The Disappearance

Seventeen

Joan awoke back at the Home.

For several seconds, she thought it was just another nightmare, that she was dreaming it, but there was a tactility to her surroundings that was never present in her dreams, and when she saw that the old photo of Father that had graced each of the bedrooms had been replaced by a newer photo showing him with a thick white beard, she knew she was really here. She sat up slowly, feeling her brain pressing outward against the sides of her skull. Her muscles ached, as though she’d been simultaneously lifting weights and running a marathon.

Where was Gary? she wondered. And Reyn and Stacy? And Brian?

Dead.

No. Father wouldn’t allow that.

Then where were they?

Despite the pain in her head, she stood. Aside from the bed, the room had very few furnishings: a hard-backed chair, a small eating table, a freestanding lamp. They were standard issue, and she remembered them from her childhood, but she had lived too long away, was now used to comfort, and her surroundings seemed not just spartan but prisonlike. There was no radio, no television, no computer, no bookshelf. Light came from a fluorescent square in the ceiling. Walking over to the closed curtains, she pulled them open. As she’d expected, as she’d known, there was no window behind the drapes, only a painted scene of green rolling hills, a powder blue sky and a smiling yellow sun.

It seemed like only moments before that she and Gary had been with their friends at Burning Man, sitting around their camp, watching the Man burn and then fall. But how long ago had it really been? Hours? Days?

She had to go to the bathroom, so she tried to open the room’s lone door, but it was locked. She began pounding on it. “Let me out!” she called. “Someone let me out!” There was no answer, no response. She called out again, pressed her ear to the door and listened, but heard nothing. She glanced around.

In the far corner of the room was a metal bedpan.

She remembered this, too.

No, she thought. I can’t. I won’t.

But she could. And did.

The girl who brought her food sometime later was one of the Children. Joan did not know her, but her legs and arms were long and bony, and there was a slackness to her features that Joan recognized from some of the others. The girl carried in not a tray but a canvas bag, from which she withdrew a chicken sandwich wrapped in a dirty piece of reused aluminum foil, a carrot, an apple, and a glass bottle filled with apple juice so thick it was nearly opaque. The girl was accompanied by an older man who stood just inside the doorway and was obviously there to thwart any type of escape attempt. Both were dressed in clothing they had made themselves, the type of simple garments Joan recalled from her childhood. Just looking at it made her flesh crawl, and she knew that soon she would be expected to discard her jeans and shirt and sew herself some new clothes.

More than anything, she wanted to escape, wanted to run past the girl and the man and out the door. But she would not get far in the shape she was in. She would be captured and then she would be punished. Joan knew how things worked in the Home. Her best and only hope right now was to garner trust before she attempted to get away or contact anyone. The slight advantage granted to her by not being under constant suspicion could mean the difference between success and failure.

The girl said nothing, not even when Joan thanked her, and Joan wondered if this was one of the Children who couldn’t speak. She tried to catch the eye of the man at the door, smiling at him in what she hoped was an open, affable manner, but he remained completely stoic. Seconds after the girl finished placing the food on the small table, the two of them left. Joan heard the click of the door’s lock, loud in the stillness.

She was starving. And though she wanted to remain defiant and hated the idea of acquiescing in any way, she needed food, needed sustenance, and she pulled the chair next to the small table and began eating greedily. The food was edible but not very tasty, and the flavor of the apple juice was so odd that she spit back her first swallow and did not take another, in case it was drugged. She considered pounding on the door and letting whoever was out there know that she was finished, but she needed to maintain the illusion of compliance and instead left the remains of her meal on the table.

Now that she’d eaten, it seemed easier to think, though she still had a pounding headache. She wished she could believe that she had been spotted at Burning Man by someone from the Home, but the likelihood of that was nil. No one from the Home would ever attend a festival like Burning Man. No, she had been followed there and then taken, though for how long she’d been under surveillance she could not even guess.

Joan shivered, hugging herself. Had her parents been found, too?

She wondered if they had been captured.

Or if…

She started to cry, but quickly stopped herself, wiping away tears before they even spilled from her eyes. There was no time for that now. She needed to keep her wits about her if she ever hoped to get out of here.

Joan glanced up at the framed photo on the wall. Once again, she told herself that Father would not allow anyone to kill Gary and her friends. But this older Father looked different from the man she had known. Not harder—he had always been hard—but crueler, somehow. She could imagine him doing things not merely because they needed to be done but because he wanted to do them. That frightened her.

Could her friends be dead?

No. They might have been drugged, as she had been, temporarily taken out of commission so that she could be abducted without opposition, but they would not have been permanently harmed, and she took solace in the fact that they were out and free and knew something had happened to her. Gary would make sure that she was found, even if he had to go all the way to the FBI to do so. Whether he was back in California or still in Nevada, he would find a way to track her here.

But what if Gary and the others were not free?

What if they had been brought here, too, and were in rooms of their own? What if they were right now being brainwashed and beaten into submission just down the hall?

She continued to stare at the photo of Father, at his new white beard, at the flintiness of his eyes.

It was possible.

Joan lost track of time, but for what felt like the next several hours, she went back and forth on this subject. Deprived of any outside stimulation, her mind kept going over the various possibilities, trying to decide what had happened to her friends, her family, Gary. She knew this was a trick of Father’s, knew that this was exactly what he wanted her to do, was why she had been left alone like this, but she couldn’t help herself, and she was grateful when she heard the sound of the lock turning in the door.

She sat up in bed as the door opened. This time, the girl brought in her bag of food a chunk of cold cooked beef, a slice of freshly baked bread, another carrot and more apple juice. Joan realized that this was dinner. Which meant the last meal was lunch, which meant that she must have awakened in the morning. Along with the food came a book: Father’s version of the Bible. Joan felt like throwing it across the room, felt like dumping it in the half-filled bedpan, but she took it from the girl, forced herself to smile gratefully and said, “Thank you.”

The girl grinned, pleased, and Joan noticed that her teeth were exceptionally small, like twin rows of little Chiclets. Although she was at least fifteen or sixteen, it looked as though she still had her baby teeth, as though her permanent teeth had never come in.

There was no man accompanying the girl this time, and Joan knew that was a test. Father wanted to see how she would react, what she would do. So she made no effort to get away, made no effort to get information out of the girl, but simply accepted the food and the Bible, and then waved good-bye as the girl backed out into the hall and closed the door behind her.

She was still famished. A side effect of whatever she’d been drugged with, no doubt. As well as the fact that her lunch had not been that filling. She was also thirsty, and while she continued to have doubts about the odd-tasting apple juice, she had no choice but to drink it. She ate first, finishing everything, then waited for several moments, trying to discern any changes in her thoughts or emotions. When there was none, she took a sip. Again she waited.

It took some time, but eventually she finished the juice. She was still thirsty, though, and hungry, and she wondered if that was intentional.

Probably.

Father always had a plan. He left nothing up to chance.

Over the next half hour or so, the ceiling light began to fade in a rough approximation of nightfall, and before it grew completely dark, Joan crawled into bed. She could have turned on the lamp in the corner, but what was the point? She was alone here, and there was nothing to do. She was also tired, although whether that was a side effect of being drugged, a reaction to sensory deprivation or merely the natural workings of her body, she did not know.

She lay there under the thin covers, thinking about her parents, half hoping that they’d eluded capture and were free, and half hoping that they were here somewhere, at the Home. She would not feel so alone if she knew her mom and dad were nearby.

And where was Gary? she wondered. What had happened to him?

Maybe she’d never see him again.

Gary.

She thought of his open smile and his kind face and the tender way he looked at her when he thought she wasn’t watching.

Tears came to her eyes as she stared up into the blackness. She said his name aloud, “Gary,” and the sound comforted her, made her feel less lonely, though it also filled her with a sadness so profound that her silent tears were converted into sobs, and she could not stop herself from crying, great hiccuping sounds emanating from deep within her gut. She turned over, burying her face in the pillow, trying to muffle the noise.

She cried herself to sleep.

“Gary,” she kept repeating. “Gary, Gary, Gary…”

Day two.

Or was it? Joan had not been allowed to see outside, had been kept in this room since she’d first awakened here, and although she’d been served lunch, dinner and breakfast, it was possible that the intervals were off, that dinner had come six hours after lunch and breakfast had come one hour after dinner. Breakfast could have been served to her at four in the afternoon and lunch at midnight.

Father was capable of that.

Of more than that.

Boredom made her pick up the Bible after breakfast. She stood next to the curtains, pretending to herself that there was a real window behind it, and opened the book at random, to a page where parents were instructed that disobedient children were to be stoned to death. Immediately, she slammed the covers shut, a chill passing through her, an echo of the fear she had lived with every day until she and her parents had left this place. She’d been gone for five years, had gotten used to life in the outside world, and she’d almost forgotten what it was like living here. That harsh passage brought it all back.

She glanced back at the table, where, next to the toast crumbs and empty apple juice bottle, a prayer scroll lay that had been brought by the boy who had delivered breakfast. Like the girl, he’d been one of the Children, and not only had one of his legs been considerably longer than the other, but his head had been unusually large.

The thought of the Children intensified her chill.

She walked back to the table, dropping the Bible on top of the bread crumbs. Though Father insisted that it was the foundation of everything, the Bible had never held much sway with her. For one thing, there were too many narrative inconsistencies. She could never believe in things like the story of Exodus. After maintaining their religion through two thousand years of slavery, after seeing the Red Sea part, after being provided with manna from heaven, God’s chosen people forgot all about Him and started worshipping a golden calf because Moses was late coming down from the mountain? It didn’t make any sense. And there were weird anomalies like the story of Adam and Eve, who were kicked out of Eden because God was afraid they would usurp His power. In a strange conversation with what appeared to be another god, He said that humans had already eaten from the tree of knowledge and knew the difference between good and evil, and that they needed to be expelled before they ate from the tree of life and also became immortal.

So she didn’t believe the Bible.

But the scrolls still had power for her. They were harsh sometimes, even brutal, but there were no stories in them, only prayers and entreaties, and, in her experience, many of the requests had been answered. That lent them authority. She didn’t want to believe in the world shown in the scrolls, particularly not the persistent prejudice against Outsiders, but she’d spent her entire life rolling scrolls, writing them, reading them, and old habits were hard to break.

Joan hesitated for a moment, then picked up the prayer scroll from the table. Rolling it open, she automatically read the words aloud:

The second she finished reciting the words, the door opened and there stood Absalom, smiling. It was as if he’d been waiting outside the door for her to say the prayer, as if its recitation allowed him entry. She had not thought of Absalom since she and her parents had left, so Joan was surprised at the warm feelings of nostalgia she experienced upon seeing him again. Like Father, he was older than she remembered, but the sincerity of his smile and the kindness of his eyes were as far from Father’s stern visage as it was possible to get. A memory came to her: Absalom tying her shoes for her when she was five or six, using a thick, rough finger to wipe the tears from her cheeks and telling her to ignore Luke, the bratty little boy who’d made fun of her because he could tie his own shoes and she couldn’t.

Absalom stepped into the room. “Welcome back,” he said in the Language, holding his arms open wide for a hug.

She knew why he was here. It was his job to smooth things over, to try to make her forget that she had been drugged and kidnapped and taken to the Home by force. He was supposed to make her feel missed, wanted and loved. He was supposed to let her know that all was forgiven, that she was back and everything was fine. She wanted no part of that. At the same time, she did like Absalom and didn’t want to hurt his feelings, and she compromised by smiling and saying, “Hello.” She said it in the Language, surprised and a little bit frightened by how easily it came back to her.

Behind him, in the hallway, she could see the girl who’d been bringing her meals. The girl hung back shyly, though her face lit up when Joan’s eyes met hers, as if she was remembering when Joan had thanked her. If Joan recalled correctly, the Children didn’t receive many compliments or kind words.

“It is nice to see you,” Absalom said in that formal way of speaking that adults always used in the Home. “When Father told me you had come back to us, I was overjoyed.”

I didn’t “come back” to you! Joan wanted to yell. I was kidnapped and brought back by force! I never wanted to see this place again! But she forced herself to answer with a slight acquiescent nod.

“You have been given your old room back!” Absalom told her enthusiastically. “I will take you there. Everything will be as it was.”

That was what Joan was afraid of, but she nodded and smiled and followed him out into the hall, the girl moving aside to let her pass. She looked first to the left, then to the right. She didn’t recognize this corridor and wondered if it was part of a new addition, though it was also possible that she’d simply forgotten it. Not only had she been gone for several years, but there were doubtlessly things that her brain had blocked out.

“You will be able to eat with us in the dining room again,” Absalom continued. “And you may participate in all of the joyous events Father has planned for us.”

Joan was filled with a sense of welling panic. She remembered all too well how difficult it had been for her and her parents to escape, and she knew that once she had been reintegrated into the fold, every minute of every hour of every day would be accounted for. She would have no privacy whatsoever. Each move would be watched; each word heard and reported back to Father.

They walked past a series of closed doors. Did any of them lead outside? Even if they did, they would not lead out of the Home, only out of this building—although that might be enough to allow her to get her bearings and, if she could think fast enough on her feet, find an escape route.

She eyed the door on her right, trying to determine whether or not it was locked. If it was and she tried to open it, her attempted breakout would be over before it began. Likewise, if it was open but led to a closet, she would be out of luck as well. She had to be careful. She could afford no mistakes.

Ahead, on the left side of the corridor, a door was open. Joan continued to face forward but glanced surreptitiously to the left, prepared at a second’s notice to run through the doorway if it happened to lead outside. There was a tapping sound, a click. In her peripheral vision, she caught movement on the opposite side of the corridor and, surprised, she swiveled her head to the right, where another door was opening to reveal two men standing in a small room filled with skeins of recently spun yarn piled next to what appeared to be a broken loom.

“Absalom!” one of them called.

Absalom paused. “Wait here,” he told Joan, shooting a significant look at the girl behind her. He walked into the room to speak to the men, and Joan took a step forward, peering into the open doorway on her left. It looked like an office. Not the type of primitive office she would have expected to find in the Home, but a regular, if bare-bones, office with chairs, a desk and, atop the desk, a computer.

And a phone.

There was no one inside the room.

Joan took a chance. As fast as she could, she ran into the office, slamming the door behind her. She dashed across the floor, grabbed the phone and quickly dialed the number of Gary’s cell.

In the hallway, the girl was screaming, though no words issued from her mouth, only harsh atonal cries. Joan knew she had only seconds to pull this off. There was one ring, two—and then the girl had thrown open the door and was in the room, trying to slam her hand down on the phone and cut off the call. Joan managed to push her away with her left hand while holding the phone to her ear with her right, but the girl fell back and came at her from another angle, still screaming, still calling for help in the only way she could.

Absalom and the other two men entered the room just as the ringing ceased and Gary’s voice mail message came on: “Hello. This is Gary. I’m not able to…”

One of the men lunged for her while the other guarded the door. “Gary! I’m—” Joan shouted, and the phone was ripped from her hand. She was shoved against the desk with such force that the wind was knocked out of her, and then her arms were being pulled back as she was restrained by both men. The girl was still screaming and Absalom was calming her down as the two men dragged Joan back into the corridor.

“Return her!” Absalom said angrily, pushing past them and leading back the way they had come.

She was taken again to the windowless room in which she’d been confined since her arrival and thrown onto the bed, the door closed and locked behind her.

And there she stayed.

Food was delivered while she slept, enough for breakfast, lunch and dinner, so she never saw another person. She knew this solitary confinement was supposed to break her, and she vowed she would not let that happen, but being so alone, with no computer or television or radio, with no book other than the Bible, began to take its toll. She actually found herself looking forward to the day when she could see one of the Teachers or even one of the Children, though that was not something she would ever admit.

She had no conception of time in here, but once, she attempted to sleep after she ate lunch rather than after dinner, and several times she tried to stay awake and not fall asleep at all, in hopes of catching someone bringing food or emptying her bedpan. But she must have been under surveillance somehow because neither ploy worked and, as always, her food arrived and her bedpan was emptied while she was slumbering.

She was given new clothes, Home clothes, which she did not have to make herself, probably because they wouldn’t trust her with a needle. She would have welcomed the opportunity to sew—it would have given her a way to pass the time and the clothes would have actually fit—but she put on the oversized blouse and pants anyway. Her old clothes were getting dirty, and she no longer felt comfortable wearing them.

The next morning, her jeans and shirt were gone.

Finally, after what felt like a month but was probably only a couple of days, the door was opened again. Joan was daydreaming, thinking about the trip to the beach she had taken with Gary and wondering where Gary was at this moment—whether he was here in the Home or in his dorm room or in a class or at a police station demanding that she be found—when there was an unexpected rattling of the doorknob. She instantly jumped out of bed and faced the door. She’d pictured this moment many times, and in her imaginings she unplugged the floor lamp and used it as a spear or cudgel to attack the person entering her room, but here it was happening, and she was completely unprepared.

