Chapter 20
Remedy
The clubhouse stopped feeling like a home the moment Ruth’s image appeared on Cipher’s screen.
It still looked the same. The long conference table remained scarred by years of meetings, old photographs of the club lined the brick walls, and the faint scent of coffee lingered beneath the sharper smell of gun oil drifting in from the garage.
Somewhere upstairs, children slept beneath mismatched blankets while Lark, Daisy, and several Harbor House volunteers took turns watching the hallway.
None of those familiar details had changed, yet the building around us had shifted into something harder.
Every brother moved with sharpened purpose, conversations became clipped and deliberate, and the quiet certainty that had carried our chapter through countless emergencies settled over the room like armor.
Malachi had given us three sunrises.
He had probably expected panic, arguments, and desperation to fracture whatever protection Sunshine had found here.
He wanted her isolated by guilt long before she ever stepped through Restoration’s gates.
The Order understood shame better than almost any weapon because they had spent generations teaching women to carry responsibility for every cruelty committed against them.
Ruth’s captivity became Sunshine’s fault.
Charlie’s danger became Sunshine’s fault.
Every person Malachi threatened would become another weight meant to drag her back willingly.
I had nearly helped him.
The memory of my own words scraped through me while I stood beside the conference table watching Cipher dismantle the video frame by frame.
I had invoked Charlie because fear had stripped caution from my voice and made protection sound too much like blame.
Sunshine had forgiven the mistake quickly, perhaps because she understood terror better than anyone, but that did not make it harmless.
Loving her did not grant me permission to place my fear above her autonomy.
If anything, love demanded greater discipline because I now possessed the power to wound her in places she had only recently allowed me to see.
Sunshine sat across from me with both hands wrapped around a mug she had not touched.
Her eyes remained fixed on the frozen image of Ruth’s bound wrists while Cipher traced the transmission through layers of foreign servers and temporary relay points.
She looked composed from a distance, but I saw the tension in her jaw, the rigid line of her spine, and the way her thumb moved repeatedly across the mug’s handle as though counting each pass.
I wanted to take her upstairs, wrap her in my arms, and keep her somewhere Malachi could never reach.
Instead, I remained where she could see me and waited for her to decide what she needed.
Toxic leaned over the property map spread across the table. “Start with Restoration. Everything we have.”
Lilith opened the folder beside her and pulled out several printed photographs from Rebecca Hayes’s recovered files.
“The property was purchased eighteen years ago through Restoration of Grace Ministries. The foundation dissolved seven years later, but ownership moved to another nonprofit with the same registered agent.”
“Current owner?” Steel asked.
Cipher continued typing. “Harvest Covenant Outreach.”
Sunshine’s head lifted.
“That name matters?” I asked.
She nodded slowly. “Harvest wasn’t only a property. It was a ranking system.”
Every man in the room turned toward her.
Toxic kept his voice quiet. “Explain.”
Sunshine looked at the papers instead of any of us.
“The elders called children seeds. Young women became fields when they reached the age they considered suitable for marriage, and families who produced enough obedient children were described as a good harvest. I thought Harvest was another compound because I heard women whispering about being sent there, but it may have been an organization overseeing several places.”
Disgust tightened my stomach.
Mace muttered something violent under his breath.
Sunshine continued before the reaction could stop her.
“Restoration was different. People were sent there when punishment inside the compound had failed. Women who tried to escape. Girls who refused assignments. Boys who challenged elders or protected their sisters. Sometimes they returned quieter. Sometimes they never returned at all.”
“Security?” Knight asked from the far end of the table.
“I only know stories.”
“Stories are a beginning.”
Sunshine looked toward him. Knight’s tracking experience had earned him a place beside Toxic, though Autumn remained upstairs helping monitor the children. His voice carried no pressure, only the practical patience of someone accustomed to assembling truth from partial signs.
“They said Restoration had two fences,” Sunshine answered. “The first looked ordinary, like farmland. The second was hidden farther inside the property. There were dogs at night and men posted near the road, though they dressed like workers during the day.”
“Buildings?” Knight asked.
“A main house, barns, and something underground.”
Cipher stopped typing.
“Underground?”
