It’s funny. As I prepared for this job, I thought the hardest part would be adapting to the way of life around here. But the hardest part, so far, has proven to be the simple task of learning my own name.

My fake name, that is. Connor.

We’re all attuned to the sound of our own names. In a noisy crowd, if someone speaks your name, your brain focuses in on the familiar sound and triggers your attention. Although we rarely think about it consciously, we expect the people we know to respond instinctively when we call their names.

And responding to a fake name doesn’t come naturally. Every time this girl—Tammy—says the word “Connor,” it takes me an extra fraction of a second to remember that Connor is me and to respond the way I would if she’d said “Kyle.”

So far, she doesn’t appear to have noticed anything. She hasn’t given me any suspicious looks. In fact, she’s been nothing but nice and welcoming. It’s enough to make me feel guilty about the fact that I’m deceiving her. Only a little guilty, though. The level of my deceit is peanuts compared to the con that’s being run on this poor girl and all her friends.

She’s packing up our lunch bags now.

“Stay here,” she says. “I’ll return all this stuff to the Commons and see if there’s anything for dessert. You can enjoy the view. Try to meditate, if you like. This is a great place for it, and it’s so rare to get this hill all to yourself. You should make the most of it.”

She seems really sincere. I nod, doing my best to look like I think her suggestion is a really great one, and lie down on my back as she takes off down the hill.

I shouldn’t be having this much trouble.

It’s not like I’ve never worked under a false identity before. It’s not like I’ve never had to infiltrate a group. That’s my job. I’m supposed to be good at it. Hell, that’s why I was sent here in the first place—I’m great at this. So why am I having so much trouble? Why do I want to correct Tammy when she calls me Connor, to tell her my real name and that I’m not in marketing and never have been?

That kind of honesty would jeopardize my whole mission. I know I can’t do that.

I stare at the puffy clouds floating miles above this picturesque ranch. Nothing is what it seems. The place looks gorgeous, idyllic. I have to admit, I can understand why people choose to come here. But if they knew what I know, they’d run screaming in the opposite direction.

I have to expose this place. I can’t blow my cover.

I came here expecting to find a bunch of suckers. You’d have to be a sucker, wouldn’t you, to be taken by a scheme like this? And my expectations were lowered further when I met Xavier, the guy who’s in charge of it all. For someone who’s such a proponent of clean living, he definitely looks like he’s rolled one too many joints in his day. He needs a haircut. I have to wonder if he even has a high school diploma.

And Tammy seems completely taken with him. How can that be? Because, despite my expectations, she’s not an idiot. Far from it. She’s smart and witty and surprisingly insightful. That little speech she gave about defining yourself according to your intrinsic qualities rather than the work you do—it might be propaganda, but there’s a kernel of truth in there, and she did a great job selling it to me. If it didn’t come with the rest of this creepy place as part of the package, I could absolutely subscribe to that viewpoint.

Maybe that’s what makes me so angry. Because I can’t deny the rage that’s bubbling up in the pit of my stomach—controlling that feeling has been a challenge all of its own. Maybe I’m angry that this kind, smart, gorgeous girl—not that it matters that she’s gorgeous, that’s totally irrelevant, but I’m not blind—has fallen so completely into this trap. She really believes this crap! She really thinks she’s discovered a great new lifestyle. And I’m completely powerless to tell her otherwise, to tell her that this place isn’t what it appears.

At least, for now.

It won’t be like this for long, I remind myself. After all, the whole point of my mission here is to help Tammy and people like her. I’m not going to leave her trapped in this mess. It’s agonizing having to play along in the short-term, acting like I’m just boring old ad exec Connor who needs to get away from the hustle and bustle of city life, letting Tammy show me around the ranch and oohing and ahhing at everything.

It feels like lying to her. And even though I’ve just met her, I hate the idea of lying to her. God knows enough people are already doing that.

But the only way to save her, to free her from this, is to keep up the lie for a little bit longer. I have to play the role of Connor long enough to achieve what I came here to do. I can explain it all to Tammy later, and I’ll just have to hope she understands. For now, I don’t have a choice.

I sit up and watch her running across the lawn, far below me, toward the barn-like structure Xavier called the Commons. All the buildings here look the same. The Commons is a big barn. The dormitories are medium-sized barns. Lots of little barns are scattered around—single family dwellings, maybe. And, off in the fields, the barns that hold the livestock look exactly the same.

