I thought of Lia, learning to recognize deception. Lia, learning to lie.
“Lia likes high places,” Dean continued softly, “because her mother let a man like Holland Darby stick Lia in a hole in the ground for days at a time. Because six-year-old Lia didn’t have a humble spirit. Because she wouldn’t take forgiveness when it was offered. Because she didn’t repent her sins.”
Dean forced himself to stop, but my mind was reeling at the implications. As a child, Lia had gotten locked into a battle of wills with a man who dealt in power, manipulation, and control. The kind of man who benevolently offered forgiveness, so long as you accepted that your salvation was his to give. From the moment Lia had seen those people in town, from the moment she’d read about Serenity Ranch, she was a ticking time bomb.
Power. Control. Manipulation. Lia had known that approaching Holland Darby as tourists wouldn’t work. Approaching him as the FBI would only cause him to close ranks. But approaching him as a lost soul in need of redemption?
You’ll play his game better than he does. You’ll find out what he’s hiding. And if it costs you—whatever it costs you—so be it.
“I’m not going to take a swing at anyone.” Dean did his best to look like he wasn’t on the verge of letting his darkest self come out to play. “But I’m also not staying in the car.”
“Good,” I replied as the cult leader approached the gate where Agent Sterling stood. “Because neither am I.”
“How may I help you?” Holland Darby’s voice was pleasant and smooth, more powerful and magnetic than his son’s.
Agent Sterling didn’t so much as glance at Dean and me as we came to stand behind her. “I’m here for Lia,” she said. Her tone wasn’t argumentative. She was simply stating a fact.
“Of that, I have no doubt,” Darby replied. “Lia is a very special young lady. May I ask what your relationship to her is?”
On either side of the gate, Holland Darby and Agent Sterling stood with their arms hanging loosely by their sides. Both of them were preternaturally calm.
“I’m her legal guardian.” Agent Sterling went for the jugular. “And she’s a minor.”
If there was one thing that we knew about Holland Darby, it was that he took pains to stay just this side of the law. The word minor was his kryptonite, and Agent Sterling knew it.
You would hate to part with such a prize, but if she’s not eighteen…
“I haven’t been a minor for three months.” Lia came to stand behind the cult leader. She was dressed in a white peasant top and flowy white pants, barefoot, her hair loose and free.
“Lia.” Dean didn’t say more than her name, but there was a wealth of warning in that single word.
“I’m sorry,” Lia told Dean softly. “I know this hurts you. I know that you want to make it all better, to make everything better, but there is no better, Dean. Not for someone like me.”
A masterful liar wove truth into deception. Lia could say the words someone like me and mean them.
“I believe there is a better.” Holland Darby took the opening that Lia had left him. “For everyone, Lia, even you.”
Even you. Those two words belied the gentleness in his tone. He was already undermining her, already sowing the belief that she was less, that she was unworthy, but that he could believe in her despite her unforgivable flaws.
For a brief instant, Lia’s eyes met mine. You know exactly what you’re doing, I thought. He’s a doll-maker who likes broken toys, and you know how to play the shattered, broken doll.
Agent Sterling almost certainly saw that as clearly as I did, but she had no interest whatsoever in allowing one of her charges to play this game. “Lia, you have two choices. The first is to get your ass out here in the next five seconds. And the second choice?” Agent Sterling took a single step forward. “It’s one that you’re really not going to like.”
Lia—being Lia—heard the truth in that statement. I expected her to bait Agent Sterling further, but instead, she shrank back.
Vulnerable. Broken. Weak.
Holland Darby held up a hand. “I will have to ask you to moderate your tone.” He stepped in front of Lia, blocking her bodily from Sterling’s view. “This is a simple place, and we abide by simple rules. Respect. Serenity. Acceptance.”
Agent Sterling stared the man down for a moment, and then she reached for her back pocket—for her badge, I realized. Dean’s hand caught Sterling’s before she could pull it out. He looked toward Lia, who stepped tentatively out from behind Darby, every motion, every gesture of vulnerability a lie.
“I hope you find what you’re looking for,” Dean told Lia. There was anger in those words, but also a message. He was telling her that he saw through her act—that he knew why she was here, and he knew that it had nothing to do with finding serenity and everything to do with finding out what Holland Darby was hiding.
Lia smiled sadly before retreating behind Darby’s form. “I hope so, too.”
The second we walked past Agent Starmans, who was stationed in the hallway, and into the hotel room, Michael scanned our faces. “You spoke to Lia,” he concluded. “Where is she?”
“She infiltrated Serenity Ranch.” Sterling addressed those words to Judd, who didn’t look any happier about Lia’s absence than we were.
“Lia infiltrated a cult,” Michael repeated. He shot an incredulous look at Dean. “And you didn’t drag her home kicking and screaming?”
“Don’t start with me, Townsend.” A muscle in Dean’s jaw ticked.
“Consider me warned.”
Judd ignored the tension brewing between Michael and Dean and focused his attention on Agent Sterling. “Is Lia in any immediate danger?”
Agent Sterling’s answer was as terse as Judd’s question. “I don’t think Darby has avoided formal charges for this long by overtly abusing newcomers before he’s had a chance to fully indoctrinate them.”
In other words, as long as Holland Darby bought the persona Lia was presenting to him—the lost lamb in need of guidance—she was probably safe.
For now.
“Will she be discreet?” Judd addressed that question to Dean.
“Discreet?” Michael repeated incredulously. “Are we talking about the same Lia Zhang here? The one who expresses her displeasure with relationship partners by threatening to duct-tape them naked to the ceiling?”