“Are you saying you wouldn’t leave Charlotte, regardless of the reason?”
“I am saying: to do so would destroy my relationship with my father and my sister.”
Ward thought for a moment. “That’s good enough for me.” He picked up his phone and opened a global map. After tapping the screen a few times, he handed the phone to Jarrod. “This is Holy Mountain, the headquarters of a worldwide cult. It’s populated by roughly one thousand people, and it’s surrounded by a massive wall. They have their own law enforcement, so attempts by the county and state to enter the city have been stalled by legalities. And we are fairly certain the cult has members in Denver, maybe even D.C. We need a way in—something that will trick them into giving us evidence we can use against them. But we keep hitting dead ends.”
Jarrod leaned forward. “You’re leaving out details. Stop it.”
Ward fidgeted. “There are allegations of abuse against children.”
“And?”
“And what? You have to understand why I would hide that from you. After what happened in Kinshasa…” He shook his head. “And I’m talking about last year. You choked a State Department asset to death for crying out loud. And that was before…” he motioned at Jarrod’s armored chest, “all of this.”
“There’s something else at stake, and you know exactly what I mean. Tell me what it is, or I walk.”
Color returned to Ward’s face. He jabbed a finger toward the house and said, “That is at stake, Jarrod. Your chance to leave everything behind and start again. You killed a lot of people under my watch, and a day doesn’t pass without me wishing things could be different—not for them, but for you. If you had put down the sword when you should have, Melody and Joshua would still be alive.”
Jarrod’s head twitched, and he leaned back. For a long moment, he didn’t seem to breathe, and he stared out the window.
As Ward’s blood began to cool, he was hit with a tidal wave of regret. “Jarrod…I’m so sorry. I never should have—”
Jarrod held up a hand and turned his head. His chin rose and fell like an antenna being calibrated.
Ward waited in patient silence, thinking Jarrod was struggling against his emotions. But then he realized Jarrod was listening for something. He swallowed and said, “What is it?”
“Someone is talking to my father on the phone. It’s…Kayla.”
It was as if Ward had fallen through a trapdoor. His stomach turned upside down and his chest involuntarily squeezed the air from his lungs. He couldn’t think of what else to say, so he stammered, “Wh—what’s she saying?”
“It sounds like the same conversation you had with him. She’s trying to tell him I’m still alive.”
Ward felt heat building around his collar, and sweat beaded in the small of his back. “Uh-huh. What else?”
“She’s…excited. Panicking, I think. Which is unusual for her. She wants him to give me a message.”
Ward knew what was coming next. His voice trembled as he said, “Jarrod, don’t listen.”
Several seconds passed, then Jarrod’s head turned slowly toward Ward. Claws grew from his fingertips, piercing the seat cushion beside him. “Eric has been taken? That is what you were hiding from me?”
“I—we don’t know what happened,” Ward protested. “All we know is he hasn’t made contact and—” A black hand clamped down on his mouth, smothering his words.
Jarrod held a finger against his lips and bobbed his head left and right. “Quiet. Something else is happening.” Slowly, he loosened his grip on Ward’s mouth and met his questioning gaze. “They’ve come for her.”
16
Craig, Colorado
Kayla’s pace quickened as the hotel came into view. Her breakdown in the park had been short-lived. After a few minutes of despondence, a moment of clarity arrived. There was something she could do to help Eric. Ward wouldn’t be happy about it, but she didn’t care. If he didn’t have the stomach to make the right decision, she would make it for him.
The phone trilled against her ear, and she prayed for Adam to pick up. When she reached his voicemail, she dialed again. Then again. Finally, the call went through, and a gruff voice spoke.
“Thomas, you’re not going to change my mind about this. Please, stop harassing me so I can get some sleep.”
Kayla stopped in her tracks. “Adam, is that you?”
Two seconds of silence, then, “Yes. Who is this?”
“This is Kayla Rei—Kayla Larson. I’m sorry to bother you this late at night, but I didn’t know who else to call. I need your help.”
“Is everything alright? Thomas stopped by earlier; I assumed he is in the middle of an investigation, but he wouldn’t give me any details.”
She resumed walking and cupped her hand around her mouth so she could speak softly. “I’m fine. But this isn’t really about me. I need to talk to you about Jarrod.”
“I’m listening.”
“I—” she broke into a trot to cross the street. “I don’t know how to say this. Heck, you might already know what I’m going to tell you. Jarrod is, um…”
“Go ahead, dear.”
“Jarrod is alive. Eric and I found him in Africa. We even spent some time with him.”
“All right.”
She frowned. All right wasn’t the response she was expecting. “Mr. Hawkins, I’m sorry we didn’t tell you before. Jarrod’s situation is…complicated, and we didn’t think it was our place to speak for him.”
“I understand completely. Don’t beat yourself up for it, and tell Eric the same. That man carries too much guilt already.”
Kayla took a deep breath and pinched the phone against her shoulder as she pulled the hotel door open. There was no one in the lobby, so she moved to the edge of the room and continued speaking. “Adam, is he there with you?”
He sighed. “I’ll tell you the same thing I told Thomas: until I know what this is about, I can’t help you.”
