35. Freya
35
FREYA
G rowing up in a cult might be the only childhood more messed up than being raised by a serial killer.
I close the latest article I’ve been reading and look out the windshield to the long empty road. It’s warm outside and the beige desert landscape seems about as dry and tired as my eyes feel.
I’ve spent pretty much the whole morning since we landed reading up on every bit of information I can find on the Dying Angels. There isn’t an awful lot out there because they keep themselves as isolated as possible but cults, as a whole, don’t tend to be nice, cozy places.
Jeramiah Lock gives me the creeps.
He does a good job of skirting the line, never putting the cult at risk of being investigated again but there’s nothing illegal about touting views that women are precious commodities that should be protected from the sins of the world so they can contribute to a pure, holy household. At its best its chauvinism wrapped up in a pretty package. At its worst its domestic abuse hidden behind a false religion.
My mother never stood a chance.
I fiddle with the engagement ring on my finger, part of me wishing it wasn’t just for show.
Oz catches the action from the driver’s seat and I turn my neck to look at him.
“Do you ever wonder what our lives would be like if we hadn’t ended up here? If I’d had a normal childhood and you didn’t find the dark web at fourteen?” I ask.
“Not if that means I wouldn’t have met you.”
I shrug. “Maybe we’d have met at college or something. You’d have been studying computer science and I’d have opened a bakery.”
Oz snorts.
“What?”
Oz’s eyebrows peak above his glasses. “You’d be bored out of your mind in a bakery.”
“Not if I was normal,” I counter. “Not without all the trauma.”
Oz takes his eyes off the road. “I would do anything to take your trauma away for you, but surviving your childhood is what made you the strong, incredible, brave woman you are. If I could take away your pain I would, but I wouldn’t change a single thing about you.” Oz’s gaze drops to the ring on my finger. “And that doesn’t mean we can’t have the normal things. The wedding and the white picket fence.” The corner of his lips tips up. “It just means we’ll have an out of this world security system and the ability to run background checks on our daughter’s boyfriends.”
I laugh as sparks flutter in my chest. It still stuns me silent that River, Eli, Jude, and Oz see me for who I am, like me for who I am.
Oz shifts his hands on the steering wheel. “You want to go over the plan again?”
I shake my head but give him a small smile, so he doesn’t worry. “I’m good.” I twist the ring again and bite my lip. “Besides it’s not like I exactly have to pretend I’m hopelessly in love with you.”
Oz breathes in. Takes his eyes off the road for a second too long. “That’s good, because I won’t be pretending either.”
My heart blooms. I want to crawl across the car and kiss him like he’s my life force but we’re still driving, and Oz turns his attention back to the road.
I face the front too, my lips tipping up into a smile. I feel like a teenager who just got asked to prom by her crush. It’s not quite an ‘I love you’ and I don’t know what compelled me to say it in this moment, on the way to talk to a psychopath who may have known my mother. Except maybe that everything else feels like it’s falling apart.
Josh still hasn’t woken up. Angelica is god knows where and my father is devolving faster than any of us predicted. There’s every chance we’re too late and he’s already gotten to my mother, already finished what he started all those years ago.
I should be drowning. I would be drowning if it weren’t for the guys. If Eli hadn’t forced me to get some sleep. If Oz, River, and Jude hadn’t been there waiting when we got off the jet.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m still terrified of what might happen. I still don’t know if I’m ready to face my father again or if I’ll ever be, but I know, for the first time in my life, I’m not doing this alone.
We did, however, decide five FBI agents rocking up to the compound wouldn’t be received very well. So for the next hour or so Oz is my fiancé and we’re trying to track down my mother before the wedding. The others are waiting at a roadside diner a few miles back.
The desert makes the road feel endlessly long but eventually a turn comes up on our right. There’s no sign, but Oz flicks the blinker and we turn onto a long dirt road. Dry, green shrubs are dotted across the pale sand, and I swear I catch the glimmer of a camera nestled behind one.
There’s nothing for miles around except for the compound ahead. A barbed wire fence runs the perimeter of the property, two wooden outposts on either side of a gate covered in more barbed wire.
Oz slows as we approach, rolling to a stop as two men step in front of the gate, rifles pointed right at us.
“Well, that’s one way to welcome guests,” Oz mutters.
