Suddenly, we came upon six vehicles parked on either side of the trail. All were unmarked, mostly Jeeps.
Standing right there was Kyle Craig. Kyle had his hands on his hips, and he was smiling as if he had the most amazing secret to tell me.
I suspected that he did.
Chapter 85
“I THINK this is exactly what we’ve been working for,” Kyle said as I walked up to him. We shook hands, an old ritual that reflected Kyle’s formality. He looked calmer and more in control than he had during the past week. “Let me show you something,” he said. “Come.”
I followed Kyle down along the split-rail fence until we came to a broken-down gate. He showed me a faded image. The body and head of a tiger had been branded into the gate. It was subtle, but this was it, it had to be. We had arrived at the tiger’s lair.
“The group inside seems to be led by the Sire, the new and improved one, I assume. We haven’t been able to establish an identity for the leader. Alex, the past Sire was the magician Daniel Erickson. Two members of the group just returned from a trip. They were in New Orleans. Pieces are finally starting to fit.”
I looked at Kyle, shook my head. “How did you find all of this out? When did you get here, Kyle?” How much have you been keeping from me? And why?
“Santa Cruz police contacted us, and I came right out. They grabbed one of the ‘undead’ when the little prick left the ranch. He’s a local high school dropout, wasn’t as committed as some of the others. He told us what he knew.”
“Is the Sire in there now?”
“Supposedly. This kid had never actually seen the Sire. He’s not part of the inner circle. The two members who traveled to New Orleans are in there, though. He heard they were the ones who killed Daniel and Charles. He said the two of them are total psychos.”
“Well, I believe that.” I looked down through the limbs of pine and cypress trees at the ranch. “What about Jamilla Hughes?”
His eyes shifted. “We found her car in town, Alex. But no sign of her. The kid we questioned didn’t know about her either. He claimed there was a commotion at the ranch late last night. He was bunked in with some of the younger ghouls. They thought that someone had broken the perimeter, thought it might be the police. But then it got quiet again—according to the boy. There’s no evidence that she’s there.”
“Can I talk to him, Kyle?”
Kyle looked away; he didn’t seem to want to answer me. “The Santa Cruz police took him away. I guess you could go into town to see him. I talked to him, Alex. The androgynous little twerp was scared of me. Imagine that.”
Kyle was acting strange, but I reminded myself that he understood the deranged criminal mind better than any other FBI agent or police officer I had worked with. The agents who worked under him were convinced that he would run the Bureau one day. I wondered if Kyle could ever take himself out of the field, though.
“I know you’re worried about Inspector Hughes. I guess we could go in there right now, but I think we should wait. I want to go at them after midnight, Alex. Or possibly near sunup. We’re not even sure she’s down there.”
Kyle paused. His eyes shifted toward the distant ranch house. “I want to find out if they hunt as a gr
oup. There are questions we need answered. What motivates these freaks? What makes them tick? I want to make sure we get the Sire this time.”
Chapter 86
IT WAS a long, cool, very tense night in the foothills outside Santa Cruz. I couldn’t wait for it to be over, or maybe I couldn’t wait for it to start. We learned something interesting right away. The woman lawyer who had been murdered in Mill Valley had been involved in a lawsuit trying to get control of this property. It was probably why she and her husband had been hung.
I watched the ranch through binoculars from the surrounding trees and rock formations. I watched until my eyes ached. No one had left as of eleven. I didn’t see anyone standing lookout either. The people inside were either crazy or supremely confident. Or maybe they were innocent. Maybe this was another wrong turn for us.
I was trying not to worry too much about Jamilla, but it wasn’t working. I couldn’t bear to think that she might already be dead. Was that what Kyle thought? Was it what he knew and was keeping from me?
At midnight, two males walked outside leading a tiger. I watched them through the night-sight glasses. I was almost certain I had seen them in New Orleans. They’d been at the fetish ball, hadn’t they? They loped off into the flat, open fields behind the house.
One of the men got down on all fours, then rolled around in the tall grass with the cat. They were playing, weren’t they? Jesus Christ. How incredibly weird. I remembered that the tiger had been called off its prey in Golden Gate Park.
About twenty minutes later, the men brought the cat to a pen behind the main compound. They hugged the six-hundred-pound tiger as if it were a large dog. The lights in the main building and the nearby bunkhouse burned brightly until past two. Loud rock and roll played. Then the lights were dimmed.
No one had left the house to hunt.
We still didn’t know if Jamilla was inside, or even if she was alive. I stayed awake and watched. I couldn’t sleep, not even for an hour or so. The FBI continued to collect information on the people inside the domain. What in God’s name were they doing down there?
There was no word on the identity of the Sire. We did learn about the two blond males with the ponytails. William and Michael Alexander were the sons of a post-hippie couple who had worked at the ranch as animal handlers. The mother had been a zoologist. The boys had grown up comfortable around wild animals. They attended schools in Santa Cruz until they were nine and twelve, at which time the boys began to be homeschooled. They wore Moroccan robes and were always barefoot on their occasional trips to town. They were considered bright, but odd and extremely secretive. The boys had gotten into trouble in their early teens and been sent off to a state correctional facility for aggravated assault. They had been dealing drugs and also been caught breaking and entering.
Kyle joined me in the rocks overlooking the ranch at around three.