The men and women had their wrists zip-tied behind their backs. They sat on the floor, leaning against the walls, carefully watched by armed agents. Three other agents were individually interviewing the residents, taking them one by one to the back of the mess hall for privacy, where their neighbors couldn’t hear who was lying and who was telling the truth.
Eddie stopped near the closest agent standing guard. “Any results?” he asked in a low voice.
The agent was grim. “Nothing on our missing agent.”
Her name is Mercy.
“No one here will verify that someone of her description was even in the compound,” the agent added.
“Did she not make it to the camp?” Truman suggested. “Did something happen before she arrived?” His head throbbed at the thought. If she hadn’t made it to America’s Preserve, where was she? Why hadn’t she called?
“Crap,” agreed Eddie.
Mercy’s identity was no longer a secret to protect from the compound members. Finding her was the priority.
A snow-covered agent appeared at the mess hall door, and Truman’s heart gave a wild kick at the concern on his face. “I need an ax,” he shouted, gasping for breath and stomping the snow from his boots. “Where can I find an ax? Or bolt cutters?”
“There’s axes in those,” said a younger militia member, jerking his head toward a row of rickety cabinets. All the doors hung open; the contents had been searched. Truman caught his breath at the rows of gas masks on the shelves.
What emergencies was this compound prepared for?
The snowy agent grabbed two axes from a bottom shelf and dashed out the front door.
Eddie and Truman exchanged a look and ran after him.
They followed the man, running south across the snow. He caught up with five agents jogging in the same direction, most of them carrying flashlights. Truman recognized the large bulk of Ghattas in their midst. He and Eddie joined the tail end of the group.
Something is up.
Several minutes later they entered a large clearing. Ahead was the largest building Truman had seen on the compound. “That’s the new one that Agent O’Shea couldn’t get into, right?” he panted at Eddie.
“I think so.”
The men reached a side door. The agent with the axes handed one off and entered first. The rest filed in, their flashlights roaming over two parked vans and a wall with shelves and storage units.
“That smell . . . ,” said one of them, covering his nose. The odor was coming from a storage unit.
Truman recognized the odor of death. Dizziness swamped him.
No.
The agent swung the ax at the first storage unit’s padlock. The clang of metal on metal echoed in the large space. The padlock didn’t break. He swung again with the same results. Truman’s mind screaming in alarm, he shoved forward and grabbed the second ax from an agent waiting to take a turn at the door. Foreboding choked him.
“Get back,” he ordered as he strode to the unit. The agent who had swung at the lock took one look at his face and leaped out of the way.
Anger and fear fueled his swing. The lock split and scattered across the floor.
Truman froze, the ax clenched in his grip as he faced the door.
I can’t open it.
A hand on his shoulder gently pulled him back. Agent Ghattas stepped past Truman and opened the door.
Flashlights lit up the interior as a putrid wave of odor hit the group. On the floor a man lay facedown wearing only underwear. His back was a rotting mess.
Not Mercy.
Truman’s knees became water, relief and dread battling inside him.
Where is she?
“What happened to his back?” asked an agent.
“I think he was whipped,” answered Ghattas. “Some of the interviews mentioned whipping as punishment, but no one has said these storage units are prison cells.”
Units. Plural.
Truman whirled back to the group. “Open the other doors,” he croaked.
The next two rooms were empty.
Truman stared at the padlock on the fourth door.
I’d know if she was gone. I’d feel it.
Right?
But right now he felt nothing. Nothing but nausea.
An agent swung, and the padlock on the last door flew off.
Empty.
A long exhalation escaped him. Eddie met his eyes, his relief reflecting Truman’s.
Ghattas stepped into the last unit, his flashlight focused on the floor. He bent over, staring at something. Truman couldn’t stay back. He slipped through to the front of the group that had gathered at the fourth unit. On the concrete were dark-brown smears.
“They were locking up their own people,” Ghattas spit out. “After they tortured them.”
Truman’s gaze locked on the unit’s floor.
Caught in the dried blood were several long, black, wavy hairs.
The screams in his brain started again.
TWENTY-SEVEN
The compound was a snowy landscape, buried under nearly a foot of white fluff. And it continued to fall as Truman wearily strode up the steps to the mess hall. The morning had brought much-needed light to the investigation, and the compound had been searched from top to bottom again. Truman had joined the team of agents who’d scoured the buildings in the daylight.
No Mercy.
But there had been a huge breakthrough. The women who had left with their children verified that Mercy had been in the compound. They claimed Noah Trotter would have died if Mercy hadn’t insisted he be taken to the hospital. One woman said she’d heard the men grumbling about her pushy ways, but no one had seen her since she was escorted to the command center after breakfast the day before yesterday.
She’d gone in and never come out.
Pete was dead. His interactions with Mercy forever silenced.
Why did no one else admit she’d been in the compound?
Truman paused and turned around, one hand on the mess hall door. Tall firs surrounded the compound, many of their branches coated in snow, drifts forming against their trunks. A thorough outdoor search was nearly impossible and might be delayed until spring.
His heart couldn’t wait that long.
Numb, he stepped inside and took a seat at a table where a few agents were eating breakfast. The smell of eggs and coffee turned his stomach.
The FBI had started to transport the militia members off the compound. Several were still in the mess hall. Overnight, blankets and pillows had been brought in from the cabins for the detainees, and agents had supervised bathroom breaks. The interviews had continued through all hours of the night. Everyone in the mess hall—men and women—had denied meeting anyone named Jessica. No matter that the half dozen released women back at the base camp claimed she’d been there.
Did Pete order that she not be discussed?
The rest of the agents had been informed of Truman’s relationship to Mercy, but it wasn’t mentioned during the interviews. The members of the compound knew only that the agents were searching for Jessica Polk—not why.