by Cindy Dees
“Uhh, sure,” he managed to croak.
“Spectac-ulous!”
Apparently, she was in full-blown, bouncy-beach-girl mode, as well. In fact, if anything, she was trying too hard. She was scared. “You don’t have to go.”
She planted her hands on her hips and her hair swirled around her in a glorious display of crimson. “We’ve already had this fight, and I won. I’m going with you.”
He took a different tack. “Tell me this, then. Why are you afraid? What worries you about this outing?”
“I’ve been in a cult compound before. It’s the place I ran away from and left my mom.”
Her voice didn’t give away a thing. Immensely frustrated at his inability to read her, he reached out and gently removed her sunglasses. Her golden gaze met his in anguish. As he’d thought. She did hide behind her shades.
“Tell me about it, Sam.”
She shrugged, but the casual gesture obviously wasn’t casual at all. “They were an ‘end of the world is nigh’ bunch. My mom was a true believer and I wasn’t. I didn’t want to stick around and drink the cyanide fruit punch.”
He sensed her holding back. “What else happened there?”
She huffed. “Well, there was the cult leader who decided to make me his thirtieth or so wife, and at fifteen years old, I didn’t feel like having sex with a fat, bald guy in his fifties. So sue me.”
A fragile, hurt quality clung to her as he glimpsed the girl she must have been. “And your mother did nothing to protect you?”
Sam shook her head, and he stepped forward to wrap her in his arms. “I’m sorry, baby.”
He froze. Baby. That’s what he used to call Emily. It had just slipped out. But shockingly, the world didn’t end. Sam snuggled closer against his chest. He drew his next breath. The pain didn’t shred him. One second ticked into the next. Was it just a word after all? He hadn’t uttered it in five years. Had thought he’d never say it again. But lo and behold, the impossible had happened.
“Your mom failed you, Sam. You know that, right?”
“Yes.” She sighed against his chest. “I know it in my head. But it feels an awful lot like I did something wrong and she abandoned me.”
“You took action to defend yourself from rape. Action your mom should have taken for you. You were brave and strong.”
She laughed without even a hint of humor. “I’m not strong. I’ve just been faking it long enough to get good at it.”
He knew the feeling. “Had me fooled. And you really don’t have to go to Proctor’s place with me. You can stand off at a distance and keep an eye on me perfectly well.”
“But then I wouldn’t have your back if things go bad.”
“I don’t want you there if things go bad.” The words came out of him without his volition. He couldn’t live with himself if something terrible happened to her.
“And I don’t want you there if things go bad,” she retorted, “so we’re even.”
He leaned back far enough to smile down at her. “Fair enough. We take care of each other and get out of there pronto if things get ugly. And speaking of which, I need to put an emergency exit plan in place.”
“How’s that?”
He kept one arm around her as he reached past her for the phone. Her hands roamed up and down his back and he all but moaned with the pleasure of having another human being touching him.
He spoke into the receiver. “Hi, Novak. If I don’t call you guys in the next four hours and use the phrase ‘peachy keen’ in the call, I need you to send in the cavalry to the Proctor compound to rescue me and Sam.”
“One dead-man switch up and running, Gray,” Novak replied jauntily.
He hung up the phone and looked down at her. “Ready to do this?”
“As ready as I’ll ever be.”
He couldn’t resist. He kissed her, inhaling the strength that defined her. It was a novel sensation being with a woman who could stand beside him as an equal.
The drive to Proctor’s place was quiet. As they turned onto the driveway with its prominent sign warning that trespassers would be shot, he looked over at her. “I won’t let anything bad happen to you, Sam. I promise.”
She smiled back gamely. “And I won’t let anything bad happen to you.”
He did believe she meant that, too. She’d fight like a mother bear to defend him if it came to it. Yet another novel sensation for him.
