Page 134 of The Rut in the Road

Raj nudged my leg again.

The Assistant Deputy Director was smiling when he reclaimed the note from me. “So this is the Church of Holy Judgment?” he asked me.

I nodded.

He turned to Raj. “Take them down, Parikh.”

Raj nodded once. “Yes, sir.”

“No,”Hart said, shaking his head. “You send a note like that, you’re going to be fucking ready for the asshole you threatened to break out the goddamn cavalry.”

Raj let out a huff of breath. “Which is why we have tomove,” he replied sharply. “Because they’ll expect us to have to prepare, to bide our time, get warrants, what have you.”

I almost asked why we didn’t need a warrant, but decided that wasn’t part of my job or my expertise, so I just stayed quiet.

“You can’t just storm the church,” Hart replied. “Much as I fucking want to.”

Drew got up from his desk, then handed a tablet to Raj. “The church isn’t their only property,” he said softly, reading something off Drew’s tablet. He looked at the other shifter. “This is in the warehouse district?”

Drew nodded.

“So they’ve got storage space?” Cass asked. “For what? What does a church need to store?”

“Fuckin’ nativity scenes?” Hart suggested. “Old bulletins?” He shrugged. “Have you ever seen a church basement? God only fucking knows where they get all that shit.”

Raj was frowning in the way he did when he was thinking. He glanced over at me, then back to the rest of the room. “I imagine Rayn will be of more use at a warehouse than at the church itself,” he said.

Hart leaned back in his chair, arms crossed over his chest. “And more out of any potential lines of fire,” he said, although there was a funny tone to his voice that I didn’t quite follow.

Raj met his gaze squarely. “I don’t see a problem with keeping civilians out of harm’s way,” he replied, and I knew that the undercurrent to his voice was one of warning. “Do you?”

Hart shrugged. “Nope,” he replied. I had the feeling he had other things he wanted to say—or maybe I just wasn’t understanding what was actually going on. It wouldn’t be the first time I’d misunderstood subtext in a conversation, and it definitely wasn’t going to be the last, either.

“So how are we going to do this?” Cass asked. “Where do we go first?”

Drew shook his head, then reached forward and pointed with two split fingers at the map that had been pulled up on Hart’s tablet.

“You think we hit both at the same time?” Raj asked him.

Drew nodded.

Hart blew out a breath. “I don’t like going in with fewer people,” he replied. “We go two places, we drop from four—or five—down to two.”

Raj was nodding. “We can get backup,” he replied.

“That much backup?” Hart asked him, pointedly. “Sure, we can probably get a dozen or so people, but you’re not gonna want to turn that into two sets of eight, either, given that we know the congregation is a shit-ton bigger than that.”

“You think the whole congregation is in on the murders?” Cass asked, her brow furrowed.

“Not likely, I wouldn’t guess,” Hart answered.

Raj was nodding his agreement. “Statistically speaking, when you have a church with a cult-style following, there’s an inner circle who are more fanatically devoted than the regular congregants.”

“Statistics and I aren’t really besties,” Hart told him. “I still say we need backup, and not like two asshats, either.”

Raj nodded. “Agreed.”

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