Bitter Falls (Stillhouse Lake #4)(71)

I don’t doubt that Vee is right. This was once the Assembly of Saints compound, before it left Wolfhunter behind completely and moved somewhere bigger. Somewhere better.

I hug Vee and say, “Thanks. This is a big help.” I try to smile. She tries too. We’re both a little shaken. “However did you find it? It wasn’t marked as Assembly of Saints, was it?”

“No. I just looked for creepy cult videos,” she says. “In Tennessee, ’cause that’s where he started out. That’s all I found, though. Wish I’d found the new place.”

“You did great,” I tell her. She needs that, as much as or more than my own kids. And she nearly glows under the light of that small encouragement. I see it, but I can hardly feel it. My heart is nearly dead, and it will be until we find Connor.

The dawn’s a layer of promise on the horizon, but I go and rouse Lanny, and get Vee to change back into her clothes.

“Where are we going?” Lanny asks me as she drags a loose black shirt over her head. “Do we know where they are?”

“Not quite,” I tell her. “We’re going to find someone who can tell us where to look.”

Because I’m going to find Carol.

And this time she’s going to tell me everything.





18

SAM

I don’t remember much of anything after seeing Gwen hit from behind, seeing her go down, and charging after the man who was taking Connor.

Just flashes.

The deafening shrieks of the kids’ panic alarms going off.

Connor being dragged to the dirty RV parked outside.

Bracing myself and getting good aim on the craggy face of the man who had my son.

It’s fuzzy after that. A sudden, spasmodic, overwhelming pain. Being down, losing the gun when it’s kicked from my hand. Being kicked again until I’m out.

I try to remember more but all I can see is Connor’s face, stark and terrified.

I wake up slowly, and the memory fades into an unsettling reality. I’m shackled by my feet to a U-bolt in the floor of the RV, and my hands are manacled together with a long chain through the same bolt. Just enough slack for me to sit tied in this dirty, frayed bucket chair that’s also bolted down.

They didn’t get me from behind, I know that; I had all three of them right in front of me. One slightly off to the left. When I concentrate, I think I remember seeing flashes of light as the pain hit and I collapsed.

One of them must have had a Taser, and he juiced me down until they could kick me unconscious. I’m bruised and sore, and I may have a cracked rib, but I’m better than I expected. One hell of a headache throbbing like a fist behind my eyeballs. None of that matters, because Connor is sitting in the chair across from me.

He’s tied down, too, same manacle setup. He’s bruised and scraped, but his eyes are clear and sharp, and I see the relief when he realizes I’m waking up. “Dad?” he blurts out, and I feel a complicated rush of emotion. Fear. Intense love. Rage that I can’t get to him. He doesn’t call me Dad often, and when he does, it means his defenses are low. It means everything to me that he trusts me that much. I can’t let him down. “Are you okay?”

“I’m fine,” I tell him. We’re not fine. This is bad. We’re in the dirty RV, rocking and rolling along bumpy roads; we’re not traveling a main highway, at least not yet. They’re taking some back way, avoiding any cops, I assume. It’s still dark outside, and I don’t think I’ve been out all that long. Minutes, I hope. Longer than that, this throbbing behind my eyes means I’m heavily concussed, and I don’t need brain damage on top of everything else we’re facing right now.

“Shut up,” says one of the men. There’s one driving, of course, and one sitting shotgun; the third one is in another bucket chair that’s swiveled around to watch us. He’s got a Taser sitting on the table next to him. No gun that I can see.

They don’t want to kill us. That’s good. That’s an advantage I can use.

“You’re not going to make it,” I tell him. “Cops will already be looking for you. And the FBI. You abducted a kid this time, not an adult. You know what that gets you? Amber Alerts. Federal and state investigation all over your asses. They’ll have you ID’d from the surveillance video at our house in a matter of hours, and how long do you think this piece-of-shit RV is going to stay anonymous? Just let us go. Let us go and call it good.”

“Next time you talk, you get this,” the man says, and touches the Taser. He isn’t listening. Or believes God is going to protect him, though they have to have some awareness of just how risky this is. They’ve been careful before. Something about this has made them reckless enough to break their patterns.

Nothing scarier than fanatics who don’t feel like they have anything to lose.

I shut up, because I need to be ready and able to protect Connor, if it comes to that. I memorize the layout of the RV. Lights are dim, yellowed with age, but they reveal matted, old carpet; a tiny, cramped kitchen with a cracked counter and locked-up shelves; four bucket-style chairs; a couple of small tables; and two bunk beds all the way at the back, just visible behind a sagging folding door. I guess the other folding door hides the toilet. The inside of this thing smells like a locker room baked under a heat lamp. I assume there’s usually a woman with them—the bait for their preaching—but if so, there’s no sense of a woman’s touch in here.