Miss Maddie hadn’t been exaggerating when she said the place had huge fences and armed guards. They had to wait for a razor-wire-topped gate to be rolled back while surly guards glared at them. He guided the Bronco inside. As the gate swung closed behind them, he gauged the Bronco’s ability to crash through the heavy barrier in a crisis. He didn’t like the odds.
He glanced over at Sam and saw her mouth had gone tight. “You’re a bimbo sex kitten,” he reminded her under his breath.
That made her grin. “I’m gonna make you regret those words,” she threatened playfully.
For once, she waited for him to come around to the passenger side of the SUV to open her door. Apparently, it took armed men threatening her to teach her proper etiquette. He opened her door with a flourish. She stepped out and an audible silence fell around them. Ahh, the sweet sound of men underestimating his partner.
Huh. She really was his partner. He hadn’t had one of those since before the murders. He held his arm out to her with a murmured caution to watch her footing on the loose gravel.
“Honey, I’ve been walking in heels since I was three,” she replied breezily.
“This way,” someone said gruffly from behind them.
He looked around the compound curiously. It was neat. The buildings looked newer than he’d expected. Freshly painted. Perhaps a dozen men stood around, wearing jeans and jackets for the most part. There were no women or children in sight, however.
A man led them to the main building in the center of a ring of what looked like dormitories. The building turned out to be a dining hall about half-filled with rows of tables and benches. Gray spotted Wendall Proctor immediately. There was no mistaking the lean build, short crew cut and pale, intense eyes of a zealot. The man was all but holding court in the open area at the far end of the room with an array of his disciples sitting on benches in a half circle in front of him.
Sam tensed, and Gray gave her hand a little squeeze of support. She squeezed back and relaxed fractionally.
They were led to the middle of the circle of benches and left there like sacrificial lambs. Proctor ignored them, looking down at a sheaf of papers for nearly two minutes. Gray’s lips twitched in humor. This guy didn’t miss a trick when it came to intimidation tactics. For her part, Sam appeared to be staring fixedly at the papers. Probably reading them. His amusement increased. Little did Proctor know the mistake he was making by having those papers out in front of her.
Finally, Proctor looked up. “Who are you?” he barked without preamble.
“My name is Grayson Pierce. And who are you?”
Proctor momentarily looked startled as if everyone ought to know who he was. Uh-huh. Big ego.
“I’m Wendall Proctor. I run this place.”
“And what is this place, exactly?” Gray replied. Might as well keep the offensive as long as he could.
“It’s a cooperative of like-minded souls,” Proctor replied. The men around him nodded like proper sycophants. Big, physical, soldier-like sycophants. If he wasn’t mistaken, a shudder passed through Sam. He found the vibe in this room shudder-worthy, too.
“Why did you want to talk with me?” Proctor threw out.
“Because you and I need to have a conversation about Echelon.”
The word galvanized the room. An almost electric tension zinged in the air. “And you know about Echelon how?” Proctor snapped.
“I work for the NSA,” Gray snapped back. He wasn’t yielding one inch to this egomaniac.
“So talk.”
Instead, Gray glanced down at Sam. “Baby, why
don’t you go outside and take a little walk?” It helped her girlfriend cover if he didn’t want to talk business with her around. And, if he sent her out before Proctor’s men took her into custody, maybe she’d get the run of the place instead of being a prisoner. After meeting Proctor in the flesh, he needed at all costs to keep her out of the bastard’s clutches.
She looked vaguely stunned but smiled and trailed a hand down over his rear end as she turned to leave. Every male gaze in the room riveted on her derriere as it twitched out of the room. He’d lay odds she was doing that intentionally. Amusement coursed through him. He loved her ballsy courage. And the beauty of it was nobody suspected a thing. In ten minutes, she’d know more about this compound than they could begin to imagine.
He turned back to face Proctor. “Echelon has to be stopped.”
