The Hero (Thunder Point #3)(38)

He decided he’d find out. Dinner—they could have dinner together. Let things evolve as they naturally should.

* * *

Reese Brolin was prepared to leave The Fellowship with her seven-year-old son, Mark, but in the end she couldn’t leave without Mariah, the pregnant twenty-year-old who felt as much like a daughter to her as a sister. Reese was the one who got them all through labor and delivery and she wasn’t sure what would happen to Mariah if she was left to the other well-meaning but untrained women. None of them were nurses or doulas.

Sister Laine had offered her this chance. She told her about the secret opening in the fence, the backpack with a change of clothes, the bottled water and apples.

“Did you also help Devon to leave?” Reese asked.

“No,” Laine said. “I had planned to follow her, but things didn’t work out for me. You should take this chance while you have it. I know you want to go.”

“What makes you say that? I have a pregnant girl to deliver. I can’t go!”

“You should go, Reese. Take Mark out of here before something happens. I think Jacob is breaking down. It’s time to get the children out. Trust me.”

“How do you know this?”

“We all know. He’s not the same as he was when I first got here. The level of anxiety around here is growing by the hour. Something’s going on. I think there might be trouble coming and you know Jacob will fight back. He’ll never give up this acreage, his herb farm. You have a chance. You’re strong enough and can keep Mark safe. Go south.”

And it was then that Reese knew. “You’re not who you pretend to be,” she said to Laine.

“Don’t worry about who you think I am, just take this one chance. And, please, don’t talk to anyone about this or it will be very bad for me. Deadly bad. Do you understand, Reese?”

Reese said she did. She had suspected that Laine wasn’t one of them. She could sense she was trying to fit in but there was something just a little off. Reese knew because The Fellowship wasn’t her first experience in a commune or religious sect. She had been born in Africa to white missionary parents—this was hardly her first tribe.

Laine was a spy and Reese knew it.

In the end, she whispered to Mariah late at night when everyone had gone to bed, “Shh, come with me. I’ll explain...”

Mark didn’t utter a word, because Reese had told him to be completely silent. She had told him this was important and he mustn’t make a sound. She carried what supplies she could and guided her son and her friend to the secret opening in the fence.

“What are we doing?” Mariah whispered as they climbed through the fence.

“Shh,” she said. “I’ll tell you in a second. Put these things on. Come with me.”

They walked out to the road, difficult for Mariah—the baby was a month away and she was big and ungainly, and the brush was thick.

As a child, Reese had been in the thick of African tribal uprisings. Her family had escaped death, and she had seen too much unrest and was no stranger to it. Her instincts were very good; a tribal leader in the Sudan once told her she had the intuition of a hawk and would always know what to do. So, when she saw the road curve where Laine had promised a truck would be waiting, she grabbed young Mariah’s upper arms and said, “Jacob is in trouble. There’s no doubt the police are coming and he’ll fight to keep his possessions. People will be hurt, they will be taken away. If you come with me now, we might escape. If you don’t, your baby will be born in jail. I can almost guarantee that.”

“No!” Mariah said in a sudden panic.

“Mama?” Mark was suddenly frightened.

Reese crouched down to Mark’s level, peering into his eyes. “We have to leave, Mark. We have to leave now or face danger. You have to do as I say.”

Then she rose to Mariah. “You can refuse to come with me, but if you do, we are all in danger. You most of all, I think. See that truck? I was told it would be waiting for us. Let him take us to a safe place before it’s too late.”

“And you’ll stay with me?”

Reese brushed her hair back a little. “I’ll never leave you, I promise. Never.” Reese took Mark’s hand, then Mariah’s. “Say nothing and trust me,” she said, leading them down the road where a dark truck waited.

Reese opened the door and looked inside. The man wore a ball cap, but the hair on his head was short. There was a rifle in his gun rack. He turned his head to look at her and then immediately he started the engine. “Hurry up,” he said.

She lifted Mariah into the truck first then Mark, then she squeezed in.

The man pulled away, using only fog lights until he’d gone quite a distance. When he turned on the headlights, she said, “Take us to the police.”

“Police it is,” he said.

* * *

It was barely dawn when Laine was putting plates and flatware around the long table—enough for fourteen people, and a high chair for a two-year-old. They were six women and four men, including Jacob who sat at the head, and five children including little Liam. The women were busy preparing the meal and rounding up the children. Lorna was making toast and bacon, Pilly was scrambling eggs and Charlotte was spooning oatmeal into bowls for the children. And then Jacob arrived.

“There’s a hole in the fence!” he boomed. “Who knows about this?”