Chapter 2
Chapter Two
Jake
My brother Ennis and I have been going over the layout of this cult’s compound for months. I know every basement, root cellar and crawl space. I know every nook and cranny.
But somehow, today, on the last leg of the job, I’ve lost my way.
Sweat drips down my brow, mixing with the dirt and dust, and now I’ve hit a literal dead end.
Wylie, Ennis, all our friends, and I have been poring over the map, redrawing it for months, with help from Olivia, Louisa, and Goldie.
By our estimations, I’m supposed to be under the women’s dormitory by now.
This is supposed to be nothing but a root cellar walled off with earthbags—literal bags filled with dirt used to make underground walls.
Not easy to pick through, but doable enough. This is where we’ve decided the mouth of the escape tunnel will be. Instead, as my brother and I demolish bag after bag of soil and rocks, pulling them down, we’re face-to-face with drywall.
“Are we in the right place?” Ennis asks.
“I’m sure this is it,” I say.
Ennis is being too cautious. “But what if it’s not? What do you suppose is on the other side of that wall?”
I shrug. “Let’s bust through and find out.”
“Hold on, cowboy. Let’s check the map.”
I turn to Ennis, who blocks the light from my headlamp from shining directly into his eyes.
“This has to be the cellar,” I say.
“But I also don’t feel like finding out the hard way that we dug all the way to their heavily guarded cache of artillery,” Ennis wisely says.
“But what if it is artillery, and the guards are small dudes? We can take ‘em prisoner and get our hands on some real firepower,” I fantasize.
“Are you for real?” Ennis says.
I grunt, “Fine, let me see the map.”
“Um…”
“What?”
Ennis curses, patting his pockets. “I might have forgotten it.”
“Awesome,” I sigh, taking a swig of water from our supply.
I run my hand over the wall. No insulation, just drywall in between studs. Someone put this up in a hurry and did a piss-poor job of it.
“I don’t know what you’re thinking of doing, but hold up. Let me go back to the ranch and get the map.”
I nod. “Fine. I’ll keep chipping away at these earth bags while I wait.”
“Don’t do anything crazy,” my brother insists.
“I won’t,” I say.
I wait until I can no longer hear Ennis’s retreat through the underground tunnel that leads to an abandoned mine shaft that opens onto Sterling Ranch.
If there’s danger on the other side of this wall, I’m determined to keep my younger brother safe from it.
In my gut, I know this is the old dormitory, where they used to house the single women and school-age children.
Since the shake-up last year, after The Prophet was arrested, and Child Protective Services opened a case file on a bunch of the children, the dormitory has been abandoned, according to Louisa and Goldie.
No one is watching the place.
I’m sure of it.
And I’m eager to be finished with this project.
I know it’s just a fantasy, but blowing this place sky high would feel pretty great, once we get the people out.
Feeling antsy, I forge ahead. There’s only one way to find out what’s on the other side of this wall.
I keep smashing.
This task is shockingly easier than slowly digging through dirt, and I’m not expecting how quickly the wall gives way with the force of my strikes against it.
My forward momentum is so great that the next thing I know, I’m tumbling face-first into what is supposed to be a root cellar.
Dust fills my lungs, I think I broke my shoulder falling into this concrete floor, and I’m totally disoriented.
What in the actual hell?
I come to standing, rubbing my sore shoulder. This floor is supposed to be earthen. And instead of shelves of preserves and baskets of stored vegetables, I see walls of files, a desk, and a tiny basement window.
I barely have time to get my bearings when a woman’s voice shouts from behind me, “Hands where I can see them!”
What follows is the unmistakable cocking of a gun.
“Whoa…” I say calmly, “Let’s slow down. I’m not here to rob you.”
I raise my hands in the air and turn slowly, coming face to face with a blonde angel in a high braid and a denim overall dress, who can apparently cuss like a sailor.
“Who the fuck are you and what in the fuck do you think you are doing?”
Confused, I take in the heart-shaped face, the perfectly angled eyebrows and the hint of tinted lip gloss.
I smile despite the stupidity of it. “I got the same question for you. You aren’t from around here, are you?”
Because if this chick is from the compound, no way she’s allowed to wear lip gloss and cuss.
“You better go first before I shoot you in the leg, Kool-Aid Man.”
I’m confused at first. “Kool-Aid Man?”
The angel purses her lips, still aiming the gun at me.
“Oh. I get it. Because I busted through the wall. You’re funny. I like you, Blondie.”
The woman narrows her eyes, letting me know the more I talk, the more I’m going to piss her off.
