Chapter 16

"I wonder how many small bodies are buried on this ranch?" Heather said.

Heather's question could have been taken verbatim from my mind.

Morgan, can you hear me? Sifu said silently.

Yes.

Talk with Colleen. You need her perspective.

"I need to think," I said and took a few steps into the shadows. Ruben, keep Heather busy for a few minutes. I need advice. He knew about my telepathic advisory board, and I sensed approval in his expression. Like Sifu, did he believe I needed advice?

A gust of wind rushed through the stand of pines behind the bathhouse. I heard a pinecone tumble from the tree, finally striking the metal gutter on the eave before falling to the needle-strewn ground. I'd returned from the red fog and no longer needed sweet thing's mental counsel, but we'd stalled the mission with an intermission and touching my mind with hers was always refreshing.

I clicked my tongue.

Finally, Colleen said. Are you all right? Is Ruben all right? Robyn is in our suite with me.

I'm not hurt, but I'm not all right. For a while, I lost it, baby. But for Heather, Ruben and Sifu, I'd have thrown the rest of my life away.

If that sounded melodramatic, think again. Killing under the influence of the red haze of anger and revenge that had briefly consumed my body and mind would have been counter to Mr. Bart's conditioning. I'd have surely lost my humanity.

I told Colleen about Bailand, the shallow grave, the dead boy wrapped in a cheap Mexican blanket, and then I described my angry reaction that took me on a side trip into the murky realm of insanity. For a brief time, I became what Heather once called me: a killing machine. I felt compelled to move through that house leaving death in my wake without a sense of right or wrong or a concern for my own safety. I went berserk, sweet thing.

I'm not sure I would have reacted differently.

I connected with you for advice, I said. Sifu is also connected, and an advisory board meeting is hereby called to order.

The three of us did some mind-talking for about five minutes. Then I let Ruben and Robyn converse while I spoke quietly with Heather.

"No one has exited the house to check on Bailand," I said.

"I noticed," Heather said.

I heard Ruben tell Robyn that he needed to return to the task at hand. He looked at me and, nodding toward the house, said, "How should we do this?"

"I'm going in. Recon only. We need to know what we're up against before we enter en masse."

When Ruben started to object, I said silently, I'll move through the house and locate the occupants using telepathy. Recon only. In and out, Ruben. I'm fine, now.

Okay, he replied.

Besides Glen Brogan, six or seven adults occupied the house, the seventh being Nick Martin. If I found more than eight mental signatures in the house, I'd know Brogan was holding other children captive. Besides, I'd been in children's minds. I believed I could recognize and differentiate the mind of a child from an adult's.

I entered through an unlocked patio door. I wasn't surprised by my ease of entry. All the stronghold's defenses were concentrated on the perimeter. Besides, Bailand had exited the house carrying the murdered boy and a shovel.

I quickly cleared the vacant east side of the ground floor, which included the kitchen and dining areas. No new minds in that area, but I found four mental signatures on the west side. All occupants in those rooms were asleep; two of them were children. I mounted the stairs to the second floor and found five new minds. Two of the five were children. Everyone was asleep.

I exited the house thoroughly confused. I'd expected to find seven or eight adults. I'd located five. Maintaining the assumption that Nick Martin was not at the ranch, that meant two of the seven adults who should have been in the house were missing. Had Brogan slipped my net again? Had he left the ranch this morning after Heather and Leo gave up their surveillance? Perhaps the sheriff left, or the senator, or Keith's boss.

Had I been mistaken regarding my adult and child classifications?

Shit.

I joined Ruben and Heather in the bathhouse where they'd waited for me and told them what I'd found.

"The senator arrived in a limo, Keith's boss in a sedan, and the sheriff in a police cruiser," Heather said. "I'll check the garages and the parking areas for those vehicles." She left the bathhouse and moved into the shadows.

Heather wasn't privy to my telepathic abilities, so I couldn't discuss my concerns about possible classification mistakes with her. After she left to check on the vehicles, I told Ruben about them, silently, of course, and it was time to inform Colleen about the children I'd found at the ranch.

