Page 9 of Toy

I smiled and shook my head. “No. You’ve been too zonked out on the painkillers until this afternoon.”

“Have you heard anything about Tom?”

I quickly filled him in on the conversation I had with the detective after Tom’s body was taken away.

“Jesus. I really messed his face up that bad?” Mason asked. “I don’t even remember that part.”

I propped myself up on one elbow and looked down at him. “You did. As far as I know, they still haven’t officially identified the body,” I replied. “But I spoke to the police a few days ago, and they said they’ve tracked down a direct relative. A sister who’s been living in Texas. She stopped speaking to Tom back in 1999 when he joined the cult with all the other guys, and she thought he died in the plane crash in 2011. But she flew in to help the cops and give them DNA to compare to his so they can confirm he was actually alive all along. Until you got him, that is.”

“How long will that take?”

I shrugged. “They said a week or so.”

“Well, we know it was him,” Mason said, two lines appearing between his brows as his expression darkened. “And you heard what he said to us, too. He said Jacob sent him.”

I nodded. “Yeah. So we know for sure that my dad is alive,” I said with a heavy sigh. “You were right all along. The cult guys are still out there.”

“Sorry. I hate being right about something so fucked up.” Mason rubbed his chin, hesitating for a moment. “Where do you think they’ve been hiding all this time?”

“No idea. I’ve been thinking about it for ages, and I don’t even know how they got away.”

“Probably a similar way to the one you described when you were pretending to know where they were. It was pretty convincing.”

I drew my brows together. “Maybe. But I don’t think any of them are hiding out on a farm near a small town.”

“How come?”

“You know how I went and lived in a bunch of small places over the years, and I always wound up moving away from them?”

He nodded. “Yeah.”

“It was because I always got recognized. There’s just no anonymity in small towns. Even though I’d changed my name and appearance, there was always one person who saw through it and figured out who I really was in the end. I didn’t like people knowing it was me, so whenever that happened, I packed up and left.” I paused to take a deep breath. “It would be the same for my father and the others. People would recognize them eventually.”

“True. So you think they might’ve been hiding in plain sight in a big city?”

“Maybe. I guess it could work, right? In massive places like New York, people don’t look at other people all that much. Most of them probably wouldn’t even bat an eyelid if they walked right past Chris Hemsworth.”

Mason nodded. “Yeah. Your dad could probably stand on a street corner all day and no one would even notice.”

“Exactly.” My lips tightened. “Then again, I doubt he’d want to risk it. It would also be impossible for him and the others to start a new commune in such a big place. People would notice, right? And I doubt he’d be happy without his regular lifestyle. He’d need to get all his bullshit started again.”

“Yeah, I’d say so.” Mason wrapped an arm around me as I lay down again, snuggling myself against him. “That reminds me. I always wondered something about your father.”

“What’s that?”

“Do you think he and the other guys actually believed their own bullshit back then? Or were they all faking it to justify their pathetic need to control women? I could never really tell.”

I hesitated. “You know, I’ve often wondered the same thing,” I said softly, staring up at the high white ceiling. “I think my father made up all the stuff about the visions from the supposed ‘new God’ to try and get people on his side, and he definitely knew it was bullshit at the time. He just wanted to control people. I think the other men knew it was bullshit too. But they all wanted it so badly they were happy to go along with anything my father said.”

“And they were happy to kill for it, too,” Mason said stiffly.

“Yeah.” A harrowing image of my mother’s bleeding, bullet-riddled body flashed in my mind, and I gulped and closed my eyes, trying to picture anything else. “They wanted it to be real, so they made it real. I think somewhere along the line, they all started to genuinely believe in the fake religion. It was just so convenient for them—a lifestyle where they could treat women the way they wanted without any consequences. For men like that, who sincerely believe women should be an inferior slave class, it’s impossible to resist. They’d do anything to keep it going.”

“And they’re probably still doing it today.”

I shivered at the thought of more girls and women being tortured, raped, and killed by the cult. There would be no mercy for them. The men had proved that time and time again when I was in their grasp.

“I just can’t believe how sick they are,” I said softly. “They killed their own wives and kids.”

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