Danger in Numbers Read online

  Praise for New York Times bestselling author

  Heather Graham

  “Heather Graham delivers a harrowing journey as she always does: perfectly…. Intelligent, fast-paced and frightening at all times.”

  —Suspense Magazine on The Final Deception

  “Immediately entertaining and engrossing.”

  —Publishers Weekly on A Dangerous Game

  “Intricate, fast-paced, and intense, this riveting thriller...keeps readers guessing and the tension taut until the very end.”

  —Library Journal on Flawless

  “A thrilling, dark, and deadly tale.”

  —Booklist on Haunted Destiny

  “Taut, complex, and leavened with humor, [a] riveting thriller.”

  —Library Journal on A Dangerous Game

  “Chilling…intense…will leave readers well satisfied.”

  —Publishers Weekly on The Dead Room

  “An incredible storyteller.”

  —Los Angeles Daily News

  New York Times and USA TODAY bestselling author Heather Graham has written more than two hundred novels. She is pleased to have been published in over twenty-five languages, with sixty million books in print. Heather is a proud recipient of the Silver Bullet from Thriller Writers and was awarded the prestigious Thriller Master Award in 2016. She is also a recipient of Lifetime Achievement Awards from RWA and The Strand, and is the founder of The Slush Pile Players, an author band and theatrical group. An avid scuba diver, ballroom dancer and mother of five, she still enjoys her South Florida home, but also loves to travel. Heather is grateful every day for a career she loves so very much.

  For more information, check out her website, theoriginalheathergraham.com, or find Heather on Facebook.

  Also by New York Times bestselling author Heather Graham

  New York Confidential

  THE FINAL DECEPTION

  A LETHAL LEGACY

  A DANGEROUS GAME

  A PERFECT OBSESSION

  FLAWLESS

  Krewe of Hunters

  DREAMING DEATH

  DEADLY TOUCH

  SEEING DARKNESS

  THE STALKING

  THE SEEKERS

  THE SUMMONING

  ECHOES OF EVIL

  PALE AS DEATH

  FADE TO BLACK

  WICKED DEEDS

  DARK RITES

  DYING BREATH

  DARKEST JOURNEY

  DEADLY FATE

  HAUNTED DESTINY

  THE HIDDEN

  THE FORGOTTEN

  THE SILENCED

  THE BETRAYED

  THE HEXED

  THE CURSED

  THE NIGHT IS FOREVER

  THE NIGHT IS ALIVE

  THE NIGHT IS WATCHING

  THE UNINVITED

  THE UNSPOKEN

  THE UNHOLY

  THE UNSEEN

  THE EVIL INSIDE

  SACRED EVIL

  HEART OF EVIL

  PHANTOM EVIL

  Cafferty & Quinn

  THE DEAD PLAY ON

  WAKING THE DEAD

  LET THE DEAD SLEEP

  Harrison Investigations

  NIGHTWALKER

  THE SÉANCE

  THE PRESENCE

  UNHALLOWED GROUND

  THE DEATH DEALER

  THE DEAD ROOM

  THE VISION

  GHOST WALK

  HAUNTED

  Bone Island

  GHOST MOON

  GHOST NIGHT

  GHOST SHADOW

  The Flynn Brothers

  DEADLY GIFT

  DEADLY HARVEST

  DEADLY NIGHT

  THE KILLING EDGE

  THE LAST NOEL

  THE ISLAND

  KILLING KELLY

  DEAD ON THE DANCE FLOOR

  PICTURE ME DEAD

  HURRICANE BAY

  A SEASON OF MIRACLES

  NIGHT OF THE BLACKBIRD

  NEVER SLEEP WITH STRANGERS

  EYES OF FIRE

  SLOW BURN

  NIGHT HEAT

  * * * * *

  Look for Heather Graham’s next novel

  THE UNFORGIVEN

  available soon from MIRA.

  Danger in Numbers

  Heather Graham

  For Ali Kareem with thanks and love from the “White Rabbit.”

  Contents

  PROLOGUE

  CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4

  CHAPTER 5

  CHAPTER 6

  CHAPTER 7

  CHAPTER 8

  CHAPTER 9

  CHAPTER 10

  CHAPTER 11

  CHAPTER 12

  CHAPTER 13

  CHAPTER 14

  CHAPTER 15

  CHAPTER 16

  CHAPTER 17

  CHAPTER 18

  CHAPTER 19

  CHAPTER 20

  CHAPTER 21

  EPILOGUE

  PROLOGUE

  Fall 1993

  Sam

  Sam Gallagher stood in the forest, deep within the trees, holding his wife and son to him as closely as he could, barely daring to breathe.

  They would know by now. He and Jessie would be missed. He could imagine the scene: Jessie wouldn’t have appeared bright and early to help prepare the day’s meal with the other women. He wouldn’t be there to consume the porridge and water that was considered the ultimate meal for the workday—the porridge because it was a hearty meal, the water because it was ordained as the gift of life.

  Their absence would be reported to Brother William, sitting in his office—his throne room, Sam thought—where he would be guarded by his closest associates, the deacons of his church.