“This is private property. Sinners aren’t welcome here.” The man’s voice filters through the open window.
I raise a brow at Oz then fix my face and lean my head out the window. “Sinners? Oh Lord, I sure hope I’m not a sinner. I say my prayers and cross my t’s every day I assure you.”
Oz rubs his beard, trying to hide his smile at the heavy southern belle accent I’m putting on. Moving slowly, he opens his door and climbs out, holding his hands up. “We’re hoping you can help us,” he says. “You see we’re getting married next month, and my fiancée here wants nothing more than to have her ma at our wedding. They’ve been estranged for years but we were told she used to live here.”
Oz’s accent is far more restrained and perhaps a tad more realistic. I make a mental note to tone mine down a bit even if this is the most fun I’ve had in a while.
The two guards eye each other. They’re dressed in white cotton trousers and loose-fitting peasant shirts which makes the big black guns all the more unsettling. “Told by who?” the one with cropped brown hair demands.
I hop out of the car and join Oz, slipping my hand into his and hugging his arm. “Oh well, maybe ‘told’ is the wrong word. She wrote about y’all. Said the Dying Angels were her saviors and, well I guess, I’m hoping you can be mine too.” I beam at them, like it’s perfectly normal to be held at gun point by religious extremists.
The shorter of the guards shakes his head. “Well, you were told wrong. Best run along now, little girl.”
Clearly, we’re not welcome but they must have decided we don’t pose an immediate threat because they lower their weapons.
I let tears fill my eyes and sob my words. “Oh, but please, you don’t understand, I’ve just got to have my mother at my wedding. It just wouldn’t be holy if she weren’t there.”
Oz pinches my hip.
Oops, so much for toning it down.
The guard shifts. “Listen, woman, you’ve got to go?—”
“Issac.”
The guard, Issac, stills as a man with long brown hair and eyes too shrewd to be kind strolls over to the gate from inside the compound. “You didn’t tell me we had visitors,” the man says. His hands are in his pockets, the casual stance at odds with the threat in his voice.
A young boy stands next to him, no more than eleven or twelve. His hair’s cropped short and he’s standing to attention like a child soldier, his hands clasped behind his back.
Both the boy and the man are in the same white cotton get up as the guards, the only difference the wooden bead necklaces hanging around the man’s neck.
Jeramiah Lock.
I take them in, and my eyes catch on a teenage girl standing a few steps behind Jeremiah. Unlike the men, she’s dressed all in black, with cargo pants and military boots. Her gaze meets mine and sparks.
“They were just leaving, Father,” Issac says.
Neither Oz, nor I make a move to go.
Jeramiah picks me apart with his stare over the low gate. There’s an intelligence in his eyes he’s trying to hide. He has a master’s in theology but a degree in business, which makes me think taking over this cult was less a god-driven passion and more of a calculated ploy for power.
“Well, friends, what brings you to our humble home?”
“I’m looking for my mother, Father,” I say, taking a gamble his ego will like the religious title and flashing him a saccharine sweet smile.
“Oh?” His interest piques.
The boy looks over at me but all it takes is Jeremiah clicking his tongue for him to jerk back into position, staring straight ahead.
My body goes rigid. Everything about this man screams abusive and I should get a freaking Oscar for keeping the smile on my face. “Yes, Sir. She used to live here but she would have left over twenty years ago now.”
The girl shifts. It’s subtle and I wouldn’t have noticed if I wasn’t watching her, curious as to what her role in this place is.
Jeremiah gives a placid smile. “Your mother must have been a very lost young woman. Not many people choose to leave paradise once they’ve found it.”
“So, you remember her?” I ask, my accent slipping a little.
He looks me up and down. He sees her in me, I know he does, but he holds my gaze, his face set. “I can’t say I do.”
I squeeze Oz’s arm to stop myself from breaking character and let my disappointment rise to the surface, over the top and saturated. “Oh, that’s okay. I understand. I hate to intrude further but would you mind awfully if we had a look around.
“You see, I haven’t seen my ma in years, and it would just make my day to see where she grew up. To feel close to her again, you know?” I lay it on so thick Issac is squirming.
He looks at his leader, but Jeremiah’s affable pretense has been stripped away. The early wrinkles on his forehead have deepened, his eyes locked on Oz’s trouser leg, just above his shoe. Right where Oz’s gun is hidden.
