Parker held his breath as he waited for Sara to decide. Then he saw something in her eyes shift, and he let out his breath in relief. There were tears in her eyes again and her body wasn’t rigid with tension as she stepped forward and they embraced. Parker crushed her into him, the hug reaching back through all the intervening years. He felt her hug him back and he closed his eyes.
“I found you,” he said.
With the words, he felt a tangible weight floating free from his body. He stood still, savoring the moment, and then they stepped back and looked at each other. He heard a sound and turned to see Finn wiping her face with her sleeve.
“Finn?” he asked. “Are you crying?”
“No, I’m not crying,” she snapped. “Your stupid cabin has stupid mold and my stupid allergies are acting up. Plus, your face is stupid.”
“Is this my new sister, Daddy?” Sara asked. Her voice was wry, and he heard something of himself in it—something, finally, that didn’t remind him of her mother. He felt himself grinning.
“Finn,” he said. “Meet, Sara, my daughter.”
“Hello, Sara,” Finn said with a chuckle. “Nice to meet you.”
Sara smiled a big smile—one that seemed like it could have bubbled over into laughter at any time. “Nice to meet you, Finn,” she replied. “You’re going to have to tell me how you two met.”
“Later. Sara,” Parker interrupted. “We’ve got to go.”
“Dad…”
He saw she was having trouble using the word, and knew it must feel alien to her tongue after all these years. “The Council hasn’t taken down the Vineyard because they were hoping I could get something for them, something they were afraid they might lose in a raid. It’s why they used me.”
“What thing?”
“They think Dr. Marr might have had plans for her resistance, and the names of agents she might have gotten inside their networks.”
“And you agreed to help the people trying to steal America because…?” he asked.
“Because it meant safety. Not only for me, but for the rest of the women and girls of the Vineyard. They’re still not safe. I have to help them.”
Parker was silent. Along with overwhelming frustration, he felt a growing sense of pride in this woman standing before him. At the same time, he felt a furious flash of hate and anger for his ex-wife. He’d missed out on so much.
“Wow,” Finn told him. “You’ve finally met someone as stubborn as you are.”
Nonplussed, Parker ignored her. He kept his focus on Sara, sizing her up and trying to understand her as a person. She returned his gaze, neither pleading nor supplicating.
“If I help you,” he said, choosing his words carefully. “You’ll give up this insane idea of collaborating with the Council?”
“They’re worse than the Church,” Finn said gently. “It might not feel like it right now to you, but once you get out in the world, you’ll see it for yourself. You’ll only be trading one prison for an—”
Parker heard it then, the footsteps on the porch—too many. He turned quickly, saw Finn reacting to his reaction, and then both their weapons came up and pointed to the door. It flew in and his finger found his trigger. It froze there.
21
Flanked by three men, Maggie Parker entered the cabin, a Sig Sauer pistol to Ava’s head. Her eyes widened in recognition as she saw Parker, but then narrowed with hostility. She kept her muzzle glued to Ava’s head, behind her ear. Meanwhile, the men fanned out into the room, bringing their weapons up toward Parker and Finn, and he heard Sara gasp, but he didn’t look at her, as he slowly lowered his gun and shifted his finger off the trigger and motioned for Finn to do the same.
“This is quite the family reunion,” Maggie said, her tone dry.
“Guns and all,” Parker replied. “Seriously, Maggie? You kidnap our daughter, turn her over to a cult, let me believe she was taken by perverts and most likely murdered, and now you show up, to what? Kill me on top of it all?”
“I’m sorry I hurt you,” she said flatly. He stared at her, looking for something on her face. Remorse, maybe? Nothing.
“No, you’re not,” he snapped.
“Fair enough. I wish you didn’t feel pain because of my actions, but I regret nothing. The Church of Humanity was something you were never going to understand. I did what I thought was best.”
“Don’t,” he said. “Spare me your moralistic beliefs about a fucking doomsday cult. I’m not drinking the Kool-Aid. You stole my child and abandoned our marriage. So, if you’ve come back here to steal her again, let’s get down to the guns blazing part.” Parker’s tone was anguished. Once he’d realized that his ex had been behind everything, the pieces had all begun to fit.
