Run Away(74)

He moved his head. It may have been a nod, she wasn’t sure, but she treated it as though it was.

“Who?”

“Her name,” he said, “is Alison Mayflower.”

“She was a case worker?”

“Yes.” Then thinking more about it, he added, “Sort of.”

“And this Alison Mayflower, she was the one who brought in these cases?”

His voice was low, far off. “Alison came to me in the strictest confidence. She said there were children in need. I offered my help, and it was accepted under conditions.”

“What kind of conditions?”

“For one thing, I had to be kept in the dark. I couldn’t ask any questions.”

Elena took her time, thought it over. When she was with the FBI, her team had busted several seemingly above-board churches and agencies for illegal adoptions. In some cases, white babies were in such demand that macroeconomic reality in a capitalist society took over—supply and demand—and so they commanded a higher price. In other cases, one of the potential adoptive parents had something in their history that made legally adopting difficult. So again, money changed hands.

Big money sometimes.

Elena had to be careful here. She wasn’t here to bust Isaacson for selling babies or whatever he’d maybe done twenty or thirty years ago. She wanted information.

As if reading her mind, he said, “I really don’t know anything that can help you.”

“But this Alison Mayflower. She might?”

Isaacson nodded slowly.

“Do you know where she is now?”

“She hasn’t worked with me for twenty years. Moved away.”

“To where?”

He shrugged. “I hadn’t seen her in years. Lost touch.”

“Hadn’t.”

“What?”

“You said ‘hadn’t,’ not ‘haven’t.’”

“Yeah, I guess I did.” He ran his hand through his hair and let loose a deep breath. “She must have moved back, I don’t know. But I saw her last year working at a café in Portland. One of those weird vegan places. But when she saw me…” He stopped.

Elena prompted him. “But when she saw you?”

“She slipped out the back. I went out to follow her, just to say hi, but by the time I got there…” He shrugged it off. “Anyway, it might not have been Alison. I mean, she looked different—her hair used to be long and black as night. This woman’s was super short and totally white, so…” He thought about it some more. “No, it was Alison. I’m sure of it.”

“Mr. Isaacson?”

He looked up at her.

“Where is this café?”





Chapter

Twenty-Five



The first thing Ash saw when he opened his eyes was Dee Dee’s beautiful face.

He might have thought that he’d died or he was hallucinating or something like that, except if that was the case, Dee Dee would have had her normal blonde braid back, not the short auburn-dyed locks she’d been forced to adopt.

Or maybe not. Maybe in death you saw the last vision, not your favorite one.

“It’s okay,” Dee Dee said in the soothing voice of something still confusingly celestial. “Just stay still.”

He glanced past her as he swam back to full consciousness. Yep, he was still in the cult compound. The decor in the room was closer to nonexistent than austere. Nothing on the walls, no furniture in view. The walls were that same inescapable gray.

There were other people in the room. Dee Dee tried to stop him from sitting up, but he was having none of it. In the far corner, Ash saw Mother Adiona, her eyes on the floor, her hands clasped in front of her. Closer to him, on either end of the bed, stood two men he recognized from the triangle of portraits he’d seen in that other room—the Visitor and the Volunteer.

One of Carter Vartage’s sons—the Visitor maybe?—spun and walked out the door without a word. The other turned to Mother Adiona and snapped, “You’re lucky.”

“I’m sorry.”

“What were you thinking?”

“He was an outsider and an intruder,” Mother Adiona said, her eyes still on the ground. “I was defending the Truth.”

“That’s a lie,” Dee Dee said.

The son silenced Dee Dee with a wave of his hand, his eyes still boring into the older woman.

“It isn’t your place, Mother.”

The woman kept her eyes on the ground.

“If you had concerns, you should have come to the council.”

Mother Adiona nodded meekly. “You’re right, of course.”

Vartage’s son spun away. “You may go.”

“Before I do”—the older woman headed toward Ash—“I want to offer my sincere apologies.”

Mother Adiona reached the bed and took Ash’s left hand in both of hers. She met his eye and held his gaze. “I cannot express my sorrow for hurting you. Forever be the Truth.”

The other two muttered, “Forever be the Truth.”

Mother Adiona gripped Ash’s hand tighter.

That was when she pressed a slip of paper into his palm.

Ash looked up at her. Mother Adiona gave him the smallest nod, folded his hand into a fist around the slip of paper, and left the room.