The Disappearance

Twenty-five

Sitting in the sheriff’s office, Gary could not stop shaking. He’d been fine when it all was happening. Adrenaline had taken over. Even afterward, waiting outside, watching the Home being raided and everyone rounded up, he had been able to maintain his cool. But he’d started shaking the moment they’d returned to town. His emotions had caught up with the knowledge in his brain, and he realized not only the scope of what they’d come up against but how close they had come to death. Even thinking about that army of deformed people—

The Children

—made his blood run cold.

He had no idea where the Children were right now or, indeed, where most of the men and women from the Home were being held. A handful of them were in cells here in the building, and he assumed those were the ringleaders, the ones in charge, though the sheriff, understandably, had not had time to explain exactly what was going on.

He only hoped they would not be arrested themselves. In an effort to head off trouble and get everything out in the open, Reyn had volunteered the information that Brian and Gary had been carrying knives. For self-defense, he’d emphasized. In all of the chaos, that fact might never have come out, so Gary wasn’t sure that offering it up was such a wise strategy. Brian was pissed. Nothing had been said about his taking Isaac hostage, but it was bound to come out eventually, and he was already blaming Reyn for that.

Gary was sitting next to Joan on the couch in Sheriff Stewart’s office. His arm was around her, had been ever since they’d arrived, but the two of them had not had time to talk. Well, they’d had the time but not enough privacy. He felt awkward saying what he wanted to say in front of the others, and he was waiting until they were alone.

A deputy Gary did not know brought them soft drinks and potato chips from the vending machines—it was after lunch and they were starving—and they set upon the food greedily. The Fritos bag Gary picked up crackled noisily as his hands shook, and he noticed when Brian popped open his can of Dr Pepper and spilled it all over his pants that his friend’s hands were shaking even worse than his. They were all nervous wrecks, and only Stacy, who had not come into the Home, retained any measure of composure.

“How did you find me?” Joan asked Gary. She opened up a package of Doritos. “How did you ever figure out that I was here in Texas?”

It was a long story, but he wasn’t sure she wanted to hear it right now and he wasn’t sure he wanted to tell it. “They sent someone after me. Two people, actually. They were caught and gave us the address of the Home. I think they thought we’d be captured if we came here. I don’t think they were doing us a favor.”

“You almost were captured,” Stacy said.

He nodded. “That’s true.”

Joan was eating her Doritos. She no longer seemed to be paying attention to him.

“I went to your parents’ house,” he told her. “In Cayucos.”

“They’re dead,” she said simply.

“What?”

“My parents are dead.”

He had no idea how to respond to that. The only thing he could think of to say was, “How do you know?”

“I don’t want to talk about it.”

“Did you tell the sheriff?”

“I don’t want to talk about it.”

Gary shared a glance with Stacy, hoping she could indicate to him how he should react, what he should do, what he should say, but she shrugged her shoulders helplessly, raising her eyebrows in an expression of cluelessness.

“I got their address from Teri,” Gary continued lamely. He suddenly realized she did not know that Teri Lim was dead. He shut up. There was a minefield in every explanation, and he doubted that she could take much more bad news.

Her parents were dead?

Had the Homesteaders killed them? That would be his first guess, and he thought about the dead dog and the blood on the linoleum floor of their kitchen. If Joan hadn’t told the sheriff yet, Gary would. Drugging and kidnapping were bad enough, but murder would put those bastards away for life.

Where was Kara? he wondered. Had she been placed in a cell? She might be able to shed some light on this.

From outside came the sound of a helicopter. No. Helicopters. Plural. At first he thought they were from other law enforcement agencies, but seconds later, Stewart came into the room, frowning. “The press has arrived. I’ll try to keep them away from you—”

“No need of that,” Brian said. “I’ll talk to them.”

The sheriff fixed him with a hard glare. “I was thinking of Ms. Daniels.”

“Oh.”

“Could we have a minute?” Reyn asked the sheriff.

“Take all the time you need. I’m going out there to try to deal with this. If you need anything, ask Taylor. I’ll be back as soon as I can.”

“What the hell are you thinking?” Reyn turned on Brian as soon as Stewart was out of the room and the door closed behind him.

“I’m thinking of getting some national exposure.”

“Do you know what would happen if you spoke to a reporter? Every reporter would try to talk to you. Then they would start looking into your background. They’d find Isaac, who would reveal that you held him at knife-point. Then they would ask why you held him at knife-point and whether this was part of a pattern, and they would comb through your past and find every little thing you ever did wrong and broadcast it to the entire world. Do you want that to happen?”

“No,” Brian admitted.

“Okay, then. Just keep your mouth shut.”

Stacy put a finger to her lips, motioning for them to stay quiet. Phones were ringing all over the building. From the front of the sheriff’s office, they could hear Stewart shouting above the thwap-thwap-thwap of the helicopters. “I want no one in here! Is that understood? No one gets past these doors! Taylor? You and Billy drag out that podium we have in the conference room and set up some sort of press area in the parking lot out back! We’ll direct them there! I don’t know how long it’s going to take them to land and find their way over here, but we don’t have much time!”

The helicopters were getting louder, and there seemed to be more of them.

“Who’s at the compound?” Stewart shouted. “They’ll be going there first! Stall them! I don’t want anyone saying anything—‘No comment’ the shit out of them—but keep them there as long as possible!”

The tactic must have worked because while the sheriff’s office seemed to be in complete chaos for the next fifteen minutes or so, as far as Gary could tell, no reporters made it into the building.

After that, things calmed down, though the sound of the helicopters never completely went away. Stewart returned, and one by one, they were taken to another room and interviewed, their statements recorded, dictated to a stenographer and signed. Joan went first, Gary next. The questions were easy, and he answered them honestly, describing everything that had happened since the trip to Burning Man, leaving out only those incidents that would cast himself or his friends in a bad light. Between Joan’s eyewitness account of her captivity, what had been found in the Home and what he and his friends had to say, the Homesteaders were going to be in deep shit.

Joan had been crying after her interview, and she was still crying when he returned, sitting on the couch with Stacy, the two of them holding on to each other’s hands for support. Gary took over for Stacy as she went over to Reyn, and Brian left to do his interview. He held Joan close and told her over and over again that everything was going to be all right, the worst of it was done.

He hoped it was true.

After a while, she stopped crying, but they continued to sit on the couch, arms still around each other. If they weren’t where they were and what had happened hadn’t happened, he thought, it would have been nice.

A deputy walked past the door, leading a too-tall woman with too-short arms.

One of the Children.

The tactile memory of slimy skin and rough claws made him shiver. From what Gary understood, the Children were the product of incest, the offspring of Father and his daughters. Or granddaughters. Or great-granddaughters. The idea sickened him, and he thought about the photo of Joan’s mother, wondering if she was one of Father’s progeny. The possibility that Joan could be related to that man made his blood run cold.

Had Father tried to… ?

Gary pushed the thought from his mind, refusing to consider it.

It was evening by the time they were through. There was no motel in town or the department would have paid to put them up for the night. There wasn’t even a bed-and-breakfast, but the sheriff had invited them to sleep at his house, and his wife had set up couches and cots in the living room. The bed was made up in the guest room for Joan. Just as Antwon Stewart defied the stereotype of a Texas sheriff, his wife, My, left any preconceptions about a sheriff’s wife in the dust. A petite woman with a thick Vietnamese accent, she wore silk pajamas with no shoes and served them homemade spring rolls and pho for dinner. She was friendly and chatty and kept up a lively conversation throughout the meal, but Gary could understand only about a fifth of the things she said, so he ended up nodding a lot and pretending to agree with whatever she told them.

The sheriff had dropped them off but had not remained for dinner, and although he advised his wife not to turn on any television news so as not to disturb Joan, Mrs. Stewart asked after they’d finished eating whether any of them would mind if she put on CNN.

“It’s fine,” Joan said, managing a small smile. “I think we’re all curious.”

Mrs. Stewart turned on the TV, and after showing the results of a tropical storm that had hit South Carolina, a shot appeared of the Home, taken from a helicopter earlier that afternoon. The anchor gave an update on “the situation in Bitterweed,” revealing that authorities were questioning cult members, trying to discover the whereabouts of the sect’s mysterious leader, known only as “Father,” who had authorized the drugging and kidnapping of at least one UCLA student and who might be behind numerous other crimes over the past two decades. A picture of Father, taken from one of the framed photos found throughout the Home, was shown on-screen.

“At least people know who to look for,” Stacy said hopefully.

Gary said nothing. He was watching an aerial view of the Home, thinking that much more shocking revelations would be revealed to the world over the next few days as the law and the press learned more about the Homesteaders.

Hopefully, they would be long gone and back in California by then.

Stacy already had her cell phone out. “I have to call my parents,” she said. “They’re bound to see this on one of the stations, and I have to let them know I’m here before they find out about it on the news.”

Reyn and Brian took their cells out as well, calling their parents, and Gary knew that he should do the same. Even if the sheriff was able to keep his promise and shield them from the media, their names were bound to get out eventually. Especially Joan’s. His mom and dad were already worried about Joan, and if they heard that she’d been kidnapped by a cult in Texas—or, worse, that she’d once been part of that cult—they’d hop a plane to California and physically drag him back to Ohio. He needed to get ahead of this and put his own spin on it before they learned about it from some third party.

But he made no effort to move his arm from around Joan’s shoulder. She had no parents to call, and right now it was more important for him to be there for her than to try to head off an uncomfortable confrontation with his mom and dad.

Well, his mom.

His dad would be okay. He could reason with his dad.

His mom would freak.

Stacy, Reyn and Brian had retreated to opposite corners of the room and were talking in hushed, hurried tones. He’d call his own parents later, when Joan was going to the bathroom or taking a shower or something. He pulled her closer to him, squeezing her shoulder reassuringly. She leaned her head against his arm. “I love you,” she said softly. It was the first time she’d said it since they had been reunited.

“I love you, too,” he said.

Gary fell asleep that night on a narrow couch, staring upward at an unfamiliar ceiling. He dreamed that he was one of the Beatles and they had just finished playing a concert in a massive stadium. Afterward, they ran backstage and Father was in their dressing room. He was having sex with the groupies who had been meant for the band.

And one of them was Gary’s mom.

The trip back to California was uneventful. Joan was still not volunteering information about her ordeal, and Gary did not want to pressure her. She would talk when she was ready.

The backseat of the car was crowded and uncomfortable, with three people shoved into such a small space, but no one complained. They stopped a lot to stretch their feet and switch driving duties. It seemed much harder to stay awake on the trip home than it had on the way there, and the desert scenery seemed infinitely more boring. The only times they were all awake at once were the beginning of the trip, the end of the journey, and whenever they stopped for a meal or a bathroom break.

It was night when they reached Southern California.

“Should we check in with the police?” Stacy wondered as they pulled into Westwood Village. “Tell them what happened?”

“Fuck ’em,” Brian declared.

“I’m sure Sheriff Stewart has called Detective Williams and told him everything by now,” Reyn said.

“Even if he hasn’t, so what? Kara’s free. Her parents are probably coming out to pick her up. And if they want to keep looking for Joan—or, more accurately, start looking for Joan—let ’em.”

That reminded Gary that neither he nor Joan was officially enrolled in school anymore, and as that was something else of which she was not aware, he explained to her what had happened to all of their computerized records. Before showing up to class again, they were both going to have to go to Admissions and try to get everything straightened out.

“My Facebook page is gone, too?” she said incredulously.

“Everything.”

“I didn’t know they were so tech savvy,” she admitted.

Reyn was driving, and he found a parking spot near his dorm. “After we unpack,” he told them, “I need to take the car back. I don’t want to pay for an extra day.”

“I think we have to,” Stacy said. “We were supposed to turn it in in the morning. I think we’re already being charged an extra day. We might as well get some use out of it.”

“I’m taking it back anyway. We don’t have a parking sticker for it, and if we leave it here they’ll tow it.”

“I’ll follow you in my car and pick you up,” Brian offered, getting out.

“Deal.”

“Thanks,” Gary said gratefully. “I—”

“Don’t worry about it,” Reyn told him.

They took their personal belongings out of the trunk. Tossed casually near the wheel well were Brian’s knives. Gary had been surprised when Sheriff Stewart had not confiscated them, and even more surprised when the man had said, “Get these out of here. I don’t want to see them again.” It had been a thank-you for helping the sheriff’s department to get the Homesteaders, and it was also a way of keeping things simple, not muddying the waters. No one else had seen the knives, and if any of the cult members claimed to have, Stewart would just say they were crazy. The best thing for everyone would be for the knives to just disappear, but with Father still on the loose, Gary knew Brian would not get rid of them.

Neither Gary nor Joan had any belongings to take out of the trunk, but they waited patiently while the others unpacked. They had not talked about it, but Gary could not imagine that she would want to sleep in the same room she had shared with Kara. At least not the first night. Not after everything that had happened.

He was right.

He caught Joan looking in the direction of her dorm building, and when she saw him watching her, she shivered. “I’m not staying in that room,” she said. “I can’t.”

Gary put an arm around her. “You don’t have to. We’ll just go in and get your clothes, toothbrush, whatever else you need. You can stay with me.”

“I’m not sleeping in your room, either,” she told him.

He frowned. “Where, then? The car? I mean, we’re kind of running out of options.”

“I’ll switch with you,” Brian offered. “Dror and I can move into your place and you can live in ours.”

“No one would want to live in your place,” Stacy said. She smiled at Joan. “You can move in with me.”

“Wait a minute!” Reyn objected. “You’re supposed to be staying with me.”

“I was,” Stacy said. “But I’m going back to my own place. There’ll be two of us there now.”

“I don’t like it.”

“We’ll be fine. It’s on the top floor, far away from the elevators and the stairs, and surrounded by very responsible people. Not to mention the fact that we’re just going to walk inside, lock the door and stay in until morning.”

“They were waiting for me in my room,” Gary pointed out.

“You will all come with us to check the place out,” Stacy said. “Once you leave, then we’ll lock the door and stay in until morning.”

“I still don’t like it. Make sure you stay away from the window, too.”

Stacy gave a single nod of acquiescence. “In case anyone climbs the building, we will keep the window shut.”

“What about Gary?” Joan asked. “I don’t want him to—”

“He can stay in my room,” Reyn said. “As long as he doesn’t mind camping out on the floor. I’m not sharing my bed with him.”

Gary smiled politely. It didn’t matter what they did, he thought to himself. The Homesteaders had hacked into the school, the DMV, and every credit agency he’d even looked at. Finding the residences of his friends would be a piece of cake.

But he said nothing. Not yet. Tomorrow he’d talk to everyone about it, but tonight they all needed a good sleep. Besides, paired up, they should be all right. For one night at least.

How many cult members were there? he wondered. The Home had been pretty well cleaned out, though Father and maybe a few others had escaped. But how many were spread across the country, hiding in farmhouses like the one in New Mexico, living in little pockets amid the unsuspecting families of small-town America? Father could be amassing an army right now, an army whose sole pupose was the destruction of Joan and her friends.

Now he was just being paranoid.

Wasn’t he?

“Cell phones on at all times,” Reyn advised. “We need to keep in contact with each other.”

Gary nodded in agreement.

Stacy patted Joan’s shoulder. “Come on, roomie. Let’s go get your stuff. Then I’ll show you around your spacious new digs.”

Twenty-six

The weekend passed quickly and, thank God, uneventfully.

On Monday, Joan spent the morning in the registrar’s office, along with Gary, filling out forms and explaining to a succession of clerks and administrators the broad outlines of what had happened. Neither of them was officially reinstated yet, but the machinery was in motion and they’d been assured that everything would be fine. Eventually.

It was much easier dealing with her instructors. She didn’t give them any details, but even the ones who didn’t care whether she showed up or not were perfectly willing to allow her to remain in their classes, do the work and take the tests—even if she wasn’t officially enrolled. She met with each of them before class began to find out what she’d missed, and while there was a lot of reading to catch up on, there hadn’t been any tests and weren’t any coming up in the next few weeks. It would be pretty easy to get back up to speed.

It was simple talking to her teachers; her fellow students were a different situation altogether.

She started sensing something wrong in physical anthropology, her first class of the afternoon. She arrived early to speak with the instructor and was in her usual seat before any of the other students arrived, but Janie Kendricks and Rob Magnussen, who usually sat to either side of her, purposely chose desks on the opposite side of the room, and by the time the entire class had assembled, there was a visible boundary of empty desks around her. That seemed strange, but the room was large, the class small, there were a lot of empty seats and the configuration could have been just a coincidence.

