over at his cousin Gabe, a member of HRT who’d recently come off shift and was listening through his own earphones, frowning. He remembered the years after Gabe’s mother was killed overseas. She’d just been in the wrong place at the wrong time during a spree shooting.
Greg’s parents had tried to help Gabe and his sister get through it, while their dad grieved by pushing everyone away. Greg recalled all the times Gabe had spent at their house, staying in Greg’s old room while he was away at college. All the times Greg’s parents had spoken about the hell Gabe and his sister and father were going through. Shut it down, Greg told himself.
“We know who’s talking?” he asked loudly. Who was trying to keep Evelyn or Jen alive?
Gabe looked up, his angular face creased with concern. He shook his head and went back to jotting notes.
Through Greg’s headphones, the flurry of voices continued. Some were arguing that they should throw her outside, let her fend for herself—an idea quashed by a voice Greg did recognize. He’d spent hours online searching for feeds of Ward Butler, and he’d found a few. Mostly old militia meetings, and they’d told him that the man was definitely radical, even for fringe militia. They’d also told him that Butler had a distinctive growl of a voice, as though his vocal cords had frozen years ago and never properly healed.
Ward’s deep voice cut through the followers’, reminding them that the FBI was outside, and insisting that if they let her go, the FBI would invade.
There was a surge of voices, mingled with other sounds—booted feet on hard floors, the slap of something against skin, guns being racked.
Then the distinctive boom from a shotgun blast split the air, and Greg instinctively sank lower in his seat.
Around him, HRT agents lurched to their feet and swarmed the entrance to the tent. A mad rush of big men trained in specialized tactical response, each carrying sixty or so pounds of equipment, all trying to race outside at once.
Over his headphones, the shuffling of feet and the loud arguments continued, and it took Greg a minute to understand. The gunshot hadn’t come from inside the compound.
It had come from the FBI’s perimeter.
Evelyn gasped for breath, the smell of blood and sweat and too many bodies squeezed closely together burning her nostrils. Pressed against the rough, hard wall, with Rolfe’s back against her, and her heart pounding, she could barely breathe.
The cultists had chased them back into the hallway, had managed to flank her and block her way before she could make a run for it. Somehow, for some reason, Rolfe had stood in front of her, trying to convince Butler to keep her alive.
A few of the cultists had stayed in the main room or followed and leaned against the wall, as if waiting for the show to start.
But most of Butler’s followers had entered full-on mob mentality. If Butler was still giving orders, she couldn’t hear him over the roar of the other cultists. Their screams all mingled together, becoming little more than a blare of words she couldn’t make sense of.
Until someone shouted, “String the bitch up!” Then a rope came lassoing from somewhere to her right, passing behind Rolfe and snagging her bun, snapping tight. It wrenched her head hard enough that if it had gone around her neck, she’d be dead. Then the rope slipped off.
“Try again!” someone demanded. “Make an example of her!”
“Feeb!” someone else screamed. “How do you like your false power now?”
“Babylonian!” A third voice, shrill and excited, rose above the others. “Your time has come! We’ll defeat your evil army!”
“Stop with the Babylonian bullshit,” a tall man with a knife in his hands and a scowl on his face snapped back. “She’s just another government pawn, trying to take from others. We need to make her pay for it, like Ward always says.”
“Back off!” Rolfe shouted with so much rage and authority that the crowd actually did take a collective step backward.
But it didn’t last. The cultists surged forward again almost immediately, and in front of her, Rolfe’s hands locked around his AK-47.
To protect her? Evelyn didn’t know, but it probably wouldn’t matter. Just Rolfe against more than a dozen frenzied survivalists? Even if he handed her a weapon—which he wasn’t likely to do—it wouldn’t be enough.
A strong hand wedged itself between her and Rolfe, gripping her upper arm and trying to wrestle her free.
Evelyn pushed hard against the wall, and managed to get her hand up, digging her short nails into the man’s wrist as hard as she could until his grip loosened. But just as fast, there was someone else on her other side, reaching for her, too.
Then Ward Butler’s distinctive growl cut through the noise, so loud and angry it made her jump.
“Enough!”
As one, his followers stopped, but Evelyn didn’t have to see them to feel the blast of hatred aimed at her. Rolfe’s body eased forward a little, finally allowing her to draw a full breath, but setting panic free. She latched on to the rough folds of his camo, hoping to keep him there. He was all she had besides Butler’s whims protecting her from a lynching.
“We hang on to her for now,” Butler said, and a grumbling that sounded like an angry lion’s roar filled Evelyn’s ears.
Still, the crowd eased farther back, and most of them returned to the main room where Butler had preached earlier. Rolfe moved away from her, too, pulling out of her shaky grasp with ease.
He left her there, trembling in the hallway. A few scowling cultists prevented her from running for the door as fast as she could. Although it occurred to her that if they had trip wires inside the compound, there was probably something at the back door.
Evelyn slid along the wall, the three men who’d stayed behind tracking her closely as she slunk into a corner of the room. She didn’t want Rolfe out of her sight.
He was at the front now, standing next to Butler, talking. Evelyn turned to scan the rest of the room, and discovered that the other men had taken seats at the three tables and were talking among themselves as if nothing had happened, suddenly as docile as a group of survivalists could get.
Her heart rate wasn’t as quick to decelerate, and she pressed a hand to her chest as she swiveled her head, looking for the next threat.
Snippets of conversations drifted her way as the sound of her heart pounding in her ears slowly faded. Some of the men had moved on to mundane topics, like how brutal they predicted this year’s winter would be, the best methods for finding food on the mountain and where to scavenge for supplies. Others still grumbled about letting a federal agent live when they needed to teach the government a lesson. A handful just eyed Butler and Rolfe with interest.
The few who’d stayed behind in the hallway still stood within arm’s reach. The guy with the lasso—a small, heavily bearded man, probably in his twenties, with beady eyes and a snarl—kept glancing between her and Butler. The other two were calmer, hands lingering near their weapons,
