Before the team left to get Prescott, they’d already used their ATVs to move Lacey and Pete’s bodies. All evidence from Lacey’s brief stay has been scrubbed from the shed, which was easy, because there was barely any to begin with. In the hours just before he brought her down to meet Pete Henricks, Milo had been using narcotics on her, not fists, so she’d arrived with no open wounds.

Now, the same ATVs they used to relocate the corpses have taken Milo, Prescott, and three foot soldiers up the mountain to Milo’s workshop of choice.

Meanwhile, Jordy and two of his best guys are sitting stakeout just upslope from the clearing to see if Tommy’s absence is going to signal the arrival of law enforcement.

Sure, it’s possible Tommy could come wandering through the woods any minute, disheveled, a little worse for wear, but not under the thumb of whoever popped out of the woodwork down at Prescott’s house.

Jordy doubts it.

Jordy wasn’t there, but based on the description Milo and Manuel gave of how quickly things went to shit, he knows someone important was watching the place. And that means Prescott must have talked to someone, and that means Prescott knows something, and that means Jordy waited too damn long to send the guys after him.

And why was that? Because of Lacey, dammit.

Because of his weakness for Lacey.

If any other dumb bitch had jammed them up like this, he’d have let Milo use his typical methods, and they probably would have got something out of her in a few hours. But instead he made them slow down and wait while he gave them bullshit speeches about patience and steadiness and resolve. Remembering those words now gives him the urge to throw himself off the nearest cliff.

Of course, Milo’s acting like it can all be saved. And parts of it probably can be. But Milo always gets chipper and optimistic when he’s about to unleash agony on someone. Torture makes him feel useful.

The more time that goes by without any disturbance from the woods below, the more Jordy finds himself getting a little optimistic, too. There are some best-case scenarios, even if he’s afraid running through them in his head might weaken his resolve.

For one, Tommy might have escaped.

Also, he might have been killed, which means he won’t say much.

Or, despite being in restraints, he might prove faithful enough to keep his mouth shut.

If only he knew Tommy better. If only Tommy was one of his guys and not Milo’s.

The guys sharing the brush with him now are his—Bertrand Davis and Mike Frasier—former Recon Marines like him who also saw shit in Afghanistan that reshaped their view of the world. Things they can’t share with people stateside because they know they’ll just feed into the pansy liberal view of America as some great invader and corrupter of barbaric shithole countries. They know the truth is different—America’s moral decay is weakening its fiber, its very spine, and the country’s sliding downhill as a result. You don’t fight the kind of barbarism they’ve seen by trying to understand it. You only try to understand it if you don’t want to fight the unchecked sin within yourself, and if that’s the case, you aren’t out to save anything but your pride—a state that describes most citizens of this once great country. The country’s would-be heroes are being weakened a few years out of the womb. They grow up questioning Christ because they’re taught to question everything from the very idea of patriotism to their own God-given gender. Freedom and self-indulgence are not the same thing. No man who gives in to his every instinct is free.

The only solution to this, Jordy knows, is the single unifying fear of a greater power. This fear has to be instilled in all those who believe their sole purpose is to service their every craving, no matter how childish or perverse. And for it to be effective, this fear must be constant. True freedom, the freedom that saved nations, will come when people are liberated from their own base instincts. Only then will they have the clarity to pick up the sword of truth. Until then, their self-indulgence lays the country open to ceaseless corruption from outside its borders and endless, unwinnable wars in culturally inferior hellscapes.

Jordy is breathing deeply now, even as he adjusts his sitting stance.

There’s hope for their plan. Hope for the bones of it, at least. If Luke Prescott’s gone, he can’t testify to whatever Lacey told him about what she might have seen on his computer. If the dummy seismic maps haven’t been exposed, they can still use those to justify the orders for the explosives. The rest he can operate from the shadows.

But if Lacey passed Prescott something real, if the guy has evidence and he passed it to someone else, someone who was watching his house . . .

Then they would already be here, he realizes, with the first twinge of hope he’s felt in two days. They would have been watching us, not Luke.

But they haven’t been. If the feds were staking them out because Prescott had passed on damning information, they wouldn’t have just sat idly by while he put a bullet in Lacey’s brain or when Milo snapped Pete Henricks’s neck. They would have been tailing them earlier today when they drove Henricks up the mountain. They would have exploded out of the woods, guns drawn. But they weren’t.

He wonders, suddenly, if Luke’s not just a troublemaker but something else altogether.

Some sort of criminal who was under surveillance.

The thought speeds his heart, actually has him nodding at the shadows.

Is this a test, God? he prays. Are you enlisting us to wipe out a minor pestilence before our reign of fear brings your will to the country at large?