It was in her psych class that she truly knew there was a problem. As before, she spoke to the professor prior to the start of the class, but there were a couple of students from the previous session who’d remained behind to talk to the teacher, and by the time she finished writing down her reading assignments and the address of a Web site on which one of the instructor’s monographs was posted, the rest of her class had started to arrive. Moving away from the lectern toward her seat, she nearly ran into Leigh Lathen. She and Leigh had known each other since their freshman year and had always been friendly, but now the other woman scowled at her and fixed her with a glare so hostile that Joan was taken aback.

It had to have something to do with the Home. Though she’d given no interviews and done everything she could to stay out of the spotlight, Joan’s name and face were all over the newspapers and TV—especially those damn cable channels. She didn’t even want to think about what was happening in cyberspace.

Maybe Leigh was religious and somehow offended by her connection with a sect that mainstream America considered a cult. Maybe she had a friend or relative who was a Resident or Penitent and had been arrested. Maybe…

She gave up. The truth was, she had no idea what the problem could be. It bothered her, though, that Leigh seemed to be upset, and, determined to set things right, she tapped the other student on the shoulder.

Leigh whirled around. “Leave me alone!”

“I’m sorry. I—”

“Why would you do something like that?”

Joan looked at her, confused. “What?”

“You know.”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

Leigh turned away.

“Whatever you think I did, I didn’t,” Joan insisted.

“Right.”

Other students were looking at her, Joan noticed, and the expressions on their faces mirrored Leigh’s: a mixture of anger, antagonism, disappointment and disapproval. Curt Souter was staring at her as though she’d shot his dog. Marie Pearcy looked like a woman whose husband had been seduced by Joan and stolen away.

What was going on here?

“Marie…” she began.

“Don’t you even talk to me.” The other student focused her gaze on the professor at the front of the class, her mouth set in a hard, straight line.

The lecture began before Joan could find out what the problem was. She paid attention, took careful notes, but was aware at all times of the unfriendly glances directed at her by her classmates. It was a weird sensation, made all the more difficult because she didn’t know why it was happening or what was behind it. The lights dimmed as the instructor began a PowerPoint presentation, and that made her think about the Homesteaders’ new facility with computers. Her MySpace and Facebook pages were gone, she was not officially enrolled in this class due to the hacking of Father or one of his minions, and it was not much of a leap to assume that her classmates had been sent malicious e-mails bearing her name. She could clear this up quickly if she could just talk to the other students, but after class ended they shunned her, refused to speak with her and exited the classroom quickly.

Frustrated and discouraged, Joan packed up her books and looked toward the front of the class where the professor was preparing for his next lecture. Her teachers would probably be next, sent falsified messages threatening them or propositioning them or telling them she wanted to drop their classes. Father was playing with her, piling on the problems one layer at a time in an effort to break her, and she knew that she had to be strong in order to survive the onslaught. So did Gary and Stacy and Reyn and Brian.

What would happen after the psychological noose was tightened? How far would Father go in order to get back at her?

She knew the answer to that. He had spent five years tracking her and her parents. He had killed her mom and dad and kidnapped her in the middle of a counterculture festival filled with thousands of people. He would stop at nothing.

Father’s sense of revenge was Old Testament.

He would not stop until she was dead.

Outside, the campus was bathed in autumn light, orangish and indirect, and though her watch said it was shortly after two o’clock, the light made it look like four. She looked around for Gary. He was supposed to meet her here, but there was no sign of him. Her pulse quickened slightly. It was probably nothing, but she knew what Father was capable of, and she was the one who had insisted that the four of them be alone as little as possible.

The walkways were crowded, but Gary was tall and usually easy to spot. Today, she knew, he was wearing a red shirt. Glancing both to her left and to her right, she saw no one who looked even remotely like him.

But…

But she saw a very tall man with a very bald head standing alone on the grass next to a marble sculpture. He seemed to be the only person who was not moving, and though he was kind of far away and it was impossible to tell for sure, it looked like he was watching her.

Joan’s breath caught in her throat.

She turned away. Not quickly, not obviously, but casually, subtly. She focused her attention on a building, on the sky, scanned the walkways for Gary once again, then pretended to randomly glance over at the sculpture.

The bald guy was still there, still unmoving, still staring in her direction.

She turned away again, her mind racing, trying to come up with a plan. He couldn’t do anything in public, she reasoned, not now, in broad daylight, in front of all these witnesses. This was the perfect place to confront him, and though the sharp pain in her stomach made her wonder if this was what an ulcer felt like, Joan forced herself to be brave. Instead of fleeing, as she wanted to do with every fiber of her being, she took a deep breath, crossed the crowded walkway and started across the lawn toward the man.

He made no move to get away, and she saw as she approached that he was not looking at her but still staring in the same direction where she had been. He seemed as much of a statue as the sculpture next to him, and for a brief second she thought that he might be some art student’s amazingly lifelike project. Then she saw the white cane leaning against the marble and realized that he was blind.

She relaxed a little. But some of the Children were blind or deaf, too, and she kept glancing around to make sure this wasn’t a trap and she wasn’t about to be jumped by Homesteaders hidden in the bushes. She approached slowly. “Hello?” she said softly in the Language.

There was no response.

“What is your name?” she queried.

He turned his head in her general direction, a quizzical look on his face. “I’m sorry. Are you talking to me? I’m afraid I only speak English.”

The sigh of relief that escaped her made her realize that she’d been holding her breath. “I’m sorry,” she said in the Language, keeping up the pretense of being a foreign student. She turned, walking much more briskly back the way she had come. Gary was now heading up the walkway in the middle of a crowd of students, looking away from her toward the building, expecting to see her waiting by the steps as they’d arranged, and she tapped him on the shoulder. He started at her touch, nervous even here, and she realized how on edge all of them were.

“I didn’t mean to startle you,” she said.

He bent down, kissing her. “No problem. It’s just… you know.”

“Yeah.” She tried to smile. “I need to ask you something: Did you notice anything strange in any of your classes today? Was anyone acting weird toward you?”

He frowned. “How do you mean?”

She explained that no one would sit by her in anthropology and that the students in her psychology class had been hostile and shunned her.

He tried to make a joke of it. “What are you, in junior high?” But she could tell from his eyes that he was worried.

“I think they’re attacking us with computers. They have a lot of information about us, and Father will use everything at his disposal. There’s no telling what they might do.”

“We have credit freezes, everyone’s been alerted, all the companies—”

“I don’t just mean online. There’s no telling what they might do physically.”

He nodded. “I bought you a present. Come with me to my car.”

That was a non sequitur if she’d ever heard one. “What?”

“I bought you something.” Sensing her confusion, he added, “It’s for protection.”

He’d parked in the north lot instead of leaving his car in his usual spot by the dorm and walking—an effort to vary his routine, which was something they’d all discussed and were trying to do. The parking lot was closer than the dorm, but it still was quite a trek, and though at first he refused to tell her what he’d bought, wanting it to be a surprise, his silence in the face of her constant questioning began to seem silly, especially as they had another five minutes to go. “I got you a baseball bat,” he finally admitted. “Big Five was having a sale and my sociology class was canceled, so I sped over there and bought it.”

When they reached the car, Gary opened the trunk and pulled out her bat, a dull red length of aluminum. “Here it is,” he said, hefting it. “You can fight off anyone with this. It won’t work against guns, but unless I miss my bet, Father and his people are less mechanically inclined.”

“They don’t use guns,” Joan agreed. She paused. “At least, I don’t think they do. I didn’t think they used computers, either.”

Gary rested the bat on his shoulder. “You can swing at any part of a person and it’ll work,” he said. “Legs, arms, midsection. Anything’ll put them out of commission. Don’t aim for the head unless you have to, though. That’ll kill them.”

There was an awkward pause, and Gary placed the bat back in the trunk. “So where do you think he is? Any ideas?”

She shook her head.

“There seem to be cult members—”

“Homesteaders,” she said.

“What?”

“We—they like to be called ‘Homesteaders.’ ”

He eyed her strangely. “We?”

“You know what I mean. What were you trying to say?”

“Just that there are Homesteaders all over. In Texas, New Mexico, maybe even here in California. I was just wondering if you know where any of them might be located. Or even how many of them there are.”

“I was brought up in the Home. I don’t know anything else. I do know some of the others who’ve gotten away… .”

“The people in your parents’ address book.”

“They might have some ideas. But I’m sure they’re in hiding by now. News travels fast on that network, and even if you didn’t scare them off with your clumsy investigation”—she smiled at him—“they’ve seen the news and they’ve scattered to the wind.”

“So what do you think happens next?”

Her smile faded.

“Joan?”

“I think he’s going to come after us,” she said.

The phone rang in the middle of the night. Not her cell phone or Stacy’s, but the landline, the one that belonged to the room. By the time Joan groggily lifted her head from the pillow, her brain still echoing with the dream of an endless hallway filled with horribly malformed Children, Stacy had already walked over to her desk and picked up the telephone. “Hello?” she said. Her eyes grew wide and frightened. She put her hand over the mouthpiece. “It’s a man,” she whispered fearfully. “I think it’s one of them. He’s speaking some language I never heard before.”

Fully awake now, Joan jumped up from the air mattress on which she’d been sleeping and grabbed the phone from Stacy’s hand. She was prepared to hear Father’s voice, but it was someone else, though the words the man was saying could not have been more terrible. “Your flesh shall be rent for your crimes,” he stated in the Language, and it sounded as though he were reading the words from a scroll. “The Lord has sanctioned your punishment, and when you are dead you shall dwell for eternity in the fiery pit of Hell—”

Joan hung up the phone.

“Who was it?” Stacy asked, her voice quavering. “Was it… ?”

“It wasn’t Father, but it was one of them.”

“They know my number!” Stacy was on the verge of crying. “They know where we are!” She grabbed her cell phone from the nightstand, casting frightened glances at the telephone on the desk, as though she thought the object was possessed by a demon.

“Who are you calling?” Joan asked.

“Reyn!” Pressing a speed-dial number, Stacy quickly brought the phone to her ear. “We just got a phone call!” she said without preamble. Reyn must have answered. “Joan says it’s them!” There was a short pause, and Stacy turned toward Joan. “They got one, too!”

She tried to remain calm as Stacy and Reyn described details to each other over the phone, but inside Joan was just as frightened as they were. This might be just a scare tactic, part of the psychological assault, but she was by no means sure of that, and it could very well be that someone was on the way right now to carry out the threatened punishment. She crouched down next to her air mattress and reached under Stacy’s bed for the baseball bat.

“I’m calling the police!” Stacy shouted into the phone. “I don’t give a shit what Gary and Brian think!”

She hung up and called 911.

Reyn arrived before the police, as did Gary. Brian elected not to join them. His phone had not rung, and he was setting up his computer to record any calls. He planned to wait by the phone in case one came in.

A single uniformed officer showed up to take the report. Gary and Reyn seemed offended that the case had been given such a low priority. They’d expected to see one of the detectives they’d dealt with before—even though it was after one o’clock in the morning—and they kept emphasizing that Joan was the student who’d been kidnapped by the cult in Texas. The policeman, Officer Garcez, assured them that the detectives would be given his report in the morning, but he seemed tired and put-out that he had to be here at all, and Joan wondered how seriously he was taking this.

Stacy was still upset, and she explained the sequence of events several times to make sure the officer understood what had happened. Joan filled in her part of the story, providing a translation of the message up to the point where she’d hung up the phone.

Reyn was the one who’d answered the call that came to his room, but he’d put it on speakerphone and Gary had confirmed that the language being spoken sounded like the same one his kidnappers had used.

Officer Garcez was taking things a little more seriously now, and he called in to a supervisor, giving a report over his two-way radio before he’d even finished writing everything down. Joan was still holding on to her bat, though she was leaning on it at the moment, treating it more like a cane.

They all heard the supervisor’s reply, although Garcez acted as though they hadn’t. “We’re going to look into the cult connection,” he told them. “We have your phone numbers and we know where to reach you. If we need additional information, we’ll be in touch, and if you see, hear or experience anything else unusual, call and let us know.” He finished writing on his pad, then closed it, obviously preparing to leave.

“That’s it?” Stacy said incredulously. “You’re not going to station someone outside our door or have someone watch the building?”

The officer allowed himself a small smile. “It was a phone call,” he said. “Do you know how many times a night people report obscene phone calls?”

“They weren’t obscene phone calls,” she reminded him. “They were threats. From people the police are looking for. Fugitives. And they’re part of a pattern.”

“We’ll check into it,” he said in a voice that was probably meant to be reassuring but that just sounded patronizing. “Lock your doors, don’t let anyone in you don’t recognize, and if you receive any other calls, let us know.”

“Can’t you put some kind of device on the phone?” Reyn asked. “To trace incoming calls?”

“No,” the officer said simply. He was already making his way toward the door, and it was clear that he didn’t want to be here.

Joan put a comforting arm around Stacy’s shoulder, still holding on to the bat with her other hand. She was glad Gary had given her the weapon because she felt much more secure with it in her possession, and in her mind she saw Father coming over, forcing his way into the room, and herself using the bat to bash in his head, swinging it like a baseball player until his head was nothing more than a bloody pulp and he was dead.

She could do it, Joan thought, and the realization scared her.

“So what do we do now?” Stacy wondered aloud as soon as the cop had left and the door closed behind him.

“I’ll stay here with you,” Reyn offered. “You and Joan take my room,” he told Gary.

Stacy was already shaking her head. “No way. I’m not staying here.”

“Then we’ll switch—”

“I’m not staying here, either,” Joan said.

“Then we’ll all sleep in my room,” Reyn told them, “although God knows where everyone will fit.” He looked toward Stacy and Joan. “And don’t forget: They know where I live, too. I got a phone call also.”

“There’s safety in numbers,” Stacy said, and Joan had to agree.

Reyn nodded. “All right, then. Get what you need and let’s go. It’s late, I’m tired and I have an early class in the morning.”

Joan gathered her toothbrush and hairbrush from the bathroom, putting them back into her suitcase along with her clothes. She picked up her suitcase in one hand, her baseball bat in the other.

Father was just trying to scare them, she told herself again. Soften them up before making an actual assault. They still had some time.

But she didn’t relax until they’d walked to Reyn’s dorm and were in his room, with the door closed and locked behind them.

Twenty-seven

This time, Gary was awakened by sirens.

Reyn was already up and peering out the window, his face illuminated by pulsing flashes of red light. “What’s going on?” Gary asked, sitting up. Beneath the oscillation of the sirens, he heard the faint, constant cry of a far-off alarm.

“I think it’s your dorm,” Reyn said, and his voice was so calm and matter-of-fact that for a moment the meaning of his words didn’t register.

Joan and Stacy, on the bed, were still sleeping, and Gary looked over at Reyn’s alarm clock. Three fifteen. They’d been asleep for less than an hour. He’d thought the commotion of the phone calls and the cops would be enough turmoil for one night.

He suddenly realized what Reyn had said. “My dorm?” Gary crawled out of his sleeping bag and looked with his friend out the window. Sure enough, a fire truck with extended ladder was parked two buildings over, where smoke could be seen billowing upward through several open windows, illuminated from within by yellow-orange flames.

Gary stumbled, reaching for his shirt. He bumped into the bed, and Stacy, instantly awake, said in a panicked voice, “What is it?”

Reyn answered. “It looks like there’s a fire in Gary’s dorm.”

Stacy immediately flipped on the light. Gary found his socks and shoes and started putting them on. Within seconds, everyone was getting dressed and ready to go out. Moments later, the four of them were hurrying through the empty hall and down the stairs. Ignoring the walkway, they made a beeline across the lawn toward the fire engines with their flashing red lights. There were several trucks in front of the building now, but the sirens were off, Gary noticed. And the alarm was silent. The scene before them seemed anomalous without those sounds, deprived of the noise that gave it context, and the sound track of quiet murmuring that accompanied the garish visual made it all feel very surreal.

All of the residents of the dorm were outside, on the sidewalk, on the grass, in the parking lot, many in their bare feet or only partially dressed. Thick black-gray smoke was pouring from the front-facing windows, streaming upward into the sky, and heat from the fire had blown out the glass. Shards glittered on the ground in front of the building, crunching under the boots of the firemen walking in and out. Occasional flames were still visible from one of the upper windows, though the fire seemed for the most part to have been extinguished.

