I woke with a start two days later.

My father was leaning over me, his face close to mine. “Wake up, Matthew!” he demanded.

“What’s wrong? Is it Mother?”

“No. Tucker is here. He wants you to go with him for something.”

I sat up and rubbed the sleep out of my good eye. “What time is it?”

“Two.”

I glanced at my cell phone as I slipped it off the table. “Why now?”

“Stop asking so many questions, and get out there. He’s waiting!”

I nodded, slipping out from under the bedclothes and grabbing my discarded jeans. I pulled them up over my hips and grabbed a clean t-shirt from a drawer. My father was watching me, a grimace on his face as he looked at the greening bruises on my chest.

“It’s better.”

He didn’t respond, except to move back near the door.

I sat on the edge of the bed to pull on my boots, wondering what the hell was going on. What could Tucker want from me now? He hadn’t said anything when I saw him earlier in the evening.

The Guardians’ meeting had been brief tonight. Tucker read from Scriptures and then announced that we’d found a few things on Jack Stone and his firm, but didn’t specify what. After that, he warned everyone that a reporter had been sniffing around, trying to get information on Smythe and Sanders. He instructed everyone to ignore her until he could do something about it.

“The last thing we need now is some nosey reporter getting involved in church business. Keep your mouths closed, and let me know if she approaches you.”

That was the second time someone had mentioned a reporter hanging around. Jack had mentioned it, too. The local paper didn’t even show interest in the Guardians, not even after the arrests last spring. Made me wonder what this reporter thought she knew that no one else seemed interested in.

Tucker was indeed waiting out in the driveway behind the wheel of his truck. I climbed in, a little surprised to see he was alone.

“What’s up?”

“Just sit back, and be quiet.”

He gunned the engine. I could see my father standing in the doorway, his face in shadows. There was tension in his shoulders. I wondered if he knew where we were going, if he knew what was about to happen. Was I in for another beating?

Tucker took me to a property on the outskirts of town, a ranch that was foreclosed on late last year. We bypassed the house and followed a narrow trail down to some outbuildings near the back of the property. One looked new, dirt still piled behind it that had been cleared for the foundation, debris scattered all around it. It was a prefab building, about the size of a small bungalow. Two men, the same two men who’d shackled me to the cross, were standing guard in the doorway.

“Inside,” Tucker said.

I followed him into the building, worried when I realized we were alone save for the two guards at the door. Tucker was a man with purpose, leading me to the back of the building, where a room had been divided into two halves. One side was just a normal room with two chairs sitting randomly by the wall. The other side was enclosed in Plexiglas, completely sealed, with a single chair sitting in the center.

A man I didn’t know was restrained in the chair. When he saw me, he began to struggle, screaming though a gag. Desperation made his eyes wild, almost crazed.

“What is this?”

“Watch.”

As we stood there, the man began to convulse. Nothing had changed, not that I could see. No gas was pumped into the room, at least not a visible gas. He hadn’t been given an injection or otherwise approached by another person. And there was nothing he could drink or consume.

“What—”

“Be quiet and watch.”

The convulsions were violent, his entire body jerking against the restraints, his spine bending in ways it shouldn’t have been able to bend. His arm twisted and pulled until it visibly broke under the pressure of the restraints. And then he bent his spine one more time before slumping in the chair, clearly not breathing.

“What the hell?” I slapped my hand against the Plexiglas. “Someone needs to go in there! Someone needs to help him!”

“It’s too late for him. It was too late three hours ago.”

“What are you talking about? He needs a hospital!”

“He’s dead.” Tucker moved up behind me. “He’s a vagrant who happened to wander into the wrong town on the wrong day. We needed a test subject, and he was more than happy to receive a free meal.”

“What did you do?”

Anger and outrage burned inside of me, but I stood very still, spoke with more calmness than I had probably ever felt or accomplished before. I sensed danger in this conversation, a danger that I hadn’t anticipated when I signed on for this particular job. There was more going on here than I could ever have imagined.

“While Stone Security has been busy putting out fires all over town, protecting that pretty sex shop owner and her friends, we’ve been working on the real plan.”

“What’s that?”

“This country has become a vile place, brother. A businessman as president, social factions turning on one another for the simplest slights, people shooting up movie theaters because they don’t like the way they were treated in middle school. This is not the world God gave to us, and not the one he intended for us to thrive in.”

“And you’ve come up with a solution?”

“We have.” Tucker stepped back, gesturing for me to take one of the chairs. He settled in the other, crossing his legs like a professor giving a lecture to a struggling student. “We believe that most non-Christians have lost their way so completely that there’s no hope of getting them back on track. For that reason, our town was chosen as a test subject. We’ve been experimenting with different ways of ridding the town of bad influences. When one didn’t work, we tested another. We’ve continued testing even though some of our tests have not been clearly evident.”

I glanced at the dead man behind the Plexiglas. “This is one of your methods?”

“It is. A quick, predictable method. Our favorite at the moment.”

I shook my head, almost unable to understand what I was hearing. “You plan on killing others with this? Nonbelievers?”

