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I just don’t know if it will be alive.
Or dead.
Chapter Five
Blue Harbor
Bexley Hemmingway’s office
Saturday, September 1
6:05 p.m.
Bexley checked her watch. After seeing Tiberius this morning, the rest of the day went to pot until she saw him less than an hour ago on TV giving a press conference. His confidence was professional and assured, not arrogant. If Ahnah wasn’t missing, Bex might find solace in his words to the community that they would put in their best efforts to catch this killer. The promise in that statement made its mark. But Ahnah was missing, and there was a possibility that they wouldn’t find her before he killed her.
They’d been through a rough patch lately—the whole family. Josiah was sullen and angry all the time. She was to blame for sure. A boy needed a father, and he’d been bringing it up more often. The hostility was new, which she’d been passing off as teenage boy hormones with a side of “I need a dad.”
Milo’s session had been a debacle earlier due to her lack of undivided attention and had resulted in agitation, but the man who had Ahnah had called her place of business and knew her name, talked with Tiberius. He knew where they were, and she worried Josiah and she might be in danger. She grabbed her voice recorder and pressed Record, forcing herself to concentrate on the job. “Patient exhibits positive parental transference due to a core belief that it’s his job to protect. This stems from guilt associated with domestic violence in his own home.” Milo obviously believed Bexley was meeting his emotional needs that his own mother, who had been terribly abused, couldn’t at the time. Bexley had helped his mother and as a favor agreed to help him work through the trauma.
“Earlier today he interrupted me in my office with someone. Loud voices triggered the deep-seated need to protect. I’ll continue to monitor him and work through the transference through cognitive recognition. If it escalates, I’ll reevaluate and assign him to a new counselor.” She clicked the stop button and leaned her head against the chair headrest, rubbing her temples.
After three minutes of breathing exercises and prayer, Bexley collected her purse and keys, then left the office with her admin assistant, locking the door before walking outside. Exhaustion weighted her limbs, and a sharp pain hammered against the side of her head like a woodpecker to a tree.
Seeing Tiberius brought up her own past trauma, and she’d taken fifteen minutes earlier to call her own therapist. After fleeing that night, she’d felt this same kind of exhaustion and anxiety, which had resulted in her passing out at a bus station. Renee Helton, a therapist who rescued girls like Bexley in all kinds of situations from trafficking to domestic abuse, found her and Ahnah and brought them here to the island and to this home. She missed Renee terribly and wished she was still with them.
Bexley unlocked her car door and all but collapsed inside. How was she going to tell Josiah about Ty? What would he do? Terror that her son would contact the Family to find his roots had kept her silent so far. The Family of Glory was a sick, twisted institution using a real and good God as a front to wield male authority over subservient women and abuse them however they saw fit. Women were born to be wives and mothers and to pleasure their men. If they succeeded in complete submission, they were awarded great honors in heaven and the assurance their children would be with them—if they abided by the rules and laws and weren’t disfellowshipped or left willingly. Leaving or disfellowship resulted in eternal condemnation in darkness and torment. Isolated and burning with the shame of failing their families.
Renee had worked tirelessly for months helping to deprogram Bexley and Ahnah from these wicked beliefs. Rand Granger was nothing more than a charismatic, rich pervert. A narcissist and immoral predator seeking greater wealth and pleasure at the expense of broken men and women. The therapist deserved many crowns for that alone. Bexley wanted to give back in the way Renee had given to her. But it had cost her by consuming her. Desperation to see other women set free had fueled her ambition to open up further facilities across the South.
The terrors that she and Ahnah endured should never be faced by anyone else.
She pushed her ignition button and inhaled deeply before buckling her seat belt. “We were gonna risk it all,” she murmured. But not at first. At first, they believed that eventually Garrick would marry. Then Tiberius could officially propose to Bexley, and their lives would be perfect. But Garrick’s torment of Ahnah increased, and Bexley had divulged the things he’d done and made Ahnah do. Tiberius had taken that information to his father, which kicked off Garrick’s heinous plan of asking for Bexley’s hand himself.
They’d had to decide: stay and be miserable now. Or go and be miserable in eternity. Their love for one another and desire to keep Ahnah safe had won. They had planned to leave.
From day one, Renee had drilled into Bexley that she could never return to the cult or to Tiberius. He was the son of the Prophet, and it was always a possibility that Rand would find favor with him and have him reinstated. Rand carried all the power, and that meant making new rules and changing rules that benefited him under the pretense that God had spoken to him through his meditation.
No way Bexley was going to let her child be raised by a monster like that. Renee made good points to a seventeen-year-old girl. What did Renee know about Tiberius other than those facts? And Bexley would have and did counsel other young women to do the same—cut ties with members. Clean slate. New chapter. Grace to move forward.
Turning left, she wiped her wet cheeks. She had made mistakes, but she’d only wanted to protect herself, Ahnah and Josiah.
Now Tiberius was in her life, busted right in like a hurricane. Which she also had to think about. Most of her neighbors said it wasn’t going to be as rough as they’d predicted and planned to hunker down. Meteorologists had to say the worst to cover their behinds.
She couldn’t leave Ahnah, but she needed to keep Josiah safe. If it actually swept through the coastline. Right now she was more worried about Tiberius sweeping through her life, leaving a serious disaster in his wake. How could she help him understand her reasoning behind not contacting him about his son?
She glanced at the time on her car clock. Late. Josiah would be angry. He wasn’t one hundred percent wrong to be. She hadn’t put her job above him intentionally. She was working to provide for him through traveling to raise awareness and funds for the non-profit on top of researching and writing grants. It took time to help those who were alone and destitute. Or maybe he wouldn’t care if she was gone. Lately he’d been holing up in his room, online gaming with friends.
As she rounded the corner, a big black SUV was parked on the side of the road. Blood drained from her head, leaving her light-headed.
Bexley’s stomach coiled tighter than a rattler. She pulled under the carport, breathed a prayer, then checked her hair in the rearview mirror. It was as curled as her stomach. Even when she had it thinned out, it was still a massive amount of hair. Like Medusa’s.
Yanking her purse and laptop off the passenger seat, she stomped inside her galley kitchen, which needed an update. The savory scent of roast permeated the house, and her stomach rumbled.
The sounds of gunfire and grenades exploding on the Xbox in the living room drew her attention away from the slow cooker. Josiah and Tiberius were locked into a war game.
What had Tiberius revealed? Had he gone against her wishes?
“Dude, you should have had that!” Josiah hollered. “You’re an FBI agent. You’re supposed to be handy with a gun. Remind me to never ask you to protect me in a gunfight.” He laughed at his burn.
