here.
Cold air stung her throat as soon as she slammed the car door behind her. Either because it was later now, or because of their elevation, it felt another twenty degrees cooler up here. In the Montana wilderness, she needed more than a wool suit and a pair of low heels. She’d taken barely five steps when her fingers started to throb from the cold.
Still, she unbuttoned her suit coat for quicker access to the SIG Sauer P226 strapped at her hip.
Jen followed the set of thick tire tracks that ran off the hard-packed trail and into the looser dirt. As she stepped around the corner of the building, she called out, “Hello?”
Evelyn picked up her pace to follow when she heard Jen exclaim, “Hey, I know you!”
Then Jen walked around the corner again, this time backward, with her hands up and held out to her sides.
Evelyn reached for her weapon, but before she could unholster it, a man came into view.
He was nothing more than a big blur of angry features and camo, because all she could focus on was the modified AK-47 aimed directly at Jen.
“What are you doing here, Agent Martinez?” the armed man demanded, his voice a deep, harsh rumble.
Next to her, Jen jerked at the news that Butler knew her last name. Then she tried to recover, and her voice was surprisingly calm as she took another step backward, both arms up and out. “Just a friendly visit. Nothing more, Ward.” Ward Butler, Evelyn realized as her eyes adjusted to the darkness. The leader of the Butler Compound. The man Jen suspected of being a homegrown terrorist.
Standing there now, holding an illegally modified weapon, wearing a thick, scruffy beard and dressed in camouflage and a skull cap, he looked like one.
“Drop that,” Butler barked, ignoring Jen’s conversational tone entirely.
Jen’s eyes went to her phone. The readout was lit up, probably because she was on the line with whoever she’d started to call in the car.
“Drop it now!” Butler yelled, his voice echoing across the compound.
As the phone fell from her hand, Butler casually redirected his AK-47 and shot it, midair, blasting the phone to pieces.
Instinct made Evelyn lurch backward, and she went for her weapon.
Before she reached it, the AK-47 was pointed at her.
“I wouldn’t do that,” Butler warned. “Hands up.”
As Evelyn raised her arms, they started to tingle. Because of the cold or because she’d seen how good a shot Butler was, she wasn’t certain.
Although Jen’s boss certainly suspected she’d come up here, he probably wouldn’t expect her back at the office for hours. Maybe not until tomorrow.
And no one knew where Evelyn was.
“Let’s try this again, Agent Martinez,” Butler said slowly, a sarcastic emphasis on the word Agent. “What are you doing here?”
Most cult leaders were charismatic. Narcissistic sociopaths, too, but they had to be able to conceal that. They had to exude enough charm to get a group of people to give up everything they owned and follow them.
Not this guy. As far as Evelyn could tell, he was a hundred and eighty solid pounds of pure menace.
She didn’t have much experience with cults, but Butler was setting off all kinds of alarm bells. If he was a cult leader, where the hell were all his followers?
“I’m at the end of a shift, Ward,” Jen said. “I’m taking my new partner on the rounds.” She lifted her shoulders and gave a little smile. “You know, to meet all the neighbors before we head back to the office.”
Butler turned toward Evelyn, looking at her with a disgust he didn’t bother to hide. “You’re the newbie in the Salt Lake City office?” he asked, skepticism dripping off every word.
“That’s right,” Evelyn replied, uncomfortable with Butler’s tone. Had he mentioned the field office to let her know he was familiar with how the Bureau worked? Or was there more to this?
Jen put a little steel in her voice when she said, “There’s no need for this to get ugly.”
A sneer crossed Butler’s face. He didn’t move his gaze from Evelyn as he told Jen, “You made it ugly.”
The force of his hatred had Evelyn stumbling back on her heels, and Butler’s sneer turned to a tight smile.
But instead of saying another word to her, he looked at Jen again. “This is private property. Trespassing without announcing yourself isn’t very smart.” He made an apologetic face. “You’re likely to get yourself mistaken for an intruder and shot.”
Chills danced across Evelyn’s skin. After Butler’s display with the phone, she absolutely knew there was no way she could get her gun out of its holster before he pulled the trigger on both of them.
If he did, she’d never get the chance to decide what to do about her FBI career. Never get to say goodbye to her grandma. Never get to figure out where her brand-new relationship with fellow agent Kyle McKenzie was headed.
She should’ve taken more time off after solving her friend’s case. She should’ve extended that vacation with Kyle, never mind what the FBI wanted. She thought of that quiet, secluded beach, with nothing for miles but ocean and sand and Kyle’s deep blue eyes staring back at her...
For that one brief week, she’d felt like a different person. Someone whose life wasn’t completely consumed by her job. Someone who didn’t have an overwhelming need to chase down the demons of her childhood until they were all she could see.
She’d felt normal, something she couldn’t remember feeling in a long, long time. Not since her best friend had disappeared from her life, which had started her down the path to becoming a profiler.
With Kyle, she’d felt as though the whole world was finally beginning to open up. Then she’d gone back to work, thinking everything would be different.
But for the past three months, she’d felt lost. Without purpose. A feeling she’d never experienced in her life.
And now, here she was, back in the job that had taken everything she had. And if she didn’t get her profiling instinct back, it just might take her life.
“Now toss over your gun. Real slow,” Butler said.
Jen reached for her weapon and Evelyn tensed as she watched. She readied herself to dive for the ground if Jen didn’t toss it. Readied herself to reach for her own gun as a desperate last effort if Butler’s finger moved inside the trigger guard of his AK-47.
Jen hesitated only a second before tossing the gun into the brush.
Then the sudden rumble of a powerful engine sounded from around the corner. A big black truck hurtled past her, close enough to blast