“Yes.”

I looked at the dead man again, trying to wrap my mind around what was happening here. I’d just watched a man die. An innocent man. How could they…why…how?

“I brought you here not to include you in our little secret, but to offer you a warning. This is going to happen, Matthew. We are going to rid this town of nonbelievers. And then we’re going to rid the state of nonbelievers. Our plan is to eventually attack the entire country, remove those from power who do not belong there, and to put in their place people we know and trust, people who can bring this country back to the place where it was always meant to be. This was a country founded on Christian ideals, led by men of morals. That is where it must be returned.”

I stared at him, saw the excitement in his eyes, and I wanted to be sick. My fists clutched in my lap, the desire to wrap my hands around his neck almost impossible to ignore. I could kill him right here, right now, and no one would know but the two men out by the door. With a gun, I could take them out, too.

But killing Tucker wouldn’t do any good, other than likely putting a target on my back, on my father’s back, on my sister’s back.

I couldn’t do that.

“We’re building an army that’s much bigger than you could ever imagine,” Tucker continued. “Men and women in other cities, other states, ready to stand up for what is right. We want you to be a part of that, Matthew.” He leaned forward and touched my knees lightly with his closed fists. “We need to know that you’re on our side.”

“I am.”

“Yes, you say you are. But words can sometimes be false.” He studied my face closely. “You love your mother, don’t you, Matthew?”

Fear trickled over my heart. “Of course.”

“You wouldn’t want anything to happen to her?”

“No, never!”

“And your sister. Pregnant with a new life, with new hope. You wouldn’t want to see her harmed, would you?”

I sat up straighter, that urge to attack growing stronger. But I kept it under control.

“No,” I said between gritted teeth.

“Then you must continue to show loyalty. If we begin to think you are still working with Stone Security—”

“I’m not! I walked away from them!”

“We can see that. But if you change your mind, if you decide this is all too intense for you…” Tucker gestured toward the Plexiglas. “You can see what we can do now. You know that the next bite of oatmeal your sister takes, the next sip of ginger ale, could be the last thing she ever does on this Earth. Right?”

I nodded. Bile rose in my throat, burning like fire. Pain danced in my chest. I’d never killed anyone, never used my weapon in the Army for anything more than target practice. I hadn’t been stationed in Afghanistan like Quentin, hadn’t been in a war zone. I was stationed in Korea, watching over a checkpoint that was rarely ever challenged.

But I would kill now if I thought it would stop the threat he was presenting.

“You will do everything we ask of you. And you will not spend time with anyone we don’t approve of.” He tilted his head to one side. “That includes the pretty blonde you’ve been visiting at the Watering Hole.” He made a face when he mentioned her, something changing in his eyes. Was it a flash of anger? Distrust? Was he jealous, or was there something more about Whit that bothered him? “Do you understand?”

I lowered my head in assent.

“You will work for your father during the day and stick around your house at night unless I call you and ask you to come to a meeting or run an errand for me. Understand?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Good.” He stood and wiped his hands off on his pants. “Let’s get out of here.” He was halfway through the building when he suddenly stopped and looked back at me. “Oh, Todd Lawson wants you to have dinner with his daughter tomorrow night. Is that doable?”

“If you’re okay with it.”

Tucker smiled. “I think Kari would make a good match for you, son. She’s a beautiful girl, if a little dull. Should make pretty babies.”

Again, that urge to wrap my hands around his throat presented itself with such passion that I actually lifted my hands a little. But the moment when it was a possibility had passed.

“Take him home,” he barked to one of the guards. “We need to dispose of the body.”

The taller of the two guards gestured for me to follow him. There was a car parked behind the building, waiting. We were halfway across town when I got up the nerve to ask him.

“You’re a mercenary, aren’t you?”

“Private security.”

“Who do you work for?”

He glanced at me. “An agency out of California. Why?”

I shrugged. “Who hired you?”

He shook his head. “That information is confidential.”

“Do you know what they’re up to?”

The man gripped the wheel of the car, his knuckles flashing white for a moment. But he didn’t speak.

“Has it crossed your mind that if they decide you’re not Christian enough, you’ll be a victim of this thing, too?”

Again, he gripped the wheel hard, but he didn’t respond.

I crossed my arms and stared out the window, wondering if I should urge Whit to get out of town. Knowing I should, but wondering if my phone was compromised. Would they hear the conversation and decide to go after my mom? Or Ruth? Or was it already too late? Were they going to target Whit?

I was suddenly overwhelmed with fear. Everything I did from this point on could mean someone I cared about could suffer.

“You’re impressive, you know?” the man behind the wheel said. “The way you stood up to that beating they gave you was incredible. I’m not sure even I could have withstood it.”

I glanced at him. “That was nothing compared to what’s coming.”

As the words tumbled out of my mouth, I knew how true they were. I was fucked. No matter what I did from this moment on, someone was going to get hurt. All I could do was pray it wouldn’t be Ruth or Mom or Whit.

Funny, how we always come back to prayer…