  The family had been in the woods for only a few minutes, but it seemed like an eternity. Jessie was so still Sam couldn’t hear her breathing, could just feel the tremor of her heart.

  Cameron was just six. And yet he knew the severity and danger of his situation. He stood as still and silent as any man could hope a child might be.

  Panic seized Sam briefly.

  What if Special Agent Dawson didn’t come? What if there had been a mix-up and he hadn’t been able to arrange for the Marshals Service to help?

  What if they were found?

  Stupid question. He knew the what if.

  He gritted his teeth and fought against the fear that had washed over him like a tidal wave. Dawson was a good man; Sam knew he would keep his word. He’d arrived at the commune undercover, having the intuition to realize Sam’s feelings, his doubt, and his fear for his wife and his son. Together, Dawson had told him, they would bring down the Keepers of the Earth. His actions would free others. No, their actions would free others.

  Today was the day. Just in time. Sam had known the danger of remaining, felt the way he was being watched by the Divine Leader’s henchmen.

  They had to leave. Leave? No, there was no leaving the compound. There was only escaping.

  Alana Fisk had wanted to leave, and they knew what had happened to her.

  It had been Cameron who had found his beloved “aunt” Alana’s body at the bottom of the gorge, broken, lying beneath just inches of dry dust and rock, decomposing in her shallow grave. It had been Cameron, so young, who had become wary and suspicious first. He’d seen a few of the older boys in the area when he’d last seen Alana there, and he didn
’t trust them. They were scary, Cameron said.

  Sam tightened his hold on Cameron. Seconds ticked by like an eternity.

  Sam closed his eyes and wondered how they had come to this, but he knew.

  He and his wife had wanted something different. A life where riches didn’t make a man cruel.

  Jessie hadn’t hated her father; she had hated what he stood for. And Sam knew the day when her mind had been made up. Downtown Los Angeles. They had seen a veteran of the Vietnam War, homeless, slunk against a wall. Only one of his legs remained; he had been struggling with his prosthetic, his cup for donations at his side. The homeless veteran had looked at Jessie’s father and said, “Please, sir, help if you can.”

  Peter Wilson had walked right by. When Jessie had caught her father’s arm, he had turned on her angrily. “I didn’t get where I am by giving away my hard-earned money. He’s probably lying about being a vet. He can get himself a damned job doing something!”

  Sam had been walking behind them. Embarrassed, he tried to offer Jessie a weak smile. He hadn’t come from money, and he had lost his folks right after his twentieth birthday, but he was working in a coffee shop, dreaming he’d get to where he could work, go to college and have time left over to be with the woman he loved.

  He had given the man a dollar and wished him well.

  Jessie had turned away from her father.

  It was the last time Jessie saw her father. Despite the man’s efforts to break her and Sam up—or because of them—Jessie and Sam had eloped. The plan was to both get jobs and finish college through night school. Her father had suspected her pregnancy; he’d wanted her to get over Sam and terminate the baby.

  Jessie quickly made friends at a park near their cheap apartment. They were old flower children, she had told Sam. Old hippies, he’d liked to tease in return. But those friends had been happy, and they’d talked to Jessie about the beauty of their commune, far from the crazy greed and speed of the city.

  In the beginning, Brother William’s commune did seem to offer it all: happiness, unity, love and light.

  But now they knew the truth.

  Brother William—with his “deacons,” his demands on his “flock” and the cache of arms he kept stowed away as he created his empire—was demanding absolute power for himself, complete obedience among his followers. And it became clear Brother William’s will was enforced; he had those deacons—Brothers Colin, Anthony and Darryl, and the squad beneath them. They received special treatment.

  Sam clutched his family as he strained to hear any unfamiliar sound in the woods. Were those footsteps? Was the rustling of branches just the breeze?

  He had to stop dwelling on fear.

  He had to stay strong. Maybe not ruminate on what they’d been through.

  But there was nothing else to do while they waited, barely breathing.

  Think back, remember it all.

  1

  Now

  Late summer

  The woman had been strung up on a cross, her wrists and ankles tied in that position.

  And a spear had been run through her, right in the region of the heart. The weapon appeared to look something like a medieval javelin.

  Blood dripped from the body and the stake, only half-congealed in the damp heat of the day.

  Her head hung low in death and a wealth of dark brown hair fell around her face, tangled and matted with blood. Slashes had been cut through her cheeks, and an eerie mask had been painted on the woman’s face, creating a jester’s oversize smile and giant, red-rimmed eyes.

  A cloud of insects made a strange, buzzing halo around her head.

  Special Agent Amy Larson absently swatted at one of the flies that had deserted the corpse and was humming near her ear. She was aware somewhere in the back of her mind that she was going to be bitten to pieces by the time she left the crime scene. Amy had been called to several murders during her time with the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, but none so grisly, so gruesome a display.

  They were almost in the Everglades but not quite. This stretch of old road had once been the main connection between the extreme south of the state of Florida, Central Florida and all the way on up to the north and connecting with east-west highways stretching out to either coast.

