Deadly Deception (SCVC Taskforce) Read online

  As she sat in the parking lot, pretending to listen to music and enjoy the warm summer air, the anti-Boy Scout emerged from the building, wiping his face with a bunch of white napkins. His hair was wet and slicked back like he’d stuck it under a faucet. The beard had been trimmed down to a light stubble. How had he pulled that off? Was he hiding an electric razor in his cargo pants?

  Thinking about what was in his pants made her flush. Sooo not going there.

  Two wafer-thin blondes checked Thomas out as he walked by, one licking her lips. He trashed the napkins, jogged over and leaned on Ronni’s door. The scent of soap and water followed.

  His clear blue eyes met hers. “Better?”

  Who knew the scent of commercial soap could be such a turn-on?

  Not the soap, stupid—the eyes.

  They pulled her in, ignited something inside her she hadn’t felt in a while. But they also showed concern and hid all the things he was thinking about her.

  Damaged. She was damaged goods, and he knew it.

  “The blondes over there think so.” Air…I need air. She covertly inhaled a deep breath. “Let’s go.”

  He checked his watch. “The meeting’s in twenty. I’ll drive.”

  It made sense since she had no idea where they were going. “This isn’t some macho partner bullshit, is it? You’re the male, so you get to drive everywhere we go?”

  A spark of humor danced in his eyes. He leaned closer. The blondes stopped on the sidewalk, continuing to scope him out. “What if it is?”

  “Then you better check your junk at the curb. If we’re partners, we’re equals, inside the car and out.”

  His gaze dropped to her lips, made a slow perusal up to meet her eyes. “I wouldn’t want it any other way.” He lowered his voice and a soft tingle started at the base of her spine. “Believe it or not, I like take-charge women.”

  Oh, she just bet he did. Not. “Well, aren’t you lucky? I’m a walking, talking, take-charge woman.”

  Opening the door, she pushed him back a few steps, her fingers brushing his on the frame as she stood and straightened to full height. He lightly ran a hand over her elbow as if helping her, and she hid a flinch. His skin was rough, but warm…what would his hands feel like running over her body?

  Dammit! They were going to be partners—temporarily—and then she’d be on her way to her next assignment. Working partners, nothing else. She was not getting involved with anyone in California—maybe not anyone ever again. Men always let her down. Her heart could only take so much.

  The car door was the only thing between them. In her conservative heels—why hadn’t she worn her Steve Madden’s?—she had to peer up at his face, which irritated her.

  The tingle at the base of her spine grew as his eyes locked on hers. Her cheeks heated. She pretended to straighten her pants. “You can drive this time, but once I know my way around San Diego, we’ll take turns. Agreed?”

  The setting sun outlined his body as he looked at her with those damn blue eyes that saw all the way to her soul. “I know you’re nervous about this meeting, Punto, and you don’t want to be here, but the SCVC group is a good team. We don’t just work together. We’re family.”

  He leaned in, getting right in her face. That stubble, those lips…”We won’t let you down this time, I swear.”

  We. Not I.

  Not his fault. Yes, he’d been outside the apartment on duty the night Valquis snuck in and stabbed her. He could have stopped him. But it wasn’t Thomas’s fault the psycho had gone after Ronni. Not really. Celina had been the target, and no one in the FBI or on the SCVC taskforce really believed at the time that either of them was in danger. Valquis was supposed to be dead.

  Dead.

  Ronni’s chest grew tight like it always did when she thought about that night. FBI agents were routinely threatened, occasionally punched, and in rare circumstances shot. But to have a perp stab you in the back when you weren’t prepared…

  She squeezed the door frame. Air. Even though she was outside, she needed some goddamn air. She closed her eyes and did the breathing exercise the shrink had taught her. She could not—would not—let Thomas or anyone else on the taskforce see her weakness. The doctor may have cleared her for field work, but hyperventilating wasn’t an option.

  “Easy does it, Punto.” Thomas’s voice was steady. He didn’t touch her, but bent so he could look into her face. “You okay?”

  Obviously, she wasn’t hiding her internal chaos well enough. She had to do better. Otherwise, this wasn’t going to work. How could she be around him without thinking of that night?

