The shadowy shape of a ladder dropped to the floor, then a man climbed down. Another long shape fell through the ceiling and landed with a thud, barely missing the ladder.
“Take it easy,” Hank complained. “That bitch almost hit me.”
It had to be Greg climbing down next. “Cry-baby.”
“Easy for you to say. You’ve never had her stab you in the back like I did.”
“That’s because she liked me better.”
Damn. That dead body had to be Jerusha.
Jude’s mouth went dry when Cain’s assassins lifted Jerusha to her final resting place—right next to Saffron’s mother. The poor gal still had her hand extended, two fingers missing, just the way he’d left her. If these guys decided to revisit their previous handiwork…
“It’s kinda fitting, her being down here with all the folks she lied about, don’t ya think?”
“Yeah.” Greg stood over Jerusha. “I knew damn well old man Jenkins didn’t touch those little girls like she said he did.”
“Me, too.” Hank nudged her head with his boot. “But what were we going to do? Once she started spinning her web of lies, it was just a matter of time ’fore Cain agreed with her and started preaching and condemning. If you ask me, he figured Jenkins was moving in on his territory, them both liking little girls and all.”
“But Jenkins didn’t like little girls.”
“I know, but once Jerusha said he did, he was done for.”
“She doesn’t look half bad now that we’ve got her big mouth glued shut,” Greg muttered thoughtfully. “You think anyone heard the ruckus she made?”
“In the silo?” Hank asked. “Fat chance. Them walls are solid granite. Can’t hear a thing in there. Stand outside next time we put someone down. You’ll see.”
“There isn’t going to be a next time.”
“Yeah. Right.” Hank didn’t sound convinced. “Look around. Seems to me we heard that crap before.”
“You don’t believe the prophet?”
“Just saying I’ll believe it when I see it. You and me both know Cain and his brother got bigger plans than this cult. This stupid church is just a means to an end.”
“You may be right.” Greg turned around, as if reviewing the entire room. “I like this place. I feel like I’m in a museum.”
“You’re a sick bastard, you know that?”
“Whether you believe it or not, embalming the dead is an art form.” Greg peered at the bodies stacked in the corner. “Morticians are like any other artist. We’re proud of our work. These pieces should be displayed, not treated like junk in an attic. It’s not right.”
“Humph,” Hank growled. “You’re making me wanna cry. Boohoo.”
Tucker crawled up alongside Jude. “What’s going on?”
“Shhhhh,” Jude ordered softly. Now wasn’t the time for chitchat.
“We need more room.” Greg sighed. “If we’re not going to display these corpses properly, we might as well bury them.”
“I been saying that all along, but no. You pump ’em so full of that toxic crap—”
“It’s embalming fluid, Hank. Simple formaldehyde, methanol, disinfectants, anti-edemic chemicals, and—”
“I don’t care what it is. It keeps ’em from stinking and rotting. That’s the only reason you get to play with ’em once they’re dead. I’m outta here.” Greg was already halfway up the ladder. Hank followed. Within seconds, it was lifted out of sight and the trapdoor shut.
“Shit, those guys are sickos.” Tucker all but pushed Jude back into the crypt. “That was close.”
He flicked his light over the room, but Jude was already standing over the body Hank and Greg had left behind. “Bring your light over here. Now.”
The second Tucker’s light hit the corpse’s face, Jude breathed a sigh of relief. Despite what Hank and Greg had said he needed to be sure. Thank God. It was Jerusha.
“Shit! Will you look at that? He killed his old lady,” Tucker exclaimed.
“No, he didn’t. Greg and Hank did. That’s why they followed Jerusha after the meeting,” Jude said sadly. “They were killing her while the rest of the congregation did chores.”
Jude’s anxiety meter peaked. Only this morning Jerusha had been one of the prophet’s favored. How long before he tired of Judith?
“So Greg embalmed all these folks, huh?” Tucker knelt next to the body. “Look at the hole in her neck. Some asshole stitched her carotid.”
“Why?” Jude heard the anguish in his own voice.
