Escape from Eden (20 page)

“Should we have stayed there with Juanita?” I asked Gabriel. “Was going to San Sebastian a mistake?”

“No.” His voice sounded hoarse. “There was nothing we could do to help Juanita.”

“Why are you so sure?”

“What were we going to do, Mia? Fight them then take her to a hospital?” He sounded tired, a bone-deep and raw kind of tired. “They had guns.”

“You had a gun. Grizz’s gun. You could have used it.”

“I’d dropped it. But even if I hadn’t, I wouldn’t–couldn’t have used it.”

“But—”

“It doesn’t matter now, does it?” His eyes drifted away from me and he watched the trees that lined the road.

We were quiet for a few minutes, each lost in our own reverie.

Finally he spoke. “Listen, about earlier.” He glanced at the officer who was paying more attention to his phone than to us. “At that weird party. Whatever drugs they gave us were intense. I haven’t been on anything like that in a long time.” He paused. “I did some things I wouldn’t normally do.”

“What do you mean?” I asked, even though I knew what he meant.

“I don’t want you to get the wrong idea. We aren’t together or anything. The kiss in the jungle that night, the one earlier at the party, they were only incidents of circumstance, understand?”

“Perfectly,” I said, though his words stung. My heart twisted in my hollow chest. I wasn’t sure what I expected from him, but the words sounded so cold, clinical. Incidents of circumstance. “I’m actually glad you said something. I didn’t want you to get the wrong idea.”

His mouth twisted and he looked away. “Good.”

I shifted farther from him.

Moments later, we pulled up outside a small house nestled among trees. It was a low-slung building with a sloped tile roof. Security lights blinked on, shining wide cones of illumination into the darkness. The windows’ glass was slatted, like the cottages in Edenton, and I was surprised to feel a pang of homesickness. White chairs were stacked on the covered porch by the front door, which swung open the moment Officer Santiago turned off the car.

Light spilled onto the porch as a large woman lumbered out, leaning heavily on a cane. From what I could see beyond the glare of the security lights, her face was round and pretty, dominated by enormous eyes, framed with a halo of curling blond hair. She wore a red robe tied around her thick middle with a mismatching length of fabric. She paused at the bottom of the steps as she squinted at us in the back of the car.

Officer Santiago got out, leaving Gabriel to shoot me a suspicious glance.

“What?” I asked him. “Do you think she’s going to brain you with her cane? She looks pretty harmless.”

Wordlessly, he jumped from the car and, to my surprise, held out a hand to help me. I tentatively placed my hand in his. His skin was hot, and my heart thudded. I took in a deep breath, trying to get my pulse under control.

An incident of circumstance.

“These are the people from Edenton?” the woman with the cane asked in Spanish. She spoke the words with a lazy tongue, obviously not a native speaker. “Dear God, Santiago. They’re children.”

“They came to the police station,” Santiago said.

“In San Sebastian?” the woman asked with surprise. She took us in, her eyes raking over us with worry. “How did they end up there?”

“They told me there was a fire,” said Santiago.

“Where?” she asked.

“I believe she described Las Casitas.” He said the words like a proper name. “They did not escape from the Edenton compound.”

I’d explained to Officer Santiago about waking up in the little resort, but he hadn’t said anything about it on the ride out of town.

The woman gasped, horrified. “Truly? These children were at Las Casitas tonight?”

He glanced at me and took the woman’s arm, speaking with her in low, urgent tones.

“What is Las Casitas?” I called to them in Spanish, and suspecting I already knew the answer.

“Excuse me,” Gabriel said in English, raising his hand. “The Ugly American here. Do you plan on subtitling this conversation or should I go ahead and make up a story in my head? Because my version includes a hot shower, about fourteen hours of sleep, and fried chicken.”

“Oh, my apologies,” the woman with the cane said in a crisp British accent. I was surprised that her native tongue could be so sharp yet her Spanish so edgeless. She came forward with an outstretched hand. “Veronica Rosendale,” she said, shaking Gabriel’s hand vigorously.

After he introduced himself, Gabriel rubbed his palm with his other hand. “And this is Mia,” he said. The introduction was unexpected and considerate.

I didn’t extend my hand. “Hi,” I said.

“Are you truly from Edenton?” Veronica leaned on her cane and asked with an edgy interest.

“Yes,” was all I offered.

