Chapter 2
Chapter Two
Jefferson
For the 31st day in a row, my kicking heart threatens to drown out the noise of my 1969 Dodge Charger as I rumble past Georgie’s house.
I wish this incessant ticker of mine would cut it out with the theatrics. Constantly building up hope. Hope that gets dashed, day after day.
I’ve been doing this for a month, and still no sign of her.
Where is Georgie?
I know she lives here with her mom and siblings. With a few keyboard strokes and paid access to county records, her place of residence was easy to find. My job is finding people who skip out on bail, on court dates, on summonses.
And yet, the minute I use my privileges for personal reasons, I can’t seem to glimpse one law-abiding 19-year-old woman.
I search for her like it’s my job. Georgie is at the forefront of my mind when I open my eyes in the morning and when I close my eyes at night. I can still see the thick auburn rope of her hair that hangs to her waist. The defiant chin. The shoulders set in iron resolve, ready for god knows what.
Georgie is the bravest person I know. Crazy of me to think that after talking to her for five minutes, I know. But I’ve learned a few things about her in our time apart.
On this early summer morning, a group of auburn-haired kids play red-light-green-light on the scrubby front lawn of a brick ranch house along the highway, about a quarter mile from the church’s main campus. A political sign stands cock-eyed in the right-of-way, reading, “Mark Lund for Sheriff.” Over my dead body.
One problem at a time, Jefferson. First, find Georgie. Don’t concern yourself with local politics.
I suppose I could invest in a less conspicuous mode of transportation than a classic muscle car named Sonja, which I Frankensteined with salvaged Viper parts. What can I say? I’ve never been one for subtle. This car was my only hobby before I met Georgie.
This group of kids doesn’t glance my way. They’re used to lookie-loos by now. People from Darling Creek love to drive around and gawk at the polygamists, whether they support their right to this lifestyle or not.
As for me, I’d never heard of the Celestial Order of Covenant Kinship (or C.O.C.K, for short—are you kidding me?) before the day I met Georgie and her band of highly paranoid friends at that house in Bozeman while I was trying to pick up Orlyn Moffatt. Her friends looked at me like I was in league with the devil.
And when I said that name, they all went white.
I thought that Orlyn was a drifter wanted for questioning about that murder up in the mountains.
Turns out, that guy means something to some important people. Those people call him The Prophet, which is a pretty fucking eerie nickname if you ask me.
The bitch of it is, I also suspect that local law enforcement is aiding the old man in evading capture. I don’t have enough evidence to support that, but the way that murder investigation has been handled has been bad news all around for the county.
Not that I rely on cops to help me do my job, but when they actively try to sabotage and send me on wild goose chases? That is not good.
Now, the dirty cop—one Deputy Mark Lund—who “tipped” me off on the wrong address is now running for sheriff, and that’s a whole heap of trouble for the town of Darling Creek.
I wish I’d done more than simply give Georgie my card and tell her to call me. I probably looked like a creep, but I honestly meant it sincerely. I hadn’t meant it as a pickup line.
Her friend, Goldie, has been cautious about giving me too much information. That’s partially my fault.
I may not have started off on the right foot by showing up unannounced after tracking Goldie down at her and her husband’s house on Windgrave Mountain.
To their credit, Goldie and Barrett invited me in when they realized I was on their side. They made coffee, and we gathered around their kitchen table.
The two of them had started talking strategy with me. A lot of big-picture stuff that I didn’t care about.
Me? I had a one-track mind.
What does Georgie like? I asked.
Goldie and Barrett exchanged a look. “Plants. Books. She collects journals like they’re going out of style,” Goldie had said.
“Where would she go if she ran away again?”
“She wouldn’t.”
Honestly, I can’t blame Goldie for not entirely trusting me, considering she spends most of her time trying to rescue women and children from that crazy church.
“If you want to help Georgie,” Goldie pressed, “You can join us in helping the victims. It’s a process. You’re not going to go in and snatch her out of there. It takes time. It takes precision.”
