That’s all it had been for Tara. But when Andrea had stopped writing after joining the Chosen, it hadn’t taken Tara long to decide to follow her. She hadn’t even been certain she intended to convince Andrea to leave. Because according to what she’d gathered, members of the Chosen were allowed to leave. That fact alone suggested to Tara that nothing truly evil could be going on in the compound.
Leaving wouldn’t be easy, of course, since the Chosen gave up their personal possessions to the Leader upon arrival, and lived a proscribed life that wouldn’t exactly provide them with much to put on a résumé, but it wasn’t forbidden. And guests were encouraged to come in, to spend a day in the gardens or the orchard. While they had to be checked in by guards at the gate and have their presence announced, they were not followed around the premises. On the surface, everything appeared to be on the up-and-up.
But when she’d arrived at the camp three weeks after Andrea, ostensibly to help in the gardens again, only to hear that Andrea and John had both gone on missions of self-discovery, every instinct she had rebelled.
A man like the Leader didn’t just send away a brand-new acolyte over whom he hadn’t guaranteed full control. John, maybe. Andrea, never.
And the longer Tara had stuck around, the more suspicious she’d become. Nothing about the way the Leader treated his flock gave the impression he’d let a single one out of his sight for longer than a day. And then there were the cameras. She’d noticed them almost by accident when the sunlight had glinted off a lens set just below the glass of one of the security lights. Why would a community farm and ranch need to spy on its members? So Tara had given notice at the diner and moved into the commune.
And now, Jake was here. What could it possibly mean? Both drugs and guns were possible activities for reclusive groups with charismatic leaders, but Jake didn’t belong to the DEA or ATF. Kidnapping? No one in the compound seemed to be held against their will. In fact, they seemed quite happy overall, despite the hard work and restrictive living conditions. She hadn’t made it into the ranch house yet, though, and there were acres and acres of land on which anything might be occurring.
The final dining horn rang, and Tara found Aaron at her side. He waited while she cleaned her plate and laid it in the bussing tub. Whoever had kitchen duty this afternoon would pick up the tubs, wash the dishes and silverware, and then reset the long tables in time for the evening meal.
Without speaking, Aaron led her over to the door, where Jake waited for them.
“Jacob, this is Serena. You will be working with her this afternoon.” “Serena?” A spark of humor lit those dark eyes, and Tara had to squelch the instinctive urge to grin back. Finally, someone with a sense of humor about the ridiculous names. But laughter would draw unwelcome attention, so she simply nodded.
“We have to cut down a tree limb that’s growing into one of the fences,” she said. “Are you up to it?”
“Are you implying that I’m some kind of weakling?”
“Jacob,” Aaron said, a note of warning in his voice, “the Chosen do not judge. Serena is merely concerned for your welfare.”
“Of course,” said Jake. “I’m just not used to anyone worrying about me.” He cast his eyes down.
Damn, he was good. Even Tara believed him.
“You will become used to it in time. Serena, take Jacob out to the shed and get the tools. Don’t allow him to overdo it today, though.”
“I’ll be careful,” she promised, still astonished they’d let her take him out alone. It had to be some kind of test.
Jacob followed her silently through paths teeming with the Chosen headed to their afternoon duties. The western fence was close to the large area of empty soil from which beans had just been harvested. Unfortunately, three men were tilling the remnants of the plants into the soil, so she and Jake wouldn’t be truly alone. Not that she’d expected to be.
At the shed, Jacob hefted the ladder and an ax with enviable ease, leaving her only the saw to carry. Regardless of what he’d put his body through, he remained strong, and she couldn’t help staring just a tiny bit at the bulge of muscles in his arms. His physical presence had knocked her for a loop when they’d first met, and though she didn’t want to remember the feeling, it was impossible to forget.
When they got out to the tree, he set up the ladder, took the saw from her, and climbed up to finish cutting away the branch while she stood below, steadying him. When she’d been working alone, she’d sat in the V of the branch, using the saw in front of her. It hadn’t been particularly safe, but it had been the only way she could get good leverage, because without someone holding it, the ladder tended to sway alarmingly.
“What are you doing here, Jake?” she asked with a quick look around to be sure no one was close enough to hear.
“I came to find you. Now that I have, we’re leaving.”
“Like hell.”
“You can’t mean to stay with these . . . drones?”
“Not that it’s any of your business, but yes. I do. You can leave any time, though.”
“Why?” Sawdust rained down on her as Jake went after the limb with alarming aggression.
“Why what?”
“Why the hell would you want to incarcerate yourself in a place like this?”
“I’m looking for a friend.”
“For crying out loud, TJ, I know you had a rough year, losing your family and all, but you have friends. And they’re worried about you. They’re the ones who sent me to find you.”
She gaped at him. “You can’t be serious. My brother was the scum of the earth and my father wasn’t much better. You of all people should know that. I’m not here figuring out the existential meaning of friendship, I’m looking for one particular friend. This is the last place I traced her before losing her trail.”
