Seized
Meanwhile, Greg had spent the time trying not to think about Evelyn, the closest thing he had to a partner at BAU. Instead, he’d been reading and rereading everything he could on the Butler Compound and its members, hoping he’d find some way to help her. Assuming she was still alive.
He tried to push the thought aside, but it had been intruding for hours now, ever since word had come down that the cultists had been overheard talking about a dead federal agent. He needed to focus on whatever he could do to help Adam make a connection with someone inside; if the group wouldn’t talk to them, it limited their options significantly.
Details about the compound members were sketchy at best. According to the old profile written up by BAU, Ward Butler was a hard-core survivalist with a handful of weapons possession, resisting arrest and tax evasion charges lodged against him over the years. He’d spent some time in jail, but had always gotten out, and as the years went by, he’d slipped farther and farther off the grid. He’d risen to the top of a local militia group before dropping out entirely and forming his compound, supposedly a gathering place for like-minded survivalists.
As a fringe militia leader, he fit the bill. Obsessed with weapons, antigovernment, believing that society would ultimately crumble and he’d need a bunker and the skills to live off the land. A man seeking power in a like-minded community. But he didn’t seem like a typical cult leader—primarily because they tended to be charmers. They were usually as good at manipulating words and ideas as they were people. Ward Butler, on the other hand, had an outright angry, almost antisocial personality. But then, there were as many cults as there were personalities.
“There’s something going on inside,” Yankee said in his deep Southern drawl. Apparently, his nickname was ironic, given to him by the other members of HRT.
“What is it?” Pinpricks of pain shot through his fingertips as he gripped his thermos harder, and he realized his hands were frozen. Apparently, the heating system in TOC couldn’t handle the Montana mountains.
“Take a listen, would you? I want an assessment.” Yankee nodded at the headphones, discarded on Greg’s desk, that would hook him up to the parabolic mics.
“Mic three,” Yankee added as he hurried back the way he’d come, to talk to the Special Agent in Charge who’d arrived from the Salt Lake City office.
Greg traded the thermos for his earphones. As soon as he slipped them over his ears and turned to the right mic, a flurry of loud, angry voices made him cringe. It was hard to understand anyone with all of them talking at once, but one voice stood out.
“We need her alive,” the man yelled over the fray.
Her. They had to be referring to Jen or Evelyn. One of them was still breathing. Relief and fear coursed through him in equal measure as his eyes were drawn to the picture brought in by an agent from the Salt Lake City office.
Jen Martinez was a forty-five-year-old mother of two. In the picture, she seemed happy and confident, a grin on her face and her arm around the waist of her husband of more than twenty years. Standing on either side of the couple were their kids. A daughter in high school and a son in middle school. The daughter resembled her mom, in appearance and attitude. The son took after his dad—or would, as soon as he emerged on the other side of his current awkward stage.
Every time he looked at the photograph, Greg felt the immediate need to avert his eyes. It was too close to the pictures he kept tacked up in his cubicle back at Aquia, of his wife, Marnie, and their two children, Lucy and Josh, the same ages as the Martinez kids.
He’d made the call to Marnie on the way to the plane, and she’d given the phone to Josh. His son had put on a good front, but Greg had heard his disappointment. Josh’s very first hockey game, and he’d missed it. Worse, Josh had sounded hurt, but not surprised.
Greg loved his job. He couldn’t imagine leaving it. But he spent too much time away from his kids—time he was constantly trying to make up to them when he was home.
If his partner was alive, that meant Jen Martinez was never going home to her children.
His eyes were drawn once more to the photo, to the kids who were waiting to hear if they still had a mother. Then he forced himself to look away, forced his mind back on the mission.
He glanced 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.
5
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, but displaying no obvious fury. More of Butler’s lieutenants?
She squinted at them, trying to remember where they’d been during the mob, although she hadn’t been able to see much around Rolfe. She had no idea if they’d swarmed her or if they’d been among the few who’d stood back and watched, ready to jump in or break it up, depending on Butler’s orders.
“...question me!” Butler’s furious voice caught her attention. Evelyn shifted her head toward him again, straining to hear, but he quieted down as Rolfe, his back to her, gestured with his hands. He seemed to be arguing aggressively.
New worry rushed into her mind. What would Butler do—or have his followers do—to Rolfe if he didn’t obey orders? And what would happen to her without Rolfe?
How the hell had she let herself get mixed up in this mess? Would she have recklessly accompanied Jen if she hadn’t been looking for a way to decide whether she still belonged in BAU? Or would she have done what Dan wanted and headed home on schedule?
Was this just one more sign that it was time to move on? To leave profiling behind for good? To leave the FBI?
To start over somehow? Of course, that meant she’d have to figure out what she wanted to do—who she even was—without the mission that had been driving her since she was twelve years old.