Looking up at the dormitory, Gary didn’t have to be told.

The fire had started in his room.

He glanced around and saw his neighbors, Matt and Greg, standing next to a light pole, both of them wearing nothing but pajama bottoms and holding on to laptops as though someone might try to snatch the devices from their hands. “Hey,” he said, walking up to them. “What happened?”

“Dude!” Greg said. “Where’ve you been? We were pounding the shit out of your door trying to get you out of there! We thought you burned up!”

“I was out.”

“I can see that,” Matt said, taking in Joan and Stacy and their disheveled appearance. He nodded admiringly.

“What happened?” Gary asked again.

“Who the hell knows?” Greg said. “I was asleep, and then the alarm went off and I smelled smoke, and I yelled at Matt to get up, and we grabbed our laptops, and we tried to save your sorry ass, and then people were screaming and the smoke got too thick and we bailed.”

“And here we are,” Matt added.

Joan pulled him aside. “It’s them,” she said.

“I know.”

From off to his left, he overheard one fireman talking to another. “It was an accelerant with a really low flash point, that’s for sure. But I’ll be damned if I can figure out what it was. I never smelled anything like that before in my life. And did you see that burn pattern?” He shook his head. “We need a real investigator on this one.”

“So what do we do?” Joan asked.

Gary didn’t know, but from his point of view right now, their options were narrowing. He didn’t see Father giving up and going away, and every outcome he could imagine involved a confrontation. He thought of his battle with the psycho at the gas station and wondered if another such event was unavoidable.

“Hey,” Greg was addressing Reyn. “Do you know if the school has, like, fire insurance on all this? I lost some valuable stuff in there.”

“Do you think they’ll stop?” Gary asked Joan.

She shook her head. “Never. We crossed Father and we won. That’s not something he’ll ever forgive or forget.”

“But the others… don’t you think they’re grateful to be free? And in the eyes of true believers, doesn’t this make him seem fallible? Won’t he lose followers?”

“Never,” she said again.

“So they’ll keep coming after us.”

“They believe in an eye for an eye,” she said.

Gary met her gaze. “What do you believe?”

Joan turned away, uncomfortable. “I’m not one of them. That’s why we left.”

Stacy was already calling someone on her cell phone.

“Who are—” Reyn began.

“The police. They need to know about this.”

She was right, and Gary found that he was glad she was calling. The cops may have been useless when it came to investigating Joan’s disappearance, but the Bitterweed sheriff’s department had saved his ass back in Texas, and he trusted law enforcement for protection. Wasn’t that their motto? “To serve and protect?” Or “To protect and serve?” The word protect was in there somewhere, and right now he and his friends needed protection. Especially Joan.

Besides, Tucker might be an asshole, but Williams seemed like a good guy. And Gary knew that it would be a huge feather in the detectives’ caps if they were the ones who caught Father. Police and sheriffs’ departments all over the country were looking for the man, and the one that nabbed him would get not only bragging rights among their peers but a whole heap of good publicity.

“When are we going to be able to go back in?” Matt was asking a fireman.

“Not for a while.”

“What if looters steal all my stuff?”

“No one can get in,” the fireman said. “Not even looters.”

“Thanks for nothing!” Stacy flipped off her phone, scowling. “They said the fire department handles its own investigations,” she reported. “If the police need to be called in, the fire department will decide.”

“Did you remind them about the Homesteaders?” Gary asked. “I mean, the cops were only here an hour ago and now this happens. It seems like things are building. Who knows what could happen by morning.”

“They don’t care.” Stacy shook her head disgustedly.

Matt tapped Gary on the shoulder. “Did you lose a lot of stuff?”

He hadn’t even thought about it. “Yeah, I guess,” he said. The truth was, he didn’t really care. He had more important things on his mind.

Greg breathed deeply. “This might sound weird, but don’t you think this fire smells good? I mean, all fires smell good. But this one really smells good.”

“It does have a distinctive odor,” Reyn told Gary. “I was just thinking that myself. And it smells familiar, though I can’t quite place it.”

Gary,Joan and Stacy sniffed the air. It was more woodsy than would be expected from a dormitory filled with books, clothes and electronic equipment, Gary thought. And maybe it did smell kind of fragrant, like aromatic pipe tobacco. But it was not anything he recognized.

Joan was looking around, scanning the faces of the ever-growing crowd, and Gary asked what she was doing. “Looking for them,” she answered, and he mentally kicked himself. He should’ve done the same thing when they’d first arrived on the scene. If there had been any Homesteaders around after the fire had started, watching from the shadows and waiting to see what happened, they were long gone now.

Firefighters were emerging from the open front doors of the building, dragging dripping, deflated hoses with them. The blaze appeared to be out. No more flames were visible, and even the smoke coming out of the windows had died down to occasional wisps.

Gary glanced over at Reyn’s dormitory, its rectangular bulk dark against the night sky, the refracted red from the fire engine lights reflected in blank windows. Was it next? What about Joan’s room or Stacy’s? Or Brian’s?

“I don’t think we should go back to your place,” he told Reyn. “If they know where I live, they probably know where you live.”

His friend nodded. “Agreed.”

Stacy had her phone out again.

“Who are you calling?” Reyn asked.

“Brian.” She looked down at the small screen. “Wait a minute. He left a text.” Her fingers typed on the tiny keyboard. “He says, ‘Don’t call. Busy.’ What the hell does that mean?”

“His recording,” Gary said. “He’s waiting for the Homesteaders to call him so he can record it.”

“That guy knows his computers,” Reyn admitted. “He might even be able to trace them.”

“I’m calling anyway.” Stacy started pressing numbers.

“Call his cell,” Gary advised.

“That’s the only number I have.”

He must have picked up right away, because she started telling him about the fire. “Gary’s,” she said after a short pause. She listened for a moment. “No, I’m saying you should get out, too. You could be next.” She put her hand over the phone. “He says he’s not going anywhere. He’s ready for them if they come.”

“He probably is,” Gary said.

“What?” Stacy said into the phone. She listened again, facing Gary. “He says if they can’t even be bothered to call, to hell with them.” She looked surprised, then took the phone away from her ear. “He hung up on me!”

Gary and Reyn both chuckled.

“You think that’s funny?”

“A little,” Reyn said.

“I’m sure he’ll be fine,” Gary offered.

Stacy faced him. “Yeah? Well, what about us?”

She was deeply frightened, he realized, and while he appreciated Brian leavening the tension and his friend’s bravery gave him hope, she clearly didn’t see it that way. Brian’s attitude had made her feel that even they weren’t taking the threat as seriously as they should. She was even more worried than she had been before.

“I think the most important thing right now,” Reyn said, “is that we continue to vary our routines. For all we know, they have people watching us, have had people watching us ever since we got back. We can’t make it easy for them. Yes, we go to classes at specific times, and we sleep in the same rooms, but we can make everything else a variable. Take different paths to class, eat at different tables or restaurants, make sure we’re not providing them with a blueprint to get at us.”

“I say we take it to them,” Gary said.

“We don’t know where they are,” Stacy pointed out. “Or who they are.”

Reyn nodded. “We’re going to have to play defense.”

“Set another trap?” Gary wondered aloud.

“I don’t know how we’d do that,” Reyn admitted. He looked over at Joan. “Any ideas?”

She shook her head. “I’m out of my depth here. And, to be honest, you guys probably know as much as I do at this point.”

“I’m not going back to any of our rooms,” Stacy announced. She obviously didn’t want anyone else overhearing their conversation because she backed onto the grass, away from the crowd, motioning for them to follow. “I think we should rent a hotel room,” she said, her voice lowered.

Reyn shook his head. “There’re only a few hours left until morning. By the time we find someplace, it’ll almost be time to get up again. Besides, we’d have to use a credit card. And right now, I think we’d better assume that they have the ability to track our cards and know where we go.”

“He’s right,” Gary agreed.

Joan nodded.

They spent the rest of the night in the student union, taking turns sleeping on chairs that they’d pulled into a wagon-train circle, with one person awake and on watch at all times. Joan had brought her bat, and it was passed to each person standing guard, first Reyn, then Gary. It was Joan’s turn to play sentry after that, but the clock on the wall said it was five thirty and Gary knew he would never be able to fall asleep for just an hour, which was when Reyn needed to get up for class, so he stayed awake and let the others get some extra shut-eye.

Brian called him on his cell phone at six, and Gary moved away from his friends to the middle of the room to take the call. Brian said he’d taken a pill he’d been saving for just such an occasion and stayed awake all night.

Gary was in no mood to lecture.

“No one called,” Brian said, disappointed. “I was ready to record that sucker and turn it in to the cops, but either they lost my number or I’m not important enough to bother with. Probably they were too busy to call,” he quipped. “You know, with the fire and all.”

Gary smiled. It helped to have someone not take things so seriously.

“So what’s the plan?”

“Everyone’s trying to figure that out,” Gary told him. “Right now, I guess we keep our eyes open and just try to get through the day.”

“That’s not much of a plan,” Brian pointed out.

“Yeah, well…”

“Need another knife?”

“Joan has the baseball bat I bought her.”

“What about you? What if they come after you?”

“I think I’m pretty safe here on campus.”

Brian snorted. “Are you kidding? If you’d been in your room last night, you’d be dead. They kidnapped you on campus. You need a knife.”

“Maybe,” Gary conceded.

“Meet me in front of the bookstore at seven forty-five. They don’t open ’til eight.”

“I can’t carry a weapon to class! Give it to me later.”

“Name the where and when.”

“I’ll call you.”

Reyn had awakened, and Joan was stirring, so Gary said good-bye and returned to the circle of chairs. He tried to smile. “Up and at ’em,” he said. “It’s a new dawn.”

Before their first class, Gary took Joan to Subway for breakfast, something neither of them had done before. Stacy studied in her car, with the windows rolled up and the doors locked. Reyn parked his own car in the west lot, rather than leaving it near his dorm. They were all making an effort to vary their routines and throw potential tails off their trails, but Gary couldn’t help thinking it was futile. These were people who had nullified his driver’s license and erased his school records. Did he honestly think they wouldn’t find him if he ate breakfast at a new location?

No.

The only thing that gave him any comfort at all was the fact that every police department in the western United States was on the lookout for Father, and his picture—the same one that had overlooked every room in the Home—had been on TV constantly ever since the raid. Even casual viewers would know that he was a dangerous and wanted man if they happened to run across him. Of course, if Father shaved his beard and changed his hairstyle, no one would ever know who he was. But that would be a victory in itself and not something that he thought would happen.

He still held out hope that Father would be located and caught. From a logical, rational perspective, it was not only possible but probable.

And yet…

And yet his gut told him exactly the opposite. It was nothing more than a feeling he had, a vague, floating, unsubstantiated notion that Father could not be stopped, that he would find them wherever they went, whatever they did. But Gary believed it utterly, and it frightened him to the core.

His cell phone rang in the middle of classical mythology, and Gary jumped in his seat, startled. The students around him turned to look, and Dr. Choy, at the head of the room, frowned. Cell phones weren’t allowed in class, but ever since Joan had been kidnapped at Burning Man, his had been on all day every day.

Gary’s first thought was that it was Joan and that she was being attacked. His second thought, immediately upon the heels of the first, was that it was Reyn, calling to tell him that Joan had been attacked and was missing.

Or dead.

He hurried out of the classroom to answer the call, pressing the TALK button even before he reached the door. “Hello?” His voice sounded as frightened as he felt.

“Gary?”

It was his dad. The classroom door closed behind him, and he was alone in the corridor save for a couple dressed in black who were making out next to one of the windows. “Dad?” he said.

“Why didn’t you tell us?” His father’s voice was accusatory.

Gary feigned ignorance. “Tell you what?”

“Your girlfriend, this Joan, was kidnapped by a cult, a cult that she used to be part of, and now that cult leader is loose and on the rampage.”

He should have known they’d figure it out.

Actually, he was surprised it hadn’t happened sooner. He’d been expecting a call immediately after returning from Texas, but somehow his parents had missed that initial round of news stories. Thank God for small favors. Although he should have taken the initiative and called them first.

“Your mother and I saw Dateline last night, and they had a whole thing about it.”

He could hear his mom in the background, shouting, “Let me talk to him! I want to talk to him!”

His dad’s voice lowered. “As I’m sure you can guess, your mother is very upset.”

“Listen, Dad—”

“The police rescued her and now she’s back in school, but this madman is still after her. They explained all about it.”

It sounded as though the part he and his friends had played in the events had been left out, and for that Gary was grateful. Sheriff Stewart was definitely a class act.

His mom grabbed the phone. “What are you doing with a girl like that?”

“A girl like what?” he said angrily. How dare his parents pass judgment on Joan. They’d never even met her.

“She was in a cult! We didn’t raise you that way. Maybe we didn’t go to church that often, but—”

“Mom,” he said, trying to keep his tone even, “you know nothing about Joan. And you know they make things up for TV. How else would they get ratings?”

“It was on Dateline!”

Once again, he realized how far he’d come since his Ohio days. He was a real Californian now, and whether that meant he was more cynical or more sophisticated than he had been, the fact was that he no longer saw things the way his parents did. They were nice people and he loved them, but their world was much simpler and much more black and white than the one in which he now lived.

“They made it look worse than it was,” he said.

His dad took the phone back, got on the line again. “I know how you feel, Gary. She’s your first real girlfriend, and you think you’re in love with her—”

“I am in love with her!” he blurted out. He cringed even as he said the words, embarrassed to be talking to his dad that way, but he stood his ground.

“Maybe you are,” his dad conceded. “Maybe you are. But hear me out. You’re too young to be tied down right now. And something like this can only make it more difficult. There is national media attention focused on this girl. And she was kidnapped and held captive at some cult compound in Texas. She’s going through things you can’t possibly understand.”

Right then, he almost told his dad everything.

Almost.

But he didn’t. This was one of those pivotal moments, an end-of-childhood moment, and though he wanted more than anything to have his dad speed out here to California and rescue him, he knew it would be wrong to involve his parents. He couldn’t endanger them like that, and he realized that this was the first time he was making an important decision that affected all three of them; he was deciding what should be done for the good of the whole family. “Most of that stuff is made up,” he lied. “You know how the media sensationalizes everything.”

His dad sounded skeptical. “It seemed pretty well documented. And they were talking to law enforcement officers who were involved in the case, who were there.”

“Dad, I can handle it. And she needs me right now.” His voice almost broke on that last sentence. He was saying it for strategic reasons, for dramatic effect, but it was true, and though he hadn’t known Joan that long, he realized yet again how much he loved her. No matter how long he lived, he would never feel this way about anyone else, and going through something like this together could only make their relationship stronger. That was something he didn’t know how to describe.

But, miraculously, his dad seemed to understand. “Okay, Gary.”

“What?” He could hear his mom screaming in the background. The sound was suddenly muffled as his dad put his hand over the mouthpiece and said something to her that he didn’t want Gary to listen in on. “I’ve got to go,” his dad said a few seconds later, coming back on the line.

“Over my dead body!” his mom screamed.

“I’ll call you later.”

“Okay,” Gary said. There was a short beat. “Thanks, Dad.”

“No problem. Love you.”

“Love you, too.”

He returned to class, shooting the instructor an apologetic smile, hoping the expression on his face conveyed the importance and seriousness of the call. A half hour later, after the session ended, he found Reyn waiting for him outside the classroom. Reyn had had a free period, and he’d called a friend of his, who had a friend who was out of town. If they took over house-sitting duties, the friend said, they could stay at this guy’s place for the next week. It was a two-bedroom duplex in Van Nuys, just off the 405 freeway, ten minutes from campus if there was no traffic. All they had to do was feed the fish and water the ficus.

“We can all stay there,” Reyn said. “Even Brian, if he doesn’t mind sleeping on the couch.”

“That sounds great.” Gary felt surprisingly relieved, as though getting away from UCLA would offer them some sort of protection. “I’ll call Joan and Brian, tell them.”

“I already called Stacy. It’s fine with her, although she has a late class today until six. My last class is at three, but I’ll stay with her.”

