Devon followed first, still pulling on a jacket she’d pulled out of the pile. She found Rawley digging around in the tool storage bin in the bed of his old truck. He removed a rifle and a very large, very intimidating knife in a leather holster of some kind. She didn’t gasp but she did say, “If I had known you had these things, I would’ve been afraid to stay with you.”

“Always locked up tight, chickadee. Wouldn’t leave nothing like this around a child. You sit in back with me—tell me the lay of the land while Cooper drives.”

“All right.” She touched his arm. “Rawley, I’ll get her back, won’t I?”

“You think I’d do this for the fun of it? You wanna help? Do what I say to do and don’t argue. What I sure the hell don’t need right now is the Keystone Kops following me around the jungle.”

“Rawley, it’s a forest.”

“It is what it is. Cooper!” he shouted.

The man came scrambling out of the bar, Spencer behind him carrying a jacket and pair of Cooper’s boots. Once Cooper was behind the wheel Rawley said, “Get us over to Highway 5 and head south. Be quiet and listen to Devon—she’s the only intel we got.”

* * *

Spencer sat in the front beside Cooper and listened to Rawley question Devon; he listened to Devon answer. She had told him a great deal about her experience in this commune, but he’d never really created a visual before now. He never really put himself in her position until tonight.

“What are the buildings in the front, by the gate?” Rawley asked.

“A long driveway, a long yard, a very big house, kind of an old country farmhouse, almost like an inn—two stories with a wraparound porch. A barn and south of the barn, a chicken coop. Between the barn and house, a large dirt patch, a place we played, a place the men parked those big SUVs. Behind the barn is a corral. Pastures and our produce gardens back up to the river.”

“Fence around all that land?”

“No, just around the compound—they let the stock out of the compound and there is just normal pasture fencing. They don’t worry about the cows or horses getting away. There aren’t that many animals. It’s the people who are fenced in who are at risk.”

“How far to the river from the gate?”

“At least a half mile. Almost a mile. There’s a bridge—the men would drive their SUVs across the bridge because over there was Jacob’s house, right between two big barns. They’re not barns—that’s where Jacob was growing marijuana.”

“Is there any other road inside except for that front road?”

“I don’t think so, but I don’t know. We never went over there. Jacob would take women to his house one at a time. I think there are only four women left there—Lorna, Laine, Pilly and Charlotte. And four children. When I got there four years ago or so, there were eighteen women and six men and a bunch of kids. In the past couple of years, people started leaving and Jacob started getting strange. Angry and paranoid and weird. I think he knew law enforcement suspected him of stuff.”

“How did you get out?”

“There was a hole in the fence behind the chicken coop and Laine told me to carry Mercy and to run down the road—there was a truck waiting to give me a ride over the mountain. She arranged everything at a Farmers’ Market.”

“Why didn’t people just walk away at that market?” Rawley asked. “That market’s a busy place.”

“Because, Rawley—the kids were home, inside the fence.”

“Where do the men keep the guns?”

“With them, I think. There’s a bunkhouse back by the marijuana barns. There were never guns in our house.”

Spencer listened as she described the property, a beautiful big farm on a lovely river in a valley where food and shelter and friendship was plentiful... And where they were surreptitiously guarded by men with guns, men who were there to serve the master, the man who took them one at a time to his house for sex and liked to say they were all one big happy family.

“I think we were part of Jacob’s fantasy or delusion,” she told Rawley. “He wanted to be the grand pooh-bah, the big daddy, the king of his little kingdom, served by women, loved by his many children. He hardly ever left the farm. The men came and went pretty freely, but Jacob only left occasionally. He liked his animals, his gardens, his family. He liked to walk across the bridge to the house, sit at the head of the table with one of the children on his knee, ask us about our day, then lecture a little or talk about himself or maybe rant against the government. He wrote volumes on his beliefs, his philosophies and believed his writings would one day be legendary. There were times it seemed so lovely. Then there were times it seemed so sick and demented. One thing—once you were there, there was no leaving. And they didn’t let people inside. He used the excuse that we were a private religious order. But there wasn’t much religion going on there. Reese, the oldest of us, called it a tribe. A militant tribe.”

Rawley asked the same questions over and over again. Devon answered, and her answers were consistent. Spencer memorized her answers, as he assumed Cooper was doing.

Spencer was beginning to understand what she had been through in a way he hadn’t before, even though she’d told him about her experience. This was completely different and for the first time he was impacted by how trapped she must have felt and how much courage it must have taken for her to flee. And, to his shame, he realized how much trust she must have churned up to be able to trust someone like him.

Had he really done what he’d done? Chased her, seduced her and then rejected her because of sudden terror that he’d somehow be hurt again? He felt the fool and he wanted to stop everything right now so he could explain, beg her to understand and forgive him, to tell her he was really not that kind of wimp. If they got Mercy and got through this, he would never let her down again.

