Find the disillusioned outcasts. Offer them easy answers. Isolate. Induce dependency. Control. Allow only one voice, one that cannot be questioned or doubted.
Succumb.
Several three-story drab-gray structures formed a courtyard. They led him across it. All windows and doors faced the courtyard, so you couldn’t even view the trees from your room. The courtyard had green grass and wooden benches, again painted in drab gray, and the benches, like the windows, all faced a large statue sitting high atop a pedestal with the word TRUTH written on all sides. The statue was maybe fifteen feet high. It was of a beatific Casper Vartage, his hands raised, half exaltation, half embrace of his flock. That was what you saw from every window—“The Truth” staring you in the face.
There were more women in the courtyard, all uniformed, all wearing headgear of some kind. None spoke. None made a sound. None so much as glanced at this stranger in their midst.
Ash was getting a bad feeling about this.
Guard One unlocked a door and signaled for Ash to enter. The room had polished hardwood floors. On the wall were portraits of three men. The portraits formed a triangle. The Truth aka Casper Vartage was at the top. His two sons—you could see the resemblance—were below him on either side. The Volunteer and the Visitor, Ash assumed. Some folding chairs were stacked in the corner. That was it in terms of decor. If one of the walls was mirrored, you might mistake this for an exercise studio.
Guards One and Two came and stood by the door.
Ash didn’t like this.
“What’s going on?”
They didn’t speak. Guard Two left. He was alone now with a heavily armed Guard One. Guard One grinned at him.
The bad feeling grew.
Ash started mentally prepping. Suppose, as he had already, that the cult had been the ones who hired him. Perhaps the people he killed were all former members of the cult, though on the surface that didn’t seem to add up. Gorse, for example, was a gay tattoo-parlor owner who lived in New Jersey. Gano was married with kids outside Boston. But still, it could be that. Maybe they were Truthers in their youth, and for some reason they needed now to be silenced.
Or maybe there was another motive. It didn’t matter.
What did matter was that Ash had done the job. The money had come through. Ash knew how to get funds and transfer them around so they wouldn’t be found. He’d been paid in full—half on taking each job, half on completion.
But now the cult was done with him. Perhaps. That was one of the things Dee Dee didn’t know yet—why she wanted him to wait. Whoever was hiring him was communicating through her. So perhaps she had come to the Truth Council when he dropped her off. Perhaps the Truth or one of his advisors had said, “No, we are done.”
And suppose they wanted to completely tie up any loose ends.
Ash was professional. He would never talk. That was part of what you got for your money.
But maybe the cult leaders didn’t know that about him.
Maybe they figured that under normal circumstances, they’d be more trusting, but because Ash and Dee Dee knew each other—had a special connection even—the Vartages felt more exposed.
The simplest solution to the problem? The smart play for Vartage and his sons?
Kill Ash. Bury him in the woods. Get rid of his car.
If Ash was the cult leader, that was what he would do.
A door on the other side of the room opened. Guard One lowered his gaze as a woman Ash guessed was in her early fifties entered the room. She was tall and imposing and unlike everyone else he’d seen in the compound, she held her head high, chest out, shoulders back. She wore the gray uniform, but there were red stripes on her sleeves, like something in the military. Against all the drab gray, the stripes stood out like neon lights in the dark.
“Why are you here?” she asked him.
“Just dropping off a friend.”
She glanced over his shoulder at the guard. As if he felt her gaze, he looked up, semi-wincing. This woman wasn’t the Truth or part of their trinity, but whoever she was, she clearly outranked this guy.
Guard One stood at attention. “As I informed you, Mother Adiona.”
“Adiona?”
She turned to Ash. “You recognize the reference?”
He nodded. “Adiona was a Roman goddess.”
“That’s correct.”
He’d loved mythology as a kid. He tried to remember the details. “Adiona was the goddess of returning children home safely