The Mysterious Stranger (The Confidence Game Book 3) Page 2

  “Just clean living, bein’ right neighborly and wholesome family relations,” Zeke said, winging his elbow in a good-old-boy kind of way.

  “You’re going to miss your pizza and your vanilla Frappuccinos.” He had a terrible sweet tooth. How he kept in such good shape with his appalling diet was wizardry.

  He groaned. “Don’t remind me. What are you going to miss?”

  The cozy reading nook in her apartment. Her favorite book and coffee shop. Her tech. The settlement was dry on alcohol, drugs and Google, and a desert when it came to shopping, social media and contact with the outside world. She’d be detoxing consciously, literarily and digitally. And not the least bit happy about it.

  “I’ll miss my Dropbox little black book backup.”

  He gave her a lopsided grin. “Okay. Focus. We’ve got a month to get our heads into this and to find that cell-signal jammer, turn it off and check in with Tres. She will land a goddam helicopter with an extraction team in the vegetable garden if we go radio silent longer than that.”

  That made Rory smile. Zeke might’ve been mayhem central as a kid, but Tresna, the youngest Sherwood, was a purple-haired warrior. A suicide-courting Jack Russell terrier who habitually put its head in the mouth of a mastiff. When Tres said you had thirty days to find the cell-signal jammer and check in, she wasn’t messing around. She was their eyes and ears to the outside world for as long as they were Abundance residents and Rory trusted her to get them out safely if everything went bad.

  If everything went according to plan, they’d all walk out, and the Continuers would go straight into the care of psychologists and counselors before Sherwoods helped them put their lives back together. And Rory will have gone some way to learning how to trust herself again.

  She watched the landscape, sipped from a bottle of coconut water and tried to will her headache away. In another hour, it would be game on, they’d be in sight of the electric fence that walled off the 88,000-acre settlement.

  Epcot bought the initial parcel of land ten years ago and he’d expanded the territory between the valleys, buying up ranchers who’d gone broke every year since. It was all legal, he paid his taxes, he didn’t break any obvious laws. Before the sun set they’d be inside to start working out what less obvious ones he’d broken.

  “We need to find out what they’re growing in those greenhouses,” she said.

  “And storing in those barns. Has to be the stuff delivered in unmarked trucks in the dead of night we weren’t able to trace.”

  Drugs, explosives, maybe both. Despite two years of surveillance, there were large gaps in their knowledge of how the community operated.

  “We really needed a runaway to talk to.” The fact they’d been unable to find anyone who’d left the Continuance in five years wasn’t comforting.

  Zeke took his sunglasses off and hooked them in the neck of his T-shirt. “We know they recruit cleverly. Loners, misfits, people searching for meaning, refugees from harsh religions. Anyone who is weighed down by grief or addiction or struggling to make sense of the world is a candidate. So long as they’re short on troublesome loving relatives and have money to buy their way in.”

  He pointed at her and then himself. “Look at Zack and Rosie. Poor little rich kids. Nobody loves them. Everyone wonders if they knocked off both their parents.”

  She pulled her bare feet up onto the seat and hugged her knees. “That’s not our story.”

  “No, but it’s a good one.” Zeke reached over and cupped her kneecap. “I told Spencer I felt responsible for you becoming a coke addict.”

  “I love it when you take the blame.”

  He squeezed her knee hard enough to make her bat his hand away. “If I remember rightly, the first time I took serious heat for you was because you hotwired Principal Beard’s old Beetle,” he said.

  She laughed, remembering. “It was such a cute car. It was only a joyride.”

  “I got to do cute chores every day for a cute month.”

  Damn right. He’d been grounded. Missed a Foo Fighters concert. And they were his favorite band. Not because he’d taken the blame for stealing the car but because the mark selection was wrong. Principal Beard was a good man and Sherwoods and Archers didn’t fuck with good people.

  It was such a joyous memory, she scrambled onto her shins, leaned across the seats and kissed his cheek. “My hero.” And then so he didn’t get a swollen head and she didn’t strangle herself with the belt, she sat back and said, “Who is totally responsible for my hangover.”

