The Chance (Thunder Point #4)(31)

She nodded. “It was a commune, really. A farm. A kind of loose religious order without much religion. Or order, for that matter.”

“How’d you end up there?”

“I asked for it. I looked the part—our suspect liked young blue-eyed blondes. I look younger than I am. I thought I could do it if we created the right backstory. And as it turned out...”

“Whoa,” he said. “You asked for it?”

She gave a nod. “I had to give the pitch of a lifetime to get it. Our bad guy was recruiting young women to make a part of his ‘family.’ He found them when they were down on their luck, rescued them, then held them against their will. We knew he was working on his antigovernment manifesto, spewed a lot of violent-sounding, antiestablishment rhetoric—”

“Since when is antiestablishment rhetoric against the law?”

“When it’s accompanied by threats, human trafficking and the purchase of large quantities of fertilizer—the kind used to make bombs. Since they were running an organic farm, we were concerned about the commercial fertilizer. We already knew he had defrauded charities, didn’t pay taxes, wouldn’t acknowledge law enforcement and kept his commune surrounded by a locked fence guarded by a few armed men. He was suspected of plotting domestic terrorism and I was part of a counterterrorism task force. Some of his clan had gotten away and tipped the police. He hadn’t been real violent, according to the reports, but the potential was escalating. He was escalating.” She shrugged. “We had to get ahead of it. Before he blew something up.”

Eric wiped a hand down his face. “I think I better sit down,” he said.

“Take it easy, it was expertly planned. And it wasn’t what we thought at all. It was a pot farm concealed behind a fake cult. Oh, he was crazy,” she said, following him to the couch. “He believed all his own B.S. about how he could run his own world, populate it, conceal it and keep it separate from the rest of society. He thought he was creating a peaceful sovereign nation, which of course takes piles of money. Drug money. And it was peaceful, right up to the point when someone disagreed with him—then it was less peaceful. It was when he said the world was going to go up in flames but his family would be safe—someone had to take a closer look.” She stood in front of Eric while he sat. Then she sat down beside him. “He was the king of his little empire and his fertilizer wasn’t for bombs, it was for marijuana. And he had a few men to guard it and move it. Armed men.”

“So you found out? And left?”

“No, Eric. There were women and children there. It took me a long time to get the lay of the land, communicate with my team, start evacuating the captives. I didn’t seem to be in immediate danger. And if I had to run, I knew a couple of exit routes.”

“He prevented them from leaving? How?”

“Intimidation, brainwashing, convincing the women they couldn’t legally remove their children. His children. He threatened them, told them if they took his children from him, he wouldn’t rest till he found them. Plus he had his guys, the ones who helped with the heavy chores around the farm. The marijuana grow wasn’t revealed to his female clan, so we hadn’t gotten the word on that until I found it. I think only a couple of them were aware of it. I had to sneak around after dark and peek in open doors and slats in the walls of the barn—it wasn’t easy to find. It was across the river where none of the women went, where Jacob’s house was and the men lived. Till then, we had only heard about his collection of women and children and his determination to keep them inside the fence.”

“What about him? Jacob? What did he expect from you?”

“Well, that’s a little complicated. He thought he was healing me. We built a story about me being a victim of sexual abuse so he would probably understand why I wasn’t willing to be involved with a man. And it worked, thank God. But I had to endure a lot of preaching and his attempts at seduction. Whew. Those were hours that passed like days. I cried a lot, acted vulnerable and grateful, begged, bought time. Some of the other women helped shield me, helped me avoid him.”

“What if it hadn’t worked?” he asked. “You could have been in serious danger.”

“We planned it for a year. The FBI had watched for longer than that, interviewing people who were closely acquainted with him and his commune. We even tried to get a man inside, but that didn’t work. We just didn’t have a model for the kind of man he wanted to work with. But we understood the women he targeted.”

“It was risky,” he said. “Very risky.”

“There’s always risk. Thus the training and planning.”

“He could have assaulted you. Raped you.”

“He was a megalomaniac, but predictable. We didn’t go in there without profiling him—we knew him pretty well. We interviewed a couple of women who left his commune. The women inside talked to each other—they were like a bunch of sister wives. He hadn’t raped anyone as far as anyone knew. But, I knew that going in without a wire or weapon could be dangerous, especially if he found me out. I wasn’t going to let him rape me.”

“But he could have.”

“If he’d had help,” she said with a shrug. “Eric, if the whole thing had turned, if he’d used his big armed men to hold me down he could have, but we knew he worked alone with the women. He thought they all loved and adored him. And he was just one man.”