The door swung open and in walked Absalom.

Unlike last time, he was not smiling.

And he held in his hand a rope with a muzzle.

“Father wants to see you,” he said.

Eighteen

An address.

They had nothing else to show for their long interrogation, for all of their questions and threats, and though they’d gotten exactly what Gary had wanted—the specific location where Joan was being held—the lack of context unnerved him. For Ape Arms gave up the address almost instantly, with a slight, mysterious Gioconda smile, as though he knew of some secret reason why Gary would never reach the place. But after that he would say nothing else, not who he was, not who would be at that location, not why Joan had been taken, not why Kara was missing, not why Gary himself was being targeted. His companion just kept crying.

Gary looked down at the address in his hand.

Joan was in Bitterweed, Texas.

Texas. That was far away, but Gary remembered the Lone Star license plate of the car his abductors had driven, and it was one of the reasons he believed the information to be true. The fact that it was given so freely made him uneasy, though, and while he intended to head out immediately to find Joan, he was worried that he might be walking into a trap.

The two men they’d captured stood before him, unmoving. It was still hard for Gary not to think of them as Outsiders, but if there was any other reliable information they’d obtained during their exhaustive questioning, it was that these two were not Outsiders. The very idea seemed to enrage them, and that was the only point on which they would argue or engage, although Gary and his crew were not sophisticated enough interrogators to be able to use that as leverage to pry more information out of them.

But if they weren’t Outsiders, who was?

That was only one of a hundred questions for which he had no answer. He had the address, though, and once Joan was back safe and sound, then he would have the luxury of trying to figure out what was going on.

Reyn sidled up next to him. “What’s the plan?” his friend asked, nodding toward the captives.

“We’ll have the film society take them out.”

Reyn stared at him.

Gary smiled weakly. “Joke.” He looked from the tall one to the short one. What was to be done with them? If they turned the men in to the police, they risked being arrested themselves. Detaining the men in the way that they had was not immediately obvious as self-defense, and while he might be able to make a case that it was, he would doubtlessly have to do so in court. There wasn’t time for that.

On the other hand, if they let the men go, the two of them would probably contact their cohorts immediately and Joan would be taken away and hidden somewhere out of reach.

That was something that could not be risked.

Gary realized all of a sudden that Ape Arms was grinning at him, and he looked away with an involuntary shiver. Something about that smile was extremely disconcerting, and he could tell by the reactions of those around him that they found it unnerving as well.

Who were these people? he wondered again.

Brian had his BlackBerry out and had typed in the Texas address, using Google Earth to try see where it was and what it looked like. “Check this,” he said, and Gary leaned over to see that the area outside the town of Bitterweed, where the address was located, was not available for viewing. Instead of a rural landscape, they saw a gray screen and the words “Image Not Obtainable.”

Brian quickly cross-referenced two other satellite photo sites, but they, too, were blacked out.

“Curiouser and curiouser,” Reyn said.

Stacy pulled them away, telling Dror and the others to keep an eye on the captives for a moment, and she led them down the path until they were out of earshot of the others. “I don’t know what the plan is now,” she said once they’d stopped. “But we need to tell the police what we know.”

“She’s right,” Reyn agreed. “We’ve done all we can. This is where we hand it off.”

Gary was already shaking his head.

“We have to!” Stacy insisted. “Haven’t you learned your lesson yet?” She ran a hand through her hair, exasperated. “What’s your idea? Drive halfway across the country and try to mete out some vigilante justice? Are you going to bring a gun and Rambo her out of whatever predicament she’s in?”

Gary didn’t know what he was going to do. All he knew was that he needed to rescue Joan. He looked to Brian for support, but Brian for once was oddly noncommittal and lifted his shoulders in a gesture of vague equivocation.

“They killed Teri Lim,” Stacy reminded him. “Killed her. And kidnapped Joan and Kara.”

“And drugged us,” Reyn added.

“The point is: this is not something we can handle. We got lucky here tonight. But we’re a few college students up against… God knows what.”

Gary thought for a moment. She was right, he thought, though he hated to admit it. His intentions hardly constituted a plan, and whatever action he took might fail completely. Not to mention the fact that it would take some time for him to actually get to Texas.

Stacy placed a gentle hand on his arm. “We have to turn them over to the police. You know we do.”

“We got what we needed out of them,” Reyn said. “We tell the cops they were stalking you, file a complaint, let them figure out what to do.”

That was a good strategy. He was still worried that they might be the ones to get in trouble, that they might be accused of assault or kidnapping or some related offense and would be jailed while the other two were allowed to go free. But they had numbers on their side—twelve to two—and since Teri was dead and Kara and Joan were missing, it was likely that Williams would believe their story.

Gary gave in. “Okay. We’ll take them into the police station—”

“Take them in?” Stacy said incredulously. “Has this affected your brain? We call nine-one-one.”

Of course.

Gary felt stupid. Grief, fear, stress, lack of sleep, all of it was conspiring to impair his judgment. It probably was a good idea to let the police handle things.

Reyn already had his phone out and was calling. After he explained the situation to the 911 operator, Reyn said that this was connected to a case Detective Williams was working on and that the detective would probably like to be informed about it.

They walked back up the path, returning to where the others waited. Both Ape Arms and his buddy had closed their eyes and were standing with their hands clasped in front of them, praying. The two of them were speaking aloud but very softly, and though occasional words could be made out, everyone gave them privacy.

Gary had time to think while they waited for the police to arrive, and he changed his mind about not going after Joan. Maybe his judgment was impaired, but he thought the cops were taking too long to show up, and it made him realize that, while they might be highly trained, they had no personal stake in the outcome of this situation. He did. He loved Joan, and he needed to be there when she was rescued from her captors.

The operator had instructed Reyn to stay on the line, and he had. As the police drew closer, he gave them a more specific description of exactly where they were located. Seconds after hearing sirens pull into the parking lot at the end of the memorial path, four uniformed officers came hurrying up the trail. They pushed their way through the circle of students and immediately surrounded the still-praying duo. Moments later, Williams and Tucker strode out of the darkness. Gary hadn’t expected them to be working this late and was surprised to see them, but he wasn’t surprised by the look of annoyance on Tucker’s face, and a sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach told him that they should not have called the police.

Williams immediately put his fears to rest. The detective glanced at the two men, then walked directly up to Gary. “What happened?”

While everyone listened, Gary explained that these two had been stalking him and that because of that he’d been afraid to go out at night alone, so he’d come out this evening with a bunch of friends, and when he and his friends were attacked, they’d fought back.

“And why, exactly, were your friends carrying weapons?” Tucker asked drily.

Gary reminded the detectives about his abduction, how he’d been kidnapped and almost been killed. Williams kept glancing over at the captives. It helped his cause that the two men were dressed oddly and that they had obvious physical problems. They looked wrong, and that granted verisimilitude to the story Gary was telling.

“They look like the guys who kidnapped me,” Gary said. “Same kind of clothes, everything. I’m willing to bet that they’re the ones who wiped all my computerized records. I know they’re part of the group that has Joan.”

“How do you know that?”

“They told us where she’s being held. They gave us an address.”

“I have no idea what they’re talking about,” Ape Arms said calmly. He grinned at Gary, and even with the police present, that smile was still creepy enough to send a chill down his spine.

“We have witnesses,” Reyn said, gesturing around. “Twelve of them.”

“They’re liars,” Ape Arms said.

“Outsiders!” his friend insisted.

The word put Williams on alert, and Gary thought of Joan’s prayer scroll, which the detective must have seen during his examination of Joan and Kara’s dorm room. “What did you say?” Williams asked.

“You’re all Outsiders!” the short man yelled at the detective.

The men were separated, two uniformed officers guarding each, while Williams interviewed the tall one and Tucker the short one. Gary and the others waited around, trying to listen in, but while the questions could be heard, the answers couldn’t, and it soon became clear that the cops were having no more luck obtaining information than they had. Williams returned to where Gary was standing, obviously exasperated. “Do you have any idea what their names are?” he asked.

“Nope. They wouldn’t say.”

“Still won’t.” Williams nodded to the uniformed officers. “Bring ’em in. We’ll get this sorted out down at the station.” He turned to Gary. “You said they told you where Ms. Daniels is being held and provided you with an address.”

“We’ll need that address,” Tucker said.

Brian faced the detective. “Why don’t you guys just keep looking for Kara? We’ll take care of Gary’s imaginary girlfriend.”

Tucker glared back defiantly.

“We’re sorry about that,” Williams said, “but we have to go with the facts we have in hand.”

“Yeah, and we told you—”

“It’s all right,” Gary interrupted. He was feeling antsy and wanted to speed things along.

“The important thing is that we get everyone back in one piece,” Williams offered. “Now, did they give any indication as to Ms. Daniels’s condition?”

Gary shook his head.

“Did they say whether anyone else was being held at this location?”

Brian snorted. “They gave us the address. Period. Then they called us Outsiders and prayed.”

“I’m going to need you to come back to the station with us.”

Gary looked anxiously over at Reyn. They needed to get out of here and get going. Texas was far away and time was passing.

“I know what you’re thinking,” the detective said. “But the fastest way to do this is for me to call the local police or sheriff and have them check out this address. I’ll explain the situation, tell them what we have, and they can go out and look for us. If they find anything, they’ll let us know. If they don’t, and it turns out we’ve been given false information, they’ve prevented us from going on a wild-goose chase.”

It made sense, and Gary nodded reluctantly.

“You don’t need everyone, do you?” Reyn asked, gesturing toward the students gathered around them.

“Not right now. I need everyone’s name and phone number, but Mr. Russell’s the only one I need to speak with at the moment.” He motioned toward Gary. “You’ll have to sign the complaint.”

The uniformed policemen had already led Ape Arms and his buddy off to patrol cars, although they had not been handcuffed, and Williams and Tucker took several moments to write down names and numbers, Williams in a small notebook, Tucker on his handheld computer.

“All right,” Williams said, nodding toward Gary. “Follow us.”

“We’ll meet you there,” Reyn promised.

“Our car’s right over here.”

“We’ll take my car,” Gary said.

Tucker looked suspicious, but Brian shone his flashlight into the detective’s eyes and made him turn away. Brian chuckled to himself as the detectives walked back up the path toward the parking lot.

“I guess you all heard that,” Gary said to the gathered students. “You guys can go home. You don’t have to come with us. But I want to thank you for all of your help tonight. We couldn’t’ve done it without you.”

“And things might have turned out very differently if you weren’t here,” Reyn added.

“Tell us what happens,” Dror requested.

Gary nodded. “We will.”

“Tomorrow,” Reyn promised.

The entire group walked back toward the center of campus, splitting off into different directions once they reached the buildings, and Gary led Reyn, Stacy and Brian to his parking spot and his car. Fifteen minutes later, they were at the police station and being ushered up the stairs to the detectives’ area. Williams was at his desk and on the phone, but there was no sign of Tucker, the other policemen or the two men they’d captured, who were hopefully sitting in some cell right now.

Williams saw them and held up a finger, motioning for them to wait a moment. “Yes,” he said into the phone. “I understand.” There was a pause. “I’ll make sure they do. What’s that number?” He fumbled around on his paper-strewn desk for a pen, then grabbed one of the pieces of paper and wrote something down on it. “Thank you,” he said. “I’ll be in touch.”

Williams hung up the phone. “That was Sheriff Stewart, from Bitterweed, Texas. I told him what had happened, told him we have an escaped abductee”—he nodded toward Gary—“as well as three young women—two missing, one a hit-and-run victim—and that we have reason to believe the perpetrators of these crimes are located at the address we were given. I spelled out the details, then described the appearance and behavior of the two men we have in custody, though I couldn’t provide any positive ID because they refused to furnish their names, they had no forms of identification, and we have not yet been able to match their fingerprints with any on file.

“Turns out the sheriff and his department know these guys. They’ve tangled with them before. They’re part of a cult based in Bitterweed, known as the Homesteaders, and they’ve been accused in the past of using terrorist tactics against their enemies, including drugging people and kidnapping them.”

“That’s them!” Gary said excitedly. “We’ve got ’em!”

“Not so fast. None of them have ever been convicted, and there’s a pending harassment suit against the sheriff that’s still making its way through the courts. The sheriff’s department would like nothing better than to nail these bastards, but they’re more than a little gun-shy, as you can imagine, and they’re worried about creating a Waco situation and making these lunatics martyrs to all the wacky fringe groups out there. I laid out everything we have, but they’re walking on eggshells, and as far as they’re concerned, we can’t show probable cause. Right now they’re not even willing to take a request to a judge.”

“We’ll take care of them ourselves,” Brian said. “That was our original plan anyway.”

Gary nodded in agreement.

“Hold your horses. Sheriff Stewart said he can’t authorize any official surveillance, but he’s going to station a discreet lookout at the head of the road leading to the compound—”

“Compound?” Stacy said. “They have a compound?”

“Cults always have a compound,” Reyn told her.

“—and if any of his men happen to see any unusual activity or happen to spot anyone resembling Ms. Daniels or Ms. Madison, he’ll send deputies in, harassment case or not. I gave him a brief description and am going to e-mail over everything we have. I told him our information’s solid, and he knows the importance of finding these young women, so he’s going to do everything he can to help us.”

“I’m still going over there,” Gary said.

Williams nodded. “I thought you might say that. And, frankly, I’m glad. I told Sheriff Stewart that there was every possibility you would not be deterred, and he promised he’d look the other way. No matter what you might try.” The detective paused. “I hate to say this—and I’ll deny I ever did—but it wouldn’t be such a bad thing if you got into trouble somehow and did something that required the sheriff to come to your assistance. If you find Ms. Madison or Ms. Daniels, that is.”

“What about you?” Stacy asked. “This is your case. Aren’t you going to come?”

“No.” Williams looked embarrassed.

“Why not?”

“It’s complicated.”

Gary didn’t care why, didn’t care whether it was lack of money, a jurisdictional problem or something else entirely. Like Brian, he was glad the detectives weren’t coming along. They’d been no help at all up to this point, and the idea of them hogging the glory and claiming success after their mishandling of the investigation into Joan’s disappearance set his teeth on edge. Let the local law enforcement guys in Texas get all the credit. It didn’t matter to him, as long as Joan was free and safe.

Williams copied something onto a yellow Post-it and handed it to Gary. “Here’s the sheriff’s direct number. You can keep in contact with him at all times. If you have any problems, if anything happens that you can’t handle, the sheriff’s men will be there.”

“Thanks,” Gary said.

“All right. Let’s go.” Brian was already walking away from the detective’s desk toward the stairwell.

It was clear that Williams had more to say and that Stacy wanted to stay and listen, but time was wasting, and Gary started after Brian. “Yeah. I need to get moving.”

Reyn and Stacy followed behind them, but Gary didn’t turn to look back until they were on the first floor. It gave him a perverse sense of satisfaction to ignore the police, and his only regret was that Tucker hadn’t been there as well. The other detective would have gotten much angrier, and it would have been great to just blow him off.

Still, he was in an odd position. Despite Stacy’s fears of vigilante justice, Williams and the sheriff in Texas had basically signed off on exactly that, encouraging him to go after Joan on his own, though he had absolutely no idea how. On the one hand, he resented the idea of the police jumping on the bandwagon this late in the game and suddenly getting involved when they’d been completely useless until now. On the other hand, he resented the fact that they were opting out on some technicality and leaving everything to him when he was in way over his head.

Nothing was working out the way it should.

And he was still suspicious of the fact that Ape Arms had provided the address so readily. He and his partner had been sent out here to California to capture Gary again—he was sure of it—and the way they’d practically invited him to go after Joan made him sure that his arrival was expected and that a trap had been set for him.

The uniformed officer at the desk buzzed them out, and they stepped through the security gate and through the lobby. Outside, the air felt cool and good.

“We’re renting a car this time,” Brian announced. “I don’t trust any of your raggedy-ass jalopies. Mine, either, for that matter.”

Gary shook his head. “I can’t. I’m still off the grid. My credit card won’t work.”

“I’ll take care of it,” Brian told him. “I have a MasterCard that I never use. I think there’s a balance of zero on it.”

“When the bill comes in, we’ll split it,” Reyn said. “Three ways. Me, you and Gary.”

“Four ways,” Stacy stated. Reyn turned toward her. “I’m contributing, too,” she said.

“I already said we are.”

“I’m going to.”

“I wasn’t trying to disenfranchise you. I just think of us as one entity, one unit. I figured that would be our contribution.”

“You’re a cheap bastard who wants Gary and Brian to pay more.” She looked at Gary. “Four ways.”

He didn’t know how to express his gratitude. Not only for helping to defray expenses but for offering to come along in the first place. He honestly hadn’t expected any of them to accompany him. Yes, they were his friends, but they’d already gone far above and beyond. Besides, this wasn’t their fight.

Looking from one to another, he actually started to tear up.

