Page 43 of Beyond Redemption

Trenton seemed to test the dusty ground under his feet as he stepped out. His expression was flat enough to pass for neutral to anyone who didn’t know him. I knew better. His shoulders were too still, his brows drawn just enough to signal restraint, but not calm. His hands were empty, hanging loose at his sides, but the muscles in his forearms stood out with the effort it took to keep them that way.

Camille stepped out after him, already focused on the baby in the car seat still fastened in. Their son, Oliver, appeared in her arms a second later, heavy with sleep, cheek pressed against her shoulder, thumb tucked in his mouth. She adjusted his weight automatically, smoothing his hair. Her face turned toward Trenton, toward the guards, then the gates behind them. A quiet warning lived in her eyes, impossible to miss. She was the only voice Trenton would hear until he saw Olive, and she knew it.

“Trenton is at about an eight,” I murmured.

“Out of…?” Thomas asked.

He didn’t expect or need the answer, but I gave it, anyway. “Ten. He won’t swing first, not in front of the kids. That doesn’t mean he won’t if given the smallest reason.”

“Fair,” Thomas said. “How about Taylor?”

“Seven… and a half,” I said.

Travis rounded the back of the fourth SUV, pulling open the back passenger door for James as he hopped out, his twin sister Jessica behind him before his feet evened out on the ground. Both were tall, gangly, and suddenly not children anymore, both with braces and headphones resting around their necks. Abby appeared then, Carter’s small hand in hers, both moving slower than the others, blinking from the dry, sandy air. He let go of her long enough to tug on his father’s sleeve and then returned to the comfort of his mother.

Travis ruffled his youngest son’s hair, then reached for each of the twins, guiding them closer. A brief tethering, reminding his children, who were old enough to be afraid, that he still stood between them and whatever came next. When he straightened, his attention had already shifted toward the gate. Everyone he loved stood behind it now. He understood the stakes, and he glared at the steel as if he were already choosing where to put his hands to tear it off its hinges.

Even so, Travis wasn’t as visibly angry as Taylor or Trenton. He didn’t have to be. He took his time to meet the eyes of every guard within reach, one by one, offering a single unspoken warning: hurt them, and this compound burns to the ground with you in it. Abby hovered just behind, their children framed between them—not gathered for comfort but positioned to protect.

Corporal Fonseco approached the first truck with a clipboard and tablet. Names were checked, IDs verified, phones surrendered. Luggage was wanded lightly and waved through, more process than suspicion.

The Maddoxes complied. No one argued, no one raised a voice. They answered questions and acknowledged instructions. On paper, it looked like cooperation. But Thomas and I knew it was containment, a short play to achieve their objective: to see Olive. No one could be sure what would happen after that.

I watched Falyn as she listened to the briefing. A sergeant explained the basics: mess hall schedule, Orientation timeline, restricted areas, comms limitations. Her eyes followed his mouth, but almost nothing registered in her features. She nodded at the right moments, said yes when prompted, stepped where they guided her. Her focus lived elsewhere, on the other side of whatever line had been drawn the night Olive disappeared from their lives.

“They’re holding it together,” Thomas said quietly, a tinge of hope just beneath his words.

“For now,” I replied.

Guilt slid in under my ribs like a slow, familiar blade. I kept my shoulders relaxed, my stance open. Inside, my brain did what it always did under pressure: it replayed past choices, stepping through decisions in order, checking them against the outcome.

We let everyone who loved Olive believe she had died. We let them bury a niece, a daughter, a cousin, because every other path led to circumstances that would have breached security and exposed her to the people hunting her. By every measure, it was the only viable route. Extracting Falyn, Taylor, Hollis, and Hadley from Colorado, moving them into a safe house, asking them to put everything on hold, trusting not one of them would crack under the weight of secrecy was not. Hoping no child would repeat something in the wrong hallway, at the wrong birthday party, to the wrong set of ears. The logistics alone were a minefield, extended family demanding visits, friends searching social media, someone noticing a bank account going quiet or a school record freezing. The funding was its own problem, navigating the appropriations and adjustments without naming the cause, as if money could so easily stretch around five ghosts.

It wasn’t that the family would have agreed or even listened—not that we had time to convince them. Logic was on our side. Itold myself that then just as I did now. That there was no time to invent a better plan, that we made the only choice that kept her alive. I hoped that if I said it enough, it would sound less like justification and more like the truth.

Logic, though, did not stand in front of you with her eyes swollen and her voice shredded from screaming into a pillow.

Taylor’s gaze swept the guard towers, moved to the Longhouse, and finally settled on Thomas and me. Even from a distance, I could see recognition in his eyes. For a heartbeat, he moved as if he might lift a hand to acknowledge us in some small, familiar way. Then, the memory caught up. Whatever gesture had almost existed died before it reached his shoulder. He looked at us the way he glowered at the militia—distance, distrust, a line already drawn. We weren’t allies anymore. We were the reason he was here.

“They see us,” I said.

“I would be concerned if they didn’t,” Thomas replied. “Ready?”

“No. You?”

“I thought I was. But now that I see them? The best I can do is to say I’m prepared.”

That was as close as we came to optimism. It vanished almost instantly, and my throat cinched tight. In seconds, the guards would escort them to the Longhouse, and the most dangerous conversation in Maddox history would be underway.

The sergeant finished the briefing and gestured toward us. One by one, the Maddoxes turned, and Taylor was no longer the only one staring. The brothers’ families clustered tightly around them, a line of familiar faces now set against a backdrop of unfamiliar stone and sand.

I catalogued what I saw, because that was what I knew how to do—and the only control I had. Trenton’s eyes locked on Thomas first, then on me. The recognition and then anger came,immediate and sharp. Travis’s followed, his gaze narrower, seeming to measure the distance between us. His jaw muscle twitched once, but his expression was otherwise unreadable.

Falyn saw me last.

Her stare hit with the force of contact, a collision I felt in my ribs. The exhaustion that had hollowed her out made space for something darker to rise. Rage, betrayal, grief, all without a name. Falyn’s hand dug into Taylor’s shoulder, not for comfort, but to keep herself contained—feral mother bear energy coiled, deciding if restraint was still the right choice.

“This is the part,” I murmured, “where we try to convince them that being here with Olive matters more than gutting us before being forced out by gunpoint.”