Saved from the Cult

by Winter James

He blinks and turns his head, taking me in slowly, like he didn’t expect for me to intervene. His eyes have gone black with rage. His breath comes evenly. Beating Leader Michael hasn’t even winded him. Fear strokes the back of my neck.

  “He hurt you,” growls Jake. “He’ll pay.”

  “He will.” Jake blinks at my agreement. “But not like this. I want everyone in the House of Rapture to know him for what he is.” Leader Michael shakes his head and sneers at me, blood streaming down from his nose. “A fraud. And an evil man.” Understanding dawns in Jake’s eyes. Slowly, slowly. “If he’s dead, I won’t be able to prove it.”

  Jake doesn’t move, his hand inches from Leader Michael’s neck.

  “Let him go,” I say gently. “I need you.”

  Finger by finger, Jake’s fist unclenches. Leader Michael sits down hard on the carpet. Then he’s blocked from my sight by Jake’s enormous body. He folds me into his arms, all of him trembling.

  “Are you all right? Fucking stupid question. You’re not. What do you need? You want to get out of here?” He puts a hand beneath my chin and tilts my face so he can look at me. “Did he hurt you anywhere else?”

  My bottom still throbs, but in Jake’s arms the pain can’t get much purchase. “No. He—he was going to. But he didn’t.”

  “What do you want to do?” Jake takes a single, deep breath and he’s solid as a rock again. His clear, green eyes are confident. “Are there things you need to get before we leave?”

  He doesn’t have to say that we’re not coming back.

  “Nothing. There’s nothing. Let’s go. I have to explain—I need to get somewhere to explain what happened before—”

  “Oh, I don’t think so.”

  It’s not Jake who disagrees in a terrifyingly mild tone of voice.

  It’s Leader Michael.

  He stands in front of his fireplace, his pants done up again and a gun in his hand. He runs his thumb over the handle and from the way Jake stiffens next to me I know this is no casual movement. My heart scrambles up into my throat. If he shoots Jake in front of me, I don’t know what I’ll do. I’ll lose my mind. I’ll be lost forever.

  “I don’t think you’ll be going anywhere.” Leader Michael looks up at the two of us like we’re naughty members of the cult. “Well...maybe you can get outside. But sooner or later, they’ll find you both. In my experience, officers of the law generally place a higher priority on catching people suspected of murder.”

  “You’re fucking twisted.” Jake shakes his head a little, squeezing my hand tighter. He tries to angle me behind his body. “You’re going to do this now, like a coward, out of spite? You’re going to put a young woman in jail because you can’t handle the fact that she doesn’t want to?”

  Leader Michael bows his head, and when he looks up I see that Jake’s words have planted a seed of doubt. “You’re right,” Leader Michael whispers. “You’re right. Take it. In the name of the Lord, take it.” He steps forward haltingly and holds out the handle to Jake.”

  Jake gets his palm around it.

  “Thank you,” Leader Michel says, his voice ragged. There’s something off to the apology. “Please, take it. Take this from me.” But instead of letting go, Leader Michael yanks the gun out of Jake’s hand. ”He took my gun,” he shouts at me. “Did you see that? He took it right out of my hand. No. Please, no—don’t kill me. Don’t shoot me.” His voice rises with every word and every word is a death knell.

  “Don’t do this. You’ll hurt Dove.”

  Leader Michael shrugs. “I’m not entirely certain it will hurt her. She might not end up in jail. But, as your accomplice, there’s always a chance. It’s good enough for me to roll the dice.” He laughs, a wild light shining in his eyes. “A martyr for the House of Rapture. I never thought I’d be the first, but the Lord calls.

  A martyr.

  No. No.

  “Don’t shoot me!”

  Leader Michael raises the gun at the same instant Jake drops my hand. His howl twists itself up with the bang of Leader Michael’s pistol going off. The sound rips through my ears and I flinch back, shutting my eyes. I snap them open again as fast as I can. If Jake can be brave enough for this, then so can I.

  But I open my eyes on a nightmare.