Sweet thing, I said silently, I found four live children in the house. I could be wrong. I might have mistakenly classified one or more of the sleeping minds a child when, in fact, they were adults. Regardless, at least one person in that house is a child. Start moving your medical help toward the ranch now.

All right.

Tell them about Sifu. If the medical personnel arrive before we've neutralized all the adults, they'll need to wait with Sifu before we can open the gates for them.

Heather returned. "The limo, sedan and cruiser are still here," she announced.

That means three of the five adults in the house are the senator, the state cop and the sheriff, Ruben thought.

Maybe, I said to him.

Uh-uh, he said. I've grown to trust your telepathic abilities. We'll find five adults and four children in that house.

"All right. Let's do it this way," I said. "We'll use the bathhouse as our holding area for the children. They'll make noise, so what we do inside with the adults must be quick and sure." I outlined my plan. Ruben and Heather made suggestions, and we altered the plan. We were a good team.

The three of us entered the house together, and Ruben and Heather followed me down the hall to the first occupied bedroom. I opened the door and entered the room. The fat county sheriff was snoring loudly, and a child was asleep in the bed with him. I whacked the sheriff on the head with my cudgel, careful not to kill him - sort of. I hoped he'd wake up with no memories. Ruben placed his hand over the child's mouth, a boy, I noticed. He was restrained. The sheriff had cuffed him to the bed.

"Heather, search the sheriff's clothes for the handcuff keys," I whispered into the microphone as I pressed my fingers against the child's neck to put him to sleep. I noticed large bruises on his face and body. He was naked.

Ruben grunted when he flipped the fat sheriff onto his back and used flex cuffs on his wrists and ankles to restrain him.

"Found them," Heather said, holding up the keys.

I taped the sheriff's mouth and eyes while Heather unlocked the cuffs and released the sleeping boy.

"How long will he sleep?" Heather asked.

"He could wake up while Ruben carries him to the bathhouse," I said as I gently placed a piece of duct tape on his mouth. None of us liked it, but we'd collectively decided the children had to be gagged until we got them to the bathhouse. After that, it was Heather's call.

Ruben picked up the boy, and he and Heather left the room. Heather would stay with the child in the bathhouse, and Ruben would return to help me in the next occupied bedroom on the ground floor.

The state senator was asleep in a king-sized bed, and the child with him was a girl, which surprised me. I'd expected to find nothing but boys. Like the previous captive, she was restrained, but not with handcuffs. The senator had bound her hands and feet with neckties.

While you carry the girl to Heather, I'll incapacitate the adult sleeping alone upstairs, I said to Ruben telepathically after we'd trussed and gagged the senator.

All right.

The single adult was the female that we'd assumed was an assassin. I quickly rendered her unconscious, restrained and taped her. She was wearing an unbecoming flannel nightgown.

Three down, two to go, Sifu.

Don't become overconfident.

Good advice, I reasoned. I returned to the landing. Ruben was waiting for me.

If the layout upstairs on the west side is similar to the layout downstairs, we should find another master bedroom at the end of the hall. If he's in the house, that's where we'll find Brogan, I said to Ruben silently. Let's check out that room first.

Brogan didn't occupy the room. Chief Brett Knott slept in the bed with another girl. I didn't need to put the girl to sleep. She'd been badly beaten and was unconscious. I relayed her condition to Colleen. She'll need medical attention before the other two children we've freed.

Is Knott unconscious, gagged and restrained? she asked.

Yes.

Break both his legs for me.

I whacked his shins with the cudgel. The reverberations sounded like hyenas chomping on bones, satisfying echoes in my mind.

Done, I said.

Thanks, cowboy.

My pleasure. Thanks for the suggestion.

I waited while Ruben carried the unconscious girl to Heather. With her injuries, we'd discussed not moving her at all but considered that approach too dangerous. Ruben left carrying the girl as if she were an armful of eggs. He'd be a while, and I became impatient.