Parker cast a quick look to Finn and Eloisa and caught their eyes. They both looked pissed more than anything, which was better than frightened; so long as they didn’t do anything stupid. Giving an almost imperceptible shake of the head, he hoped they understood not to do anything foolish.
“Sara,” Maggie said, holding out her hand as if she were a child. “Come over beside me. Everything I ever told you about what was going to happen, everything Dr. Marr ever told us, has come true. Why would you leave now? I know you miss your father, but he would never have believed. If I’d thought he would have, I would’ve tried to reach him before.”
Sara looked from Maggie to one of the men, and Parker couldn’t read her expression.
“Truesdale raped me,” Sara ground out between clenched teeth, snapping her hand up to point at him. “And I wasn’t the only one. I was supposed to look up to Marr as an example, as a strong woman and leader, but she collected bastards like she did runaways.”
“I did not!” Truesdale shouted. He looked over at Maggie, expression nervous, and then cut his gaze back to Sara. “She wanted it!” he shouted, staring at Maggie again whose face remained shockingly impassive. “It was a ploy so I wouldn’t notice her working for the Council.”
“Have you shown my mom your trophy book?” Sara demanded, smirking when Truesdale went white.
“I don’t know what you mean.” His voice sounded flustered, and Parker might have enjoyed his obvious discomfort if it wasn’t for the fact that he was looking at his daughter’s rapist.
“He keeps pictures in there, Mom. Pictures of all the Church girls, and they are girls, that he raped.”
Maggie pursed her lips, but any emotions she might have felt were masked behind an impenetrable wall on indifference. “We’ll discuss this later, Sara,” Maggie replied, holding out her hand again. “We’re in danger right now.”
“Really?” Parker shouted. “Fucking, really? After what your daughter just told you, that’s your answer? You sick bitch.”
Parker made a move toward Sara but stopped when one of the gunmen waved him back.
“Don’t you judge me!” Maggie suddenly screamed. “Don’t you ever judge me!” She pressed her muzzle harder into the side of Ava’s head, her finger white on the trigger. “You gave up the right to judge anyone a long time ago.”
“Maybe so, maybe not,” Finn said. “But I sure haven’t, and, lady, I gotta tell you, you’re a fucking bitch.”
“He doesn’t get to rape Sara and walk away,” Parker said. “You shoot Ava, you’re the next to die.” He locked glares with his ex-wife.
“What the fuck you mean next to d—” Truesdale shouted.
Parker snapped his gun up and shot him in the forehead, before turning his muzzle toward Maggie and lined up the sights. Truesdale’s forehead cracked open like a gourd, making a blood halo mist behind his head, and he collapsed without finishing his thought, a look of incredulous stupidity stamped on his face. Blood poured out of his wound and made a red lake around the Church personnel’s feet. The two bodyguards tensed.
The bodyguard standing closest to him looked stunned, blood and bits of brain having splattered his face.
“Stand down! Stand down!” Maggie screamed. She swung her face back toward Parker
. “You crazy sonofabitch!” she shouted. “I needed him alive!”
“Kill the girl, you die next; either by me or by Finn. No way you get out alive,” Parker warned her. “He had it coming. So let’s file it in my ‘you fucking owe me, bitch’ column and call the matter closed. What do you say?”
Sara suddenly stepped away from him putting distance between her and her parents and pivoted. She pointed her gun at Parker who, in turn, blinked in surprise.
“Stop, Dad,” she said. “I can’t let my father kill my mother, not right in front of me. I’ll go with her before I let you do that.”
“You’d shoot me?” Parker asked.
“You’d shoot him?” Finn asked, shock evident in her voice.
“All he did was kill the guy you said raped you,” Ava pointed out.
“It was more complicated than that,” Sara admitted. “I was searching his office and I did need to distract him.” She scowled at the corpse. “I didn’t expect him to rape me.”
“You are working with the Council?” Maggie asked. Her face looked almost comically shocked at the revelation.
