A Deadly Influence (Abby Mullen Thrillers #1)(52)

“No, I’ve never heard that name before.”

That made sense. If Otis Tillman wanted to send someone to stalk Eden and her family, he’d send a member Eden wouldn’t recognize.

“Any idea why a man from Tillman’s farm would stalk your house?”

“No.” Eden seemed stunned. “I told you, we’d left that part of our life behind us. I was sure we’d never see any of them again.”

“We took him in for questioning,” Abby said. “And we want you to point him out in a lineup, to make sure he’s the guy you saw.”

“Now?”

“No. We’ll need time to organize it, and we want to interrogate him first.” Abby leaned against the wall. “I need to know more about the Tillman cult. Anything I can use when questioning Karl.”

“I don’t know how much I can help you. I haven’t been in touch with them for seven years.”

“Back then, how was it? Tell me anything you remember.”

Eden stared at her hands. “When I joined, it was a very small group. Maybe a dozen people. David was like Otis’s right-hand man. Otis was very religious, and he had interesting ideas. He believed confessions should be more than a report of your sins. It was more like therapy. Each of us had three confession sessions every week. And he would help us through our difficulties. He was very intuitive—and sensitive. I always left those confessions feeling so . . . free and light. I just waited for the next one.”

“What did you tell him during those confessions?” Abby asked, keeping her tone natural.

“Everything, Abby. There were no secrets during confessions. No judgment. And it wasn’t just the confessions. He preached a lot. He could preach for four or five hours, quoting long passages from the Bible word for word.”

Long sermons were used by some cult leaders to induce a trancelike state in their members. During such a state it was much easier to plant ideas in their heads. Reverend Jim Jones, whose cult had ended in the Jonestown mass suicide, had been known to talk for hours, intermingling his Bible preaching with his social agenda while constantly hammering in the importance of single-minded loyalty.

“We felt important,” Eden continued. “He kept telling us we were changing Christianity, modernizing it. Armageddon was coming, and it was our job to make Christianity more accessible to the younger generation, to save their souls.”

“Was there a date for Armageddon?”

“It changed a few times. Otis received signs God was postponing it because he saw the good work we were doing.” Eden’s voice was monotone. “I know how it sounds—”

“Never mind how it sounds,” Abby said softly. She’d heard much crazier cult dogmas before. For cult members, no matter how strange the preachings of the leader were, they became the absolute truth. “Just tell me.”

“The community grew. I was really happy at first. I had a purpose. I loved the people around me. I fell in love with David, and we had this wonderful child.” Eden’s voice cracked.

“But then . . . ?”

“Otis began saying the FBI was after us. Satan was using the FBI as his army. We got guns, and we all learned to use them. We were constantly afraid the FBI would attack. And we knew that if anyone left the cult, he was at risk of being killed by FBI assassins. As long as we stayed at the farm, Otis could protect us.”

“Where were the guns stored?”

“They kept stashing them in different places and moving them around. At some point I couldn’t keep track anymore. I couldn’t shoot straight anyway, so it didn’t matter. My job, if the FBI attacked, was to pray for God to smite them.”

“How did you leave?” Abby asked. “You must have been terrified.”

“I was, but . . . I had Gabi and Nathan. And the confessionals . . . Otis said if we really want to be pure, we should do the private confession sessions with nothing materialistic to weigh us down.”

“Like what? Money?”

“Like clothing.”

Abby’s heart sank with every word.

“So I left,” Eden said. “It was hard. Much harder than I thought. I was terrified. And empty. Otis was furious, and warned me we would all die without him. I still did it against his will. It wasn’t like when we were kids, when Moses chose us to leave unharmed.”

“Moses didn’t choose us,” Abby said, startled. “We were lucky.”

Eden blinked. “He chose us. That’s why we weren’t in the hall when . . . when it all ended.”

“Eden, we were in that hall,” Abby said. “Don’t you remember? Moses held a damn gun to my head and told me to tell the police to stay back. He said if they tried to break inside, he would shoot me.”

Eden shook her head. “No, we were in a different room. He told us we were chosen to be saved.”

“I read the transcripts of that phone call,” Abby told her softly, sitting on the bed by Eden’s side. “I told them everything. He held a gun to my head. We were all together in the same hall. We were never chosen. Moses wanted us all to die.”

“That’s impossible,” Eden blurted. “Then why do I remember—”

“We went through a terrible trauma,” Abby said, taking Eden’s hand in her own. “Our minds had to come to terms with what had happened. Moses told all of us over the years that we were chosen. And then, when we survived, your mind manufactured a false memory in which Moses chose us to survive. But, Eden, he didn’t. We were there with everyone else. We were all supposed to die.”