Chapter 23
Priest
We paused as we came into the clearing. An ominous feeling swept over me.
This is where we’d found the men who’d been burying Sherry Holden.
Where we’d buried them instead, only to come back later and find their bodies missing.
This was where we’d first seen Caitlyn. I remembered her tear-filled eyes meeting mine and it’d felt like she was screaming inside of my head.
She hadn’t uttered a word, of course, but that look had been a punch to my gut.
She’d come such a long way in a short amount of time, even though she still wouldn’t speak…
or couldn’t. I honestly wasn’t sure which it was.
Staring down at the empty hole where we’d buried the men, and later found them missing, I shook my head.
“I can’t wait to finish this,” I muttered.
The thought of Chet and whoever he was working with finding Caitlyn had me seeing red.
“I’m going to kill them and leave them out here for the coyotes to polish off.
Make sure no one ever finds them again.”
“There’d be remains,” Butcher said. His tone of voice suggested he thought he was being helpful as he told us, “There’d be an arm or leg left around somewhere.
And the bones and clothes, of course. Way too much evidence.
That’s why pigs are a better way to dispose of bodies than wildlife scavengers.
They eat all that shit.” A surprised look flashed over his face as he realized we were all staring at him.
“I assume anyway,” he muttered, looking away.
There was no assumption needed. He’d spoken with complete confidence. Which meant he had experience with this. I didn’t want him to explain, and the others must have felt the same because no one said anything. Now was not the time.
It’s Butcher, there’s never a time when you wanted to know what he did.
Everyone in the club knew what Butcher’s ‘specialty’ had been while he’d been in the military.
He’d been a part of an elite task force that most of the country’s three letter organizations hadn’t even known existed.
The CIA, FBI, NSA, hell even the brass inside the DOD hadn’t had a high enough security clearance to know about his team’s exploits.
They’d reported directly to some bigwigs in Washington D.C.
and had every mission wiped clean after it was completed.
Butcher wasn’t one for following the rules—one of the reasons they’d recruited him for that task force—and he’d been more than happy to fill us in on some of the ‘fun’ he’d had while in.
I honestly wasn’t sure if he’d always been a little fucked up in the head or if his time in made him that way. I’d only met him after the attack on my Ranger team. His task force—he’d been in charge of it—had been called in after my spotter had been killed and our operation blown.
He’d found me a few weeks later, sitting in my bunk still trying to reconcile how my partner and best friend had been killed, and told me—in detail—how they’d dispatched each of the men responsible for the loss of my brother.
Somehow the gory retelling had helped and Butcher and I had become friends.
With him came Toxic. The two were practically joined at the hip, though Toxic wasn’t a part of Butcher’s task force.
He’d been one of the pilots assigned to Butcher's team.
He was dual certified in both Blackhawks and Apache helicopters and had been the one to either drop off Butcher and his team where needed, or would be hovering overhead providing cover from the air.
Riptide and the others had started walking again, so I caught up to them. Despite the blazing sun burning down on our skin, none of us bitched about the heat as we hiked along. We were all used to it by now and had done far worse in our time overseas.
My muscles relaxed and loosened as we walked for a few hours before buildings started coming into view between the brush.
“What the fuck?” Ricochet asked softly. We stepped behind a cluster of mesquite trees and took a knee. Ricochet faced forward, scanning between the buildings, Butcher scanned behind. The rest of us huddled around Riptide.
Riptide turned off the receiver and instantly the beeping stopped. We waited as he folded the antenna up and put it inside his pack. Shrugging the bag onto his back, he asked, “Am I fucking losing it or are those actual houses?”
“Shacks,” I offered up.
“Somewhere in between,” Hush said in a quiet voice.
We were in a little alcove just west of The Silverbell Mountains.
It was the perfect spot to hide a community.
The roads that led to The Silverbell Mine gave them easy enough access, but it was behind a set of hills that kept them out of sight of the mine.
There was nothing else out here, making it the perfect location.
Only, why would anyone want to live out here?
Without electricity. Without running water.
No air conditioning. No creature comforts of any kind.
I’d had enough of that from my time in the military.
The thought of living that way here at home was unfathomable.
As one unit we ducked in and out of brush as we got as close as we could to the buildings. There were sixteen that we could count from here, and it looked like more were being built.
I shot Riptide a questioning look and he shrugged. He didn’t know what this place was any more than I did. They were starting to build a huge fence around their compound, as though to keep the world out.
Or maybe their own people in. My muscles tightened as I watched men and women spilling out of all corners of the compound and forming a loose circle in the middle.
I was practically vibrating with fury as I saw a man dragging a young girl—maybe ten or eleven—toward everyone.
She was digging in her heels, trying to get away from him, and kicking up dust everywhere as she did so.
A hand came down on my shoulder. I glanced over at Riptide.
He squeezed my shoulder and shook his head.
“We’re too fucking outnumbered, Priest,” he whispered, though I saw the torment there in his gaze.
He pointed to the corners of the compound.
Men with rifles surrounded the place. We were outnumbered three to one.
All of us knew this scene playing out in front of us couldn’t be a good thing, but there wasn’t much we’d be able to do.
I stayed put, ducked down behind the fence—out of sight of the guards—but had to grind my back molars together to keep from bellowing at the fucker to take his hands off that kid. She wasn’t much older than Gabby.
They came to a stop in the middle of the circle and for a short time no one spoke. Then a man started up.
“My people!” he called out.
My lip curled up in disgust. Who the fuck said shit like that?
“How many times should one person be forgiven?” He looked around as he asked the question, catching the eyes of the adults standing nearby.
All the young kids were hiding behind their parents’ legs while the older children were near the back, staring at the dirt in front of them. One glance was all you needed to know those kids were afraid. Which made me instantly dislike the man who was speaking. His words just amplified the feeling.
“How many mistakes can we make without consequence?”
The parents, on the other hand, were fixated on the speaker. The glassy look in their eyes, some bizarre mix of fear and admiration. For the first time in a long time, I was actually afraid. I’d seen that look in people before. Fanatics.
“What the hell,” Hush muttered. “Who is this freak?”
“Abigail has been warned many times before that she has broken the rules. Still she refuses to obey. To repent. She casts off the beliefs that I have bestowed upon you. She defies the commands of her earthly father, the commands of her god. And for what?” He glared down at the girl.
“To this day, she still will not confess. Well, I know her reasons,” he said the last sentence a bit quieter, so we had to strain to hear him.
Almost as if he were speaking to himself.
He shook his head, his blond hair reflecting in the bright sunlight. A crazed smile formed on his face. It wasn’t forced and it was completely out of place with his words and the aggression oozing out of them.
“How many times?” he boomed again.
“Too many times!”
“Once is too many!”
It was mainly the men standing around who started yelling out answers to the man’s questions.
A few women joined in, but the others just stood quietly, as though they feared opening their mouths.
The men easily outnumbered the women and they were getting restless.
I began to worry that we were going to see a mob mentality take over when another voice cried out above the low buzzing coming from everyone else.
“As many times as it takes until she can seek forgiveness!” A young woman rushed forward.
If I had to guess, I’d say she was in her late twenties.
She had light brown hair that fell to her hips and pretty features.
A strangled sound from beside me had me glancing over at Riptide.
His eyes were fixed on the newcomer and a grin formed on my lips.
A quick glance over showed that Hush hadn’t missed our brother’s interest either.
There was a calculating look in his eyes and I knew that sometime soon in the future, Riptide was going to be regretting his involvement with Lockout’s plan to push Hush toward Seek before he was ready.
I had after he’d pulled his stunt with Jenny.
Though now I was fucking grateful he’d interfered.