Final Vow, page 24
That’s exactly what she wanted. Catch them in their beds, groggy and disoriented, before they can organize any kind of resistance.
But something feels off.
She pushes the thought aside. Maybe they’re heavy sleepers. Maybe they’re used to being told to stay inside when there’s trouble. Either way, she can’t slow down. She has to trust Sanecki and his team to handle it.
“Command, this is Alpha Lead.” Avery speaks low into her radio as they move. “We’re approaching the elders’ mansion. ETA two minutes. Status on perimeter teams?”
Choi’s voice comes back immediately, steady as always. “Copy, Alpha Lead. East and west roadblocks are holding. No movement toward the exits. Sanecki’s team is fanning out through the residences—no contact yet.”
“Good. Keep me posted.”
Every sense feels sharpened, heightened. She’s aware of everything—the crunch of gravel beneath her boots, the weight of her tactical vest pressing against her chest, the cold metal of her AR-15 in her gloved hands.
The mansion rises ahead of them, two stories of relative grandeur amid the surrounding decay. A wraparound porch. An actual lawn—brown and patchy, but still a lawn. Stone steps leading up to heavy wooden double doors. Beside it, the large metal warehouse looms with its six garage bays, their doors closed and silent.
The contrast with the ramshackle trailers behind her makes Avery’s stomach turn. The leaders enjoy comfort off their followers’ backs. God’s chosen, indeed.
They reach the edge of the cleared ground, and she signals her team into position. Agents flow up the steps, stacking along the broad stoop, rifles trained on windows and doors. The battering ram is brought forward, a tall agent gripping its heavy steel handles.
Avery takes her position near the balustrade at the bottom of the steps, surveying the approach one final time. The mansion is dark. No lights in the windows, no movement behind them. The garage bays remain closed, their metal doors reflecting the pale dawn light.
Her pulse quickens. Almost ready.
“Vargas, take a squad around back,” she murmurs to the dark-haired agent beside her. “Cover the rear exits. Woods, you’re with me on the front entry. We go in hard and fast. Primary target is the other elders. Check your fire. There may be women and children inside.”
“Copy,” Vargas murmurs, already peeling off with six agents in tow.
Avery waits until they’ve disappeared around the side of the mansion, counting seconds in her head. The sky is growing lighter by the minute. They need to move.
She takes a breath. Steadies herself. She raises her hand, ready to give the signal—
The garage doors explode open.
The sound is deafening—six massive metal doors clattering upward in near-unison, chains rattling, motors screaming. For a split second, Avery’s brain refuses to process what she’s seeing.
Then the vehicles come roaring out.
Big lifted trucks with reinforced bumpers. Moving vans. A semi cab with no trailer, its engine thundering as it lurches forward. They pour from the garage bays like wasps from a disturbed nest, tires spinning on gravel, headlights blazing, rumbling down the road toward the west gate and kicking up massive clouds of dust in their wake.
They knew we were coming.
Gunfire erupts.
Muzzle flashes strobe from the vehicles still in the yard—men leaning out of windows and crouching behind truck beds, firing toward Avery and her team. Bullets punch into the columns, the balustrade, the walls of the mansion. Splinters fly. An agent grunts and goes down, clutching his leg.
“Take cover!” Avery shouts, throwing herself behind a post. “Everyone take cover!”
Her team scatters—some diving behind the pillars of the porch, others dropping flat against the steps. The battering ram clatters to the ground as its operator abandons it.
Avery presses her back against the hard surface. The gunfire is relentless—a steady barrage of cracks and pops that tells her they’re facing a variety of weapons. Shotguns. Handguns. Rifles. They’re well armed and more prepared than her intel suggested they’d be.
She keys her radio. “Command, this is Alpha Lead! We have contact at the elders’ mansion and are under fire! One agent down. Multiple vehicles fleeing west on the main road—alert the roadblock! Repeat, convoy headed for the west gate!”
Choi’s voice comes back tight. “Copy, Alpha Lead. Salt Lake team is being notified.”