Ahead were the flashing lights of a patrol car.

“Do not turn around,” Rawley said sharply. “Pull up to the copper. Ask him why the road is closed. Tell him you’re just taking a shortcut to Canyonville where your folks have a farm. Let the copper turn you around. You turn yourself around they’ll be after you that fast.”

And Cooper did just that, pulled right up to the officer and put down his window. “What’s happening? Accident?”

“Where you headed, sir?”

“My folks have a spread near Canyonville. I been taking this shortcut for years. Can I get through?”

“Road’s closed, I’m afraid.” He peered into the car. “I better have a look at your driver’s license and registration.”

“You bet,” Cooper said, fishing for those things in the glove box and his back pocket.

The patrolman shone a flashlight on those items while he asked, “What takes you to your folks just now?”

“Hunting, what else? We get there tonight, start up first light.”

He looked into the backseat. “You hunt, little lady?”

Devon laughed. “Please. I cook!”

“I like that,” he said. Another patrol car pulled up behind them. “Get outta here,” he said. “Road’s closed.”

Then Cooper took his turn and headed back in the opposite direction.

“Now what?” Devon asked.

“Now we go upstream and head down the river. I hope you swim.”

“Like a beaver,” she said. “If they find out what we’re doing, will we be in trouble?” she asked Rawley.

He laughed. “Trouble? I reckon we’ll prolly go straight to jail.”

Eighteen

Laine spent a couple of days at Jacob’s house, in and out of her bonds. Jacob gave her water and he brought her back a small plate of food from the house now and then. It was hard to stay in character as a meek and submissive female while he kept her tied, and when he did talk to her he ranted angrily about how he knew she had betrayed him, had betrayed them all.

Of course he didn’t know the truth. She hadn’t confessed to a thing.

Laine slept upright in the straight-back kitchen chair, testing her binding, trying to scoot to the counter to see if she could reach into a kitchen drawer to get something that would cut her ropes. When he came home from the big house after dinner to find she had moved, he gave her a black eye and split lip and then lectured her for an hour on his plan for his Fellowship and the conspirators who would strip them of their bounty, leave them homeless and poor. Everyone who wasn’t with them was against them.

And then he came back after what she presumed was his dinner at the house, except he had Mercy with him. She gasped when she saw him and said, “Is Devon back?”

“I’m finished with Devon, but this is my daughter and she stays with me. If I untie you and take you to the house with the other women, will you stay? Or will you just run?”

Her mind raced. What had he done with Devon? Had he hurt her, perhaps killed her to kidnap this child? Because, as she knew, her former friend Devon would not have given up Mercy, not at the point of a knife. “Why would I run?” she asked him. “You’ll just catch me and bring me back. I’ll take Mercy to the house, see she’s fed and put to bed and I’ll—”

He laughed at her. He grinned and said, “I wouldn’t put that kind of pressure on you.” He untied her and said, “Come with us, Sister Laine. We’ll take you to the house—you can help the women with the children. I’ll keep Mercy with me.”

“I’ll take care of her, Jacob. I’m sure you have too much to do to take care of her. She needs to be with the children.”

“I guess you really do think I’m an idiot. Stand up.”

She stood from the chair and turned to face him.

“Mercy, I want you to sit at the table here until I get back. Don’t move, don’t leave the table for any reason or I will be very angry with you. Do you understand?” The child looked up at him fearfully and nodded. Laine noted that the children were not ordinarily afraid of Jacob, but perhaps whatever act he had committed to gain the custody of this child had filled her with fear. And then he said to Laine, “Let’s go.”

He held the door for her and she preceded him out of the house, walking toward the bridge. She was almost there when he said, “Sister Laine, you really don’t have anything I want anymore. Why don’t you just leave now?”

She slowly turned toward him. “How am I to leave? The gate is locked.”

He gave her a patient smile. “Then I suppose you should find a way. You’ve found other ways. Maybe you left a hole in the fence somewhere. If you can get out, you can run down the road—the police have blocked the road. You can just run to them—they’ll take you in.”

“Jacob, why don’t you just ask them what they want? It can’t be anything so terrible. You always took good care of your family, you always—”

“They’ll take all of this if I let them in,” he said, gesturing around. “And I won’t leave a single thing for them to take! And when they take me down, they’ll be forced to show the world my work. Good work. Thousands of pages of brilliant work inspired by my beliefs.”

And suddenly she feared the worst. If he didn’t escape, he would be on a suicide mission. She had known for months it was possible he was a thundering lunatic and might do something desperate, but she wasn’t sure what...or how. “Jacob, where are the men?” she asked suspiciously.

“Yes, where are the men? Well,” he said, turning his head right and left as if looking for them. “Where are they?” he asked facetiously. “Not with me. And if they’re not with me, then they’re against me.” And with that he left her there and went back toward his house.