Tucker’s gentle grip on his shoulder surprised him. “You’ve got to remember that we’re not dealing with normal guys here, Jude. Men like Hank and Greg zero in on each other’s perversions and band together. It happens all the time. Remember Hitler? Idi Amin in Uganda? Pol Pot in Cambodia? It’s a sick and twisted world, in case you haven’t noticed.”
“Let’s get out of here,” Jude said. “I’ve got to find my—”
“Freeze!”
A blinding spotlight hit Jude full in the face. Greg and Hank had come through the tunnel. “Why Brother Chase,” Greg said with certain satisfaction. “Figured you might be the one snooping around.”
“Told you it had to be Brother Clark,” Hank said from behind the light, his voice twisted with sarcasm, “seeing as how his little girl’s gonna get fucked by the prophet tonight.”
Rage ignited deep within at that despicable word, flooding Jude’s cautious nature into submission. With a crash, he charged the cowards. Greg’s flashlight flew to the ground and rolled, sending weird shadows dancing across the ceiling and walls. Jude’s fist connected with a cheekbone, and instinctively, he ducked as someone else’s fist in flight brushed his forehead.
He’d already spent too many years living with limited vision to let it work against him now. Darkness was familiar territory and fighting for his daughter was something he damned well knew how to do. Every fierce, fatherly instinct surged forward, finally at his command. He charged again, ready to receive, but damned well ready to give.
His fist connected over and over again. He kicked out at the slightest hint of shadows. He rolled. He spun around. Crunch. Someone dropped to the ground at his feet, and he honestly didn’t know who it was, Greg or Hank. He just kept kicking out at the unlucky bastard.
“Son-of-a-bitch,” Hank cursed weakly from the floor nearby. Good to know. One down.
Jude didn’t have to worry where know-it-all Tucker was, but he knew exactly where Hank crouched. With his fists clasped together like a hammer, he dropped to his knees and blasted Hank’s chops with every ounce of strength he had. “Not my daughter, damn you,” he bellowed as he hit the cruel man again and again. “Not. My. Judith!”
Hank had to be badly hurt. He offered little resistance.
A sixth sense warned Jude he still had an enemy at his rear. Spinning around, his fist struck who he hoped was Greg sneaking up behind him. Instead, a sliver of light flew high above his head. He paused, not believing what he saw. Greg’s spotlight still bathed half of the room in brightness, but the penlight flipped end over end until a hand reached up from the dark side and caught it.
“Shit,” Tucker groaned, the penlight in his grip. “Why didn’t you tell me you were a black belt?”
Jude shook that ridiculous notion away. It took a second to understand that he was the only man standing in the disgusting room full of corpses. Sucking in a ragged breath, he dragged the back of his bloody hand over his mouth, and took stock of the situation. Pulling Hank’s spotlight off the floor, he cast the beam around the room. Hank lay very still and bloodied where Jude had left him. Tucker was sprawled against a corpse with Greg crumpled face down at his side.
“What... what just happened?”
“You don’t know?” Tucker asked weakly, shoving away from Greg with a grimace. “Hey, can you give me a hand up? Please?”
Please? That was different.
“Sure.” Jude extended a hand until the spotlight caught a glint of silver pr
otruding just below Tucker’s left collarbone. “You’re hurt.”
Tucker staggered to his feet. “Shithead stabbed me.”
“You need a doctor.” Jude propped the spotlight on the ground so he could wrap Tucker’s arm over his shoulder for support. “Shouldn’t we remove that knife?”
“Hell no. That’ll just make me bleed to death.”
Jude looked at the widening red stain seeping through Tucker’s shirt. How could it possibly bleed more? “You sure? I could rig a bandage with my shirt.”
“I’m fine,” Tucker mutter, but he couldn’t seem to catch his breath. He was far from fine.
Jude found it unbelievable that Hank and Greg were unconscious while he and Tucker were alive. But he couldn’t take chances. Those men might be unconscious now, but he needed them incapacitated until help arrived.