Creepy.

This shouldn’t be taking the toll on my mind that it is. As a Navy SEAL, I’m one of the mentally toughest people in the world. It’s what makes me so good at adopting an alias—I don’t crack under pressure. During SEAL training, we undergo special conditioning to have the fear response programmed out of us. That makes us more capable of getting things done when we need to, of not buckling when things are hard or intimidating or even tragic, the way this ranch is.

I’m supposed to be able to set my emotions aside and do what I need to do. That’s supposed to be my skill set.

And this mission is especially important to me, because it might enable me to make Captain. The fact that Captain Ennis is retiring in a few months is probably the worst kept secret in the service. Somebody’s going to be getting a promotion. But the fact that we’re not deployed right now means that opportunities to distinguish myself are pretty thin on the ground.

That’s why I was so eager to be sent on this mission. If I bring this place down, it won’t just be a mammoth achievement that will make me stand out to my superiors—my name will be in the press. I might even gain the attention of the White House.

The first step, though, is infiltration. The plan to bring the ranch down is rigorously designed, down to the last detail, and involves dozens of people, not just me. I can’t put them at risk by going off-script, no matter how badly I want to tell Tammy exactly what’s going on and that she should just get out of here.

Unfortunately, I’m going to have to use her. Xavier assigned her to look out for me, which means I’m going to have to use the rapport we’re developing and her encyclopedic knowledge of ranch life. She’s going to become my information pipeline, the one who’ll tell me everything I need to know to achieve what I came here to do.

God, she’s going to hate me. She’s going to hate me at best. She is going to feel so betrayed by me. It’s hard to think about.

How is it possible she doesn’t see anything wrong here? Does she really not see the holes in the explanation she’s giving me?

Is it possible she knows?

No, I write that idea off as quickly as it comes to me. When I spoke to Xavier, I could practically see the dishonesty radiating off him. There was an audible sneer in everything he said, a gross kind of pride at being able to pull off a scam like his. Talking to him made me want to take a shower. My interaction with Tammy was completely different. She was so sincere, so fresh and open. If she was lying to me, she’s officially the best liar I’ve ever met—and I’ve met some real champion liars.

I get to my feet and pace back and forth between the two trees that grow on this hill—Eastern Hill, Tammy called it. Creative naming. It’s at the easternmost point of the ranch, and it’s a hill. Still, I can imagine this is probably a nice place to spend time if you’re not stewing about subversive plots. If I was just having a nice picnic right now and not planning how best to stab a sweet, smart girl in the back and sabotage her way of life, I would probably find this hill very relaxing.

I think back to my briefing, when I was first given this assignment. I was called into the ready room where individuals always meet with Captain Ennis before solo missions. Much to my surprise, Admiral Henshaw was there, too. I knew immediately that this mission must be a big deal. I took my seat opposite the two officers at the table, and Captain Ennis slid a file folder over to me. I picked it up and flipped it open.

The top page was a flyer advertising Pyrite Ranch. Of course, I already knew that was where I was being sent, so I laid it aside. Underneath were several pages full of numbers. I wasn’t sure exactly what I was looking at, so I turned my gaze back to the officers for an explanation.

“Tax records,” Captain Ennis explained. “These are the ranch’s reported earnings over the past five years.”

“Okay?” I said, unsure what to make of it. “So, we know they pay their taxes.”

“Whether they pay isn’t the issue,” Admiral Henshaw said. “It’s the amount of revenue.” He reached over and tapped the paper with a long, bony finger. “This place is a self-sustaining wellness retreat, yes? Now, look at the next page.” He pulled it out. “Here’s what a similarly sized wellness retreat reports in income—and this place is not self-sustaining. They pay a staff. They pay to keep electricity on. Do you see the problem now?”

I nodded. The second place—the one that wasn’t self-sustaining—was bringing in considerably less income than Pyrite, a place that ought to have virtually no expenses.

“So, where’s all the money going?” I asked.

“Precisely,” Admiral Henshaw said. “And that’s what we want you to find out.”

Now, standing on this hilltop and taking in the entire community at once, I feel like I’ve stepped into a mystery novel. I’m standing in the middle of this place I read about, this place that defies logic and reason.