I regret pushing back on this with Goldie. Words like “process” and “time” and “precision” are not in my vocabulary.
“Like hell I won’t. That’s exactly what I’m gonna do,” I said.
“You need resources. You need us,” she said, crossing her arms, her body language communicating that I was on dangerous ground.
“I don’t play well with others. I just want to find her.”
And then her husband, Barrett, told me it was time to leave.
After I left Windgrave Mountain, I went home, opened my laptop, and did some digging on the cult.
Let me tell you, that was one fucked up internet rabbit hole.
Now that I know what I know about this church, their women aren’t allowed to possess their own phones. Of course, Georgie couldn’t call me.
So it’s all on me to find her. More power to her friends and everything they do, but Georgie is my mission and mine alone.
My hands squeeze the steering wheel as I coast by the house.
A woman comes out through the side door. I sit up straight for a second, hoping against hope that it’s her.
But it’s not Georgie. The woman is about twice Georgie’s age and has a basket of wet laundry. She takes one look at me, then barks something to the children.
They all jump. A second later, they’re headed for the door.
The woman continues to give me the side eye as she hangs the laundry on the line. No one else comes outside.
Georgie should be here. As I watch this woman do her work, I realize that none of those clothes she hangs on the line look like they might belong to Georgie.
Where the hell is she?
Off in the distance, a white pickup approaches, coming from the direction of the main compound.
“Get ready, Sonja.” I make a U-turn at a reasonable speed and then pop the clutch and fucking fly.
Someone called someone else to warn them about me.
Come quick. He’s back again. That man in the leather jacket in the loud car. He’s cut his hair, but I know it’s him.
I evade the truck by using a couple of winding dirt roads through the foothills, risking bottoming out on a couple of rutted paths. My baby girl scrapes by, mostly unharmed, as the engine screams through backroads headed into town. Thank you, modern custom fenders.
Home sweet home is a crappy multi-use office with dirt cheap rent that I split with my best friend, Joaquin.
I park my dirt-caked Sonja in the alley’s carport, where I work on her on my days off. I bound up the steps through the back door, pass through the sad excuse for a kitchen, and head into the front office area.
From the outside, the place is a boring-1970s-era two-bed one-bath that narrowly escaped getting flipped into something with more curb appeal.
Inside, the front room houses two salvaged metal desks, two long rows of green file cabinets from Army Navy Surplus, two bottom-dollar Ikea office chairs that have seen better days, and a rust-colored sofa shoved under the picture window that we call our “magic sofa.”
Despite Joaquin’s preference to work in the dark, I flick the light switch on my way in. The room is bathed in a half-hearted glow from the ugly amber pendant light fixture that someone’s grandmother no doubt thought coordinated perfectly with the popcorn ceiling and the avocado-green walls. Apart from the fingerprint-ID-locked gun safe in the corner, the only thing about this office that’s not wildly outdated are the simple but comfortable wingback chairs facing each of our two desks, and the desks’ computers. Joaquin and I were unanimous in that we’d rather splurge on technology than on making the place look pretty.
A giant head atop two broad shoulders pops out from behind one of the computer monitors. “Jefferson! Where you been?” Joaquin asks in an overly friendly way, telling me he knows exactly where I’ve been.
I grunt a monosyllabic answer and toss the keys to my Charger on my desk. “Out.”
“Looking for skips? Real juicy ones that pay the rent?”
And here comes the sarcasm. He’s calling me out without directly calling me out.
“Yep,” I say, not making eye contact though I can see his caveman eyebrows arch in mock surprise.
“Neat. Tell me about ‘em.”
I sit down in the cheap wooden desk chair and scrub my face. “Not much to tell,” I say.
“Dammit, Hope,” he replies. “You were out looking for that girl again.”
I ignore him, though he’s triggering my blood pressure. My hand goes to my mouse to wake up my computer monitor.
