“If I’d wanted to sell the story of that threat against Laura and Tavis, as sensational as it was, I could’ve gotten seven hundred thousand—maybe eight, hell, maybe a million—from one tabloid or another. I wasn’t tempted for even a minute.”
Liam grimaced. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to imply . . . Damn, Wyatt, this experience has fucked with my head. You and I go back a long way. I know you’re solid.”
“We go back to before you were who you are.” He reached out and put a hand on Liam’s shoulder. “Do I have to get you drunk before you’ll tell me what you need to tell me?”
Liam sighed and settled back in his chair and told it all.
Now, six hours later, Wyatt was in the Treasure State. Liam’s Learjet had flown him from Seattle to Spokane. From there, a chartered propjet carried him, the only passenger, to Helena, Montana, where the runway was too short for the Lear. A new Range Rover, purchased from a local dealer by Liam while Wyatt was in transit, waited for him at the airport. When money was no object, getting from anywhere to anywhere else could be as easy as going nowhere at all.
He would be at Rustling Willows well before nightfall.
12
Six days a week, Wendy Sharp worked the lunch shift at an Italian family restaurant and the dinner shift at an upscale place with good Mediterranean food, but all she had on Thursdays was a lunch shift. By three o’clock, she was hurrying through traffic in her VW, eager to free Cricket from Jolly Bertha and go to the park and watch people, especially people with dogs, because it was her and Cricket’s fondest dream to one day have a house with a yard and a dog, and they were still unsure what breed they most wanted.
Wendy Sharp had no one in the world except Cricket Moon; and she would die for her if ever it came to that. Cricket Moon Sharp was seven years old, with her father’s auburn hair and her mother’s blue eyes. She resembled her mother in every regard except for the hair, which was fortunate because Wendy might not have loved the child so intensely if every time she looked at her she was reminded of him. His name wasn’t Snake, but that’s what Wendy called him when she walked out of the hell that he built and ruled. Snake was the name he earned. Snake was not a part of their life anymore, and he never would be, not if Wendy had anything to say about it. In fact, she had everything to say about it, because Snake knew she would kill him hard if he ever came around, and he was scared of her.
She loved Cricket Moon with a passion that surprised her because for so many years before this child came along, Wendy had been dead inside. Well, her organs worked and her blood flowed and all that, but she didn’t feel anything. Or she didn’t feel much, not anything worth feeling: sadness, a quiet and persistent anxiety, self-loathing. She left home with all that bad psychological baggage and little else when she was fourteen. Anyway, it wasn’t really a home that she left, just a place where her mother did dope and her father drank. Often the old man was in a mean mood, and the only thing that cheered him up was hitting someone too small to hit back. When Wendy got out of there, she lived on the street with a paper bag over her head, holes cut in it to see and breathe, and she had a special corner where she sat with a donation jar and a hand-printed sign that said: SEVERE FACIAL DEFORMITIES. SO UGLY NO ONE WILL HIRE ME. GOD BLESS YOU FOR CARING. Some people took her claim seriously, as if she were the girl version of the Elephant Man, while many others thought it was a scam but a funny one, and both types dropped coins and singles in the jar, sometimes larger bills. By concealing her face, which was actually pretty enough, she remained able to panhandle without much risk of being taken into custody by child-welfare authorities. She slept in churches and bathed after midnight in public fountains and reflecting pools, and she had money for food, movies, whatnot. Nothing really terrible happened to her, but nothing good enough happened to make her feel better about herself, which was why she was so susceptible to the Snake when he pitched her on the glories of his mission and his pure heart, and brought her to live in his compound at the eastern end of the San Fernando Valley.
She was fifteen when she became the Snake’s “bride.” In her mind, she always put quotation marks around the word because there was never a wedding and because she wasn’t his only “bride.” He had four or five at any one time, although this was not known by those beyond his inner circle of advisers, the so-called First 10. The other “brides” were often pregnant, and the Snake had a doctor in his mission, one who performed ultrasound scans to be sure that the mothers and their unborn babies were okay. The Snake wasn’t a gentle husband, nor did he appear interested in a wife’s needs or emotions. However, his concern for their health during pregnancy suggested that he cared about them more than he could easily express. If something was wrong with a baby—something often was—an abortion ensued. If the baby was healthy, its arrival was celebrated by all the “brides” as the birth of another right-thinking missionary who would grow up to help their father lead the world to its destiny. Wendy became pregnant when she was sixteen. Her unborn baby passed its ultrasound test. She was seventeen when she reached term. When her labor began, two other wives attended her. In the penultimate moment, as her child was about to enter the world, she woke to the terrible truth of what she had done.