by Sara Blaedel
Ilka took a few steps toward the door.
“No one can turn from God,” Burnes proclaimed, his bass voice booming. “My wife belongs to God and our brotherhood. Turning away is a mortal sin. You of all people must know that. No one who stands alone finds love.”
The cult leader pointed over to the woman in the car. “But even for those who in moments of weakness turn from God, there is a way back,” he said, so slowly that every word felt like the blow of a hammer. “And that pathway is open for Jane-Maya and our daughters. For you, though, there can be no return. Your sins will forever haunt you. Heaven will forever be closed to you.”
His voice changed; it was as if he were reciting a prayer for a congregation. “I have come for my wife and my daughters.”
Again, Ilka felt the chills down her spine. The men behind him stirred, as if Burnes’s proclamation was a signal.
Jane-Maya turned to Ilka, then glanced back out at the car window. A look came into her eyes, but before Ilka could read it, the young mother’s fingernails had dug into Ilka’s arm. “Get my girls out of here, take them away and make sure they’re safe,” she whispered.
Ilka glanced at the two terrified girls in the kitchen doorway watching Burnes, who now took a few steps toward the house.
“Get them out,” Jane-Maya repeated, pleading now, tugging at Ilka. Then she walked over and kissed both of the girls.
“Is there another way out of here?” Ilka asked Dorothy as they hurried into the back hall.
Dorothy shook her head. “If you take the hearse, you’ll have to drive over the fields, and they can’t help but see you.”
The hearse was no match for those four-wheel drives, Ilka could see that. It could hardly even make it up over the hill.
“Run down along the fence line to the crematorium, hide the girls in the oven,” Dorothy said. “When the oven door shuts, it can only be opened if you know about the mechanism under the door, you have to slide it to the side. It’s a safety measure for when the oven gets hot.”
They turned at the sound of Jane-Maya’s shrill voice; she was standing beside Lydia now.
“You betrayed us!” she screamed at the woman in the backseat. “You turned against your own family.”
“Run!” Dorothy whispered
“You’ll never ever get them…”
Jane-Maya’s voice faded away as Ilka and the girls ran down the path to the crematorium, hunched over and hidden by the bare yet thick bushes lining the property’s boundary.
The girls ran as fast as they could, their legs pounding the ground like drumsticks. Their eyes were shiny from terror, but they didn’t hesitate when Ilka pulled open the heavy crematorium door and grabbed their hands before entering the dark building. They hurried to the back room where the oven stood like some prehistoric monster in the middle, emitting a charred odor. A green handle used to start the oven stuck out on the right side, with a temperature gauge below it.
“I promise, you’ll be safe here,” Ilka whispered, panting for breath. “Nobody can find you; just be quiet, completely quiet. Promise me you will be, that if they come in here, you won’t make a sound.”
She looked at the girls and saw that promises weren’t necessary. What they were running from terrified them much worse than being locked up in the dark.
Ilka jerked the wide iron door open. The oven was cold, and the girls scrambled up onto the sooty iron sheet. They sat hugging their knees in silence.
“You two are the bravest girls I’ve ever known,” Ilka said. She wasn’t sure she could let herself be locked up in there. “I’ll come get you as soon as they’re gone. I promise, nothing’s going to happen to you as long as you stay quiet.”
Both girls nodded at her, then Ilka closed the oven door. She heard a click when it locked, and she stared at the door a moment before running back and pulling the crematorium door shut behind her.
She spotted two of the men in sweatshirts walking into the house, and she took off running, hunched over, nearly parallel to the ground. On the other side of the property line, she followed a tractor path shielded by a low embankment. When she reached the back of the house, her lungs were burning and a metallic taste had spread inside her mouth as she gasped for breath. She edged over to the back door and stood on tiptoes. In the living room she glimpsed a pant leg as it disappeared up the stairs. The other man was nowhere in sight, but the three travel bags were still on the floor, and the documents and billfold Lydia had left for her remained on the table.
