LITMIR.BIZ

      This book would not have happened if not for the assistance of some very special people, and I wish to acknowledge and thank them. I dedicate this book to the following wonderful, talented people. I feel lucky to share the planet with every one of them.

      To Gayle Wilson, whose words of wisdom broke the dam! I was stuck fast, but you inspired me at NJRW, 2002.

      To Molly Herwood, who went above and beyond to help me find the information I needed.

      To WTVH-5’s Maureen Greene and Melissa Medalie, who helped me get inside the head of a news anchor. To photojournalists John and Al, who changed my entire concept of this book’s hero. And to everyone else in the newsroom at WTVH-5 Syracuse, for your invaluable assistance and inspiration.

      To David O. Norris, veteran cop, skilled P.I. and Captain of the Genesee Belle for unwavering support and tireless advice, and for helping me get the “cop stuff” right.

      To my precious husband, Rick, who stands between me and the world like a suit of armor. Without you, I’d be done for.

      I’d also like to thank those I think of as “my team.” My agent, Eileen Fallon, for her solid guidance, wise advice and for her steady hands at the helm of my career. My editors: Leslie Wainger, who has been in my corner, supporting me and believing in me from the very start, and to Dianne Moggy and Amy Moore-Benson, who had the faith to embrace both sides of this writer’s split personality by welcoming both my vampires and my suspense novels into the MIRA family. My editors deserve sainthood for putting up with an author who changes the story while the back cover copy is being written—and never once flinching or complaining.

      Thank you, all. My life is richer (and my books are better) because of you.

      Contents

      Prologue

      Chapter One

      Chapter Two

      Chapter Three

      Chapter Four

      Chapter Five

      Chapter Six

      Chapter Seven

      Chapter Eight

      Chapter Nine

      Chapter Ten

      Chapter Eleven

      Chapter Twelve

      Chapter Thirteen

      Chapter Fourteen

      Chapter Fifteen

      Chapter Sixteen

      Chapter Seventeen

      Chapter Eighteen

      Chapter Nineteen

      Chapter Twenty

      Chapter Twenty-One

      Chapter Twenty-Two

      Chapter Twenty-Three

      Epilogue

      Prologue

      “Can’t you see that we’ll die if we don’t get the hell out of here?”

      “We won’t, Jewel,” Lizzie whispered. “Mordecai would never let anything happen to us. Not to us.” Her voice changed to a singsong kind of coo. “No, he wouldn’t. Not to his own baby, would he, Sunshine? No.” She sat cuddling her newborn daughter in the rocking chair Mordecai Young, “the reverend,” had brought into their quarters.

      They no longer had to room in the barracks with the other so-called Young Believers. Mordecai Young had moved his special girls into the spacious attic of the main house, where he could be closer to them.

      “Lizzie, you’re being stupid. You’re forgetting the plan.” Jewel paced the length of the large room, growing more and more agitated. “And it was working so damn well.”

      Lizzie looked at her and for a moment Jewel thought she saw the sharp mind and clear eyes of the girl her friend had been six months ago. “It was,” Lizzie said. “We made him believe we loved him, didn’t we? And it worked.”

      It had worked. Mordecai had made them his right hands. They had access to the house. They ate better. He never hit them anymore.

      “But, Jewel, I’m not acting anymore. I love him.”

      “He’s a criminal. Jesus, Lizzie, he takes in runaways and makes us into slaves. He has armed guards and those dogs of his patrolling the compound in case any of us try to leave. We’re fenced in, fed all the drugs he can slip into our food to keep us complacent while we listen to his sermons and cultivate his crops. And you’ve seen the weapons room. He’s got more firepower than the freaking National Guard down there!”

      Unmoved by Jewel’s impassioned speech, Lizzie stroked a forefinger along her baby’s whisper-soft cheek. “He’s my daughter’s father.”

      “He’s a drug dealer with a Messiah complex, Lizzie. And this is no place for a baby.” She moved closer, ran a palm over Sunny’s silken baby hair. “We have to get out—for her sake.”

      Lizzie closed her eyes. A tear squeezed through her lashes. “I know. I know you’re right. I just…I don’t think he means to be…I think he really believes the things he tells us.”

      Maybe he did, Jewel thought. Maybe he really did believe he was more enlightened than the rest of the world, or that he’d been chosen by God to be his new messenger and ordered to create this compound. And that the marijuana crop didn’t do much real harm, and that it was the good he could do with the money it brought in that made it all right in the eyes of the Almighty.

      Yeah, maybe he really did believe all that. Which made him insane, and even more dangerous.

      “He loves her. It’ll kill him to lose her.”

      “He wants to control her,” Jewel insisted. “He named her. He sets her schedule. When she eats, when she sleeps, when she’s bathed, how often you get to hold her. He sees her as something he owns, just like us.”

      “It’s just his way.”

      Jewel

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