Kayla ducked into the ice machine room and lowered her voice further. “I need you to give him a message. Eric is in trouble. He’s been taken prisoner by a group of cultists in Holy Mountain, Colorado, and I haven’t heard from him since this morning. Adam, if we don’t get him out soon, they might kill him.”
Adam didn’t answer right away, so Kayla took the opportunity to dart down the hallway to her room.
Finally, he said, “This is something you can’t handle on your own?”
Kayla slid her keycard into the door. “I wouldn’t ask if I thought there was another way. If you see Jarrod, tell him—”
The door flew open on its own, and a pair of arms reached out and grabbed her. She dropped the phone and cried out, but the man thumped his knuckles against her throat. The door slammed shut behind her, and a second man stepped in to wrap her in a bear hug.
As she coughed and writhed against her assailants, she noticed a third man who was talking on a cell phone.
“We have her, my Lord. I will call you when it is finished.”
With one man holding her wrists and another pinning her arms down, she had no way to reach the Ruger .38 special concealed in her waistband. If she was going to win this fight, she needed the weapon to even the odds.
Twisting her forearms inward and down, she managed to pull her left wrist free. At the same time, she threw her head back, crushing the nose of the man behind her. He let go, freeing her left arm completely.
She normally shot right-handed but was well-practiced at drawing with both hands and wouldn’t need precision to hit her target at this distance. Hooking her left hand beneath her shirt, she grasped the pistol’s grip. She pulled it free and spun it around, her finger searching for the trigger. But before she could point the business-end in the right direction, the third man stepped in and seized her arm.
He was stronger than the others, and he easily overpowered her. He wrenched her elbow outward, then plucked the Ruger from her grasp and tucked it into his back pocket.
She tried to scre
am again, but the man with the broken nose held her mouth shut. She couldn’t cry for aid and she’d lost her pistol, but she was far from helpless. She swung her knee up, and her right hiking boot found soft flesh between the first attacker’s legs. He let go of her arm and stepped back, leaving the other two to wrangle their captive.
The man behind her tried to grab her free arm, but his efforts were half-hearted—he didn’t want to get his face too close to the back of her skull. He pressed one hand against her back and squeezed her mouth with the other, arching his body away from her.
She took full advantage of his awkward position. Pressing her face into his hand, she opened her mouth, curled her lips in, and bit down. As her incisors dug into his palm, she twisted to the right and brought her right elbow up, hitting him in the jaw.
The second assailant yanked his hand away and backed into the corner so he could massage his jaw.
The third man groaned in frustration. “Do I have to do everything myself?” He tugged on her arm, throwing her onto the bed.
Before she could recover, he was on top of her, digging his knee into her back and forcing her face into the pillow. Something pricked her in the shoulder, but she ignored it. For now, all she could think about was taking her next breath. She squirmed and shifted her head, but the man on top of her was too heavy. Too strong.
The darkness was closing in, but she felt strangely at peace. If they raped her, beat her to death, and dumped her body in the middle of the desert, it didn’t matter. Soon, Jarrod would be on his way. Eric would be rescued, and these men would live just long enough to see their worst nightmares come true.
She stopped fighting, and before she blacked out completely, she reached out to Eric with her thoughts. I love you. More than anything.
17
Charlotte, North Carolina
Ward’s head slammed into the window as the sedan careened from the county road onto the highway. He swore, gripped the seat in front of him, and leaned toward the center of the car. “I taught you better than this. You’re going to get us killed.”
Jarrod pinned the accelerator to the floor, redlining the tachometer. He feathered the handbrake just enough to slide through a tight curve and mumbled, “We’ll be fine.”
Ward swallowed the bile pooling at the back of his throat. “Could you at least turn the headlights on?”
“I can see better without them.”
This was madness. They had already reported the incident to Morgan County law enforcement. What did Jarrod expect to do from North Carolina? “Will you at least tell me where we're going?”
“The airport.” He picked up the phone and tossed it into the back seat “If you want to help, find me a flight to Denver.”
Ward picked up the phone, then shook his head. “There is no way you’ll get through airport security. It’s a waste of time.”
“I won’t be going through security. I’ll be going around it.”
“Jarrod, it’s after midnight. There may be flights coming in, but I doubt anything will be going out.”
“I have contingencies in mind, but I need you to check.”
“Alright, but—look out!”
The sedan was hurtling toward a T-intersection, far too fast to make the ninety-degree turn. At the last moment, Jarrod cranked the wheel to the left, cutting the corner and sliding across the wide gravel shoulder. The nose of the vehicle spun wildly until it was almost facing the direction they had come. Miraculously, Jarrod maintained control, and they bounced over the next shoulder and skidded into the far lane.
Ward took a deep breath and wiped a spot of vomit from his chin. He took a few moments to compose himself, then dutifully unlocked his phone and did a quick search for flights leaving the Charlotte airport. “What’s plan B? Because nothing is leaving for the next five hours.”
Jarrod mashed the brakes. The phone flew out of Ward’s hand and into the front seat as Jarrod navigated onto a side road, leaving long streaks of rubber behind. “There’s an airstrip not far from here. I’ll commandeer a Cessna and fly there myself.”
