“Get them to the trucks!” he calls over his shoulder.
A minute later, a soldier appears beside my line and directs us forward. Feeling as if the night has become seriously surreal, I allow myself to be herded toward the perimeter fence and out through the gate. Several trucks with large beds are waiting there, canopied with what looks like canvas. A soldier opens the doors at the back of one of the trucks and directs us in.
I look to my left and right. The other trucks are filling up, too, with people from the ranch. It looks like they’ve gotten everybody. Where are they taking us? Will we be coming back?
I haven’t got any of my things. The thought flashes nonsensically through my head before I remember that I have no possessions.
I’m hoping for answers once we’re settled in the back of the truck. I look around at everyone else who’s ended up in this vehicle with me, a seemingly random assortment of people from the ranch. Everyone looks as terrified as I feel, and I get the sense that no one has the slightest idea what’s going on.
As I look from one face to the next, I hear the truck rumble to life, and a thrill of fear shoots through me. Next thing I know, we’re moving, the bed of the truck rocking gently back and forth, carrying us away from Pyrite Ranch, toward a future that is uncertain and unknown.
Chapter 11
Tammy
We are unloaded at a steel-reinforced building surrounded by barbed wire, armed guards, and fierce-looking dogs. I shiver as I’m led into the building, past badges reading “FBI.” Whatever kind of trouble we’re in here, it’s a big deal. Will we be sent to prison? Will there be a trial? What in the world have we done wrong that has led us here?
Once seated on wooden benches, each person is summoned, one by one, into small windowless rooms that line the perimeter of the larger space housing us. They don’t call us by name. I don’t think they know our names. Instead, we’re summoned with the wave of a hand, a beckoning finger.
The woman who finally calls me over has a severe haircut and a pair of wire-rimmed eyeglasses. She is probably in her fifties and has a rank on her uniform. I can’t decode the symbols, but I know enough to know this means she probably isn’t a field agent. She probably wasn’t present at the raid on the ranch. I don’t know what to make of that.
She leads me into a little room, gestures to a wooden chair on one side of a small rectangular table, takes the seat opposite me, and pours two cups of water from a plastic jug. I haven’t seen plastic in three years.
The woman opens up a notebook.
“My name is Admiral Keene,” she says. “I’m assisting Admiral Henshaw. We’re both with the U.S. Navy SEALs. Can you tell me your name?”
“Tammy,” I say. “Tammy Owens.”
“How old are you, Ms. Owens?”
“I’m twenty-four.”
“And how long have you lived at Pyrite Ranch?”
“Three years. Ms. Keene—”
“Admiral Keene,” she corrects, not unkindly.
“Right, sorry, Admiral Keene…can you tell me what’s going on?”
“All your questions will be answered,” she promises. “I need to get a little information first. Is that okay with you?”
“I guess…”
“First of all, are you injured at all?”
“What? No.”
“Nothing we should be aware of? You haven’t been beaten?”
“Why would I have been beaten?” That’s an alarming question. “Is somebody else hurt? Someone from the ranch? Everyone’s okay, aren’t they?” My mind goes to Olivia.
“Everyone’s fine,” Admiral Keene says, nudging the glass of water toward me. “Drink. You’re dehydrated. You haven’t been starved, have you?”
“No!” I say emphatically. “Why are you asking me these things? What’s going on?”
Keene sighs. “Forgive me, Ms. Owens, but I have to ask these questions. These are common behaviors within cults.”
I reel back in my chair. She’s made a mistake. “Pyrite isn’t a cult. It’s a health retreat.”
“I’m sorry, but it isn’t. Our investigation has revealed the true nature of the organization, and it’s been shut down. You’re not to worry. You and the rest of the members are completely safe.”
“I’m not a member of a cult!”
Keene clutches her hands in front of her. “Ms. Owens, I wish I could be breaking this to you more gently, but I need you to focus and try to keep up with me here, okay? I know this is going to be hard to hear. We’ve been talking to the others for a while now, and everyone is having the same reaction. Honestly, the fact that none of you were aware of what was going on only serves to reinforce the insidious nature of this cult.”
I’m shaking my head before she finishes talking.
“It was a health ranch,” I correct her. “People came to restore their mental and physical wellbeing. We were all there voluntarily. People could leave anytime they wanted to.”
The image of Connor flashes through my mind. I remember seeing him as we were marched out of the ranch, fighting with Elias, pursuing him in the direction of the woods. Whatever’s happening here, it’s Connor’s fault. He’s the one who turned us in to these people and told them the ranch was a cult. He must be. I can’t think of any other explanation.
Fury burns through me at the thought. How dare he tell such vicious lies about us! He had only been with us for a few weeks. How could he presume to think he knew what Pyrite was about?
“Ms. Owens?” Admiral Keene is still speaking. “Are you still with me?”
“Yes.”
My voice comes out sounding sulky and petulant. I’m not impressed with myself. At the same time, though, don’t I have a right to sulk? This is so ridiculous. I was upset with Connor for leaving, but if I’d ever suspected he would do something like this…well, I’d have gotten over it a lot more easily, that’s for sure. I can’t believe I ever went into the forest with him. What was I thinking?