“Should we—”

“I’m going to meet Ernesto for lunch so he can give me the key to the place. Wait for me at three on that bench outside the library, and I’ll give it to you. You and Joan can go over there first, and we’ll meet you there after Stacy’s class.” He grinned. “If you two wanted to provide a hot dinner to show your appreciation, I wouldn’t be opposed.”

“Consider it done.”

The crowd around them was thinning out. “I’d better get going,” Reyn said. “See you later.”

“Later.”

Reyn met his friend at an El Pollo Loco in Encino to pick up the key and stopped by an Ace Hardware on the way back to make four extra copies. “There’s no garage,” he explained when he met Gary and Joan outside the library, “so you have to park on the street—if you can find a spot. The stove and oven are broken. They’re both gas, but the gas has been shut off so the place won’t blow up.”

“We’ll make do,” Joan told him.

Brian was with them. They’d already asked him to stay in the duplex, but he’d declined. “I like to be where the action is,” he said. “Besides, Dror’s got my back.” He had agreed to drive over with them, however, just to see where the place was, and he took out a pen, writing down Reyn’s directions on his hand.

“I have some paper,” Joan offered.

“That’s all right. This is easier.”

Reyn gave each of them keys, Brian included, then looked up at the clock in the tower. “I’ve gotta get going. Stacy’s out in ten minutes and it’s all the way across campus. See you between six thirty and seven.”

“Dinner will be waiting,” Joan promised.

Reyn was already starting to hurry away.

“Did you try these keys yet?” Gary called after him.

“No! Let me know if they work!”

And he was lost in the crowd.

The three of them stood there for a few moments more, pretending to talk but in reality scoping out the surrounding area, looking to see if they were being watched. There was no sign of oddly dressed Homesteaders, and none of them noticed anyone loitering suspiciously nearby or taking any interest in their presence.

“I’ll follow a couple of car lengths behind you,” Brian said as they started making their way toward the east parking lot. “See if you’re being followed.”

“Are we paranoid or what?” Gary tried to joke.

“No,” Joan said soberly. “We’re realistic.”

And that, he realized, was the truth.

Brian stayed for only a few minutes, to make sure they got into the duplex and to check it out. There was a medium-sized living room, a small, narrow kitchen, a single bathroom with a shower-tub, and two bedrooms, both with full-sized beds. It was connected to a bigger unit in the front, but while it was modest, it felt homey, and Gary liked it immediately. He was reminded of Sheriff Stewart’s house in Bitterweed, for some reason, and that connection cemented his positive impression of the place.

“Even if I wanted to stay, there’s no room,” Brian noted.

“The couch,” Gary said. “The floor.”

“That’s all right. I’ll stick with my bed.”

Joan carried her suitcase into one of the bedrooms, and Brian motioned for Gary to follow him outside. He’d managed to find a parking spot in front of the duplex, and he headed over to his vehicle. “Brought you a knife,” he said. He opened the trunk and withdrew a long blade encased in a leather sheath.

Gary was hesitant. It was much bigger than the one he’d carried into the Home and looked almost like a small sword. “I don’t know. We have the bat… .”

“If Father and his hemp-shirted goons come crashing through that door in the middle of the night to kill you and rape Joan, you’re going to thank your lucky stars you’re sleeping next to this.”

He was right, and Gary picked up the weapon, hefting it in his hand, surprised by how heavy it was and at the same time reassured. “Thanks,” he said.

“No problemo.”

Joan appeared in the doorway behind them. She saw the sheathed knife but said nothing about it. More than anything else, that brought home to him how seriously she took their predicament.

“Gotta go,” Brian said, slamming the trunk. “Call me tonight. If I don’t hear from you by eight, I’m calling you. And if you don’t answer your phone, I’m coming over.”

“Right back at you.”

Joan had walked up behind him, and together they watched Brian drive away, standing on the sidewalk and waving until his car had turned the corner at the end of the block. “So what’s for dinner?” Gary asked.

“Let’s go in and see,” she said.

The apartment had a working microwave and a refrigerator, but the refrigerator was empty and the only food that could be found in the cupboards were packages of Top Ramen and Cup O’Noodles.

Joan grimaced. “I don’t think so.”

“Any ideas?”

“I can actually cook in a microwave, you know. Real food.”

“Like what?”

“How does pasta sound?”

“Pasta Roni?”

She hit his shoulder. “No. Real pasta. Sort of. I get, like, Ragú or something, chop up some extra vegetables and herbs, heat it up, cook the noodles and voila! A nice home-cooked meal.”

“Sounds good,” he admitted.

She took his hand. “Let’s go to the store and do a little grocery shopping.”

He smiled. “We’re getting awfully domestic, aren’t we?”

“Is that a complaint?”

“No. I think it’s great.”

She squeezed his hand. “Me, too. Come on.”

They drove down the street to the nearest supermarket, an Albertson’s. He grabbed a cart from the front of the store and followed her up each aisle as she compared prices and picked out items. “Do you want something for dessert?” she asked.

He shook his head. “I’m not much of a dessert fan.”

“I eat when I’m under stress. I’m making brownies.”

“In a microwave?”

“It can be done, believe it or not. Watch and learn.” She threw a box of brownie mix into the cart.

He liked this. It was fun. And for a few moments he almost forgot that Father was out there, angry and after them. Then they were in the produce department, where suddenly he smelled dirt, roots. He whirled around—and Joan was holding out a bag of loose mushrooms she’d chosen. “I usually mix these into the sauce,” she said, frowning at his reaction. “Gives it a richer flavor. Are you all right?”

“Fine. I’m fine.” But the smell was still in his nostrils and he was remembering the rag his kidnappers kept putting over his face. He felt nervous, jittery, and he found that he didn’t like being out in public like this. He felt exposed, and he made Joan hurry up so they could get out of there and get back to the duplex.

Reyn and Stacy arrived ten minutes before the dinner was done. Joan and Gary had already set the table and were watching the news, waiting for the microwave’s timer to beep, when their friends came in. “I was joking,” Reyn said when he saw the table. He breathed deeply. “But it smells good!”

The food was good, and they all overate and then retreated to different chairs or couches to complete the reading assignments for their various classes. Reyn turned on a radio and tuned it to a jazz station, keeping the volume low. “I can’t study in silence,” he said apologetically. “I need some noise.”

The evening was nice, but the aura of foreboding that hung over Gary refused to go away, and when they quit studying and went into their respective bedrooms, he had a hard time falling asleep, despite the fact that he’d been up almost all the previous night. When he finally dozed off, he dreamed, a horrible nightmare in which, like zombies from Night of the Living Dead, Homesteaders surrounded the duplex and started breaking windows, knocking down doors. He tried to grab his knife, but too many hands were on him, clawing, scratching, hitting, pulling. Homesteaders were everywhere, and as he looked frantically around, he saw that Joan had already been killed, that her bloody body was being torn apart. Through a gap between the lurching forms of his attackers, he saw the open doorway, and behind it the short hall, where an army of peasant-clothed Homesteaders was filing into Reyn and Stacy’s room. Over the grunts and screams and sickening wet crunches, he could hear Father’s deep, booming laughter, loud, raucous and happily amused.

In the morning, he awoke with the dawn, and for the first few confusing seconds thought that his dream had been reality. But Joan was dozing next to him, he could hear Reyn and Stacy murmuring in the other bedroom, and with grateful relief he realized that everyone was still alive.

So far.

Twenty-eight

Brian hated communications law. It wasn’t the subject matter; although, for the most part, the course was pretty dry going. No, he hated the length of the class. And its time slot. It was a course required for his major, so he had to take it, but it was only offered in one big chunk, on Wednesdays from four to seven, and that made the class unbearable. By that hour, he’d been at school for most of the day and his brain was tired. It also encompassed his dinnertime, so he was hungry. Students were allowed a fifteen-minute break at five forty-five, halfway through, and a lot of them got snacks from the vending machines on the first floor or coffee from one of the service clubs that’d set up a concessions table outside the building, but others just bailed, leaving and not coming back, and today Brian thought he might try that himself.

It had been a few days since they’d returned from Texas, but he still hadn’t adjusted to normal life. In a weird way, he’d liked the roller-coaster ride of the past two weeks. On some adrenaline-junkie level, he’d even liked that terrifying foray into the Home, although he could hardly believe now that he had held a guy at knife-point and forced him to take them to Joan. It seemed as though that had been another person, and thinking about it from a distance, he realized how lucky he was that he was not behind bars.

But that was why he was finding it difficult to get back into the rhythm of things here. After so much danger and excitement, it was hard to go back to being a regular guy doing regular things in a regular way—although Father was still loose and probably after them, if the events of the past two days were any indication. So he wasn’t exactly Joe Average. But compared to the adventure they’d had in Texas, life at UCLA was still a lot more sedate than being on the road.

And sitting through a class like comm law was sheer torture.

The session was not even halfway over and he’d already dozed off twice, though he doubted the instructor had noticed. A pompous windbag who loved the sound of his own voice and seemed to believe that a point worth making once was worth making thrice, Dr. Meyer seldom paid much attention to inconsequential minutiae such as the reactions of his students.

Brian had been taking notes on the lecture in the way that was expected, but in the margins of the notebook he’d been jotting down ideas. He still thought the best plan was to take the fight to Father, to get Dror and those film geeks together again, bring along the pigs if necessary and hunt the bastard down. But since none of them had any idea where to take the fight to, the next best thing would be to prepare themselves for the showdown that was inevitably going to come. Reyn’s little nambypamby plan of hiding and hoping no one would notice them was idiotic. The only reason they’d been able to get into the Home had been because he’d thought to bring knives, and Brian knew that their best chance now was to arm themselves the same way.

That was what he’d been jotting down: simple alarms they could set up around their rooms, places they could hide easy-to-use, easily accessible weapons, people they could enlist to help them. They’d beaten the cult the last time, and Father would do everything he could to ensure that didn’t happen again. So they needed to be ready.

Brian smiled to himself. Too bad his dad wasn’t still around. The old man would be shocked that his hippie son not only knew his way around weapons but was willing to use them. Had used them.

Some of his dad’s asshole-ness must have gotten passed down through his genes.

Brian’s brain had drifted away, lost the thread of the lecture, but his attention was once again focused on the front of the room when Dr. Meyer suddenly stopped speaking. The instructor was folding up his laptop, and the students around him were standing and stretching or gathering their belongings, and Brian understood that it was break time.

Just as well. He’d brought a Big Gulp to class with him, hoping the caffeine in the Coke would keep him awake, but he’d finished the drink early on and now desperately had to take a leak. He looked around for Tina, a chick he was interested in whom he usually managed to chat up during the break. She was already out the door, on her way to get coffee from the table in front of the building, no doubt, and he figured he could quickly go to the bathroom and worm his way next to her in line before she actually got her decaf.

He shoved his books under his chair, checking his phone to make sure he had no messages waiting as he followed the crowd through the door. He didn’t like using the restrooms next to the elevators—too crowded—so he usually walked down the hall to the bathroom opposite the Communications department office. The office closed at five, and there were no other classes at that end of the building at this hour, which meant that he was able to get in and out quickly.

He passed through the throng of students who were waiting for the elevator, lining up for the restrooms or making their way down the stairs. Once he turned the corner, the corridor was empty, save for a female instructor weighted down with book bags who was just entering the little-used back stairwell at the far end of the building. The sound of voices behind him grew muffled, faint, indistinct, before being swallowed up in the silence, and by the time he approached the closed door of the Communications department office, the only noise he could hear was that caused by his feet on the hard floor, which, despite the fact that he was wearing sneakers, sounded like the clicking of boots.

Tina was probably downstairs by now, lining up.

He reached the restroom, went in, quickly relieved himself and washed his hands. The dispensers were out of paper towels, so he wiped his wet hands on his pants. He came out of the bathroom—

And saw an old man in peasant clothes, holding a whip.

Brian stopped. The guy was coming toward him from the rear of the building, where the door to the stairwell was still closing slowly. He’d been holding the whip in front of him, using both hands, but when he saw Brian, his left hand dropped the tip of the lash and his right hand flicked the leather handle, causing the whip to crack.

How the fuck had they found him? Brian wondered.

He started walking away from the man, toward the front of the building, toward the elevators and his classroom and other people. Behind him, the whipcracks grew louder, more frequent, more insistent. The old guy was gaining on him, and unless he wanted to start running away like a little girl, he was going to have to deal with the man.

Brian stopped, turned.

The old man was closer but not as close as expected, and Brian examined his face, trying to figure out if he looked familiar, if he’d been at the Home. Brian didn’t recognize him, but both the plain homemade clothes and the poorly shorn hair clearly marked him as one of the Homesteaders.

The man stared hard at Brian and cracked his whip with extra vigor.

These were religious freaks, weren’t they? They were supposed to take the Bible literally and follow everything to the letter, right? He decided on a confrontational approach. “Thou shalt not kill. Ever heard of that rule? It’s one of the big ten. Maybe you guys should try following it.”

The man kept coming, cracking his whip. He said nothing, and the expression on his face was blank.

“Fuck you,” Brian said disgustedly. He was more scared than he dared let on, but he turned calmly to walk away, not wanting to give the son of a bitch the satisfaction of seeing him run—

And two more Homesteaders were coming toward him from the front of the building.

Carrying knives.

The blades were remarkably similar to the ones he’d brought to Texas, and it occurred to Brian that they might be the very same ones. These guys were out for revenge, and they could’ve easily broken into his room and found them in his closet. They probably could have found his schedule somewhere in the room, too, although their resident computer whiz could just as easily have looked it up online.

Neither of these two was wearing an expression, either. Their faces were just as blank as the old man’s, and as they approached, knives extended, they reminded him of zombies.

No.

Soldiers.

Following orders.

Suddenly he was much more afraid. People acting on their own, even out of strong emotion, could be reasoned with, talked to, convinced to alter their course of action. But people following orders, doing the bidding of others, had no ideas or convictions they could be argued out of. They were merely performing a task.

Brian thought quickly. One or more of the doors in this corridor might be unlocked, but if he tried to open them and failed, he would have wasted valuable time. The bathroom was open, but he didn’t think the door could be locked from the inside and he didn’t want to trap himself within a confined area—particularly not with people carrying knives.

He decided the best course of action would be to try to get by the guy with the whip. The old man might get in one or two lashes, but that wouldn’t be fatal, and if he ran fast and hard enough, he could knock the old fuck off his feet and speed past him, escaping down the back stairs.

Assuming there weren’t other Homesteaders waiting for him in the stairwell.

The men with knives quickened their pace, and Brian screamed at the top of his lungs, an incoherent cry intended to startle his attackers and throw them off their game. Simultaneously, he rushed the old man, keeping his head down as he charged so as not to be whipped in the face. The whip was more powerful than he’d anticipated, however, and either the Homesteader was more adept with it than expected or he was extraordinarily lucky, because even as Brian ran, the lash sunk into the flesh of his neck and instantly wrapped around it three times, cutting off his flow of air. Brian floundered, fell and desperately tried to claw the whip from his neck. His mouth and nose were frantically trying to suck in oxygen, but the passage to his lungs was blocked, and the braided leather acted as a barrier between his head and his body. He knew that he was dying, and he kicked his feet, jerked his body around, trying everything he could to breathe again.

Then a knife stabbed him in the lower back, and he could no longer move his feet. With one hard, jolting yank, the whip was pulled away, and another knife sliced into the back of his neck. He tried to use his hands to push himself up off the floor, but his arms were weak and his muscles wouldn’t obey his brain.

The three men spoke together, calmly, unhurriedly, in the strange language of the Home.

This can’t be happening, Brian thought. Not on a modern college campus, not in a building with hundreds of students in its classrooms.

But it was happening.

The last sight he saw was his own blood spreading slowly across the shiny white floor toward the wall.

Twenty-nine

Reyn looked up. “He’s still not answering.”

“Brian always answers his phone.” Gary was worried. This was the fourth time they’d tried to contact their friend in the past hour, and each time they’d been put directly into voice mail. Outside the coffeehouse, the light was fading. The sun was almost down, and most of the campus was now in shadow. The security lights lining the walkways were already on. Both Joan and Stacy were in lab classes—different lab classes in different buildings—and he and Reyn were waiting here, next to the window, where they could see the entrances to each building.

Reyn said aloud what they were both thinking. “Do you think something happened to him?”

“I hope not,” Gary said, but that was a lame response and he knew it. He finished his coffee and stood. “We need to find him.”

