I stood at the back of the pack, watching each man take his turn at the targets. Most of them couldn’t hit the side of a barn—quite literally—but a few had a good eye. Some of these guys had been hunters all their lives and wanted to treat the rifle like a heavy shotgun. An assault rifle, however, required a whole other set of skills, a finesse that wasn’t necessary with a shotgun. It was like the difference between slopping paint on a wall and creating a delicate flock of birds on a fine canvas.

“Pull the trigger gently. Don’t jerk it!”

They weren’t listening to me, and I was okay with that. I wasn’t really excited about training these men to go after my friends and neighbors with these guns.

“How’s it going?”

I glanced at Tucker as he came around the side of the barn. A few of the men eagerly stepped up to the mark to fire so that he could see it. Most of them missed their targets.

“I can see improvement,” he announced.

That was funny, because I didn’t see it.

“You have a week!” he called to the men. “I need every one of you to be prepared to win this war in exactly one week. Do you think you can do it?”

“Yes!” they all screamed in unison.

They couldn’t. I was watching them jerk the trigger and miss the target by miles. None of these men would be capable of hitting a target in a week. It would take months to train them, months we clearly didn’t have.

“Could you come with me for a minute, Matthew?”

Tucker didn’t look at me when he made the request, and that made me wonder what I might have done. Was it time for me to have a taste of that poison?

I followed him across the yard to a small storage building. Like on the night of the poisoning, the mercenaries were standing at the door.

“Have you seen this?” Tucker asked almost casually, picking up a newspaper from a low table and handing it to me.

It was a copy of the Austin American-Statesman. The moment I saw the headline, I knew this was going to be about Whit. My heart stuttered in my chest for a second, a silent prayer rushing through my mind: please let Jack have her in a safe place!

Tucker opened the paper to the appropriate page, and returned it to my hands.

‘Memphis Firm Opens Satellite Office in Arizona,’ the headline read.

I glanced over the article, picking up little quotes here and there from Jack and some of the others at Stone Security. The article ended with a hint that there would be a follow-up article about the Guardians and the shooting at the Yuma hospital, but neither appeared to be the main focus of this piece.

The story was attributed to staff reporter Whitney Ellington.

“Do you know where she is?”

I looked up, once again struggling to hide my true emotions under layers of fake calm.

“No, sir.”

“Are you sure? I know this was the woman you were spending time with at the Watering Hole.”

“I haven’t seen her since you told me to stick to work and home.”

“I heard she showed up at your job site last week.”

“And I told her to leave because my father revealed that she was a reporter. I hadn’t known that at the time.”

“How could you not know that?”

“We never got around to discussing her profession.”

“Did you tell her anything about us? About the Guardians and what we’re up to here?”

“Of course not!”

Tucker studied my face for a long moment. “I find it interesting that she disappeared at about the same time your mother and sister went on vacation. Are you sure you had nothing to do with that?”

“You can check my cell phone records. I haven’t talked to anyone but you and my father since you told me to stay away from outsiders.”

He tilted his head slightly. “No one?”

“I text a friend from time to time, but that’s all. And we haven’t seen each other in years, not since we both left the Army.”

That was the cover story Jack had given me to cover the texts. The number he had given me as a contact was even an out-of-state number to support the story. He assured me that if the Guardians bothered to reverse look up the number, it would come back to an Army vet living in Chicago.

There was no reason for Tucker to doubt me, but it was obvious he did.

“We will find this reporter and silence her before she can publish anything about us. I suggest if you do know where she is, you let us know. And then you stay out of it.”

“I will.”

Tucker studied me a moment longer like he thought he might see something on my face that would reveal the truth. Finally, he lowered his head and sighed.

“The Fall Festival for the church is in a week. All Guardians are required to report here that morning, prepared for battle. Do you understand?”

My heart sank in my chest. “Yes, sir.”

“Make sure those men are prepared for this. I want them to be able to hit a target at least fifty percent of the time. We don’t have enough ammunition to afford anything less.”

“Yes, sir.”

Tucker nodded, clearly deciding that I was still trustworthy, or, at least, necessary.

I followed him back out of the storage building, wondering if my father would have time to make his speech before hell came to earth.

I hoped so. And I hoped it had the desired result.