  “You’re not going to puke, are you?”

  “I’m going to suffer in silence.” For about three minutes. She was starting to get keyed up. “Signs you’re in a destructive cult, final refresher, go.”

  “You’re isolated from general society.”

  She nodded. Abundance was hours from the nearest town center. If you needed medical care you were the best part of two-day’s journey to get it, but no Continuer other than Spencer had ever been seen outside the settlement.

  “You follow a charismatic leader.” Everything they’d learned about Epcot suggested he was Cal but cutthroat, Zeke but lacking in basic humanity, Tres but he’d bite without provocation.

  “You believe your leader has a divine right, is appointed by God, or in this case, thinks he’s smarter than God,” Zeke added.

  They’d both been relieved to learn the Continuance wasn’t organized along religious belief lines. They didn’t have to come up against God, just a man who acted like a god. “You have blind loyalty to the leader. He’s infallible. He tells you to dance naked in the rain, you dance naked in the rain.”

  “Even if it’s not raining.” Zeke tapped the wheel. “Hmm, but naked rain dancing. I’m in.”

  She snorted into her drink bottle. “That might be the moment I make my escape attempt.”

  “What’s a little nakedness in the rain between cult members?”

  Naked anywhere with Zeke would be—hmm, she rolled her lips, not thinking about that. “It’s a survivalist cult, not a nudist colony.” She hoped. There was so much they didn’t know. And shit, she was thinking about it. He’d been half naked on the bar top last night. He was premium male, made from A-grade materials, near-mint condition and his soulmate was missing out on his prime-time offering, and there was something tragic about that.

  “Anything that’s negative about the leader, their beliefs or the cult itself is slanderous,” she said.

  “Fake news.” He steered around a dead furry thing long barbecued in the middle of the road.

  Wished she hadn’t seen that. It made her stomach roil. “Anyone who is outside the group is jealous, evil, out to wreck things and is therefore a threat.”

  “Everyone inside the group has come to believe their old life was mad, bad and dangerous, also about to end at any moment, and only in their new life can they be truly safe, happy and fulfilled.”

  The Continuers were effectively roadkill. “Everyone in the group has been subtly brainwashed, coerced, manipulated and lied to so cleverly they not only can’t tell, they’d be outraged if you suggested it. They’ve had their sense of self systematically broken down so they can’t function independently any longer.”

  “Daily life is tightly controlled. Where you live, when you wake, eat, work, sleep is all prescribed.”

  “Because you can’t be given the opportunity to think critically, challenge norms or question authority.”

  “Leading to intense psychological stress.”

  They fell silent. Her gut had settled; the headache was fading. She twisted her hair up in a loose bun. The sun was much lower on the horizon. When it set there would be a billion, billion stars and other than their headlights, the moon would be the only light.

  In 1987, 31,000 men lost $4.5 million on a scheme that promised they could retire to a paradise tended by nude angels. In the thirty-plus years since, too-good-to-be true schemes kept popping up, and desperate, lonely people kept being suckered out of their savings.
Abundance was simply one of many elaborate nude angel schemes and it was time it was exposed. They just had to find a way to do it, without being suckered themselves.

  Zeke shot her a look. “We’ve got this.”

  She nodded. He’d done this before. He knew how to play this game, how to manage the stress they’d be under. And he knew how to read her uncertainty.

  “I never got to see them live, you know,” he said.

  It took her a second. “The Foo Fighters?”

  He drummed on the wheel, humming the opening bars of a song. She knew that song. “The Pretender.” It was his personal anthem. She grabbed for her phone and plugged it into the car stereo, had it playing through the car speakers in seconds. It was the perfect song for the moment, all about being kept in the dark and insisting you weren’t like everyone else.

  Zeke gave her this enormous delighted grin as the opening bars played and launched into the song with Dave Grohl, his voice dark and gritty, his hands alive and his knees jumping.

  They were minutes from putting their lives at risk, facing untold unknowns for an indefinite period of time to save others, and he was rocking it out in the driver’s seat of a rental as if all of that was just a load of laundry.