“But Stacy and Joan…”

“They’ll be in class for another twenty minutes. We’ll be back in plenty of time.”

Reyn nodded, but Gary could see that he was worried. If something had happened to Brian, they might be putting themselves in harm’s way. And the fact that Joan and Stacy were in class didn’t necessarily mean that they were safe.

Still, it was a risk Gary was willing to take. Right now, Brian’s silence concerned him more than anything else.

The two of them left the coffeehouse. Outside, it wasn’t quite as dark as Gary had thought. Looking through the windows from inside the lighted building had made the exterior world look like night, though in reality it was still dusk. “I know he has a class right now,” Gary said, “but I can’t remember what it is.” Brian had flirted with several different majors, and it was hard to keep track of what he was studying.

“Isn’t it that long class? The one he was dreading on the trip back?”

“Yeah. But what was it?”

“Wasn’t it some type of law class?”

“Communications law!” Gary suddenly remembered. He frowned. “But what building’s it in? And what room?”

“Somewhere near the Communications department, I assume.” Without mentioning it, both Reyn and Gary had automatically reoriented themselves and started off in that direction. Reyn had his phone out, and while it wasn’t as sophisticated as Brian’s BlackBerry, he was typing on the small keypad and trying to access the school’s current course catalog. “Fourth floor,” Reyn announced. “Room 411.” He shut the phone, shoved it into his shirt pocket, and they both strode more quickly toward the Communications building.

There were very few students out at this hour. Some were in classes, but most were studying or had gone home or were eating dinner. The two of them pretty much had the walkway to themselves. Gary was focused on their goal, had his eye on the square, blocky structure ahead, with its asymmetrically lit windows that gave the front of the building the appearance of a primitive computer terminal. So he was surprised when Reyn nudged him with an elbow and pointed. “Look,” Reyn said quietly.

Between the bushes, moving away from them, was a dark-haired man wearing familiar-looking peasant clothes.

Gary didn’t wait. He took off running, leaping over a low hedge border and dashing over the short expanse of grass. He hit the bushes hard, branches scraping his arms, leaves slapping against his face, but he refused to slow down. He was not athletic, had never played football, but he brought the man down with a flying tackle just as the Homesteader emerged into an open area near an intersecting sidewalk.

He fell onto his quarry, who tried to scramble out from underneath him and get away. Gary twisted the man’s neck until the Homesteader turned onto his back, then sat on the man’s chest, his knees pinning down the cult member’s arms. The guy beneath him looked perfectly normal. His bones weren’t strangely shaped; his head wasn’t oddly formed; he didn’t appear to be slow or impaired in any way. A convert, Gary thought. And that was good. In movies and on TV, fanatics and true believers inevitably held out against any questioning, steadfastly refusing to divulge information even while being tortured. But in real life, most people weren’t that strong. And anyone weak-willed enough to voluntarily join a cult would not have the fortitude to withstand a hard interrogation.

“Call Joan,” Gary told Reyn, who was just catching up. “Make sure she’s all right.” His fear was that Homesteaders had been sent out to distract the rest of them while Joan was attacked and captured—or killed.

Reyn whipped out his phone and punched in her number.

Gary turned his attention to the man beneath him. “You were following us, weren’t you?”

The man smiled, his teeth eerily white in the ever-increasing darkness.

“Why?”

There was no answer.

“Where’s Father?” Gary demanded.

The smile grew wider.

Gary punched the Homesteader in the face. His fist didn’t connect directly with the man’s nose, the way he’d intended. Instead, it sort of hit the side of the nose and the cheek. But it had the desired result, and Gary felt the hardness of bone beneath his knuckles, the warm wetness of blood.

“Where’s Father?” he asked again.

The man was crying. He seemed surprised by the pain, as if he never thought such a thing could happen to him.

Gary held up his fist again. “Tell me where Father is! Tell me why you’re here and what’s going on! Now!”

“God doesn’t want—”

“God wants me to beat the shit out of you,” Gary said. “That’s why I’m here and you’re there. Now talk!”

The man recovered his composure and, through his tears, smiled again, blood covering his gums and seeping between the cracks of his teeth, distorting the look of his mouth and giving him an almost inhuman appearance. “Father is coming.”

Father is coming.

The words sent a chill stabbing straight to Gary’s heart. “Where is he?”

There was only the bloody smile.

A student walking by on the sidewalk to their left had noticed the commotion and was looking at them suspiciously.

“Get the police!” Gary yelled at him. “Now! This guy’s a rapist! I caught him!”

The student ran off, taking out his cell phone as he did so. Thankfully, the guy was rattled and not thinking clearly or he would have noticed Reyn standing there and talking on his phone.

Or he would have realized that he didn’t have to go anywhere to make the call.

Or he might have stood there and used his phone to take a picture.

Things could have gone so much more wrong, but miraculously they hadn’t, and Gary quickly tried to think of a way to incapacitate the Homesteader. He wanted the man to remain in this spot but didn’t want to be around himself when campus security or the police arrived. He and Reyn needed to get out of there fast. Looking around, he saw a recently planted sapling in the center of the grass. The small tree was being supported by guide wires secured to the trunk and attached to stakes in the ground. If he could—

The man bucked beneath him, the force and suddenness of the movement throwing him off, and before Gary could right himself and reestablish his hold over the Homesteader, the man had scrambled away, jumped to his feet and dashed into the bushes. Every instinct he had was telling him to take off in pursuit, but Gary knew that he had no hope of catching up to the man now, and at the moment his chief concern was for Joan. If he was being shadowed, it was a certainty that someone, or several someones—

Father

—had been sent after her.

Reyn was talking to Joan on the phone right now, and when he told Gary that she was in the library, working on research with a group of students from her lab class, a flash of panic shot through him. She wasn’t in the lab? She’d walked all the way to the library without telling him? At this point, any variable at all was cause for worry, and he took the phone from Reyn. “Stay where you are!” he ordered. “Father is coming! That’s what the Homesteader said. I caught one and—”

“I know. Reyn told me.” There were others with her, so she was trying to sound calm, but he could hear the worry in her voice.

“He just escaped!”

“I know.”

“Don’t—” Gary had to stop and gulp air. He was hyperventilating and couldn’t finish his sentence without pausing to catch his breath. “Don’t go anywhere!” he said, and took another breath. “We’ll meet you there! Where are you, exactly?”

She was still trying to keep her voice calm in front of her classmates. “We’re in study room A on the sixth floor of the library, against the back wall.”

“I know where it is. We’ll be there as soon as we can.”

“I’ll stay right here.” There was a pause. “You be careful, too.”

“Always.”

They said good-bye, and he handed the phone back to Reyn. “We have to get over there.”

“I’m calling Stacy first.” He paused before pressing her speed-dial number. “Do I tell her to stay where she is or go to Joan?”

Gary thought quickly. “We should probably stay together. There’s safety in numbers.”

“It’d be harder to get all of us if we were spread out,” Reyn said.

“Not if there’s a group of them and they’re all spread out. We can defend ourselves better if we’re together.”

Reyn nodded, pressed the number. “Stacy!” he said as soon as she answered. “We just ran into a Homesteader. He said Father’s here and on his way. I need you to leave class and get over to the library as quick as you can. Joan’s there. We’re heading over, too. We…” He trailed off, then shook his head as he changed his mind. “No. Stay where you are.” He looked over at Gary. “You get Joan,” he said. “I’ll get Stacy. We’ll meet… ?”

“In the library. Study room A. Sixth floor.”

“In the library. Study room A. Sixth floor,” he repeated.

There was no time to waste. Gary waved to Reyn and took off running. Reyn started running after him, several steps behind, and before their paths diverged, he heard his friend say to Stacy, “That’s who we were looking for. He’s not answering his phone. We thought something might’ve happened to him.”

Then Reyn turned toward Stacy’s building, and Gary ran toward the library.

It was dark now, and the entire campus seemed little more than an amalgam of hiding places. He glanced suspiciously at every person he passed by, hyperaware that any one of them could be a fanatic cult member ready to attack. Ahead, in the gloom, the hulking mass of the library resembled nothing so much as the exterior of a haunted castle.

An icy shudder passed through him.

Father is coming, he thought.

Father is coming.

Thirty

Joan put down her cell phone.

Tessa and Vy were arguing over something in the course textbook. Craig was on his laptop, looking up something entirely unrelated to the class.

She glanced slowly around. The study room was completely enclosed. There was only one door, and a wall of windows looked out into the library, so if anyone tried to approach through the stacks, she’d be able to see them immediately. This was probably one of the most secure places she could be on campus, but she felt vulnerable, at once trapped and exposed, and though she’d promised Gary she’d remain where she was, Joan wanted nothing more than to get out of this room and out of the library. First instincts weren’t always right, though, and she knew that it would be much smarter for her to—

The lights in the library began flashing, accompanied by the clanging of an alarm.

“Fire!” Tessa cried, snatching up her books.

All of the students in her study group hurriedly gathered their materials, preparing to make a run for the stairwells. They were on the sixth floor, and if there was a fire, they wanted to get outside as quickly as possible. Joan had the same gut reaction, but even as she grabbed her books and notebooks, she was thinking of the fire last night, in Gary’s dorm. The ringing alarm sounded exactly the same and the parallels were impossible to ignore. The fire in the library—if there really was a fire in the library and someone had not simply set off the alarm—must have been set by the same person.

Father is coming.

Tessa and Vy were already out of the room and running, and Craig was holding the door open for her. “Come on!” he yelled.

She followed him—and saw a Homesteader walking up the aisle between a long row of bookshelves.

The lights flashed off again, on, and the Homesteader was closer, much closer, moving fast, though he was still not running.

Panicked, she dashed to her left. Another Homesteader was coming up this aisle, heading toward her as though he’d known all along that this was exactly where she would be.

She ran in the direction of the north stairwell, acting on instinct rather than intellect, aware on some level that she was going into the most remote section of the library and that most of the other students on the floor had probably run to the south stairwell, which was adjacent to the elevators. The rhythmic flashing of the lights, accompanied by the constant ringing of the alarm bells, lent the space ahead a surreal aspect that only intensified her fear.

And then the alarm stopped, the sudden cessation of noise creating a silence so heavy it pressed against her ears.

Joan froze. She heard no voices, no footsteps. She’d lost Craig and had no idea where Tessa and Vy were. Downstairs by now, probably. Along with everyone else.

Was she the only one left on the sixth floor?

No. The Homesteaders were here.

She ran toward the stairwell door as quickly as she could, her heart pounding crazily. It was the terror she’d felt back at the Home multiplied by ten. Here in the outside world, Father might not have the absolute power that he’d had in his own fiefdom, but the Home was gone and he was angry, and there was no telling what he might do.

She reached the door and pushed it open. The stairwell smelled familiar, as though someone wearing a heavy floral perfume had just left the area. Immediately, her head began to feel strange. She recognized the feeling and tried to turn around and go back the way she’d come, but hands reached around from behind her and grabbed her arms, pressing them to her sides. Looking down, she saw that the hands were clawed, that the skin was blue, the long nails black, and then a bag was put over her head, a bag that was wet and smelled of old licorice.

And then she was out.

Joan awoke to see Father staring down at her.

It was night, and his features were illuminated by the soft, flickering glow of candlelight. His eyes were hard, his mouth set within the overgrown beard, and he was holding a Bible, though the way he was clutching it in his hands made it look as though he wanted to rip the book in half rather than read it. Joan was in a prone position, lying on something hard, and when she tried to lift herself up on her elbows, she found that she couldn’t. She was being held down, though she couldn’t tell if hands or straps were keeping her in place, and she realized at that moment that she could not feel anything below her neck. Her body was totally without sensation. Maybe nothing was holding her down, and with a feeling of rising panic she wondered if she was permanently paralyzed.

She tried not to let the fear show on her face, though she had no idea whether or not she was successful. “Where am I?” she demanded.

When Father didn’t answer, she said, “Gary’s coming for me.”

“He’s dead,” Father stated flatly. “All of your friends are dead. Ruth.”

Joan couldn’t keep the reaction off her face this time. The effect his words had on her was physical. It was as if he had punched her in the stomach. She could tell from the smug satisfaction in his voice that what he said was true, and she was filled with a sudden deep despair. At that moment, she wished she was dead herself. Her parents were gone… Gary… her friends, and all that was left to her was the one thing on earth she wanted most to avoid: Father. She wished he would kill her, but she knew that was not going to happen. Eventually, she would die, but he wanted to make her suffer first, wanted to make her pay.

“I am building a new Home,” he said in the Language, “and you have been called upon to assist me.”

“Never,” she said in English, though she was not brave enough to look at him.

He shoved his face in front of hers. The candlelight created pools of shadow on his features, giving his eyes an almost skull-like appearance. “You will bear me sons,” he intoned. “In pain shall you bring forth children.”

Her vision blurred. She closed her eyelids tightly as the tears overflowed and ran down the sides of her head, not wanting to see Father’s expression of triumph.

He continued talking to her, but somehow she was able to block out his voice. Closing her eyes helped, but there was also a type of white noise in her head, a dull humming that was probably a residue of whatever had been used to drug her, and she found when she concentrated on that sound, it caused Father’s voice to fade into the background. His voice grew louder and he might have been yelling at her, but she lost herself in the hum and, eventually, she drifted off to sleep.

When Joan awoke again, she was alone. It was still night, but the environment around her was darker. Candles had either burned out or been taken away. She glanced around surreptitiously, trying to figure out where she was. She assumed Father and his people had taken her off campus. But were they even in California? How long had she been out before waking up? How much time had passed? Hours? Days? Weeks?

She was gratified to find that not only could she move her head, but she could wiggle her fingers. And there was feeling again in the lower half of her body. She was definitely strapped—she could feel the ropes holding down her arms, legs and midsection—but at least she was able to see her surroundings.

She was lying on a bed in a small room of primitive construction, in what appeared to be part of an old shack or cabin. The lone candle illuminating the room was behind her head somewhere, so she couldn’t see it, but its flickering orangish glow threw into relief the whorled wood of the walls and allowed her to view the framed photo of Father that was hanging where a window should be. There had to be a door into the room—indeed, she could feel cold seeping in from outside—but, like the candle, it was behind her and she couldn’t see it. Other than the bed on which she lay, there didn’t seem to be any furniture.

Joan listened for any sounds from the world outside or from other rooms in the cabin. Her ears were still slightly plugged up, and at first she heard nothing. Then, from the stillness, came a low, muffled muttering.

Voices in prayer.

How many of them were there? And what were they praying for? The death of the Outsiders? Continued evasion of the police? All of Father’s prayers were selfish and self-serving, asking for favors or begging for revenge, and she had no doubt that he was leading his current group of followers in a plea to save his butt.

The idea that the great and powerful Father was engaged in such a pathetic and prosaically craven pursuit gave her hope and strength, and she immediately began testing her bonds, attempting to discover if any of them were loose and whether she had any hope of escape. Gary and her friends might be dead, but that was even more of an incentive. Their deaths needed to be avenged, and she would not rest until Father had paid for his crimes.

She was crying, thinking about Gary, and for some reason the image that stuck in her mind was one of him eating a sandwich at the beach, staring out to sea while she watched him, unnoticed. But she made no noise, and even as her tears overflowed, trickling down the sides of her head into her ears, she was moving her hands and feet back and forth, trying to create some wiggle room. Her legs felt cold. In fact, the entire lower half of her body felt cold, and she realized with horror that her pants were off.

Had anything been done to her? She couldn’t tell. But even if nothing had happened yet, it would—

You will bear me sons

—and she struggled even harder to free herself.

The prayer had stopped, and now Father was talking. She could not hear the words, only the rhythm, but he was in full fire-and-brimstone form, and she could imagine what he was saying. How many people were with him? she wondered. Almost everyone from the Home had been captured, but she had no idea how many people in the rest of the country were followers of Father or how quickly he could gather them. Although maybe he didn’t want them all with him. Spread out, they could provide a fugitive network, allowing him to evade police indefinitely as he moved from one house and one state to another.

Joan gave up trying to break free of her restraints. There was no progress, for all her effort, and already she could feel pain in her wrists and ankles where her skin was becoming chafed and rubbed raw. She needed to save her strength in case an opportunity arose.

Who was she kidding? There weren’t going to be any opportunties. Gary was dead, Reyn and Stacy were dead, Brian was dead, and she was tied down to a bed in some filthy shack, where she would spend the rest of her life—however short or long that might be—being raped by Father.