  Jake stands over Leader Michael’s body. Leader Michael has fallen. Blood paints the wall to his left. It paints the carpet. The chair he sits in to read at night.

  And Jake.

  His blood is all over Jake.

  Jake stares down at his hand, which was on Leader Michael’s gun. I know from the things the other girls have whispered that this is how people get caught—because they leave traces of themselves behind.

  “You’re innocent.” I manage it through a fear that squeezes all the air from my lungs and wrings them out. “You didn’t do it. I saw everything that happened—”

  “His blood is all over me.” Jake meets my eyes. For the first time, he looks totally defeated. The pain in his eyes is on full display, and it breaks me in two. “This time, they’ll convict me of murder.”

  Chapter Sixteen

  Jake

  It’s Paunch who shows up at the House of Rapture twenty minutes later with four other cops in tow. I guess they don’t get many calls about gunshots fired at cult compounds, because every single one of them comes in with his gun drawn. My heart couldn’t sink any farther into the ground. I won’t even have a chance to plead my case. Not even a chance.

  “Who called them already?” Dove whispers, her face white. “Somebody must have heard.”

  “Don’t know how they could have missed it.” The cult members were out when I got here the first time. Out in the garden, out carrying baskets of flowers, out hauling bricks for their wall in a wheelbarrow. Not one of them seemed to see me.

  Obviously, they noticed when things went south in Leader Michael’s bedroom. What a fucking nightmare of a man. He’s got his favorite girls in bare rooms while he keeps the master bedroom and raises them for future brides. Raises one of them for a future bride, so he can get his name on the deed to this place.

  Paunch steps into the bedroom and Dove presses herself against my side, as close as she can get. She breathes light and fast, like a little bird. If I could get her to fly out of here right now I would. It’s the only thing that will save her.

  “Shit,” Paunch says. The others crowd in behind him. All of them talk at once. I lean my head back against the wall and close my eyes. It doesn’t matter what they’re saying, but I catch investigator and murder weapon and coroner.

  It’s just not going to go my way.

  I slide my arm around Dove’s shoulders and try to memorize how it feels to have her so close. What I need to do now is get the cops to understand that she had nothing to do with this. My jaw clenches at the thought of showing them the evidence—I don’t want any of them seeing her like that. But it might be the only thing that saves her. What a fucked-up system. I can at least make sure it doesn’t eat both of us alive.

  Paunch was the first into the room and he’s the first out. One of them stays behind in the room. The others crowd into the narrow hallway to provide backup. Dove slips her hand into mine and holds tight. I can see Paunch glance down at our two hands, then back up at our faces. His mouth turns down a little. Fucking great.

  “Think you already know we’re going to have to take you on down to the station.” He holsters is gun slowly, like he’s making a point. “Roy?”

  Paunch gestures one of the other cops forward—Roy, I’m guessing—and he steps up with this handcuffs ready. The sight of those silver fuckers changes everything. The wall against my back feels like a jail cell door. My wrists ache. Every part of me tenses, my heart kicking and screaming. If I made a run for it now I could get down the stairs and to the front door at least. Prison is like being an animal in a cage. Worse than an animal. A bitter taste fills my mouth. I’ll fight them. I’ll fucking fight them all. They’ve got guns, but I’ve got desperation on my side, and ye
ars of hard labor.

  Dove lets go of my hand.

  For one blinding second I think she’s had the same idea and she’s going to run.

  She doesn’t run.

  She steps in front of me, between me and the four police officers in the hall, and plants her feet.

  “Don’t arrest him. Don’t arrest Jake.” A tremble in her voice gives her away, but she holds her head high. I’m so fucking proud of her. “He didn’t have anything to do with—with what happened in there.”

  Paunch watches me for a long moment, then looks down at her. “A man’s been killed.”

  Dove flinches. “I know. I know he’s been killed. But Jake didn’t do it.”

  No, no, no. I want to put my hands on her shoulders and pull her back to me. Whisper in her ear that this is a bad idea. I don’t have the luxury of making a move like that. All of their eyes swivel toward me, with the blood from a dead man all over my shirt, and probably my face.