“The shredders should slow them down. Make sure that roadblock holds!”
“Understood. Alpha Lead, do you need backup?”
A bullet whines inches from Avery’s head, and she ducks lower. “Keep half the Vegas backup team there to hold the perimeter. Send the rest and a medic here ASAP. Just don’t let anyone escape!”
She risks a glance around her cover. Another agent is wrapping a tourniquet around the wounded team member’s thigh. Several vehicles have already disappeared down the road, dust clouds billowing in their wake. But others have stopped—parked at angles across the open ground in front of the garage, men using them as cover while they fire steadily at the porch.
Vargas’s voice crackles in her ear. “Alpha Lead, we’re taking fire at the rear. Four hostiles, maybe five. We’re pinned but holding.”
“Copy, Vargas. Hold your position.”
Woods is crouched behind a low wall a few feet away, her weapon up, waiting for a clear shot. Her face is wan but focused. Good. The woman’s holding it together.
Avery adjusts her grip on her rifle. The firing has slowed slightly, the cultists either conserving ammunition or repositioning. This is her chance.
She leans around the edge, weapon raised, searching for a target—
And freezes.
A man in plain dark trousers and a white church-social shirt stands behind one of the stopped trucks, face twisted with righteous fury, a hunting rifle in one hand and a woman gripped against his chest with the other.
She’s maybe in her thirties, with a long braid hanging over one shoulder and a high-necked dress that falls all the way to her feet—the old-fashioned style Avery has seen in surveillance photos. The woman’s face is white with terror, tears streaming down her cheeks. The man has one arm locked across her chest, using her body as a shield while he fires over her shoulder.
Avery’s finger stills on the trigger.
It’s not just one. As her eyes sweep the yard, she sees more figures emerging from behind the trucks and from inside the garage—men in plain clothes with weapons, each one dragging a woman or clutching a child. The children cling to their mothers’ skirts, some crying, others petrified with shock.
A little girl, no more than five or six, is being held in the arms of a stocky man who’s firing one-handed around her. A teenage boy is gripped by the collar, shoved forward as his captor advances. Two women are pressed together near the white moving van, kneeling in the dirt, a clean-shaven man crouched behind them with his shotgun resting on one of their shoulders as he takes aim at the porch.
She keys her radio. “They’re using their own families as human shields. Do not risk hitting civilians.”
“Bastards,” Woods curses.
“Fucking hell,” comes Varga’s answer over the comms.
A fresh volley of gunfire forces her back, bullets chipping the stone, showering her with fragments. She presses herself flat, chest heaving.
She can’t shoot back. None of her team can—not without risking those women and children. But the cultists have no such reservations. They keep firing, emboldened, advancing across the open ground while Avery and her agents cower behind cover.
More gunfire. More screaming. The sound of engines roaring as another truck peels away down the road.
Avery’s finger hovers uselessly over the trigger.
It’s all falling apart.
CHAPTER 40
Peeling paint, a roof that dips in the middle, and windows so filthy they’re nearly opaque. Protocol says that I should wait for backup, at least one other agent.
I hurry toward the house anyway.
My K-9 stays close, in step, his body rigid and ears pricked forward. Around us, the compound churns—agents in tactical gear sweeping past, boots pounding dirt, radio chatter in my ear as teams fan out through the residential clusters. No one’s made contact yet.
But I can’t look away from that door.
This is where my mother lives. Or lived. The woman who watched me get betrothed to a sixty-three-year-old man and said nothing. Who was as much a victim as her children, and yet never even tried to protect any of us from my father or the other church elders. The same woman who birthed me, bandaged scraped knees, and told me bedtime stories.
The mother I haven’t seen in fifteen years.
My hand tightens on my handgun. The tactical vest feels heavier than it did five minutes ago.
Is Daniel in there? Is my mother?
