She froze, terror gripping her. The lemon vodka slipped out of her hand and shattered against the polished concrete floor.
“Oh, Shelley,” Madison said, staring at the vodka mess and not noticing what was really going on. “Are you okay? Be careful, don’t move, you don’t want to step on glass. Hang on. I’ll go get a broom and dustpan to clean this up.”
Shelley heard her sister’s voice as if she were very far away . . . underwater. A muffled, slo-mo, burbling sound. She felt rather than saw her sister take off to find something to clean up the mess with. Don’t go, Maddie. Don’t leave me when I need you most.
It couldn’t be him. It couldn’t be them. Not here. Not in Moonglow Cove. Oh, but it was.
Guru Meyer had come for her and Shelley hadn’t even had the good sense to anticipate this move. She should have known. He was all about his image and control. To take the time and effort to come after her, Guru Meyer must perceive her as some kind of threat.
But why?
It occurred to her that he’d somehow learned that Madison was famous, and he was worried Shelley might spill the beans to her powerful sister about his compound. Fear of being exposed must have motivated him. Plus, he considered it a personal affront whenever anyone left and would often pursue them with a fresh round of love bombing to lure them in again. She’d seen him sweet-talk more than one cult escapee back into the fold. Preserving his power and reputation had to be behind his appearance in Moonglow Cove if it meant leaving someone else in charge of Cobalt Soul and getting on a plane to come after her.
He stood at the end of the aisle, sucking all the oxygen out of the room with his bulky shoulders, intimidating Sanskrit tattoos, and smoldering ice-blue eyes. He pinned her to the spot, quiet intensity oozing from every pore.
Shelley’s mouth dropped open and her body ached clean through her bones. She reeled and stumbled backward, heard glass crunch underneath her flip-flops, felt pain shoot through the bottom of her foot.
“My beloved,” he said in that voice that had entranced her five years earlier. “We have found you at last.”
Her heart slammed against her chest, pumping adrenaline through her, urging her to run, but she couldn’t twitch a muscle.
But she could feel hot blood warming her heel. The glass shard had poked through her flip-flop, cutting her.
“There you are, Sanpreet,” he said, reaching over to take her elbow. “I’m saddened to find you in a liquor store, but it’s all right. We love you just as you are.”
“We love you,” chorused the four young women, all fairly recent recruits. Yoga tourists, Shelley knew. She’d helped recruit them.
This now was the reccurring nightmare she’d had since escaping Cobalt Soul. Guru Meyer coming after her, tracking her down, mesmerizing and love bombing her into coming back. She looked into his intense gaze and thought of all the things she’d left behind. Friends. Tranquility. The magnetic beauty of Costa Rica.
The meals of mung bean soup and fermented bread, the ice-cold showers, the four a.m. awakenings to sit cross-legged chanting for two and a half hours in a windowless, pitch-black room. The eighteen hours of hard physical labor and/or long, boring lectures with minuscule breaks espousing Guru Meyer’s doctrine.
Guru Meyer had presented these practices as “chakra cleansing” and “spirit strengthening” but Shelley now saw them for what they were, the building blocks of mind control—deprivation, isolation, manipulation.
Five years ago, hurting so badly from Maddie’s anger, and trapped in a shame spiral, she’d run straight into Guru Meyer’s devious arms—ignoring red flags, checking her brain at the door, and surrendering her personal power to this man who offered what seemed on the surface unconditional love.
Enticing, heady stuff for a wounded, guilt-filled young woman desperate for salvation.
But why had he come after her?
It occurred to her then, while she stood transfixed and terrified, heel throbbing, blood pooling at her feet, that maybe, because she’d once been such a hard-core devotee of Guru Meyer and his group, when she’d left, others had woken up and jumped ship as well. For instance, where were Sach and Prem, the two older women who never left his side? They might have stayed back at Cobalt Soul, but wouldn’t he have at least brought one of the faithful with him to