Her eyes lit with a flash of excitement. “Excellent. Please come in.” She waved us toward the house with her cane. “Santiago, are you coming?”

“No,” he said in English. “I don’t want to arouse too much suspicion with my absence from the station.” He inclined his head to us in goodbye.

I watched helplessly as he pulled away in the car, realizing we had no way back down the mountain. I didn’t see a car parked near the house. My nerves began to sing with apprehension.

Gabriel and I followed Veronica to the house. The porch floor was tiled in large squares, the shiny surface dulled with dust. At the far end, a colorful hammock was strung between the concrete wall of the house and a porch rail, a stack of newspapers scattered about below it, as if someone had spent a lazy afternoon reading. We ducked through the front door and entered a large room, painted the same ocher as the outside of the house.

“Tea?” Veronica asked, limping over to a tea service sitting on a small dining table under a tarnished brass chandelier. A few of the bulbs were dark at the tips and burned out.

“Yes, thank you,” I said absently, watching Gabriel as he examined the room. His eyes anchored on every crevice, every shadow, and every space behind the furniture. “What were you expecting?” I whispered to him.

Gabriel sat down on one of four matching green lounge chairs that circled a cluttered coffee table. He relaxed a fraction and whispered back to me. “Before? Maybe an ambush, Thaddeus jumping out of the shadows to take us back.” He watched as Veronica busied herself with a teakettle, her cane propped against the ornate table. She hummed tunelessly. “Now? An
Antiques Roadshow
marathon and about thirty cats.”

“So,” Veronica said, glancing over her shoulder at us. “I’m not even sure where to start. What a boon this is!”

Gabriel mouthed the word “boon” to me.

Ignoring him, I asked, “What’s the place you and Officer Santiago mentioned outside, Las Casitas?”

The teacup rattled in her hand, and her expression darkened. “Las Casitas del Jardin,” she said.

Before she could say anything else, a shadow appeared in a doorway off the living room. Another woman entered, followed by a man. Both appeared to be deadly serious, in contrast to Veronica’s cheeriness.

The woman was smaller than Veronica, almost petite by comparison, with a spill of black hair gathered in a tie over one shoulder. Her olive skin was clear and slicked with a sheen of sweat. She and the man wore the same type of clothing: khaki shorts, tough hiking boots, and dusty shirts, hers a button-up white blouse with a tank top underneath, his a white T-shirt.

“Veronica,” the woman said, a slight Spanish accent honing her words. She stared down at us with disgust. “You’re offering them tea? Have you seen the wounds on the girl’s legs?”

I looked down at myself. Dirt and blood streaked my legs, the cuts clotting in patches along my skin. “It doesn’t feel as bad as it looks,” I said.

“Right now, but if those wounds get infected you’ll be in a lot of pain. And trouble.” The woman stomped across the room into what looked like a kitchen.

“That’s Ibbie,” the man said. “I’m Edgar.”

He sat heavily on a green chair across from us. The springs of the seat protested with a series of squeaks. He was bulky, and tall, taller than Gabriel, and slightly familiar, though I couldn’t place exactly what about him was familiar.

“Now, how do we know you’re really from Edenton?” he said.

“And the point of lying would be?” Gabriel asked. “So we could have a complete stranger chauffeur us to another complete stranger’s house for proper English tea at,” he looked at a clock on a bookshelf, “two in the morning? Mia, he’s discovered our nefarious plan.”

Edgar rubbed his palm over his black shorn hair and squinted at Gabriel. “Smartass teenagers. My favorite.”

Ibbie hurried back into the room and knelt at my feet, depositing a first aid kit on the floor. She flung it open and began scrabbling around its contents. “You’re both so young,” she said, and it sounded as if she were about to cry. “So, so young.”

“Excuse me,” I said. “Can one of you tell us why we are here?”

Veronica laughed. It was high-pitched and trilling. “We are so thrilled you are here. You have absolutely no idea what we’ve been through.”

Edgar cleared his throat. “Veronica,” he said in a dry, warning tone, then turned to me, leaning forward with his elbows on his knees. “Mia, is it?”

I nodded.

His heavy eyebrows lowered over his eyes. “We have a vested interest in Edenton because all of us have relatives who live there.”

“Live,” Ibbie scoffed. “Imprisoned is more like it.”

“Who?” I asked, shocked. With the exception of my own father, I rarely thought about the Flock’s relatives outside of Edenton.

