Chapter One
It’s Cold Outside
Esther
Today was the first day of her twelfth year—her Day of Ascension. She lay curled into a tight ball on the narrow cot, her threadbare blanket wrapped around her. A weak sliver of moonlight shone through the high windows at the back of the dormitory, and Esther opened her eyes slightly. Her bed was the second on the right. Two weeks ago, when she’d arrived there, all twelve of the beds were filled. Tonight, only five had occupants. As she lay there, she heard sniffles coming from across the room. Rachel. Rachel’s Day of Ascension had been three days ago, and Esther knew that by the Sabbath, Rachel’s cot would most likely be empty too.
She thought about slipping out from under the slight warmth her blanket afforded and sharing it with the smaller girl and holding her until they both could fall asleep. But just as she moved to do so, she heard the familiar sound of the lock on the large metal door being turned. Then the door opened.
Heavy footsteps fell across the room. Esther buried her head farther into her thin pillow and squeezed her eyes shut. She listened as the footsteps reached her cot and hesitated. Esther heard two voices speaking.
“She is promised.” Esther did not recognize the man’s voice.
“He has no right to choose the ripest to keep for himself.”
Her blood froze in her already cold body. She knew that voice. Brother Eli. He was the one who wore the big knife attached to his belt. She’d seen his face as he looked at her when she had been brought before the Leader. His eyes on her had terrified her.
“Move on, Eli. She is promised. Today is not the day to begin the challenge. And the challenge will not be started over a mere wife.”
She heard the men breathing as they stood at the end of her cot. And she held her own breath as fear wrapped itself around her stomach, becoming a near physical pain. Just when she was sure that she could no longer bear the silence and that the sobs of fear clawing in her mind would erupt, the footsteps moved away.
Then Esther clamped the pillow tightly around her head and prayed for the heavenly Father to strike her deaf so that she could not hear the screams from Rachel.
Twenty Years Later
Sam
Jesus, it was still as fucking cold as a well digger’s ass. March in Idaho might technically be early spring, but it was no one’s idea of paradise. Sam Beckett cranked up the heat in the truck and killed the headlights, slowing to a snail’s pace on the dirt track that led through the woods. He squinted and tried to adjust his vision. Thank fuck for the bright moonlight of the mostly full moon. Otherwise, he would have been driving blind through the hilly terrain and the thick forest of pine and fir trees.
He crested a hill and slowed his pace even more as he saw lights illuminating the settlement in the valley below. But Sam didn’t need light to know that sight like the back of his hand. Six long dormitory buildings and two large buildings for meetings and training formed the main compound. A smaller, two-story building served as the school and clinic. Three large garages and two large storage warehouses stood to the south. Numerous smaller buildings dotted the landscape. Sam knew those structures housed weapons and ammo, basic plumbing, and cots for the guards that rotated their “protection” duty. The houses for the senior members of the brotherhood and the trailers and barns that housed the bulk of the members and animals were situated on the outskirts of the property. The fenced pastures and farmlands that grew the crops lay beyond that, along with the training fields.
Everything was surrounded by a fifteen-foot-high, military-style security fence.
The Brotherhood of the Father.
Six months ago, when his FBI assignment landed him undercover in the Idaho wilderness, Sam had been pissed. He had not wanted to be stuck in the boondocks, investigating a bunch of wackos preparing for the end of days. He’d seen the case files, heard the preliminary investigative tapes, and he had not been convinced that they were anything more than what they purported to be—religious nut cases who wanted to avoid polygamy laws.
That was six months ago. Now Sam knew them for what they were—domestic terrorists with the ultimate mission of overthrowing the United States government. They were extremists who were preparing for war—domestic terrorists with money, power, and sympathizers in Congress.
And now there he was, his cover blown, a bullet wound in his left shoulder, and the lives of two innocent people in his hands.
Laura
“Esther!”
Laura knocked lightly on the back door of the trailer, pulled the lapels of her coat up, wound the long wool scarf tighter around her head, and stuffed her bare hands in her pockets. No gloves. Damn. Thank God, she had the coat on when she ran from the clinic. The snow crunched under her boots, and her breath blew out in clouds around her face. As she shifted from foot to foot, she could feel perspiration trickle down her back and knew it was not from heat. It was from fear. Oh my God, where is Esther? Other than the door overhang, nothing was shielding Laura from the view of anyone walking by the building. She and Esther needed to get out and get under cover.
She tried the door handle then barely stifled a screech as it moved under her fingers and the pale face of the woman she was seeking appeared in the doorway.
“Come on, honey. We have to go!” Laura grabbed the other woman’s hand and pulled. He will be waiting. Please, God, let him be waiting. She refused to believe that he could be lying dead back in the clinic. He is not. She would not even consider it. They had planned for the possibility of something going wrong before they were ready.
The fence was a good half-hour hike up the hill. It was dark, and they could not risk a flashlight. They needed to go immediately.
Then she felt the tug on her hand. She turned back and looked into Esther’s eyes. Even in the dimness, Laura could see the abject terror that was stark in her eyes and feel it in the atmosphere surrounding the woman.
A sob tore from Esther’s throat. “I can’t. Laura, I can’t.”