  You survived a madman before. You’ll survive this one. Shut. It. Down.

  She did, calling up a mental exercise she’d created for herself when the breathing technique didn’t work. Petero Valquis had tortured and killed five others besides her. For them, she mentally took out her gun and shot the image of him branded into her brain right between the eyes.

  One breath. Two…

  Vengeance. She wasn’t supposed to be after vengeance. Work through the anger and let it go, the therapists told her. Besides, there was no one left to take vengeance on. Valquis was dead—Celina had killed him. Three bullets sent right into his cowardly back. A just reward.

  My kill.

  But she hadn’t been there to witness it, and for some reason, she just couldn’t seem to move on.

  Just like with Daniel.

  “I’m fine,” she lied, focusing on her mental exercise. “Must have been something I ate on the plane.”

  “O-kay.” He kept watching her as he straightened up.

  The FBI was her life, so after Valquis, she’d done what the therapists and supervisors wanted—put the past in a box, pretended to work through her anger, and attacked the physical therapy and healing process with gusto. She was now in the best physical shape of her life and there were plenty of other violent perps out there she could put away. Hence, this temp assignment with the taskforce.

  The band around her chest eased. Breathe…

  Straightening, she avoided Thomas’s eyes and headed for the passenger side. “Let’s get to that meeting.”

  The two blondes continued to watch Thomas, making her bristle. They giggled at Ronni and made eyes at him. Whipping out her credentials from the chain around her neck, she made sure they each saw them. “FBI. You got a problem, ladies?”

  They stopped giggling, two sets of eyes going wide. “Uh, no,” the double D said, grabbing her friend and hustling her inside.

  Once they disappeared, Ronni put her creds away and returned to the passenger side of the car. She slid in, ignoring the questioning smirk on Thomas’s face. “Did I miss something?” he asked.

  “Aside from the tacky blondes enjoying your vagrant appearance?”

  “Maybe they’re into the biker look.”

  Riight. Checking her face in the mirror, she adjusted her sunglasses. She looked good, regardless of the nerves banging around in her stomach. “Just drive.”

  He climbed in, buckled his seatbelt, and put the car in gear, revving the engine. “You’re gonna love it here, Ronni. Give it a chance.”

  The wind whipped her hair and the sun warmed her face as they raced past palm trees. It was a beautiful place. A warm place. But Ronni knew there was no way she would ever love what she was about to do.

  Chapter Three

  SCVC Taskforce headquarters

  “…the fifth case we’ve closed this month, even being short-handed.” A little cheer went up from SCVC members in the conference room.

  Ronni entered, set her briefcase on the table, and the room fell quiet. Too quiet. They were late and the meeting was already in full swing. She futzed with her jacket and accepted a bottled water from Thomas before she sat and met anyone’s eyes.

  Cooper Harris nodded at her from the front of the room where he’d written a string of cases on a whiteboard. Big guy with a buzz cut, tattooed arms, and a take-no-prisoners approach to bad guys. He picked up where
he’d left off. “Problem is we have a dozen more that have landed on my desk this week.”

  Everyone groaned.

  Thomas took a seat to Harris’s right. Word had it Cooper was tough on his fellow DEA agent, but only because he was grooming Thomas to run his own taskforce down the road.

  Nelson Cruz, the ICE agent who had a dozen successful Homeland Security investigations under his belt, sat on Ronni’s left. He’d been in Des Moines when Valquis came after her and the other agents guarding Celina. Nelson offered her a tight smile. She returned it with one of her own.

  A woman she didn’t know sat across from Cruz. Victor Dupé, head of the Southern California FBI operations, acknowledged her from his seat at the head of the table.

  Dupé was medium height with jet black hair, dark eyes, and a healthy mustache. Technically he was the man in charge of all of the Southern California taskforces. He handpicked his teams, right down to the support staff. Ronni’s temporary assignment—being invited to one of Dupé’s taskforces—was a dream for many agents. That Dupé had given the leadership role of the violent crimes taskforce to Cooper Harris, a DEA agent, said Dupé had a lot of faith in the man.

