Bitter Falls (Stillhouse Lake #4)(88)

“Pretty much emptied out the Knoxville and Memphis field offices,” he tells me. “Specialized teams are coming down out of headquarters and heading straight for the location you provided.”

I’m not stupid enough to think he took my word for it. “You have confirmation that’s where their compound is?”

He nods and pulls out his phone, and in a few swipes brings up an image. It’s taken from a satellite, and it’s difficult to make out exactly; the area is thick with trees. But I can see an open area, and what looks like at least two buildings visible through the tree cover. One looks like a church. What seals it is the wide stream that wanders along the border, and the rocky falloff into a small lake. Bitter Falls. It matches what Carol—Daria—described.

“We’re tasking a drone to get a better look at the compound, so we should have images real soon.”

He’s holding something back. That isn’t surprising, but it is aggravating. “You couldn’t have gotten all this done without more than what I told you,” I say. “What did you find?”

He doesn’t want to tell me. At all. But he can see I’m not moving until he does. “We took a look at that abandoned camp you talked about. Fact is, we were behind the curve on this; they never had anybody coming forward, escaping, selling stories. Nothing. People who were in the cult kept their mouths shut, or didn’t know enough to matter. We went all the way back in the records and came up with a man called Tom Sarnovich. He started out a regular-type preacher back in the seventies, took over a church in Wolfhunter around then. One day, the church just closed down, and they moved out to Carr’s property, where they built their first compound.”

“The one you and Sam found.”

Lustig nods. “Turns out they were there for about ten years, then Preacher Tom wanted a bigger slice. They moved to that camp you sent the video of; it was an old mining camp sold at auction.” He doesn’t want to tell me the next part. I can see him hesitating.

“Agent,” I say. Then, in a lower tone: “Mike.”

“Okay. We sent a team out there to look around. It was pretty much like the video showed—weird and disconcerting, but no real signs of anything criminal. But there was a small lake on the property, too, an old quarry. Smelled rotten around there. On a hunch, the agent in charge sent down a diver to take a look.”

My mouth goes dry. I don’t blink. I just . . . wait.

“They found bones,” he says. “No way to tell how many bodies there are down there, a lot of the bones are scattered. They’re all skeletonized. Divers found one still weighted down with junk iron and chains.”

My lips part, but I don’t say anything. All this fits. It fits with everything that Carol told me. It fits with the baptism, Father Tom’s army of saints.

“My guess is, they moved because when you put that many bodies in a body of water that shallow, the stench can’t be covered up. The whole place must have reeked. So he found some new spot to relocate and start over.”

“Bitter Falls,” I say, and swallow. It feels tight and painful, and my nerves are crawling with horror. “How deep is this lake?”

“Deeper than the first one,” he says. “And my guess is, they’re using it the same way.”

I have to brace myself against the porch railing because my knees are shaking. I can’t stop imagining my son out in that water, a weight around his ankle, being dragged down in the cold, black water. Then, in a blink, it’s Sam. Nausea rushes up. It’s too much. Too close.

Melvin anchored his victims’ bodies in water. He liked to take us out on the lake where he knew they were, gliding his boat over his garden of dead women. I never knew until the trial, and I still dream about it, about plunging off the side of the boat and being down there with them. Sightless eyes and reaching arms, welcoming me.

I don’t throw up. But I realize that I’m gasping for breath, and Lustig is watching me, and I manage to get myself together. Somehow.

“Normally I wouldn’t let you within a country mile of one of my ops,” Lustig says. “Especially not one like this. You know that, right?”

I just nod. The acid at the back of my throat burns.

“So here’s the deal we’re going to make. You, your friends—however badass you think they are—you can come with us, but you’re staying at the perimeter. I can’t have you in the line of fire, and I can’t have you trying anything clever. These are not rational people we’re dealing with now. You got me?”

“Yes,” I tell him. “When are you going in?”

Lustig sighs and looks up at the sky. Day’s turned to night. We’ve wasted so much time already. I expect him to say soon, or now, or at least tonight.

But he says, “We’re not.”

I just stand there for a second, looking at him blankly, because I know I cannot have heard him properly. “They’ve got Connor. And Sam. You know what they do to people!”

“They’ve also maybe got fifty or more other people in there, and we don’t know which of them are fanatics and which are victims. Little kids in there, by your informant’s account and the evidence we saw at that old compound. That’s a hell of a lot of potential human shields and noncombatants. We can’t do a full-on assault. They’ll be looking for it.”