The very idea made her uneasy. The need to find out what had happened to Cassie had pushed her through college, through her advanced degrees, through the FBI Academy. It had motivated her to work impossible hours, striving for a perfect record, until she’d been accepted into BAU.
Now, her desperate need to solve Cassie’s case was gone, because she’d done it. What was left?
She’d never know unless she could make it out of here alive, Evelyn reminded herself as she tried to hear what Rolfe was saying.
“...need her! Don’t forget why you’re here,” Rolfe’s voice carried toward her.
“This isn’t how it was supposed to go,” Butler boomed. “Not here! This place was supposed to stay invisible.” Then he seemed to realize how loud he was being, and glanced around as Evelyn wondered what exactly his words meant.
Ward caught her eye and Evelyn lowered her head, but not before she saw him look back at Rolfe and give him a toothy, insincere smile.
“I never would’ve let them kill her,” Butler said, clearly intending for her to overhear as he added, “Not yet.”
Rolfe said something in response, but all Evelyn caught was an ominous-sounding, “Don’t forget what we agreed,” before he stalked away from Butler and toward her.
“Let’s go,” he barked, grabbing her arm and dragging her along with him back the way they’d come.
She stumbled, trying to catch her footing. “Where?”
“You want to stay with me or them?” Rolfe replied, the fury in his tone telling her now wasn’t the time to test his determination to keep her alive.
“You,” she whispered, as if she had a choice.
“That’s what I thought,” he said, still pulling her along so fast she had trouble keeping up.
The beady-eyed guy with the lasso spat at her, but kept quiet as Rolfe dragged her back the way they’d come.
He slowed down just long enough to let her step carefully over the trip wire, and the way he glanced at her gave her the impression that his anger was directed more at Butler than at her. It was hard to tell how far they’d walked in the semidarkness, but Evelyn thought they’d passed the closet where he’d brought her earlier to change.
How big was this place? And where were they going?
She could sense Rolfe’s mood in his painful grip, so she didn’t ask, just let him push her through another door and shut her inside. She heard him storm off, and as soon as he left, she reached out blindly and tested the handle. It was locked. A second later, footsteps approached again and she listened as something scraped the floor as it was wedged under the handle from outside.
She stood in the darkness, waiting for her eyes to adjust. No matter how much she strained, she couldn’t see anything at all, not even shapes. She gave up and stretched out her arms. Her right hand bumped into something wooden, sending another splinter into her arm. She ignored the pain, sliding her hand forward, identifying shelves. They were lined with plastic containers, but she couldn’t guess what might be in them.
Carefully, she took a step to the left, and immediately bumped into another shelf. So she was probably in a different closet, like the one they’d originally shut her in with Jen.
What had they done with the other agent? Evelyn sucked in a deep breath, suddenly afraid to move backward. What if Jen’s body was in here with her?
As a profiler, she’d seen a lot of death. Usually in crime scene photos, as she consulted from her office in Aquia, but up close and in person plenty of times, too.
In her job, getting called in on a case meant the death was probably gruesome. During her year at BAU, she’d seen depravity she couldn’t possibly have imagined.
But she’d never had to watch another agent being shot, then been drenched in her blood. She’d never been locked in pitch darkness, hoping not to stretch out her arm and encounter a body.
Panic threatened, and Evelyn tried to ignore it, to think. Her best chance of getting out alive was to profile the people inside the compound, to understand them well enough to predict what they’d do next.
It was easy to see that Rolfe was her best ally. But why? What kind of lieutenant so openly questioned his leader?
The survivalists who’d chosen to live here did seem united in their hatred of the federal government, in the “prepper” ideology—the idea that they needed to be prepared for the collapse of civilization. Maybe instead of trying to go it alone, they’d banded together to ride out the end times together. They all appeared to be single, without families, so perhaps this was the family unit they’d created instead. Maybe those things formed the basis of the cult structure, instead of a typical religious belief, since they didn’t seem to share a religion.
Was it enough? Preppers who’d put their faith in Butler as a leader? Except the conversation she’d overheard between Butler and Rolfe went through her mind as she absently tried to yank the splinter out of her arm. Butler had talked about the compound as though it wasn’t the only place he controlled.
Could Jen be right? Could they be more than a cult? Could there be a terrorist connection?
Evelyn sighed, sinking slowly to the ground, feeling her way before she sat. She wrapped her arms around herself for warmth as she considered.
The mob of cultists who’d come after her had been disorganized, abrupt. Could a group consisting of members who didn’t share a religious connection band together effectively enough to fuel a terrorist ideology? Could they really follow orders and act on their leader’s plan?
Images flashed through her mind. The frenzied delight in the eyes of the man who’d hoped to lynch her. The shrill voice and sudden furor of the one who believed her to be a Babylonian heralding the arrival of an apocalypse. The grim, disgusted tone of the guy who just hated agents of the government.