  Dupé wasn’t big and brawny like Cooper and Thomas, but his voice was deep, his eyes serious. “You’re doing good work, each and every one of you, but there is more work to be done. Which is one of the reasons I’ve brought in Special Agent Roanna Punto. She has special insight into our next big case—Heaven’s Gate, Church of the Truth.”

  Cults. Ronni shivered. Shut it down. The past had no hold over her…at least not that part of her past. It was time she used her “special insight” as Dupé called it to help others.

  All eyes were on her, waiting. Dupé had briefed her several days ago on the increasing criminal activities of the group. She knew more about the leader than anyone at the table…maybe more than anyone period.

  Removing a file from her briefcase, she sent a stack of papers around the table. “Here is my evaluation on Church of the Truth, otherwise known as iChurch. Please take one.”

  As the papers were distributed, Ronni took a sip of water, cleared her throat. “Church of the Truth is a religious cult with doomsday ideologies and a quiet, but extremely dangerous anti-government stance. Their compound is located off Highway 125 on Heaven’s Gate farm, a forty acre parcel of land with an irrigated farm system, orchard, and, at last count, one-hundred men, women, and children. They call it ‘the farm’, the organization is referred to as The Church, or for social media purposes, iChurch.

  “They grow and sell organic food and other natural products. Along with donations, they use the profits to sustain the farm and the costs of the people living there. This setup allows them free labor and offers a nice cover story. The followers display unquestioning commitment and loyalty to their leader, Adam Karsni, who believes he is the next messiah. Unlike many cults, iChurch allows interaction with the world through social media such as Facebook and YouTube, and even has its own Facebook page, website, and healthy online presence. Karsni is only twenty-three, but worldwide, he has close to two thousand followers, and six other iChurch communities exist throughout the United States, Canada, and Europe. Adam’s sermons are delivered to these sites via Skype.”

  “Welcome to Cults in the 21st Century,” Thomas mumbled.

  “Karsni?” the woman across from Cruz spoke up. Blond hair, blue eyes, round, baby face. Looked to be all of twenty. “Related to Daniel Karsni?”

  Daniel Karsni. Mount Royal. The siege in Wrightsville, Texas that had left twenty-nine people dead, including women and children, and another dozen severely injured. It had been twenty years, but every FBI agent, ATF agent, and most of the world, remembered the confrontation between the federal government and Karsni’s cult.

  Dupé nodded at the woman. “Agent Punto, this is Bianca Marx, communications specialist on loan from the NSA. She routinely assists with satellite surveillance.”

  Ronni acknowledged Marx. “Daniel Karsni had many ‘sons’ and ‘daughters’, not all blood relations. A handful left the compound before the siege, and a few survived the government’s attack. Adam is the biological son of Daniel.”

  My brother.

  A tense silence fell over the group. Thomas toyed with a pencil. “Wrightsville revisited.”

  Memories assaulted Ronni. Men and women scrambling, kids crying, the dogs in the kennels keening and barking. Portions of the walls collapsing. The teargas, the fires…

  No flashbacks. Not here. She cleared her throat, took another sip of water.

  Adam had been three years old. She’d only been nine. At her mother’s insistence, Ronni had been assigned to keep Adam safe. Ronni was not Daniel’s biological child, but Adam was Daniel’s son, and since they shared a mother, Ronni had been blessed by Daniel’s hand and declared his. Adam’s guardian angel, her mother had called her.

  She could still see Daniel’s eyes behind his glasses. The smile he gave her as he laid a hand on her forehead. Mine, he’d said. For all eternity.

  “I thought Karsni’s wife and kids were killed in the siege.” This from Cooper.

  “His legal wife and children were.” The faces of Tonya and her children flashed through Ronni’s mind. “Adam was a survivor, but the authorities didn’t know his identity at first. Later, when it was revealed”—by me—“it was kept quiet. Daniel also had a dozen children by other female followers—his sacred wives. Now, twenty-plus years later, the FBI believes Adam is stepping into his father’s shoes because the end of days is near. To him, what happened at the molehill—Mount Royal—was a test.”

  Thomas stopped playing with his pencil. “Molehill?”