Reyn clapped a hand on his back. “We’ll get her, don’t worry.”

“Everybody get a change of clothes, toiletries and whatever,” Stacy suggested as they reached the car.

“I’m good,” Brian told her.

She ignored him. “We’ll meet back at… where? Gary’s?”

“You’re forgetting something,” Reyn said. “It’s nearly midnight. All of the rental car places are closed.”

“Then we’ll—” Gary began.

Reyn cut him off. “We’ll go back to our rooms, catch a few hours of much-needed sleep, then head out bright-eyed and bushy-tailed in the morning.”

“No.” Gary shook his head in firm disagreement.

“Do you want a repeat of last time? Breaking down in Asswipe, Arizona, while we spend hours waiting for some Homer to find the part that’ll fix our alternator? We get some sleep, wait until morning, then rent a car and drive nonstop until we’re there.”

“We could fly,” Brian suggested.

“Yes!” Gary said.

Brian already had his BlackBerry out and was moving his fingers over the screen, tapping the keypad. They waited patiently while he accessed different sites and saved specific information. At the conclusion of it all, he looked up and said, “The earliest flight we could get would be a Southwest leaving LA for Austin tomorrow night at eight. The problem is, we’d have to rent a car for the rest of the trip, which would be a good four hours more. But since we’d be landing in the middle of the night, we’d have the same problem we have right now: we’d have to wait until morning for the car. And find a place to sleep.”

There was no way Gary was going to wait around all day tomorrow until a night flight—that could very well be delayed—took them to Austin, Texas, where they would have to wait for ten hours for a rental car. His muscles were tense again, and he had to force himself to unclench his fists. “Okay. We’ll go in the morning.”

“And get some sleep,” Reyn said.

Reluctantly, Gary nodded. “And get some sleep.”

They were on the road in a new silver Nissan Altima by nine thirty the next morning. Stacy had brought textbooks and schoolwork to keep her occupied on the trip. Reyn and Brian were lugging their laptops, Brian also bringing along his ever-present BlackBerry, while Gary had packed… nothing. It was stupid and shortsighted, he knew. They were going to be in the car for a long time, and a book or a game would have helped while away the hours—only he knew that he wouldn’t be able to concentrate on anything extraneous. Joan was the only thing on his mind, and nothing could distract him from thinking about where they were going and what they were going to do when they got there.

He hadn’t even brought a weapon, and that felt like a mistake to him the second they left. He remembered all too clearly that battle-to-the-death he’d had with the gas station attendant in New Mexico, and that should have taught him a lesson: he ought to be prepared at all times. A sledgehammer was not always going to be nearby when he needed it.

“The sun barfed heat onto the desert,” Brian said to no one in particular as they passed one of the Palm Springs exits.

Stacy frowned at him. “What?”

“I’m composing my memoir of this adventure. In my head. I’m memorizing my thoughts and impressions so I can write them down later. This will make an amazing book. True-life trauma makes for instant bestsellers. Especially firsthand accounts of widely publicized events, which, face it, this is bound to be.”

“If we play our cards right,” Gary said, “no one will ever know about this.”

Brian looked at him incredulously. “Are you kidding? This is gold. Four college students setting out on a road trip to rescue their friend who’s been abducted by a cult? You couldn’t make this stuff up.”

Stacy’s voice was tight. “A little insensitive, don’t you think?”

“No offense, dude,” Brian told Gary sincerely. “I’m just thinking out loud. And I know everything’s going to turn out okay; otherwise I wouldn’t even entertain this thought.”

In a weird way, that made Gary feel a little more optimistic.

“It’s fine,” he told Brian.

Stacy wasn’t willing to let it go. “It’s wrong,” she said flatly.

Brian ignored her. “I read this science fiction story once where, after he croaked, this guy went to a world that was just this wild, overgrown jungle. It turned out that when people and animals died, they just died. They rotted away and became plant food. But when plants died, they went to a kind of veggie heaven, where they grew forever. Somehow wires got crossed, and this dude ended up there with the plants, the only human ever to experience life after death.”

“Does that have anything to do with anything?”

“No. I’m just saying.”

Gary tuned them out. He was glad they were here, happy they had come along, but their focus was more diffuse than his. He found it impossible to think of anything other than Joan, and talk of any other subject he found not only distracting but annoying.

Disloyal.

Yes. More than anything else, it felt disloyal to him, though that was a fanatic’s reaction and he would never admit to it aloud.

Stacy and Brian continued to argue, but Gary said nothing, simply stared out the window, watching the scenery pass by, wishing they were moving faster.

As with the trip to Burning Man, they took turns driving and sleeping. Stacy had gone first, then Reyn. Gary took the wheel after Tucson and didn’t give it up until they reached El Paso that night. They had an interim meal at Denny’s (“Dekfast,” Stacy called it, “half dinner, half breakfast.” “Wouldn’t that make it dickfast?” Brian wondered aloud), and afterward Reyn and Stacy slept in the back while Brian drove and Gary rode in the passenger seat beside him. Outside, the world was dark and flat, the road impossibly straight. They met no others on the highway, and it was easy—too easy—to imagine that they were all alone, the last people on the planet. Gary found himself grateful that the rental car had come equipped with satellite radio, that they could listen to music being broadcast from New York. It made him feel tethered to modern life and the world of human beings.

He found himself wondering if the area around Bitterweed looked like this as well. Was Joan chained up in some room, looking out on a barren landscape of endless plains? The thought sickened his heart.

Although he’d not just been anxious to reach Joan but driven to do so, impelled by a deep primal need to go after her, he had still not thought through the mechanics of rescue. Stacy was right. How did he expect to free Joan from her captors? Walk up to the door of whatever this place was and demand that she be released? Try to sneak in through a window and spirit her away, fighting anyone who attempted to bar their escape? What was he going to do?

He had no idea.

Gary continued to stare out the window into the empty darkness, listening as Brian fiddled with the satellite radio, trying to find a song that he liked.

Eventually, lulled by the music and the blackness and the motion of the car, he dozed.

He dreamed about a gigantic farmhouse, identical on the outside to the one in New Mexico where he’d been held but a hundred times bigger. Inside, there was only a single barnlike room where dozens of young women who looked just like Joan were manacled to the floor. At the far end of the room, the psycho from the gas station was trying to start up a chain saw. He intended to cut up the captive women, and Gary knew this because he had a chain saw in his hands as well. They were supposed to work together, moving in from the outside and killing everyone in between. “No!” Gary yelled at the other man. “Stop!” But the gas station attendant didn’t understand English, spoke only that weird alien language, and he revved up his chain saw and cut through the midsection of a young woman who not only looked like Joan but screamed like her.

When he awoke, it was still dark. Brian was driving more slowly than he should have been, and Gary tapped him lightly on the shoulder. “What’s up?” he whispered. Reyn and Stacy remained dead asleep in the back.

“It’s been going on for a while,” Brian said. “Wait a sec.”

“What?” Gary didn’t know what he was talking about.

“There!” Brian pointed through the windshield where, several yards ahead, at the edge of the illumination offered by the headlights, a lone man wearing beige peasant clothes and using a large hooked staff as a walking stick strode purposefully along the side of the road.

“That’s the sixth one I’ve seen in the last ten minutes.”

Gary felt chilled.

They passed the man, and though Gary watched carefully through the side window, the man did not turn to look at them as they went by, gave no indication at all that they were there. Glancing in the side mirror, Gary saw the walking man’s form, lit red by the taillights, recede eerily into the darkness. He had been dressed like the men who had kidnapped him, like the people at the farmhouse, like the two men they had captured who had given them the address where Joan was being held.

Gary’s voice when he spoke was quiet. “What do you think that’s about?”

Brian said nothing, only pointed to a green sign coming up on the right.

BITTERWEED 45 MILES.

Nineteen

They had escaped from the Home at night.

Joan had been awakened by her dad, who, with a finger to her lips, bade her get up. Her mom stood behind him, holding a lantern. Joan had not been told this would happen, but it was not entirely unexpected. Like herself, her parents had never seemed happy here, and recently she had noticed them avoiding certain people and spending more time conversing together in low murmurs long after Bedtime, when everyone was supposed to be asleep.

Her mom had been born in the Home, like Joan, but her dad had come here voluntarily, and sometimes, in secret, he told her stories of the world Outside. Father, Absalom and the other Teachers told of the world Outside, too, but theirs were cautionary tales, meant to frighten. Her dad’s stories were different. Personal reminiscences. Funny, exciting, but more wistful than anything else. And Joan found herself longing to experience the type of things her dad had. The more she heard and the more she learned, the more stifling life at the Home seemed, and every day it grew harder to follow the rigid rules or feign interest in the mundane tasks required of her.

Though fear of punishment made her outwardly compliant at all times.

Her parents’ dissatisfaction, too, seemed to be increasing, but it was when Father had called her in for a personal conference, when she had told her mom and dad what he said, that she really sensed a change in their attitudes. The difference was subtle and probably not noticeable to anyone other than herself, but all of a sudden discontent became disengagement, and though they continued to go through the motions of their daily routines, they no longer seemed a part of that life. Which was why she was not surprised when her dad woke her up in the middle of the night, put a finger to her lips and whispered for her to get dressed; they were leaving.

Joan’s heart was pounding as she slipped out of her pajamas and put on the new clothes she had sewn for herself last week. There were things she wanted to bring with her, stuffed animals she’d made, pictures she’d drawn, stories she’d written, but she knew without asking that she would have to leave everything behind, that they would be traveling light.

In the darkness, her parents whispered to her the details of the plan they had concocted. Her dad, it seemed, had been overseeing workers at the Farm for the past week, and while doing so, he had taken the opportunity to stash food, water and other survival needs in backpacks that he’d hidden in the bushes at the edge of one of the fields. Enough for a week. The original plan had been for them to strike out on foot and then try to hitch a ride with someone driving by, preferably someone just passing through on their way to one of the coasts. But as luck would have it, the brakes on one of the farm trucks had gone out yesterday, and Joan’s dad had been in charge of getting them fixed. He had done so—and while buying brake pads in town, he’d had an extra key made. He had hidden the key in one of the backpacks and had parked the truck on a trail off the side of the road between the Home and town. He had told Father that the truck needed a new master cylinder, something he could not do, and that he’d left the vehicle at a garage.

Now the three of them needed to get out of the Home, strike out across the fields, pick up the backpacks and walk down to where the truck was hidden. After that, they would be free to go anywhere they wanted.

“We’ll go far enough away that no one will ever find us,” her mom said. “Not even Father.” The words were reassuring, but her tone was not, and Joan could tell that her mom was as scared as she was.

“Do you understand?” her dad asked.

Joan nodded silently. She looked around her room one last time, at everything she would have to leave behind.

Seeing the look on her face, her dad smiled kindly. He told her that he had also taken her favorite stuffed animal, a bunny that her mom had made for her when she was born and that she’d had for all these years, and had hidden it in her backpack with the other stuff. Joan had never loved him more than she did at that moment, and she threw her arms around his neck and held him tight. “I love you, Daddy,” she whispered.

“I love you, too,” he whispered back.

Holding her mom’s thin hand, she waited until her dad had opened the door and checked the hallway to make sure it was clear, then walked with her parents out of the room. They strode purposefully but not hurriedly, not wishing to arouse suspicion. Should someone spot them, it would appear that their family had been summoned by Father or was engaged in performing an assigned duty. Luckily, they encountered no one else, and they walked in silence past the doors of other residences until they neared the end of the third hall.

Still holding her mom’s hand, Joan dragged her feet, holding back, trying to slow down. She didn’t like where they were going, and though she knew this was the fastest way to get outside, she wanted to turn around and leave the Home through another exit. Ahead, she could see a shadow wavering on the wall, a small, strangely shaped silhouette formed by a candle backlighting an unseen figure standing in the corridor that branched off to the right at the end of the hallway. She was afraid to go around the corner, but her mom squeezed her hand tight, pulling her forward, and Joan held her breath, bracing herself for what she might see.

It was an adult, not a child, but it was one of the Children, and no more than three feet high, with ungainly feet and an oversized head. A man, he grinned dumbly at them, not knowing who they were, not caring what they were doing, and Joan’s muscles tensed as she passed by him. She couldn’t look at that horrible dumb smile, and she did not relax until they were past the figure and out of the corridor. Glancing at her mom’s face, she saw sadness there, sadness and regret. Her mom, she knew, had a soft spot for the Children. She was one herself, though not so bad off as many of the others, and Joan squeezed her fingers tighter around her mom’s hand to show that she understood.

Then they had reached the side door, her dad had unlocked it and they were out.

Joan had never been outside at night before, and she breathed deeply. The cool air felt good, strange but good, and she looked up at the sky and saw the bright fullness of the moon. She felt happy and free, and though she’d known all along that they were doing the right thing in leaving, now she was certain of it. She thought of all the stories her dad had told her about growing up Outside, and she was filled with excitement at the knowledge that now that would be her world, too. She was scared, too, of course. The Teachers had drilled a fear of Outsiders into her since she’d been able to speak, and that sort of indoctrination did not give up its hold easily. But she was more eager than scared to leave the Home as she followed her dad around the edge of the building and through a large yard filled with farming equipment and tools. They stayed close to the fence, as far away from the windows of the Home as they could, until they made their way over a dry irrigation ditch and out to the grain field.

“Over there,” her dad said, pointing. He was still whispering, though they were several yards from the nearest building and there was no one in sight.

Joan followed his finger to see a line of trees at the far end of the field, a windbreak of tall, skinny poplars filling in the spaces between massive naturally growing cottonwoods. Crouching low, keeping near the high bushes that separated the grains from the vegetable crops, they hurried across the tilled ground, careful not to trip over roots or rocks or furrowed rows. Moments later, they had reached the trees and there, where her dad had left them, were three backpacks. Joan picked hers up, unzipped the top and checked inside. Her fingers closed on the familiar softness of her bunny, and she knew at that moment that everything would be all right.

As they walked between the trees and turned north toward the road, there came a loud scream from the Home behind them. Only it was too loud to have come from inside the Home. It had to have originated outside, in the equipment yard or field through which they had just passed. Joan’s heart was pounding. She’d almost screamed herself at the sound, and it was only her mom’s hand holding tightly to her own that had anchored her and given her strength and kept her from crying out.

“They’re not after us,” her dad whispered, sensing her fear. “Someone’s being punished.”

There was another scream.

Who was being punished? And why? Did this happen all the time? Joan had never heard such a noise before, but her dad was not only not surprised; he seemed to know exactly what was going on.

Joan shivered. She thought of the personal conference she’d had with Father, the way he’d looked at her, the way he’d smiled at her, and more than ever, she was glad that they were leaving. They increased their pace, branches from the underbrush scraping against their legs through the material of their clothes. Then they reached the road, and, with her dad leading the way, the three of them ran over the hard-packed dirt to the pull-out where he’d left the truck. By the light of the moon, he opened his backpack, took out the keys to the vehicle and unlocked the passenger door. Joan threw her backpack behind the seat, crawling over the vinyl upholstery to the center. Her mom was right behind her, settling into the passenger seat.

The left door unlocked, opened, and her dad got in. Seconds later, he was starting the truck and pulling onto the road. Moments after that, they reached the paved lane that led to town.

But they did not stop in town. They kept going, gaining speed, heading west.

And they were free.

Joan followed Absalom through a series of hallways to an area of the Home that she remembered only too well. The muzzle was on, covering her mouth, nose and chin with crisscrossing leather straps, and although she could speak, it effectively restrained her head and gave the old man the ability to pull her along like a dog on a leash.

To her right was the Dining Room, and it looked exactly as she remembered: the long wooden tables and uncomfortable benches, the open window leading to the Kitchen, the high beamed ceiling, the walls bare save for the life-sized photo of Father framed at the north end. To her left was the Chapel, and, as was always the case, there were people kneeling on the hard stone floor, both Residents and Penitents, worshipping and praying. Simply looking into the Chapel brought back a flood of sense memories, and her knees could feel the pain of remaining bent on that floor for hours, her arms the strain of holding her clasped hands in perfect position the entire time, her throat, stomach, bowels and bladder the agony of not being able to drink, eat or go to the bathroom.

Absalom yanked on her strap, pulling her forward.

Joan’s heart leapt in her chest.

Ahead, the Children were lining the corridor before Father’s Room, some standing, some sitting in wheelchairs, a few lying on ambulatory devices that resembled gurneys with steering wheels. She did not want to continue on. Even under the best of circumstances, she was unnerved by the Children, and the thought of passing by them now filled her with dread. Seeing the girl who had brought her food, Joan tried to smile at her, but the child stared back, blank-eyed like the others.

These were not Children like her mom and the others who had been integrated into normal life at the Home. These were the ones who were damaged, the ones who might be entrusted with simple tasks but more often than not were simply housed here, with the vague promise that one day God or Father would reveal their purpose. It had only been five years, but there seemed to be more of them than there used to be, and each succeeding generation appeared worse off than the last, which made perfect sense to someone like her who had learned real science but was probably very confusing to a lot of the Residents, particularly the younger ones.

