“I can’t! Steve, I’m not leaving you two. What if you get into trouble? I need to help.”
“Matt, baby, please listen. We’ve been trained for things like this. Her more than I, yes, but even I’ve had good government training. You haven’t. If we get into trouble, you need to be here, calling Pat’s men.” He handed Matt his phone, explaining, “I took the passcode off, so you won’t have an issue getting into the phone. Pat’s number is in the contacts, and under it is a number for his second on the team, Norman Roberts. Norman is coming, on his way. If I’m not back in ten minutes, call them.”
There were so many thoughts and emotions coursing through him. Pictures flew through of Steve hurt, bleeding, dying. He couldn’t take that. After all he’d lost, to lose Steve was not an option. “If anything happens to you, I couldn’t take it. I can’t, Steve.”
A cool hand came to his cheek, Steve’s little smile playing at his lips. “That makes me feel so good, Matt, and I know that wasn’t the point of it. I want to be safe. I want to come back to you and have that life we’ve been talking about. I’ll do anything to have that, but I also know we can’t have that life with these people continuing to get away with the things they have.”
It was true, all true. “Be safe. I’m right here.”
“That’s the only thing I need to know.”
Steve’s lips were on his, and in that crushing kiss was so much. A wealth of love flooded him, promises of the future neither were sure they’d have. Matt thought he smelled flowers, the flowers from the wedding they both wanted so badly, and maybe a breeze that was salty. The ocean, something he’d never seen, waves crashing against rock as the music for their ceremony.
That was what he was left with while the dark once more surrounded him, alone in the car while the two people who’d become the most important to him were gone to fight his battle. That chapped him something fierce, having other people, people he loved and cared about, fighting for him.
He watched out the front window, then out of the sides, waiting, and each second felt like hours.
****
Creeping along the edge of the bushes, Steve held his gun in front of him and down, ready to act in a millisecond if confronted. The feel of his own rifle slung across his back helped his nerves, but not much. He knew if confronted, he’d have to kill them or they’d surely kill him.
The closer he got, he could hear car doors open and shut, low voices, but no distinguishable words.
The two thoughts crowding him were about Stacy and where she could be and Matt, back in the car, likely itching to get into the fray. He’s seen so many do just that, and it rarely ended well. All Steve could hope for was the feds would show in time to take over, leaving Matt right where he sat in the car.
When he got to the small field where the truck that had been carrying the goons, as Matt called them, the van that held the girls, and another car and a different van sat, he crouched in the bushes, hidden from the road, the field, and he hoped anyone that may be scouting out the area.
To see the man himself, Gabriel Whitehouse standing there, in the center of everything, that surprised him. More often men like him sat comfortably at home while their lackies did the dirty work. Steve didn’t hazard a guess as to why he was there. He knew. Gabriel enjoyed it.
There were sadistic people and then there were men like him. Sadists loved the occasional pain they could inflict on others, but men like Gabriel had to live it and breathe it. He wanted to feed off the fear of the girls in that van, see their faces as they realized they weren’t going to marry and have families and children.
Knowing the feds were on their way eased him some, but they weren’t there yet. There was an exchange happening before Steve’s eyes, but if he tried to rush in and stop it, they’d kill him without much problem.
There were no grand conversations like in the movies. The exchange was going very quickly. Three tall, thin men stood opposite Gabriel and his followers. One handed Gabriel an envelope, probably the confirmation to a payment made to a bank account, and Gabriel nodded to one of the goons to open the van containing the girls.
Steve looked around, listened as closely as he could, but heard no cars in the distance. He knew it would be over and the men on their way before the feds would get there. The girls would be lost, and they’d have to wait for more to be sold before a bust could go down. That was unacceptable, and Matt, he, and Stacy could never live with that.
Determined to stop them, keep them still until the feds arrived, Steve was about to head out, show himself, but as he stood, he heard a scream, crying, just as the girls from the van were being led to another.
It was Stacy! She was running onto the field, yelling, “Thank goodness! I was so lost!”
The men with guns, which was most of them, all had them pointed at her, but she acted like she didn’t see that. “Who the hell are you?” One of the men shouted at her.
Getting back low, Steve smiled even as his gut clenched in worry for her. She would pretend to be lost to stall the men from both sides until the feds came. Risky, and would probably get her killed, but she had to know what she was doing.
He moved closer, right up to the edge of the field, flush with a tree as he held his gun tightly in his hand and listened.
“Who are you, bitch?”
“I…I was getting away from my husband. He’s been terribly abusive since he lost his job and started drinking! I was running, but my car broke down a few miles from here. I’ve been walking ever since! You…I saw you. I knew God was listening! I’ve been praying with every step!”
Steve chuckled despite the seriousness of the moment, shaking his head. “Pouring it on a little thick, Stacy,” he whispered to himself.
“Girl, you found your way into a pickle,” another voice told her. The condescending way he’d said it, it left Steve with no doubt it was Matt’s father. “God didn’t bring you here. I think it was the other fella, and leaving your husband, well, that’s against God’s will.”
Steve’s teeth gritted together, hearing that hypocrite spouting about God, but he listened closer.
