Might be more than one in the sheriff’s department.
Fucking hell.
Tell me you’re going to be careful.
And that he’s bringing a gun.
Yes.
To both.
I knew Elliot wasn’t a big fan of guns. He didn’t own one, unlike at least three-quarters of Shawano. I also didn’t own one, and not just because Elliot didn’t like them.Ididn’t like them, either.
Elliot did have a compound bow for hunting, although he didn’t do it much. His father had taught him when he was young, and sometimes Henry asked to go out with him, in search of turkey, pheasant, or deer. He’d bring home the birds and donate deer to the Reservation. When he did that, he was responsible for cleaning them. The first time he’d handed me a dead pheasant, feathers and all, I had stared at it, then looked at him and asked if I looked like a Golden Retriever. He’d laughed, taken it back, and offered to teach me to clean it.
That had lasted about five minutes before I’d told him that I loved his dedication to using all parts of the bird, but I wanted to maintain my white man illusions that my dinner came nicely packaged from the store.
He brought them to me already cleaned and plucked from then on. Because apparently I cooked them better, although Elliot was no slouch in the kitchen.
Point is, I didn’t have a gun, and I wouldn’t have known how to use one if I did.
Hart, however, both had a gun and knew how to use it. That was something I was relying on to get us both through whatever was about to happen when we went to meet with the Community Elders.
My throat tightened as we drove past the turnoff that led up to the Hills’ farm and my parents’ house. The irony wasn’t loston me that I’d been nauseous about going back to the house, but now I looked back at the turn away from the road wistfully.
I directed Hart to pull up next to the building that served as the Church of the Divine Transformation, a long rectangle with a high roof at one end, all four sides with windows to let in natural light, whether sun or moon. Along one side was a second building, added on later and connected by means of a single door at the back of the older building. That was where we were going.
Hart had somehow tracked down a phone number for the Community, using it to convince someone that he needed to meet with the Elders.
So here we were.
I was grateful that the crutches slowed me down, grateful for every additional second that I wasn’t in that building with the men who had made my childhood a living nightmare. Because while the person who most often disciplined and denied Noah and me was our father, the Elders were the men he brought to the house when he felt that we were beyond his capacity to correct. Or when it called for something even he wasn’t capable of doing himself.
I didn’t want to see any of them ever again.
And yet, here we were.
I tried to console myself by thinking about the fact that if they were involved in Momma’s murder, in Elliot’s attempted murder, in wantingmedead… That would likely mean the end of the Community of the Divine Transformation. Assuming Hart could prove it.
Andthatwas why we were here. Not just to find out what they knew, what they were involved in, but to find evidence that might mean an end not only to my current nightmare, but of the whole organization and the terrors they were inflicting and would inflict on other people’s children in the future if they weren’t stopped.
Keeping what had happened to Noah and me from happening to other kids.
I took a deep breath, then crutched my way through the door that Hart was holding open for me.
And looked directly into the face of the very last man I had ever wanted to see again.
Jeremiah Porter. He was older now, lines drawing a permanent frown from the corners of his lips and a furrow across his forehead, grey liberally streaking black hair. Now that I was an adult, he seemed a lot smaller. My five-foot-nine teenage self had been intimidated by a man three inches taller and much larger than me—but I’d grown into a body that was six-three with a bit of weight, and Jeremiah Porter no longer seemed nearly as intimidating.
I really wished I wasn’t on crutches. There is nothing at all intimidating about crutches.
At least I had the satisfaction of watching all the blood drain from Jeremiah Porter’s face, the sharp-sour scent of fear in my nostrils.
“I see you remember Mr. Mays, here,” Hart drawled from behind me. “I’m Special Agent Hart, FBI. I’m employing Mr. Mays as a specialist consultant to assist me with an ongoing investigation that I’m hoping you and your… confederates”—Hart gestured at the five other men in the room, most of them greying or fully grey- or white-haired, expressions guarded and lined by years of cruelty and judgment.—“will be willing to provide assistance with.” He offered a small half-smile that seemed charming and friendly, and I knew was anything but.
Jeremiah Porter wore a simple suit—a collarless button-down shirt in dark grey paired with navy slacks and jacket. Simple black shoes. No tie, no elaborate buckle on his simple belt, nothing remarkable. The rest were dressed just as simply, although the tones varied—greys, blacks, dark blues, some withwhite or cream shirts. None with anything to set themselves apart. Nothing to show style or individuality.
The only adornment they wore—all of them—was a heavy silver cross on a thick chain, the upper portion backed by a mother-of-pearl crescent moon. The Cross of the Divine Transformation.
