Chapter 1
Jesse Owens, who looked remarkably like the great athlete who was his namesake, paced the living room of his Georgetown townhouse while his wife, Jeanie, quietly cried on the couch.
She looked up with pleading eyes. “What are we going to do, Jesse? I can’t bear to lose our baby into that—that cult.”
He sat beside her and put his arm around her pulling her close. “I’ll think of something, honey. I’ll think of something.”
Both were well-educated blacks who lived inside the cocoon of upper-level government officialdom. They believed—perhaps feared would be a better word—that stepping outside that world and its restrictions would put everything they had achieved at risk. Sadly, their daughter Julie, had rebelled against the restrictions and became the victim of her rebellion.
He went into his home office, picked up the phone, and dialed Diane Hitchens, a retired Air Force Special Investigations officer. They had crossed paths several times over the years when he did his Air Force Reserve active-duty annual training and they developed a good working relationship.
He recently helped her keep a ladder-climbing FBI agent from ruining an innocent man’s life by callously targeting him for prosecution in order to protect the fact the FBI had penetrated the communications of a group of the Russian Mafia.
He hoped he could call on her for help, especially since she lived in New Mexico where his daughter was located.
“Diane, this is Jesse, I think I need your help. I don’t know if you remember me talking about my daughter, Julie?”
“Are you kidding? That’s all you talked about.”
“Well, she’s gone off the deep end and is living in New Mexico in some kind of Mormon cult. I checked the head honcho—they call him the Prophet—and there’s nothing on him I could use. And she’s an adult, so I can’t just go get her.
“But something’s fishy. We went out to visit her and weren’t allowed on the property. The guys who kept us out were armed with assault rifles.
“Jeanie and I are at our wit’s end. You’re the only person I know in New Mexico that I trust who can do something. I’m willing to pay. Can you help me?”
“Give me all the information you have. I’ll talk to The Crew to see what we can do and I’ll get back to you. You’ll hear from me soon.”
After she hung up, Diane pushed back from her chair and ran her fingers through her hair in frustration.
“Damn,” she thought. “I have to finish the report for the risk analysis. I don’t need the interruption now.” But Owens was a friend and a good someone to have in her Rolodex.
She sighed and picked up her phone and dialed John, The Crew’s in-house computer genius. “Hey John, are you up for another adventure?”
“What kind of adventure?”
She pictured him sitting cross-legged in his chair with three computer screens on the desk in his messy overcrowded college professor’s office.
“Do you remember the DOJ IG guy who helped us last time? Well, his daughter—she’s 21 or 22, I think—has taken off and is living with some kind of cult up north here in New Mexico. Could you run a check on the group and the leader?”
“Doesn’t sound too complicated. Sure. Just give me what information you’ve got.”
“OK, ready to copy?”
“Shoot.”
“The leader’s name is David Warren. The cult is called Gate to Heaven’s Glory. And the property is GHG Ranch. It’s located in Regina in Sandoval County.”
“Got it. I’ll get back to you when I’ve got something.”
Diane dialed the phone again. “Hello Phil, how’s Melanie? Hear you guys are getting soaked.”
Phil was a retired Special Forces officer married to a lovely woman who was also a gifted psychic and—of all things—a talented mechanic. They lived on Whidbey Island in Washington state.
“Oh, she’s going fine, but I’m afraid my vegetable garden doesn’t like all this rain right now. Too much, too soon. What’s up?”
“Do you remember Jesse Owens from the DOJ’s IG office?”
“Sure. He did us a solid getting that idiot FBI backstabber off of Dave’s back. What about him?”
“Well, he just called me, and apparently, his daughter is living in a cult here in New Mexico. When he and his wife went out to visit, they were run off by armed men.
“He asked if we could look into it. He said he’d be willing to pay. That’s a new one for us.”
“And you want me to pass on the information to Melanie and see what she can see.”
“Exactly. Would she be willing?”
“You said there’s a young woman in trouble?”
“It seems so.”
“Then I don’t even need to ask her. Give me what you’ve got.”
Diane gave him the information. “Oh, one more thing. Could you do a Google Map recon of the Regina area from your military perspective? I’ll do the same from a police point-of-view.”
“Sure. Sounds like you think this could need some boots on the ground.”
“Yeah, I’ve got a hunch it just might.”
She hung up and called her boyfriend Peter Delgado, a respected artist and The Crew’s second psychic.
“Hey lovely lady, what’s up with a call this early?”
She passed on the information and finished with, “How would you feel about me coming out and spending the night? You could feed me, take me riding, and then have your way with me.”
“You wanton wench. What are you up for?”
“I was thinking about your spaghetti Bolognese, even if you do make it with textured soy instead of cow. The price I pay for loving a vegan.”
They had known each other since they were in grade school and were absolutely devoted. But, after being separated by most of the twenty years of Diane’s Air Force career, she still enjoyed her space and chose to live in the little adobe house that had been her childhood home.
Peter, on the other hand, lived in a large monolithic dome on the property his family had occupied for three generations. The size and luxury of his home attested to his very successful career as a painter.
Two hours later and disgusted, Diane pushed back from her desk. She had just gone over the same sentence four times and still couldn’t get it the way she wanted.
