The Hero (Thunder Point #3)(77)

“All right.” She touched his arm. “Rawley, I’ll get her back, won’t I?”

“You think I’d do this for the fun of it? You wanna help? Do what I say to do and don’t argue. What I sure the hell don’t need right now is the Keystone Kops following me around the jungle.”

“Rawley, it’s a forest.”

“It is what it is. Cooper!” he shouted.

The man came scrambling out of the bar, Spencer behind him carrying a jacket and pair of Cooper’s boots. Once Cooper was behind the wheel Rawley said, “Get us over to Highway 5 and head south. Be quiet and listen to Devon—she’s the only intel we got.”

* * *

Spencer sat in the front beside Cooper and listened to Rawley question Devon; he listened to Devon answer. She had told him a great deal about her experience in this commune, but he’d never really created a visual before now. He never really put himself in her position until tonight.

“What are the buildings in the front, by the gate?” Rawley asked.

“A long driveway, a long yard, a very big house, kind of an old country farmhouse, almost like an inn—two stories with a wraparound porch. A barn and south of the barn, a chicken coop. Between the barn and house, a large dirt patch, a place we played, a place the men parked those big SUVs. Behind the barn is a corral. Pastures and our produce gardens back up to the river.”

“Fence around all that land?”

“No, just around the compound—they let the stock out of the compound and there is just normal pasture fencing. They don’t worry about the cows or horses getting away. There aren’t that many animals. It’s the people who are fenced in who are at risk.”

“How far to the river from the gate?”

“At least a half mile. Almost a mile. There’s a bridge—the men would drive their SUVs across the bridge because over there was Jacob’s house, right between two big barns. They’re not barns—that’s where Jacob was growing marijuana.”

“Is there any other road inside except for that front road?”

“I don’t think so, but I don’t know. We never went over there. Jacob would take women to his house one at a time. I think there are only four women left there—Lorna, Laine, Pilly and Charlotte. And four children. When I got there four years ago or so, there were eighteen women and six men and a bunch of kids. In the past couple of years, people started leaving and Jacob started getting strange. Angry and paranoid and weird. I think he knew law enforcement suspected him of stuff.”

“How did you get out?”

“There was a hole in the fence behind the chicken coop and Laine told me to carry Mercy and to run down the road—there was a truck waiting to give me a ride over the mountain. She arranged everything at a Farmers’ Market.”

“Why didn’t people just walk away at that market?” Rawley asked. “That market’s a busy place.”

“Because, Rawley—the kids were home, inside the fence.”

“Where do the men keep the guns?”

“With them, I think. There’s a bunkhouse back by the marijuana barns. There were never guns in our house.”

Spencer listened as she described the property, a beautiful big farm on a lovely river in a valley where food and shelter and friendship was plentiful... And where they were surreptitiously guarded by men with guns, men who were there to serve the master, the man who took them one at a time to his house for sex and liked to say they were all one big happy family.

“I think we were part of Jacob’s fantasy or delusion,” she told Rawley. “He wanted to be the grand pooh-bah, the big daddy, the king of his little kingdom, served by women, loved by his many children. He hardly ever left the farm. The men came and went pretty freely, but Jacob only left occasionally. He liked his animals, his gardens, his family. He liked to walk across the bridge to the house, sit at the head of the table with one of the children on his knee, ask us about our day, then lecture a little or talk about himself or maybe rant against the government. He wrote volumes on his beliefs, his philosophies and believed his writings would one day be legendary. There were times it seemed so lovely. Then there were times it seemed so sick and demented. One thing—once you were there, there was no leaving. And they didn’t let people inside. He used the excuse that we were a private religious order. But there wasn’t much religion going on there. Reese, the oldest of us, called it a tribe. A militant tribe.”

Rawley asked the same questions over and over again. Devon answered, and her answers were consistent. Spencer memorized her answers, as he assumed Cooper was doing.

Spencer was beginning to understand what she had been through in a way he hadn’t before, even though she’d told him about her experience. This was completely different and for the first time he was impacted by how trapped she must have felt and how much courage it must have taken for her to flee. And, to his shame, he realized how much trust she must have churned up to be able to trust someone like him.

Had he really done what he’d done? Chased her, seduced her and then rejected her because of sudden terror that he’d somehow be hurt again? He felt the fool and he wanted to stop everything right now so he could explain, beg her to understand and forgive him, to tell her he was really not that kind of wimp. If they got Mercy and got through this, he would never let her down again.