  “That’s for the jury to decide.” Paunch waves Roy forward again with an impatient jerk of his hand.

  “No.” Dove throws herself between me and Roy. “Please, please don’t do this.” Her voice cracks, breaks. She seems so young in front of all those blue uniforms. I’ve brought this upheaval to her life—me. She shouldn’t be trying to stop what’s inevitable. “Please don’t arrest him. You can’t.”

  “We can, and we will,” snaps Paunch. “It’s clear he was involved with—”

  “He wasn’t. I shot Leader Michael. It was me.”

  One of the cops in back puts a hand to his chest and lowers his head. Fuck me. I’ve never seen a more obvious lie in all my life.

  Dove holds out her wrists. “Arrest me. I—I’m the one who did it. Just don’t do anything to him.”

  Paunch sighs. “Roy, go ahead.”

  Roy doesn’t so much as look at Dove. He steps around her and puts one hand on my shoulder to turn me toward the wall. My gut twists like it’s trying to get rid of a knife. There’s nowhere to go, nowhere to run. No air to breathe. My vision goes dark at the edges and I know I shouldn’t be resisting but I can’t unclench my fists.

  “Guys?” Roy’s nervous. “Lend a hand?”

  “Don’t do this,” Dove begs.

  “You’re going to have to step back, ma’am,” says Paunch. “This man’s under arrest.”

  “You can’t do this. Please, you have to stop.” Her voice rings in my ears like a broken bell.

  “Wait a minute,” says a voice I don’t recognize.

  I only turn my head an inch. A curiosity like wildfire moves through the hall, starting in the center of my spine.

  My god. It’s that Robin girl.

  She steps out into the hall, where there’s barely enough room for her, and looks back at me. A pinched frown takes over her face. What the fuck is she going to do? Raise her hand and call me the devil? She can only make this worse, the little she Devil.

  Then Robin takes her hand out from behind her back.

  She’s holding a phone.

  A phone.

  Dove gasps.

  “This man didn’t kill Leader Michael.” Robin’s voice is level and clear, but I still don’t believe she’s saying it. This evil little monster, doing anything to help me? “He killed himself. I recorded it.”

  She walks up to Paunch and hands it to him like she’s been making calls and downloading apps for years.

  Shit.

  She probably has.

  “Robin, what—why—” There’s awe in Dove’s voice, and confusion, too.

  Robin rolls her eyes. “I hate Leader Michael and everything to do with this cult. Isn’t it obvious? It’s terrible here.” Robin blinks hard, and for a fraction of a second I can see how much the House of Rapture hurt her, too. “I was going to use the recordings as blackmail. Or to get him thrown in prison. Whatever. But now he’s dead, so I can use it for something better.”

  Paunch is busy flicking through the phone. The light from the screen makes him look pale, and then something he sees there drains the blood from his face. He’s a ghost.

  “Recordings?” I clear my throat and jiggle my wrist a little. “You had more than one?”

  “He liked to leave the door open when he did nasty stuff to people,” Robin says, like this is a fact we should have known all along. “He made it easy.” Then she spears Roy with a glare. “Are you going to let him go, or not?”

  Every eye in the room swings toward Paunch, who’s holding the necessary evidence in the palm of his hand. He could dismiss it right now. He could do what he came here to do, which is arrest somebody. Arrest me.

  He looks up from the phone. It’s all there, written on his face. He’s seen it too. He knows.

  “Yeah.” Paunch’s shoulders sag. “Let him go, Roy.”

  Chapter Seventeen

  Dove

  I step out onto the porch of the farthest cabin and shade my eyes. The July sun beats down on everything, cheery and tiring all at once. The House of Rapture almost looks nice in light like this. If I didn’t know better I’d think it was a cute camping community or co-op that grew a little big for its britches.

  Jake steps out behind me and slides one big hand over my back, then around my waist. I melt into him. There’s no better way to describe it. I can feel myself relaxing and feel the way my softness meets the hard lines of his body. I’m never going to get sick of this—not ever in my life. I know it like I know the sun’s going to rise in the morning and the winter’s going to come after the fall.