“Please, help me! I’m trying to get to a bus station.”
Gabriel, in his best prophet’s voice, scolded, “You aren’t going anywhere. I should bring you back to your husband and let him punish you, but you’ve seen too much here. I’m afraid you are a liability now.”
“Liability? I swear, I’m only trying to get to town. I’ll leave, I’ll walk. I didn’t see a thing!”
Just then, the girls from the van started screaming, and Gabriel’s voice boomed, “Get them quiet! I thought you drugged them!”
“We got a little distracted,” another man’s voice yelled back to Gabriel. “They’re getting their injections now.”
“Who are those girls? What’s going on here?”
After Stacy yelled the question, Steve heard a hard smack of flesh against flesh, followed by a shriek. Steve’s fist tightened on the gun, his eyes closed for a long blink, but then, he forced himself to get lower and move to look.
Stacy was on the ground, pretending to cry into her hands.
Steve watched one of the goons walk over to Gabriel, and though he was gifted in reading lips to a point, he couldn’t make out what was being said.
He learned fast enough.
“Girl, are you lying to us?”
Stacy moved her head, fake tears abandoned as she got back up to her feet.
“This boy tells me you were the one driving my son from the hospital.”
“How can you tell? I’m Asian. I’ve heard we all look alike,” she jabbed, her voice indignant and sarcastic.
A sadistic grin spread on Gabriel’s face as he started to close the small distance between them. Stacy had her head high, face defiant.
Gabriel called back, “Get those girls out of here! It’s a trap!”
Steve knew it was his time to move, and he came out of the bushes with his gun raised. Stacy, like the amazing woman she was
, pulled the gun he’d given her from her waistband and held it right on Gabriel as Steve closed in.
“Yeah, that was me, and this is a trap, but no one is going anywhere.”
Everyone raised guns that had them and Gabriel screamed to no one in particular, “No one checked her for weapons?”
Stacy smiled as he stepped to him, setting the barrel of her gun right between his eyes. “No one groped me. I guess there is something to be said for getting caught by good Christian boys.”
“Vile, foul woman! You will not interfere with God’s will!”
“God’s will, Daddy?”
Steve jumped at the sound of Matt’s voice, then groaned as he saw him moving in from the road. “Boy, you better start to pray.”
Steve saw red, his entire body filled with fire and the need to protect Matt. He knew, however, that was why Matt was there. “Sorry, Daddy, but it’s over. No more girls are going to be taken from their childhoods.”
The sound of thunder came on slowly and built, and when he recognized it as a helicopter’s approach, Steve smiled as he yelled to Matt, “Get down!”
Matt ran to the van as bullets started being fired, the night lit up with gunfire. Steve was ducking, firing, aiming at the men who were running off into the woods, and he wasn’t alone. Stacy was ahead of him, firing purposely at three men who were fast, but not fast enough.
Steve glanced back once to see the van being driven out of harm’s way and was glad Matt was out of danger. The feds came in full force with the local cops, sirens blaring once they arrived, shouts of the agents and cops along with the gunfire booming through the otherwise silent night.
Stacy and he caught up with the men, one shot in the leg, the other two abandoning their weapons. They held them there until the authorities came. He escorted Stacy back to the field where all the men from the compound and those they were selling the girls to were on the ground, fingers threaded over the backs of their heads. Matt was running back to him, and once he got close, he jumped into Matt’s arms, holding him tightly. “I was so scared he was going to hurt you.”
“We’re all okay now.”
It was pure chaos, and then quiet, men in leg and waist chains being led into a van and into the backs of squad cars, and before Gabriel could be placed into the back of one, Matt went to him and spit in his face.
The lead agent, Norman Roberts, came to them and shook hands as he introduced himself to Stacy and Steve as the crime scene was being taped off. He was thin, short, but heavy browed and dark skinned, handsome in a federal agent kind of way. “You two stalled just long enough. Thank you.”
“Thank you for coming so fast,” Stacy said, her face red but she was smiling wider than Steve had ever seen. He knew part of that was the fact the criminals had been caught, but more of it was that she had gotten to be a part of it.
“Listen, we aren’t done. Mr. Whitehouse, you know we have to go into the compound. There are more suspects there. Agents DeSoto and Castaldo informed me you were adamant that didn’t happen.”
Matt stood tall and corrected, “I don’t want it to happen, not like it could. No storming in the place with guns blazing. There are a lot of innocent men, women, and kids in there. Most of them are family to me, a lot of friends.”
“Then how do you suggest we do this? It’s not like we can go up and ring the bell. There’s a ten-foot wall around the place, from what I’ve seen from the photos, and Castaldo and DeSoto both told me that the intel has them heavily armed. I won’t place my agents in that kind of danger.”
“I won’t place my people in danger either. I have an idea, though, so that we can accomplish both our goals.”
Steve had no idea what was in his head, and it was obvious Stacy didn’t, but on the way back to Steve’s house, Agent Roberts rode with them to listen, as they were, as Matt divulged his plan.
When they got to the house, Matt went to the back yard to call Aaron and inform him of everything that had happened. The police assured the men pulled into the station wouldn’t be allowed their phone calls until the compound could be breached. They had a little time, so Matt laid out his plan to a skeptical agent.