“Were you aware that Xavier Graves was stockpiling an arsenal of weapons beneath the ranch?” the admiral asks me.
“What?” I look at her, mystified. “No he wasn’t.”
In response, she pulls out a manila folder and slides some photos across the desk toward me. They were clearly taken in the dark, with some kind of night vision technology, but I can see the outlines of several guns.
“This is just a fraction of what was found under one of the barns,” she says. “We believe Mr. Graves acquired them illegally.”
“But what would Xavier do with a bunch of guns? He’s a peaceful man.”
“We’ve discovered that Mr. Graves was planning a terror attack on the city of San Francisco,” Admiral Keene says. “He held the belief that the end of days was near, and that he would usher it in through violence and chaos.”
“The apocalypse?” I shake my head. “That’s crazy.”
“Well,” Admiral Keene says gently, “that’s what I’m trying to tell you.”
I think back over my interactions with Xavier these past three years. We didn’t see that much of each other, it’s true—but that’s because he was busy managing ranch affairs. It made perfect sense. Whenever I did see him or speak to him, he was perfectly nice. He always remembered my name. He was like a friendly old Santa Claus, not a doomsday fanatic.
I shake my head. “You must be mistaken,” I tell Admiral Keene. I’m not sure what any of the others are saying in their interviews, but if enough of us stick up for Xavier, tell the truth about how things really were at Pyrite, surely we can put a stop to this. “I don’t know why he had guns. Maybe he thought we needed some measure of self-defense. I can’t explain that part. But I know Xavier would never hurt anyone.”
“Do you know this man?” She’s showing me another picture, this time on her tablet.
“That’s Elias,” I say. It’s a driver’s license photo of him. It looks oddly recent, too.
“According to our undercover operative—”
“Conno
r?” I interrupt. “Is that who you’re talking about?”
“According to our operative,” she goes on, ignoring my question, “this man asked him to take part in a plot to assassinate the mayor of San Francisco. That was the piece of evidence he needed in order to blow the whistle.”
I can’t believe what I’m hearing. “Elias was going to shoot the mayor?”
“After which, he and Mr. Graves were going to take you all into a series of underground bunkers to live out your remaining days, so they would be protected from the impending apocalypse.”
“But…but Xavier never made anybody stay who didn’t want to…”
“That would have changed,” says Admiral Keene. “After the attack on the mayor, nothing about the ranch would have been voluntary anymore. You’d have been forced to go underground—at gunpoint, most likely. You’re fortunate that our operative found the necessary information when he did, Ms. Owens.”
My head is spinning. I lean forward and rest it on the desk. Pyrite Ranch was a cult? A real live cult, like you read about in in the papers? And I’ve been living in the middle of it for the last three years? How could that have happened? How could I—a smart, college-educated woman—have become a cult member without even realizing it?
I press my forehead into the wood of the desk, trying to collect my thoughts. It doesn’t seem possible. Part of me is still itching to jump to my feet and scream that Admiral Keene is wrong, that their operative is lying, that Pyrite was a beautiful place where we were all happy. Part of me wants so badly to go back to my bed in the dormitory, pull the covers up over my head, and wake up tomorrow to a world where none of this is real.
And yet…
There were always things I didn’t understand about life on the ranch. Things that didn’t quite add up. I let them go when I saw them, because what did they matter? My life was what it was, and I didn’t need to understand everything. I knew exactly what Xavier would say if I ever asked him about the things that didn’t seem to have an explanation. He would chuckle, like a father charmed by a precocious child, and advise me not to worry about it.
He would tell me to ignore it, my mind reframes that now. He would turn me away.
They were things that could have been little. Inconsequential. Delivery trucks pulling up to the perimeter gate in the night. I’d seen that two or three times, and I never really got what it was all about. A self-sustaining ranch shouldn’t need to take deliveries. Any essentials from the outside we couldn’t produce—medical supplies, pens, or whatnot—Xavier would have just picked up himself on his occasional outings. We shouldn’t need to send anything out either. We didn’t even have garbage pickup—we mulched our refuse and used it to fertilize the fields.
So, what were those trucks doing there? They had to be dropping off or picking up something…but because I couldn’t think of an explanation, I stopped wondering. I did exactly what Xavier would have wanted me to do. I conditioned myself to ignore it.
Then, there were the holes. I’d forgotten about the holes until now. A few years ago, when the dorms were being put up, Xavier insisted that we dig massive holes beneath them, big enough to serve as basements. At the time, I thought they were going to be basements, but then we just boarded them over when we put up the dorms. Once again, I stopped wondering about it when it became clear I wasn’t going to get an answer. I’ve just been living on top of a gaping hole in the ground for the past couple of years without knowing why.
Now, though, listening to Admiral Keene, it makes sense. That must be where Xavier planned for us to go.
I wonder what’s down there. Things could have changed drastically since the dorm was put up, especially since I know supplies have been delivered. I imagine reinforced steel walls with guns hanging on racks. I imagine this arsenal living right below me, the weapons gleaming, waiting to be fired, as I slept just a few feet above with no idea of what was going on.