They were unlike any cult she’d ever seen or studied. Unlike any terrorist group she’d come across.
There was no real unity here. So what kept them together?
When the FBI didn’t just go away, would they turn on one another? And what would that mean for her?
* * *
“Move, move, move!” Yankee yelled, leading from the front as he raced toward the perimeter.
Kyle finished strapping on the extra weaponry he’d set down after coming off shift. The MP-5 slung over his back, the extra Glock strapped to his chest, the magazines on one thigh, flash bangs on the other. Hopefully he wouldn’t need any of it.
He raced up next to Yankee, his breath puffing clouds of white into the frigid Montana air, his boots crunching in the frost, his gaze swiveling left and right. As far as he could tell, no one had breached the perimeter. But nothing was certain, and he pulled his MP-5 to the front for easier access.
“We have intel?” Gabe asked their boss.
“All we know is that someone took a shot near the perimeter the local police established.” As more HRT agents joined them, Yankee continued. “We don’t know who fired. We don’t know what the target was, or if anyone was hit.” Yankee’s speed increased, but his voice remained calm. “Remember, unless there’s an immediate risk of loss of life, no one fires. We’re not giving them any excuses.”
The local PD was handling the perimeter, along with agents from the Salt Lake City FBI. What made this different from most standoffs was the fact that they were dealing with a lot more than just reporters and camera crews.
Antifederalist numbers had risen rapidly in the past few years, and they’d proven their willingness to flaunt their beliefs at other standoffs around the country. Unfortunately, it wasn’t just beliefs they were flaunting, but also an arsenal of weaponry that rivaled HRT’s equipment. And the know-how to use it.
The Salt Lake City office had already beefed up security at the perimeter twice since HRT had arrived early that morning, and reports had come back that the crowd of protesters was still growing. And too many in that crowd had come armed for war.
Kyle’s stride faltered as he finally caught sight of the perimeter. “Shit,” he mumbled, and kept going, gripping the stock of his gun, knowing that if he had to fire it casualties would be too high.
There was no other outcome, not with the sheer number of people pushing their way toward the perimeter. The sound seemed to reach him all at once, the roar of twenty-five furious voices without a united message.
How had they gotten here so fast? This part of Montana was remote, isolated. The population was fewer than five hundred and most of them didn’t live here year-round.
Some of the crowd had come in heavy winter coats and carried handmade signs. Those were the ones who would eventually give in to the need for warmth and head home, watch the outcome on TV. But about half the protesters were wearing serious outdoor gear, mostly in camouflage colors, and they were armed. A cursory sweep of the crowd showed him a few shotguns, some handguns and far too many rifles. He glanced around and spotted additional shooters perched in the spindly pine trees.
“Get the negotiator here,” Yankee said into his mic as he looked up into the trees. “The profiler, too.”
Kyle glanced across him at Gabe, whose jaw had clenched at the mention of his cousin.
“We’ve got protesters with radios,” Yankee muttered. “Are they talking to one another or did we miss something?”
Were all these people here because of an antifederalist principle, and not Butler specifically? That was definitely possible, given the number of fringe militia groups and antigovernment extremist movements in the area. Or could Butler be giving orders from inside the compound, bringing supporters here himself? Did he have a bigger reach than they’d realized?
If Butler could contact the outside world, that might explain the size of the crowd. Then again, it could also be due to the reporters jostling for position amid the protesters.
Kyle stared up at the closest shooter, braced near the top of a pine tree. It swayed under his weight, but he seemed at ease, holding a semiautomatic in gloved hands, a radio painted in camo colors strapped high on his chest along with enough extra ammunition to take on an army. A canteen was hooked to his waist next to a sheathed knife, and he wore a bulletproof vest under all the packets of ammo. He caught Kyle’s gaze and seemed to smile, though it was hard to tell through the heavy salt-and-pepper beard. The pine tree bounced as he lifted his weapon higher, lining it up with Kyle’s head.
Kyle instantly tensed. His gut reaction was to swing his own weapon into position...and to wish he’d taken the time to grab his helmet. But this guy could hit a target; Kyle didn’t need to see him try to know that. He had fringe militia written all over him. A helmet wouldn’t make any difference. And aiming his own weapon could set the supporter off, give the guy an excuse to shoot first.
So, instead, he kept his MP-5 clenched close to his body, aimed down at the ground and said into his bone mic, “Inactive shooter, pine tree, at my three o’clock.”
“Got him.” Wyatt Thompson, the brand-new sniper on their team, came back immediately.
Kyle had no idea where Wyatt had positioned himself, but Wyatt’s father was a big deal in the army and apparently Wyatt had learned to shoot around the time he’d started walking. He was one of the best shooters they’d ever seen in HRT. The tension in Kyle’s shoulders loosened instantly, even as a reporter pointed directly at him, and then the cameraman behind her swung his lens to film them.