“Wait here.” He leaned Tucker against the wall by the tunnel entrance. Marching back to Hank, he stripped the man’s shirt off, and used it to tie his hands behind his back, then his legs together. He did the same with Greg. By the time he finished, Greg and Hank resembled the corpses they lay next to, only not so peaceful.
“I’m sure glad you got Greg. I had my hands full with—”
“I didn’t get Greg, you moron.” Tucker gasped, his voice edgy with pain and sarcasm.
Jude turned in annoyance. Now wasn’t the time for one of Tucker’s annoying mind games. There was still a lot of work to be done. Cain would miss Greg and Hank before long, and someone would be looking for them. Besides, Tucker wasn’t too cocky anymore. He might be hurt worse than he let on. Selfishly, Jude worried he might loose his only ally—and his eyes.
This next part was going to be hard. Tucker would have to be extra careful not to dislodge or bump the knife while he crawled through the tunnel to safety.
“You really don’t know, do you?”
“Know what?” Jude steadied Tucker as he lifted the burlap curtain out of the way.
“You did all this.”
“I did what?”
Tucker waved his penlight toward Hank and Greg’s prone bodies. “I’ve never seen a guy move so fast.” His voice filled with something akin to awe. “Greg stuck me the minute I kicked the light out of his hands. All I saw was this shadow come to life. Man, you were everywhere at once. The next thing I know, Greg drops like a bag of bricks, and you’re turning Hank’s face into hamburger.”
Jude blinked at Tucker’s incorrect assessment. “No. Not me. I—”
“Yes, dumb shit, you. Do I look like I could’ve fought them off with a knife sticking in me?”
Jude really looked at Tucker, and then he was scared. They’d never make it through the tunnel. It didn’t matter who’d knocked Greg and Hank down. Maybe it was just the brightness of the spotlight, but even Tucker’s lips looked gray. He was bleeding to death. Gently, Jude dropped the burlap and used both hands to force Tucker back to the ground.
“No, I...” Tucker winced, even though he complied with the assist. “We gotta go.”
“We need to pull that knife out first.”
“No, I—”
“Shut up. There’s no way I can get you through that narrow tunnel with a knife in your chest.”
“But I—”
“But nothing.” Jude secured the light so the beam remained stationary on Tucker’s chest. He reached over his shoulder and pulled his shirt off. He still wore a dingy white T-shirt, which would also make decent packing to stop the bleeding if needed. Quickly, he ripped two long lengths from the bottom edge of his shirt, folded the rest of it into one thick pad, and positioned a palm against the hole where the knife protruded. “Hold your breath or something. This is going to hurt.”
“You think?” Jude gave him no time to argue. Pushing with one hand, he pulled the knife straight up and out with his other hand while Tucker hissed one long, “Son... of... a... bitch!”
Jude ignored him, more concerned with the flow spilling out of the FBI agent’s body than his curse words. Tucker was right. He was bleeding a lot more now. Working quickly, Jude pressed the packing into the wound and applied two-handed pressure. Doubt created panic. What had he just done? He wasn’t a medic. Why did he think he knew anything about first aid for this magnitude of a chest wound?
Tucker glared up at him, clearly in pain. “Told you so.”
Jude focused on the bandage instead of the hateful glare, convinced he had done the right thing given the circumstances. Pushing harder into the wound, he applied more pressure. Then more. Tucker moaned and groaned, but at last the blood loss slowed.
Jude swallowed a shaky gulp and deftly wrapped the longer lengths of cloth around Tucker’s torso to hold the packing in place. “Hold this,” he ordered his bossy companion to keep pressure on the packing while he tied the strips off.
“Got it.” Tucker meekly complied; two fingers on the first knot while Jude tied another.
Once he was sure the simple bandages would hold, he sat back, shaking like a leaf and sure Tucker would toss out another biting comment because of it. Jude tilted the spotlight away. No sense drawing attention to the weakling in the room.
Tucker glanced at his chest. “Will ya look at that. The son-of-a-bitch stabbed my wife.”
“Your what?”
“My heart tattoo with my wife’s name in the middle of it. He stabbed her.”
