Chapter 1 #2
We weren’t the kind to go to law enforcement with anything.
We handled our own shit. So for some of our brothers to consider bringing in the police it spoke to how dangerous all this was.
How much they didn’t want to have to send me into that place alone.
It wasn’t my idea of a fucking good time either, but I was the best choice.
I came closest to fitting Derek’s—Chet’s cousin’s—description.
Hell, our first names even matched. Add to that I was the VP for the club and had more authority to take action than anyone—other than Lockout.
It meant I wouldn’t need to check in before making decisions.
Lockout and I had already talked and he was giving me full approval to do what needed to be done while I was in.
If I fucked things up we’d handle them once we took out the cult.
“The cops would get slaughtered. Oh sure, eventually they would call in the FBI and end up taking them down. But it would take years of surveillance before they even attempted to arrest or kill the members. In the meantime, any of the cultists who aren’t there by choice would be subjected to this sick fuck’s every whim.
Besides all that, cops are stupid, and they have rules to follow.
How many would die before they figured out what they were dealing with?
Remember Jonestown? They killed a U.S. Congressman.
The part they leave out is how many CIA and FBI tried to infiltrate the place.
Over a dozen agents. All of them were killed.
Better that we just take care of it ourselves. ”
Butcher’s outlook made sense. He’d been part of a team that hadn’t needed to follow any kind of procedure while he’d been in the military.
The rest of us still had to follow those ‘rules’ so we knew exactly what he was talking about and how those protocols had bound our hands so many times in the past. He was right and I saw the resignation on everyone’s face. We had to do this ourselves.
I thought of the woman again. The way she took a beating for that child.
It left me with a selfish hope that maybe she wasn’t one of them.
Maybe I could save her. A pang of guilt struck me as I realized that I almost didn’t care if no one else there could be saved.
So long as I could get her out. That didn’t mean I wouldn’t try.
The more people we saved the better. One, because it would make what I was about to do worth it if we could help them.
And two, because that meant less people for us to fight in the end.
“But if they really do think he is their God, wouldn’t killing him break them out of their trance? Prove that he isn’t their ‘Earth God’?” Ricochet insisted.
“You’d think so, but too many times that has proven not to be the case.
They’re too far gone, too obsessed with him to see it like that.
Their minds will collectively create a story around it.
He returned to heaven, rejoined the spiritual plane, blah, blah, blah.
The end result is the same, mass murder or mass suicide.
And the mass suicide is almost never voluntary. ”
“Time to vote,” Lockout said, putting an end to the other options. “All those in favor, raise your hands.” He started it off by putting his in the air.
I gave him a grateful look. He didn’t want to send me in there any more than the other men did, but I’d pulled him aside yesterday and asked him to do this for me.
With him voting in favor the others were more likely to do so as well.
He hadn’t asked me to explain. He trusted that I knew what I needed and I had to do this.
Looking around, I relaxed a fraction. Every hand at the table was up. No one looked pleased about it, but they’d voted in favor. I was going in.
Lockout stayed quiet for what felt like a whole minute, watching me, before he spoke again. “Last chance. It’s not too late to pull the plug on this.”
“I’m good.” I said definitively. “I’ve made up my mind.
Butcher, run me through this. Tell me everything you know about cults.
I don’t want to end up buried out in the desert because I don’t know what the fuck I’m doing.
We know there’s no taking him down, not by assassination.
I assume that discrediting him and making his worshippers abandon him is out of the question? ” I asked, already knowing the answer.
“Not a chance. Chet Holden killed his wife and was going to kill his daughter for this creep.” Butcher was watching Priest as he said it.
Priest was squeezing the end of the table so hard I thought that he might snap it.
He’d adopted Chet’s daughter, Caitlyn. The thought of anyone hurting that girl was enough to send him flying into a rage.
But it rammed home Butcher’s point. The ‘true believers’ were beyond our ability to help.
All we could do was rescue the children and those kept there against their will.
Butcher focused back on me. “Don’t forget that. You aren’t smart—or crafty—enough to discredit him, and he’ll kill you if you try.”
Don't forget about the woman. One way or another, she’s coming with you.
“How do I fit in once I’m there?”
“That’s going to be the fun part.”
I groaned inwardly. Butcher’s idea of fun wasn’t what the rest of us would consider a good time. It always turned out to be horrible in one way or another.
“You’re the new guy, everyone will be suspicious of you.
Play stupid, apologize for everything. Only ask him for forgiveness, though.
The other members are going to test you, try to assert dominance over you.
Stand your ground to a point, but don’t attack them.
You may even have to take some punishment at the beginning. ”
Gritting my teeth, I thought again about the woman, and how they had circled her and kicked her for standing up for the girl.
This is going to be hard. Not losing my shit over that kind of behavior would take all my willpower.
It was one thing to let people beat on me, but to stand back and watch them hit women and children went against everything I believed in.
I sighed and relaxed my hands, which had balled up into fists at the thought.
“Oh, another thing. They’ll have a strict set of rules.
Guaranteed they’ll be bizarrely contradictory.
Like, don’t touch the children, but women are fair game.
Don’t rape a married woman, but an unmarried one has no protections.
Never mind the contradictions, don’t try to make sense out of them.
Just don’t violate the rules, and never point out the contradiction.
They might kill you on sight. Just nod and agree. ”
Fuck. Me. How the hell am I going to pull this off?
It didn’t matter. I’d figure it out. In the end I knew helping Sloane would be worth whatever I managed to get myself into.