Another player came into the room just then, drawing Sawyer's still somewhat indignant attention. Yet another tall, wide-shouldered and athletic man, this one moved with an easy, curiously feline grace, someone totally comfortable inside his own skin. He had jet-black hair with a rather dramatic widow's peak as well as a streak of pure white at the left temple, very pale and extremely sharp silvery-gray eyes, and a faint jagged scar down his left cheek that kept him from being quite as good-looking as DeMarco was but helped him look twice as dangerous.

Which was saying something, Sawyer thought, as those metallic eyes fixed immediately on him.

"Chief. I'm Special Agent Noah Bishop." The newcomer's voice was cool and calm.

"You're in charge?"

"Technically, you're in charge. Your jurisdiction."

Sawyer wondered how many times Bishop had made that little speech.

DeMarco said to Bishop, "You might have warned me Galen was on the warpath."

"I might have," Bishop agreed.

"s.h.i.t, Bishop."

"Hey, he was going to take his shot. I figured it'd be easier on you if you didn't know it was coming."

"Thanks a bunch."

"Anytime."

Galen said to DeMarco, "Want an ice bag for that jaw?"

"Don't gloat. It's unbecoming. Especially when you blind-side a man." DeMarco gave his jaw a final rub, then squared his shoulders, clearly throwing off the subject. "Look, I'm on a tight timetable here, so unless everybody wants to find themselves some wheels or walk back down the mountain, I suggest we get to it."

Bishop said, "Samuel believes you're out alone, patrolling the perimeter of the Compound?"

"He calls it prowling. It is my long-standing habit to do so at irregular intervals, something he's accustomed to. I left word that's what I'd be doing for the next hour or so."

Clearly hearing or sensing something more, Bishop lifted a questioning brow.

"There are a couple of other people who've been paying unusually close attention to my movements recently, so I'm more than a little uneasy about being outside the Compound," DeMarco explained. "I'd really rather not give them any reason to be suspicious of me, not at this late stage."

"Sounds like they already are," Quentin pointed out.

"Maybe. Or maybe Samuel's growing paranoia is fueling it in others."

Bishop frowned, then gestured toward the oval conference table, and most everyone moved to take seats. Sawyer was interested to see that Bishop took the head of the table and DeMarco took the footboth instinctive power positionswhile Galen chose to lean a shoulder against the side of a bookcase, apart from the group, where he could watch everyone at the table as well as keep an eye on the doorway.

Someone on guard, Sawyer thought. Probably at all times.

"Is Samuel growing more paranoid?" Bishop asked DeMarco.

"I'm no profiler. But it doesn't take an expert to see that he's walking a very fine line right now."

"Between?" Sawyer asked.

"Between sanity and madness, Chief. The thing is, he's come down on the mad side too many times already. I don't even know how he can be sane at all, at any time, given the things he's done. Though I suppose monsters can always find justification."

"What's his?"

"That he's doing G.o.d's work, of course. The world is overrun with sinners, and he's helped cull a few. That's how he looks at it. Just a warm-up for the big show."

"What show?" There were so many questions tumbling through Sawyer's brain that he had to start asking, and keep asking, even though he knew Tessa had only one concern right now and was impatient to steer the discussion to Ruby.

"Armageddon. An apocalypse. Whatever you want to call it. The End Times. The end of the world, Chief." The very lack of emotion in DeMarco's voice made his words all the more chilling. "Samuel believes he was given a Prophecy by G.o.d. And given the power, by G.o.d, to trigger the final destruction. To control it. And to survive it."

"He's also," Bishop said flatly, "a serial killer."

"Which you know," Sawyer reminded him, "but can't prove. Right?"

"Unfortunately."

DeMarco said, "There's been no confession. Not even something remotely resembling one. He might talk of culling sinners but not of killing them. What he did last summer in Bostonhe did it partly just to see if he could, I think. If he could control the beast. If he could hunt and not get caught. But then the monster hunters got too close, and he set out to discover just how good they really were. He set out to explore and test the strengths and weaknesses of the only enemy he was truly afraid of." He nodded toward Bishop.

"You?" Sawyer asked Bishop. "He's afraid of you specifically?"