“Hold on, you’re going to fly halfway across the country in a prop plane?”
Jarrod didn’t respond.
“Even if you didn’t have to stop to refuel, which you will, it would take you twice as long to get there. You’d be better off waiting for the first airliner to leave Charlotte.”
Jarrod let off the accelerator.
“Or, if you can tolerate waiting two more hours, we can leave from the Charleston airport in a Gulfstream. I chartered an aircrew to fly me out to Colorado tonight, and they’re making preparations as we speak. The pilot is an old friend of mine, and I know I could convince him to bring you onboard without listing you on the manifest.” Ward pondered for a moment, trying to think of a way to sweeten the pot. “I can even contact a pilot in Denver and have a helo waiting for us with rotors turning. But please...promise me you’ll avoid unnecessary violence.”
Jarrod brought the vehicle to a smooth stop, as he did in the years when he served as Ward’s personal driver. He handed Ward the phone and said, “I promise.”
18
September 4th
Holy Mountain, Colorado
This can’t be happening. Not again.
Eric dug his fingers into the narrow gap around the door. The steel was smooth, and the hinges were on the outside. There was nothing in the room to jimmy the latch with; his prison cell was an empty cube of concrete with a rubber-matted floor. There were no windows, no lights. The only illumination came through the slim cracks around the door. He hammered his fist against the door and shouted obscenities at his captors, but as before, no one answered.
Overcome with fatigue, he lowered himself to the rubberized floor. He dabbed his hand against the thin jumpsuit they had clothed him with—no doubt to make him easier to transport when they put a bullet in his head—and he felt slick blood between his fingers. A desperate sigh escaped him, and he knocked against the door one more time with his elbow. This time, to his surprise, someone responded.
“Will you stop? They can’t hear you anyway.”
Eric dropped onto his stomach and spoke through the space at the bottom of the door. “Who is that?”
“Who do you think it is? Cameron Rollins, as usual.”
Eric’s eyes widened. “Cameron? Do you know where we are right now?”
A chuckle echoed in the hallway. “In the Punishment Room—my second home.”
“And…where is the Punishment Room?”
“You’ve seriously never been here before? You must be a Rasmussen. It’s in the temple basement.”
Eric placed his palm against the door. “Cameron, I need to get out of this place. Is there anything in your cell that you can—”
“You need to get out of here? I’d chew my left arm off to switch places with you. Suck it up and enjoy your stay in the box.”
After a moment’s hesitation, Eric said, “Are you alright, Cameron?”
“I’m pretty frickin’ far from alright,” he scoffed. “But I’d rather have them rip me apart from the outside than the inside.”
“What do you mean?”
“Don’t act like you don’t know. I’ve heard you sickos talking about it—how you think it’ll change me into a proper Adherent.”
“Cameron, I’m not—”
“Well I’ve got news for you, douchebag, forcing myself on an eleven-year-old girl isn’t going to bring me enlightenment, even if the rest of you enjoy it so much.”
Eric was stunned. “What?”
“Apotheosis, numb-nuts.”
“Cameron, I honestly have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“Yeah, right.”
“I’m not who you think I am—my name is Eric Larson, and I’m a private investigator.
The Punishment Room settled into a deep silence, then Cameron said, “Prove it.”
Eric chewed the inside of his cheek. “I’ve been trying to get inside the mountain for the past
week. I managed to get a video of you calling for help, which we used as leverage to have you evaluated by a psychologist. But things didn’t go the way we planned. For whatever reason, the psychologist didn’t report any signs of abuse or trauma.”
“Because he was an Adherent. You had me evaluated by an Adherent.”
Eric winced. “That’s what I was afraid of. I’m sorry, Cameron—we had no idea.”
“I guessed that already.” Cameron let out a deep breath. “Who hired you to rescue me?”
“Well…actually, we’re working in the interests of Agatha Hunter. She hired us to get her niece out.”
“After another long pause, Cameron said, “You’re here to rescue Esther Hunter?”
“That’s right. You know her?”
Silence.
“Cameron?”
The sound of sharp inhalations traveled between the prison chambers. When Cameron spoke, his voice was ragged. “Esther is…she’s the girl they’re going to make me rape tomorrow night.”
The dimly lit room began to spin, and Eric clasped his head with both hands. When he’d regained enough composure, he passed along hollow reassurance. “I’m not going to let that happen. I’m going to get both of you out of here, I promise.”
“I’m not stupid enough to believe that. Even if you managed to break me out of the punishment room, they’d kill both of us before we made it out of the temple. But…if you can take out the guards that come to get you, will you do me a favor?”
“Anything, just name it.”
“Kill me.”
Know thy enemy was a mantra Byron lived by—after all, it wouldn’t do for the personification of Wisdom to be caught off-guard. Byron Doyl tapped his keyboard, scrolling through the updated report his tech team had compiled on Eric Larson, and frowned. It normally took less than an hour for his computer experts to complete a thorough background check, and Eric’s had been no exception. But this report was an anomaly—Byron’s team had never updated a file in the middle of the night, and they had certainly never flagged it for immediate attention.
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