In pain shall you bring forth children.

She started to sob again, and this time she couldn’t help uttering small desperate cries of hopeless despair.

Behind her, she heard Father’s heavy footsteps.

And even heavier breathing.

Thirty-one

By the time Gary reached the library, it had been evacuated and scores of students stood before the building in the growing darkness, clutching books and backpacks, watching as policemen and firemen came and went through the open doors. Every so often, another student or two would be ushered out. Gary scanned the crowd, looking for Joan, and when he didn’t see her, he moved to the front of the assemblage, hoping to find her being escorted to safety, but very quickly the trickle of people being led from the building dropped to zero, and he realized with a sick feeling in his gut that she was missing.

He was filled with rage and frustration, much of it directed at himself—he should have gotten here faster, he shouldn’t have let the Homesteader go—and he wanted to run into the library and find Joan, wanted to speed across campus and chase down the bastards who had nabbed her, but he had no idea where she was, and he stood there impotently, unable to act.

At the edge of the crowd, Gary saw a shadowy shape, a short figure with an oddly large head, and as the squat form wove in and out between the evacuated students, an unwelcome shiver passed through him. It wasn’t the man he and Reyn had caught on their way to the Communications building, but he had no doubt that it was a Homesteader, one of the Children. From the corner of his eye, he thought he saw additional movement to the side of the library, and when Stacy tapped him on the shoulder and Reyn said, “Hey,” Gary jumped.

“Where’s Joan?” Stacy asked immediately.

He shook his head, unable to say the words, and realized that he was on the verge of tears. They had rescued Joan once before. What were the odds that the same thing could happen twice? Would Father, who was on the run, kidnap her to convert her back to his religion or press her into servitude? No. He probably wanted to punish her. She was probably already dead.

Stacy’s phone was out, and once again she was calling the police. This time, she got Williams on the line. “We think she’s been kidnapped again,” Stacy told the detective, explaining what had happened.

Listening to her describe the situation, Gary came back from the brink. Father probably did want to punish Joan, but he wouldn’t do it by killing her. He would keep her, hold her, torture her.

Gary thought of the case Sheriff Stewart had told them about, the woman who’d been imprisoned in the Home for over a year and repeatedly raped by Father. He tried not to, but he couldn’t help imagining Joan being assaulted by the old man, and the pictures in his head made him want to strangle the son of a bitch with his own beard.

Sirens sounded from streets on different sides of the campus.

“What?” Stacy said into the phone, shocked.

Gary held his breath.

She looked over at them. “Someone’s been murdered in the Communications building!” she announced.

Brian.

Gary met Reyn’s eyes, seeing on his friend’s face a mirror image of his own feelings.

Stacy said a quick good-bye and got off the phone. “He’s coming over himself this time.”

“To the murder site first,” Reyn said.

Gary nodded. “Which doesn’t help Joan.”

There was a commotion near the library entrance, and the three of them pressed forward, along with the rest of the crowd. The cause of the disturbance had been discovered. A piece of cloth had been set on fire and placed near a smoke detector in order to make the alarm go off. A firefighter carried out the smoldering black fabric using a pair of long metal tongs, and another fireman rushed up carrying a metal container. The burned cloth was dropped inside.

Reyn sniffed the air, and an expression of excited recognition passed over his features. “I remember that smell now! I know where I’ve smelled it before!”

Gary breathed deeply. The smoke did indeed have the same woodsy odor as the fire that had destroyed his dorm.

“It’s Abrego’s Pitch!”

“What the hell’s that?”

“It’s sap that was used by Indian tribes as a kind of fire starter. The Spanish even used it in their lamps when they couldn’t get oil. It’s from a native tree that was nearly logged to extinction. We learned about it in my California habitats class last semester.” He looked at Gary. “As far as I know, the only place this tree grows is on a preserve in the Mojave Desert. It’s protected, but there’s, like, an on-site research facility run by the school. We went there for a lab class, and that’s where I smelled that smell, as part of a demonstration.”

“I’ll bet that’s where they’re going,” Gary said excitedly. “I’ll bet that’s where they’re taking her. How far away is this preserve? And how big is it?”

“Big,” Reyn admitted, and the note of discouragement in his voice made Gary’s heart sink. “It’s part of the Angeles National Forest, on the desert side of the San Gabriel Mountains, and it probably takes up fifty square miles. There are canyons, trails… .”

“So we’d never be able to find them,” Gary said dejectedly.

Reyn paused, thinking. “The thing is,” he said, “on another part of the preserve, in a canyon where we hiked and took notes on local plants, we passed an old abandoned ranch—a house, a barn, some stables—and I remember a big white cross painted on the rock wall above it.”

Stacy was shaking her head. “Sounds kind of hinky, don’t you think? They escape from their compound in Texas, are on the run from the law, and instead of holing up with one of their own in Texas or New Mexico or Arizona, they decide to camp out in a California wildlife preserve—one with a public nature center, no less—so they can raid the local trees for pitch to start fires at UCLA. It doesn’t add up.”

She was right, Gary thought. And yet…

And yet how much of what had happened to them made any kind of logical sense? From Joan’s mysterious disappearance at Burning Man, to her roommate Kara’s conversion, to his own abduction, to the Home with its deformed incestuous offspring, everything that had occurred had followed an absurdly irrational rationale. Were they now going to start applying the test of ordinary reason to a situation that until this very second had been its polar opposite?

“I think she’s there,” Gary said.

Reyn nodded. “I agree.”

“Do you know how to get to this preserve?”

Reyn’s phone was out and he was already accessing a GPS app. “I will in a minute.”

Stacy sighed, shaking her head.

Around them, some of the students had started to wander off. A fireman was announcing that the library would not reopen until it had been thoroughly searched, and the rest of the crowd started to break up. The excitement was over, it was getting late, and they began heading toward other classes or the student union or the dorms.

There was movement in the darkness to the left of the library building, and though it was too dim for him to be sure, Gary thought he saw two figures in peasant clothes hurrying behind the bulky, blocky structure. His pulse quickened, a primal fear response. A split second later, another man appeared, this one standing purposely in a square of light thrown onto the grass by one of the library’s windows. He faced their direction, and though he was too far away for his face to be seen, Gary had the distinct impression that he was smiling.

The man was oddly shaped, with a squat body held aloft by incredibly long legs. He was obviously one of the Children, and just the sight of him sent Gary into a rage. Fists clenched, he started forward.

“No,” Stacy said, grabbing his arm.

He turned to her.

She was looking in the same direction, an expression of alarm frozen on her face. “Don’t follow them. They’re trying to get us alone. Stay with the crowd.”

He peered into the darkness at the long-legged man still standing in the square of light and felt a tingle of fear. She was right. The man was attempting to lure them into the shadows, away from everyone else, and doubtless there were others waiting nearby to… to…

To what?

Kill them.

Yes. The Home was gone, Father was ruined, and he was out for blood.

Stacy had already manuevered her way between the departing students and was flagging down one of the campus policemen standing in front of the library doors. She spoke quickly, but whatever she said to the officer must have had the ring of truth because the man immediately returned with her and asked with some urgency, “Where is he?”

Gary pointed into the darkness at the side of the library, but the Homesteader was gone. In the few brief seconds he had turned away, the deformed man had disappeared. “I don’t know,” Gary said. “He was right there.”

“We’ll find him,” the policeman said grimly.

The three of them followed the officer around the side of the building. He had his flashlight out—a long metal cylinder that obviously doubled as a weapon when needed—and was shining the beam in a swiveling arc in front of them. But there were very few bushes or hiding places, and the area seemed to be completely deserted. They reached the spot where light from one of the library windows fell upon the ground, and Gary looked back at where they’d been standing. He knew all of a sudden that they would find nothing. All of the Homesteaders were gone.

He was right. They circumnavigated the entire building, but aside from a handful of students strolling past on a nearby sidewalk on the opposite side of the library, they saw no one. Certainly no malformed men in beige peasant clothes skulking around the shadows.

“There’s no one,” the policeman said. “Or, if there was, they’re gone.”

“We didn’t imagine it,” Stacy said.

“I believe you.”

“Well, thanks for checking it out,” Gary said. “But we’ve got to go.” With every second that passed, Joan was farther away, and he was anxious to be out of here and on the road. As tenuous as Reyn’s connection might be, he fully believed that Father and his followers were taking her to that nature preserve, to that ranch with a cross painted on the canyon cliff above. The notion rang true to him, and his mind had already begun concocting a scenario where that painted white cross was a secret symbol indicating that the ranch below was a stop on an underground railroad for religious fanatics, a safe haven for abortion clinic bombers, child-molesting polygamists and weapons-hoarding sect leaders.

Stacy held out her hand. “Thank you, Officer Sanders.”

“I’ll keep my eye out for these people,” he promised her. “And I’ll tell everyone else to watch for them, too. They probably are the ones who set off the alarm.”

“We’ll take my car,” Gary said, leading them away from the library toward the north parking lot. A few students were still hanging around, watching the firemen and policemen, and a young woman with a camera, probably from the school newspaper, was crouching down on the cement, trying to find the right angle for a picture, but by now most of the crowd was gone.

They hurried. The walkways leading between the buildings to the parking lots were not very crowded, but that would change in a few minutes when classes got out, and they didn’t want to get caught in the rush. Gary cast a quick glance toward the Communications building. None of them had made an effort to call Brian again since all of this had started, and though he knew why, he didn’t want to think about it.

Reyn still had the directions he’d accessed displayed on his phone, and as they strode quickly toward the parking lot, he was describing the route they needed to take. The sidewalk wound between two grass-covered mounds, and far off to the left Gary saw the tree-lined memorial path where they’d set a trap for the Homesteaders who had come to abduct him. Although the area before them was clear and open, for some irrational reason he kept expecting the tables to have been turned, kept waiting to be jumped by a gang of Father’s followers, but they made it to the parking lot without incident. “I’m over there,” Gary said, pointing.

They hurried down the main aisle, past several rows of vehicles.

“Oh my God,” Stacy said as they approached.

Gary’s car had been vandalized. All of the windows were smashed and the tires were flat. He ran forward and looked inside. The seats had been slashed.

They knew his car.

What else did they know?

His parents’ address.

The thought chilled him. The important facts of his life were all listed online, he realized, and the Homesteaders’ hacking had gained access to that. They knew almost everything about him.

Now they were acting on it.

He wanted to call his parents immediately, but there was no time. Joan was his first priority right now, just as she was Father’s, and he needed to find her and get her away from those lunatics.

“They’re here somewhere,” Stacy whispered, looking around the parking lot. “I can feel it.”

Gary could, too, and he looked about, seeing pools of darkness in the gaps between the evenly spaced lights. The parked cars and trucks offered far too many hiding places for his liking.

“We need weapons,” Reyn said all of a sudden.

He was right. Gary mentally kicked himself. How stupid could they be? If Brian were here, he would have brought weapons. He recalled the comforting heft of Brian’s swordlike knife in his hand. If only he had something like that right now…

But it was back in the duplex, along with Joan’s baseball bat.

Reyn had taken the ring of keys from his pocket and was holding it in his fist, individual keys protruding from between each knuckle. Gary thought of an idea. He hurried around to the trunk and opened it, rummaging through the wheel well until he found a tire iron. He saw in his mind the crazed, grimacing face of the bearded gas station attendant, and though the recollection of that encounter made his stomach knot up, he knew that the heavy tool would be an effective weapon. Closing the trunk, he swung the length of tempered steel back and forth, hearing it cut through the air with an audible swish.

“Gary?” Reyn said.

Gary could tell from Reyn’s tone of voice that he’d seen something, and he quickly turned. Reyn was staring down the row at a figure standing several car lengths away.

It was a man with a whip. He had emerged from between a beat-up Honda Civic and an old Chevy and was flicking his wrist, the whip in his hand cracking loudly several times in quick succession. The man was wearing the handmade clothes of a Homesteader, and his gray hair was cut crudely in a style Gary had never seen before. Behind him, from between the same cars, came another Homesteader, this one wielding a large knife.

“Back up slowly,” Gary said, and the three of them did just that, not wanting to turn their backs on the men.

The old guy advanced, cracking his whip again, and Gary swung the tire iron in front of him, his heart pounding.

“You! Put that down! Now!”

At the sound of the voice, Gary turned to see a campus policeman getting out of one of the electric vehicles used to patrol the parking lots. He came from behind Stacy, walking quickly, pointing a nightstick at the Homesteader with his right hand while his left hand unhooked a walkie-talkie from his belt. “Martinez,” he said. He’d obviously been notified about the Homesteaders, probably by Officer Sanders. “North lot. We have two of them, one with a whip, one with a knife, threatening three students.”

The Homesteaders ran.

“Wait there!” the policeman ordered Gary, Reyn and Stacy, and took off after them, shouting into his walkie-talkie. Seconds later, the Homesteaders and the policeman were nowhere to be seen.

“Do we wait?” Stacy asked, confused.

“No,” Gary said.

“We’ll take my car.” Reyn told them. “I parked in the east lot. Let’s go.”

Stacy called the police station again as they ran, trying to get ahold of Williams. He was not in his office, was already on campus, but by the time they reached Reyn’s car, the dispatcher had put her through to the detective, who was with a forensics team on the fifth floor of the Communications building. Gary listened in on her side of the conversation, his eyes meeting Reyn’s over the roof of the Focus, neither of them liking what they heard.

Stacy swung the phone away from her mouth, an expression of shock on her face. “It’s Brian,” she said, her voice little more than a whisper. “He’s been stabbed. He’s… dead.”

Gary had suspected that already, had known that already, but it was another thing to have it confirmed, and hearing the manner of his friend’s murder took the breath out of him. He had to inhale deeply just to keep his respiratory system functioning. Involuntarily, his gaze shifted toward the center of campus, toward the Communications building, though it could not be seen from this angle. He tried to remember the last thing he’d said to Brian or that Brian had said to him but couldn’t.

Stacy continued to talk on the phone as they got into the car, explaining to Williams what had happened and where they were going. It was clear from her side of the conversation that the detective was trying to talk her out of it, but whether that was because he didn’t believe Father and his followers were actually out in the desert or because he thought it was dangerous for them to go there alone was considerably less clear. Even Stacy wasn’t sure, she admitted, after terminating the call, but she hoped the fact that she’d hung up on Williams before he could finish would cause him to at least send some other cops after them.

“We can’t do this alone,” she told them.

Gary and Reyn said nothing.

The official name of their destination was the Mojave-Abrego California State Preserve, and there were several ways to reach it, although even the quickest route took two and a half hours, which meant that they wouldn’t arrive until after midnight. Gary told himself that that meant it was a two-and-a-half-hour drive for the Homesteaders as well, but rather than reassure him, the thought tormented him. That was a long trip. Did it really seem plausible that they would transport Joan so far? Wouldn’t it make more sense for them to take her to a hiding place closer by?

Or kill her?

He refused to let his mind go there, but the worry nibbled around the edges of his consciousness.

As the freeway passed through the sleepy suburban communities of the San Fernando Valley, Gary grew ever more anxious. Reyn had recognized the smell of the smoke, but was that really enough to go on? Was that lead concrete enough that they should spend the next several hours in the car after Joan had been abducted yet again and Brian had been murdered? What if they were wasting their time on a wild-goose chase?

“I know it’s where they took her,” Reyn said, and though he was probably just trying to convince himself, his words had the effect of calming Gary. Despite the seemingly illogical logistics, he thought the same thing. Father’s people had taken Joan out to the preserve.

They had traveled this road before, and as the city faded into desert and they passed by the jagged, angular rocks where Reyn had told them episodes of Star Trek were filmed, Gary was overwhelmed by memories. He remembered Brian and Reyn arguing behind the raised hood of this car while waiting for AAA after the water pump broke, remembered all of them getting out their frustrations by yelling obscenities into the desert night.

“Fuck!… Cunt!… Asshole!… Dick!…” The sadness he felt threatened to sap whatever energy he had left, and once again he thought that Joan was probably dead.

Her fate wasn’t a certainty, though, and the image of her face installed a renewed vigor in his determination to confront Father. Even if she was dead, Gary was going to make sure that that bastard paid for it and that he could never harm anyone else ever again. Gary still had his tire iron, and Reyn had one in the trunk that he could use, along with a hammer and an assortment of screwdrivers. Stacy had also found a wicked-looking corkscrew in the glove compartment. Not the greatest weapons in the world, but at least they were armed.