“Wow, I’m so glad to see our daughter flourishing so well under the moral and humanistic environment of the Church you think I never would have joined,” Parker spit at her, the sarcasm in his voice so sharp that it was nearly vile.
“Fuck you, James!” Maggie shrieked. “You don’t know anything!”
“I know you let our daughter get raped,” he shot back.
“Shut up!” Sara screamed. “Shut up!”
In the shocked, tense silence that followed Sara’s scream, Ava spoke up, Maggie’s gun still at her temple. “I thought my parents were fucked up.”
Finn snorted with laughter, the sound unbidden, and more a result of tension than humor. “We’re all going to die when the Council shows up,” she pointed out, a half-panicked smirk on her face. “Seriously, they’ve got all the guns and all the men. And they’ll capture and hang us, or take us out in the woods and shoot us. If we keep this Steve-Wilkos-show shit up,” she went on. “We’re all dead, and soon.”
Maggie looked at Sara, tears forming in her eyes. “Why, baby, why?”
Sara shook her head, giving her mom a sad look. “Because whatever you thought the Church was, it’s not. It rotted from within right under Marr’s nose. Dad’s right, Mom. It’s nothing more than a cult now, an organization that preys on its faithful.”
“That’s not true,” Maggie started. “Yes, maybe Truesdale was bad, but—”
“And Gruber,” Ava spoke up. “Don’t forget Gruber and his legion of buffoons. He worked right under Marr. She had a habit of putting unethical bastards in charge of the guns because they had no qualms using them.” Ava swallowed. “Lady, you don’t know me, but I saw you with Marr once. Please stop holding a gun to my head,” she pleaded. “Your daughter has her own gun and doesn’t know me. Your conflict is with her.”
Maggie seemed to consider what Ava had said, the press of the barrel against Ava loosening. “If I do, James is going to open fire.”
“No, I won’t,” Parker said.
“I don’t trust you,” Maggie replied.
“Quick test,” Parker said. He looked at the bodyguards. “Either of you cowboys rape my daughter?”
“Don’t be stupid, James,” Maggie snapped. “Of course, they didn’t hurt Sara. They’re my bodyguards.”
The men looked uncomfortable, unsure of whether they should be communicating directly with the man who’d murdered a Church leader, but then they traded glances as if to confer. Just as Parker was about to lose his patience, the men shook their heads.
“In light of recent events,” Parker told her, furious all over again, “you’ll excuse my skepticism.”
“Am I the only one here trying to get the gun away from my head?” Ava asked. “Seriously?”
“Let her go, Mom,” Sara said. She lowered her pistol. “She’s a Church member, for crap’s sake. Or was, like me.”
Maggie set her mouth in a hard, straight line and looked at Parker. Parker, making no move to lower his weapon, arched one eyebrow at her.
“You know I always hated it when you did that Mr. Spock bullshit,” she said.
Parker lowered his eyebrow, then arched it again. She smiled, slightly, and nodded. Then she lowered her handgun from Ava’s head and gently released the hammer on the double-action pistol.
“Maggie,” Parker said. “There’s one thing I have to know; why did you pick a Sig Sauer?”
“What?” she asked, clearly confused. “It’s a great handgun. I think the SEALs use it. Why?”
“No reason.” He looked at Ava, who stepped closer to him and Finn. “You okay?”
“Okay enough,” she answered, rubbing her head where the barrel had pressed against it. “Finn’s right, though; we don’t have time for dysfunction junction here. It’ll cost all of us, except maybe Sara, our lives.”
“Eloisa wouldn’t murder you,” Sara protested.
“Eloisa!” Maggie half-shouted in surprised recognition of the name. “She’s the informant?”
“No,” Sara said. “I’m the informant, and she’s my handler. She’s been a member of the Council for years.”
“I left you with her,” Maggie said. “I trusted her.”
“Yeah,” Parker said. “It sucks when someone you trust takes it upon themselves to make decisions about your daughter’s future without considering you, doesn’t it?”
“Dad!”
“Go to hell,” Maggie snapped, ignoring Sara. “I’m not apologizing to you, James.”