  People enjoying the beaches on those coasts probably had little knowledge—nor would they care to have any—regarding the whole of the state. Here was this no-man’s-land that was at the edge of the Everglades, dotted with sugarcane fields, churches and cows.

  She drew out the small sketch pad she kept in her pocket; she also kept notes, but Amy liked to sketch out what she saw, always wondering if there was something that would particularly catch her mind’s eye.

  “Hey, Picasso, you know there will be—”

  “Photographs, yes,” she told her partner, Special Agent John Schultz of the Florida Department of Law Enforcement.

  They’d been partnered for two years and worked well together. He was fifty and had been with FDLE for most of his adult life.

  She’d been with the FDLE two and a half years, after a stint with Metro-Miami-Dade. She was thirty-one, and John had been admittedly annoyed and amused when they’d first been paired on major state crimes, but he was quick to tell others now that they were an odd couple who worked.

  Amy sketched every crime scene.

  John mentioned it—every crime scene. Even though her sketches had proved valuable in the past, and she knew he liked that she did them.

  He gave her an odd, grim smile. He was a tall, rugged man with a sweep of snow-white hair that gave him no end of happiness since most of his male friends and coworkers his age were already bald. But it was hot out here, and he had to swipe back a wavy lock from his forehead; the sweat was causing it to plaster to his face. His smile faded as he took in the scene again.

  While no one entered law enforcement without knowing they’d have to face brutality and death, what they saw here was especially grotesque. Despite what he had seen in life—or maybe because of it—John Schultz was a kind man, a good man, and knew the scene was causing an effect on her, as it was on him.

  Amy arched a brow to him, and John nodded. They walked over to Dr. Richard Carver. The ME was from this county, which stretched from the beaches to this no-man’s-land. They knew him well and had worked together before, though he looked like he should still be honing up for final exams. His looks were deceiving; Carver was in his late thirties.

  Carver was just moving up his portable stepladder, asking one of his assistants to check that he didn’t pitch forward to the road and bracken, dry in some places, wet in others.

  Amy noted the area offered a fine cropping of sharp sawgrass, as well.

  “Anything to tell us yet?” Amy asked.

  “She’s been in rigor and out of rigor... I’m going to say she’s been here about a day. The insects are doing a number on her.”

  “Method and cause of death?” John asked hopefully.

  “Well, the method could have been this sharp pole sticking into her. With the amount of blood, I’m thinking the cause of death just might have been exsanguination. They were pretty damned accurate in slamming that thing right through her chest and into the wooden pole here. Don’t think they got this wood from around here, but I do bodies, not trees. So, sorry—right now, I’m thinking she’s been here somewhere between twenty to thirty hours, and she was killed here.”

  He hesitated; even the doctor seemed bothered by this one. His voice was hard when he spoke again. “She struggled,” he said. “I think they cut her face while she was alive. Her wrists are ragged, which shows she tried to escape these ties. And when they came at her with this spear, she knew they were coming.”

  John turned to Detective Victor Mulberry, from the county’s sheriff’s office, who had been standing, silent and greenish, behind them. He’d been routed by the hyste
rical call from a tourist about the body and had been first on the scene. “Do we know of any active cults in this area?” John asked him.

  Mulberry shook his head. “Small communities out here, minuscule next to the coast. But we got Lutherans, Catholics, Baptists...and two Temples. I know two of the rabbis and several of the pastors and priests. The people are churchgoing, but in truth, we’re a little haven of diversity—all kinds of backgrounds, religions, colors. All the leaders of the local houses of worship get together once a month to make sure there’s friendship between everyone. Heck, they put on charity sales and the like together. We have no fanatics, no Satanists, no...no cultists. I guess those church guys made it so it’s just...cool. Good, I mean. Good. Folks get along. They like each other. They help each other.”

  Amy smiled grimly at him and nodded. “Nice,” she told him.

  But someone, somewhere, wasn’t so nice.

  She realized Dr. Carver and his assistants had started their work while she and John had silently stared at the scene.

  Well, that was work, too, trying to take in every small detail of the scene; it was impossible to know what might become important in the end.

  She’d barely been through this area before—and only because both the turnpike and I-95 had been plagued with accidents, and the old road had been just about the only chance of getting up to the middle of the state.

  She glanced John’s way, shaking her head. “There are a lot of churches, but as far as I know, they’re pretty traditional. The population in this area is sparse. Most of the land was owned by the big sugar companies for years, and we’re not far from Seminole tribal lands,” she said.

  She was close enough to one of their best crime scene investigators and forensics team leaders, Aidan Cypress, and she winced when he looked at her with a question that was almost accusation in his eyes.

  “This is nothing Seminole, I assure you,” he said.

  “No, Aidan, I wasn’t implying that. This is different than anything...from most anything else in the state,” Amy said.

  He nodded; he knew her better than that.

  “No, nothing traditional, for sure,” John said. “Ritual overtones. Both cheeks have been slashed identically. The weapon...half-makeshift, as if a poor cosplayer was trying to recreate a medieval halberd. She’s naked, but that could be the work of a run-of-the-mill sicko.”