Laura turned fully to the woman and gripped her upper arms. She had known this was likely to happen. Esther had been a prisoner in this hell her entire life. The fact that she had agreed to leave with them at all was a statement of her courage—a courage that had been forged in subjugation and abuse.
But sometimes, the hell that a person knew was less terrifying than what was on the other side of it. Laura knew this truth only too well. And that was exactly why she was not going to let Esther stay there, even if she had to beg or carry the woman up that hill in the frigid darkness herself.
Because once you took that first step out of hell, the next one was easier. Today was the beginning of Esther’s journey out of hell. Laura would not even consider anything else.
She gently pulled Esther closer until her nose almost touched her friend’s. “Esther, listen to me. I know that you are scared. So am I. We can do this. Together. I am with you, and Sam is waiting. He risked his life for us. We are not going to let him down.”
Laura was not above using emotional blackmail. She would repent later. She gave her friend a gentle but firm shake. “Do you hear me?” She shook Esther’s arm a bit harder. There wasn’t time to be gentle or coaxing. “Now, do you have the bag?”
Esther’s voice was quiet but steady. “Right here.” The edge of panic in her tone had receded a bit.
“Good. Let’s go.”
Turning, Laura once again grasped Esther’s hand firmly and jerked her through the door. She looked around carefully but saw no movement or sign of life. It was dark and still. She looked quickly over her shoulder and saw the sweet, angelic, pale face of the woman she had come to love as a sister. She gave her friend a smile that was about ten times more confident that what she felt.
Esther smiled back weakly. But at least she smiled.
Then they ran.
Jake
Jake Beckett slammed the latch home on the back of the horse trailer. It was too fucking cold to have the mare out in her condition. He needed to get to the boarding hotel and get her settled in for the night. He knew that the timing for this venture was going to be tricky, and he had not been prepared for the condition of the mare. John had told him when he first volunteered to go to Idaho to pick up the horse at auction that she was foaling, but Jake had assumed that it would be in the early part of the process. To his non-expert eye, she had only a few days left, at the outside. She was restless, and he could see some mammary gland enlargement and waxing. She would foal soon.
The pickup had been scheduled for after the foaling and after the weather warmed.
But then Sam had called.
Jake didn’t remember telling Sam that he was coming to Idaho. But Sam and John were closer friends and kept in more regular touch than he and Sam did. Sam was Jake’s brother, and they were close, in their way, but Sam tended to bring up shit that Jake had no desire to rehash. By unspoken agreement, their conversations were confined to discussions about Mercy and their next vacation. When they saw each other at whatever locale they had decided on for the year, there were more unspoken rules. No talk about work, no talk about Faithful, and absolutely no talk about the past.
Jake walked to the front of the truck and leaned his ass against the bumper, pulling the wool knit cap out of his pocket and tugging it over his ears. Jesus, it was fucking cold. His east Tennessee blood wasn’t used to this. Where the hell was Sam? This whole thing was more than a tad screwy. But Sam had never asked him for anything—not when he’d left home for the Marines before the ink was dry on his high school diploma, not when he’d been wounded and sent back home, and not when he’d, once again, left Faithful for college in DC with his purple heart, his Marine Commendation Medal, and his VA student benefit letter stuffed in his pocket.
So when Sam had called and asked him to move his trip to Idaho up a couple of months, with the explanation that he needed urgent help with a case, Jake hadn’t really asked a lot of questions. The day Sam had called, Jake had been slammed in the clinic with everything from the flu to the usual winter maladies that struck his poorer patients, and operating on very little sleep. Sam had sounded uncharacteristically intense, a thread of something in his voice that Jake had never heard before. He had agreed, got the minimum information that Sam offered, and didn’t ask for details.
In the subsequent twenty-four hours, Jake had been busy making the most urgent house calls, getting Grace to check in on Mercy, giving Delilah instructions about their more serious patients, and prepping the truck and trailer for the trip to the Salmon River Mountains of Idaho. Then he had driven the distance nearly straight through, stopping only a couple of times for a few hours’ sleep. He hadn’t liked the sound of his brother’s voice. Sam was an FBI special agent. He didn’t lose his cool, and he didn’t ask his small-town-doctor brother for help.
During the long hours in the truck, Jake had turned over and over the questions that had persistently poked at him that he had failed to ask. Sam had said he had a colleague that needed to get to DC, but the guy needed to lay low for a few weeks first, which meant no airline, no bus, and no public transportation that could be traced. Sam needed a safe place that was off the grid and untraceable for the agent to stay. Jake had thought wryly at the time that Faithful was about as “off the grid” as a person could get and still be in America. Sam had said that he couldn’t take care of it because “something had come up,” and he needed to go directly to DC. When Jake had asked why the Bureau didn’t use their private transport, Sam had just grunted “long story” and asked if he would help.
The plan had been for Jake to pick up the mare at the auction, check into the boarding motel, and get things settled with the horse. Sam was to meet him there in a couple of days. But Jake hadn’t even checked in before he had received his brother’s text.
Exit 92, Blackfoot exit. Sunset Motel on right, parking lot. Meet me now. Urgent.
So there he stood in the cold darkness of a motel parking lot outside of Blackfoot, Idaho, with no real clue about who his traveling companion was, why the guy was going to be with him, or where he was going to put him once they got back to Tennessee. And his nuts felt as if they were in the bottom of a sub-zero meat locker.
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