“Mom!”
“Hell?” Parker demanded, also ignoring Sara. “I put myself in hell for a lot of years because of you. Imagining what had happened to our daughter,” he said, his voice having broken a little on the last. He swallowed hard. “You let me believe she was kidnapped instead of telling the truth.”
Maggie looked at him. “Sara is coming with me,” she said.
“No,” Sara said simply. “I’m not.”
Finn stepped forward. “You’re being stupid, lady.” Maggie opened her mouth to answer and Finn held up her hand. “No, listen to me; hear me. The Council, working through FEMA, controls everything; has taken over everything. You understand? Everything. They could have taken down the Vineyard anytime they wanted and executed everyone as hoarders. Clearly, they knew all about the place all along. They chose to use Sara because they needed something they worried they couldn’t get through a raid, right? Only now, Sara’s been exposed, ergo, they don’t have a reason not to squash the Church. There is no more Church, or there won’t be very shortly. The dream is dead. Let. It. Die.”
Parker wanted to lower his weapon and help deescalate the situation, but he’d already killed Truesdale and he didn’t know how the bodyguards might yet react. Finn’s shotgun was a powerful deterrent at this point-blank range, but she was so small in stature that she looked ridiculous holding the weapon.
Maggie took a long moment to consider where things stood. Finally, she lowered her weapon and then gestured at the bodyguards to point their muzzles to the floor. She looked at Parker.
“Your turn,” she said.
Slowly, Parker brought his muzzle down. “Finn, go ahead,” he told her.
Seemingly reluctant, Finn lowered the shotgun.
“I have to get to the Vineyard,” Sara said. “I have to get the women out. With Truesdale dead, my cover might not be blown now and there are still other predators there like Dexter was. These women need my help because there isn’t anyone else. I’m not going with anyone who isn’t ready to do that.”
“We’re staying with Sara,” Parker said. “At least, I am.”
“Any chance to hurt the Church, I’m in,” Ava said. She showed a grin that looked more like a dog snarl and looked at Maggie. “They’re as bad as the Council.”
“Call your dog off, James,” Maggie said, as the bodyguards stiffened but Maggie waved them down.
“Screw you, lady,�
� Ava snapped back. She turned to Parker. “I need a gun.”
He indicated the stairs next to the bathroom door. “Over there, under the rug. There’s a trapdoor. Pull it open and go down. You’ll need a knife or a screwdriver to fit into the seam. I didn’t put an obvious handle on it.”
“You remodeled the coal cellar?” Maggie asked.
Parker nodded, eyeing the nervous-looking bodyguards. “I had a lot of time to myself. I had a friend, Eli, he helped.” He caught one bodyguard’s eye. “What’s your name?” he asked.
“I’m Jason; this is Eric,” the taller one said. No one offered to shake hands.
“Sara will go down with the girls while I stay up here to make sure you don’t do anything foolish; you three aren’t invited.”
“It’s a trick,” Maggie said. Jason and Eric scowled.
“It’s not a trick,” Parker said. “But it is my cellar, and I don’t want anyone from the Church of fucking Humanity knowing what’s down there.”
“Fuck you,” Jason said. “I work for Maggie.”
“We’re not your enemy,” Eric added.
“As of when?” Parker asked. “Fifteen seconds ago? Fuck you both. This is my house.” He turned toward Maggie, and added, “I seem to recall you not wanting it in the divorce.”
“I thought I was doing you a favor,” she said. “You loved this cabin.”
“I loved coming here with my family.”
“Please stop,” Sara said. “I know what Mom did,” she told Parker. “There’s at least a dozen girls and ten women who need to be saved from under the thumb of the Church. No one, other than me, seems to care that their lives could be in danger. I’m going to help them, and if this doesn’t stop, I’m leaving right now.”
“You need a plan,” Parker replied.
“Guns blazing works for me,” Ava spoke up. “Seriously, if there’s that many women and children there, we need to save them, Parker. I’m with Sara on this.”
“There are innocents there,” Maggie interjected. “They could be killed if you go in like that.”
Dead End (911 Book 2) Page 18