Nikki was heading straight for the grocery store R.J. had entered moments before. She hadn't uttered a word about her rash decision. She had just sprung from the car catching Emily completely by surprise.  She was halfway across the parking lot by the time Emily caught up to her. Emily grabbed her by the shoulder but instead of slowing the other woman, the hand only served as a towline dragging her along.

"Stop," Emily said with as much command as she could manage seeing as she was being pulled like a child. "Are you trying to screw this whole thing?"

"I need to talk to him." Nikki spun around and Emily had the chance to regain her balance. "I have to explain things to him."

"Not now." Emily considered using the pistol as a bargaining chip but she didn't want to overuse it. Nikki was more manageable as a friend than a hostage. "If Max spots us, he'll never show himself. I can't get him to call it off, if I can't talk to him."

Nikki's fierceness faded and she seemed wilt in the sun bleached lot.

Despite what Lauren said, Emily was able to lie convincingly. It wasn't Maxwell she was waiting for, but Amy.

Ever since the night before, when they first put eyes on R.J., Amy hadn't been with him. At first, Emily had assumed he'd stashed her somewhere, and followed him hoping he'd lead them to her. But then the long frantic hours he spent searching the state park put a new perspective on things. The girl was out there somewhere, probably lost. Emily could just as easily start looking for her but the smart move was to stick on Blass and wait for her to show.

In the language of weaknesses, Amy's was being alone. She needed help and right now, the only one she had to help her was R.J. Amy would be doing everything in her power to get to him.

However, if Amy saw he wasn't alone, she might get spooked and stay hidden.

"Let's go back to the car," Emily said, changing the hard grip on Nikki's shoulder to a comforting squeeze.

Ever since Emily had wheedled out the truth, Nikki had been pensive and sullen. It didn't look like confession had been good for her soul. Not that Emily had expected it would be. Despite popular belief, Emily had never found that the act brought anything but trouble. Secrets were secrets for a reason and a person's guilt was best left unspoken—for the guilty person, that was. Emily was much better off now that she knew the story behind how Nikki had met R.J. and didn't regret forcing it out of her for a moment.

They had just entered New Mexico, when Emily began to suspect that Nikki wasn't on the up-and-up and pushed her for answers.

"I was hired," Nikki had admitted.

"By who?"

She had been hesitant to respond to the question. It wasn't just reluctance to admit her lies but also uncertainty of how to put it all into words. Nikki scratched at the wispy hair on the back of her neck and chewed on an imaginary bite of food as she tried to formulate her thoughts.

"I was working in this awful hash-slinging joint, yeah?" she started. "Seemed like after my restaurant shut down each job got worse and none of them lasted long. Part of it was the economy. Places kept closing. But a lot of it was my attitude. Once you're your own boss, it's hard to get ordered around by some ass who knows less than half you do. My boyfriend had just left me. I was behind on my car payments. The repo men were probably days away."

"Boo-hoo. Does this have a point?" The way Nikki flinch at her words made Emily feel slightly guilty about her rough tone but she was too on edge to give it more than a passing care. She had thought she had set off to rescue Amy with R.J.'s ex. An innocent—a civilian. Now it looked like she was sharing the car with a fucking grifter, or worse.

"I'm getting to it." But the interruption had derailed the story and she had to take a minute to compose herself before continuing. "One day after my shift, this clown approached me on the way to my car. He asked if I wanted to make same easy money for a service. You can guess what sort of service I assumed he was looking for, yeah? So I told him to keep his money and to go fuck himself instead. He just laughed and told me he had a business offer from some very powerful people."

"What people?"

Nikki kept talking ignoring the question. "He offered to buy me a drink and we could discuss it. He still seemed like some creep. But I'd just pulled an all-nighter and could use a shot or two, so we went to this bar nearby that was opening up for the day and he explained to me who he was and who he worked for."

Emily let her scowl ask the question again.

"Ever hear of Strafer? The musician?"

Emily slowly nodded as the she retrieved the memory from long term storage. "Played with that emo boy band, back when we would have been young enough to listen to boy bands."

"That's him. When he first brought up the name, I thought he was claiming to be Strafer—he sure as hell looked like the guy. But I knew he was dead of an overdose years ago. I'd heard that much even if I never listened to his music."

"Of course you didn't."

"But this guy introduces himself as McMillan. He tells me he represents The Society of the Immortal Blood. It's a group of people who honor this Strafer's memory. He said honor but later I learned that worship is a better word. They're fucking fanatics."

"So you're saying there's a bunch of assholes out there that worship some dead, second-rate rock star like a god?"