I stand outside the door, listening. It’s quiet inside. An agent dashes past to the nearest house, startling me. I take a deep breath and try the handle. Surprisingly, I find it unlocked and ease it open with my boot, gun raised. The smell comes rushing out, smacking me in the face.
Rotting garbage. Human waste. Something dead and decaying underneath it all.
My stomach heaves. Even through the gaiter covering my nose and mouth, the stench is so thick I can taste it. I glance down at my K-9 to make sure he’s okay, and he merely looks up at me, brow furrowed. Flies buzz in lazy circles near the ceiling, clustering on surfaces I can barely make out in the dim light filtering through those grimy windows.
I’ve seen bad. The cramped home I shared with my siblings, the mold creeping up the walls, the way we learned to ignore the smell of the outhouse in summer.
This is worse.
Shadow’s hackles rise. He pushes past my leg into the front room, his nose working overtime, then stops and looks back at me. Waiting.
I step inside.
The floor is barely visible beneath the debris. Piled trash bags are split open, their contents spilling across stained concrete. Dishes crusted with something unidentifiable, stacked on every surface. Clothes and cloth heaped in corners and draped over furniture.
I pick my way forward, glass crunching under my boots. A fly buzzes in front of my face. I swat it away, fighting the urge to gag. Shadow moves beside me in careful, precise steps, his ears swiveling, alert to every sound.
The house is silent except for the buzzing.
I must have the wrong place. This has to be abandoned. No one could live like this.
“Hello?”
The weak voice drifts from somewhere deeper in the house.
My heart slams against my ribs. Shadow goes rigid, his head swinging toward a doorway on the far side of the room.
“Hello? Is someone there?” Retching coughs follow.
I swallow hard. Adjust my grip on the gun. My hands are shaking as I move toward the sound. The wooden door hangs crooked on its hinges. It creaks as I slowly push it open.
My mother lies on the bed ahead of me.
My knees nearly buckle.
She’s propped up in the narrow bed, buried under layers of handmade quilts and crocheted blankets. Her hair is spread across the pillow, now more gray than dark, stringy and falling out in patches.
The mother I remember was worn, yes, but solid. Strong. This woman is skeletal. Sharp cheekbones jut out, and her eyes are sunken. Her skin has become yellow and waxy.
She’s dying.
She squints toward me, toward the figure in full tactical gear with a gun and a German shepherd, and her mouth opens in a scream.
It comes out as a croak. A thin, hoarse sound that barely fills the room.
I realize what I must look like to her. Helmet. Goggles pushed up on my forehead. Gaiter covering half my face. Everything she’s been taught to fear about the outside world, standing in her bedroom door.
“Mom.” I shouldn’t do this, but I yank the gaiter down, pull my helmet off. It clatters to the floor somewhere behind me. “Mom, it’s me.”
I holster my gun and hold up my gloved hands, stepping closer. She stops screaming and stares at me, aghast.
The room is a maze—more piles of clothes, cardboard boxes overflowing with papers, stuffed trash bags and wads of tissues scattered across the floor. Shadow and I have to pick our way around the foot of the bed to reach her, navigating the narrow channel between the wall and the debris.
Confusion ripples across her features. Then something shifts.
“Eden?”
Tears spring to my eyes so fast I can’t blink them back. “Mom.”
I tug off my gloves and stuff them into a pocket, then reach for her hand where it lies on top of the quilts. Her fingers are cold. But when I wrap my hand around hers, she squeezes back, and that single pressure—that tiny reciprocal grip—sends me back fifteen years. I’m a young teen again, and she’s my mom.
“I’ve been trying to find you.” The words come out thick, wet. I’m crying now, tears streaming down my cheeks. “For so long. I’ve been trying—”
“Eden.” Her voice cracks on my name. Her other hand lifts, trembling, and touches my face. Her palm is papery and dry against my cheek. “My girl. You came back.”
For a moment, we stay like that. Her hand on my face. My hand wrapped around hers. All the years of silence and distance and everything I couldn’t say, everything I couldn’t fix, compressed into the space between us.