He digested that while he finished sawing off the branch. Caught in the fence, it remained aloft even after it had separated from the tree. Jake yanked on it a few times, then climbed down the ladder.
“I’m going to have to take that off closer to the fence edge as well. Then I can chop the bigger part for wood while you re-stretch and reattach the chain link.”
One of the men from the field wandered over, and Tara’s belief that she’d been handed Jake as some sort of test intensified. The man’s name was Samuel, and he was among the favorites of the Leader.
“Is everything working out?” he asked.
“It’s fine.” Tara managed a smile. “I don’t think we’ll need to replace this piece of fence at all. If Jacob can get all the pieces of the branch out, we should be able to just fix it.”
“Waste not, want not,” Samuel intoned.
“Exactly.”
“And you, Jacob? The labor is not too difficult? You are handling it?”
“Yes, I am. It’s good to be working again. Feeling useful.”
“Excellent.” The man nodded and went back to talk to the men in the bean field.
“They don’t trust you yet. Be careful. I don’t intend to let you get me kicked out of here.”
“Do you have any idea who these people are, TJ?”
“Stop calling me that. Here you have to get used to calling me Serena, and I have to get used to answering to it.”
“Jesus.” Jake gave the tree branch a particularly vicious pull.
“And don’t let them hear you say that or you will get a lecture from the Leader on how ‘Jesus’ is just a name the deluded masses of the un-Chosen give to one of the Powers.”
“What cover story did you invent for being here?”
“I didn’t need one. Andrea, the friend I told you about, she brought me out here a bunch of times. It all seemed harmless enough. Then one day she decided to move in. Soon after that, she stopped coming to town, and she didn’t write. When I came to visit and asked to see her, I was told she’d moved on, gone on
some kind of spiritual mission.”
“And you don’t believe that.”
“Not a chance.”
“Okay.”
Tara couldn’t deny the thread of warmth that snaked through her at his easy acceptance of her evaluation of the situation. She had little faith in her own instincts these days. She’d missed such important things when her friends at home had been in trouble that she’d almost gotten them killed. She wasn’t naive; she recognized that part of her determination to find Andrea had to do with making up for having been unable to save Lucy. Jake’s agreement based on nothing more than her word eased the constant burden of self-recrimination.
“What did you tell them?”
“I’m Jason Norman. They didn’t ask for many details, but I’m sure they’ll check, so I built myself a pretty solid cover. I told them I was a computer programmer who’d had a bad breakup from my girlfriend. She ran off, and I left my job to go look for her. I fell on hard times and landed in Twin Oaks, taking odd jobs.”
“Why on earth would you tell them you were looking for a girlfriend?”
“Because if they asked around in Twin Oaks, they’d know I’d collected stories about Tara Jean Black.”
“Shit!” Tara barely remembered to keep her voice down as she snuck a look at the field. Black was the name she’d used working in Twin Oaks. “You’re going to get me kicked out of here!”
“No, I’m not. I told the Leader that I recognized you. I knew you wouldn’t know what to say about me, so I told him you hated me and probably wouldn’t even acknowledge my presence. I wouldn’t tell him why, just said I deserved it.”
“You do.”
“Yeah, I do. But the fact remains that Tara Jean Black was involved with Jason Norman. You’ll have to admit we know each other at some point, so here’s what you need to know: We met while you were working in Dallas cleaning houses and I was a work-from-home computer consultant. I had to give us both jobs he couldn’t check on easily. I hired you from a flyer you’d put up in a coffee shop, because I am a slob.”
“Are you? Really?” Tara looked up at him with interest. She’d met him in Dobbs Hollow. They’d been brought together because a mutual friend had needed help from the law enforcement community, but they’d never been close, never had time to become friends. Tara knew more about Jake from a true crime book she’d read in which he was featured than she did from the time they’d spent together.
“Yeah, I kind of am.” He grinned, and her heart leapt a little at the sight of the groove it carved into his lean cheek and the twinkle in his changeable blue-gray eyes. “I tend to leave papers out everywhere. That much is true.” Serious again, he hurried on. “We started dating, fell in love, then you ran off. I followed you, and eventually heard you were here. That’s the story.”
“And I’ll have to give a reason for not admitting it sooner. Thanks a lot.” She glanced around to see who might be watching, but no one seemed to be paying them any attention. “Now they’ll never trust me. You’ve screwed me up but good.”
“Do you have any idea who these people are? Who that lunatic who calls himself the Leader is?”
“No. I didn’t exactly have the resources of the FBI at my fingertips before I came looking for Andrea. I had to fly blind.”
“Well, let me clue you in: His real name is Owen Stephenson. He inherited this ranch from his father, who died under extremely suspicious circumstances six years ago, when Owen was twenty-seven. His father had already set this place up to house his own ministry. He sent Owen to all the best schools hoping he’d follow in his footsteps but with a more modern twist. Little Owen went to the University of Texas as an undergrad and majored in biochemistry and psychology. Then he went to Harvard Medical School. But rather than going into an internship in a hospital, he came home one summer, his father died, and he stepped right into the top slot. Aaron and Samuel, he brought them with him when he came home from Harvard.
