Promise Not To Tell(31)

“Think there’s a chance that Sandra Porter was in Zane’s compound with us?”

“No. According to her profile she was only twenty-four years old. That means she would have been two at the time we were all in the compound. I don’t remember any kids that young. Do you?”

“No.”

“You were one of the youngest on the list of cult members that my brothers and I have compiled. Zane didn’t want the problems that very young children or infants would have caused him. He wanted kids he could lock up at night.”

“We were hostages, weren’t we? We were insurance for our mothers’ obedience.”

“Yes.”

Virginia set the empty glass aside, sat forward and folded her arms on the table. “Okay, so Sandra Porter wasn’t at the compound. That doesn’t mean she didn’t have a connection to it. Maybe one of her relatives got sucked into the cult.”

“A possibility. But the real questions are, what was she doing at your gallery and why did someone kill her?”

“We need to find that fake plumber, don’t we?”

“That would be helpful,” Cabot said.

“So what’s our next step?”

“We start turning over rocks but we stay out of the way of the police. They will be extremely unhappy if they think we’re interfering in their investigation. And if they are unhappy, they won’t provide us with any insider information.”

“I understand. But where do we find the rocks to turn over?”

“Up until a few days ago Sandra Porter had a job,” Cabot said. “That means she had colleagues, people who knew her. She may have had a boyfriend.”

“She’ll have had neighbors and probably some relatives, too. Won’t the police be talking to all of them?”

“Sure,” Cabot said. “But they will be asking questions that are very different from the ones we’ll be asking. They’ll be looking for a relationship gone bad, a drug problem or maybe an indication of corporate espionage.”

“Got to admit, those sound like reasonable avenues of investigation – except none of them explain why Sandra Porter wound up dead in my back room.”

“It also doesn’t explain why Sandra Porter was killed in what television and the movies would have you believe is a classic hit-man style. Two shots, one to the chest to take the victim down, the second to the head to make sure of death.”

“Good grief. Do you think we’re talking about a professional hit man?”

“No, just someone who watches a lot of television. A real pro would have made the hit somewhere else and dumped the body into Lake Washington or Elliott Bay or driven it up into the mountains. There’s too much evidence associated with a body.”

Virginia exhaled slowly. “Good to know we’re not dealing with a hired killer.”

“According to my brother Jack, who studies this stuff, there aren’t a lot of actual professional hit men in the real world. The few that do exist tend to be affiliated with specific gangs or mobs. There are trained snipers, of course, but, by definition, they work from a distance.”

“I see.”

“That said, it doesn’t mean there aren’t a lot of people who think they’re smart enough to get away with murder.”

Virginia poured herself a little more wine, trying to suppress the wired sensation.

“What now?” she asked.

“Now I go downstairs and get my overnight bag out of the trunk of your car.”

She stilled. “You’re spending the night?”

“Do you want to stay here alone?”

She did not have to think very hard about that. “Under the circumstances, no.”

“Good choice,” Cabot said.

CHAPTER 19

The old nightmare struck out of the darkness.

The rear wall of the barn was on fire now, and there was no way out because Zane had locked the big front door for the night. The other children were screaming but she was too terrified to utter a sound. One of the older boys was ordering all of them to get down on the floor to avoid the smoke. She crouched, clutching her prized possession, the book her mother had given her a day earlier…

Virginia came awake on a full-blown panic attack. The crashing waves of anxiety were made even worse by the maddening knowledge that she could not control the terrible rush of energy. The experts said that, from a physiological point of view, it was as if her system was suddenly jolted into full fight-or-flight mode but with no obvious threat. The disconnect was unnerving. But as far as she was concerned, that explanation didn’t even begin to describe the infuriating sensation.

She was too far into the deep, dark waters of the anxiety attack to even attempt to stave it off with the self-defense routine. You’ve been here before. This isn’t your first rodeo. Do what you have to do.

She pushed the covers aside, made it to the bathroom, yanked open the cupboard and grabbed the bottle of meds. She got the lid off, shook out one pill and washed it down with a glass of water. Shivering, she gripped the edge of the sink and tried to breathe.

She hated having to resort to the meds. Doing so made her feel weak. But lately the panic attacks had been coming on more frequently, and there was no question that they were getting worse.

She went back into the bedroom, pulled on her robe and went out into the hall. In the weak glow of the night-light she could see that the door of Cabot’s room was closed.