"More like a prophet than a god. Apparently the guy, whose real name was Kyle Silver, made all kind of predictions. Some of them appeared in the lyrics of his songs, most were only made public when his diaries were published posthumously. I flipped through one in a bookstore once." Nikki gave a shudder at the memory. "Read like the ramblings of a severe schizophrenic on bad acid. It was filled with all this end of the world shit and these freaky sketches of animal-human monsters. I don't know why, but some people believe it. You would think it would be a passing fad like the guy's music had been, but it's a growing movement."

"How many?"

"How the hell should I know?" Nikki spoke softly, almost in awe of the possible vastness of it. "I only ever saw McMillan and maybe two or three others. But do an internet search and you'll see there's a whole lot more of them. They have a registered church and everything. Most just seem to be hangers-on. Suckers who buy the books and show up at the meetings. But there are also the true believers. Total fucking nut cases. They show their devotion by dressing like Strafer and by—even weirder shit."

"Weirder-shit?" Emily was feeling like a parrot but Nikki seemed to need someone to draw these details out of her.

"Body modification. They get his tattoos. They have plastic surgery to look like him, yeah? Some are spitting-images to Strafer in his prime, before he got old and strung-out."

"I remember that Octomom case—the woman who had surgery to look like Angelina Joile. How the fuck can there be a group of people doing that?"

"If you don't believe me, Google it. There are photos of their rallies online. It'll make your skin crawl." Nikki drove in silence and Emily was beginning to think she'd have to prod her with another question, when she started up again. "But I only found out most of this afterwards. In the bar, McMillan kept things short. If he had been more forthcoming, I probably would have walked out. Or maybe not."

She bit her lip. It was the gesture of a young girl and Emily saw a glimpse of the vulnerable woman R.J. had fallen for. That poor deluded bastard.

"You see. After we sat down, he handed me five grand. I shoved it back in his face. But he said to keep it, no matter what I decided, just hear him out. So McMillan had my attention and I probably would have kept the money even if he started spouting out that crazy-ass cult stuff. Five bills wasn't going to solve all my troubles but it felt like it might."

"He wanted you to hook up with R.J. in exchange." Emily said guessing the rest.

"Basically. He said there was a man who was a regular at the restaurant. I still remembered how he put it: you make him breakfast every morning." Nikki's voice got husky and her eyes were misty. "McMillan just wanted me to make friends with him. Bump into him, when he came in and chit-chat. Maybe flirt a little. Then report back and he'd have more money for me. Simple, yeah?"

"So you sold him out?"

"I didn't even know him. Not then." Nikki's throat was tightening up and the words came out high-pitched and strained. "Haven't you ever done anything you're ashamed of?"

Girl, there isn't a car ride long enough to go into that, Emily thought but she said, "Nothing like that."

"They just wanted me to talk to him." Now the tears were streaming down her face. "But he was so lonely. So desperately lonely. I thought I could get more out of him if we were dating. And they'd pay me more."

"Pull over," Emily yelled, bracing herself against the dash as the car swerved out of its lane. "I don't want to die because you can't hold it together."

Nikki made a deep sniffing sound like a school boy getting ready spit or hock a luggie as one of Emily's foster brothers had called it. "I'm okay." And she was. Nikki had somehow sucked her tears and her guilt back up into her sinuses. "I figured it would just be for a couple of weeks. But McMillan always wanted more. And R.J. turned out to be remarkably tight-lipped. I knew he was lying to me about his job but no matter how close we got, he never opened up about it. Not until a few days ago, anyway. But there were always little things: names, schedules, that sort of stuff. McMillan was happy with anything I brought him, even a rundown on R.J.'s mood about work—whether he was excited or depressed or tired. Of course, that kind of info didn't pay very much."

A question sat like a sour taste on Emily tongue. She knew the answer didn't matter. She'd been with enough men to know a job was a job. But R.J. was her friend. He was part of the family. She had to ask, "And did you ever actually care about him?"

"Of course, I did." Nikki looked at her with shock as though she couldn't believe that Emily would even have doubted it—as though she hadn't been listening to her own story. "I still do. If I didn't, I wouldn't be driving across the country with..." She cut herself short and looked nervously through the windscreen.

With me. She wouldn't be here with me, the bitch with a gun.

Emily had the story. The parts of it she was willing to believe anyway. She was tempted not to believe any of it, but who would make up that crap about a body modifying cult?

Could she trust Nikki? No. But when had she ever worked a job with someone she could trust?

She led Nikki back to the car and away from R.J., happy to get out from such an exposed position in the half empty parking lot.

"So what do we do know?" Nikki asked.

"We watch and we wait."

Nikki seemed lost, her head kept turning back to the store as though willing R.J. to step out and see her.

Her confession had really fucked her up bad. Emily wondered if she told someone her whole truth or even a part of it, if it would affect her like that. If someone pointed a gun at her and made Emily reveal what Lauren and her were up to in California before Max came to the rescue, would she crumble and become a basket case?

She didn't plan on ever finding out.