Somewhere in the middle of the desert, they turned off on another road, a two-lane highway that ran along the foothills of a mountain range that could be sensed more than seen in the darkness. Theirs was the only vehicle traveling in either direction, and while the lights of a few far-flung buildings were visible when they first exited the freeway, those quickly disappeared and they drove through a landscape that was black and featureless, able to see only the small section of blacktop illuminated by the Focus’s headlights.

They had stopped speaking quite a ways back and drove for the next hour in silence.

There were no green road signs telling them how far away the preserve was located, and only the eerie glowing screen of Reyn’s phone on the seat next to him told them that they were on the right track. Indeed, even when they reached the turnoff to the preserve, it was only a dark wooden sign planted parallel to the road that indicated they were there, and if Reyn had not remembered it and been looking for it, they probably would have driven right past without noticing.

This road was dirt. And narrow. The desert had given way to foothills, and the single-lane trail wound through what appeared in the gloom to be a lot of scrawny trees and dry brush. They passed a turnoff that led to a low, dark building where a single lightbulb illuminated a bare side wall and slab of concrete.

“Nature center,” Reyn said.

He followed the curving dirt road away from the building, and several miles later it began winding through a forest of stunted pine trees. They went up a small hill before dipping into a rocky canyon carved into the mountains beyond. The car slowed as they approached the towering black cliffs.

“Almost there,” Reyn said grimly, and added, “I think.”

He was right.

Rounding a curve, Reyn suddenly had to slam on the brakes. If they’d been going even five miles an hour faster, they would have had an accident

Jesus Christ, Gary thought as he took his hands from the dashboard and peered through the windshield. How many of them are there?

The road ahead was blocked by cars, Jeeps and pickups with license plates from various states, more than a dozen of them, parked and double-parked in no particular order, the vehicles protruding into the road at assorted angles, making further progress impossible.

Reyn quickly shut off the headlights.

They waited for a moment, expecting Homesteaders to come at them, expecting to be attacked, expecting at the very least to see someone running away to warn Father that they were here. But the vehicles were all empty; no one had noticed their arrival. The three of them looked at each other, their faces barely lit by the dim illumination of the dashboard lights. It was impossible to read what his friends were thinking, so Gary just blurted out, “I’m going to get Joan.” He opened his door.

“You don’t even know where she is,” Reyn said.

“Up this road, I assume. That’s where that ranch is, isn’t it?”

“I’m coming with you.”

Gary shook his head, motioned toward the parked cars. “There are a lot of people here. If one person can’t sneak her out—”

“Maybe two or three people can,” Stacy interrupted.

“No. Listen,” Gary said. “I’m going to find her, see what I can do. If it’s not possible, I’ll come back and the three of us’ll figure something out. But right now, I want you to get this car turned around and ready to go in case I do bring her back and do as much damage as you can to those other cars so they can’t come after us.”

“We don’t know whose cars they are,” Stacy objected. “They might not be the Homesteaders’.”

“They are,” Gary and Reyn said at the same time. They both smiled. The first time all night.

All three of them got out of the car, Gary taking his tire iron with him.

“All right,” Reyn said, agreeing to Gary’s plan. “But you come back for us if there’s any problem.”

Gary nodded.

“If there’s any question about there being a problem,” Stacy added. “If there’s a minor inconvenience.”

“Deal.”

Gary hefted the tire iron in his hand and was about to start off when Reyn said, “Wait,” and walked back to the trunk. He opened it, drawing out a long screwdriver. “Slip it in your belt,” he said, handing the tool to Gary. “Just in case.”

Gary nodded and also accepted a long metal flashlight. “Thanks.” He pointed it at the ground and turned it on, testing it to see if it worked. It did. Reyn pulled out a lug wrench for himself and closed the trunk.

“I’ll be—” back, Gary started to say, and thought he saw a man-sized shadow detach itself from the darkness before them and slip behind a pickup truck. The hair on the back of his neck prickled and gooseflesh instantly overtook his arms. Before he could say anything or even switch on his flashlight, the shadowy figure emerged from somewhere off to their right, running crazily toward them.

“Outsiders!” it yelled in a man’s voice.

They all jumped back, startled and frightened, and Gary managed to switch on the flashlight, aiming it upward. He had time to register that it was indeed a man, that he was dressed in Homesteader garb, that he did not appear to be deformed, and then he was upon them. Stacy was the one closest to him, and with one wild leap he jumped on her. She screamed, tried to fight him off, but he grabbed her head in both hands and twisted.

She fell to the ground, limp, the Homesteader on top of her. The man raised his arms in triumph. Stacy’s eyes were open wide, as though she’d seen something surprising, and her mouth was open. The expression on her face, the last expression she would ever have, was one of shock and horror.

Reyn swung his lug wrench without pause, without thinking, an instinctive reaction accompanied by a terrible wail of pain and loss and rage and hate. The steel tool slammed into the back of the Homesteader’s head. With the force of such an impact, Gary would have expected the contents of the man’s skull to splatter outward. Instead, brain and blood overflowed like the yolk from a cracked egg, and the Homesteader fell onto his side, dead. His legs were still lying atop Stacy’s back, and Reyn, continuing to make that terrible sound, kicked them off her. He bent down, touched his fingers to her throat, pressed his ear against her cheek, but as much as he might hope and wish that she remained alive, she was dead, and he put his arms over her and hugged her awkwardly, sobbing.

The same thing might have happened to Joan, the same thing could be happening this very second, and without saying anything to Reyn, trusting that his friend would do what needed to be done despite his grief, Gary took off, keeping to the side of the dirt trail but following it forward. He held the flashlight in one hand, the tire iron in the other, prepared to encounter another Homesteader at any second and ready to attack first if he did.

He met no one on the way, and with the beam of his flashlight trained on the ground directly in front of him so as to illuminate pitfalls, he did not see the ranch house until he was almost upon it.

It was the sound of voices that alerted him, a chorus of chanting louder than his footfalls on the dirt that caused him to stop and look up. The canyon had broadened, and off to his right, past scattered trees, against a cliff so tall and dark that he could not see where in the night sky it ended, sat the ranch Reyn had told them about. There were three or four buildings, although they were little more than vague black smudges in the gloom. The middle one, however, had lights in its windows, dim, flickering lights generated by candle or lantern rather than electricity, and he assumed it was from here that the voices originated.

Still shining his flashlight on the ground so he would not trip over holes or rocks or roots, still holding tightly to his tire iron in case he should meet anyone on the way, Gary walked slowly forward toward the ranch, eventually finding a footpath that led between trees and over a dry creek bed to the buildings. As he drew closer, he could see the white cross that Reyn had described, gray in the darkness and taller than a man, painted on the rock wall directly above the ranch house.

No guards or sentries had been posted outside, as he’d feared, and Gary shut off his flashlight and hid for a moment behind the thin trunk of a polelike pine, trying to determine the safest approach. Through the curtainless window straight across from him, he could see a large space—what had probably been a living room once upon a time—and a group of silhouetted figures standing there holding hands. There were at least ten people in this prayer circle, he estimated, plus who knew how many in the building’s other rooms. Somewhere inside was Joan, he was sure, but at the moment he could think of no way to find her, let alone rescue her.

He was about to try sneaking around to the back of the house when, from down the trail behind him, from the way he had come, an explosion ripped through the night. He started, nearly dropping the flashlight, and turned, looking toward the source of the sound. He saw fire through the trees, bright, thin flames a half mile back that caused orange light to dance up the face of the opposite cliffside.

Reyn, he thought.

And smiled.

Thirty-two

Joan vomited.

It was her best and only defense.

The door had closed behind Father—she could hear it, if not see it—and there was suddenly more light in the room. He had brought his own candle or lantern. She expected him to come around and confront her, but he did not, and in the silence of the room she heard the rustling of clothes, the sound of pants falling to the floor. She knew what he was doing, and her stomach knotted up with dread. Moments later, he presented himself. He was naked and aroused, and she was sickened by the sight of his body. He was old and decrepit, and his sagging chest and scarred, wrinkled skin revolted her.

How old was he? She’d tried to calculate his age while at the Home and determined that he had to be at least in his late eighties or early nineties, although when she’d told this to Mark and Rebekah, they’d both said with complete confidence that he was over two hundred years old. She’d considered that idea ridiculous at the time, more brainwashing propaganda, but the thought chilled her now. She would believe anything at this point, and her eyes focused on a scar near his right shoulder that looked like it might have come from an arrow.

He moved in front of her.

“You will bear me sons, Ruth. God has willed it.”

That was when she vomited.

The idea came to her spontaneously. In a quicksilver thought process focused solely on self-preservation, she recalled how germophobic Father had always seemed to her with his endless cleansing rituals and his insistence that others carry out his wishes, and simultaneously she remembered how as a child she’d been so squeamish that she could make herself throw up just by thinking of gross and disgusting things. Her brain put the two together, and as he approached her, she thought of excrement floating in milk.

And puked.

She turned her head to the side so she wouldn’t choke on her own vomit, but the spew only went so far and some of it flowed back into the indentation where she lay on the mattress. She felt a disgusting warm wetness against her cheek, smelled a horrible putrid stench and promptly threw up again.

Father stepped back, horrified, his erection gone, and though she could tell from the expression on his face that he wanted more than anything else to hit her and beat her and hurt her, to punish her, he could not. He was too repulsed, too afraid of contamination, and he gave her a wide berth as he walked back around the head of the bed and began putting his clothes back on. Joan could hear him gagging, trying not to throw up, which explained why he wasn’t lecturing her and railing against her, and several seconds later, he was out of the room, taking his light with him and slamming the door.

She flipped her head away from the part of the mattress on which she’d thrown up, and while that lessened the smell somewhat, or at least the immediacy of it, she could still feel the cooling puke on her shoulder and side, and the sour taste still filled her mouth. It was all she could do not to vomit again, though she doubted there was much left in her stomach to regurgitate.

She was safe for the moment, but she knew that Father would probably send someone else in here to clean her up, and then she would get it even worse. The self-preservation instinct never thought ahead or contemplated consequences, and she realized now that her actions could very well have hurt her in the long run.

Now that she considered it, though…

If they untied her in order to change the bedsheet and wipe her off, she might be able to get in a few licks, might be able to bite or kick or hit or even get away. She quickly thought about her options. She might have a chance here, and she needed to prepare herself to take it.

Unless Father didn’t send someone to clean her up, and punished her by making her suffer and lie in the puddle of her own drying vomit.

Or decided to kill her.

To hell with the consequences. She was glad she’d done what she had, and even if she ended up being beaten, raped or killed, she took great satisfaction in knowing that she had pierced Father’s implacable, arrogant armor. Just remembering the look of horror on his face, the sound of him gagging as he quickly put on his clothes, gave her a feeling of victory.

From somewhere outside came an eerie cry, an agonizing wail that was faint but clear. She still had no idea where in the world she was, but the primitive walls within her sight line suggested country rather than city, and lying here in this dim room, hearing that wail, she imagined some sort of monster prowling through the woods. She shivered, frightened on an instinctive gut level. The cry came again. In fact it never went away, only ebbed and flowed in its intensity, and now it sounded human, the cry of a man in serious physical or emotional pain.

There was a commotion in the other room, and at first she thought it had to do with her and what she had done, but when no one came in, and she heard Father yelling and was able to make out the words “you” and “again,” she allowed herself a glimmer of hope. He was angry. At his own people. And that was good. It meant things were not going according to his plan.

She wondered if the Homesteaders had been discovered, if they were going to have to leave this place—wherever it was. Maybe they would forget about her in their haste and leave her behind and she would be rescued.

Maybe they would just kill her because it would be too much trouble to take her along.

She tried in vain to make out what Father was saying. He was still yelling, and she could also hear the movement of feet, many feet.

What was going on in there?

She listened.

Waited.

Thirty-three

Gary faced away from the far-off fire and focused his attention once again on the ranch house in front of him. He had no idea what had happened and could only assume that Reyn must have figured out a way to blow up one or more of the Homesteaders’ vehicles. He’d probably dropped a match down one of the gas tanks or something, and while the sound of the explosion and the sight of the flames had immediately filled him with a sense of gratification, he wished his friend had found a quieter way to decommission the cars.

Seconds after the blast, a line of men and women came running out of the ranch house. It was too dark to see any of them clearly, but he discerned no limps, no malformed appendages, nothing to indicate that any of them were Father’s Children. They carried neither lanterns nor flashlights and moved without speaking through the darkness, not taking the road but jogging single file down a parallel path he had not noticed before.

He counted twenty of them, maybe twenty-one or twenty-two. It was hard to tell. Were these all of the Homesteaders who were left? Gary wondered. Were these all of the penitents and all of the followers from throughout the entire country? He hoped so but doubted it. Not that it really mattered. Because while there might still be pockets of believers scattered among various other states, Father was here. That was the important thing.

Cut off the head and the body will die.

Gary didn’t know where he’d heard that before, but it was true, and he knew that if Father were captured—or killed—his followers would dissipate; the Homesteaders would be through. Gary looked toward the path down which the men and women had gone, wishing there was a way for him to warn Reyn that they were coming, but even if his cell phone worked in this canyon, he didn’t want to draw attention to himself by speaking aloud or inadvertantly give away Reyn’s position by setting off the ringtone of his friend’s phone. Besides, at the rate the Homesteaders were moving, they would reach Reyn before Gary could take out his phone, turn it on and make the call.

He needed to concentrate on finding Joan and getting her out of here before they came back.

The room behind the window he’d been watching now appeared to be empty, but Gary didn’t dare trust that that was the case. Carefully, he crept forward, crouching low, until he reached the building. He paused, waiting to see if he’d been spotted, but no one came out, and though he listened, he heard no sound. His right hand was starting to hurt, and he loosened his grip on the tire iron, which he’d been clutching as tightly as he could.

Moving slowly, he sidled along the wall until he reached the window, then allowed himself a sneak peek around the edge of the frame. He saw a sparsely furnished room lit by two lanterns at opposite ends. There were no people, which meant no Joan, and he quickly pulled himself back, not wanting to be discovered should someone enter. His heart was pumping loudly enough to muffle his hearing, and he wondered if Joan was in the house at all.

Maybe she was dead.

No. She couldn’t be. But he crept along the side of the wall more quickly, with renewed purpose, and when he reached another window on the side of the building and found it dark, he shone his flashlight through the glass without hesitation. Weakened by the dusty glass, his beam shone upon a bed, a table, a chair. Through another doorway across what had to be a hall, he could see dim flickering, as from a candle, and he hurried around the next corner in an effort to reach that room.

Only…

The rear of the house had no windows. His flashlight beam played upon a solid wood wall facing the cliff behind the ranch. A feeling of panic welled within him, and he forced himself to calm down as he retreated back the way he’d come. He reached the front of the house, making sure to stay in the shadows—

And there was a gunshot down the road.

A gunshot?

One of the Homesteaders must have gotten Reyn.

It was like a punch to the gut, and his first instinct was to run and check on his friend in case there was something he could do.

Another gunshot.

Two shots? Reyn had to be dead. But Gary could not allow himself to stop and dwell on it. He had to find Joan—although how he could hope to get her out of here now he had no idea.

He clutched his weapon tightly. As far as he could tell, he was all alone. No one seemed to have been left behind when the Homesteaders had run out to investigate the explosion. Even if someone was in the house, Gary had his tire iron and could easily subdue—

Kill

—the person. It was time for him to take action, and without further thought he ran to the door through which the Homesteaders had exited. It had closed but was knobless and unlocked. He put his flashlight down on the ground, then yanked the door open, rushing inside, both hands on the tire iron, ready to swing.

As he’d seen from the window, there was no one in the front room. From a hook next to the door hung a lantern, and another lantern was suspended from a bigger hook near the door on the opposite side of the room. Between the two, in the center of the floor, was a round table on which sat a large black Bible. The table’s chairs had all been pushed against the wall, and on top of the seats were piled boxes filled with prayer scrolls.

The room smelled woodsy, piney, the same distinctive odor that had characterized the fires at his dorm and at the library. If Reyn had not recognized the scent, Gary would not be here right now, and he was grateful to his friend for remembering where he had encountered the pitch before.

