Christyne no longer felt human. Consumed by grief and crushed under the weight of total exhaustion, she felt drained not only of energy and will, but of life. When the hands finally fell upon her and sat her up, she barely felt them.
“Stand for us,” a female voice said.
She stood. If they’d told her to fly, she’d have flown.
They supported her-braced her, really-as the bonds on her ankles and knees were sheared.
“Spread your feet apart, please,” the female said. “We need you to find your balance.” Clearly to someone else, she said, “Get the blindfold off.”
More manhandling. This time, everything was made more complicated by Christyne’s hair, which apparently was tangled in whatever they were removing from her eyes.
“She’s tall,” a second voice said. This one was male, and he seemed to be explaining his difficulty in removing the tape from her eyes. It was definitely tape. She could tell by the tearing sound.
They’d killed her son. These terrible, terrible people had killed the sweetest boy in the world, and Christyne had done nothing to stop them. Nothing they could do from this point on-literally nothing, including burning her at the stake- could possibly hurt more than that. And all because of… what?
What had she done-what could anyone do-to justify this level of cruelty?
The last strip of tape pulled painfully at her eyebrows and eyelashes. She yelped, but no one cared. When she opened her eyes, she tried to focus anywhere else, but there was no fighting the temptation to see that which she dreaded seeing. Almost involuntarily, she shifted her eyes to the floor, where she fully expected to see Ryan’s remains.
Instead, she saw only a blood smear. On an altar, it seemed. Truly, this terrible place was a church. What level of blasphemy must that speak to?
“How can you do this to us?” she asked the woman who stood closest to her.
“I don’t expect you to understand,” the woman said.
“Do not speak to her!” a voice boomed from the back of the room. Christyne jumped at the noise, but so did her captor, whose eyes snapped away from Christyne’s face and down to the business of removing the rest of her bonds. The man who had just boomed his command stood in the middle of the center aisle, his hands on his hips. He wore a black robe that covered his entire body, from shoulders to floor.
When her hands were free, Christyne brought them around to the front, and she was aghast at how much they had swollen.
“You there,” the robed man said. “Stand tall.”
The words triggered a memory in Christyne how Ryan would have popped off to someone who had spoken to him like that. God bless Ryan, ever prideful. Forever dead. Christyne started to cry.
And she stood tall.
“Take off your clothes,” the man said.
“No way,” Ryan said. “I’m not taking off my clothes for you, you perv.”
Even as he said the words, though, he was already shrugging out of what was left of his sweater and shirt. “Why are we doing this?” he asked.
“Soon enough, it will be very clear,” Brother Zebediah said. They’d driven back into the compound, but stopped at a different little house from the one in which he and his mom had been imprisoned. It was the same design, but this one looked more lived-in than theirs. It had well-worn furniture, and there appeared to be books on the shelves along the walls. It was hard to tell in the dim light of the kerosene lamps.
“Where is my mother?” he asked. “Is she all right? She had nothing to do with the killing.”
Brother Zebediah remained focused on the wall just beyond Ryan. He and Sister Colleen appeared none too comfortable with their assigned duties. They both made a show of not watching him while in fact they watched him carefully.
Bare-chested now, he sat on the sofa to unlace his shoes. His hands were trembling, and tears spilled from his lids. This was wrong. This was so terribly, terribly wrong. If he hadn’t messed up his escape, they’d be away from this god-awful place. Instead, he’d made everything worse.
With the laces undone, he pulled his Nikes off with his opposite feet. Trembling miserably, he stood and unfastened his jeans, letting them drop as a puddle of fabric to the floor. Cold and exposed, he stood there before his captors in his boxers and socks, covering himself as best he could, his left arm supporting his throbbing right.
“Good thing I wore clean underwear,” he joked. Anything to preserve a little dignity.
“Those, too,” Sister Colleen said.
CHAPTER TWENTY – SEVEN
Gail drove the Dodge pickup to the front gate with Jonathan in the shotgun seat and Boxers coiled out of sight in the flatbed. She pulled to a stop just outside the gate. The wheels had barely stopped turning when Jonathan had his door open and was stepping out.
A sentry hit them in the eyes with a supernova of a flashlight beam. “Stay in the vehicle, please,” the sentry said.
“Get that thing out of my face,” Jonathan barked. He’d learned long ago that the right tone of voice caused people to obey. It was instinctive.
The light dropped away. The guard approached him, while another walked up to Gail’s door.
“You know the protocol,” Jonathan’s sentry said. “You stay-”
“Now,” Jonathan said. In unison, he and Gail leveled their sidearms at the foreheads of their respective prey. In the same instant, Boxers rose to his full height in the flatbed and leveled his M4 at the startled guard on the far side of the fence.
“Don’t move!” Boxers yelled. The command carried the tacit promise to kill if he was not obeyed.
“Listen to the man,” Jonathan said to his guard. “You twitch, you die. Gunslinger?”
“He’s frozen,” she said.
He didn’t bother to ask Boxers. The absence of a gunshot spoke for itself.
“Thank you,” Jonathan said to the guard closest to him. Like sentries everywhere, this one was a kid, maybe twenty-three. His eyes were one-hundred-percent focused on the muzzle of Jonathan’s. 45. “What’s your name, son?” He kept his tone commanding yet understanding.
“You shouldn’t be here,” the kid said.
“Well, sometimes shit happens. I asked your name.”
“Put your hands down!” Boxers yelled to his guy on the other side of the fence. “Just let ’em dangle, and don’t move.”
Jonathan’s kid darted his eyes up to the sound.
“Look at me, son,” Jonathan said. “What’s your name?”
“I am Brother Jonah.”
“Gunslinger?”
“Mine is Brother James,” Gail said.
“Lots of brothers and sisters,” Jonathan said. “Must be a big family.” He gave a rueful smile that was intended to intimidate. The kid took a step back. “Don’t bolt on me, Brother Jonah. You have a very good chance of living tonight. That’s not so true of your colleagues. You should count your blessings.”
Brother Jonah nodded. “I do, sir. Every day.” He seemed to be stating a fact, not being flippant.
“Here’s what I want you to do,” Jonathan said. He talked him through the process of taking two giant steps back and then lying face down on the ground so that Jonathan could zip-tie his hands behind his back, and his ankles together.
They repeated the procedure for the guard on Gail’s side, and then together Jonathan and Gail approached the guard on the far side of the gate, taking care to leave a clear fire lane for Boxers’ rifle if it came to that.
“And what’s your name, son?” Jonathan asked. Taking a look at the guard’s face, he had to suppress a laugh. Standing there in the wash of the pickup’s lights, with Boxers’ muzzle light bathing his face, the kid gave a whole
