“What the hell is that?” Stacy demanded.
“These are kidnappers and rapists. Child molestors, maybe. We can’t just walk in with good intentions and sunny smiles. We need to be ready.”
Thank God, Gary thought. He again wished he’d thought to bring a weapon, and he was glad that at least Brian had come prepared.
“I have one for each of you,” he said.
Stacy crossed her arms, shaking her head. “No,” she said emphatically.
“I don’t think it’s a good idea,” Reyn concurred.
Gary stepped forward and took the proffered knife. Joan was in that place. If he found out that she’d been raped, he would gut the motherfucker who’d done it, no questions asked. His fingers tightened around the handle. It felt reassuringly solid in his hand. He followed Brian’s lead and pushed the knife beneath his belt on his right side, untucking his shirt and pulling it over the weapon to hide it.
“Violence isn’t the way,” Stacy admonished them.
“We’re not going to start anything,” Brian countered. “We just need to be able to defend ourselves.”
“You’re going to end up dead. Or in jail.”
“We’ll be careful,” Gary promised, but again he felt that bloodlust as he thought about what might have been done to Joan.
“I’ll go in,” Stacy said. “You’re Joan’s boyfriend, Reyn’s your friend, I’m Reyn’s girlfriend. I’m the furthest degree of separation from the source. If anyone’s going to be able to get by them, it’s me.”
“They know all of us,” Gary explained again.
“We could pull a Wizard of Oz,” Brian said. “Jump some guards, steal their clothes, sneak inside.”
“Or jump a penitent,” Reyn suggested. He pointed. Walking down the road, from the opposite direction from which they’d come, was a man like those they’d seen striding down the highway in the dark hours before dawn.
Even this far away, even in broad daylight, there was something creepy about him, Gary thought. The fanaticism and true belief required to make a person walk mile after mile, through some of the most godforsaken terrain known to man, lent the penitent a focus that seemed almost inhuman, and even though his body was clearly tired, almost exhausted, he pushed himself on, continuing zombielike down the road.
And he was smiling.
The smile was the worst.
They watched as he reached the gate, turned in and started up the sloping driveway toward the Home.
“I think the best approach is the simplest,” Reyn said finally. “I say we just walk up and demand to see Joan. If they turn us down, we’ll think of something else. If they try to capture us, we’ll fight back and escape. We’ll also have legitimate cause to call in the law.” He touched Stacy’s arm. “You wait in the car. Pull it up to the head of the drive. Be ready to take off if we run back. If anything happens to us, get the sheriff.”
“I like it,” Gary said.
Brian nodded, patting his hip where the knife rested below his shirt. “I’m in.”
Stacy took a deep breath. “Okay,” she said reluctantly. “But be careful. Just… be careful.”
Brian gave her the car key, and Reyn gave her a kiss. “Keep an eye on us,” he told her. “Anything weird happens, call it in. The sheriff has those two men out here.” He looked around. “Somewhere. They can be on those guys in seconds.”
Stacy held his hand tightly. “I don’t like this.”
“I don’t, either,” Reyn admitted. “But it’ll all be over soon.”
“I think they say that in The Wizard of Oz,” Brian muttered to Gary.
Stacy returned to the car while the three of them continued onward. They all reached the gate at the same time, and she rolled down the window and blew Reyn a kiss while exhorting him once again: “Be careful!”
If all went right, he’d be kissing Joan soon, Gary thought.
The possibility made his heart race—though with anticipation or fear he could not tell.
They started up the narrow, rutted driveway. The penitent was gone, swallowed up by the Home, and Gary wondered if they were being watched as they trudged up the drive toward the compound. He took out his cell phone and pressed the key to automatically dial the number of the sheriff that he’d input into the device. Nothing had happened—
Yet
—but the sheriff had all but begged them to come up with any excuse to call for help and invite law enforcement to rescue them, and he thought it might be a good idea to have someone on the line, listening in as they tried to talk their way inside—just in case something went wrong.
Gary held the phone to his ear.
Nothing.
The call was blocked.
He asked Reyn and Brian to try their phones, but the result was the same. It made sense. Any organization that had the technical savvy to delete credit histories and bank accounts would have no trouble jamming phone signals.
Thank God they’d left Stacy in the car. Someone needed to be able to go for help.
The three of them looked at one another, putting away their phones.
Kept walking.
Finally, they reached the front entrance of the Home. Gary half expected someone to meet them, to either chase them away or force them inside, but they made it to the door without incident. The building was one story, but it looked bigger close up than it had in the photographs, and just knowing how many interconnected structures lay behind this initial facade made Gary realize how hard it was going to be to find Joan. She could be anywhere in there.
“What do we do now?” he wondered aloud. “Knock?”
Reyn did just that, pounding several times on the door with the side of his fist. The door was so thick, it barely made a sound, and Gary looked down the flat expanse of the building, trying to figure out if there was another way inside.
Then there was a rattle, a click, and the door was opened by an elderly man dressed in the type of peasant clothes that characterized all of the Homesteaders. He greeted them with a too-wide smile, though his eyes were flat. “Welcome to the Home. May I help you?”
“Joan Daniels! Where is she?” Gary hadn’t known what he was going to say until he said it, and his words were infused with anger, weighted with all of the emotion that had been roiling within him since Joan had been taken at Burning Man.
The Homesteader’s eyes widened. “Outsiders!”
Brian whipped out his knife and pressed it against the man’s throat.
“What are you doing?” Reyn yelled.
Gary’s heart leapt in his chest, pounding crazily. They were the ones who’d be going to jail, he thought. Brian had fucked everything up. He’d committed an honest-to-God crime, and even if they found something now, it wouldn’t stick.
But Brian wasn’t backing down. “Take us to Joan!” he demanded. “Now! Or I’ll slit your goddamn throat!”
Gary expected the two deputies who were keeping the compound under surveillance to run up, guns drawn, but no one arrived. No one came from inside the Home, either, and Brian moved slowly around to the back of the man, still pressing the tip of the knife to his throat. He shifted position, using his left arm to get the man in a headlock and pressing the knife against his back, hostage-style. “You have five seconds to start bringing us to Joan.”
“Father will—”
“One!”
“—not allow—”
“Two!”
“Okay!” The blankness in the man’s eyes had been replaced by fear. Gary looked over his shoulder toward the road, wondering if Stacy could see what was going on, wondering if she had called for help.