Sunshine’s fingers tightened around the mug. “They called it the foundation.”
The room went silent.
I watched memory darken her eyes and moved closer before the past could pull her fully inside it.
“What do you hear?” I asked.
She looked toward me immediately.
The question had become familiar enough that she did not need an explanation.
“Keys.”
Cipher’s fingers had started moving again.
“What else?”
“The heater.”
An old radiator clicked near the wall.
“What can you feel?”
Her gaze dropped to the mug. “Warm ceramic.”
“You’re here.”
Sunshine drew a slow breath. “I’m here.”
Toxic waited until she nodded before speaking again. “Do you know where the underground entrance was?”
“No. They said disobedient people were taken beneath the house, but that may have been meant to frighten us.”
“Order stories usually contain enough truth to make the fear useful,” Lilith said.
Sunshine met her eyes, and something passed between the two women that none of us could fully share. Different compounds, different men, but the same system had taught both of them how cruelty could hide behind religious language.
Cipher turned one monitor toward the table. Satellite images filled the screen, showing acres of forest, cleared fields, and several pale roofs clustered near a private road.
“Current imagery is six months old. Main house here, two barns, equipment shed, and what looks like an abandoned chapel. Thermal or underground structures won’t show without better data.”
“Property lines?” Toxic asked.
Cipher highlighted a large irregular boundary stretching along a river and several miles of woodland. “Nearly nine hundred acres.”
Steel exhaled. “That’s not a rescue. That’s an invasion.”
“Then we don’t invade blind,” Knight said.
He studied the topographic map, tracing elevation changes and creek beds with one finger.
“The river cuts off the southern side. East approach crosses open fields. Main road comes from the northwest, which they’ll expect us to use.
The western ridge might provide cover, but we need current surveillance. ”
“Drone?” Mace asked.
“Too easy to detect if they’re expecting us.”
Autumn entered the conference room carrying her laptop and a thick folder. “Then don’t use ours.”
Everyone looked toward her.
She placed the folder beside Knight. “The state environmental office surveyed this watershed eight months ago after complaints about chemical runoff. Their contractor used aerial imaging, ground-penetrating radar near the river, and soil sensors across the western fields.”
Cipher’s expression brightened for the first time all night. “Please tell me you have access.”
“I have the public report. The raw survey files are archived behind a state portal.”
He pulled her laptop closer. “Give me ten minutes.”
Toxic looked toward Autumn. “Complaints from who?”
“Anonymous submissions over three years. Dead fish downstream, bleach odors after midnight, and trucks arriving without company markings.”
Sunshine went still.
“Bleach,” she whispered.
I followed her gaze. “What about it?”
“The underground rooms always smelled like bleach.”
She had never told me she had been inside one.
Pain cut through the realization, but I kept my voice steady. “At your compound?”
Her eyes closed briefly. “The hole.”
Daisy had once mentioned Sunshine’s fear of darkness and the punishment space used by the Order, but hearing the words from her made the cruelty immediate.
“How long?” I asked.
“Remedy,” Toxic warned quietly.
He was right. The conference room was not the place to ask for details simply because my need to understand had become unbearable.
Sunshine answered anyway.
“Three days the first time.”
Every violent impulse inside me sharpened.
“The first time?” Mace asked, his voice stripped of humor.
She looked down. “There were others.”
I forced my hands to remain open against the edge of the table.
Malachi had not merely inspected punishments.
Men like him had built systems where a child could disappear beneath the ground for days and return expected to feel grateful it had not been longer.
Ruth might be sitting in a room exactly like the one Sunshine remembered, listening to footsteps overhead and wondering whether the promise made years earlier had finally been forgotten.
Sunshine’s gaze returned to the frozen screen.
“She’ll be afraid of the dark.”
“You remember that?” I asked.
“She always slept near the window. Even when it was cold, she wanted the moonlight.” A tear gathered along Sunshine’s lower lashes, though her voice remained steady. “She used to say darkness felt too much like being erased.”
I moved around the table and crouched beside her chair.
“We’re going to find her.”
Her eyes met mine. “You don’t know that.”
“No.”
I refused the easy lie even while every part of me wanted to give it to her.