“That’s all well and good, but you’re a civilian, Mr. Whitehouse. If I allow you to go in there and something happens, it’s on me.”
“The same can be said if you go in there, shooting up the place, killing kids and women, right?”
That visibly deflated Roberts. His left brow rose weirdly high on his forehead as the other dove lower over his right eye. “Are you going to become a lawyer after all this? You’d be great at it, and that’s not a compliment.”
Matt leaned over his knees and said, “All I want to become is a better person. Maybe you should try it.”
“Touché. Okay, tell me your plan, but I’m still not promising we’re going to go through with it.”
Chapter Twenty-Three
The approach was the worst moment of his life. The face of his grandfather passed through his mind, his brothers and sisters, mother, and even his father, who was pacing a cell floor in town. The road was so familiar, he could have told the people he rode with each rock and yucca plant along the way.
The window was open on the cool morning, letting in the scents he’d grown up with into the car, wrapping him in his childhood, his memories thick. Running over the little hills, skinning his knees and tearing his pants that would have to be mended to pass down to the other sons that would come into their family or the next generation. Nothing had ever been all his. Not his parents, or friends or even clothing. Every pair of pants and socks had been someone else’s and they would go on to be someone else’s again.
He held the hand of the one person that would be all his. Steve sat stoic, eyes ahead, but he was present, tightening his grip on Matt’s hand when it was needed, like he sensed every emotion. Stacy rode in the front, and though Stacy would never be all his in many senses of the word, she was a true friend, someone he knew he could always go to if he needed her.
Roberts parked outside the compound by a mile, like Matt had instructed. Aaron texted he was at the gate, waiting for Matt to show up, and he was as nervous and afraid as Matt had ever known him to be.
The other agents were positioned around the barriers, far enough to be unseen, but there. He’d begged for Roberts to give him time, and he’d allowed it, but with a ton of conditions. Matt planned to ignore most of them, hating to lie to the man who’d swept in and saved his fiancé and friend, but he had to. Other people were on the line.
He got out of the car, joined by Steve and Stacy only, at first. Steve held him like he was sending him to his death, and Stacy was crying. It was so out of character for her, but he didn’t mention that. Holding her tight, he promised, “I’ll be fine. And you’re going to make a crazy good mother, with all your hen instincts.”
“Shut the fuck up,” she scolded, then laughed through her tears. “Be careful or I’ll throat punch you.”
“Gee, thanks, Mom.”
Getting a smack for that, she laughed and then turned him to Steve, whose tears were bigger than hers. “Let me go with you, babe, please? I can’t take this!”
“Yeah, you can. I let you go in last night, because you had the training I didn’t. Don’t you know how hard that was for me?”
Steve nodded and wrapped his arms around his neck, crying there. “Damn it, Matt.”
He smiled patiently, wanting to grant him the request, walk into the compound with Steve at his side and tell everyone that Steve was his, but that wouldn’t make the best argument for them to listen to him right off the bat.
He let go of Steve, promising, “I’ll signal immediately when I’m clear. Don’t worry, okay?”
“Yeah right,” he scoffed as he helped Matt with the backpack that held the things he’d need when he got into the compound. “Be careful.”
“I know.”
The walk to the compound was lonely. It was what he’d searched for when he was younger, time on his own to
think, to hate himself for the feelings he had about boys instead of girls. Then later, he’d walked the paths he could while thinking about his father, about their religion, everything he questioned.
He was right, and every rock he passed was familiar. He could have named them and said hello. Before Gabriel had become so paranoid, they’d been allowed to head outside the compound to play. He gazed over at a stand of juniper trees, remembering when there were only three and he’d hidden there once during a game of hide and seek. The dip in the road he walked over was a problem for the sedans and smaller cars, inevitably scraping the undercarriages. Everything was like he was walking through his own mind, his memories.
He hadn’t been gone long from the compound, but it had felt like years. The wall around the place was tall, forbidding. It reached up, blocking out the sun in the early morning and the late afternoon on the east or west. It was made with stones from around the area, each placed by members of the compound, to feel safer from the outside world that could invade and take away the things and beliefs they held so dear.
And that was what he planned to do. He was about to take a blade to them, slashing at their prophet, their beliefs in him and his words. He was tearing apart some families while giving others the terrible news that their daughters were not at other compounds where they were living godly and raising kids with their fellow sister wives.
He knew he was seen well before he got there. He waved to the places he knew scouts were set to watch for incoming invaders or others trying to escape. He’d helped a few do just that. Those days, their hearts racing as they smuggled girls out for a better life, one that didn’t mandate obedience to old men, abuse, and having child after child until their bodies wore down.
A truck came from around the corner of the wall on the left as he got to the gate, but before any confrontation could occur, he watched the gates open, Aaron was there, smiling shakily at him while waving to the goons in the truck. “He’s made an appointment!”
“The prophet said he was banished,” one shouted from over the top of the cab of the truck, the guns all pointed at him from there and from out of the windows of the cab.
The Principle (Legacy Book 2) Page 22