Darkness at the Edge of Town (Iris Ballard #2)(61)



“That won’t do you much good if they shoot you on sight,” he pointed out.

He was trying to scare me. It was working. “Then I expect you to avenge me. And I expect you to get Scarlett Johansson and Chris Evans to help you.”



“Always with the sarcasm. That won’t save you from a bullet either.”

I wasn’t used to having someone worried about my safety. I’d forgotten how annoying it could be. “Don’t worry about me until noon, okay? I have to go. I’m doing this. I’ll keep my phone on and if the location changes, I’ll call the station, okay?”

“Just be careful. Please.”

“I always am. Talk to you later. Bye.”

I hung up before he could erode my sense of invulnerability further. It was nice of him to worry. I was just glad I hadn’t told Mom or my grandparents. Mom would have needed sedation, Grandma would have tried to convince me not to go, and Grandpa would have just tied me to the bed. If something did go sideways and Hancock had to tell them, especially Mom, he’d locate my corpse just to kick my ass.

But nothing was going to go wrong. At least not physically.

My real concern was what would happen when I saw my brother. After all of this, he might just spit in my face when he saw me. That was a real possibility, since I’d hurt his new family with my Carol routine. I knew there was no chance he’d miraculously see the light in one conversation and leave with his new bride, going back to a world where he had no job, no prospects, and the realization he’d put all his eggs in a corrupted basket. The most I could expect was to plant a few seeds of doubt and pray they grew.

The cold, hard truth was that I was going less for Billy and more to meet the infamous guru. To look into his eyes and take the measure of the man. Okay, the real goal was to get his and this Ken’s fingerprints. Maybe they had warrants out on them. Maybe they had rape and murder charges I could bring to the group to hack away at their allure. Any ammo was useful. Little cracks would bring a whole dam down, but a wrecking ball was more effective. I just had to keep my eyes and ears open for one.



I had enough information to assemble a preliminary profile on Mathias Morning. He was between fifty-five and seventy-five, of above-average intelligence, with no formal education. He came from a good home, a structured home with multiple siblings. He rebelled, probably due to his sexuality, and left the family unit. He drifted around committing petty crimes, most likely fraud, and he’d set up a cult before. New Morningism was too organized, too advanced, for a beginner. He enjoyed having complete control over people, and wouldn’t drink or do drugs as he couldn’t stand to lose that control for a moment. Power was his drug of choice. And with a desire for power came hubris. Every criminal suffered from a degree of hubris, of invincibility. It was always their downfall. I intended to make sure it was Mathias Morning’s as well.

The GPS instructed me to turn down a long dirt road in the heart of rural Niagaraville, and half a mile down a large house, a barn, and what looked like trailers and tents surrounded by a tall wooden fence came into view. From a distance, I could see that the fence wrapped around much of the fields surrounding the structures, possibly around all of their fifty-plus acres. I had a fence around my property too to keep people out. I wondered if that was this fence’s purpose. The closer I drove, the less I could see of the other structures. The fence had to be five feet tall. Eventually only the top of the white, three-story farmhouse and the white-painted roof of the red barn were visible. At least there is a farm, I thought as I reached the chain-link gate. I’m not at some field about to be ambushed. I hoped.



There wasn’t anyone at the gate, but through the chain-link I saw about half a dozen people, mostly women dressed in shorts and tank tops walking toward the barn, coming out of trailers, or hanging clothes on a line. None seemed to notice me. I honked the horn before I saw the old-fashioned bell beside the gate. All six pairs of eyes whipped toward my direction in shock. A shirtless man came out of his tent, looking ready to fight, glaring at me. No one moved toward the gate; in fact some moved backward a little. Guess I should have used the bell, I thought.

About ten seconds later, two men and a girl came out of the front door of the white wooden farmhouse. I actually gasped when I saw him. “Thank God,” I said to myself. I hadn’t seen my brother in almost two years, ever since the family helped move me to Grafton. We hadn’t spoken since then either. I think I remembered to send him a birthday card on our birthday. I hoped I had.

The cult life seemed to agree with him, at least physically. He looked good under his jeans and white T-shirt. Lean. Tan. His blond-streaked brown hair reached his shoulders. He looked…happy. Glowing. Especially when he whispered to the girl whose hand he held.

Since leaving the farmhouse, the woman, or really girl as she could barely be out of her teens, kept her head hung and remained very close, almost glued to Billy’s side. I assumed she was Betsy, my pregnant sister-in-law. Her long red hair was in a braid that made the roundness of her face more prominent. She barely reached Billy’s shoulder and her green sundress showed a large portion of her curves. She wasn’t fat, just womanly. I kind of envied her that.



Last but not least, I quickly gauged the man beside my brother. That day Mathias Morning wore dark blue jeans, a white short-sleeved button-down, wire-rimmed glasses, and sandals. As he walked closer I noticed little things, like that he kept his hands in his pockets and shoulders slightly slumped. Was he nervous? Was he attempting to make himself appear diminished? Weak? His beard and gray hair added to the meek, mild illusion. Anyone on the street would mistake him for an accountant or lawyer, not a new-age con artist who could manipulate people into prostitution. Of course, The Rosetta Ripper had the face of a cherub and the Woodsman once literally modeled for GQ. It was one of the reasons they got away with their crimes as long as they had.

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