* * *
Sam strolled outside, startled at the complete lack of women and children. Where were they? She spied the roof of a tall structure well beyond the ring of apartment-like buildings and headed for it. She’d just passed the last living facility when she was startled by movement off to her left.
A little girl, maybe five years old, peeked out from behind a straggly bush where she’d obviously been hiding. Notable was her fair skin and brilliant orange hair.
Sam stopped and smiled. “Hi. My name’s Sam. What’s yours?”
“I’m Molly. Is that your real hair color?”
“Yup,” Sam replied. “How ’bout you? Is that your real hair color?”
The little girl giggled and nodded.
“Do you live around here, or are you just passing through?” Sam asked.
Molly pointed at the building behind them, which Sam assumed meant that was where she lived. “Where is everybody this morning?” she asked the child.
“Working at the farm.”
“What farm?”
“The one right over there.”
“Show it to me?” Sam held out her hand and Molly took it confidently. They strolled past the buildings and a large, plowed field opened up before them.
“So how do you like living here?” Sam asked the little girl.
“It’s fun. Except I don’t like weeding the garden. Or making my bed.”
“I hate making my bed, too,” Sam confessed.
“Really?”
“Really. It must be a redhead thing.”
“The other kids call me Carrot Stick. I don’t like it.”
“Aww, they’re just jealous of us gingers. My hair wasn’t much darker than yours when I was your age.”
Molly looked up at her with wide eyes. “Did they call you Carrot Stick, too?”
“Mostly they called me the Great Orange Pest.” That was one of the few repeatable names she’d been called as a kid.
The child looked sympathetic. Sam stopped and knelt down to bring herself to eye level with the little girl. “So here’s the thing, Molly. Redheads are special, and other people get jealous of us.”
The girl’s sky-blue eyes grew even larger.
“They say when God gets tired of looking down at green everywhere he pulls out his magic paint and magic brushes, and he paints the mountains all of his favorite colors.” She gestured at the autumn finery rising across the valley from them.
“And sometimes, when he’s feeling especially artistic, he picks out a really special baby and uses his magic to paint that baby’s hair a color as special as they are. You and me, we’re God’s particular favorites. That’s why he gave us our beautiful hair in his favorite color.” She reached out to tug at a stray strand of orange from Molly’s ponytail.
“When you grow up, your hair’s going to darken a bit and turn into the most amazing shade of auburn. Other girls would die to have it, and boys will fall all over themselves to get your attention.”
“Really?” Molly breathed.
“Cross my heart and hope to die.” Sam stood up and they commenced walking again. “So tell me about this farm, Molly. What do you grow on it?”
“Plants and pigs.”
“You grow pigs in a garden? This I have to see.”
“No, silly,” Molly laughed. “We grow plants in a field. We raise pigs in a barn. They stink.”
“So I noticed,” Sam replied dryly. The stench was a bit overwhelming, in fact.
“We’re downwind,” Molly announced wisely. “If we go through the apple orchard it won’t smell so bad.”
“Take me to your apples,” Sam declared.
“We help hurt wild animals get better, too. And then we turn them loose.”
That tidbit surprised Sam. It seemed awfully humanitarian of Proctor. The guy surrounded himself with armed guards and concertina wire, after all.
“Right now, we’ve got a deer, and a fox and some squirrels we trapped. Wanna see ’em?”
“I’d like to see the whole farm. What do you grow?”
“Pretty much everything. I hate brussels sprouts.”
“Me, too.” Sam laughed.
Several acres of low plants in long rows were dotted with men and women bending over, harvesting various species of squash and pumpkins from dying vines. A large barn stood wide open, and teenaged youths carried baskets of produce in from the field and appeared to be sorting it. A second, smaller barn across the field was tightly closed up, however.
“Can we go into that barn over there?” Sam asked her guide.
“Oh, no. That’s the secret barn.”
“What do they do in there?”
“Dig.”
Sam frowned. “Dig what?”