Joan followed Absalom up the corridor, trying not to look to either side, trying to focus on the old man’s back in front of her and the closed double doors of Father’s Room beyond. Absalom was walking more slowly here, and she was certain that was on purpose, even though there was no way he could know about her fear of the Children.

Finally, after what seemed like ten minutes but was probably only one, they neared the end of the corridor. Inadvertently, she glanced to her right. At the head of this gathering, closest to the door, was a figure she recognized, wearing a grin she’d never forgotten. It was the little man who’d been standing in the hallway on the night she and her parents had escaped. He looked the same as he had then, with his big feet and oversized head, and he grinned dumbly at her, the same way he had on that night. If the door had not opened at that moment and she had not been yanked inside, she probably would have screamed.

But suddenly she was in Father’s Room, and the door was closing behind her.

Joan reached up and began unfastening the muzzle from the back of her head where it was strapped. The room was filled with people, and she was not about to stand in front of them like an animal with this contraption over her face. She expected Absalom to try to stop her, but he obviously knew that there was no way she could escape, nowhere she could go, and he made no effort to keep her from freeing herself. Besides, he had brought her here. His job was done.

Father would take over from this point.

Joan freed herself from the muzzle, letting the leather device drop onto the floor. She remembered with perfect clarity the last time she had been in here, the only time she had been in here, and she saw instantly that nothing had changed. At the head of the room was a floor-to-ceiling bookcase filled with religious tomes, and a massive cabinet containing copies of every prayer scroll ever written. Between the two sat the doorway that led to Father’s sleeping chamber, and scattered randomly through the center of the long rectangular room, almost like the elements of an obstacle course, were various pieces of antique furniture, not all of which seemed appropriate to the room’s purpose. There was a dining table with no accompanying chairs; a Victorian fainting couch; an ornately carved armoire; a rolltop desk; a marble bust of an old man with a long white beard, presumably God; a glass-doored cabinet filled with knives and swords; and an empty baker’s rack. Along the walls were wooden benches and, above the benches, painted directly onto the stucco, poorly rendered scenes from the Bible. They were all scenes of violence, Joan noticed now: Cain killing Abel, Abraham preparing to sacrifice his son, Christ being crucified. Father must have painted them himself. He wasn’t much of an artist, she thought, and the realization gave her confidence and a strange sense of comfort.

Father wasn’t here yet, but the door to his sleeping chamber was open, and everyone was obviously awaiting his arrival.

How old was he now? It was hard to tell. He had fathered her mom and had fathered her mom’s mom, and though both her grandmother and her great-grandmother had been young at the time, in their early teens, that probably put him somewhere in his eighties or nineties.

When was he going to die?

Not soon enough, she thought.

She should be grateful for small favors. At least he had not fathered her. And he had allowed her mom to marry someone else. Although he had wanted Joan to—

She pushed the memory from her mind.

The people in the room, seated on the benches, seated on the floor, standing in the corners, were talking among themselves. Their eyes kept returning to her, though no one would look at her directly. How many? she wondered. Twenty or thirty, at least. Not everyone who lived in the Home by a long shot, but enough that the big room seemed crowded. Father had probably called them here specifically to view her perceived humiliation, to drive home the point to both them and her that escape was not possible, that even those who managed to get out would be brought back for punishment sooner or later.

Joan had lost track of Absalom, but she saw him now, standing before the bookcase next to the door to Father’s sleeping chamber. He was with one of the other Teachers, a man she recognized but whose name she could not recall. The two men conferred for a moment; then Absalom moved so that each of them was on an opposite side of the door. “Quiet!” they announced in unison, speaking the Language.

The room was silenced.

All eyes were on Father as he emerged from the darkness.

Kara was by his side.

Kara?

Joan stood there, shocked. The last thing in the world she expected to see here was her roommate. The juxtaposition was jarring, her new life intruding into her old life, the Outside world coming into the Home.

And Kara was with Father? How was that even possible? It made no sense on any level whatsoever, and Joan was filled with a profound despair as she saw how her friend was wearing not a look of fear, panic or even coerced cooperation, but an expression of blind contentment.

Converts, Joan knew from experience, were often more hard-core than people who had been born and raised in the Home, and although that had not been true of her father, she had the feeling that it was for Kara. Something in her friend’s eyes bespoke not just belief but a willingness—no, a need—to impress that belief upon others.

How had this happened? Joan could not seem to wrap her mind around it. Had Kara been a plant all along? Was she the one who had reported Joan’s whereabouts to Father? Or had she been recruited because she was Joan’s roommate?

It was possible that she’d been kidnapped at the same time Joan had been, subjected to brainwashing indoctrination once she’d been brought to the Home, and that was the scenario Joan chose to believe.

Anything else was too depressing and demoralizing to contemplate.

His hand on Kara’s shoulder, Father strode between the haphazardly arranged furniture until he was standing directly before her. He was taller than Joan remembered and, as much as she hated to admit it, there was a powerful aura about him, a charisma he exuded that was only intensified by proximity. He smiled at her, but the smile was sharp and dangerous, not warm and welcoming. “It is good to have you back,” he said. He spoke in English. For Kara’s benefit, no doubt. “I am glad you have returned to us.”

Joan wasn’t sure how to respond. She wanted to announce loudly that she hadn’t returned, she’d been kidnapped , but while she was angry enough to confront him with the truth, doing so might make her situation worse. She was all alone here, at their mercy, and perhaps it would be smarter right now to lie low.

So she said nothing.

Father smiled, holding his arms wide as though to give her a hug, though neither he nor she made any effort to move closer to the other. “We have always known you would come back to us, and it is a blessing that you are here again. You have experienced the horrors of life Outside, away from the Home, and your inevitable return has brought a new member to our growing family.” He put an arm around Kara’s shoulder, squeezing.

She couldn’t sit still for this. She wouldn’t.

“I have seen your joyous future and know why you have come back.” He paused. “You are to give me a son.”

Joan shook her head.

“Ruth—”

“My name is Joan now.”

Father’s face hardened. “Ruth. I forgive you for leaving the Home. It was not your fault and you are back now, so I—”

“Where are my parents?”

There was stunned silence in the room. She was not supposed to interrupt Father while he was speaking. She knew that, and she’d done it on purpose, to show that she would not be intimidated. But Father’s expression was one of rage and hate, and she could tell that he was about to yell at her. Before he could utter a word, she asked the question again: “Where are my parents?” Her eyes met his defiantly.

“You will never see your parents again.”

The words were whispered fiercely, not shouted, were meant to serve as a threat, but her heart leapt with joy as she heard them. Her parents were safe. If they had been captured, Father would have told her so, would have bragged about it. If anything, he would have used them as leverage, would probably have had them here for her to see. But instead he offered only this vague threat, and inwardly she rejoiced. She didn’t have to worry about them being hurt or retaliated against, didn’t have to figure out how to help them escape. They were free. She could concentrate on herself and getting out of here as quickly as possible, in any way she could.

Father must have realized that it made him seem weak to be so upset by something she said. She was a nobody. He was Chosen. He smiled at her with newly regained equilibrium. “The Lord our God has instructed us to be fruitful and multiply, and that is why I have created this haven. So we may follow His wishes and do exactly that. The Home is not the Home unless it is ever filled with the voices of new Children.” He smiled at Joan, but there was a hint of a threat in it. “Wouldn’t you like a child of your own?”

“Not with you.”

“Only with me!” he roared.

She glared at him. “Don’t you dare touch me,” she spat out. “I wouldn’t have a child with you if you were the last person on earth.”

The stunned silence of a few moments previous was nothing compared to the cessation of sound that suddenly descended upon the room. No one spoke, no one dared breathe, and for several shocked seconds there was utter quiet. No one had ever talked back to Father before, no one had ever addressed him with such disrespect, and the fear among the spectators was palpable. None of them knew what Father would do.

Joan was afraid, too, but she was also angry. Not just angry. Furious. Furious at the way she had been brought here, furious at the way she’d been raised, furious at the way the people here were treated and, perhaps most of all, furious at what had been done to her mother. Boldly, she stared back at him, fists clenched, chin held high.

Father exploded. He lashed out and struck Joan across the face, not with an open palm but with a fist. The force slammed her head sideways, and an eruption of pain engulfed her senses. For several seconds she could neither see nor hear. Then blurred vision returned, along with a dull roaring that came from inside her head and muffled all outside sound. She felt wetness on her cheeks, and for a brief, disorienting moment thought his hand had been covered with water when he hit her. Then she realized that the wetness was blood.

A punch to the stomach dropped her to the floor, where she curled onto her side, gasping for breath. Through her tears, she peered up at Kara, but her roommate studiously avoided looking at her, concentrating her gaze on the far wall.

“You will have my child,” Father snarled, and this time he spoke in the Language so Kara couldn’t understand. “I will take you again and again and again and again until you deliver to me the son that was promised.”

Joan searched the faces above her, the faces of the people Father had gathered to watch, looking for support, looking for sympathy, but she saw only uninterested stares and the vacant equanimity of true believers. She would receive no aid or help here.

“Remove her,” Father ordered, and strong hands grabbed her arms, yanking her up. It was still hard to breathe, though the wild agony of a few moments before had settled into a pulsing throb in her head. She closed her eyes against the pain and felt herself being dragged away, out of the room, though she could not tell by whom. At first she tried passive resistance, letting them pull her, but the pressure of the fingers digging into her arms became too much, and she was forced to support herself, stumbling on rubbery feet in whatever direction they led.

She was shoved into a room, where she fell forward, collapsing onto the hard wooden floor. Not a word was spoken, and the only sounds she heard were the slamming of the door followed by the click of the lock. She lay there, unmoving, grateful for the respite. After Father’s assault and the rough treatment of her escorts, lying unmolested on the floor felt like being in a comfortable bed. She turned her head to the side, closing her eyes. The coolness of the wood felt soothing against her face. Gradually, her tears went away and her breathing returned to normal. The pain subsided, though her left cheek and the area around her left eye felt puffy and swollen.

What was she going to do now? Joan wondered.

What was going to be done to her?

She didn’t even want to think about that.

She sat up slowly, looking around. Where was she? The Home must have changed a lot in her absence, or she had forgotten or blocked out much of what she’d known about the place, or perhaps the life she had lived here had been so proscribed that huge areas had been off-limits, because this was another room that seemed completely unfamiliar to her. The shape of the room was odd, almost circular, though there were still four recognizable corners, blunted as they might be. The curved, windowless walls, entirely free of adornment or decoration, were made of a different material than she had seen in the rest of the Home: not wood, not concrete, but a tan spongy-looking substance that resembled foam rubber. Illumination came from a series of small slitlike skylights overhead.

In the center of the room were two large rectangular wooden boxes on sawhorses. Made of simple, unstained, unadorned pine, the boxes resembled coffins, and Joan knew instantly that that was exactly what they were. Attendance at funerals had been mandatory when she was a child, but somehow her parents had managed to keep her from that. So she had never actually seen a coffin here before. But she recognized the work, recognized the style, and she thought it was just like Father to lock her up in a room with coffins as part of an effort to intimidate her.

What was she supposed to take from this? That if she did not cooperate she would die?

A new thought occurred to her: maybe there were dead bodies in the boxes. She would not put that past Father, either, and she walked slowly forward to check.

She reached the coffins.

Peered down.

And saw what had happened to her parents.

Twenty

Bitterweed, Texas, was prettier than its name had led them to expect. Gary had imagined a dusty little town on a flat expanse of dirt, kind of like the one in the movie The Last Picture Show. But it was more like a small town on television: quaint buildings nestled between large, leafy trees, a river running under a bridge on the highway at the beginning of the business district. Old-fashioned streetlamps, two to a block, staved off the darkness and cast the entire community in a warm glow, even now in the wee hours of the morning.

As promised, they stopped by the sheriff’s office first. Gary wouldn’t have expected it to be open at this hour in a town this small, but lights were on as Brian pulled next to the curb in front of the tan brick building. The four of them got out of the car, and Reyn pulled open the glass door. It was unlocked, and a cheap buzzer sounded as they walked inside.

“Is this a police station or a Seven-Eleven?” Brian muttered.

A deputy was sitting behind an old oak desk, playing Tetris on a computer located atop an adjacent cart. He glanced up as they entered and said in a thick Texas accent, “Are you from California?”

Gary looked at his friends. “Yeah,” he said.

“The sheriff wants to see you. Hold on, I’ll find out if he’s awake.” The deputy disappeared through an open doorway into a hallway that led to the rear of the building. “Come on back!” he called seconds later. Glancing silently at one another, Gary and his friends walked around the desk and down the hall to where the deputy stood outside an office, motioning for them to enter.

Sheriff Stewart was as far from the stereotype of a small-town Texas sheriff as it was possible to get. Rather than a corpulent redneck in mirrored shades, he was a slender black man with a soul patch beneath his lower lip. He’d obviously been dozing on the worn couch that sat against one wall of his office, and he yawned as they walked in. “Sorry,” he said, and he had no Texas accent at all. “Not much happens here after the bars close, and I was just getting in a little dreamtime before the morning rush.” He held out a hand. “I’m Antwon Stewart, sheriff of Camino County. My associate here is Taylor Lee Hubbard, the best deputy on the planet Earth.”

The four of them shook hands and introduced themselves. Though there didn’t seem to be anyone else in the station, the sheriff indicated to the deputy that he should close the door, and he did so, standing with the rest of them in front of the sheriff.

“I understand that you think one of your friends has been kidnapped by the Homesteaders,” Stewart said.

“My girlfriend. Joan Daniels,” Gary answered. “And I don’t think so; I know so. We captured two of them who’d been sent after me, and they told us where she was. That’s why we’re here.”

“And you were kidnapped by the cult before and escaped?”

Gary nodded.

“That’s rare,” the deputy said.

“What happened?” the sheriff asked. “Your detective didn’t give me too many details.”

Gary explained how he’d been abducted from his dorm room, drugged, and taken to a farmhouse in New Mexico. He described how, after spending a day there shackled to the floor, he’d escaped following a car crash, and revealed his suspicion that the De Baca sheriff was one of them.

Stewart looked over at his deputy before turning back toward Gary. “Would you be willing to testify that the Homesteaders were the ones who did this to you?”

“Hell, yeah!” Brian answered for him.

Gary nodded.

The sheriff smiled. “That would help us out a lot.”

“Does that mean that now you can go in there and rescue Joan?” Stacy asked.

Stewart sighed. “It’s not that easy. I don’t know how much you know about the Homesteaders, but they’re a cult. They brainwash people. It’s virtually impossible for us to get anyone to testify against them or go on record in any way, shape or form.”

“They’re scared,” the deputy said.

The sheriff nodded. “Even the ones who have escaped, who know things, who’ve seen things, are afraid. As you found out, these sons of bitches have a long reach. And right now, we’re not allowed to even look in their direction, thanks to a court order.”

“That they bought,” the deputy added.

“They have some pull in these parts,” Stewart admitted.

“Well, we’re going over there and getting Joan,” Gary said. “Even if we have to tear that place down.”

“We don’t condone what you’re doing,” the sheriff said. “In fact, we aren’t even aware that you’re doing it. But if you get into trouble and need help, it’s possible that we might be nearby.”

“With enough men to storm those gates in sixty seconds flat,” the deputy offered.

“Thank you,” Stacy told them.

Stewart sat down behind his desk. “Just do us a favor. Wait until morning.”

Gary started to object, but the sheriff said, “It’s only another hour or so. Besides, it’s dark now; you’ll be at a disadvantage. And while I have a man out in… that general vicinity right now, I won’t have my full shift coming on duty until seven.”

“We’ll wait,” Stacy promised.

Gary looked at her.

“Come on. We need every advantage we can get. Besides, we still don’t even have a plan.”

“What do we do until then?” Brian wondered.

“We have a break room,” the deputy said. “There’s coffee, some old cookies, I think. You could just wait there.”

“Tell us more about this cult,” Reyn suggested. “Give us a heads-up on what we should do, what we should be looking for.”

Brian raised his hand. “I have a question. On our way here, we saw these cult guys just walking along the highway. For miles. What’s that about?”

“Penitents,” the sheriff said. “They’re members of the cult who have been sent away to live elsewhere. For punishment. After a certain amount of time, they’re allowed to return. Homesteaders don’t just live here in Bitterweed, in the place they call the Home. This is where they come for training or indoctrination or whatever, and a lot of them do stay, but some of them live in other places, other states.” He gestured toward Gary. “As you found out.”

Gary nodded. “Like the people at that farmhouse.”

“We think they do it on purpose, so we won’t know how many of them there actually are—and so that, even if we raid the Home and capture everyone in it, they’ll still have people free. We don’t even know where these penitents go when they leave Bitterweed. I mean, we’ve followed some of them, and we do know a few locations, here in Texas, but out there… ?” Stewart shook his head.

