare she’d carry with her forever.
And that was only her hand. This time the ritualistic killing would involve not only a combat knife, but the puncturing of vital organs and a torturous, drawn-out death.
Stop it. Sloane nipped her thoughts in the bud. She wasn’t letting her mind go there. It would only paralyze her and waste valuable time. None of the women in this house was going to die. She would come up with a means of escape. She had to.
The Bureau had provided her with the finest, most sophisticated training in the world. But no handbook, no amount of education, innate ability, or years of crisis resolution experience could prepare her for a situation like this—where she was negotiating for her own life and the lives of others—with no help. And, given the circumstances, it felt as if everything was happening at warp speed, with Lillian’s impending death being an imposed, but intangible deadline—like a bomb with a lit fuse, set to go off at some imminent but imprecise hour. There was no opportunity for her to make gradual progress, foster developing trust. And there was no margin for error.
Sloane’s mind stepped through the salient points of crisis negotiation, extracting those techniques that would work in this high-stress situation. She prayed she had the right answers.
That brought her to the cell phone she’d slipped into the seatback bag of Lillian’s wheelchair when Luke had kidnapped her. Obviously, she’d been incapacitated and unable to access to it during their trip. But the phone still had to be in that bag. If Luke had discovered it, he would have slit her throat by now. Fine, but had he brought the wheelchair inside the house? Was it with Lillian? Sloane had to find out. She had to get into Lillian’s bedroom—or rather, convince Luke to take her there.
He’d intimated that he’d created a room for “Artemis” upstairs, one she had to earn the right to move into. She’d be willing to bet that Lillian’s room was on the same floor. So if she could convince him to move her, she’d be one step closer to the wheelchair and the phone.
She’d have to do this as subtly as their limited time would permit. Maybe she could request a peek at the room, and a brief visit with Lillian—just so she could cheer “Gaia” up. That would definitely earn her brownie points.
Even if she pulled it off, Luke would never leave her alone with Lillian. He’d be supervising her every move. But she had to get to that phone, find a way to snatch it as well as a private place to use it—and then pray that wherever the hell this place was, she would have enough cell reception.