Her reference proves my point, that she’s not from here.
But she might just shoot me if I keep sassing her.
For all I know, she’s a legit member of this cult and she might run and find her old man.
From what I know about those elders, they have zero qualms about shooting trespassers.
They’ll shoot a man even for talking to one of their wives.
Might as well play dumb.
“All right, I’ll talk. My name is Jake. I’m just a rancher trying to dig a drain and I guess I lost my way.”
One perfect eyebrow lifts, but she keeps the gun trained on me. “Really. A drain.”
It’s less of a question and more of an “I don’t believe you” statement.
There is no way a woman this mouthy woman is one of them.
“Really!”
“Bullshit.”
I smile at her. “That’s not how a nice plyg wife talks,” I say, using the slang term for polygamists.
“I’m not a plyg wife.”
I look at her left hand. No ring, but that doesn’t mean much as far as I can tell. A lot of these wives don’t walk around wearing a ring because their husbands are selfish sonsabitches, obviously. So I’ll have to take her word for it.
“Okay,” I say. “Then you’ve got a lot of explaining to do if you expect me to believe you’re one of these people. They don’t cuss. At least, the women don’t.”
But it’s not just the cussing. I can’t put my finger on what it is about her. She’s just…different from the women I’ve seen following behind the men from this church when they come to town. She even has a different vibe from Olivia, Louisa, and Goldie. Less haunted, somehow.
“I don’t owe anybody an explanation, least of all someone trespassing.”
“I’m just a neighbor, sweetheart. Didn’t mean any harm by that. Heck, like I said, I was just trying to install a drain for that eastern patch between our properties by the creek that always floods, so my cattle don’t have to stand around in freezing cold mud half the year.”
The woman’s eyes rake over my body. A glimmer of something sparkles in her eyes, but I have no idea why.
Her lips begin to curve upward. Maybe she likes me and she’s actually believing my lie.
On top of that, I’m disarming her with my chatter, proving that I’m harmless. My older brother, Wylie, loves to remind me what a dope I can be sometimes. And I’ve never had that much game with women. But whatever I’m doing seems to be working on her.
I need to take this opportunity to push past her and get the hell out of here before someone more dangerous than her discovers me and shoots me on sight.
I try to reach for my pickaxe, but that turns out to be a dire miscalculation.
The woman knows martial arts.
One second, I’m upright, and the next, I’m on my stomach with her knee pressing into my spine. “Let’s get one thing straight. I don’t put up with liars. Got it?”
“Got it,” I wheeze.
“I’m going to ask you again. Where did you come from?”
Grunting against the pain in my back where her knee is planted, I gesture toward the wall. “Literally next door.”
“I know about Sterling Ranch. You’re pretty far away from the field, don’t you think? Your story is really cute, but I’m not buying it.”
“This is what I’m noticing,” I wheeze. “You don’t talk like one of them.”
She sighs exasperatedly. “Guess I’ll call the cops and let them handle you.”
I wheeze a laugh. “I would love to talk to the cops, sweetheart. And I’m sure they’d love to ask about all those unregistered firearms in that cabinet over there.”
This is a shot in the dark, so to speak.
She considers her options for a long minute.
“Fine. I’m gonna let you up. But first, do you have any weapons on you?”
“Just the pickaxe,” I say, pointing across the room to where it skidded when I fell.
“I’m gonna frisk you and make sure. No funny business.”
I remain perfectly still while this woman holsters her pistol, then pats me down.
Not gonna lie, I kind of enjoy the way her hands nudge me everywhere—my hips, my chest, inside my boots.
Not to mention every pocket. What I don’t love is when she makes me roll onto my back and checks the front pockets of my jeans.
All I can do is pray she doesn’t notice the gigantic erection.
I wonder why she didn’t threaten to call one of her holy men with guns to question me? Why wouldn’t she turn me over to one of those controlling nutjobs that are probably in charge of her?
Yet another piece of evidence supporting my hypothesis that she is not from this cult.
“Get on your feet and don’t think about touching that pickaxe,” she says, her hand resting on the holster of her gun at her hip.
I stand, and she points to the gaping hole in the wall.
“Show me more of this drain you’re building.”
“Happy to,” I tell her. What else can I do?
I pick up the headlamp that fell off when I fell through the wall and turn it on, then step through the hole. I turn to her.
“Can I have my pickaxe now?”
“I don’t think so.”
“How about I let you carry it and I’ll get it back from you after I prove to you that I’m just a lowly ranch worker?”