Sighing, she gave up and pulled up Regina on Google Maps. She could start to see what the place looked like before she needed to leave for Peter’s Valley.
“Let’s see what you’ve got GHG Ranch”, she thought to herself. “Hmm, the damn place is certainly in the middle of nowhere. It’s just a cluster of buildings. What about local law?”
She clicked on the area around the ranch. It was located in Sandoval County. Rio Arriba County bordered it on the north and east. The Jicarilla Apache Reservation was to the west.
“Not much in the way of law enforcement and certainly not close enough to provide any kind of quick response”, she mused.
When she changed to 3d mode, she found it wasn’t even enabled. There didn’t appear to be enough interest for that level of detail. She closed her computer. She’d have to wait for John to come up with something.
“I wonder if he’ll find any complaints from the neighbors?”
While Diane did her police-oriented map reconnaissance, Phil looked at the terrain around GHG Ranch. It sat in what looked like a wide floodplain. There were mountains not too far away to the east and west, but not much concealment on the west side of the complex of buildings that constituted the ranch cum town.
“I’ll bet they’ve got sensors”, he thought. “If they had armed guards, that’s a good bet and one that will give us problems.
“Whoa old son, you’re already planning a raid and we don’t even know if we’ve got anything more than an overly protective father. Let’s see what Melanie and Peter come up with.”
Peter had been too busy cooking and anticipating his evening with Diane to do any remote viewing of the group. But Melanie had been more diligent.
She started by focusing on David Warren. Images flashed of a man in his 50s, or maybe even a well-preserved 60. He was rotund and had a full head of white hair being brushed by a woman.
The woman was slavishly devoted. A younger woman stood nearby. But instead of devotion, she exuded loathing and fear.
She switched her focus to the group and felt a chaotic jumble of emotions. Some women were like satisfied cats. Others were cornered rats, fearful and terrified.
“That’s a strange image”, she thought. She rarely received images that went beyond simple physical scenes or strong emotions like fear and pain.
Then she felt a similar pattern with the men she sensed. Some were complacently satisfied while others were resentful. “This is not a happy place”, she mused.
She then turned her mind to Julie Owens, but nothing emerged. “I hope that doesn’t mean something has happened to her.”
She quickly wrote up her notes and sent them to John to be logged into the case file she was sure he’d already begun.
Having done her duty, she went to the kitchen where Phil was humming happily while he prepared shepherd’s pie for dinner.
He turned as she walked in. “Anything interesting?”
“Yes. This GHG Ranch is a very unhappy place.”
“How so?”
“It’s like there are two groups. One is happy and contented while the other is angry and frustrated. If you combine that with those armed guards that Jesse and his wife ran into, I think there is something to worry about.
“Oh, and I tried to focus on Julie but got nothing. I hope it was something as simple as she was sleeping and not sending out vibrations. Maybe Peter will find her.”
At that moment, Peter wasn’t thinking about anything but the woman lying next to him. Their skin glistening with sweat and their breathing labored, they tried to recover from their usual vigorous lovemaking.
“Do you think we’ll be able to keep this up when we’re sixty?” he asked.
“Of course, we will. We’re as strong as we were at 18 when I took your virginity in the back of your old pickup.”
“Ah yes, my senior prom. Those are good memories. But seriously, sixty is less than twenty years away.”
“So, we’ll die of a heart attack making love.”
She paused. “Can I get serious for a minute?”
Not quite ready to leave their light-hearted banter behind, he answered, “You’ve earned it. I’m putty in your hands my beautiful and wanton wench.”
“Did you remote view that bunch up north?”
“You just had to make me feel guilty. Between finishing my painting and making dinner for you, I didn’t have time.”
“Would you do it now please after we shower? I’ve got a bad feeling about this. I don’t know why.
“Maybe your psychic powers are rubbing off on me,” then hitting him playfully, “or maybe you injected me with it along with all your little swimmers?”
They trooped into his massive two-headed shower stall and took a workman-like shower. He then climbed the stairs to the meditation corner in his studio while she got herself a cup of coffee and sat in front of the cold fireplace.
As he sank deeper into meditation his vision swirled like black clouds boiling up from a volcano. He felt red anger whirling around blue calm. Underlying it all was a presence, like a hairy spider sitting in the middle of a web, waiting for the next moth to become trapped.
But, as much as he directed his mind toward Julie, there was a void…nothing
A half-hour later, solemn-faced, he came down to join her.
Her heart skipped a beat when she saw his face. “Is it bad?”
He nodded. “There’s conflict and anger there. But I couldn’t find any sense of Julie. I checked Melanie’s report in the database and she sensed the same thing: conflict, but no trace of Julie.
“You need to call Jesse tomorrow and ask him to send something of Julie’s—both here and to Melanie—so we can have a stronger link to her.
“I wouldn’t tell him we’re afraid she’s not there, just that we need it to focus better. He’s going to have enough trouble with the psychic stuff as it is.
“You didn’t tell him about it last time, did you?”
She shook her head. “I didn’t want him to get squirrely about investigating the sheriff and the feeb based on psychic sightings.”
He stood up and held out his hand to her. “Come on, let’s go to bed. That session took it out of me.”