The three remaining adults - two of them were missing - were my nemesis Joel Hall and Linda Carson. I was more convinced than ever that Nick Martin wasn't in the house, so Brogan or Hall or Carson lay asleep with a sleeping child in the last occupied bedroom.

Curiosity killed the cat, it's said, but I wasn't a cat. I was curious, though. Rather than wait for Ruben's return, I walked to the last occupied bedroom and opened the door.

Joel Hall looked back at me.

"Morgan!" he shouted.

My bullet entered his open mouth. Hair and bone and brains and blood exploded from the exit wound, splattering the sleeping girl. Hall's shout and the sound of my silenced pistol awakened her, though. She looked at me with unsurprised, unconcerned green eyes. Blood oozed from her nose - her blood, not Hall's - when she moved up onto her elbows, and the coagulating liquid streamed slowly down over her upper lip into her mouth. She licked at it.

"Who are you?" she asked. Her voice was tiny but strong.

"I'm Morgan," I said as I untied the scarf used to restrain her hands. "I'm here to set you free."

She turned her head and looked at Hall. "You killed him. Good. He was a bad man."

Suddenly, an un-silenced gunshot echoed through the house. Had Brogan or Linda Carson returned? Or both of them? I rushed from the room.

I saw Ruben sprawled at an awkward angle, either unconscious or dead, halfway up the stairs. Linda Carson stood at the bottom of the stairs. She was naked, which startled me, but she also had a gun in her hand. She saw me at the same time I saw her, and she was fast, faster than I. Her bullet left her gun a fraction of a second before mine. She missed. I didn't.

She'd gone for a headshot. The supersonic bullet ruffled my hair as it ripped by my head. When my bullet struck between her breasts, she spun to her right and hit the parquet floor on her side. She wasn't dead, and when she rolled onto her back and aimed her gun at me, I shot her again, another body-mass shot. The striking bullet made her hips bounce. I shot her once more as I started down the stairs to Ruben. She stopped moving.

Ruben's eyes opened, and he rolled with a groan onto his side, and then sat on a stair tread.

"Where are you hit?" I asked as I ejected the mostly empty magazine in my XD-9 and rammed home a full one.

He gasped and said, "My right side, but the bullet hit the vest. It knocked me down. I must have cracked my head on the stairs when I fell." He rubbed the back of his neck.

I breathed a huge sigh of relief.

"Where the hell did Linda Carson come from?" I asked.

"Damned if I know. Who's in the bedroom upstairs?"

"Joel Hall. I killed him." That reminded me that I'd left a little girl alone with a dead and bloody body and a scarf tied around her ankles. Not good. "There's a girl upstairs. Are you up to carrying her to the bathhouse? I want to search the house again. I don't know how I missed Linda Carson, and Brogan is still missing."

"I'll try," he said.

"I can walk," a tiny voice said.

Ruben and I looked up at her. She stood naked at the top of the stairs. Blood and gore dotted her slim body. She must have removed the scarf from her legs by herself.

She started down the stairs. Her steps were studied and careful, though. I could see she was hurting. I rose to my feet, moved up three steps and gathered her into my arms. "I'll look for Brogan later, sweetheart," I said.

"He's probably in the basement," she said. "Good, you killed Linda, too. She was a bad woman."

Basement! That's how I'd missed Brogan and Carson. I'd cast my mind out horizontally to search for new mental signatures, not up or down.

"Cover me," I said to Ruben, "while I carry..." I didn't know why, but I felt a need to personalize my relationship with the girl. "What's your name, sweetheart?"

"Lorraine, but you can call me Lori."

"You're a brave girl, Lori." She clung to my neck.

"I know," she said, matter-of-factly.

With his pistol in hand, Ruben staggered behind us. He was hurting.

"Does Brogan have more children in the basement with him?" I asked Lori.

"Uh-huh. You can kill him if you want. He's the baddest man here. He killed Tony. Tony wouldn't stop crying, and Mr. Brogan kept hitting him, telling him to stop crying until finally..."

Her little body shuddered in my arms.

"How old are you, Lori?"