"The SCU. But, yes, me specifically. I was, thanks to the media, the public face of the task force and the SCU during the Boston investigation. So he saw me as a threat. Enough of a threat that it drove him to ground for a while. Until, as Reese said, he decided to test his limits and ours. In Venture, Georgia, this past October. And too many women died in both places before we managed to find and cage the monster."

"One of the monsters," DeMarco noted. "Unfortunately for everyone involved, when Samuel pushed himselfapparently in a series of attempts to steal from others psychic abilities he wanted to possess, needed to possess for this ultimate battle he believes is comingthe experiences changed him. And not for the better."

Bishop said to Sawyer, "It wasn't until near the end of the hunt that we realized what he might be capable of. And by then we could only react defensively try to protect ourselves and our abilities. Dani Justice, a Haven operative, was the only one of us who possessed an ability that could be channeled and used as a weapon. She used it defensively."

"And it hurt Samuel," DeMarco said. "Badly. Shook his confidence and weakened him. And did something else to him. When he came back here I didn't know what had happened, at first. I was so deep undercover that my check-ins were infrequent. All I knew was that he claimed to have had a transformative experience, that he'd walked through the wilderness, through the desert, like Moses."

"Seriously?" Sawyer asked.

"Oh, he was quite serious. And he had been changed. None of us knew how much until the rebellion that had been simmering in his flock while he was gone boiled over when he returned. One follower, a man named Frank Metcalf, had taken advantage of Samuel's absence over those many weeks to make his case as a better leader. More than a few were willing to follow him. Until Samuel came back. Changed. And literally put the fear of G.o.d into them."

"Is that when he killed all the animals?" Sawyer asked.

DeMarco looked at him, no expression at all on his face. "He killed more than the animals, Chief. He also killed Frank Metcalf. He killed him without so much as laying a finger on him."

"How?" Sawyer demanded.

"Lightning. He channeled lightning. I saw it with my own eyes."

Chapter Fourteen.

RUBY CAMPBELL had lived with her secret for such a long time that it seemed to her there had never been anything else. That she had never just been a little girl who ran and played and complained about her lessons or her ch.o.r.es.

It hardly seemed possible to her now that such a simple life had once been hers.

Was it ever like that? Or do I just wish it had been? Her head ached all the time now, because she had to concentrate so much, had to think so hard about the way she needed things to be. How she needed other people to see. What she needed them to see. Even after sending Lexie away to be safe with Tessa Gray, Ruby knew she couldn't let down her guard.

Father had noticed her. He was watching her.

And she knew now what he could do. What he had done.

Brooke There was a numb place where Brooke had been. A dark spot in Ruby's memory of what had happened to her friend. She thought it was probably because she simply couldn't bear to remember it just yet.

Not all of it, at least.

But Brooke was gone. She was gone, and Ruby hadn't even been able to tell their friends about it yet.

And on top of suffering her own grief alone and in silence, Ruby was more terrified than she'd ever been in her life. Terrified that Father might know her secret. All her secrets.

He hadn't said anything about Lexie, hadn't appeared to notice, but that didn't rea.s.sure Ruby. Because the really, really scary part of her secret wasn't that she could make things look like other things or even seem to disappear. The really scary part was that she saw what was there. Even what was really underneath people's skin.

And now she had seen what was underneath Father's skin.

"Ruby?"

The little girl braced herself. She looked up from her afternoon lessons to see her mother standing in the doorway of the little den they'd turned into a schoolroom.

"Yes, Mama?" She tried hard to see her mama's face as it had been, once. Before the church. Before Father. Before last October.

"Father wants to have a Ritual before supper."

A chill crawled up and down Ruby's back, and she wondered if she'd ever feel warm again.

"So you'll need to finish your lessons and go take a shower. I've laid out your robe for you, and I'll do your hair. Hurry up, now."

"Yes, Mama." She saw beneath the pleasant, pretty features to the cold, hard sh.e.l.l that lurked under the surface, the sh.e.l.l that was blackened, as though scorched, and contained only an emptiness so vast Ruby didn't have words for it. All she knew was that her mother no longer lived there.

Her mother, she knew now, had been gone for a long time.

"Hurry up," Emma Campbell repeated.

Ruby nodded but said, "Mama? Do Ido I have to be naked under the robe? Like last time?"

