Danger in Numbers Read online

  “And what’s that?” Amy asked.

  “Kaila hates her bosses.”

  “The owners, Frank and Ida, right?” Hunter asked him.

  Ryan nodded and spoke softly. “She says they’re all smiles and good cheer to the customers, but they treat staff like indentured servants. Staff today is herself and a girl named Jill, who works nights on the weekends, and a guy named Drew, who comes and cleans at closing time.”

  “Interesting. Anything else?”

  He nodded. “She lives in town. Her parents had a small place where they ranched, but her dad got sick, and they lost the ranch. Father passed a couple years ago, and her mother passed recently. She’s just trying to save up enough to get out. She wants to live in Fort Lauderdale and go to the community college. She doesn’t hate it, but she was an only child and there isn’t much left for her around here.”

  “That’s understandable,” Amy said.

  “I think so, too,” Hunter agreed.

  “Something else,” Ryan said.

  “What’s that?” Hunter asked.

  Ryan leaned closer. “I think she’s taking food—hoarding it. Some diners left a half loaf of pumpkin bread. She looked back at Frank, then carefully hid it under her apron. I mean, maybe she’s trying to save on groceries, but maybe...”

  “Maybe she’s trying to feed someone who is hiding out?” Amy asked.

  Ryan shrugged. “Oh, she loves the rabbi—calls him Rabbi David. He’s her favorite. Apparently, priests and pastors meet here often. They’re all nice, she told me, but Rabbi David was the best.”

  “Good to know.” Hunter nodded approvingly at everything Ryan had learned.

  Ryan leaned back. “Am I driving to Orlando to pick up some things for you, Amy?”

  Amy didn’t get to answer—Hunter answered for her. “Yes, we’re going to be here a few more days, I think. And if you’d stop by my hotel, I’d appreciate it. It shouldn’t be much bother. I stay packed.”

  “Yes, thanks,” Amy said, determined to speak for herself. “I’ll talk to my friend who feeds my cat for me when I’m away,” Amy told him.

  “All right. I’ll head back after this. Unless you have other instructions for me?” Ryan asked.

  “No, but I’ll book you a room for tomorrow night, too. We’ll need you with us,” Hunter told him.

  Ryan nodded, smiling. “Thank you!”

  Hunter grinned. “You’re a good agent, Ryan. You worked this place well. We’re going to be glad to have you with us.”

  “Thanks. So you know, for breakfast, the omelets are great.”

  “Wonderful,” Hunter said.

  Kaila appeared back at their table, balancing two cups and a coffeepot. She set the cups down and poured coffee and refilled Ryan’s cup.

  “Would you like food?” she asked.

  “Omelet, please. Cheese, tomatoes, peppers. And a side of bacon,” Amy said.

  Hunter was looking at her strangely. “Uh, two, please,” he said to Kaila.

  “Making it easy,” Kaila said, and she walked the ticket she had written out with their order back behind the counter to hang for Frank in the kitchen.

  “She gets off after the lunch shift, around three,” Ryan told them, indicating Kaila. “Ida takes the dinner shift. I guess old Frank cooks all day. I should be back by five—barring traffic. I was going to go to Mass.”

  “Yep. Good idea,” Hunter told him. “Keep in touch, and text me your whereabouts.”

  “Will do,” Ryan said. “I ate already...”

  “Then get going,” Hunter told him, smiling.

  Ryan nodded and Amy shuffled out of the booth to let him by. He paused to catch Kaila quickly as he was leaving, saying goodbye. The waitress looked after him for just a second. It was a longing look.

  “Poor kid,” Hunter said.

  “Yes, I agree. Losing both parents, a home—and then stuck in a job working for people who aren’t that great. If she’s telling the truth.”

  “I think she is. Let’s face it, people put on fake faces all the time. And that’s why, sometimes, gut feeling is part of the job,” Hunter said.

  “Okay. I have a feeling about Pastor Colby—and his daughter. Why would she go all the way to Miami when her father is a pastor? Okay, she could have friends down there—in fact, she probably has friends in Miami. But at that age, she’d be visiting to head to the clubs on the beach, maybe a frat or sorority party at the UM or FIU. Would you really go all that way to go to church, unless you felt that you needed to do so?”

  Hunter didn’t answer; Amy saw Kaila was coming to their table with their food.

  They thanked her as she set down the plates. The girl paused just a moment.

  “You guys are really cool,” she told them. “Well, not that I know any other law enforcement agents of any kind, but... Ryan is so nice. And...well, you guys seem the same. I guess I thought you’d be all serious and...cold.”

  Hunter laughed. “We honestly try to be somewhat warm and cuddly.”

  Amy decided to take it a step further. “He’s right, you know. We need help all the time from people close to a situation. And for that, we must earn their trust. We try very hard to do that.”

  Kaila nodded. “Well, you three are doing a good job at that.”

  She smiled and moved quickly away from the table. Glancing back, Amy saw Frank was watching Kaila, making sure she was giving her attention to all the guests.

  Or that she wasn’t spending too much time talking to them, specifically?

