He sighed as he stared up at the ceiling. “Torrés,” he shouted, snapping his fingers. “Martina Torrés. She wrote it down on a piece of paper.”
“Was she with your group the whole time you were in the woods?”
He shook his head, and I admittedly let out a small sigh of relief. I’d be pissed at myself and my entire fucking team for overlooking a pregnant girl in the damn woods.
“No. I only remember her being there for a short time, but all the days blended. I couldn’t tell night from day.”
“Your father said you told him she seemed young.”
“Like maybe sixteen? Definitely a teenager.”
I pulled out my phone and texted Bass, and Sy, the name Oliver Wilson Jr. gave me. I’d see if they could find any records on any missing girls by that name.
“Oliver, I have some more questions for you. Do you think you can stay with me long enough to answer them?”
He shrugged and said, “I’ll try.”
“Good.”
I continued to prod Oliver Jr. over the next thirty minutes for as much information as I could. He couldn’t give me much more on the pregnant girl. All I got was a vague description and said she was with them for a short while. Whether that amount of time was two days or two weeks, he couldn’t discern. I fell back from that line of questioning and asked what he knew about the other members of the group.
Oliver explained that he’d first been introduced to two members of the group while on campus at the university where he studied. They’d been there to recruit new members for what they called their New Way of Thinking. From what I’d discerned in my research while tracking Oliver down and from his own experience was that the group’s line of thinking borrowed from various religions around the world and the leaders were bestowed with a direct line to The Almighty.
According to Oliver, he never got to meet the leaders. One of the older guys in the group, who was in his early thirties, named Tim, was the only one in direct communication with the leader. The group moved whenever Tim said he’d gotten instruction from their leaders to pick up and move.
In other words, it was complete and total bullshit. A cult, really. They’d been relatively harmless, so this group hadn’t registered on any federal watch list. But the more I listened, the more I gleaned that behind all the getting back to nature mess, which the group touted, there was some sinister shit going on.
After my interview with Oliver, I knew I wouldn’t be making it back home before the end of the day.
“You’re not serious,” Patience gasped into the phone.
sitting back against the high back chair at the kitchen table, I giggled. “I’m dead ass serious. And guess what?”
“What?”
“After he stripped off his underwear, he went running around the fountain in the hotel’s lobby before jumping in. Girl, he claimed he was Jesus of Nazareth, there to baptize people of their sins.” I shook my head, remembering that night five years ago.
“I’ve read accounts of people on drugs but have never seen it up close.”
“It’s scary the first few times, but after a while, you get used to it.” I’d been telling Patience stories of my career as a PR rep, leaving out the client’s names, of course. I’d experienced some wild times.
“Are you anxious to get back to it?”
I sighed and stared around the empty kitchen, my heart sinking a little because its owner wasn’t there. “I should be.”
“That wasn’t a yes.”
I shook my head. “In my twenties, this was my dream job.”
“And now?”
“It feels secondary to what I want.”
“Which is what?”
An image of Micah took up space in my mind. I didn’t get the opportunity to answer her question when a knock sounded at the door. A hard beat; one of those policeopen up the damn door unless we’re coming the fuck inpoundings.
The knock was followed by barking from Hound, who’d been quietly resting at my feet in the kitchen. He ran out to the door.