"Ruby, you know it's part of the Ritual." Emma Campbell smiled. "You're at the Youth Level. Even more, you're one of the Chosen. It's a great honor, and your father and I are so proud of you."

"Yes, Mama." Ruby didn't try to argue, didn't try to protest. It was useless. And it was dangerous.

"Use the special soap I bought for you when you shower. So you'll smell nice for the Ritual."

Ruby's stomach lurched, a reaction she tried to hide as she reached for normal, everyday things. Rea.s.suring things. "I will. Is Daddy coming home in time for supper?"

"No, I'm afraid not. He called earlier to say the sales conference is going on longer than he expected, and he'll probably be gone a few more days. But he's signed up a dozen more accounts. I think they may make him Salesman of the Month after this trip."

Ruby looked down at her hand, watching the pencil she held wobble slightly before she regained her fierce control. Looking at the half-circle wound made by her own teeth hours before, a wound she was hiding from everyone. In a very soft voice, she said, "Mama? When did Daddy become a salesman?"

"Oh, Ruby, don't ask silly questions when you know the answers as well as I do. Your daddy's always been a salesman. Now, hurry up and finish your work."

"Yes, Mama." Ruby dared not look up until she was certain Emma Campbell had returned to the kitchen and her endless baking. And when she did look up, she didn't cry, even though her eyes stung and there was an aching lump in her throat.

Because her daddy had always been a mechanic.

And she was never going to see him again.

"That was when Reese called me," Bishop said. "That was when we started putting the pieces together."

"Lightning?" Sawyer cast about for something reasonable to say when presented with the fantastic. "That doesn't sound like any kind of psychic ability I've ever heard of."

"It's about energy." Bishop's tone was remote, the scar standing out whitely against the tanned skin of his cheek. "From what little we've been able to find out, Samuel was struck by lightning when he was a teenager. Not only did he survive, but he came out of the experience profoundly changed."

DeMarco said, "He was already preaching his version of the Bible, not because he'd found G.o.d but because he'd found a way to make money. And a way to make people listen to him and respect him. After the lightning he was, as Bishop says, changed. He must have been a latent or even active psychic before then; we have no way to be sure. After that experience, he was very obviously psychic, clairvoyant, and precognitive."

"Miracles," Hollis murmured. "There will always be followers of people who claim to know the secrets of the universe."

"And people who claim to be touched by G.o.d," DeMarco said. "I don't know if he believed that when the lightning struck, but eventually, over time, he certainly came to believe it. After that, the only laws he obeyed were the ones G.o.d supposedly gave him, and those were remarkably flexible. I don't know much about his journey before he settled here, but I think it's safe to say he discovered a long time ago how easy it was to kill."

The sick feeling in Sawyer's stomach intensified. "Those bodies in the river. Others that washed farther downstream. How long has he been killing here?"

"It was happening when I got inside, so I can't tell you when it started, not for certain. My guess would be that it's been going on for at least five or six years, maybe longer. But I was witness to none of it, he has never confessed any of it to me, and I have no proof whatsoever that would justify even a search warrant or an arrest, let alone a trial and conviction. Not for any of the murders he's committed. Which is why I haven't been able to take any action despite what I know absolutely."

"You said you witnessed a murder last October," Sawyer objected.

"I witnessed a man being struck by lightning," DeMarco said flatly. "Samuel was yards away when it happened. Do I believe he killed that man? Yes. Do I believe I could convince a court of law that Samuel, for want of a better word, summoned a lightning bolt to do it? I don't think so. Any more than I can prove that the enormous energies he released that day also destroyed virtually all the pets and livestock within the Compound. In an instant."

"Which is our theory," Bishop said. "It's also our theory that his use of electromagnetic energy has so affected the very atmosphere above the Compound that even the birds stay away."

Sawyer struggled to let all that sink in. Finally he asked DeMarco, "How long have you been inside the church?"

"You should know. We met shortly after you took office, two years ago."

"Wait," Hollis said. "You've been under that long?"

"Twenty-six months," he said.

Frowning, Hollis turned her gaze to Bishop. "You knew about Samuel that long ago?"

Bishop shook his head. "You heard Reese. It wasn't until last October that I began to suspect Samuel."

"Then why was he sent in?"