Ilka crept inside and froze. She heard footsteps upstairs—both men or just one? She couldn’t tell, but she slipped over and grabbed the bags and documents and billfold, and seconds later she was outside, hiding behind the hearse.
Loud female voices rang out from the front of the house. Ilka pushed the bags under the hearse and stuck the documents and billfold inside her blouse; then she stood up straight and took a few deep breaths before walking inside. Out the front window she saw the other two members of the God Squad headed for the crematorium. She made a move to run after them, but Dorothy grabbed her.
“Let them go. They can’t get the oven open. If you run after them, they’ll suspect the girls are hiding down there.”
Ilka knew she was right. But all she could see was those two girls, sitting cramped in the dark. What frightened her the most, though, was the fear she’d seen in their eyes when they saw Isiah Burnes outside the house.
Every nook and cranny inside the house were being searched. The two men had found a trapdoor to the cellar, and they were up and down and all over the house, peering behind furniture, inside closets. Their brutality as they searched scared Ilka; what would they do if they found the girls?
Next, they went outside and turned the hearse inside out. They left the coffin open and strode across the gravel parking lot to the barn on the other side. On the way one of them stopped and glanced inside Dorothy’s car, and a moment later he pried open the trunk to see if the girls had been hidden in there. He left the trunk lid open and ducked into the barn with his partner. Burnes stepped toward Jane-Maya. The limousine’s back window was still rolled down, but the woman inside was now out of sight.
“You’re coming with me.” He spoke calmly as he reached out for her. “If you choose to leave your daughters here, you’ll never see them again.”
There was no threat in his voice, only in his chilling words. Spoken gently, lightly, like a soft breeze on the skin.
Jane-Maya stared down at the ground.
“Thank your sister for seeking forgiveness and for her wisdom in blocking the pathway that led you all astray. God is willing to take you back.”
“No.” Jane-Maya’s words were almost inaudible.
“What’s going on?” Ilka whispered to Dorothy.
“It’s their sister from Canada. She betrayed them. I don’t get it, I heard Lydia talking to her this morning. Everything sounded fine. We thought she’d be waiting on the other side of the border, but I guess it was a trap.”
“Come.” Burnes motioned at Jane-Maya with outstretched hand.
“My girls,” she whispered.
He took another step toward her.
Ilka spotted the two men coming out of the crematorium. They’d left the lights on and the door open—and the two girls inside, apparently.
“Come,” Burnes repeated. He moved smoothly, gracefully, almost as if he were floating, and now he was close enough to touch her.
Jane-Maya turned quickly to Lydia, and Ilka read her lips: Take care of them. Then she took his hand. Ilka bowed her head as Burnes led Jane-Maya to the car, and she kept it bowed even as she sat in the backseat beside her sister.
Ilka watched, not moving a muscle until finally she wiped a tear off her cheek. Once more the world grew quiet around her as the men returned to their cars and slammed the doors.
Then suddenly it was if somebody had turned the sound back on.
“Nooooooo!” Lydia screamed.
She ran to the limousine, f
lung open the back door, and reached inside for the sister she’d helped get to Canada. Maybe it was her anger. Or maybe it was desperation, or maybe a bit of both that gave her the strength to pull the woman out of the car and onto the ground.
“Traitor!” Instantly Lydia was all over her; the woman tried to protect her face with her hands. “How could you do this?”
Ilka’s chest tightened as Lydia screamed in rage. Before she knew it, the four men jumped out of the cars. One of them held something against her neck, and a second later Lydia’s body jerked and lay still. It took a moment for Ilka to understand: They’d used a Taser on her.
Ilka bit the inside of her cheek so hard that it bled when Lydia collapsed. She caught a glimpse of Jane-Maya hiding her face in her hands and sobbing before the backseat window was rolled all the way up.
What happened next took place in slow motion for Ilka, and would stay with her for a long, long time.
The four men in sweatshirts lifted Lydia up, and a rear door of the lead car was opened. Ilka screamed and ran over to try to stop them, but she was knocked unconscious by one of the men. When she came to, the three cars were on their way up the lane.