I imagine Xavier and Elias with big black guns in their arms, forcing me and my friends to pull up some hidden trapdoor in the floor of our dorm and descend into a painfully bright underground room, all artificial, none of the natural beauty that drew all of us to Pyrite in the first place.
I imagine dying slowly in that bunker, my family never knowing what had happened to me. For the first time in years, I really think about my parents, about them reading what had happened on the news. They knew I went to Pyrite. Would they assume I had been part of the attack on the mayor? Or would they know I would never have done such a thing and spend the rest of their days grieving my loss?
I shiver. It wasn’t just the deliveries and the dug-out bunkers. There were other things I should have noticed. I think back to my first week at Pyrite, to the “mindfulness” seminars Xavier held. The message was always the same: Don’t worry about what you can’t control.
It had seemed so smart at the time. Why would you waste energy worrying about something that was outside your power to control? Better to let go, to let the universe do whatever it was going to do, and to not stress yourself to death in the meantime. I mean, hell, that was one of the chief things that drew me to the ranch in the first place. It was such a soothing ideology, especially for someone like me, always working, always worrying. Here, at last, was someone telling me the best thing to do was just to chill out.
But thinking about it now, it sounds insidious. Don’t worry about what you can’t control. In other words, don’t bother trying to change things. Don’t bother trying to figure things out. Just go with the flow. You don’t need to understand what’s going on. All you need to worry about is what you’re supposed to be doing.
And then, of course, Xavier made sure we all had plenty we were supposed to be doing. My days were packed with sewing and mending clothes, tending to the animals, and occasionally tutoring the children. When I wasn’t doing that, I was worrying about the one aspect of ranch life I was constantly told that I could control—marriage. Marriage!
God, to think I might have figured all this out sooner if I hadn’t been worrying about who I was going to marry…
“She needs a blanket,” I hear Admiral Keene say.
Her voice sounds a million miles away. I wish I could tell her I’m all right, but the truth is that I don’t think I am. I’m shaking hard. I try to hold my hands together, to hold myself still, but it isn’t working. I was in a cult. I was a member of a cult that was going to commit a terror attack. Oh my God.
A blanket settles around my shoulders. It’s heavy. I think it might be weighted.
“You’re safe. You’re going to be okay,” Admiral Keene says, her voice much softer than before. “Try to take some deep breaths.”
“Am I—am I arrested?”
“No, of course not. You haven’t done anything wrong. You’re a victim here, Ms. Owens.”
Victim. It’s a word that makes me shiver, even under my new weighted blanket. Admiral Keene looks at me sympathetically and nudges the cup of water toward me. I force myself to take a drink.
“We’re going to have a medical team come in and look you over,” Admiral Keene says.
“There’s no need. I’m fine…”
“I’m afraid it isn’t optional. We’re doing the same thing with everyone else who was rescued tonight. There’s no telling whether your nutritional needs were adequately met at that place, or if they were putting something in the water to sabotage your health, and we need to make sure everyone is well. You’ve been through a traumatic event, Tammy. There are counselors waiting to meet with you.”
“No, really, I’m fine,” I protest.
“Again, it’s not optional.” She makes a note on a pad of paper. “You’ll be staying here in the barracks tonight, but assuming you’re in good health, you’ll be released tomorrow. Is there somewhere you can go? Do you have financial resources you can access? If you need help, we’re prepared to assist you.”
“No,” I say. “I don’t need help. My parents. I can call my parents.”
I’m already
shying away from the conversation I know we’re going to have. My mom and dad were incredibly upset when I went off to the ranch three years ago. I can’t imagine how appalled they’ll be to hear what was really going on there.
Keene’s tablet buzzes and she looks at it.
“More news from our operative,” she says. “If you have no further questions for me, I’ll leave you here, Ms. Owens. An officer will come to collect you shortly.”
I nod. “That’s fine.”
Once she’s gone, I slump in my chair, feeling exhausted and removed from time. I can’t believe how much has happened tonight. And now, the operative has even more news. How could there possibly be more? And how could Connor…God. He must have been lying to me from the moment we met.
But he also saved my life.
The thought lances through my brain, bright and impossible to ignore. If he hadn’t done what he did, Pyrite Ranch would still be operating, and I would still be a resident. No, a cult member. A victim. I have to practice those words. I have to frame this correctly in my mind.
And I need to remember that without Connor’s interference, I would have been an accessory to a horrible crime, and then I would have been forced to live in an underground bunker. And living down there, away from the world, with a finite supply of resources, would have inevitably killed me.
Instead, I’m alive—scared, shaken, but alive—and sitting in this Naval barracks. I’m going to see my mom and dad tomorrow. Everything’s going to be okay.
Because of him.
Chapter 12
Tammy
Two Years Later
My phone rings as I walk through the door of my tiny ground-floor apartment. My hand flies to my pocket. I know what will happen, the chain of events that will be set into motion, if I don’t answer by the third ring. I’ve adjusted to what happened, mostly, but I’m not sure my mother ever will.
Sure enough, she’s hysterical. “Tammy! Where were you! The phone rang and rang!”
In Deep - A Secret Twins Romance (Once a SEAL, Always a SEAL Book 6) Page 9