I’ve never seen my mother cry before.
“I’m here,” I whisper. “I’m here, Mom.”
Then her gaze drifts down. Takes in the tactical gear. My K-9 standing alert beside me, watchful.
Her hand drops from my face.
“Why are you dressed like that?” Her voice changes. Sharpens. That familiar edge creeping back in. That other, critical side of my mother.
“I’m here to help,” I say quickly. “To get everyone out safe, to—”
She recoils against her pillows, her face twisting.
“Mom, listen to me—”
“Eden.” My name sounds like a curse in her mouth now. Her eyes have gone hard, bright with something that looks almost like fever. “My wayward, sinning child. You have no idea—” A cough racks her body, deep and wet. She presses a hand to her chest, grimacing, and I look around for water or medicine, desperate for some way to help her.
“You have no idea the shame you have brought upon me. Upon your brothers and sisters.”
My throat grows tight.
“You’re helping?” Her voice rises, cracking and rasping but gaining strength. “You corrupted them with your wickedness. Daniel. Rachel. You poisoned their minds against God—” She’s trying to sit up now, her bony arms shaking with the effort. “I knew—I always knew you were cursed. From the moment you were born, that stubborn spirit—”
“Mom, please—” I can’t breathe.
“And now this!” She gestures wildly at my uniform. “Persecuting your own! Swarming in here like… like a locust, raining terror upon innocents, dragging—”
I squeeze her hand tighter. She yanks it free.
“Get out!” She’s screaming now, or trying to—the sound comes out reedy and broken, but the venom is real. “Get out of my house! I will not—”
Shadow growls, facing the front room. A deeper rumble cuts through the noise.
I swivel toward the window, toward the sound of revving diesel engines outside. And then—
Gunfire. Distant but unmistakable, cracking through the dawn air and echoing across the valley.
Shadow’s barking—sharp, urgent—pulls my attention. I spin toward the bedroom doorway.
A man steps into view.
Young. Early twenties. Blond hair, clean-shaven, cold eyes. He’s wearing simple clothes—dark trousers, a homespun shirt—and his face is calm. Almost serene.
The rifle in his hands is not.
The butt is pressed tight against his shoulder, the barrel pointed directly at my chest.
“Noah?” my mother manages, her voice hoarse.
As in Noah Cross, who kidnapped my brother?
I reach for my gun. His finger tightens on the trigger.
“No!” she croaks.
Movement. A blur of quilts and pale limbs.
My mother lunges.
She throws herself forward with strength that shouldn’t exist in that wasted body, arms spread wide, and for one impossible moment, she’s between me and the barrel.
The muzzle flashes.
CHAPTER 41
The shot is deafeningly loud in the small room. I dive, Shadow slamming into me as we go down together behind the bed.
My shoulder hits the floor. Glass crunches. Something sharp digs into my hip.
My ears ring. The world has gone muffled and strange. I should be dead.
Mom.
She lurched forward. The muzzle flashed. Her body jerked.
My throat closes. She took the bullet for me.
No time. No time to think about it.
I’m wedged between the bed and the wall, half buried in garbage and old clothes, Shadow pressed against me. Glass digs into my palm. My heart pounds so hard I can feel it in my temples. I draw my sidearm, then shift onto my stomach, keeping low.
Another shot cracks through the room. The bullet punches into the mattress above my head, sending up a puff of dust and fabric. I flinch, flattening myself against the filthy floor.
Shadow is rigid beside me, his body vibrating with tension, ears pinned back. He’s waiting. Trusting me to tell him what to do.
I grit my teeth, steel myself, then rise up just enough to return fire—two quick shots toward the doorway. Noah jerks back out of sight. I drop down again, breathing hard.
He’s got the better angle. We could do this dance, returning fire, ducking out of the way, until one of us runs out of ammunition or gets lucky.
Or until backup arrives. But the gunfire outside tells me everyone else has their hands full. No one's coming to save us — the radio's chaos, everyone already pinned down.