“Speaking of raids,” Reyn said, “what exactly did you go after them on? And what’s with this harassment case?”

Stewart sighed. “We first went after them four years ago. A woman came to us, claiming that she’d been raped and held captive against her will.”

Gary felt cold.

“At that point, we knew of the Homesteaders—they used to come into town for groceries and gas, supplies and whatnot—but as far as we were concerned, they were just a bunch of religious wackos, neohippie survivalists who kept to themselves and did no harm.”

“They’ve been there forever,” Hubbard added. “My dad remembers the Homesteaders being there when he was a kid.”

“But they hadn’t had much to do with outsiders and no one really gave them much thought. Then this woman escaped, she said, from captivity, and claimed that she’d been imprisoned in the Home for over a year and repeatedly raped by the leader of the cult, who she called ‘Father.’ We immediately obtained a warrant, but before we could serve it and arrest this ‘Father,’ our victim had a change of heart—”

“They got to her,” Hubbard said angrily.

The sheriff nodded. “They got to her. I don’t know how, although I assume it happened in the hospital in Fort Albin, where she was being examined for evidence of rape, but all of a sudden we got a call and it was her, and she was desperate to drop all charges—”

“Scared,” Hubbard said.

“She was scared,” Stewart agreed. He ran a hand along the back of his neck. “I chose to continue, figuring we had a case even without her cooperation, figuring we could get her cooperation back once we showed her how strong the case was…” He trailed off.

“What happened?” Gary prodded.

“She threw herself down a flight of stairs.”

“Or was thrown,” Hubbard said.

“There was no proof. We couldn’t prove anything, either way. I arrested this ‘Father,’ who, no surprise, refused to give us his real name. We checked his prints, but they weren’t on file anywhere, and we could find no way to positively ID him. He was not in any system, and we could find no one willing to vouch for his identity. Our guess is that he was born in the Home and has lived there all of his life, but on the complaint we were forced to refer to him as ‘John Doe,’ as crazy as that sounds.

“I asked the DA to prosecute based on the victim’s initial statement, but the case was kicked the second it went before a judge. ‘Father’ was already free, anyway. He had a high-powered lawyer who got him out of jail after the first night.”

“Wow,” Stacy said.

“Yeah. Anyway, next time around, it was a boy who claimed he was drugged and kidnapped, a student from College Station whose mother, after the death of her husband, had sold everything she owned and become a member of the cult. The boy had been concerned about her, had started making inquiries, and one day he’d come home to his apartment to find two men waiting for him. They drugged him, abducted him and brought him to the Home.”

“That sounds familiar,” Reyn said, looking at Gary.

“He was a smart kid. Resourceful. And big. Played fullback for the Aggies. He managed to fight his way free, and after he got out of the Home came directly to us, told us everything. So we got a warrant and raided the place, but someone must have tipped them off because we went over those buildings with a fine-toothed comb and found no drugs whatsoever, no indication that anyone had ever been held there against their will.”

Gary looked at Reyn. “You’re right. Déjà vu all over again.”

“We had dogs, and even they couldn’t sniff anything out. The Homesteaders, of course, were as polite as you please, very helpful, pulling that deferential religious act. We interviewed anyone we could find, but they all toed the party line, claimed they’d never seen the kid before. And we couldn’t find that many people. It was like everyone had taken off or was hiding somewhere. We searched the compound anyway, took a lot of pictures, and we did see some weird things: no bathrooms, a kitchen where a cook was butchering a possum, a chapel filled with the strangest-looking worshippers I’ve ever seen, a round room filled with homemade coffins, a triangular room where women were cutting big sheets of paper into little rectangles, huge pictures of our old buddy ‘Father’ everywhere you looked. But nothing illegal and nothing that was specified in the warrant.

“The kid still stuck to his guns, though, and swore out a complaint, and this time it did go to trial. Again, they had a high-priced lawyer, and the fact that his own mother said he was lying—and, brainwashed or not, she was a damn good witness, very sympathetic—as well as the fact that we had no physical evidence and it was basically a he-said/she-said situation, practically guaranteed that they were going to win. They did, and the kid vowed to file a civil suit, but we never heard from him again.

“Third time a couple came to us, claiming that their daughter had been kidnapped by the Homesteaders. Again, we got a warrant, went in, and there was no sign of her. In fact, the parents themselves disappeared. The phone number they gave us was disconnected, the address false.” Stewart breathed deeply. “I’m still hoping that one was a setup. But it’s more than possible that someone made them disappear.

“After that, the harassment case was brought against us, listing the county, the entire department, and me and my men individually. There’ve been delays and postponements, so it hasn’t gone to trial yet, but it’s been winding its way through the system for at least a year. Needless to say, the county attorney has ordered us to stay away from the Home and avoid contact with any of the cult members.”

The deputy looked at Gary. “Which is why we’re lucky you showed up.”

“Exactly. There are four of you who are eyewitnesses and victims. We have drugging, kidnapping, breaking and entering, robbery, murder or attemped murder, and it’s across state lines and being investigated by Los Angeles police. And two of the Homesteaders are in custody. If we can tie all this together, it’s a slam dunk.”

“I’m not sure about the robbery charge,” Gary said. “They broke into my dorm room and trashed it. But they didn’t take anything. I don’t think I had what they were looking for.”

“Oh, you might’ve. And they might’ve gotten it. But they won’t take anything physical. ‘Thou shalt not steal’ and all that. They’re strict followers of the Bible, even though they’re a little loose around the edges. Tell me, have you noticed since then that your credit cards don’t work, or—”

“Yes!” Gary said.

The sheriff nodded. “They probably got information off your computer. That they don’t consider stealing, and it’s probably why they were there in the first place. They try to come off as simple, old-fashioned back-to-the-land types, but let me tell you, they use some sophisticated terrorist tactics to go after their enemies. Believe me, I know.”

“Why?” Stacy said. “What happened?”

“My credit rating was ruined. So were the credit ratings of my entire staff and half of the county employees. I ended up having to convince my own bank that I was me, and it took two years to prove to them that I owned my own house. Everyone here has a similar story.”

“Yep,” Hubbard agreed, lips tight.

“Let me tell you about Len Hearn, our then–district attorney. Len had it the worst. He was served with papers for back payment of child support, though he’d never been married and never had a kid. His pickup truck was repossessed and his house was foreclosed on, even though he had never missed a payment on either. Oh, and his bank account was cleaned out, every last dollar he had transferred electronically to a company in Barbados.” The sheriff paused. “Len killed himself, blew out his brains with a twenty-two.”

“You couldn’t get them for that?” Stacy asked incredulously.

“No proof,” Stewart said. “We called in the FBI, but everything was untraceable. Whoever their computer guy is, he’s good.”

Outside, there was a lessening of darkness, a hint of pink that showed through the slatted blinds covering the window. Gary glanced at the clock on the wall. Six o’clock. It was Thursday morning. He was anxious to go after Joan.

The sheriff stood and pulled open the top drawer of an old-fashioned file cabinet behind his desk. “One thing that will help you, I think, is getting a look at the Home and its layout.” He withdrew a thick manila folder and placed it on top of his desk, flipping it open and turning it to face them.

The first photo, taken from some distance away, showed a sprawling series of single-story buildings framed by a wrought-iron gateway topped with a cross. The buildings were at the far end of a twin-rutted dirt driveway. “We took these during our first raid. This one’s from the road.” Stewart slid the photograph off the top of the pile, revealing the next photo below: an aerial view of the property. “This was taken from a helicopter.” From this angle, Gary could see not only how large the grounds were but how isolated. The flat buildings of the first photo and a barn surrounded by planted fields were the only structures visible. An irregular red line had been drawn with a pen over a center section of the picture, encompassing the buildings, the fields and a sizable portion of woods.

“The front entrance is here,” the sheriff said, pointing with a pencil. “This driveway leads to the road, and the road leads to First Street at the east end of town. The compound’s about eight miles from where we are now. I have two men watching the grounds at this moment. Manny Trejo’s right here, by this tree.” The sheriff moved his pencil. “Ken Faul is staking out the rear of the property from a fire break just outside this part of the picture.”

“I thought you weren’t supposed to—” Stacy began.

“What the county attorney doesn’t know won’t hurt him.”

“And it might help you,” Hubbard said.

“If something happened,” the sheriff said, “if you got in trouble somehow, if you saw something illegal, if you saw something suspicious, Manny and Ken would be in a position to quickly assist you.”

Gary nodded. “I understand.”

Stewart swiveled the monitor on his desk to face them and with a few clicks of his mouse brought up several rows of thumbnail photos. “More shots are on the computer here. Just click on the ones you want to enlarge.”

“Okay.”

“I’m going to get some coffee,” Stewart said pointedly. “Taylor, why don’t you keep me company.”

“Sure,” the deputy said.

“But—” Gary began.

“We’ll be back in fifteen minutes,” Stewart told him.

Brian put a hand on Gary’s shoulder to keep him from protesting as the sheriff and deputy walked out of the room. “They think we’re going to break in,” Brian explained, once the door had closed. “They don’t want to know about it, but they’re giving us time to look over the surveillance photos, to try and find a way inside.”

“Oh,” Gary said, feeling dumb.

“Huh,” Reyn said. “I didn’t get that, either.”

“You two are so naive,” Stacy said. She reached down and picked up the aerial photo. “How do we get in?” she wondered. “This place is like a fortress. Even if they don’t have guards or people specifically assigned to watch for intruders, they probably have cameras and alarms set up.”

“I’m not sure they need any of that,” Reyn said, flipping quickly through the rest of the photos. “Look how many people are here. Front, back, sides. Someone’s bound to notice us.”

“It’s harvest time,” Gary said. “We might get lucky; they might be in the fields.”

“That’s a possibility,” Reyn conceded.

“How do we get in?” Stacy said again.

Gary had taken the photos from Reyn and was looking through them. The front of the Home did not resemble a home at all, but a generic industrial building. A meatpacking plant, perhaps. Or a warehouse. Both the surrounding farm and the Texas setting would seem to make a Western look more appropriate, but there was no wood, only stucco, no portico, only a flat door in the wall. As Stacy said, it was essentially a fortress, and the disparity between function and appearance was disconcerting.

Inside, the decor was just odd: irregularly shaped rooms; looms, spinning wheels and other items from a preindustrial era; a restaurant-sized kitchen with a wood-burning stove; primitive, spartan living quarters, and those ever-present framed photos of a white-bearded old man. Father. The people were even odder, and like the two they had captured back in California, many of the residents appeared to have some sort of physical deformity or mental handicap.

Like Joan’s mother.

He stared at a man with an overlarge head and stumpy extremities, and it suddenly occurred to him that Joan’s mother would fit right in with these people. He thought of the prayer scroll they’d found in Joan’s room.

The Outsiders.

Realization suddenly dawned on him. Joan had belonged to the Homesteaders. She had come from here. And Outsiders were anyone else, anyone who was not part of the cult. Joan and her parents had escaped somehow, and the Homesteaders had tracked her down, brought her back. Her parents…

Gary thought of the dead dog in the empty house.

The spot of red blood on the white linoleum floor.

His thoughts must have shown on his face because Stacy said worriedly, “What is it? What’s wrong? Did you see something in that picture?” She took it out of his hands to examine it.

He didn’t want to say. They were here to help him, and it was wrong to keep information from them, but he rationalized it by telling himself that it was not information, just conjecture. The truth was that he was embarrassed, as stupid and superficial as that might be, and he didn’t want them to know that Joan had ever been involved in any way with these lunatics.

Gary looked at the next photo, a picture of the farm. Rows of crops stretched across a long field bordered at the far end by tall, leafy trees. In the photo, one man was riding an antiquated tractor, while a dozen or so others worked with hoes along the rows. If the tractor had been taken out of the picture, the scene could have been one from two hundred years ago.

“They’re not as primitive as they make themselves out to be,” Brian reminded him, looking over his shoulder. “They erased your electronic footprint. And Joan’s. Someone in there is sophisticated enough to hack into the DMV, UCLA, banks, credit agencies… . They’re not just simple God-worshipping farmers.”

“No, they’re not,” Gary said grimly. “And they’re not just here in Texas. They have allies all over, like those people in New Mexico—”

“Like that sheriff,” Brian emphasized.

“They’re not just growing potatoes on that farm, either. Whatever they drugged me with tasted like dirt, like some sort of root. I’ll bet they grow that shit right there.”

“Duly warned,” Reyn said. “We have to be careful.”

They spent the next twenty minutes or so looking through the photos on the computer, trying to figure out the best way in. The compound itself was surrounded on all sides by large tracts of open land, so whichever approach they took, they would be easily spotted. Before they even tried to get inside the buildings, they had to reach them, and they went back and forth on how best to do that.

Finally, they heard new voices from the front of the sheriff’s office, and Gary glanced up at the window to see that it was fully light outside. They should have gone under cover of darkness, he thought. That would have been the best way to reach the Home undetected. But Stewart had dissuaded them from that, and now it was too late.

The sheriff walked back into the room. “Morning shift’s here,” he said. “We’re ready for action.”

“Did you contact your guys who are out there?” Gary asked.

“Quiet night. Nothing unusual. All clear.”

“Then we should get going,” Reyn said.

They thanked the sheriff, double-checked the phone numbers they had to make sure they were correct, grabbed some fresh doughnuts and coffee from the break room, then went outside. The air was cool and smelled of smoke—someone in town was using a fireplace—but it was obvious that the day was going to be warm. An old man atop a muddy tractor drove slowly down the center of the street.

Gary, Reyn, Stacy and Brian got into the rented Nissan. Reyn drove, with Brian as navigator, and Gary sat in back with Stacy. They pulled around the tractor, still slowly making its way through town, then turned onto a side street just past a feed and grain supply store. The street sloped down a gradual incline past a few blocks of small run-down houses, then turned into a dirt road and began winding through copses of trees and boulder-strewn hillsides, following the lay of the land. They passed a single farm with a walnut tree orchard, and then there was only wilderness.

And then there was the Home.

They could see it from afar, a collection of interconnected buildings on a slight rise of open land. It looked bigger than it had in the photographs and, despite its generic appearance, more intimidating. Along the side of the narrow dirt road, conforming to the boundaries of the property, was a wrought-iron fence eight to ten feet high, in the center of which was the arched gateway topped by a cross that they’d seen in the pictures.

Reyn stopped the car several yards away from the open gateway, parking next to an overgrown bush that hid the vehicle from the buildings. They all opened their doors and got out. “All right,” Gary said. “Let’s go.”

Brian faced him. “And do what exactly?”

“Try to sneak in.”

No one moved. Reyn looked at Stacy. Brian looked at Reyn.

“What is it?” Gary asked. “What’s going on?”

“You can’t come with us,” Reyn said.

“What?”

“They know you. They sent people all the way to California to get you. You think they don’t know what you look like? They probably have Wanted posters with your mug plastered all over that damn place.”

“They know all of us,” Gary pointed out. “We were all drugged at the same time at Burning Man, and whoever did that kidnapped Joan and brought her back here. He—or they—will recognize us instantly.”

“Hence the sheriff’s break-in strategy,” Brian said drily.

“We’ll disguise ourselves as penitents,” Gary suggested. “They might not recognize us if we’re dressed like them.”

“Two problems,” Brian pointed out. “We don’t have any of their peasant clothes to put on, and we don’t know shit about their religion. One short conversation with anyone and we’d be spotted as fakers in three seconds flat.”

“I told you we should have come up with a plan before we got here,” Stacy said.

Brian held his hand out toward Reyn. “Give me the key.”

Reyn tossed him the key, and Brian used it to open the trunk. He rummaged through the backpack he’d brought and pulled out a knife. Some sort of camping knife, it had a green handle with a built-in compass, and a heavily serrated blade that glinted in the early-morning sun.

“What the hell is that?” Stacy demanded.

“These are kidnappers and rapists. Child molestors, maybe. We can’t just walk in with good intentions and sunny smiles. We need to be ready.”

Thank God, Gary thought. He again wished he’d thought to bring a weapon, and he was glad that at least Brian had come prepared.

“I have one for each of you,” he said.

Stacy crossed her arms, shaking her head. “No,” she said emphatically.

“I don’t think it’s a good idea,” Reyn concurred.

Gary stepped forward and took the proffered knife. Joan was in that place. If he found out that she’d been raped, he would gut the motherfucker who’d done it, no questions asked. His fingers tightened around the handle. It felt reassuringly solid in his hand. He followed Brian’s lead and pushed the knife beneath his belt on his right side, untucking his shirt and pulling it over the weapon to hide it.

“Violence isn’t the way,” Stacy admonished them.

“We’re not going to start anything,” Brian countered. “We just need to be able to defend ourselves.”

“You’re going to end up dead. Or in jail.”

“We’ll be careful,” Gary promised, but again he felt that bloodlust as he thought about what might have been done to Joan.