Dorothy was kneeling beside her with an arm around her shoulder as they stared silently, watching the cars vanish over the hill.
They’d taken Lydia with them.
“We need to get the girls to safety,” Dorothy said. She held her hand out and helped Ilka to her feet.
Ilka’s legs felt weak when she stood up. Her whole body had been wound tight since sneaking the girls over to the crematorium, and now her tendons felt as if they were sticking out of her skin.
“The girls,” Ilka said. She remembered Jane-Maya, her head in her hands. “How could she leave them behind?”
“She’s trying to save them,” Dorothy said as she helped Ilka into the kitchen. “I saw it in her eyes when she said goodbye. She doesn’t expect to see them again.”
“What do you mean?”
Dorothy wrung out a wet dishtowel and held it against Ilka’s temple, which was still bleeding. “I mean that Jane-Maya is sacrificing herself so her girls can live in freedom. And it’s our responsibility to make sure they’re safe.”
“They can’t get by without their mother.”
They left the house and headed for the crematorium, Dorothy leading the way.
“Yes they can,” Dorothy snapped. “They can if it means not being raped and married off while they’re still children.”
Ilka felt dizzy. “But…but Jane-Maya had just been talking about how happy their sister was for her new life in Canada.”
“Escaping is one thing, making a new life is another.” Dorothy’s face showed both anger and sorrow. “Their sister wasn’t tough enough to do that, it looks like. She ratted on her family so they would take her back.”
Ilka nodded to herself, only then understanding what had happened.
“We have to get hold of Alice Payne,” Dorothy said. “Her network will have to help the two girls. But right now, I’m more worried about Jane-Maya and Lydia.”
They were just outside the crematorium. Her voice seemed to float away with the wind. Ilka was glad Dorothy was walking in front, unable to see her sobbing. The bleeding hadn’t stopped, but no matter, she wanted to be there with the girls. She couldn’t shake that look on Lydia’s face at the sight of the third sister in the back of the limousine.
“The girls can stay with us for the time being,” Ilka said as they stepped inside. She lowered her voice, as if the men might still be around.
Dorothy shook her head. “No way. The cult knows about the funeral home. They might come back looking for them.”
“The ranch, then. It’s already like a fortress out there, and with Lydia’s money, we can rehire people to make sure they’re safe.”
She paused a moment. “And I could ask Mary Ann and Leslie to move out there. Someone would always be in the house with the girls.”
Ilka had dried her eyes, but she still felt like crying. She couldn’t bear thinking about the two sisters’ future.
Dorothy looked at her in surprise. “Do you think Mary Ann and Leslie will do it?”
Maybe that was too much to hope for, Ilka thought, but she wasn’t going to shy away from asking. And something had happened to Leslie. Something good. As if her half sister had realized she could do more than stay at home and take care of her mother.
Dorothy pushed the bolt lock aside and opened the oven door. Jane-Maya’s daughters sat in the dark with their hands on each other’s shoulders, leaning against each other, forehead-to-forehead.
Ilka took a step back at the sight of the two young girls practically entwined. It was poignant, to be sure—so much so that it made her throat hurt—but what struck Ilka most was that they’d obviously done this before, clung to each other this way to fight off their fear. She heard Dorothy’s voice, and she watched her help the girls out and down to the floor, but her legs felt paralyzed when she tried to step over and help.
“Are they gone?” the older girl whispered.
Dorothy nodded. “We have to leave too.”
She spoke without drama, in a natural tone of voice, and Ilka felt a moment of calm.
“We don’t want to go back to the family!” The girl was nearly shouting now.
The younger girl clung to her sister and said nothing. Ilka stroked her hair as she debated how to tell them their mother wasn’t coming back.
“You won’t have to, we promise,” Ilka said, adding that they’d done a great job by being so quiet.
She decided that if Mary Ann and Leslie wouldn’t step up, she would move into Artie’s house with them. The problem was that it would be just as unsafe as the funeral home. It was much easier to keep people away from Fletcher’s ranch.
