Bitter Falls (Stillhouse Lake #4)(85)

Recklessness is very, very dangerous in this kind of cult. It makes them brazen and suicidal. Father Tom, like all these self-appointed assholes, will hang on to power until the bitter end, and making sure all his cultists precede him to the grave ensures that. Plenty of precedents for it, from David Koresh to Jim Jones.

Whether I want to believe that woman or not, Connor’s danger is real. The fact that I’m sitting here shivering is humiliating and enraging, but I can’t allow it to tear me up. I need to use this. Somehow.

So I do what my SERE training in the air force taught me. I eject all of it from my mind, I curl up to preserve warmth, and I sleep as best I can, for as long as I can.





The next morning, I wake up when the door bangs open. I barely get myself upright before they’re on me. No kicks this time. They drag me out into the soft morning sunlight. It’s still cold, and my feet have gone numb, so I barely feel the cuts as I stumble over sharp rocks that form a low wall around the prison building. It’s a symbolic sort of barrier, designed to warn people away. There are three men again this time, and one of them is Caleb, who’s carrying an assault rifle strapped around his chest. An MP5. I wonder how good he is with it. Probably good enough to shred me like pulled pork. The other two are armed as well with more consumer-level ordnance, which decreases my chances of getting that MP5 away from him and surviving to use it. I opt to wait and see where they’re taking me.

They don’t say a word. They shuffle-march me down a path over more sharp, cutting rocks and then cold, packed dirt through a cathedral of silent trees. When I stumble—feeling’s coming back into my feet now, and it isn’t pleasant—I get a strong shove from behind that nearly sends me sprawling. The manacles on my wrists and ankles have worn my skin raw already, and I’m gnawingly hungry again. I notice that odd silence. There are no birds singing in this place.

I hear the hiss, then the full-throated roar, before I see the waterfall. It’s small, but breathtaking, and in the morning light a rainbow dances around the white mist that overlays the foaming water. The pond—lake?—it plunges into looks inky and deep.

Father Tom is standing by the rocky shore staring at the waterfall. Caleb and his silent companions shove me into place beside him, and withdraw a few steps. They stand at parade rest. Sloppy jumped-up militia assholes, two of them, though I think from his superior posture that Caleb’s worn a real uniform sometime in the past.

“Sam,” the prophet says, and turns his head to smile at me. He looks like everybody’s older best friend, dad, grandpa . . . and I have to admit, he’s got a weird, compelling charm. “I wanted to have a private talk. Just us, man to man.” Jailer to prisoner, he means.

I realize this could be my chance. I’m not in the middle of an exposed camp, surrounded by guards and guns. I’m in a secluded area with just three guards and the most valuable member of the cult. I click through the plan rapidly in my head. Step one, get my manacled hands over his head, pull him back by the neck, use him for cover. Get them to throw down weapons. Grab whatever’s closest and shoot every one of them if I have to. March Father Tom over to get Connor, and use him to get a vehicle and get the fuck out.

As a plan, it’s thinner than the edge on a piece of paper, but it’s a chance and the best I’m going to see, I think.

I’m a hair trigger from throwing it into motion when Father Tom turns toward me and presses a huge hunting knife to my side. He’s still smiling. “I know what you’re thinking,” he says softly, as if we’re exchanging secrets. “You’re making a plan on how to get out of here and get the boy out too. I respect that. But that boy is mine. I’ll see you both dead before I let you leave.”

I don’t say anything. Defeat is sour in my mouth. I swallow it and don’t move.

“Even if you do manage to somehow get past this knife, past me, past my men . . . my people have their orders, and they’ll tear you apart before you can escape. Accept it. You’re not that brave. No one is.” He pauses for a moment. The knife stays right where it is, a hot point of pressure against my skin. An inch or two from kidneys, large arteries. He wouldn’t have to make much of a move to watch me bleed out, right here. I feel sick and enraged and I want to kill him, but I force myself back into my training.

I wait. I look defeated. I waver, and I look as tired and dispirited as I can.

“That boy of yours is smart. Quiet, too, like you. Though I know who his real father is. Maybe he takes more after Melvin Royal. Do you think that’s true? Would he grow up to be a ruthless killer?”

I don’t say anything. Let him talk. He’ll get to the point eventually. I bite down on my anger and chew it and swallow as much of it as I can. I’m sweating, even in the cold. Feverish with the need to hurt him.

I need to wait.

“I looked you up, Sam. Such a shame your sister had to cross paths with a monster like Royal. God really does work in mysterious ways, doesn’t he? Setting you and Royal’s wife together. But there’s a certain triumph in that too. You don’t need to destroy him if you’ve taken what he once had. His wife. His children.” He’s trying to get a reaction. I don’t give it. He’s jabbed me in the wrong spot if he wants to see me flinch.

His smile doesn’t waver. Neither does the feeling coming off him—relaxed, friendly, calm. I’ll bet he looks and feels like this right up until the moment he watches you die, and then, maybe only at the very last second, the mask will slip and the monster will show through. But only for his victims. Never for his flock of sheep and wolves.