  He was the most extraordinary man. Her best, most constant friend. And the one thing she was certain about was that nothing had changed between them. She’d still follow his lead, and he’d still have her back.

  Chapter Three

  They had to leave the Foos on the highway. It wouldn’t look right to roll up to the gates of Abundance with “Long Road to Ruin” thumping through the speakers. Tempting though.

  There was color in Rory’s cheeks now. Seeing her pale and a little shaky had made Zeke feel guilty for all of thirty seconds, before he remembered how a dash too much alcohol consumed in a safe space on the eve of giving up their independence to join a cult had made dancing with her a blood-roaring thrill.

  They both had strong exhibitionist streaks. That bar-top dance had gone from a Coyote Ugly good time to Magic Mike simulated sex in a single hip thrust. Five or six delicious songs worth of extreme bump and grind on a plank of polished wood. Ghost-fucking, air-boning in front of their nearest and dearest. Mom had been yahooing the loudest.

  Which made it unbearably arousing and terminally innocent at the same time.

  That was his whole deal with Rory. She featured in every notable childhood escapade he’d ever engineered and way too many sexual fantasies he’d never admit to. She was the little sister who wasn’t. She trusted him completely, and no amount of wishing would make their ass-cupping, button-rubbing, twerking anything more than the best kind of fun.

  The sky was streaked with peach light when the gate came into view. They’d been following the fence line for a good hour. The rest of the property was bordered by mountains and gorges. He veered suddenly, pulling in and turning the engine off when he spied movement in a watchtower at the gate.

  “Doesn’t hurt to make them think we’re having last minute jitters,” he said.

  She peered through the windshield. “Electric fences, a damn guard tower, that yellow safety light. It looks like a prison.”

  “Not if you’re angry, lost, frightened. If you think the world is about to implode, it looks like safety.”

  “So why are angry, lost and frightened Zack and Rosie sitting here having the jitters?”

  He grinned at her. “Zeke and Rory are having a last moment of defiance because once we get in there we don’t make the rules.”

  “I kinda wished I smoked so I could have a cigarette to add to the drama of the moment.” She turned to him. “We could pretend to have a fight. Give them something to really watch.”

  “Now if you were going down that line of thought, how about I drag you over the center console and kiss you like we just invented incest.”

  She laughed like he knew she would. He could always get a reaction out of a line like that, just not the one he most wanted. Slow learner. You’d think he’d have given up trying by now.

  She rested her pretty feet with her cherry-red toenails on the dash. “How to bust a cult, final refresher. Go.”

  “Be sure the cult is destructive, that members’ lives are being exploited or are in potential danger.” The Continuance popped up on their radar of flagrant cons years ago, but it took time to confirm suspicions that Orrin Epcot was a dangerous grifter, and a profiteer.

  “Check.” She made a tick motion. “Infiltrate and gain trust.”

  “No judging, criticism or condemnation. People are free to believe what they want. As long as they’re not breaking the law or disadvantaging others.”

  “No arguing or causing dissent.” Rory made a lip-zip gesture. “Quickest way to lose what trust we win. Love, tolerance and understanding are our basic weapons. Which is almost the opposite of what we usually do when we’re running a con.”

  “Think of it as a vacation from the real world,” he said. “We gather knowledge.”

  “Exploit inconsistencies, ask open questions and create reasonable doubt.”

  “Which is a lot more like our usual day at the office.” He went to fake a yawn and it became real. He’d barely slept at all last night and his eyes were gritty with fatigue.

  “Ensure the safety of everyone in the community,” she said.

  “Find opportunities to bring the authorities in.” If they discovered bazookas in the barn they’d have the excuse they needed to call in the cavalry.

  “Take good care of people after it’s over. Help them restart their lives.” Rory dropped her feet and rummaged for her boots. “That’s it. I’m getting anxious sitting here.”

  “There’s one more.”

  She gave him a quizzical look while stuffing her foot in her boot.

  “Be smart. Stay safe. Walk out alive.”