Unless, of course, Joan wasn’t here.

In which case Reyn and Stacy had died for nothing.

Anger nearly overwhelmed him at the thought, and he ran through the room, tire iron over his shoulder, ready to take out anyone in his way. He almost tripped over a metal bucket near the opposite door. It was filled with a thick black liquid, and he had time to register that it was probably the pitch before he was in a short hall. He spotted the dark room he’d seen through the window, as well as what appeared to be a kitchen, but there was another room at the back of the house, with a faint light glowing around the edges of the doorway, and he hurried over and ran in.

And there was Joan.

She was lying on a bed in the middle of the windowless chamber, facing away from the door, and she looked awful. She was half-naked, and her cheeks, neck and shoulders were covered with what looked like drying vomit. Her face was red and swollen. But she was alive, and the instant he moved in front of her, she burst into tears. Tears began falling from his eyes, too, but this was no time to dawdle, he had to get her out, and he immediately he began working on her restraints—thick rope that had been tied into slipknots over and over again until the slack was down to nothing.

“We’re getting out of here,” he said. And because he didn’t know what more to say, he said it again: “We’re getting out of here.”

“How—” She tried to talk through her tears but the words were little more than hiccupped sobs. “How did you find me?” She sniffled hard and heavily. “Where are we?”

“It’s a long story, but we’re on a ranch in a nature preserve in the middle of the desert. And we’ve got to get out of here fast. The Homesteaders are gone, but they could be back any minute.” He wished he had a knife or longer fingernails. He was still on the first knot and not getting very far.

“Are we in California? What day is this?”

She’d been drugged. He should have known, should have guessed, and as he finally started to unravel the knot keeping down her left hand, he hoped that she would be able to walk. There was no way he’d be able to carry her.

His mind was racing, covering twenty topics a second. He was trying to release her from her bonds and at the same time figure out how to get out of this canyon without being seen. They probably wouldn’t be able to use Reyn’s car, he figured, so he was trying to estimate how far it was to the preserve’s nature center and how long they would have to remain hidden until someone showed up to open the place in the morning. And shouldn’t he tell Joan that he loved her? That was how it worked in movies during rescue scenes. The protagonists usually kissed, too, although that was not going to happen. She had thrown up, and it still smelled, and he was trying to hold his breath as much as possible so he wouldn’t gag. And—

There was noise from outside the house.

A voice.

“Ruth!”

Father.

Gary froze for a second, then began furiously pulling at the knot. A fiber from the rope stabbed his index finger, but he ignored it and kept working.

“Ruth!”

The voice was louder.

He could sense Joan’s panic, but somehow that calmed him. One of them had to keep a level head, and he focused on the task at hand as his fingers finally loosened a loop of rope, pulling the end free. At least both of them were smart enough to keep quiet. He finished untying her arms, then untied her right leg while she took care of the left. Quickly, Gary helped her sit up, then stand. Picking up a corner of the bedsheet, she bent down, wiping the vomit from her chin, mouth, neck and shoulders. Gary pulled off his T-shirt and put it on her. It was long but not quite long enough, and she tugged down the bottom hem.

He didn’t kiss her, but he hugged her. “I love you,” he said.

“I love you, too.”

“Ruth!”

Father was in the house.

Gary picked up his tire iron. They needed to get out of here. Now. They could no doubt find a hiding place within one of the rooms, but they would be found very easily if they did so, and when the Homesteaders returned, escape would become virtually impossible. If they were ever to make it out, this was the time. He peeked around the corner. The hallway was empty, and he turned back toward Joan, motioning silently for her to follow. Still holding down the bottom of the T-shirt, she moved next to him—

—and screamed.

Gary swiveled around.

Father.

He was standing in the center of the hallway, and Gary had never seen eyes so cold in any human being. He had no idea how Father had gotten here so quickly. It was as though he’d just appeared, and a jolt of fear passed through Gary as he looked upon that fierce, hard visage. Every instinct he had was telling him to run back into the room and slam the door, but when Joan screamed again, it broke the spell, and anger filled the space within him. This was the man who had kidnapped Joan, who was responsible for the murders of Reyn and Stacy and Brian and Teri Lim and Joan’s parents and who knew how many others. He was an evil motherfucker whose twisted preachings had caused the ruination of dozens, perhaps hundreds, of lives over several generations.

“The Lord shall smite you!” Father shouted in a deep, booming voice.

Gary rushed him.

He hadn’t known he was going to do it until he did, but he raised his tire iron and charged, intending to beat the bastard’s brains out.

Father stumbled back, and at that moment Gary knew for sure that he was just a man. He saw alarm on the bearded face, but evidence of Father’s humanity, rather than engendering sympathy, served to stoke Gary’s fury. He dashed down the hall, ready to bring down the tire iron on the son of a bitch’s head.

Father retreated into the front room and from somewhere produced a weapon of his own: a long shepherd’s staff. It must have been leaning against a wall, and Gary cursed himself for not having noticed it earlier. Nevertheless, that overgrown cane was no match for his metal rod, and he moved into the room, Joan right behind him.

With his beard and his staff, Father looked like Moses, but he was quicker and more agile than he appeared, and before Gary knew what had hit him, the long length of wood had lashed out and struck his arm—hard—causing him to cry out in pain and drop the tire iron. Father smiled cruelly.

Scrambling, Gary grabbed the tool and backed away, instinctively crouching low. The staff swung around again, barely missing his head. He was close enough to Father to do some damage, and he hit the old man’s shin with the metal bar. There was definitely a connection—he felt the solidity of the impact through his hand—but Father’s reaction was not what he expected.

Because there was no reaction.

The man’s legs did not buckle; he was not knocked off his feet; he did not even cry out. Instead, he stood his ground, and his staff came crashing down on Gary’s back. Gary fell to the floor, pain whipping through his body from the point of contact like lightning, a jagged bolt that hit muscle and organ and bone on the way. He rolled to the right, wincing in agony as the end of the staff hit the floor inches from his face.

Looking up, he saw Father’s hard eyes and thin, heartless smile. He cringed, waiting for the blow that would kill him.

With a wild, animalistic cry, Joan launched herself at Father. She leapt on him, knocking him over, clawing at his face with her raked nails as he went down. “I hate you!” she screamed. “I hate you, I hate you, I hate you! You’re a liar and a murderer and you’re wrong! You’re wrong! You’re wrong! About everything!”

It was a strange thing to yell, especially under the circumstances, but Gary understood. And he knew how hard it was for her to say those words. She’d been brought up in Father’s religion, and no matter how far she’d strayed, no matter what he’d done, there’d always been a part of her that still believed.

Father threw her off, but Gary lurched to his knees and instantly took her place, landing hard on Father’s chest, pinning down the old man’s arms.

And then he was pounding Father with his fists, hitting him hard, and it felt good. His knuckles connected with Father’s nose and cheek and jaw, and with each blow there was a satisfying crunch. Blood splattered and soaked into his beard, and though the old man did not make a sound, and even stopped struggling after the first few seconds, Gary kept whaling on him.

It was Joan who said tiredly, finally, “Stop.”

He paused, watching her get shakily to her feet, his mind still filled with thoughts of the evil this man had done, every fiber of his being focused on punishment and revenge. Gary was shaking, adrenaline pumping through his bloodstream, but slowly he stood, looking down all the while. Father did not move. He did not even appear to be breathing.

Was he dead?

Gary wasn’t sure, but part of him hoped so. He didn’t relish the idea of being a murderer, of killing a man, but the truth was that he would feel much better if Father was no longer alive.

He stepped away from Father’s body toward Joan, who had backed up and was standing near the hallway door. His knuckles hurt, and his fists were covered with blood. He wanted to find a bathroom and wash up, but they had to get out of here before the other Homesteaders returned. If the others came back and found Father dead, they would kill both him and Joan on sight.

“Look out!”

In the split second before Joan’s warning cry, he heard the tap of wood on wood, and his mind instantly put the two together. He reacted instinctively, dropping to the floor and rolling to the side just as Father’s staff slammed onto the floorboards where he’d been only seconds prior. Gary jumped to his feet. Bloody and very much alive, the old man stood there like some unstoppable monster, grinning, the few teeth that remained in his mouth dripping red.

Before Gary’s rattled brain could even contemplate a reaction, Joan had picked up the bucket next to the door, taking several quick steps into the center of the room and throwing the contents of the bucket right into Father’s face. The thick black liquid splashed onto him and around him, causing him to cry out and drop his staff, pitch running viscously down his head and off his flailing arms.

Thinking fast, Joan grabbed the hanging lantern and dashed it onto the spreading puddle.

Glass shattered, and the floor exploded with a whoosh, a breath-sucking vacuum that pulled the air around them into the center of the room, creating a fireball that shot up to the ceiling. Within seconds, everything was in flames, and Father was caught in the middle of it all. His beard was burning, as were his clothes, and he screamed in agony as he staggered around, bumping into a wall, then bouncing back and hitting the table.

He looked like the Burning Man, Gary thought, and recalled the hallucination he’d experienced after being drugged at the desert festival. In his vision, the Burning Man had lurched jerkily, like a Ray Harryhausen figure, and that was the way Father looked now as he headed blindly toward the line of flaming chairs, arms outstretched.

They had to get out quickly, before the fire spread, and Gary pulled Joan by the hand toward the part of the house he had not yet explored. The last room was indeed a kitchen, and next to a dilapidated wood-burning stove was a door that led outside. He pushed Joan ahead of him, and the two of them emerged into the open air, gasping for breath. Without pausing, they hurried around the corner to the front of the building, where smoke was pouring from the window and the doorway, the billowing black backlit by flames. Gary smelled the unique woodsy odor of the fire starter. Abrego’s Pitch, he suddenly remembered.

With a final anguished cry, a sound more monster than man, Father stumbled outside, through the open front door, and fell to the ground. Joan gasped, grabbing Gary’s hand, squeezing it tight, but Gary stood there impassively, watching the old man’s death throes, taking a grim satisfaction in the way the burning figure jerked weakly beneath the flames before collapsing in a charred heap.

Joan was crying, turning her face to his shoulder. He felt her warm tears on his skin. On the other side of her, his eyes registered movement, but he couldn’t make out what it was. Seconds later, he saw Reyn running from the darkness into the light of the flames.

Reyn!

For a second he was confused. Isn’t Reyn dead?

His friend stopped next to him, shouting to be heard over the crackling fire that had almost completely engulfed the house. “Sheriffs are here! A whole group of them!” Reyn was breathing heavily. He didn’t have the lug wrench, Gary noticed. “Williams must have called! They shot one of the Homesteaders who tried to attack! They’re arresting the others!”

“I heard an explosion,” Gary said numbly.

“Me.” Reyn held up a book of matches he took from his shirt pocket. “I made a wick, put it in one of their gas tanks. Just before the sheriffs arrived.”

Was it over? Was that it? Gary didn’t know, but he was still filled with a strong sense of urgency. Reyn, he saw, was politely looking away from Joan, who was no longer holding onto the hem of the T-shirt. She noticed at the same time he did and, embarrassed, pulled the shirt down on both sides until everything was covered.

Gary looked over at Reyn. “Are there a lot of cops?”

“Sheriffs. And there were three cars’ worth. There might have been more coming. I don’t know.”

“Can they handle all those Homesteaders?”

“I think so. They’re armed, they’ve already shot one of them, and these guys don’t seem like they’re willing to be martyrs.” He glanced anxiously around. “What about—”

“Father?” Gary nodded at the burning form in front of them. “You’re looking at him.”

Reyn’s eyes widened. “What happened?”

Gary shook his head. “It’s a long story.” And he stood there, staring silently, watching as the blackened, smoking form lost the last vestiges of its human shape and became a smoldering lump of nothing.

This is for Joan, he thought. This is for Stacy. This is for Brian.

This is for everyone.

Thirty-four

Joan pulled away from Gary’s bare shoulder and wiped her eyes. She could not look at Father’s burning body, so she faced the opposite direction, where the darkness of the canyon was suddenly rent by flashing blue and red lights as a sheriff’s car arrived.

The vehicle pulled to a stop several yards away, on a flat section of ground. A deputy not much older than herself emerged from the passenger door, with a heavyset middle-aged man walking around the car from the driver’s side. Both had their weapons drawn, but before they could say anything, Reyn shouted, “She’s the one who was kidnapped! We’re the ones who came after her!”

The deputies approached, still not putting away their guns. “Is anyone else here?”

Gary gestured toward Father’s blackened form. “Just him.”

Joan could not look.

“He’s the one who was in charge of everything, the leader of the cult. They called him ‘Father.’ ”

The deputies were taking no chances. Their weapons were still out as they walked up. The young one could not seem to take his eyes from the fire. “What happened?” he asked, motioning toward the billowing smoke.

Gary told him. From the beginning. It was an abridged version, but it started at Burning Man and hit the highlights. The two deputies listened without commenting, although it seemed pretty clear that they were familiar with at least part of the story, maybe from Williams, maybe from the news. When Gary came to his description of finding her tied up, Joan tuned out, not wanting to hear it. In her mind, she saw Father’s wrinkled, naked body, and her muscles tensed as she recalled the disgust and terror she had felt.

Gary finished talking. The older deputy was calling someone on his walkie-talkie, though there seemed to be no real urgency in the request he made for someone to come and put out the fire. Joan herself didn’t care if the entire canyon burned down.

The young deputy looked at Joan, his eyes quickly taking in the T-shirt before glancing respectfully away. “Do you need shoes?” he asked. “Or a blanket? There’s an extra pair of boots in the car. They might not fit perfectly, but you could put them on.”

“Thank you,” she said sincerely.

He hurried back to the vehicle, returning a moment later with a pair of clunky hiking boots and a gray flannel blanket. She unfolded the blanket, twisted it into a type of sarong and tied it around her. She leaned on Gary while she put on the boots one at a time. They were too big for her feet and she wasn’t wearing socks, but it was better than going barefoot.

“We have a lot of questions,” the young deputy said.

Gary nodded tiredly as Joan finished tying the shoes.

“I’m going to have to ask you to come with us to the office. It’s back in Palmdale, about forty miles away.”

Joan stood and all three of them nodded their acquiescence. The older deputy had walked over to Father’s corpse and was bending down, examining it. Joan hazarded a quick look and saw that the flames engulfing the body appeared to be completely out.

Another sheriff’s vehicle pulled up, this one an SUV.

“Do you need a ride?” the young deputy asked. “We’ll probably be out here for a while, but we can take you back.”

“No, we have a car,” Gary replied.

“My car,” Reyn said.

He was crying, Joan noticed, and she suddenly wondered where Stacy was, where Brian was. In all the commotion, she had not thought to question why they weren’t there. She started to ask, but then her eyes met Gary’s, and at that moment she knew. She was filled with a sudden aching sense of loss, and she looked again at Reyn, wanting to say something, wanting to comfort him, but the expression on his face was one of such complete and utter devastation that she knew anything she said would be useless and ineffectual, would probably make things worse, so she remained silent.

“Wait by your car, then,” the deputy said. “Someone will be heading back shortly to transport the detainees. You can follow them.” He spoke into his walkie-talkie, informing the law enforcement agents who were rounding up the Homesteaders that the three of them were coming.

She felt exhausted as they started walking across the flat ground to the dirt road, the trees, rocks and walls of the canyon pulsing blue and red in time to the car lights.

Father was dead.

She was glad, but she felt no happiness. Her parents were dead, too. So were Stacy and Brian. The Home, the site of her childhood, was gone, and though she had long ago left behind Father’s teachings, seeing a curled scrap of burned paper tumble past—one of the prayer scrolls—brought home to her what was lost and filled her with a sadness she’d not expected and could not explain.

Gary was here, though, and that was all that mattered. She loved him, and he loved her, and they had survived. She glanced over at him, seeing in his shadowed, soot-covered face the older man he would become. She knew that no matter what else happened in her life, no one else could ever be there for her to the extent that he had, no one else would do anything as heroic or selfless. But she also knew that they were young, that things changed, that despite the way they felt at the moment, they might not stay together forever. Ten years from now, they might be married—or they might be strangers, living on opposite sides of the country, involved with other people, with the events of this semester having receded into memory, recalled with decreasing frequency as the years passed by.

That was tomorrow, though, and today was today, and she took his hand, held it tightly and together they followed Reyn, walking up the dirt road, into the darkness, into the future.