“I’ll go in,” Stacy said. “You’re Joan’s boyfriend, Reyn’s your friend, I’m Reyn’s girlfriend. I’m the furthest degree of separation from the source. If anyone’s going to be able to get by them, it’s me.”

“They know all of us,” Gary explained again.

“We could pull a Wizard of Oz,” Brian said. “Jump some guards, steal their clothes, sneak inside.”

“Or jump a penitent,” Reyn suggested. He pointed. Walking down the road, from the opposite direction from which they’d come, was a man like those they’d seen striding down the highway in the dark hours before dawn.

Even this far away, even in broad daylight, there was something creepy about him, Gary thought. The fanaticism and true belief required to make a person walk mile after mile, through some of the most godforsaken terrain known to man, lent the penitent a focus that seemed almost inhuman, and even though his body was clearly tired, almost exhausted, he pushed himself on, continuing zombielike down the road.

And he was smiling.

The smile was the worst.

They watched as he reached the gate, turned in and started up the sloping driveway toward the Home.

“I think the best approach is the simplest,” Reyn said finally. “I say we just walk up and demand to see Joan. If they turn us down, we’ll think of something else. If they try to capture us, we’ll fight back and escape. We’ll also have legitimate cause to call in the law.” He touched Stacy’s arm. “You wait in the car. Pull it up to the head of the drive. Be ready to take off if we run back. If anything happens to us, get the sheriff.”

“I like it,” Gary said.

Brian nodded, patting his hip where the knife rested below his shirt. “I’m in.”

Stacy took a deep breath. “Okay,” she said reluctantly. “But be careful. Just… be careful.”

Brian gave her the car key, and Reyn gave her a kiss. “Keep an eye on us,” he told her. “Anything weird happens, call it in. The sheriff has those two men out here.” He looked around. “Somewhere. They can be on those guys in seconds.”

Stacy held his hand tightly. “I don’t like this.”

“I don’t, either,” Reyn admitted. “But it’ll all be over soon.”

“I think they say that in The Wizard of Oz,” Brian muttered to Gary.

Stacy returned to the car while the three of them continued onward. They all reached the gate at the same time, and she rolled down the window and blew Reyn a kiss while exhorting him once again: “Be careful!”

If all went right, he’d be kissing Joan soon, Gary thought.

The possibility made his heart race—though with anticipation or fear he could not tell.

They started up the narrow, rutted driveway. The penitent was gone, swallowed up by the Home, and Gary wondered if they were being watched as they trudged up the drive toward the compound. He took out his cell phone and pressed the key to automatically dial the number of the sheriff that he’d input into the device. Nothing had happened—

Yet

—but the sheriff had all but begged them to come up with any excuse to call for help and invite law enforcement to rescue them, and he thought it might be a good idea to have someone on the line, listening in as they tried to talk their way inside—just in case something went wrong.

Gary held the phone to his ear.

Nothing.

The call was blocked.

He asked Reyn and Brian to try their phones, but the result was the same. It made sense. Any organization that had the technical savvy to delete credit histories and bank accounts would have no trouble jamming phone signals.

Thank God they’d left Stacy in the car. Someone needed to be able to go for help.

The three of them looked at one another, putting away their phones.

Kept walking.

Finally, they reached the front entrance of the Home. Gary half expected someone to meet them, to either chase them away or force them inside, but they made it to the door without incident. The building was one story, but it looked bigger close up than it had in the photographs, and just knowing how many interconnected structures lay behind this initial facade made Gary realize how hard it was going to be to find Joan. She could be anywhere in there.

“What do we do now?” he wondered aloud. “Knock?”

Reyn did just that, pounding several times on the door with the side of his fist. The door was so thick, it barely made a sound, and Gary looked down the flat expanse of the building, trying to figure out if there was another way inside.

Then there was a rattle, a click, and the door was opened by an elderly man dressed in the type of peasant clothes that characterized all of the Homesteaders. He greeted them with a too-wide smile, though his eyes were flat. “Welcome to the Home. May I help you?”

“Joan Daniels! Where is she?” Gary hadn’t known what he was going to say until he said it, and his words were infused with anger, weighted with all of the emotion that had been roiling within him since Joan had been taken at Burning Man.

The Homesteader’s eyes widened. “Outsiders!”

Brian whipped out his knife and pressed it against the man’s throat.

“What are you doing?” Reyn yelled.

Gary’s heart leapt in his chest, pounding crazily. They were the ones who’d be going to jail, he thought. Brian had fucked everything up. He’d committed an honest-to-God crime, and even if they found something now, it wouldn’t stick.

But Brian wasn’t backing down. “Take us to Joan!” he demanded. “Now! Or I’ll slit your goddamn throat!”

Gary expected the two deputies who were keeping the compound under surveillance to run up, guns drawn, but no one arrived. No one came from inside the Home, either, and Brian moved slowly around to the back of the man, still pressing the tip of the knife to his throat. He shifted position, using his left arm to get the man in a headlock and pressing the knife against his back, hostage-style. “You have five seconds to start bringing us to Joan.”

“Father will—”

“One!”

“—not allow—”

“Two!”

“Okay!” The blankness in the man’s eyes had been replaced by fear. Gary looked over his shoulder toward the road, wondering if Stacy could see what was going on, wondering if she had called for help.

“Let’s go,” Brian ordered, pushing the man forward.

With a feeling of dread spreading outward from his stomach through his body, Gary followed the two of them into the Home.

Reyn hesitated for a second, then came in as well, closing the door behind him.

Twenty-one

The coffins had been removed, but Joan was still in the same room.

It was the fact that they’d taken the coffins that preyed upon her mind. What had been done with her parents’ bodies? Had her mom and dad been given a proper burial? Had they been dumped in a ditch? Cremated? Plowed into one of the fields? Were they rotting in one of the basements? She did not know, and the lack of closure and confirmation was driving her crazy.

Which was probably the point.

The coffins had been removed several hours after she had been deposited in the room. She’d been held against the wall by two big-boned women, while two muscular young men had taken away first the caskets and then the sawhorses. She’d already screamed herself hoarse and cried more tears than she would have thought possible, though she had not been able to look again into those open boxes at her parents. Neither the men nor the women had spoken to her, though she’d demanded to know what they were doing, and after everything had been taken out, the women had pushed her down on the floor and left themselves, locking the door behind them.

That had been a long time ago, and in the interim she had slept on the floor and peed in a bedpan that had been left for her use. Overhead, the skylight slits had turned dark, then light, and she estimated that she’d been in the room for at least twenty-four hours when the door opened again.

“Eat or die,” said the middle-aged man who dropped a canvas sack of food in front of her, and it was clear from his voice that he didn’t care which one she did. He was not one of the Children, but she did not know where he stood in the Home, and she turned away from him, facing the wall, refusing to give him the satisfaction of interaction.

He left.

Without taking or emptying the bedpan.

After several minutes, Joan opened the sack, removing its contents. She sniffed the food that had been brought: a crusty piece of bread, a stick of celery, a cold baked potato and, to drink, a canteen of water. All of it smelled earthy, like fertile soil, and all of it smelled the same. She refused to eat anything, and in a gesture of defiance she picked up the potato and threw it at the wall. The bread and celery followed. The water she poured onto the floor.

The door to the room opened immediately, and two men strode in. One of them she recognized as Barnabas, a former friend of her dad’s. They’d obviously had her under surveillance and had been watching her as she threw the food and dumped the water. She expected them to lecture or chastise her, perhaps even force-feed her, but instead they merely walked in, Barnabas picked up the sack and they both turned around and left.

Joan stared after them, frowning, as the door closed, then locked. There was an odor in the air, as though someone wearing a heavy floral perfume had just left the room. The scent had not been there only seconds before, and almost immediately after noticing it, her head began to feel strange. It was the way she’d felt at Burning Man, just prior to being knocked out. That memory had not been part of her consciousness until this very moment, but she recognized its accuracy the instant it was recalled, and then…

… and then…

… the door opened and her dad walked in, carrying a tray of mushrooms that looked like little angry people. He was dead and wearing the same expression he’d had in the coffin, that terrible wide-eyed, openmouthed look of surprise, and he approached her on awkward feet, offering her one of the mushrooms. She turned away, and her mom was standing in the corner, screaming, though the sound that came out of her mouth was the chirping of crickets. Her hair was on fire, and the skin of her forehead was starting to melt from the heat and drip onto her eyelashes like pinkish peach rubber cement.

Joan wanted to run away but her feet were nailed to the floor.

There was a noise above her, a roaring, like the sound of a waterfall, and when she looked up, the ceiling was not the ceiling but a giant version of Father’s face. His mouth was open, and that was where the roaring noise was coming from. Father was breathing in, sucking all of the air out of the room, and even though her feet were nailed to the floor, Joan could feel the power of the suction. Then her mom and dad and everything around her were vacuumed up, her feet were yanked painfully from the floor, and she was sucked into the blackness of Father’s open mouth.

Joan awoke in a bed.

She was in a room she recognized but could not instantly place. There were simple square end tables on either side of the bed, and against the wall opposite her stood a plain pine dresser. Glancing to her left, she saw a window.

It came to her then. This had been her bedroom. This was the room in which she’d grown up. There were differences now, such as the style of furniture, but the placement of everything remained the same as it had been throughout her childhood.

She sat up slowly. Her upper arms felt sore, as though they’d been squeezed too hard by careless fingers, and beneath the rough, shapeless cloth of her blouse, her bra was missing. There was an uncomfortable sensation between her legs, and when she pulled out the waistband of her pants and underwear, she saw that someone had stuffed a wadded cloth down there. Joan understood what had happened, and the only reason she had not been raped, she knew, was because she was having her period. Because she was cursed and unclean.

Thank God for small favors.

No. Not God.

She refused to thank God for anything.

There were voices coming from the living room, and for a disorienting moment, she thought that her parents were out there, discussing the events of the day, that they had never left the Home, that the past five years had been nothing but a dream. It was a moment of euphoria, for despite the fact that they were trapped here under Father’s rule, her parents were once again alive and well.

Then she heard the voices more clearly, and the man’s voice was not her dad’s and the woman’s voice was not her mom’s. Joan tried to get out of bed, but her head felt as though it had been slammed against a wall. Her brain seemed huge and swollen, and a heavy, crashing pain made her stop moving and cry out. Seconds later, the man and woman who’d been talking in the other room came hurrying in, solicitous looks on both of their faces. He was tall and clean-shaven, with longish hair parted in the middle. She was one of the Children, although the only indication of that was the fact that two of her fingers were fused together. Joan had never seen either of them before.

“Are you okay?” the woman asked, concerned. She was speaking the Language.

“Yes,” Joan said in kind, careful not to aggravate her headache by moving too much or too quickly.

“You must have been tired.” The woman placed a kiss on Joan’s forehead. “I’m glad you’re finally up, dear.”

Joan frowned. What was going on here?

The man smiled, patting her shoulder. “Hungry?”

They were pretending she was part of their family!

Joan recoiled. She didn’t know why they were going through this charade or what they hoped to accomplish, and without moving her head, she shifted her eyes, looking from one to the other. This was Father’s doing. Nothing happened in the Home without his approval, and he obviously wanted these two to act like parents to her, though whether they were doing so in order to obtain information or merely as part of some larger brainwashing scheme remained to be seen.

“Would you like some breakfast?” the woman asked.

“Why are you doing this?” Joan demanded, confronting them.

The woman tried to look puzzled, but she wasn’t a good enough actress, and Joan caught the sideways glance she shot her husband.

If he really was her husband.

“Doing what, dear?”

She responded in English. “Knock it off. I’m not a moron. Whatever I’ve been drugged with made me hallucinate and put me to sleep, but it didn’t make me stupid.” Her head was pounding, but she tried to ignore it. “What are you supposed to do? Guard me? Make sure I don’t try to escape?”

She’d seen through their deception, and they knew she knew, but they were playing their parts to the hilt.

“Our place is yours,” the woman said, switching to English also. “You know that.”

Fine. Joan pushed herself off the bed, stood and, despite the thunderous sound of blood thumping in her skull, walked over to the closet and opened its door. Inside were empty hangers dangling from a long wooden bar. She closed the door and headed out into the short hall that led to the bedroom that used to be her parents’.

“Ruth—” the woman began.

“My name’s Joan,” she said frostily.

The couple looked at each other, confused. Clearly, they hadn’t been given much information. They’d probably been chosen for this only because they happened to reside in her family’s old living quarters.

Joan walked into the bedroom, noting that the bed was flat against the east wall rather than being centered in the middle of the room the way it had been when her family lived here. These people kept no flowers—her mom always had a vase of cut flowers on the dresser and a potted geranium near the window—and to Joan’s eye, the room seemed depressingly devoid of decoration. The only nonfunctional item in sight was a framed photo of Father above the bed.

She walked across the room, moved to open the closet door.

“No!’ the man said, breaking character.

Joan immediately twisted the knob and yanked the door open. The closet was dark and, at first glance, appeared to be empty. Then she saw the wooden box on the floor. It was filled with black dirt, and in the dirt grew dozens of white mushrooms of various shapes and sizes.

She frowned. What was this?

“Don’t tell Father!” the woman begged. There was fear in her voice.

Whatever was going on, Joan knew she had the upper hand, and she decided to play it. “What is this? What are you doing?” she demanded.

“We only use them for ourselves,” the woman said. “We don’t share them.”

“They help us,” the man said.

She understood. These mushrooms were hallucinogenic. They might even be the source of whatever had been used to drug her.

“It’s my own soil. I made it myself. And the mushrooms just came up. It’s not stealing. I would never steal. They’re not part of Father’s crop.”

“They’re just for us,” the woman said.

Joan relented. Like herself, like her parents, these were people unhappy with the Home, people who wanted to escape but could not do so physically. Instead, they grew mushrooms in secret and ingested them in order to numb the pain and flee the reality of their lives in the only way they could.

“I won’t tell anyone,” she said. “But I need you to talk to me. I need you to tell me the truth.”

“We can’t let you go.” The woman started crying. “Father will punish us if we do.”

Joan’s muscles tightened involuntarily at the idea of punishment. She thought of the screams she’d heard on the night she and her parents had escaped. “What are your names?” she asked kindly.

The man sighed heavily. “I am Mark. My wife is Rebekah.”

“My name is Joan. It used to be Ruth, but now it’s Joan.”

“Joan,” Mark said, nodding respectfully. Rebekah was still sobbing.

“How long have you lived in the Home?”

“I came here as a child,” he replied. “My parents were Outsiders. Rebekah was born here.”

“I don’t remember you,” Joan said. “Did you know my parents?”

“I worked with your dad on the Farm sometimes,” Mark said.

Rebekah wiped her eyes, took a deep breath, banished her tears. “Your mom helped us in the Kitchen every once in a while, but we didn’t know them well.”

“You knew we escaped, though. You knew we got out.”

They both nodded.

“Do you want to get out?”

There was a moment of hesitation, as though they still weren’t certain they could trust her.

“You’re taking drugs,” Joan said. “Against Father’s laws. You’re spending your free time growing mushrooms in your closet and anesthetizing yourselves so you won’t have to think about your lives. You’re telling me you’re happy here? You don’t want to escape?”

“Of course we do!” Rebekah said fiercely. “But we can’t! No one can!”

“We did,” Joan said simply.

“And you’re back again.”

That was true. Joan thought of her parents in the coffins. Where were they now? “I’m not staying here,” she said.

The two looked at her, expressionless.

“I was kidnapped and brought here against my will. I’m being held here against my will.” She swallowed hard. “My parents are dead. They were kidnapped. And killed.” It felt like a punch to the stomach to say those words. “All we have to do is get out and tell the police, and it’ll be all over.”

“Father will punish us,” Rebekah said again.

Joan backed off. This was too new for them, too much to handle all at once. But they were unhappy here, they were already doing something forbidden and their sympathies were with her. All she needed to do was nudge them in the proper direction and help them gather the strength to do the right thing.

She also needed to figure out what that right thing was. She needed to come up with an escape plan, the way her dad had. Unfortunately, her knowledge of the Home was not only five years out of date but incomplete. She’d been a teenager when they’d left and had not been exposed to many areas and aspects of life here—which was another reason she needed Mark and Rebekah’s help.

“What are you supposed to do with me?” she asked.

They looked at each other. “Treat you like family,” Mark said finally. “Father thinks that if we show you that this is still your home, it will make it easier for you to adjust. That’s why he put us here in your old place.”

Father thought no such thing, Joan knew. He had given her a fake family and put her back in her old bedroom for the same reason that he had paraded Kara in front of her. He wanted to twist the knife.

“How long am I supposed to live with you?” Joan asked.

“We don’t know,” Rebekah said. She still seemed reluctant to reveal information, as though she suspected Joan was a spy trying to trick them and trap them.

“And now that I’m awake? What happens now?”