“My daughter-in-law,” said Veronica, handing me a teacup, clinking on a saucer. “Chamomile. Nice and relaxing.”

“Thanks.” I smiled a little. “Who is your daughter-in-law?”

Veronica took in a heavy breath, as if saying the name would cause her physical pain. “Jin Sang Rosendale.”

Mama’s cottage mate. Her last name in the outside world was Rosendale?

Veronica continued, “She was married to my son, John. When he passed away five years ago, she began following the Reverend Eden’s teachings. Three years ago, she moved to Edenton with my only grandchild.” Her large, round eyes glistened with unshed tears. She paused to gather herself. “That sweet boy is the only part of my son I have left.”

Edgar reached over and took Veronica’s hand. She patted it with her manicured hand and forced a smile on her lips.

“Is my Bae John okay?” Veronica asked me hopefully. “My grandson?”

I nodded. “Yes, he and Jin Sang live with my mother and my brother. The boys are about the same age.” I tried to smile, but it may have looked more like a wince.

“My brother is there, too,” said Edgar. “He’s been there for so long. I worry about how that place has changed him.”

Gabriel peered at Edgar with a fierce intensity. “No.”

Edgar quirked his brow. “Pardon me?”

“Oh, now I can see it,” Gabriel said, pointing at Edgar. “You have the same Neanderthal forehead.”

Edgar’s fingers touched the skin above his bushy brows and I stared in fascination as the familiarity of his features clicked. “Grizz is your brother,” I said.

Edgar crossed his bulky arms over his chest. “Is Eugene still going by that ridiculous nickname?”

Gabriel burst into laughter. “Eugene?” He grabbed his stomach and dipped back in the chair.

When I noticed Edgar’s annoyed sneer, I slapped Gabriel on the leg. “I wouldn’t laugh so hard there, Herbert.” I said his middle name quietly, but not too quietly. We couldn’t afford to anger the only people willing to help us. Especially not someone the size of Edgar.

A piercing sting shot up my leg. “Ow!” I cried. I spilled tea on my hand, the pain nothing compared to the slashed skin on my calves.

“Sorry,” said Ibbie.

She cleaned away some of the mud and blood from my legs. I shifted, uncomfortable and fidgety. I didn’t know this person, yet she was motherly and caring—like a member of the Flock. Except she wasn’t.

I held my hand out. “I can do that.”

“Oh,” Ibbie said. “Of course.” She surrendered the washcloth with a discouraged tilt to her mouth.

I bent down and wiped my legs, trying to keep from wincing with every brush of the rough material against the tender scrapes.

“Can you tell us why the police wouldn’t help us?” Gabriel asked.

Even though he spoke to Veronica and Edgar, he watched me intently as the washcloth grazed up and down my legs. I felt his eyes on me, and my face warmed.

“The Reverend gives the government in San Sebastian hefty allowances to let his Flock be,” Veronica said. “He reigns free in this area with no fear of interference from the authorities.”

“He also employs locals,” Ibbie added. “Infusing funds into the local economy.”

“Many work for one of the Reverend’s more successful ventures,” Edgar said.

“Ventures?” I asked, handing Ibbie the washcloth.

My legs were as clean as I could get them. Blood oozed from the newly cleaned scrapes. Ibbie lowered her head and concentrated on coating my cuts with ointment. I glanced up in time to see Edgar and Veronica exchange a look.

“Las Casitas del Jardin,” Veronica said, “is a resort, of sorts, that the Reverend operates to entertain very wealthy patrons.”

“A resort,” I said. A sick suspicion twisted in my chest. I felt like I knew what they were going to say. But I couldn’t help asking, “Entertain? How?”

Edgar scrubbed his hand over his forehead, then dropped it onto the arm of his chair. I jumped at the noise. “The people of Edenton, Mia, are for sale to the highest bidder.”

I stood stiffly, leaning over the back of a chair, my eyes fixed on a knife-edge thin computer screen as Edgar traced his fingers over a silver square beneath the keyboard.

“This isn’t the actual website,” he said, inclining his head toward the brightly colored display. “The live site is under airtight security. It’s password protected and an IP address must be given permission to access it. These are only screen captures that were sent to us last week.”

“Screen captures?” I asked, feeling as if Edenton had locked me away in a box while the world evolved around me, everything speeding by while I remained still as a dead tree.