Chapter 2
CHAPTER TWO
Liza Monroe—the only woman I’d ever loved. The one who time and circumstance had stolen from me.
There she was in the flesh. More beautiful than the last time I’d seen her. I’d had hours to prepare for this meeting but, seeing her normally warm, inviting hazel eyes ice cold wasn’t the welcome I’d been expecting. There had never been anything cold about Liza, she was fire and explosive chemistry.
I could lie to myself and chalk it up to shock but I wasn’t a man prone to bullshit. The last time I saw her was in a bar in Tucson. Her divorce had just been finalized, I’d just closed a case after being undercover for too fucking long. The timing was shit but that didn’t mean it wasn’t finally time to come clean. Losing her to her husband had been a wake-up call but mostly I was done playing games. The time had come to step up and claim what had been mine for the better part of a decade. At the end of the night I walked her to her room and declined her invitation to join her.
One of my biggest regrets was walking away from her that night.
That one decision had altered the direction of my life.
And by the looks of it, years later she was holding a grudge that wasn’t hers to hold. It was me who should’ve been pissed she bailed without talking to me first.
“Allyson, this is Tucker Mitchell.” Detective Wilder’s introduction pulled me from my thoughts. “Jessica, I believe you already know Tucker.”
Out of the corner of my eye I saw Liza’s brows pull together before she caught herself and schooled her features.
“Tucker, this is Special Agent Monroe.”
“Thanks, Wilder, sorry I’m late. Allyson, nice to meet you.”
I chanced a second look at Liza, this one was no less frosty.
“Agent Monroe,” I greeted and pulled the extra chair from the corner of the room to the table.
Why Wilder put a potential informant into an interrogation room I couldn’t fathom. At least the air con was on and he wasn’t sweating her out in here. Liza’s team needed Allyson to talk, and to get her to do that she needed to be comfortable.
“Tucker.”
If Liza meant for her acknowledgment to be friendly she failed—miserably. At least by my standards, I knew this woman both personally and professionally. She was using her all-business, no-nonsense voice.
The fuck of it was that husky, cold, detached tone was a turn-on. It was the tone she used when she interrogated a suspect. A reminder of how capable and strong she was. On the job, Liza was a force of nature; skilled, accomplished, wicked smart—three things that made watching her work over a suspect insanely attractive. But in the bedroom—now there, she was soft and yielding. One night with her had me rethinking my life. Not that I’d had the balls to admit that to myself or to her. By the time I got my head out of my ass, I was too late. She’d married some jackass prosecutor who won as many cases as he bedded women who were not his wife. The first time the name Special Agent Liza Boyer came out of my mouth had cut deep.
At least she’d gone back to using her maiden name.
I sat at the end of the table—Liza to my right, Allyson directly across from me—and did my best to ignore the daggers Liza’s eyes were shooting at me.
“Special Agent?” Allyson whispered.
Liza had likely left out that part when she’d introduced herself to make herself appear non-threatening, and Wilder had blown it.
“Yes, I work for the ATF.”
“I don’t get it,” Allyson murmured as her eyes darted between me and Liza before settling on her sister.
“We’ve heard talk and what’s being said is concerning,” Liza told her.
“Talk?” Allyson asked.
“Yes, rumors Mackenzie Archer is manufacturing weapons on the compound.”
All the color bleached from Allyson’s face. Her sister hadn’t fared much better but hers had turned red. In my previous meeting with Jessica she’d mentioned Allyson was concerned there were some members, including Mackenzie herself, who were selling drugs. She hadn’t mentioned guns being present. Though the two went hand-in-hand, manufacturing was a far jump from procuring illegal firearms.
Allyson’s shoulders bunched, followed by a few quick shakes of her head. “I…I, um, don’t know anything about that. I only saw…” She paused, her gaze going to her sister, then back to Liza.
When it didn’t look like Allyson was going to continue, Liza softened her tone and her posture when she gently reminded the scared woman, “Something heavy, something that has you so worried it drove you to tell your sister your concerns and come a long way to report them. It’d help me out if you could explain what you saw.”
On an exhale Allyson restarted. “I was out for a walk. It was late. The lights were on in the meditation center. Not all of them, just a few, but they’re never left on. The rule is when you leave a room, the lights are turned off. No wasted electricity. No exceptions. We don’t even have porch lights. The lights shouldn’t’ve been on.”
“So you went to check it out?” Liza asked, her tone with Allyson much friendlier than her clipped greeting to me. “What did you see?”
“Mackenzie and her brother?—”
“Her brother?” Liza uncharacteristically interrupted.
“Yeah, Tate.”
“Does Tate live on the property?” I asked.
“Yeah. He’s actually the only single male who lives there. But we rarely see him,” Allyson rushed out.
Before I could follow up, Liza did.
“What were they doing in the meditation room?”
Allyson shifted uncomfortably. And again I wished this conversation was taking place someplace more affable. She wasn’t a suspect, she was a potential witness who should’ve been given the white glove treatment.
“I’m not stupid,” Allyson blurted out.
Liza’s eyes narrowed on the woman.
“No one in this room thinks you are.”
“I just didn’t know what I was seeing,” Allyson rushed out.
“And what did you see?” Liza pressed.