  Hunter stood, walking over to the counter. He was going to talk to Frank himself. Amy couldn’t hear what he said, but it was obviously friendly. He pointed to her, and she smiled and waved, and Frank waved in return.

  Hunter returned to the table.

  “Good move,” she murmured.

  “I want to find Kaila later, when she’s off work and away from here.”

  “Right.”

  He looked at his watch. “Should be time to see Colby after we eat our omelets. That was strange.”

  “What was strange?”

  “Your order. At least we have similar eating habits.”

  Amy grinned. “If I hadn’t ordered first, you really would have ordered the same thing?”

  “I really would have.”

  She laughed.

  Kaila came to the table with refills for their coffee. Amy smiled and asked, “So, what do you do around here for your off time?”

  “Well, I used to ride. I had a barrel horse—we were good together. I raced with my gelding, Beau, in Davie, up at the dude ranch, Kissimmee, wherever. But...well, I had to sell him. My folks passed away in debt.”

  “I’m so sorry,” Amy said.

  Kaila shrugged. “It’s okay. I sold Beau to a friend in Kissimmee. When I make the money, I’ll buy him back. I’m going to go to college. I’ll start with junior college, but I’ll get there.”

  “That’s great,” Hunter said.

  “But now?” Amy asked.

  Kaila laughed. “I go home and study! I’m going to get my bachelor’s degree in media arts, and I study everything I can get my hands on.”

  Hunter had his phone out; he gave Amy an imperceptible nod.

  He’d found her address online; they’d stop in on her later.

  They both thanked her again; no, neither wanted ketchup for their hash browns.

  Hunter glanced at his watch again.

  “Let’s stop by the motel before we head back to see Colby. I want to see if I can get someone into the prison. I want to know about the fellow who apparently managed to hang himself before he could testify against Ethan Morrison.”

  “We could go ourselves,” Amy suggested.

  “The prison is too far north. I don’t want to leave yet. Gut feeling. Someone is going to give us something
.” He grinned. “I’ll talk to your office—they know that system best. I do trust FDLE officers, you know.”

  She made a face at him.

  He laughed.

  They ate, and though they weren’t in a hurry, they both ate quickly.

  “You don’t mind me getting the bill?” Hunter asked her.

  “Hell no. A fed is in charge—put it on a federal bill,” she said.

  He nodded and paid Kaila with his card. Amy noted he left the girl a generous tip. She would have done the same.

  Back on the road, he had her drive again; he was putting through a call.

  The FDLE agent he was seeking was going to have to call him back, but he would do so shortly. By the time they reached the motel, his phone buzzed.

  Amy opened the door to her room, and Hunter followed her in. She heard him speaking to an agent named Carl Winter. And then he listened. And listened. Finally, he thanked the man, ended the call and looked at Amy.

  “Well?” she prompted.

  “I don’t think there’s a lawman in the state who didn’t think that witness’s suicide was a murder. But there was no way to prove it. It happened during a shift change, and the witness, one Samuel Hornby, was out in the yard, but in a corner. And, of course, no one saw anything. He hanged himself from a fence—with strips ripped off his uniform.”

  “Right. Okay,” Amy said, “you want gut feeling? He was murdered. And you want more gut feeling? Ethan Morrison is involved in this somehow.”

  “And so is someone local,” Hunter said.

  “On to Colby now?” she asked.

  “Yes,” he said. “I’ll call Dr. Carver on the way. I want to see if any of the toxicology has come back.”

  Before he could make his call, his phone rang. He stood dead still as he listened to the caller, his face darkening and furrowing into a frown.

  “Hunter?”

  “We’re not going to see Colby now,” he said, and looked at her, meeting her eyes. “We have another victim.”

  “Where?”

  “Here. Right here,” he said quietly.

  7

  Fall 1993

  Sam

  Seconds ticked by. Seconds that were like hours. Every noise in the quiet woods felt like a thunderclap. His own panicky heartbeat seemed loud.

  Sam wondered how he had been so blind, so willing to believe. So desperate that there had to be a better world, where a man cared for those around him and the sick and the elderly. Where color and ethnicity, sex and sexual orientation, all were equal.

  How?

  They had slid into it all slowly. And he was in love. Jessie had been so determined to leave behind everything she had learned during her upbringing.

  She’d been pregnant with Cameron, and she and Sam both wanted marriage immediately. When she’d told her parents, they’d demanded she rid herself of the baby—and Sam. She had been raised to so much more. She had the best education. She had them behind her. She could rule the business world.

  Maybe they weren’t cruel people—maybe they’d really believed the world they could give Jessie was worth all they asked of her.

  And maybe, for some, living life among the elite was something of a religion.

  But Jessie, with her generous heart and loving personality, didn’t buy any of it.

  Despite all that, it hadn’t been easy for her. She hadn’t finished with the elite education; her pregnancy started to interfere, and she figured she’d have to drop out when the baby was born, anyway. Sam had to work endless hours, which was all right—after those endless hours, he was with Jessie.

  But it was somewhere in that time of working, struggling and knowing she could never go home that Jessie became close with an older man she’d met at the park. His name was Robbie, and he referred to himself as Brother Robbie. He told Jess he liked to come to the park, but he lived out in the valley, far from the insanity he sometimes watched in the heart of the city.