  That’s what they’d called it. Those who’d lived at Mount Royal. A tiny hill in the middle of Texas, where the wind howled cold and unforgiving through broken windows during the siege. The electricity had been cut off by the government agents, leaving them to rely on kerosene heaters and flashlights.

  “Agent Punto?” Dupé sat forward. “A test of what?”

  Steeling her mind, she reined in the horrible memories and focused on her profiling notes. Notes she didn’t need. “A test preparing him for the true apocalypse and his ascent to be the Shepherd’s Rod. King, in other words.”

  “Wow,” Nelson said. “Of the world?”

  She’d heard Daniel predict the end of the world and his own ascent to king so many times in her childhood, she could recite the lines from memory. “‘The Chosen One will conquer the Babylonians and restore heaven on earth for his followers in preparation for the second coming.’”

  Cooper glanced at the paper in his hands. “Babylonians, huh? I take it that refers to the government?”

  “Correct. iChurch followers are an incarnation of the Karsnians, although we, I mean, they never referred to themselves as Karsnians. That term was used by the government and media. Daniel and Adam’s believers follow the Chosen One and insist they are protected by God to carry out His work. Adam, by virtue of his command, decides who the enemy is, and labels them ‘Babylonians’.”

  We’re the good guys, Daniel always preached. Everyone else is bad, and they will perish by our hands.

  She rifled through the papers in front of her, pushing away the ugly emotions churning in her stomach. “Members specifically believe that any person or entity who stands in their way or threatens their mission is the enemy.”

  Ronni looked around the table, meeting every agent’s eyes. Several seemed indifferent, unconcerned. Wrightsville was nothing but a couple paragraphs in an agency manual to them. Like her, they had only been kids when the siege went down. They hadn’t lived it, survived it. Saw the horrors that had happened when the government wiped it out.

  “This is no joke to them,” she said. “We are the enemy. They will do whatever it takes to protect their leader, even committing suicide or sacrificing themselves for Adam. Please don’t underestimate them, and please don’t write them off as crazy, irrational insurgents. They are people like you and
me. Their beliefs may differ, but they’re still US citizens with families and children who want to be left alone to worship the way they choose.”

  “That’s why you’re here,” Dupé shifted his dark eyes to Thomas. “We do not want a second Wrightsville, but the criminal activities we believe the iChurch is committing leave us no choice but to investigate. We want to do this as quietly and efficiently as possible with no bloodshed. None. In the event we uncover proof of illegal activities, the Justice Department will pursue legal action. However, I will state again, we do not want a second Wrightsville. Our goal is to perform an undercover operation that will end with everyone alive. Clear?”

  There was a moment of silence, Ronni’s mind hopping back and forth between past and present. Everyone around the table nodded in agreement.

  “What kind of criminal activity are we talking about?” Nelson asked.

  Thomas folded a corner of his paper down, creasing it with a thumbnail. “My latest undercover op put me in touch with a mule running drugs for the Sandoval Cartel. Word is the guy is doing a sideline biz for iChurch in prescription drugs from Mexico. Painkillers, antibiotics, even anesthesia meds. Not sure what they’re doing with those, but he’s getting monthly supplies.”

  “Surgeries,” Ronni said. She flipped through her binder filled with member identities and information gleaned from their families, friends, Facebook, and the Cult Awareness Network. She stopped on Dr. Elias Elgin. “Adam has a former physician and two nurses on staff for healthcare purposes. Dr. Elgin left an active practice under disgrace and had his license revoked for Medicare fraud.”

  Ronni’s mother, Danielle Olney, had been a nurse and midwife before leaving her father and moving to Mount Royal. “Dental care, health care, delivering babies…they need supplies. Because of Dr. Elgin’s background, he can’t obtain the drugs legally in this country.”

  Dupé spoke up. “We also have an account from a woman who left the compound several months ago and claims the farm has a stockpile of weapons. She was incarcerated for drunk driving last weekend and was overheard by a guard telling her cellmate that she’d heard gossip about iChurch members releasing tear gas in several public L.A. venues over the coming months. She mentioned a shooting range and talk of offing politicians and federal officers involved in the Wrightsville siege. This matches intel reports we’ve gathered through various departments.”