Allyson’s gaze went to her sister. Jessica gave her an encouraging nod then voiced her support, “Ally, you didn’t know. How could you?”
Wide, sad eyes drifted back to Liza.
“It was weird. They had a table in the middle of the room. I was looking in the window so I couldn’t see what was on the table but they were wearing blue latex gloves.”
“What was weird? The table in the room or the gloves?” I inquired.
Allyson nodded. “At the time I thought the table was weird. There’s no furniture in the meditation room. But I didn’t think too much about the gloves because we make our own soaps. Well, I don’t make them, but some members do and they sell or barter with them.”
“Soap?” Wilder interjected.
I saw Liza’s jaw tighten. Apparently she didn’t mind me asking questions but she didn’t appreciate the detective butting in.
“Yeah, bars of soap. Laundry detergent. Shampoo. We don’t live off-grid but we do all have septic and wells. No city water or sewage so we’re encouraged to use the soap made on-site. It’s organic and good for our systems. But it’s not a rule. Though, I don’t know of anyone who uses store stuff. My friend Colleen makes it and she wears gloves when she does. That’s why I didn’t think anything about the gloves. At first I thought maybe they were packaging soap. You know, helping out even though neither of them sell it. We do that kind of stuff. We all pitch in and help out.”
“What makes you now think it wasn’t soap?” Liza took over.
“I was getting ready to move away from the window when Mackenzie dropped something on the floor. It was small, like the size of a business card, and bright yellow. Some sort of baggie.” Allyson shrugged and her brows pulled together.
Wilder looked like he was going to ask another question and at this rate we’d be here all damn day.
“Wilder?” I drew his attention to me, hating to call him out but needing to move this along. “Let’s let her finish and save the questions.”
I wouldn’t describe his look as completely hostile, but clearly now neither law enforcement officer was happy I was in the room.
“Go on, Allyson.”
“I finished my walk and went home. I didn’t think anything else about it until a few weeks later when a friend came over to have dinner. Her purse was on my couch, I could see inside and she had the same bright yellow baggie in her purse. Weird, but not weird enough for me to pry.
“A month or so passes and I’m in my same friend’s house for dinner. I need to use her bathroom. To do that I have to pass her room. The door’s open and on her bed is like fifty of those yellow baggies. I asked her about them and she freaked. Accused me of snooping. I explained the door was open and I could clearly see in. She apologized for overreacting and told me some story about how stressed she is with work and her songwriting.
“A few weeks later I’m in town at this local coffee shop. As I’m leaving I see my friend turning the corner to the side of the building. I followed her. You know, to say hello.” Allyson paused and clasped her hands on the table. “I heard her telling someone that the prices went up. The yellows were now twenty and the blues were forty and the reds were fifty. Whoever she was talking to wasn’t happy and complained that the yellows wore off faster than they used to. My friend suggested the blues for a longer high. And if they wanted the best they’d have to buy the reds. The buyer said he wanted to speak to Mack, that he wasn’t happy with the new products and he couldn’t sell junk out of the street—he’d lose business. I didn’t hear the rest of the conversation because I was afraid my friend or the guy would come around the corner.”
Allyson unclasped her hands, brought them to her face, and scrubbed her hands over her cheeks.
“I didn’t want to believe it,” she defended herself. “I wanted to pretend I’d misunderstood. But I don’t think I misunderstood. I think Mackenzie’s making some kind of drug. And I think they did something to my friend.”
“What does that mean?” I asked when it didn’t appear Allyson was going to elaborate. “Something to your friend?”
“She’s lived there longer than me. Swore she’d live there until she died. She’s like Colleen—totally into the holistic scene. She’s a strict vegan. A naturalist in the sense she uses the designated areas to draw down the sun at least five days a week in the spring, summer, and fall. She says the sun on her skin rejuvenates her. Unless she’s leaving the property, she’s barefoot. She says the dirt and grass nourishes her soul. She participates in the weekly healing circles. Then suddenly with no goodbye, she’s gone. Mackenzie says she got her big break and moved to Nashville. But that doesn’t make sense. She’d never leave, not like that. Even if someone was interested in buying or producing her music, she wouldn’t move. She’d go to Nashville then come home to revive and cleanse her energy.”
“What’s your friend’s name?” Liza softly inquired. “Do you have a cell number for her? Have you tried getting in touch?”
“She doesn’t have a cellphone. She said the electromagnetic radiation causes brain tumors. She only had a voiceover IP in her house and that’s been disconnected.”
I sat back and waited for Liza to get what she needed.
I had enough to convince my bosses we needed to continue to look into Nu Dawn. But Liza had red-tape and bureaucracy to contend with.
“And her name?”
“Bee,” Allyson whispered. “Beatrice Collins.”
Liza’s gaze softened and she gave Allyson a gentle smile. “Thank you for trusting us with that information.”
Allyson nodded.
“How’d you explain your trip to Georgia?”
“What do you mean?” Allyson asked back. “Nu Dawn’s not like a cult or anything. It’s a way of life. We’re allowed to leave.”
Nu Dawn was absolutely a cult—Mackenzie Archer was just smart enough not to hide her operation behind religion. Instead, she’d built a commune under the guise of women empowering women when in reality the only woman she cared about was herself.