Mark answered. “We’re supposed to pray with you, read some scrolls together and take you to Chapel.”

“Take me to Chapel? Are you supposed to… hand-cuff me or anything?” She remembered the humiliating discomfort of the muzzle Absalom had put on her.

“No.” Mark shook his head. “We were told that the herbs administered to you would leave you content and without the desire to escape.” He allowed himself a small smile. “We have experienced that effect ourselves.”

Thank goodness that aspect of the drug hadn’t worked.

Maybe she could use that to her advantage.

“You’re to help me cook,” Rebekah offered. “Father wants you to help me in the Kitchen.”

“So you work in the Kitchen.” An idea was beginning to form in her head.

“I enjoy cooking,” Rebekah said, a trifle defensively.

Joan smiled. “Me, too.”

There was an awkward silence. She didn’t want to push, wanted to keep the two of them on her side, so she just stood there, smiling blandly, trying to ignore the heaviness in her head. Rebekah still looked suspicious, worried, no doubt, that Joan would reveal to someone the secret mushrooms growing in the closet.

“Perhaps we should pray together,” Mark suggested, closing the closet door.

“Yes,” Joan and Rebekah both agreed, and the three of them walked out to the living room, where the prayer cabinet was located.

Mark opened up the dark wooden door of the cabinet, revealing dozens of small compartments filled with scrolls. “You may choose,” he offered Joan, and she reached forward, plucking one from the top row. They knelt down together, bowing their heads, as Mark unfurled the paper and read the words:

Joan was silent afterward. She knew that prayer. It was the one her parents had given her when she’d gone off to school, and to her it still had power. She had no fear of Outsiders anymore—she was an Outsider now—but it seemed an appropriate entreaty for protection from an enemy, any enemy, and somehow it gave her strength.

Rebekah picked a scroll, and Mark again read the prayer. Then Mark chose a scroll and Rebekah read the prayer. All three scrolls were returned to their respective nooks, and the cabinet door was closed.

“Let us go to Chapel,” Mark said.

Rebekah shot a worried look at Joan. “You’re not going to try and run away, are you?”

“No,” Joan said, and managed to smile. “Not yet.”

Chapel was as dreadful as she remembered: the punishing stone floor, the muttering of Residents and Penitents all about her, the ever-increasing pain in her arms as she remained in worship position, her hands clasped in front of her. She hadn’t been hungry and hadn’t had to go to the bathroom, so she hadn’t had to suffer those indignities of the flesh, but the entire experience was just as brutal and grueling as it had been when she lived here.

Mark and Rebekah must have known it, because the first thing Mark said after they’d walked back to their living quarters was: “Would you like to try a piece of mushroom?” His voice was kind, but there was yearning in it, too, and she knew that that was what he wanted to do.

She shook her head. “No, thanks.” She smiled politely, but deep down she was still shocked that any Resident would do such a thing. She had been brought up strictly—no drugs, no alcohol, no caffeine—and it was a lifestyle to which she still adhered, an approach to living that had stuck, and in her mind the defection of her family was far less blasphemous than the couple’s clandestine drug use.

Although her headache was all but gone, only a slow thickness to her thoughts betraying the fact that she’d been sedated, she’d pretended at the Chapel and in the hallways on the way that she was still groggy. She’d lowered her eyes to half-mast and walked in a zombielike fashion. No one had spoken to her or remarked upon her appearance, though several men and one woman had greeted Mark and Rebekah as they passed through the Home.

Not for the first time, Joan thought about Mark’s knowing smile and what he’d said when referring to the substance that had knocked her out: “We have experienced that effect ourselves.” Something about his reaction struck her as significant, and it seemed to her that it might point the way to her escape, though at the moment she could not understand how.

It was midafternoon now, and obviously she was still feeling the aftereffects of being drugged because she felt tired. Excusing herself, she went into her old room, used the bedpan and lay down. It was weird being here again, and the superficial changes superimposed over the familiar layout of the living quarters were disorienting. She closed her eyes, intending only to rest for a few moments, but when she opened them again it was dark. For a brief, panicked second she thought she’d been drugged again, but she quickly realized that either Mark or Rebekah had closed the curtains in the bedroom and shut the door.

From the living room, she heard the clinking of knives, and the clanking of pots and pans. The juxtaposition of her groggy, dazed state and what sounded like the everyday noises accompanying food preparation caused something to click in her brain.

She suddenly knew what to do.

Excitedly, Joan pushed herself out of bed and stumbled through the darkness to the door. She pulled it open. The hallway was dark, too, but there was light coming from the living room, and she followed it.

Mark was sitting on the small couch in front of the coffee table, reading a Bible, while Rebekah was unpacking a box of cooking utensils that had obviously just been delivered. “Hey, you’re up!” Mark said in an overly familial manner, and Joan wondered if they had been discussing her while she’d been asleep and decided to go back to Father’s script.

“We’re making spicy scrambled eggs for breakfast tomorrow,” Rebekah said cheerily, and Joan’s heart sank.

She moved next to the prayer cabinet, equidistant between the two of them. “You work in the Kitchen,” she said to Rebekah. “You help cook meals for the Home. And Father wants me to help you.”

There was a slight hesitation. “Yes.”

“And you work on the Farm,” she said, turning to Mark.

“But I can’t get you out.” Mark seemed to know where she was heading. He sounded worried.

“But you know how to get outside,” Joan emphasized.

“Why are you asking this?” He was worried.

“You know why.”

Rebekah had stopped unpacking the box and stood next to her husband.

“I know how we can escape.”

They looked at each other. “We don’t want to—” Rebekah began.

“Yes, you do. If you were happy here, you wouldn’t be growing—”

“We are happy here.” Mark quickly cut her off. There was a pleading look in his eyes, and she suddenly understood. He was afraid they were under surveillance. Or he knew they were under surveillance.

She shut up. Glancing around, she searched for something with which to write. Finding neither pen nor paper, she held out her flattened left palm, then squeezed together her right thumb and forefinger and pretended to scribble. Neither of them understood her pantomime, and Joan walked around the smallish room until she finally discovered, in the drawer of a bureau, a stubby pencil next to a piece of paper containing a list of names. She tore the paper in half, took it out and placed it on the coffee table in front of them.

“I’m looking forward to helping you in the Kitchen,” she said aloud in the Language. “I’m actually a pretty good cook.” On the paper she wrote: We put mushrooms in the food.

Rebekah was shaking her head violently, but Mark looked thoughtful.

“Scrambled eggs sound good,” Joan said. She wrote: The same kind they used on me. Everyone gets knocked out and we escape.

“I like eggs, too.” Mark took the pencil from her.

“They’re much better than pancakes.” He wrote: Not everyone eats at the same time.

“What day is tomorrow?” Joan asked. “I’ve kind of lost track of time.”

Mark sensed where she was going. “Thursday,” he replied. He wrote: Most people will be in the Dining Room for breakfast before Fifth Day services. Only some will be out.”

Rebekah was still shaking her head no.

Joan took the pencil from him. How many is some?

I don’t know.

Can we get past them?

Maybe, he wrote.

They were out of paper, and Joan turned it over. Try to find a way, she wrote. Aloud, she said, “You’re going to have to make a lot of eggs. Breakfast is a big meal. I bet a lot of women are working in the Kitchen.”

Rebekah took the pencil from her. Too many. She underlined the words for emphasis.

We cut the mushrooms ahead of time, Joan wrote after taking the pencil back, smuggle them in and sneak them into the food when no one’s looking. Scrambled eggs are perfect.

“No!” Rebekah said aloud.

They both looked at her.

“Yes,” Mark said softly. He wrote: We can do it!

Joan nodded encouragingly. “I’m a pretty good cook,” she said again. “I think I’ll be a lot of help to you in the Kitchen.”

Rebekah picked up the paper, turned it over, read everything on it, then looked from Joan to Mark and back again.

“Okay,” she said finally.

Twenty-two

Joan awoke before dawn, feeling anxious.

She had gone with Mark and Rebekah to the Dining Room for supper last night, eating with the Residents for the first time since she’d been brought back, and though she’d been grateful to see no sign of either Father or Kara, the Teachers’ table was full, and Absalom and his comrades fixed her with disapproving glances through the entire repast. She’d forgotten how much she disliked these communal meals, with the prayers between each course and the exaggerated politesse, and the fact that everyone around her was overly solicitous and acting sickeningly sweet put her on edge. She was grateful when an end to supper was called and they were all allowed to leave.

Afterward, back at their living quarters, Mark had chosen mushrooms that he assured her, in one of the written notes that had become their only honest means of communication, were of the right type and were strong enough to knock out every man, woman and child in the Home. The three of them had then spent the next several hours chopping the mushrooms so fine that by the finish they were practically powder. From somewhere, Mark had come up with cloth gloves and face masks that each of them wore to minimize contact with the hallucinogen, and he also supplied a small bag into which they scooped the minced mushrooms. Rebekah would carry the bag with her tomorrow and drop its contents into the eggs whenever she got the chance.

“I need some tonight myself,” she said. “To relax.”

“We will,” Mark promised her.

Joan did not know what had gone on behind the closed door of their bedroom after they’d retired, but she had stayed completely sober. This might be her only chance for a long, long time, and she could not afford for anything to go wrong. She needed to stay alert and on top of things at all times.

Now she was on pins and needles.

Either Mark or Rebekah had gone out and brought back muffins, and they were both sitting at the coffee table in silence, eating. A muffin had been brought back for her as well, and it sat there untouched atop a cloth napkin. Had either of them slept last night? Joan wondered; examining their tired faces, she didn’t think they had. That worried her, but she couldn’t afford to let them see any doubt. They were shaky enough as it was, particularly Rebekah, and at this point Joan needed to show them strength.

Forcing herself to smile, Joan knelt down on the floor next to the coffee table. “Good morning,” she said. She picked up her muffin and took a bite. It was rough and dry, tasteless. She grimaced, swallowing hard. “I hope you didn’t make this,” she joked.

Mark pushed over a piece of paper on which a message had already been written: We don’t want to do this. It is too dangerous.

Joan was prepared. She’d thought they might get cold feet and had come up with a response. She gestured for the pencil, and Mark handed it to her. I will take all responsibility , she wrote. I will put the mushrooms in the food. If I get caught, I’ll say you know nothing. It was all me. They will all believe it. Even Father. As she pushed the paper toward Mark, she wondered what had happened to the pieces of paper they’d been writing on yesterday. If they had not been completely destroyed and disposed of properly, they could be pretty damning evidence. The three of them had to make sure that no trace of their messages could ever be found.

Mark read her words, nodded to show he understood, then wrote something himself, pushing it across the table: What if they torture you?

The words hung there. Even her parents had never spoken so bluntly, though it was a truth known by everyone in the Home, and Joan felt cold reading the question.

Rebekah reached over, grabbed the paper and tore it in half. She tore those pieces in half, then in half again, continuing to rip the paper until the scraps were so small that they could never be put together again and it was impossible to tell that anything had been written on them. Joan understood her fear—she felt some of it herself—and she nodded her approval of Rebekah’s action in order to acknowledge that, but she smiled confidently. “When do we start cooking?” she asked.

Joan was not sure she’d ever been in the Kitchen. She had definitely never worked in here, and she was surprised both by the size of the prep area and by the number of women involved. One woman’s sole job was to start the fire in the wood-burning stove and keep it lit, and Joan was afraid she would be assigned such a focused and specific duty as well, so she was grateful when Rebekah announced to everyone present that Joan was to be her helper and that she would be teaching Joan the ropes.

Rebekah apparently had high seniority in the kitchen, and no one questioned or even commented upon the assignment. That was good. She was in charge of actually cooking the eggs, of blending together the ingredients prepared by the others, and that gave them a much better opportunity for sneaking the mushrooms into the food than they would have had at a different station.

Food preparation in the Home’s kitchen was like a well-oiled machine. It had been done the same way, using the same recipes, for decades, and ordinarily any deviation from protocol would have been instantly noticed. But Joan and Rebekah had worked out a plan ahead of time and had practiced it in the living room: just before the scrambled eggs were done, the older woman would move into position, blocking her from view, and Joan would sprinkle the finely diced mushrooms into the food. The only question was whether heating the mushrooms would diminish their efficacy, and they would have to wait for the meal to be consumed before they learned the answer.

Mark would be in the Dining Room with the others and, like them, he would not eat anything.

If all went well, the Residents would be knocked out quickly and at approximately the same time, allowing the three of them to make their escape. Or try. After they left the Dining Room, she had no idea what would happen. They might be stopped before they got anywhere near the outside. There were doors that could be locked, Residents who could be patrolling the hallways or guarding the exits, and other variables that could not possibly be predicted.

But they had to attempt it.

Joan could see through the serving window opening onto the Dining Room that Residents were arriving. Meals were always served precisely on the hour and Residents were expected to be seated and ready to eat when the food was taken to the tables. So diners did not trickle in. They all came at the same time, and within two minutes the place was filled.

Tamar and Mary, the two women in charge of juicing the fruits, began pouring beverages into cups, while the Children chosen to serve came up to the window with trays and started taking the drinks out to the waiting Residents.

The Children!

Joan had forgotten about them. The ones who were integrated would be eating here with the other Residents, but those with severe mental and physical handicaps ate separately, in a different room at a different time, so they would not be affected by the eggs with the mushrooms. They would still be awake and conscious.

She saw in her mind the small man with the big head and the horrible dumb grin. The thought of running into him in an otherwise empty hallway made her shiver.

It couldn’t be helped, though. And even if any of the Children were to be wandering around, they would have no clue what was happening. They would not be aware that the three of them were escaping. It would be easy to slip by them.

Rebekah touched her back, getting her attention, and Joan knew that it was time to put her plan into action. Following the older woman’s lead, Joan moved directly in front of the stove, picking up the spatula with which she was supposed to scoop the eggs onto plates. Rebekah had disguised the powdery minced mushrooms by placing them into a glass jar identical to those that housed the herbs used for flavoring various dishes, and she handed Joan the open jar, moving into place behind her so as to block from view the fact that she was dumping the entire contents of the container into the eggs.

Rebekah’s hand was sweaty when she handed off the jar, and when Joan hazarded a look at her face, the woman seemed pale and frightened. But she shot Joan an encouraging smile, and as soon as Joan was hidden from the rest of the women, she poured in the finely chopped mushrooms, stirred and started plating.

They’d been told that sixty-six people were in the Dining Room for breakfast, and though Joan didn’t know how many Residents and Penitents were in the Home altogether, the tables seemed full. The only thing that worried her was the fact that more people ate supper than breakfast, so there were likely to be men and women still out and about. Nevertheless, the majority of the people were here, and of the ones remaining, most were probably in the Chapel. If the plan worked, they should still be able to get out of the Home with little or no problem.

What they would do when they got outside remained to be seen.

Run, she thought, and smiled to herself.

The first tray of plates went out.

Even if the heat of the scrambled eggs had not diluted or negated the effects of the mushrooms, Mark had asssured her that the drug would not kick in for three to five minutes. She ladled quickly, hoping he was right, because if some people started dropping or freaking out before everyone had had a chance to eat, they were screwed.

The food was going out, and she could see through the serving window that the diners were consuming it and liking it. That had been another worry, that the mushrooms would throw off the flavor, but Rebekah had promised that the taste was practically undetectable, and she’d been right. In the center of the room, not eating, was Mark. He was sipping slowly from his cup of juice, looking carefully around, making sure everyone else was eating the way they should be.

Joan finished sending out all sixty-six plates in less than a minute and a half, and though the women working in the kitchen usually started eating only after everyone else had finished with their entire meal, Rebekah had enough clout and had built up enough trust with her fellow cooks that she had convinced them to pause and have some eggs as well before sending out the apple slices and cantaloupe that came after.

Mary swallowed a big forkful, then held up her plate. “Aren’t you going to have any?” she asked Joan.

“I’m not hungry,” Joan said. She had never felt so tense in her life, and she kept looking from face to face among the women in the kitchen, searching for some sign that the mushrooms were having an effect. If this didn’t work—

There was a crash from the dining room, the noise of smashing plates and cups. It was accompanied by voices, but they were muttering, not shouting, and as Joan looked with the other women through the serving window, she saw Mark stand up slowly while all about him diners were falling backward, falling forward, or getting up and staggering about.

Next to her, Tamar let out a short, stifled cry, then stood in place, frozen.

Her pulse racing, Joan’s eyes met Rebekah’s across a chopping table.

It had worked.

Twenty-three

As they walked deeper into the Home, Gary was reminded of a hive. Not only were the intersecting corridors mazelike, but the few people they saw were all so focused on their own tasks and duties that they seemed to pay no attention to the fact that the three of them were dressed in street clothes, and that Brian not only had his arm around a Homesteader’s throat but was pressing a knife against his back.

The lack of interest was definitely strange, but Gary was well aware that this could be misleading, that they could be walking into a very carefully planned trap.

