“You see, men like him, they believe anyone who calls themselves a victim. They think it makes ’em powerful, you see. But what they don’t understand is that when they indulge the lie, they weaken everything. Everyone. They think they’re being all strong and protective, but really they’re just living out some fantasy of being a cowboy that’s no better than jerking off alone in their room. But men like you, Pete. Men who can see the truth. Men who think before they act. Men who pause to ask where the bruises really came from. You’re the strong ones. We’re the strong ones.”
Jordy’s stunned. Henricks is looking straight into Milo’s eyes, and it’s like all the resistance has drained from Pete’s face. Is this shit really going to work? Is Henricks about to become a foot soldier?
Milo reaches down and raises Pete’s gun hand until the Glock is aimed directly at Lacey.
“We’ve got big things planned, Pete,” Milo says. “Important things. You could be part of it. I mean, this is way beyond just being our ambassador. I’m talking about being ground zero at a revolution that’s going to spread out all over this land. Fear and fire paving the way for truth. The kind of truth only men like us can see. But first . . .”
When Milo suddenly steps away from him, Pete flinches, as if he’s been drawing comfort from the big man’s proximity, and now that it’s been ripped away he feels unsteady.
Milo taps the top of the Glock in Pete’s hands, then points to Lacey’s prone body as if it were a target in a shooting gallery.
Jordy studies every inch of Pete’s body, from the way he holds the gun to the tension in both sides of his flushed neck to the glazed look in his eyes. Is it a settling into a fate, a necessary hardening of the soul, or just paralysis and shock?
But then Jordy realizes that Henricks is looking at Lacey too much. He’s not just looking at her; he’s looking for something in the way her body’s sprawled on the carpet of pine needles and leaves. Big mistake. Lacey is the target, not the revelation. The revelation will be in how he feels once he’s disposed of her; once he cuts her vicious lies free of their earthly anchor and allows them to float over the mountaintops before being blown out to sea.
And man, if anyone here should be having an emotional reaction to Lacey’s killing, it should be him. She’s his girlfriend, after all.
Jordy figures another few seconds of hands shaking this bad and Pete’s knees will go next. But instead Pete drops the gun and screws his eyes shut and starts shaking his head as if doing so will make the clearing, the trees, Lacey, and most importantly, Jordy and Milo disappear.
Milo purses his lips and nods at the ground; he seems so disappointed, Jordy almost feels bad for the guy. Maybe he really did think Pete had potential.
Pete’s crying now, but at least he’s not begging for anything, including his life.
Milo closes the distance between them, wraps his arms around the man. Pete gives in to the hug as if he genuinely thinks this might end with him being given another chance, or at least a chance to run. Instead, in a series of lightning-quick moves accompanied by the quick crunch of breaking bone, Milo snaps Henricks’s neck and drops his body to the ground.
Slowly, the other foot soldiers emerge from the woods, seven in all, lowering their guns at the sight of Henricks’s body.
Lesser men, Jordy realizes, would probably make a joke to dispel the tension, but they take death far too seriously for that, and so they just stand there, offering up Pete Henricks to the wind and the patches of dark-blue sky with their first dappling of stars, and to a God whose pure will has been ignored so often people have come to view any implementation of his wishes as a sign of pettiness or vengefulness.
32
After what feels like an appropriate amount of silence, Jordy asks Milo where he found Lacey’s bracelet. Brushing branches out of their way, Milo leads him past the nearest geophone. A few paces later the pines break, and the ground just ahead turns into a series of granite steps that quickly give way to a plunging slope so steep there’s no traveling it on foot.
“It was resting up against that trunk there.” Milo’s pointing to the trunk of a hearty ponderosa pine a few yards downslope. It’s not so thick that the bracelet couldn’t have gone easily tumbling past it after Lacey dropped it. But did Lacey drop it? They’ve still got no damn idea what actually happened during Lacey’s first visit here, and two days of trying to beat it and then drug it out of the girl hasn’t yielded any clues.
If she fell all that way, she’s lucky to have survived. And if she climbed her way back up the slope by herself, she’s stronger than he thought.
“So she was snooping around up here and fell?” Jordy asks.
“She wouldn’t say, but I checked with all our guys and nobody was up here and nobody pushed her.” Milo’s trying to hide his frustration, Jordy can tell. Milo’s powers of persuasion are intense and effective, but this is Lacey they’re talking about, so Jordy’s asked him to be less gruesome than usual.
“And we’re sure none of our guys did?”
“Nobody knew she was up here. Nobody was here. It was almost dark. If she was up here by herself, for whatever reason, she could have easily lost her footing and taken a fall, especially if she didn’t know the area. Maybe that tree broke it.”
“That’d explain why her bracelet caught on it.”