“We’ve got back rent due, you know,” Joaquin says, chucking a sheet of yellow paper over to my desk. It floats over to me and falls onto my keyboard. A late notice. I know how to fix this. I’ll get a few minor skips, Joaquin will take on one of his sketchier jobs that he doesn’t talk about, and we’ll squeak by.
“Well, lucky for you, we’ve got another income stream. A friend of a friend called, needing to sublet the second bedroom for someone.”
I’m barely listening.
“A woman. You good with that?”
I grunt as I scroll through search results on my monitor.
Joaquin clears his throat. “Which means you can’t walk around naked after your showers, buddy.”
“Okay.”
He goes on, “And you’ll have to move into the bonus room because this renter is going to pay over a thousand a month just for a bedroom.”
“Cool.”
“It’s real hush-hush. Like, I don’t know when she’ll be here, but we gotta just keep the room ready for her so she can crash here whenever she needs it. Could be a government contractor. Could be an assassin. Maybe it’ll be real exciting.”
No response from me.
“Maybe she’s cute.”
“Sure.”
“Are you hearing me, Hope?”
“Yep. A thousand a month. And I gotta move to the closet. Definitely an assassin. Peachy.”
And that means I can keep looking for Georgie. See? We always figure it out between the two of us.
“You might have to move Sonja out of the carport.”
Now he’s trying to provoke me, but I’m not biting. But my blood pressure has started to rise.
“Bro, are you good? I thought you’d be pissed about moving your shit.”
I give a barely-there dip of my chin as I focus on the monitor, where I’m scrolling through the latest failures-to-appear on the county prosecutor’s website. “All good.” I keep a second tab open, of course, which shows a live feed of the main gate of the cult compound. I just sit and watch it sometimes.
It’s not like I have a lot to move. I can handle a mattress on the floor in a glorified closet for a few months. Other than that, I have one duffel bag full of clothes, a laptop, a tattered copy of Christine by Stephen King, and a classic car wall calendar. The rest of my shit is in the shared bathroom and the kitchen, including my favorite oversized mug from Yellowstone National Park that holds half a pot of coffee. Other than that, I keep a go-bag of essentials in Sonja’s trunk, and that’s it.
I hope the new renter doesn’t mind sharing a small bathroom and a severely outdated kitchen with two dudes with dubious housekeeping habits. As for moving Sonja, Joaquin wouldn’t dare.
My best friend clicks his tongue. “You need to forget about that girl and worry about yourself. That cult is a hornet’s nest and I don’t want you bringing that heat on this office,” my best friend says.
“She’s not a girl,” I mutter when I should just keep ignoring him.
“If she’s ten years younger than you, and you’re 30, then yes. She’s a girl.”
And now, he has my full attention. I push back from my desk, stand up, and stalk toward my office partner.
The looming only lasts for a second before Joaquin stands up, his Ikea chair falling backward in his usual bull-in-a-china-shop manner.
“Her name is Georgie, and she’s in trouble,” I say, squaring up to my best friend.
“So? You don’t know her.”
“I don’t know how to explain to you that you should give a shit about other people,” I say.
“This isn’t about that, and you know it. You’re obsessed, and it’s going to bite you in the ass.”
“Why don’t you go ahead and bite my ass and get it over with?”
“Why don’t you stop and think before you draw some unwanted attention onto me? I can’t afford to have some cult weirdos sniffing around the premises. It’s bad for business,” Joaquin says.
“And what exactly is your business?” I ask.
He points a finger in the air. “We agreed not to talk about what I do for a living.”
“And why is that, exactly? Are you a hitman?”
He shoots me an icy stare. “Yeah. I’m a hitman. So stay low-key. You and me, we don’t mount white horses and ride to the rescue. And we certainly do not stick our nose into local politics.”
“Joaquin, there’s no way you could be a hitman.”
“Low. Profile.”
He can keep his head buried in the sand all he wants. But that’s not for me.
Still, I gotta get him off my back.
“Fine,” I grit out. “I promise this Georgie person isn’t going to cause any problems here at the house.”
Joaquin sits back down, crosses his arms, and glares at me.
“Why don’t I believe you?”