  I thread my fingers through his and sway a little bit. Maybe if I sway, I can create a breeze. Or just relish the fact that every movement means more contact with jake.

  “Not a bad view.” He looks out in the same direction.

  “Really? I hate it.”

  Jake laughs, a low rumble that makes me fall in love with him a little bit more. It shouldn’t be possible, falling in love with him more than I already have—but it happens every day. Almost every minute.

  “What would you change about it?”

  “I’d tear down the farmhouse, for starters.”

  He rubs his hands together. “Consider it done.”

  “You’d tear down a house for me?”

  Jake looks down at me and raises his eyebrows. “I’d tear down the world for you.”

  I’m not a violent person. Even living in the House of Rapture didn’t make me into the kind of girl who wants to see people suffer. But the truth in Jake’s voice fills me with heat and light. It’s more than a little romantic to imagine him tearing apart the planet with his bare hands.

  It’s a lot more romantic to imagine him doing other things with those hands.

  Down in the garden, Charlotte pops up from between two rows of corn and heads off toward one of the other cabins. She’s dancing, a pair of pink earbuds in her ears and a new phone stuck in the pocket of her jean shorts.

  “How many people are staying?” Jake leans against the porch railing. “Are we down to eleven now?”

  “Nine. The Millers left after the meeting.” The meeting I called, because I own all of this. All of it. After Leader Michael killed himself, I finally saw a copy of my parents’ will. I will never know how Leader Michael managed to twist his extremely distant relation to my mom as a way to take over the property—and me—but some things are better left buried.

  “But Robin’s still here?”

  “Yes.” They left their only daughter. Ironically they were angry with her for helping expose the truth about Leader Michael. They’re leaving the cult, probably in search of a new one. “She has nowhere else to go. And Charlotte’s staying, too.”

  “She was an orphan, too. Like you.”

  “Her family is unhinged. She came to the House of Rapture to get away from them.” Now, at least, my enormous property with all of its buildings actually can be a sanctuary. I don’t think people will stay forever—just long enough to let go. Even Charlotte might move on someday. The state university has a great farmin
g program. She could be—

  She could be anything, really.

  “She’s good for this place.” Jake shoots me a look with his clear green eyes. “You’re good for this place, too.”

  “You know what I think?” I put an arm around his neck and pull him down so he’s forced to kiss me. “This place will be good for you.”

  He kisses me back, hard and long. Never mind who’s watching. None of that matters anymore. The only thing that matters is our life together and the delicious heat of his mouth on mine.

  “You’re good for me.” Jake pulls back, putting an inch or two between us, eyes raking over my body. “Wherever you are, that’s where I want to be.”

  I take a deep breath. “Yeah. I wanted to talk to you about that.”

  His face goes blank, carefully blank. “You did?”

  A laugh bursts out of me. Oh, it’s probably terrible to be laughing at a time like this, but it feels so good. It’s not a stolen moment. It belongs to me, just like the land around me does. Just like the man in front of me does.

  “I got some news the other day. That lady on the genealogy site I found? She is my aunt. My mom’s sister.” This is the part I haven’t been able to mention to Jake yet. “I...know you can’t leave the state without special permission, but I wondered if you’d mind if I invited her here.”

  “God, Dove.” Jake wipes a hand over his face. “You can’t scare me like this. And yes. Your aunt can visit. As long as you don’t leave. Never leave.”

  “And her husband.”

  “And her husband, too.”

  He puts his hands on my waist and draws me close again. I slide my hands up his arms, testing his biceps. “She has four sons.”

  Jake bends to kiss me again, his teeth nipping my bottom lip, his tongue pushing into my mouth, exploring me like this is the first time. He kisses me until he’s stolen my breath.

  “Four sons,” he says against my mouth. “If they’re going to be staying nearby, then there are some things we should take care of first.”

  “Like w—”

  I never get to finish because he scoops me up in his arms, takes me into the cabin, and kicks the door shut behind us.