Ellaville, Arizona was a moderately sized town about a hundred miles west of Tucson. I arrived late in the morning, having chosen to spend the night in Tucson and rent a car to finish the trip this morning. My first view of the city was of the towers of a temple that overshadowed the modern growth where the city had moved westward away from the original town center.

Harry had informed me that Ellaville began as a staging point for outlaws who liked to run raids on the ranches that stretched across both sides of the Mexican border, named for the girl of one such outlaw. And when the outlaws had finally been run off, the town found new life when a religious group seeking asylum from persecution chose to settle there rather than rush into hiding somewhere across the border. That religious group remained, the owners of the temple, and were the source of the militant group that had recently become a problem for poor Harry.

They cleaned the town up, he told me. And the evidence of that was quite clear as I made my way through its wide streets. Most cities of this size suffered from urban decay in the older parts of the city, with run-down neighborhoods struck by poverty and abandoned buildings covered in graffiti. But this town had none of that. I assumed there were poor people here, but they were well hidden, their homes clean and in good repair. The church had done that.

“They ran the gangs out of town,” Harry had said. “Everyone saw it as a godsend, a great thing that would only make the city safer and make property values rise. But then they turned their attention to other concerns.”

And one of those concerns was apparently the gun shop Harry ran.

I pulled my rental to a stop in front of the friendly business that was one of many in a shopping mall on a bright, well-maintained street. There were flower boxes outside the businesses, manicured bushes and bright green patches of grass. Everything felt so clean. That was, of course, until I walked up to Harry’s front door and saw the open wound that had once been a show window.

“What happened?”

Harry, tall and dark, his hair only beginning to gray at the temples, turned, a grin wider than should be allowed filling his chiseled features.

“Jack Stone. Talk about a sight for sore eyes!”

Harry threw his arms around my shoulders and slapped me hard enough to take the breath from my lungs. I laughed, just as happy to see him. Harry had saved my life more than once during our time together with the DEA and taught me more than I could have ever learned in the damn training classes the agency sent me to. I owed my career to this man.

“How you doing, old man?”

He laughed. “Better now that you’re here.” He gestured toward the open maw of the window. “Damn assholes threw a brick through my window this morning. Spent the better half of two hours picking glass out of my display case.”

“You know who did it?”

“I do. But I can’t prove it, and even if I did, nothing the damn sheriff would do about it. He’s part of this church, too.”

I turned and surveyed the damage, my hands on my hips. “There’s more than one way to stop this sort of harassment.”

“Yeah, well, I ain’t as worried about me as I am about some of my friends.”

“Oh?”

“When I asked you to come out here, Jack, it wasn’t for me. It was for my friend, Alli. She’s got this little sex shop out on the highway. You know, the kind that sells vibrators and X-rated films? These people…they’re scaring the shit out of her, you know?”

“Yeah?”

“When I heard you were into security now, I thought you’d be the perfect one to go out there and put the fear of God into those assholes. Harassing a bunch of women! What kind of person can call himself a man after doing such a thing?”

I bit back a smile, feeling like I’d suddenly stepped back in time. I was once again a twenty-something recruit getting to know my new team leader. And what a character he was! Quite a difference from my refined parents and their equally refined acquaintances. He was exactly the kind of whiskey-slugging, cigarette-smoking tough nut my father had been afraid I’d turn into if I hadn’t gone to college. If he’d ever met Harry, he might have thought twice about sending Gentry and Aidan down the same path Brent and I had forged.

“This group, they’re really with the church?”

“They say that they’re protecting the souls of their brothers and sisters by running the unworthy out of town.”

“And you’re one of the unworthy?”

Harry nodded soberly. “They heard Alli came here to buy guns. Their leader, this Smythe fellow, came by and told me if I went through with the sale, they’d drive me out of business, too. I told them to go to hell. That’s when the flyers started showing up on my neighbor’s doors, when they filed a report with the state regulatory board. And when none of that worked, they threw a damn brick through my damn window.”

“Alli’s armed?”

“Damn straight! Taught her how to shoot myself.”

It sounded like a dangerous set of ingredients to me. Add a crazy bunch of militants to a woman who just learned to shoot? Not a good idea.

“You should probably introduce me to her.”

“Not a problem. Just help me put a piece of plywood over this thing, and we’ll head over there. Could use a little break, anyway.”

 

 

Alli’s shop was situated in a metal building that stood all alone out on the highway about five miles outside of town. The sign called it ‘Alli’s Little Shop of Pleasure.’ I liked that.

We walked through the front door, and a bell sounded, alerting the pretty dark-haired girl stocking sex toys on a nearby shelf. She straightened slowly, a wary expression on her face until she saw Harry. Then a bright smile lit up everything, even her dark eyes.