“Daddy Stephenson had close to two hundred followers, all of them living here. Owen stepped into his father’s shoes, but not everyone liked the changes he made when he took over, and a good number of them left. Hal Stephenson was a live-and-let-live kind of guy. His son is most definitely not. He’s a narcissistic sociopath.
“Nothing gets in Owen Stephenson’s way, and some of the people who took off have said—though never publicly, never on the record—that others didn’t make it out. People who knew too much about the inner workings of the ministry simply disappeared.”
Jake’s eyes slid to the side and he raised his voice.
“All I want is a chance, TJ.”
“For what?” She slid smoothly into the role. “To screw me over again? I came here to get away from people like you. And my name is Serena. You can’t convince me that you sincerely want to belong to the Chosen.”
“I know I don’t deserve—”
Aaron stepped into view. “The Leader wishes to see the two of you.”
“Now?” Tara let her fear bleed into her voice to mask her anger. If Jake’s appearance led to her being forced out of the compound, she’d kill him, but it was better to sound like a whiner among the Chosen than to allow her strength to show.
“Yes. Your tools will be put away for you. You are to follow me up to the main house.”
“This is your fault,” Tara hissed at Jake for Aaron’s benefit as they trudged across the field. “All I wanted was a little peace and quiet, to make my life whole again.”
“Running isn’t the answer. We can make our lives whole together,” Jake muttered, loud enough for Aaron to hear. “I’m just asking you to let me try.”
“I’m staying, you’re going.”
“What about the Chosen not judging?”
“Maybe I’m not entirely settled in yet. But I’ll get there. Faster, once you’re gone.”
“I’m not going anywhere, T—Serena.”
They reached the ranch house and were ushered into a large, airy office, where the Leader waited in a leather chair. Aaron indicated that they were to kneel before the chair, and Tara did. Jake, she noticed, took longer to obey.
The Leader sighed.
“Serena, why did you not tell me you knew Jacob when you first saw him last night?”
Although she was prepared for the question, Tara stumbled through her answer. “I—I’m not really sure. I guess I thought . . . if you knew who he was, you’d send him away and I wanted him to stay because—Oh, this is so embarrassing.”
“You have no need to be ashamed. Remember, the Powers are loving and forgiving.”
“Of course. But I didn’t live up to the best of what I can be. It was petty. I wanted him to be here, to see how good a life I had made for myself without him. I wanted him to know that I was one of the Chosen. When we were together, he made me feel small.” That much was true; Jake had made her feel small. He’d spared her no quarter letting her know of her incompetence. “I wanted to show that I was better than he thought.”
“What did he do to you?”
“I caught him with another woman.” She’d decided to use the excuse about halfway through their trip to the house. It would explain their antagonism as almost nothing else could. Let him figure out what to say in his own defense.
“Is this true, Jacob?”
Jake shrugged, a movement as foreign to his body as the humble, kneeling pose. This man was driven, focused, never apathetic.
“I was drunk,” he mumbled.
“You were drunk a lot,” she spat, letting her anger fly free.
“I’m sorry, T—Serena. I haven’t had a drink in weeks. I admit, when you first left, I got drunk and stayed that way. But then I realized I had to clean up. All this time, I’ve been looking for you. That has to count for something.”
Tara didn’t answer.
“Tell me, Serena, what you feel at this moment,” said the L
eader. Under his smooth, superficially considerate tone, she felt the fangs of an emotional vampire. He was enjoying watching her and Jake slap at each other.
“I wish I were strong enough to forgive him,” she replied.
“I need to meditate on this. You will each go to your bunks and remain there until dinner. After dinner, we will speak again.”
• • •
IN HER BUNKHOUSE, Tara paced. Now that Jake had seen her, he could go home and tell their friends that she was fine. He had no reason to stay. But he would. She knew, just knew, he was going to stick around and cause a problem, and she didn’t see any way of changing his mind.
At dinner, Aaron escorted Tara to the front of the room, where she and Jake were both placed at the newcomers’ table to eat. Her gut churned, and she found it difficult to choke down the food placed in front of her. What did the Leader have in mind? The rest of the Chosen avoided her eyes when she glanced at other tables, leaving her no question something bad was about to take place.
When the Leader called both of them up to the stage and had them stand looking out onto the dining hall, dread roiled in her stomach, souring the meal.
“We have before us a question of judgment,” the Leader intoned, and again Tara heard the tinge of malicious pleasure beneath his words. “Two of the Chosen have polluted their souls with lies. Jacob came in search of Serena, and while he admitted as much to me, he did not reveal the reasons for her flight. And Serena allowed us to believe she did not recognize Jacob, had not known him in their previous lives.
“Such pollution is a corruption that can spread, and we must drive it out or be infected ourselves.”
Fury rose in Tara’s heart, almost deafening her to the Leader’s next words. How could she find Andrea if she were thrown out of the compound? She could not, would not fail another friend.
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