Read Online Dead Even by Mariah Stewart - Free Book Online

go after anyone?” Will reminded her.
    “We agreed that he isn’t likely to go after them now, when he has no job and no means of transportation.”
    “I checked with the DMV. Lowell doesn’t even have a valid driver’s license.”
    “Yes, but do we want to take the chance that his circumstances will never change, that he’ll never have a change of heart?” Miranda sipped at her coffee. “As I see it, if we can identify a few likely targets and at least give them a heads-up, I think we are obligated to do that.”
    “You mean, show up at some poor sucker’s door and say, ‘Hi, I’m just here to let you know that your name may or may not be on a hit list because at some point in the past, you may have pissed off a guy named Curtis Alan Channing. . . .”
    “I think we could clean that up a bit, at least find out if there was some argument or bad feelings between that person and Channing. Will, keep in mind that anyone we could definitely finger as a potential victim, at this late date and with no clues from Channing, well, if it’s that obvious to us, he or she just might be the right one.”
    “I guess it’s worth the time to take a look, see if there is anyone out there who might be a target.”
    “You just put those legendary investigative skills to work. If anyone can dig out potential victims from a twenty-year-old slush pile, it would be you.” She paused and looked at his plate, where a small amount of chocolate remained. “In the meantime, are you going to finish that?”
             
    Genna Snow found her way through the darkened cabin, counting bed frames until she reached her own narrow bed at the end of the last row. She lowered herself quietly to the edge of the mattress and sat, leaning forward to untie her shoes. It was cool in the cabin, so her wool socks were still on her feet when she slid under the blanket and huddled herself to keep warm on the cold sheets. It was snowing again, and the leather shoes she’d worn when she entered the compound hadn’t been made for snow. She wondered what she’d been thinking when she’d taken them out of her closet the day she’d left for Wyoming.
    Of course, she reminded herself, it hadn’t been snowing in Virginia when she left four weeks ago, and hadn’t been snowing here, for that matter, but winter was moving across the mountains more quickly than had been forecast.
    She lay in the dark, her hazel eyes staring at the ceiling. She missed her husband. Missed her bed. Missed the cat they’d gotten from the animal shelter last Christmas. She hadn’t expected to be here, in the Valley of the Angels, for this long. It was now more than a month since she’d first shown up at the gates of Reverend Prescott’s compound and asked to be admitted. She’d made nice with all the gentle folks she met those first few weeks, proved to one and all that she was gentle folk herself. That she’d come into this camp with no weapon, well, that had been an act of faith on her part, one that had made John absolutely crazy when she told him she couldn’t take even a small handgun into the compound. If it was found on her, they’d know she wasn’t who she was pretending to be.
    And so Special Agent Genna Snow transformed herself into teacher Ruth Carey, and had sought a place in the compound. As Ruth, the résumé she’d brought with her had attracted the attention of Reverend Prescott himself, as she’d known it would. Ruth Carey had been terminated from her last teaching position for overzealously disciplining her charges.
    “It’s important, you see,” Ruth had explained to the reverend, “that young girls—adolescent girls—understand that they must tame their emotions. Discipline, partnered with the proper reward, of course, is what children need if they’re to understand their place in society, their function in this world.”
    “And that function is, Ms. Carey?” Reverend Prescott had asked.
    “Why, to submit to the will of their