  She pulled a face, eyes rolling. “Right. Got it.”

  “Are you ready to go do this, Aurora Rae?”

  “As ripe and ready as a rube to be conned.”

  He kicked the car over. “Hey.” He waited until he had her eyes on him. “I wouldn’t want to be in this with anyone else.” He’d wanted to do this job for years and when Rory showed interest in partnering him, he’d badgered Cal to make it happen.

  She ducked her head to peer out the windshield at the tower. “Can they see us in here?”

  “Not from this angle.” He hadn’t wanted any danger of lip-reading. They’d be looking down on the roof and hood of the car.

  She unclipped her belt and flung herself at him. He hugged her tight to his chest, hand to the back of her head, his own face tucked into her neck where he could breathe deep of her perfume. His hands shook a little, so he wove his fingers through her thick dark hair and stroked her back. He was anxious too. He’d rather cop to that than explore the idea that the adrenaline overload was less about going undercover indefinitely than it was Rory’s sudden nearness.

  The thought was trigger enough to peel himself away from her. They were physically free with each other, but they’d never done more than flirt up a storm, dance up a sweat and share a platonic cheek kiss. What he felt for her wasn’t so much unrequited as it was a giant gap in Rory’s worldview.

  They could be affectionate inside, but not like this because Zeke could never be sure he wouldn’t give his feelings away by holding on too tight, too long, by letting how he felt about her show on his face. And neither of them needed that.

  Rory flopped back into her seat and he waited till she got her other boot on and then pulled out and drove the short distance to the gate. Two men appeared as it opened. The one on Zeke’s side motioned for him to wind his window down.

  “You Zack and Rosie Woods?”

  “That’s us.”

  “Drive through to that building.” He pointed to a small cabin in the distance, another yellow light illuminating its porch. Spencer is waiting for you.” He tapped the hood. “Leave the keys.”

  Zeke nodded and eased the car forward whil
e Rory turned to watch the men at the gate. “That wasn’t exactly welcoming.”

  Clang, clang. That was the sound of the gates closing. “We’re outsiders still. We have to earn their welcome.” Clang, clang. This car would disappear overnight under the guise of kindly returning it to the airport for them. A vehicle could be a weapon; could be an escape.

  She snorted. “We paid for it with five-million plus.”

  “Cheap at twice the price.” What banking and tax records they’d been able to scam up on Epcot were years old and showed hundreds of single deposits for large amounts. People had handed over inheritances, life savings, sold property and businesses, and trusted Epcot with their future. Their own contribution had been paid in cash, not easy to organize but Epcot got smart. He wasn’t leaving any more records.

  He pulled up slowly in front of the cabin and shut the engine off. Spencer stood on the porch in all his you-can-trust-me-while-I sell-you-swampland-you-can-never-build-on glory.

  “Showtime,” Rory said and pushed her door open.

  Zeke did the same as Spencer stepped off the porch. “You made it,” the man said, hand outstretched for Zeke’s. “It’s quite a trip.” He came in for a hug and said, “Welcome to Abundance. Joining us is the best decision you’ve made in your life.” He stepped back, hands to Zeke’s biceps. “I know Orrin is going to be so pleased you’re here. He’ll arrive soon to interview you.” Spencer gave an offhand gesture. “It’s only a formality. Orrin trusts my word, but you know he has to be sure for himself that you’re the right kind of people.”

  None of that was news. Zeke kept his eyes on Spencer and said, “I’m relieved to be here. This is my sister, Rosie.”

  He watched Spencer school his response when he turned to her. He tried to see Rory as Spencer would. A ravishingly beautiful woman, her posture broadcasting uncertainty. An inspiration for love laments and epic poems. A life tragically fucked up by drugs, and raw clay to mold into the perfect little Continuer.

  “Rosie, Zack has told me so much about you.”

  Spencer wanted to touch Rory, it showed in his closed fists and the way he surveyed her, but he was disciplined and kept it to a brisk handshake. Rory mumbled a subdued hello and then they were unpacking the car together.