I saw Xavier’s website. I saw what he charges for those retreats. It’s exorbitant. Which is fine—he’s at perfect liberty to charge whatever he likes—but if he and all his acolytes are running around in clothes they sewed themselves, eating eggs they pulled out from under the chickens this morning, then what does he need the money for?

I wish I could believe he was financing some kind of charitable organization. That would be a great thing to do with a place like this. Come experience communal living, all proceeds go to benefit the homeless, or whatever. But I don’t believe it at all.

First of all, if that was what was going on, why in the world wouldn’t you advertise it? Even if it wasn’t in your nature to brag, putting that fact on the website could only help sales. But I scoured that website, and I found nothing to make me believe this wasn’t a straightforward commercial enterprise.

Besides that, there’s Xavier himself. He’s slimy as hell. Sleazy. He has a used car salesman vibe, hidden under a paper-thin veneer of Zen hippie. Xavier is the thing I find hardest to believe about this whole place. Does no one at all see through that man? It was so clear, when I talked to him, that he was barely keeping himself from laughing at everyone in his orbit. That benevolent smile of his was closer to a sneer.

I don’t believe for a minute that a man like that has dedicated himself to life on a commune to benefit anybody’s interests besides his own.

But what are Xavier’s interests?

I don’t know, exactly. But I do know one thing, and it makes me more uneasy than anything else I’ve learned about Xavier or Pyrite Ranch.

I know they’re armed.

The final report that came in from intelligence before I left revealed extremely disturbing information. Aerial photographs revealed multiple people moving by night—it wasn’t clear who they were; the photographs only showed us human-shaped heat signatures—between a truck and a barn. The truck has now been photographed and traced, and found to belong to a known arms dealer.

Someone was, or maybe still is, supplying guns to Pyrite Ranch, and it seemed like they might be stored in or under one of these barns.

And multiple people on the ranch know about it. The heat signatures revealed several individuals at the arms dealer’s truck, most of whom were not in in the vehicle when it drove away. Xavier almost certainly knows what is going on, but he can’t be the only one.

I don’t think it could be possible that Tammy is involved—she just seems too earnest, too heartfelt about how much she loves the place—but what about the others she introduced me to during our tour? Any of them could be guilty of smuggling guns. I made eye contact with all of them, trying to suss out who was innocent, trying to see who would flinch. But no one did. Were they all in the dark about what was going on, or were they just that good at lying?

These are important questions, but I know they aren’t the most important question, the thing that absolutely has to be answered for my mission to be considered a success. That question is, what are the guns for?

It’s weird that someone like Xavier would have a gun at all. He’s supposed to be a free-spirited hippie. He’s supposed to value nature and doing no harm to all the little plants and animals, right? So, even owning a single firearm is way out of character for that guy.

Of course, having spent time around Xavier, I’m not surprised at all. If I had to describe the man I met, one of the first things I’d say would be power-hungry, and power-hungry people are exactly the type to buy up guns on the black market. So, one possibility is that he’s just a weird obsessive, and having an arsenal in his basement makes him feel like a big man.

That’s the best possible option. The one with the least potential for violence and danger.

There’s also the possibility that he’s planning to arm his acolytes on the ranch and set them loose on the civilian population. I don’t see that working very well, if it is his plan. He might have some loyal servants here, but there must be plenty of people like Tammy, too—people who love the meditative lifestyle of this place, but who would raise an eyebrow if they were asked to pick up a gun.

She wouldn’t do that, would she? I don’t think she’s that far gone.

Besides, if they try any kind of attack on the outside world, we’ll shut them down before they get started. The Navy is watching this ranch from the outside, and the minute those guns come out, it’s lockdown time. Xavier wouldn’t even get off his own property.

So, then, the final possibility. What if Xavier is planning an assault on his own people? What if he and the others who visited the arms dealer’s truck are planning to pull those guns out in the night?

I’m going to be sleeping with one eye open as long as I’m here. That’s for sure.

It’s also possible that the guns could be for something else, something I haven’t even thought of yet. But whatever they’re for, I’m certain it can’t be anything good.

I have to uncover their plans before they have a chance to execute them. I have to put a stop to whatever’s going on here. And, as I watch Tammy emerge from the Commons and make her way back up the hill, an unexpected thought pops into my head—one I’m utterly unprepared for.

I have to protect her.