"I'm eight years old."

Eight going on eighty after the ordeals she's been through, I thought.

Heather had her weapon leveled on me as I entered the bathhouse. She looked relieved to see me, and even more relieved when Ruben walked in behind me. She dropped her pistol to her side.

"Lori, this is Heather. She's a friend of mine. She'll take care of you and protect you while I go find Mr. Brogan. Okay?"

She shook her head. "Uh-uh. I want to stay with you."

Like with Maggie when I'd rescued her from her abductors, Lori had made me her security blanket. She clung to me as if I was a lifeline and she was in an angry sea.

"Brogan's here?" Heather said, looking alarmed.

"Basement," Ruben said. "That house has a basement."

"What happened to you?" Heather asked Ruben. "Did you get hit?"

"Vest, and then I cracked my head on the stairs. I'm still pretty woozy." He staggered to a bench and sat down heavily, dropping his head between his knees.

"Your head's bleeding," Heather said.

"Lori," I said. "I need a favor from you."

"What?" she said.

"Would you stay here and take care of my friend?"

I don't want to... but... "'kay."

I set her down, and she walked to Ruben. "Lemmee see the cut," she said as she climbed up on the bench.

What an amazing little girl! Heather thought.

That's for sure, I thought.

"I'll dampen a towel, Lori, and you can wipe the blood away to see how bad it is," Heather said. "And I'll bring a damp towel for you so you can wipe her face."

"'kay."

"Where are the stairs to the basement, Lori?" I asked.

"From the room ah..." She looked at her hands, which she'd held out in front of her. "... left of the front door. If you're facing the front door, not coming through it. I looked at my hands cause I get left and right mixed up. I'm dyslexic. The stairs are behind a door in that room."

I turned and left the bathhouse.

I'm dyslexic, she says. I tell her that she's brave, and she says she knows. Lemmee see the cut, she says to Ruben as if she were an ER nurse. I think I'm falling in love with a bruised and battered eight-year-old girl, I thought as I moved back into the house.

As it turned out, I didn't need the location of the stairs to the basement to find Brogan. He was bending over Linda Carson at the base the stairs. When he spun toward me with a machine pistol in his hand, I shot him dead and left him lying where he fell. I didn't shoot him once, either. I emptied the full clip in my XD-9 before I stopped pulling the trigger.

I cast my eyes toward the heavens and said, "Mr. Bart, I just did something about it."

I received no answer, but in my mind I felt certain that Mr. Bart felt more at peace with the universe that he occupied.

Sifu, Brogan's dead. Have the medical teams arrived?

No, but I see lights off in the distance. They'll be here in ten minutes, or less.

Guide them in. Remember to pull down your mask.

I sensed a laugh. You do the same.

The basement didn't look like a torture chamber. I didn't see any whips or chains, but the expressions on the faces of the children testified to the tortures they had endured.

Like walking wounded, two boys and one girl followed me as I ascended the stairs. I carried another boy. He'd tried to walk but couldn't. His name was Gerald, and yes, he knew Lori.

"She's very brave," he said.

Morgan, the medical personnel are here, Sifu said silently.

"Heather, would you go down and open the gates?" I said.

She nodded and hurried away.

I wrapped the boy in a blanket and set him on a lounge-chair cushion. "A doctor will be here soon to help you," I said.

He nodded. "Thank you for saving us."

An amazing little boy, too, I thought.

I looked around the room.

Colleen, I said silently, we're finished here. We saved eight children, four girls and four boys. One little girl is hurt badly. She's still unconscious. One boy is too banged up to walk, but he's conscious and lucid. One boy lies dead wrapped in a Mexican blanket next to a shallow grave back by the barn. Mathew Bailand is lying dead in that grave. Glen Brogan, Joel Hall and Linda Carson are dead. Senator Conner James, Chief Brett Knott, and Sheriff Canton are trussed, blindfolded and gagged. We had to kill three of the five bodyguards, but everyone else at the ranch is alive but incapacitated. Linda Carson shot Ruben, but the bullet struck his vest, and when he fell he hit his head. If I were to guess, he has some cracked ribs and a slight concussion. He's conscious and lucid, but I'll want our doctor in Vegas to meet us at the airport when we land to check him out. You have the doctor's name and number. Call him. When we're in the air, I'll contact you, and Maggie can make the call to Dorothy Mayfield."