  Jessie had thought he’d needed help, that he sat on his bench, hungry, but too proud to ask for any kind of handout. She would make sandwiches, go to the park with those sandwiches and convince him she had gotten carried away, and just had too much to eat herself.

  He was often there with a gray-haired, middle-aged woman who seemed to be the epitome of kindness. She called herself Sister Sarah.

  After Cameron was born, Sarah was a frequent visitor to Sam and Jessie’s little studio apartment. She wanted to help; people all needed help, she told them cheerfully. Then Brother Robbie would come along, as well, and as time passed, they talked about their home out in the valley, a place where everyone worked for the benefit of all.

  Robbie talked about God, and the way some truly served Him.

  Sam and Jessie had both grown up in traditional religions; they had always had faith.

  And slowly, slowly, they had been shown the wonder of the community where Sister Sarah and Brother Robbie lived.

  It seemed like a paradise. There was land, and the people of the community farmed it. They did so much themselves.

  Then Sam and Jessie agreed to go to their first service in the valley, and they met Brother William for the first time. He was the head of the community, and he seemed so warm and jovial. His teachings felt right. Sam believed that a man’s time on earth was short; eternity was—well, eternity. On earth, man was to care for his brother—and leave behind a legacy of love for his children.

  Sam was twenty-three when they were set up on their little spit of land, and for a time, it seemed life was beautiful. Every word Brother William preached was good; the community worked together, built structures, grew their own food, cared for the land. They tended to the elderly and cared for the sick.

  The sick, Sam thought. Sickness—that was when he first discovered he didn’t agree with every word out of Brother William’s mouth.

  He’d been working to repair the roof of the church when he’d overheard a conversation between Brother William and Sister Alma—a woman who was one of the man’s cousins.

  She wanted to leave. Brother William had wanted her to marry one of his deacons, an older man, and Alma did not want to marry him. She argued with William, telling him the man was too old for her, that she was restless, that she didn’t want to farm.

  William told her no one left the community.

  Alma told him no one else might leave, but she intended to. And he was lying to her; others had left. They’d left, and never come back.

  Alma might have been planning to go, but she didn’t get the chance. By the next week, she was sick, burning up with a fever that wouldn’t go away.

  Sam thought Alma needed to get to a hospital. Her illness seemed beyond what they could handle in the community. Brother William told the group that if Alma was pure of heart, God would heal her. He was afraid sin weighed heavy on Alma’s heart. But by enduring her illness before falling into the arms of the great Higher Power, she could earn back an entrance into heaven.

  Somehow, Sam managed not to tell Brother William his words were a crock.

  Alma died.

  And Sam began to wonder if Alma had been right—if others had left, disappeared, moved away not just from the community but from the county and the state.

  Had they really managed to leave?

  By then, Jessie had taken the indoctrination to heart, and she couldn’t believe anything bad of Brother William. He was a chosen leader of God, and their duty was to pray for him, and obey him in all things. He was the Word of God in the flesh.

  It wasn’t until Brother William turned his eyes on Jessie in a different way that she began to see the light.

  They hadn’t realized that, even living there as they did, Brother William considered the men to be the Servants of God—and the women to be servants of Brother William. He called all the single women in the community his wives; there were several, an
d it appeared they were wives in that Brother William cared for them.

  But they’d been blind to so much as the first years passed. Sam knew Jessie had so desperately wanted to believe in a world where people always helped each other, where all were equal—where a man with her father’s wealth didn’t ignore another who was down and out and starving on the streets.

  Sam had started to notice the strange whispering that went on, plans that didn’t include all the commune’s members, and the way that hard work was fine for some while others were part of the whispered plans. He’d liked sharing, and he didn’t mind working, and he loved that the people around him seemed to be good and giving. But he’d felt himself questioning the way that women were brought to the compound, some of them young—too young.

  While hauling farm equipment one day, he’d also noted a stockpile of arms in one of the warehouses.

  Almost as if they were preparing to go to war.

  He could remember the day Jessie had walked back into their kitchen, white as parchment. “He told me to come to him tonight. It’s my time to serve,” Jessie said shakily.

  There was enough of himself left in Sam that the very thought instantly infuriated him.

  “Don’t go.”

  “He said—”

  “And I say you’re a married woman. A mother, a wife already. My wife.”

  Jessie didn’t go. And for a while, the matter lapsed.

  Brother William had a new wife—a young woman he had recently met and charmed into joining their community.

  Her name was Alana. She was bright and cheerful, giving and beautiful. Everyone liked her, and little Cameron had loved her dearly. She wasn’t much more than a child herself. She played games, and she helped with every manner of task; she sang and danced joyously at their gatherings.

  She also had a brother. Her brother sent police out to the compound. It was wrong that families couldn’t communicate with their loved ones.

  That day, they discovered that Brother William’s deacons were not all about God’s scripture; Sam knew they had weapons, and they were ready to use them if things went badly.

  Brother William took the police around the compound. He showed them hardworking people who loved what they were doing.