“Don’t know.” Molly’s voice dropped to a half whisper. “I think the grown-ups play in there and don’t want to share with us kids. They come out all dirty.”
Even with her extraordinary eyesight, Sam didn’t pick up any clue as to what was going on inside the building. She heard the faint rumble of a diesel generator beside it, and a large bundle of power cables went from the generator into the building. A multitude of tire tracks in front indicated that there was plenty of activity in and out of the structure. Hmm. Interesting.
“So, Molly. What do you do for fun around here?”
“Play with my friends. Go fishing. Watch movies on Friday night.”
The child actually sounded pretty well-adjusted. Maybe this wasn’t the kind of messed-up cult Sam had experienced as a kid, after all, but a true commune. “Do any of the teenagers sneak off and drink beer in the woods?”
Molly shook her head and replied earnestly, “Oh, no. Beer’s bad for you. We eat all ’ganic foods here. Stuff we grow ourselves, mostly.”
“You’re really lucky, Molly. Do any of the grown-ups smoke stuff they grow?”
“Nobody’s allowed to smoke here. It’s bad for you.”
“Right you are, kiddo.” Hmm. So, this place was really populated mostly by health nuts, after all. She glanced back at the closed building curiously. “Do funny smells ever come out of that building?”
“Nope. Just dirt.”
“What happens to the dirt?”
“They dump it in the fields where we grow stuff.”
What on earth? It didn’t sound like a still or a marijuana-drying operation was hidden in the mysterious structure. “How do folks around here make money to pay for stuff?”
“Mr. Proctor gives us all allowances. Grown-ups get a hundred dollars a month apiece, and the big kids get twenty dollars a month. But we get all the food and wood we want.”
“Wood?” Sam echoed, startled.
“Yes. Food and boards.”
Laughing, Sam continued pumping the child for information. “Do you get an allowance?”
Molly stood tall and proud. “I get fifty cents a week.”
“Wow. That’s a lot. What do you do with it?”
“I buy candy. Joey says that’s why my front teeth fell out.”
Sam grinned. “Your baby teeth fell out to make room for your grown-up teeth. Joey’s teasing you.”
Molly scowled. “I knew it! I’m telling my mo
m on him.”
“You do that. So, tell me. How does Mr. Proctor get his money so he can give it to you?”
Molly shrugged.
“Do you all sell any of the food and pigs you grow?”
“Sure. Whatever we don’t eat.”
“How many people live here?”
“Sixty-seven and a half.”
“And a half?” Sam queried.
“Miss Krista has a baby growing in her tummy. Do you know how it got there? I want one to grow in my tummy.”
Sam choked back a crack of laughter. “Maybe you should ask your mom that one.” She calculated fast. She didn’t see enough land under cultivation to do much more than keep up with sixty-seven mouths.
“Does anyone do anything around here besides farm?” she asked Molly.
“Not really. The grown-ups sit around and talk an awful lot. I wish we had a TV in our apartment. But the ’lectricity’s bad for the big ’scope.”
“Does every family have its own apartment?”
“’Course they do.”
“How many bedrooms does yours have?”
Molly held up three fingers. “One for Mommy, one for my brother and one for me.”
Wow. This place was a whole lot more prosperous than the cult Sam and her mom had lived in. But then, that earlier cult had expected the world to end and everyone to die any minute. Prosperity and productivity were a waste in that context.
“As much as I’m enjoying my walk with you, Miss Molly, I probably need to head back toward my friend.”
“I heard your friend made Mr. Proctor hatchitated.”
Sam mulled that one over. “Do you mean agitated?”
“Uh-huh.”
She’d bet Gray had agitated ole Wendall. That shot he’d fired at Proctor about needing to end Echelon as she’d walked out the door had probably hatchitated the guy all the way to his toes.
* * *
While Proctor stared at him in open disbelief, Gray mentally chalked up a score for himself. He glanced around at the flunkies and commented to no one in particular, “Someone get me a chair.”