I took a deep breath and continued, "Sweet thing, Brogan has been doing this for over fifteen years, so tell Maggie to let Dorothy know that Johnson should look for other buried children in and around the stronghold.

I shuddered with dread while imagining what Johnson would uncover during that search.

I felt her sigh of relief. You did well, cowboy.

Heather, Ruben and I are a good team.

That's for sure. Please, connect Ruben with Robyn. She needs to know he's all right.

Ruben, Robyn wants to talk to you, I said and connected them, but tamped down their thoughts as they moved through my mind so I wouldn't be distracted, and then amplifying them again as they left my mind so they could communicate. With practice, I'd learned the technique so that now I did it without conscious effort.

I heard vehicles coming up the driveway, so I pulled the mask down over my face. Ruben noticed and did the same.

"Why did you do that?" Lori asked.

"What?" I asked her.

"Cover your face."

The situation reminded me that she knew my name. I'd need her promise to keep it a secret. I sat down, and without asking, she climbed onto my lap. She was still naked, but during my absence, she'd wrapped a beach towel around her. She'd also washed her face, and looking past her cuts and bruises, I saw goodness and beauty behind her physical and mental pain.

I gave her a little hug and said, "I covered my face because the doctors and nurses who are just about here can't know what I look like. They also can't know my name."

"Why?"

"Because if the police find out I've been here tonight, they'll arrest me."

"That's dumb. You're a hero, not a criminal." My hero, she thought and hugged me tighter.

I chuckled. "I agree about not being a criminal, but trust me on this, Lori. That's what will happen. You know my name, don't you?"

"Yes. It's..." She looked around to see if anyone could hear her. Feeling safe from prying ears, she whispered, "It's Morgan."

"That's right. I need your solemn promise that you won't tell anyone my name. Okay?"

"'kay, I promise." She giggled. "I also know Heather's name. Should I keep her name a secret, too?"

"Yes."

"Heather called the other man Ruben. I betcha his name has to be a secret, too."

"I won't bet you because you'd win. All our names must be secrets. Do any of the other boys and girls know our names?"

"I don't know. Lemmee check."

She hopped off my lap and moved from child to child. "Nope," she said as she climbed back on my lap.

Heather walked into the bathhouse. Some men and women wearing white smocks followed her.

When I tried to stand, Lori clung to me, so I lifted her with me, settling her against my hip.

"Time to go," Heather said.

"You're going?" Lori said, looking frightened. Her small body trembled in my arms.

"Yes. We must. Soon, the police will be here, and we must be gone before they arrive."

"Take me with you."

"I can't, Lori. What about your mother and father? The police will take you back to them."

"I'm an orphan."

I looked at Heather and realized I was looking at her for permission to take Lori with me. I didn't need Heather's permission, but I did need Colleen's.

Colleen, what would you say if I told you I wanted to bring one of the captive children with me, a little girl? She's eight-years-old, very brave, and... oh, yes, she's dyslexic. She's also an orphan, and she's become quite attached to me.

Is he out of his mind? was her first thought, and then she responded as if we were having a conversation. She'll be missed, cowboy. Johnson will come looking for her.

Remember when you looked up at me at your father's house and asked me to give you a future?

I sensed her sharp gasp.

She needs a leg up on life, sweet thing.

Bring her with you.

"You can't take that girl with you," Ruben said. We were walking toward the idling SUV that would drive us away.

"I can and will," I said. "She's an orphan. I just adopted her."

"That's not how adoptions work," he said.

"Don't care."

"What about Colleen?" he pressed.

I have her concurrence, I said to Ruben silently as I opened the rear door of the SUV. I lifted Lori in and moved inside behind her. She promptly crawled back on my lap.