LITMIR.BIZ

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had loved to cook and bake and it was particularly on days like this that she’d come home from her office or the hospital early, arms filled with grocery bags, and spend a few hours in the kitchen. It relaxed her. She loved filling her family with comfort food—thick soups and stews, hearty casseroles, pastas in rich sauces and sweet, soft breads.

      Laine sighed. She would never get over losing her mother. It had been five years and she still reached for the phone. Then she’d remember. She’s gone.

      It was time to get to town to meet the Realtor. She got in her car, drove out of the parking lot and took the road that crossed the beach and led to the town. There was some construction on the hill—it looked like a few houses were being built on this beachfront hillside. Like Cooper’s bar, they would have the best views in the town.

      She drove to the main street and parked in front of the clinic. When she got out of her car she locked it out of habit. She looked up and down the street lined with lampposts still boasting a bit of Christmas garland. Well, it was only January, she thought with a private chuckle.

      Laine walked into the clinic and there, sitting behind the counter at her desk, was Devon McAllister. She rose with a wide smile on her face.

      “You’re here,” Devon said in a near whisper. She came around the counter and embraced Laine. “There was a part of me afraid you wouldn’t come. That something would happen, that the FBI would have work for you...”

      “Can we please not say a lot about that?”

      “About what? The commune? The raid? The FBI?”

      Laine couldn’t help herself, she brushed the hair back from Devon’s pretty face as if she were a little sister. Laine had taken Devon under her wing in the commune. “About all of it,” she said. “When people find out I work for the FBI they either ask me a ton of weird questions or they get strange, like they’re worried I’m going to do a background check on them or something. At least until I settle in a little bit, let’s downplay all that stuff.”

      “What will you say? Because these people want to know everything about everyone. They’re nice about it, but they will ask.”

      “I’ll just say I worked on a federal task force, but most of my work was just at a desk, compiling data, research, that sort of thing. Not at all a lie. And I’m on leave because of shoulder surgery.”

      “Okay,” Devon said, laughing softly. “They really don’t need to know your task force was counterterrorism until you stumbled on an illegal pot farm in the middle of a cult and that you had shoulder surgery because you were shot in the line of duty.” Then she grinned.

      Laine groaned. “Please, I really don’t want to sound that interesting.”

      “Well, the only people who know certain details were there that night and they were briefed pretty thoroughly. Rawley, Cooper and Spencer will be very happy to see you,” Devon said. “And of course Mac knows—he’s the law around here, can’t get anything by him. I told Scott, my boss, but I can keep him quiet. He’s pretty easy to control.”

      “Is that so?” Laine asked with a smile.

      “Oh, yes,” she said. “In Dr. Grant’s case it has more to do with me being happy so I can keep track of all the paperwork in this clinic. He dreads things like insurance filing, especially Medicaid and Medicare. He does it when he has to and frankly, it takes him five times as long as it takes me. He’s not even very good at keeping lab work and patient files up to date.”

      “You’re so different from the person I knew on the farm.”

      “Actually, I was different in the commune from the person I really am,” Devon said. “This is more me. I was always a good student, a hard worker. But you are the curiosity. How did a sophisticated city girl like you manage to fit into the family like you did?”

      Laine smiled, secretly proud. “Specialized training, research, good role-playing.”

      “I can see that working for a couple of days, but it was over six months!” Devon reminded her.

      She knew. Only too well. “Very good research and role-playing,” she said. Not to mention the fact that lives were at stake and rested on her success or failure. Laine had done a lot of undercover work over the years but her time with The Fellowship had been the longest deep-cover assignment in her career. She had requested it, thinking it would be a brief fact-finding assignment. She thought she could probably fit in, get to the bottom of what was happening there, but what was going on was quite different than what the FBI suspected. They had been looking for evidence of sovereign citizenry, tax evasion, fraud, human trafficking and possible domestic terrorism. What she found, once she was inside, was a giant pot farm fronted by a fake cult.

      Laine could have left then, escaped, turned her information over to the task force and let them figure out how to proceed, how to best serve a warrant and get inside to make arrests without creating a small war. But there were women and children behind the fence that surrounded The Fellowship and the men in charge would fight back—they were armed to the teeth. So she stayed, getting as many of them out safely as she could before law enforcement breached the compound. It had been a dangerous and complex operation and in the end, she’d been shot by the cult leader, the boss. Jacob.

      “Are you ready to have a little quiet now?” Devon asked.

      “You have no idea,” Laine said. But she’d never actually had quiet before. The thought of whole days without plans stretching out in front of her was intimidating.

      “I saw it,” Devon said. “The house you rented.”

      “You did?”

      “Ray Anne, the Realtor I suggested to you, told me which house it was and I peeked in some windows. It’s beautiful. So beautiful.”

      “I’ve only seen pictures,” Laine replied. “I understand I was very lucky—that there’s hardly ever rental property available around here.”

      “At least not real pretty rental property. This is a vacation home that for some reason the family isn’t going to be using for a while so they’re renting it.”

      “Do you know them? The people who own it?”

      Devon shook her head. “But I haven’t been here that long. I don’t know everyone, that’s for sure.”

      Laine looked at her watch. “I better go meet Ray Anne. Want to come? See the inside from the inside?”

      She grinned and nodded. “Let me check with Scott, then I’ll follow you so I can come right back.”

      “Maybe I better follow you,” Laine said. “I haven’t even looked in the windows yet.”

      * * *

      Devon led the way to Laine’s rental. They drove down the main street, past what seemed to amount to the entire commercial district of Thunder Point, took a left and entered a residential neighborhood. A woman who appeared altogether too dressed up exited her BMW in front of a very small house that sat in the middle of about a dozen nondescript houses. The foliage and pines surrounding the little house were deep green even though it was the dead of winter. Virginia or Boston at this time of year would be covered with snow and the trees bare.

      Laine was a little shocked at how ordinary and dumpy the little house looked; she had never seen a picture of the front exposure. It seemed very small. There was an ordinary white door with a diamond-shaped window in it and one front window. If this were her house she’d paint the door dark green and add identically colored shutters to that window.

      Laine parked, got out and stretched a hand toward the Realtor. “Ms. Dysart?” she asked.

      “Call me Ray Anne. So nice to finally meet you, Laine.” She dangled house keys. “I think you’re going to love this. Please, do the honors.”

      With Ray Anne close on her tail and Devon following, Laine stepped into the small house and entered a whole new world. Right inside the front door was

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