Shit.
Jeremiah’s smile is sharp. “Actually, I think it’s best you leave now. This is private property after all.”
I go to reply but he cuts me off. “Issac, take the quadbike, make sure our unexpected guests don’t have any trouble finding their way back to the road.”
The teenage girl who’s been hovering behind Jeremiah steps forward. “I can take them,” she says.
Jeremiah turns to face her, and the girl strategically drops her gaze. “That way Issac can continue to keep watch. If that’s what the Lord wishes, Father.”
Jeremiah makes the girl sweat for a moment before dipping his head and turning back to the boy. “Come Samuel, your sister will take care of this.”
The boy goes white.
I don’t want to let Jeremiah walk away but Oz takes my hand in his and holds tight, stopping me from doing something stupid like going all stabby on the psychopathic cult leader.
We get back in the car and the girl follows us on the quadbike. She has me on edge. Everything I read about the Dying Angels suggested they treat women as pure, helpless creatures. A quadbike riding teenage girl dressed all in black does not tally with that view. Before we get to the road, said girl turns off and signals for us to stop.
Oz pulls the car over.
“You think it’s God’s will for the kid to make us coyote food?”
Oz shrugs and switches his gun from his ankle holster to the one at his waist. “If it is, I’m a quicker draw than her.”
The weapon is hidden under his knitted sweater, but the girl takes one look at us and says, “You’re FBI, right? Or police?” She sits side on, perched on the edge of the quadbike, her fingers picking at the mud splattered seat. Her hair’s tied back in a tight ponytail and I realize what it is about her that’s making me so unsettled. She reminds me of a teenage me.
“What makes you think that?” Oz asks.
The kid nods to the gun beneath Oz’s sweater. “The Elders are kind of paranoid. We’re all taught how to spot a weapon.” She shifts and glances back the way we came. She’s nervous but trying to hide it. “The woman you’re looking for, I know who she is.”
My heart falters but suspicion edges my gaze. “How old are you?”
She tilts up her chin. “Sixteen.”
“You wouldn’t have even been born before she left. How could you know her?”
“She was my mom’s best friend. No one’s supposed to talk about her but sometimes Mom would show us photos from when they were kids.”
Oz nods and crosses his arms. “Okay. Do you know her name? Where she went?”
The kid nods. “I’ll tell you everything I know.” She stands up, planting her boots on the sand. “But you’re going to help me first.”
“Are you in danger?” I take a step forward, but Oz holds his arm out to stop me going farther.
She doesn’t say anything, just keeps looking at me.
“What’s your name, kid?” Oz asks after a moment.
The girl’s gaze shifts to Oz. “Rebekah.” She takes a breath. “The boy with Jeremiah is my brother. He’s almost thirteen, which means in one month he’ll be initiated.”
My skin crawls. “Initiated how?”
She crosses her arms. “To become a Dying Angel, you must take the life of a sinner.”
My mouth parts, the dry desert air thick on my breath. Jeremiah’s going to make that boy a killer.
I move Oz’s arm aside and go to Rebekah. She’s just trying to save her brother. I can relate to that. “What do you need?”
Her eyes widen ever so slightly, and she sits back on the quadbike, like she can’t quite believe her plan worked. “I can get us out of the compound tonight, but we have nothing. No money, no ID.”
I look back at Oz and he gives me a nod. “You know the diner down the road?”
Rebekah bobs her head, the hope in her eyes making her look softer, younger. “Yes.”
“Meet us there at eleven this evening, we’ll have what you need.”
Her shoulders shake as she lets out a breath. “I’ll tell you everything, I swear.” She straddles the quadbike and speeds off back down the trail.
The tires kick up sand, creating a beige haze.
“Any chance we can just raid the whole compound and arrest Jeremiah?” If they’re killing people, we might be able to take them down now.
“All we’ve got is her word. I doubt any of the other members would be willing to back her up.”
“They’re making kids into murderers,” I say, knowing just what that feels like.
“Hey,” Oz tugs on my hand, “we’ll get Rebekah to tell us as much as she can. She might be willing to work with the FBI to build a case.”
He better be right because there’s no way I’m letting Jeremiah go free. I’m well acquainted with what evil feels like and Jeremiah Lock could give my father a run for his money.