He hoped Stacy had called the sheriff.

“You’d better not be leading us to this ‘Father’ character,” Brian warned. “If I see anyone who even looks like ‘Father,’ you’re a dead man. A dead man. Do you hear me?”

The Homesteader nodded and suddenly stopped walking, turning back the way they had come and going down a hallway they had only recently passed on the right.

“Good call,” Reyn said.

“I know how these fucks think.”

Gary, bringing up the rear of their little party, had taken out his own knife and was carrying it at his side. He had never used a weapon against anyone before, had never even been in a real fight, but Brian’s knife was busy, and if they were attacked or threatened by anyone else, someone had to be ready to protect them, to fight back. And he was more than ready to slice his way through a whole army of cultists if it would get him to Joan.

A woman emerged into the hallway from a room that appeared to be filled with piles of white cloth. Her eyes widened as she saw them. “Isaac?”

She tried to approach them, but Brian twisted around so that his knife was visible. “Back off, shut up and Isaac will live.”

The man started jabbering in that weird alien language. The woman answered him in the same way.

“Shut up, both of you!” Brian ordered. He nodded at the woman. “You! Get back in that room! Close the door behind you! If you dare to come out of there, I’ll slit both of your fucking throats!”

The woman complied, sobbing, obviously frightened and obviously believing he was capable of such action. The man was still trying to talk to her as the door closed, and Brian tightened the grip around his neck, cutting off the words and causing the man to let out strangled, choking noises.

“When I say ‘shut up,’ ” Brian said menacingly into his ear, “I mean shut up.” The look he shot Gary over the man’s shoulder had none of the hard strength found in those words, but revealed instead a young man terrified, confused and in way over his head.

That makes two of us, Gary thought. He glanced at Reyn. Three.

Ahead, the hallway opened out into a large, open chamber that looked like the lobby of a hotel. It had a ceiling that seemed higher than the roof outside, and the walls seemed more obviously wooden. There was something rustic about it, and Gary was reminded of a log cabin. He wondered if this had been the original structure and if everything around it had been added on later.

Straight across the room was a different hallway. To their right, yet another corridor headed off in a separate direction. Gary was beginning to get worried. They were being drawn deeper and deeper into this compound, and it was starting to feel to him like a trap. Their buddy Isaac or his girlfriend back there could shout out a warning, and he, Brian and Reyn could be instantly surrounded by hordes of militant Homesteaders. They’d taken so many twists and turns through this jerry-rigged building that there was no way he would be able to find his way out again without a guide, and he wasn’t sure how effective threatening to kill Isaac was going to be. He had the feeling that the man would be willing to sacrifice himself for the common good and that his compatriots would be only too happy to let him do it.

Wasn’t that how cults worked?

Gary pushed past Reyn and got in front of Brian and his hostage. “Enough of this bullshit. Where’s Joan?”

Before the man could respond, they heard the sound of smashing dishes. The noise came from nearby, and Gary saw Isaac turn his head to the right. From down the adjacent corridor came another crash, and though their smartest move would be to stay as far away from people as possible, they all moved immediately to the head of that hallway. Something was definitely wrong, and maybe they could turn that to their advantage.

“Where’s Joan?” Gary asked again. He wasn’t about to let this bastard off the hook. “Is she down there?”

“I do not know where Ruth is,” the man said defiantly.

What the hell did that mean?

Brian tightened his grip again, making Isaac cough, but he shot Gary a look of concern, and Gary understood why. The man was bolder than he had been, he felt safer here, and that might mean they were in trouble.

“Look,” Reyn said, pointing.

Down the corridor, two men stumbled slowly out of an open doorway, then leaned against the wall opposite the door, staring upward.

“They’re tripping,” Brian said, recognizing the behavior. He grinned. “I could get into this cult. Just joking,” he added quickly, glancing over at Gary.

Gary had no idea how his friend could joke around at a time like this. Even if they managed to find Joan and get safely out of the Home—which seemed increasingly unlikely—they would probably end up going to jail, thanks to Brian’s irresponsible actions. Gary thought about Father’s high-powered attorneys. He and his friends would be charged with everything the Homesteaders should have been charged with: kidnapping, assault, attempted murder… .

If they ever did get out of here, he was going to kick Brian’s ass.

There were other noises coming from the open doorway through which the two wasted men had stumbled, including voices. One of them, a man’s, said something that sounded like “Joan.”

Gary dashed down the corridor without thinking, leaving Reyn, Brian and their hostage behind. He didn’t know if they were following him and at that moment didn’t care. The only thing he cared about was finding Joan.

The two men were still leaning against the wall, staring upward, frozen. Directly across from them was the entrance to what looked like some sort of mess hall or banquet room, with a doorway wide enough to fit four people abreast. Inside was chaos. Four rows of long tables stretched nearly the length of the huge room, and most of the people at the tables were lying face forward in their food, though some of them had apparently fallen backward and lay in ungainly positions on the floor. Here and there, other men and women were stumbling against each other or walking in circles. Four or five stood like statues, unmoving.

“Gary!”

He froze. Joan! He had no idea where her voice was coming from, but she’d seen him and was calling to him, and he swiveled around crazily, trying to figure out where she was.

And then he saw her.

How long had it been since she’d been taken from him at Burning Man? A week? Two? He had no idea; his brain could not focus. It felt like years. But she was here now, and she looked wonderful, and she was hurrying toward him from the far end of the room, dodging everyone in her way.

“Gary!”

She was wearing the same sort of drab peasant outfit as everyone else, and it didn’t look as though her hair had seen a brush for days, but she was Joan, and like a beautiful painting in an ugly frame, she shone in these surroundings, looking even better than he remembered. He was filled with a complex emotion, at once joyful and sad, angry and relieved, a new emotion that combined all of these feelings into a coherent whole and revolved entirely around her.

He shoved the knife between his belt and his jeans, on his right side, reaching for her as she ran into his open arms. There were a few seconds when it felt strange, when the size and shape of her seemed unfamiliar; then the points where their bodies touched conformed to each other, melded together, and it was as though they had never been apart. Gary kissed her, but it wasn’t a long, lingering movie kiss because she pulled back almost instantly and said, “We have to get out of here!”

“What’s going on?” he asked, looking around.

“I’ll explain later. We have to go.” She glanced over her shoulder, and a man and woman were there. “Mark, Rebekah, come on!”

His hand had dropped immediately to the knife when he saw the couple, but apparently Joan knew them and they wanted to escape as well. Holding Joan’s hand tightly, not willing to let her go for a second, Gary moved back into the corridor, where Reyn and Brian stood, confused.

“What are you doing?” Joan said, shocked.

She was looking at Brian, whose arm was wrapped around their hostage’s neck while he pressed a knife against the man’s back. “He’s our insurance policy,” Brian said.

“Gary?” He could hear the fear and confusion in her voice.

“We’ll talk about it later.”

They were moving back the way they had come. “Does anyone know a quick way out of here?” Reyn asked. He moved next to the couple behind Joan. “Can you lead the way?”

The man—Mark?—nodded. “Follow me.”

“The sheriff should be here any second,” Gary said hopefully. “We left Stacy in the car and she was supposed to call for help.”

But he wasn’t sure that was what had happened. They’d been in here for a while now, and at the very least, the two men Stewart had ordered to watch the Home should have been kicking ass and taking names.

Maybe they’d been captured.

Maybe Stacy had.

No doubt Reyn had had the same thought, but neither of them dared say it aloud. They followed Mark back into the huge rustic room—what Gary thought of as the lobby, as though they were in some resort hotel— and turned left into the nearest hallway. Isaac began to chatter away in that weird language, obviously directing his speech to Mark, but Brian did something that made him cry out and shut up.

They entered a storeroom of some sort and passed through it, exiting through a doorway on the opposite side into another room filled with low cots and cribs. The room was empty, but there was something eerie about it, and Gary was happy that they passed through quickly and entered another corridor.

“Where are we going?” Joan asked.

“The Farm. It’s closest,” Mark said.

The corridor curved—

And there was Father.

Gary knew who he was immediately. There’d been no mug shots of Father in the sheriff’s file because lawyers had gotten them removed when the case was dismissed, but his framed visage had been displayed on the walls of every photographed room. He’d appeared grim and forbidding in the pictures, but he looked far more frightening in person, and the dark eyes of the tall, stern man who stood in the center of the hallway, white beard hanging down to the center of his chest, blazed with an anger so strong that Gary completely understood why his followers were afraid of him.

Behind Father in the corridor, standing, sitting, crawling, rolling wheelchairs and pushing carts, were men, women and children, fifteen or twenty of them, all horribly malformed. Gary saw a woman with only one arm, no legs and a few strands of iron gray hair combed over the top of her otherwise bald head, being pushed in a modified stroller by a broad-shouldered man no taller than a child. A skinny, pasty-looking teenager who did not seem to be able to close his mouth was drooling into a thick rag tied around his neck. A figure of indeterminate gender lay atop a table equipped with wheels, laughing toothlessly.

“What the fuck?” Brian said.

“The Children!” Joan exclaimed, and there was fear in her voice.

“Yes, Ruth, the Children,” Father said. He had a strong, deep voice, the type suited for oratory, and his piercing, angry eyes took all of them in. What Gary saw there frightened him, and for the first time he thought they might not make it out of there alive. He used his right hand to withdraw the knife from his belt, still holding protectively on to Joan with his left.

If he thought there would be talk, discussion, negotiation, he was wrong. With a rigid finger, Father pointed at them and shouted an order in that strange language.

Rebekah screamed.

Joan clutched his hand even tighter.

The Children swarmed. As Father stood untouched and unmoving amid the sea of running, rolling, crawling humanity, Gary, holding tight to Joan’s hand, turned to run. He had a knife in his hand, as did Brian, but neither of them were killers, and though they might have wielded the weapons for protection, their reflexes were too slow, impeded by conscience and morality, and by the time they’d made the determination that to attack was their only choice, it was too late. Gary’s wrist was grabbed, the weapon jerked from his hand. All of the words coming at him were in that alien language, and hands were clawing at him, claws were handling him. He saw faces so distorted they looked more animal than human, more monster than animal, feeling soft, squishy flesh and hard, reptilian skin. Trying to fight back, he went down under a horde of hideous assailants. “Joan!” he cried as they were wrenched apart.

Punched in the gut so hard he couldn’t breathe, Gary knew he was going to die, and at that precise second someone shouted out, “Stop right there!”

The voice was not only normal but familiar. Sheriff Stewart.

The assault continued, but it grew weaker, and shouts in English overrode the alien screams as law enforcement officers broke up the melee. Gary kicked one of his attackers and managed to pull free from a long-legged man who was tugging on his right arm. He stood, looking frantically about for Joan. Batons raised, Stewart and four deputies he didn’t recognize were yanking people up, shoving them against the wall and shouting for compliance. Joan and Reyn were free and standing just behind the sheriff. Brian was still fighting with a man who had hold of his neck.

Face hurting, eyes watering, Gary lurched to the right, staggered around the edge of the fray and embraced Joan. “Are you okay?” he managed to get out.

She nodded, but her body was tense, and the expression on her face was anxious and agitated. He was about to tell her that everything was all right, the cavalry had arrived, they were safe, when he saw where she was looking. He suddenly understood her worry, and he glanced around, searching in every direction. His eyes moved over the combatants, up and down the corridor, did the same thing again, but the result did not change.

Father was gone.

Twenty-four

Joan stood with Gary and their friends next to the sheriff’s car as two deputies brought out a line of stumbling, mushroom-impaired Residents tied together with plastic restraints. They were placed in front of the Home, in the shade of the wall, next to the fifty or so others who had already been taken out.

All of the law enforcement officers in Bitterweed, on duty and off, had been called in, as had the six extra posse members who usually helped out in the event of an emergency, but they were still overwhelmed by the sheer number of people they had to round up. Other agents from other jurisdictions had been summoned to handle the overflow, but it would be a while before any of them got here, and until then local law enforcement had to subdue and restrain the entire population of the Home by themselves. Not all of the Residents and Penitents would be charged and arrested, of course, but all of them had to be interviewed, once they were sober, and after that the determination of what to do with them would be made.

There were deputies stationed all around the Home, at every entrance, in case someone should try to get away, and Joan still had hopes that Father would be captured, but as one hour passed by, and then another, such an outcome seemed increasingly unlikely. The sheriff had told them they didn’t have to wait around, they could go back to town, but she wanted to stay. She wanted to see what they found, who they found, what happened.

Finally, the last group was brought around the corner of the building from the area of the Farm, all shackled together. There were Teachers in this group, and she saw the look on Absalom’s face as he was led out with the others. There was nothing kind about it now. He had no warm smile for her, only a hateful glare that told her what she already knew: this was not over.

She remained stoic as his eyes bored into hers. But inside, she was like jelly. She had left the Home, had lived in the real world, was an official Outsider. She was not the girl she had been. But somehow being here again, seeing these people, brought it all back: the fear, the anxiety, the paranoia.

She turned away, trying to make it seem casual and natural, not wanting him to know that she was afraid. Her heart was pounding crazily, and she needed a drink of water; her mouth was completely dry. The sheriff walked up to them. He looked tired but pleased, and he actually smiled as he said, “Thank you.” He pointed to Stacy. “Especially you, for calling it in. The tape of that call is going to get us out of a whole heap of legal trouble.”

“I just hope you put them away for a long time.”

“With your help, with the help of all of you, I think we’ll be able to do that.” The sheriff moved in front of Joan. “Ms. Daniels.” He nodded politely. “How are you feeling?”

“Nervous,” she said.

“Understandable, understandable.” There was a short pause. “When we’re done here, after we go back to the office, if you’re up to it, I’d like to get a statement from you. Not to add on too much pressure, but you’re the reason for all this. You’re the linchpin of our case, and we really need your cooperation in nailing these guys.”

“I’ll give you a statement; I’ll testify in court—I’ll give you whatever you need.”

He looked relieved. “You don’t know how glad I am to hear you say that.”

“Is that all of them?” Gary asked, motioning toward the numb, passive Residents lined up against the wall. Separated from the others were the Children. Several of the more severely disabled, the ones in wheelchairs or lying on gurneys, had already been taken away in ambulances.

“That’s all we were able to find. So far. I have a group of men searching the barn and looking through the fields. We’re going to go back in and do another search of the compound in a few minutes.” His jaw tightened. “We haven’t been able to locate their illustrious leader, the one who calls himself ‘Father.’ ”

Joan had been afraid of that.

The sheriff faced her. “Do you have any idea where he might be? Are there any… secret hiding places or… I don’t know, escape tunnels?”

“I have no idea,” she admitted, but she motioned toward Mark, who stood with Rebekah off to her right in an ill-defined no-man’s-land between the sheriff’s car and the restrained Residents. “Mark might be able to help you, though. He and his wife are the ones who planned everything with me. He lived here a lot longer than I did, and he’s been here the entire time. He’ll know what to look for.”

She convinced the sheriff that Mark could be trusted, and, after talking to him, Stewart allowed Mark to lead him and a team of four men into the Home so they could systematically search each room, closet and corridor for Residents or Penitents who might be hiding.

Kara was in one of the groups that had been brought out, although she had not eaten breakfast and was considerably less groggy than the men and women to whom she was shackled. With Deputy Hubbard’s permission, and under the watchful eye of another officer, Joan was allowed to go over to speak to her roommate—although the conversation was more than a little one-sided. Kara not only refused to respond to her questions; she wouldn’t even look at Joan. She kept her eyes on the ground, and after several minutes of this, Joan gave up and walked back to where Gary was standing by the car. She still wanted to know why her roommate was here, what had happened, how she had ended up with Father, but those questions weren’t going to be answered today.

One of the Children with mental problems began howling and a couple of others responded in kind. Using a loud, authoritarian voice, a Teacher ordered them to stop, and they did.

Time passed. Ten minutes. Twenty. A half hour.

Gary tried to speak to her a couple of times, tried to ask her questions, but Joan waved him off. She wasn’t in the mood to talk right now; at the moment she was content to just stand here and wait.

The day was warm, and they were in the direct sunlight. The metal of the car was hot against her back. But she didn’t care. She was grateful to be outside, and even standing here doing nothing, she felt freer than she ever had inside the Home.

Mark emerged, leading the sheriff and his men out of the building through the same door they’d gone in, but no one else was with them. Their search had uncovered nothing. A moment later, the sheriff told them what they’d already guessed.

Father was nowhere to be found.

He had escaped.

Joan sucked in a deep breath, turning around, away from the Home and the Residents and Penitents lined up against it. She saw her reflection in the window of the car, a ghostlike image superimposed over the solid reality of the backseat. She hardly recognized herself, and she realized that she had not seen her own reflection in many days.

“Are you all right?” Gary asked softly, putting a hand on her back.

Joan nodded, but in her mind she saw the look on Absalom’s face when they’d led him out, and she shivered.

This was not over.