“Did they take Mom away?” the younger sister asked meekly.
Ilka shot a quick glance over at Dorothy, then nodded. “Your mother and aunt went with them.” There wasn’t any good way to say it, really.
But the girls simply nodded back, and the older one took her sister’s hand.
30
They divided everything between two cars. Dorothy took the cardboard box with Lydia’s money and laid it on the passenger-seat floor. Burnes’s man had ruined the lock on the trunk, so she tied the lid down with twine. Ilka drove the hearse with the girls hidden in the coffin.
She couldn’t get Lydia out of her head, the sight of her lying on the gravel. Also, Jane-Maya, hiding her face in her hands. More than anything she wanted to scream, but she had to hold back for the girls’ sake; she couldn’t show any sign of how bad things really were.
Earlier she had called Stan Thomas. Her first thought had been to call her father, but she simply couldn’t tell him what had happened to Lydia. She couldn’t even handle it herself.
“They took Lydia,” she’d said through her sobbing. She’d struggled to get hold of herself, so she could give the officer a description of the three black vehicles.
At first, he seemed most interested in knowing if what had happened at Dorothy’s place had any connection to Calvin Jennings. When he told her that Jennings in all likelihood had been dead when he was hung, the dam broke for Ilka. The words streamed out of her, and she told him about the cult and Lydia’s escape, as well as the whole story of God’s Will and the Rodriguez family murdering Lydia’s brother and his family.
He listened in silence.
“She’s facing the death penalty,” she repeated, explaining what Jennings had wanted to save Lydia from. “He had proof that she wasn’t the one behind it all, and he believed she’d acted in self-defense at her brother’s house. He wanted to help her, and now they’ve killed him.”
Again, she started sobbing; she couldn’t help it, but Thomas waited patiently until she could tell him about Ethan and Fernanda’s murder.
“Is the boy still in danger?” he said.
“I don’t know.”
Her fear of what would happen to Lydia took
over, it crept into her bones, and she walked around in small circles to keep herself from going crazy.
Thomas sensed the state she was in, and he told her he would send a patrol out to escort them away.
“We can’t wait,” Ilka said. “We have to leave, now.”
Dorothy had placed the girls’ small bags behind the front seat. She was helping them into the coffin.
“Lydia is in one of the four-wheel drives,” Ilka explained. “Jane-Maya is in the limousine with Isiah Burnes. Find them, and we’ll be okay.”
“No,” he said, “it’s too dangerous!”
Ilka heard activity in the background, and she realized he was still at the hotel. “We’re leaving now, for the ranch.” She promised to call when they got there.
“I’ll send a patrol out to meet you on the way.”
Ilka dried her tears with the back of her hand.
“Lydia,” she whispered. “Just find Lydia.”
31
Ilka clutched the wheel. Dorothy was leading the way, and it felt as if her car was pulling the hearse over the hill. Her eyes darted across the surrounding fields; they were visible from practically any direction, which made Jane-Maya’s daughters an easy target if Burnes’s men were still around.
They turned onto the main road, and Ilka’s eyes lingered on every car that passed them.
A text buzzed in from Jeff. Turn around. Get away from town.
Ilka called him and screamed, “Who the hell do you think you are, you asshole! Do you even know what you did?”
“Turn around,” he insisted.
Ilka noticed his black BMW, parked on the side of the road up ahead.
“Don’t go into town,” he said. “There’s two cars at the funeral home, and they’re out at Artie’s house too.”
“Okay, smart-ass, if they wanted us, why wouldn’t they just wait here for us?” She was so mad that for a moment she forgot how desperate she felt.
“I’m helping you get away,” he said, unaffected by her anger.
“Helping!” Ilka screamed. He got out of his car and stood beside the highway. She blinked her lights and signaled to Dorothy to pull over on the shoulder. Dorothy peered at her in the rearview mirror, uncertain what to do, so Ilka pulled over and jumped out of the car. Dorothy rolled down her window.