“You’re a married man?” That surprised Jude.
“Nah,” Tucker said weakly. “She said I was an ass. Took the boy and left.”
Jude rolled his eyes. Wow. Tucker an ass? Who would’ve thought? He had no comment to Tucker’s ex-wife’s assessment other than she must be a very smart woman. But the insight made Jude think. Despite Tucker’s crude language and high opinion of himself, they had something in common. They were fathers.
Jude grabbed Greg’s spotlight and changed the subject. “Do you think you can crawl through the tunnel now?”
“Yeah.” Tucker rolled to his side and proved he was superior to Jude all over again. They were under the stair joists when Tucker asked, “So, how’d you do all that back there?”
Jude glanced back to where Hank and Greg lay in the dark, half-naked and hopefully still out cold. He couldn’t see them, and he didn’t remember most of it, just going berserk. “I didn’t like what they said about Judith. I got mad.”
Tucker gave him a weak smile. “Man, I gotta piss you off more often.”
Chapter Fifteen
She wanted to run. Better yet, she wanted to drive one of the vans so they wouldn’t have to waste time walking, but no. Both guys insisted on maintaining the current location of their camp in the interest of safety and cover. Alex and Rourke wanted solid walls to retreat to. A van near the cult wall would raise suspicion. They geared up, locked up, and left both vans behind.
With every step, her gut twisted at what might be happening inside the compound. The phone call Alex received before they left made everything worse.
“Stewart.” He’d stilled as he listened. “And you verified this how?” A frown deepened over his brows as the one-sided conversation continued. He’d hung up without another word and turned on Cassidy and Rourke. “Pack up, damn it. We’re going in now.”
“What’s up?” Rourke asked.
“FBI’s got a man down. Bastards want us to retrieve him. We leave in five.”
“Where is he? Has he seen Jude?” Cassidy needed to know.
Alex nodded. “Agent Tucker Chase. He’s in the root cellar, but no, Jude Cannon isn’t with him.”
“Why not? Where’d he go?”
“To find his daughter, what else?”
“Don’t worry,” Rourke offered. “You told him to meet you at the barn. He’ll be there.”
Cassidy wasn’t so sure. “How’d Agent Chase get hurt?”
Alex pursed his lips before he answered. “He and Cannon tangled with two of Cain’s Elite. Chase caught a knife in his chest. He needs an assist.”
“Is Jude okay?”
“
According to Chase, he’s out looking for his daughter, now move.”
She bit her lip. Alex tended to believe his agents did what they were told when they were told to. No questions asked. But damn it to hell. Removing three people would’ve been difficult enough, but four? Insane, especially if this FBI guy was badly injured and couldn’t walk on his own two feet.
And yet… The schedule change suited Cassidy, so she didn’t ask for more intel. Antsy and edgy, it was all she could do to keep a civil tongue in her head when Rourke started interrogating her on the trail. “What’s this Jude guy do for a living?”
“Accountant,” she answered quickly.
“You like him?”
“He’s a good man in a tight spot.”
“That’s not what I asked.”
Cassidy glanced sideways at her senior agent. Rourke had a right to ask anything he wanted. Everything impacted the mission, no matter how trivial. She just wasn’t sure how much she wanted to divulge. After all, she’d only met Jude the day before and under the worst circumstances. What did she really know? “Yeah. I like him. I guess.”
“What’s he look like? You know, so I’ll recognize him when I see him.”
She smiled, remembering her first impression of Owl-man. “Your height. Brown hair with sun bleached streaks. Needs a shave. He wears glasses.”
“Glasses?” For some reason, that shortcoming was all that caught Rourke’s attention.
“Yes.” She focused on the forced march. “Gray eyes like Judith’s. She’s a pretty strawberry blonde. Fourteen years old, but mature for her age.”
Rourke was quiet for a few minutes before he spoke again, his words somber. “Sounds like you like him a lot the way you’re talking about his kid.”
Cassidy shrugged. She just wanted to get into the compound and do what she’d promised.
Cassidy Page 14
