The Soul Collectors

48

Darby spoke up for the first time: 'What's the address?'

Both Sergey and Casey snapped their attention to her, startled, and glared at her as if to say, Who the hell are you and how did you get in here?

'No. 62 Mason,' Sergey said. 'The house — '

'Is where the Rizzo family lived in Brookline,' Darby finished for him.

Sergey nodded.

'Who's there now?'

'Family named Hu,' he said. 'Two daughters, ages six and nine.'

Darby saw the knowledge in the man's eyes and said, 'They're dead.'

'I can't say that for sure, not yet.' A visible sadness swept through his voice and body. 'We pulled the family's records, got their numbers and started making calls. Father hasn't shown up for work and daughters haven't been to school.'

'How long?'

'Three days.'

'Mother?'

'Works from home.' Sergey flicked his weary gaze back to Casey. 'I haven't sent anyone to scope out the house yet. I wanted to get your input first since you know these people better than anyone else.'

Fear rose in Casey's eyes and the man tightened his jaw against it. She sensed most of the people here were afraid — afraid that their lives could possibly be at stake. But they didn't know how to hold the terror. They didn't have Casey's experience, and she sensed they were looking to him not only for direction but also for guidance as to how to act. And Casey knew it. He stood steady on his feet, thinking over the rising swells of fear for his wife and daughter, and looked away from the gazes.

A cell phone rang. Sergey reached into his pocket and took the call. Motioned to Casey to give him a moment.

Casey turned to the desk where she had sat with Coop and ran the big fingers of one hand along the edges.

Darby needed to say what came next. Casey probably already knew it, but the words still had to be spoken out loud.

She went over to the door, shut it and then returned to him. He was still running a hand across the edge of the desk. She could hear Sergey whispering in the corner, murmured voices and ringing phones coming from somewhere beyond the wall.

'Special Agent Casey — '

'Jack,' he said, absently. 'I'm not a federal investigator any more.'

'But you were one once, Jack, so you know you can't go to the house.'

'They won't kill me. Not yet.' His voice sounded flat. Detached. 'They're going to send me a message first.'

'They already did. The phone call from your daughter.'

Casey shook his head. 'That was to get my attention. Now they'll give me a demonstration of their intentions. Why else would they deliberately pick the Rizzo house?'

'They left something there for you to find. Something they want you to see.'

'Right.'

'Have they done something like this before?'

'What's that?'

'Have they contacted an investigator?' she asked. 'Taken a family member?'

'Or, in my case, an entire family.' He shook his head. 'This is a first.'

'The Rizzo house is in a rural neighbourhood. Lots of trees, lots of places for a sniper to hide. You go there, you could get your head blown off the moment you step out of the car. Or they have the house rigged with an IED, get you and all of us out of the way.'

Casey didn't answer.

'The Sandman did that, remember?'

'Nothing's going to happen,' he said.

'How do you know that?'

'Because I'm a special case.'

She waited for him to explain.

When he didn't, she said, 'Why are you a special case?'

'They've tried to kill me,' he said. 'Twice.'

'When?'

'First time was in late 2001. Darren Waters was at a private treatment facility, but I had found one more suitable for his… condition. We moved him to a safe house while we made arrangements, setting up an alias for him, and this group found us and tried a stunt like the one they pulled at the Rizzo house. Waters survived. I did too, along with Sergey.'

Casey placed two fingers underneath the edge of the desk.

'Second time was about five months after the Sandman case,' he said. 'I had moved away and remarried under a different name. Somehow they found us. We made it out of that one okay, but I reached out to the Bureau for help — my wife was pregnant — and they offered to put us into sort of a… I guess you could call it a special witness-protection programme. Only a handful of people know about it.'

'People you know and trust?'

'I know where you're heading, and no, I don't know these people, nor can I say with any confidence that I trust them. Could this group have people on the inside? Maybe.'

'Probably,' she said.

'Computers are a more likely bet. Everything's stored on them now. You know your way around them, you can sit somewhere halfway across the world and find people's lives like this.' He snapped his fingers. 'Get in and out without leaving a trace, usually.'

'You know they're good with computers?'

'No, I don't. That's what's infuriating about this group. We don't know much of anything. They snatch kids and they disappear — the kids and the group.' He lifted the corner of the desk with his fingers. 'We know they've been doing it for at least four decades, maybe even longer, but we don't know why they're doing it.' The desk legs hung two inches above the floor. 'One of them escaped, and for all practical purposes he's a vegetable. Oh, and the best part is that anyone who gets close to these people winds up dead.'

He let go of the desk. The legs slapped against the floor as he turned to her.

'Now I hope you understand the reasoning behind all this subterfuge,' he said. 'I wanted to keep you far away from this. Now you're in the middle of it and you can't go back to an ordinary life. You realize that, don't you?'

'I'll go to the former Rizzo home,' she said. 'I've been in there, I know my way around.'

'Didn't you just tell me that one or more of these people would be watching to — '

'I can get inside the house without being seen.'

'And how, exactly, are you going to do that?'

'Simple architecture,' Darby said. 'They won't see me coming, I guarantee it.'