“Hey, Harry,” she said, coming over to offer him a tight hug. “She’s in the back. It’s been a long day already.”

Harry’s face tightened. “They bother you again last night?”

“Tagged the side of the building with some pretty vulgar words for religious people.”

Harry glanced toward the back of the building, tension clear in his shoulders. The girl focused on me, obvious curiosity in her eyes.

“I’m Jack,” I said, stepping forward to offer her my hand.

“Sue,” she said softly, a touch of a blush on her cheeks. That surprised me a little. She worked in a shop that specialized in sex toys. How could I make her blush?

“Come meet Alli,” Harry said, grabbing my arm.

The woman in question was about ten years my senior and looked every minute of it. There were bags under her eyes and a gauntness about her cheeks that suggested this group of religious militants were keeping her up at night, maybe even impacting her appetite. But there was beauty under the strain. She had the high cheekbones of a model and green eyes that were flecked with gold, full lips and deep mahogany-colored hair. Her skin looked like cream, and she dressed like she was twenty instead of forty-something, her body still tight enough to pull it off.

I could see why Harry was so taken with her. I was, too, just a little.

“Harry,” she said with a sigh, standing to offer him a hug. Harry drew her close, his hands moving familiarly over her hips.

“Sue said they hit you again last night?”

“Yeah. Tommy’s out back painting over it right now.” She shook her head. “Fucking bastards think they can run me out of town with their stupid little tricks. They’re no better than the riffraff they ran off before.” She spotted me as the words left her mouth. She stepped back slightly, touching a finger to her lips. “Sorry for the language.”

“Don’t worry. He’s heard it all.” Harry gestured toward me. “This is Jack Stone. We were in the DEA together.”

“Nice to meet you,” I said, offering her a hand.

“Jack. He’s talked a lot about you.” She smiled even as her eyes traveled slowly over the length of me. “But he didn’t tell me everything.”

A little chuckle escaped my lips. “I guess some things just slipped his mind.”

Harry cleared his throat, moving between the two of us. “Jack here runs a security firm. He’s offered to help you out.”

“Is that right?”

“Do you have any sort of security?”

Alli laughed. “I’m a single mom trying to run a business on my own. We only just moved into this building six months ago. We were running it out of the house!”

“Then I’ll set you up with a state-of-the-art security system. And Harry and I can stand guard until it’s done.”

Relief flooded her face. “You don’t know what that would mean to me. This has been a real problem these last few weeks.”

“Why are they targeting you? You’re not even in the city limits.”

“Yeah, well, some of their church elders come to my shop. One guy is a bishop in the church, and he’s been my customer since I started selling vibrators out of my kitchen.”

I suppose it made sense. But everyone was entitled to make a living. She couldn’t control who her customers were.

“Maybe if they see you have help, they’ll back off.”

“Or it’ll make things worse.” She sighed. “I’ve never dealt with anything like these Guardians before. They seemed like such a good idea when they first came to town. We had a terrible problem with gangs and drugs on the south side of town. The Guardians forced them out of town. But that wasn’t good enough. It wasn’t good enough to clean up the city and get rid of the criminals. Now they want to get rid of good, law-abiding citizens who are just trying to make a living.”

Harry nodded. “I told him already.”

“The Guardians?”

“It’s what this militant group calls themselves. They think they’re some sort of band of guardian angels, protecting the souls of the church members.”

I nodded. “They do realize that we all live in the modern world now, right?”

“Yeah, well, they see themselves as persecuted. Since the beginning of their church, they’ve suffered violence from outside sources.” Alli shrugged. “I could almost feel sorry for them after hearing their history. But being persecuted in the past doesn’t give them license to do it to me or Harry. Or any of the other people they’re harassing.”

“There are others?”

“Sure,” Harry said. “Everyone with whom they disagree on moral grounds. Or business owners who have businesses that they don’t want to compete against. Like my shop. I heard rumors that they plan to open a gun shop of their own and want me gone so that no one will be tempted to come to me instead of their guy.”

“And the sheriff?”

“I told you, he’s part of their church.”

It was insanity, like something out of a bad 80s movie. I shook my head. “We’ll take care of this. They just haven’t had anyone stand up to them yet.”

Alli’s eyebrows rose. “Confident, aren’t you, pretty boy?”

Harry grunted, his hand on her hip as he pushed Alli back into the office. He closed the door, locking me out. It was pretty clear Harry thought he had proprietary rights here.

I wandered back out into the shop, snagging a stool that was pushed behind the front counter, and set it up by the door. A quick call back home to Aiden, and I had one of our security systems on its way by overnight postal service.

“You’re going to help us?”

I glanced at Sue. “Yes, I am.”

“Thank you,” she said softly.

Gratitude. That was something I hadn’t seen in quite a while. It was nice.