Page 23 of Twilight Tactics

“Right.” He paused. “Why would the hat stop them?”

“It’s their logo-less hat.”

Which explained everything. Not. “Anything else?”

She blew out a low breath and nodded. “So, I was born into a prepper family, and it was pretty chill. Then we moved to this area when I was thirteen years old.”

“Okay.”

“The man in charge, the one I told you about—LaRoche—was hard, a dictator with a serious rage problem.” She drew in a deep breath. “And, I suspect, he’s probably a killer.”

“Whoa. Why do you say that?”

“I never saw him kill anyone or I would have reported it, but people disappeared and were never heard from again. People who disagreed with LaRoche. I know the group was under investigation, because the police came out a few times. I remember seeing the FBI out there too, but nothing was proven and eventually things calmed down. But—that’s what you should know.”

She pulled Harley to a stop and motioned for him to do thesame. Belle responded on cue, and he and Elena sat side by side while she watched the trees and he watched her. “What is it?”

“I saw something I was looking for.”

“What?”

She pointed. “The No Trespassing signs. It means we’re on private land now.”

“‘Trespassers willbe shot. Turn backnow.’” He read aloud the homemade wooden sign with black block letters, then cocked a brow at her. “They do realize they can’t just shoot someone simply because they have a sign that says they will?”

“They know, but I’m not sure they care.” She shot him a glance.

“Good to know. So, why the warning? Why the danger aspect? From what I understand, preppers aren’t generally violent. Private, yes. Rude? Sure, occasionally. Protective of their way of life? Absolutely. But they’re not usually violent.”

“I know. This group is definitely an outlier. They may not actually shoot, but like I said, people have been known to disappear.”

She clicked and the horse moved forward. Sully followed her lead, with the middle of his shoulders itching. Her gaze roamed the trees, and every so often, she’d turn in her saddle to look behind them. They’d slowed to a crawl through the thick underbrush, following a faint path that only she could see. Because he sure couldn’t.

“And you grew up with them?”

“I did. Well, not this particular group. But yes. Until I was fourteen.”

“What happened at fourteen?”

“Well, that’s a story.”

“I’m listening.”

She bit her lip, and they rode in silence deeper into the wooded area. “My sister Iris and I were homeschooled,”she finally said. “Mom did the basics of reading, writing, and arithmetic and only what Dad approved. Dad did the other stuff. Wilderness survival, hand-to-hand combat and self-defense, setting traps, filtering water to make it fresh, skinning deer and preserving the meat.” She waved a hand. “You get the idea. But Mom would talk about the outside world occasionally. Secretly tell us stories of how she grew up in the big city of Charlotte, North Carolina. Then we moved here. This compound was closer to town than the one in Virginia. So sometimes, when she could get permission, she took me to town to buy supplies we couldn’t grow on the compound, and I was fascinated by the stores and the other kids who were so different than I was. And then, on my fourteenth birthday, I ended up in the hospital with a ruptured appendix.”

“Whoa.”

“Yeah.” She scowled. “That was probably one of the worst pains I’ve ever felt in my life. I was so sick. Dad kept telling LaRoche that I needed help, but LaRoche said I’d get over it and I wasn’t going to a hospital. But I kept getting worse. Mom woke me up in the middle of the night and snuck me out. Somehow, she carried me down to a little convenience store at the base of the mountain and called an ambulance. I don’t know how she dodged all the guards to get down there, but she did. I spent two weeks in the hospital. Once I was conscious, I loved being there.” She smiled, a sad little smile that tore at something in his heart. “Not the almost-dying part, but the television, the people who took care of me. The food. Even the Jell-O. I couldn’t get enough of the strawberry Jell-O. Everything was new and exciting, and I didn’t need to sleep under mosquito netting. The day they told me I could go home, I cried.”

“So you went back to the compound after you healed? After LaRoche almost let you die?” They passed yet another NoTrespassing sign that had a warning attached to it: TrespassersWillBeShotOnSight. TurnBackNow.

“I did,” she said, “and hated it even more. I learned a lot from watching television that last week. I slept very little. Spent at least twenty hours a day just devouring the television. A whole new world opened up for me, and I became aware of just how different we were from most everyone else in that world. A world that was huge and mind-boggling—and exciting. I wanted to explore it. Learn. Experience everything. I begged Mom to leave the preppers. Day after day, I hounded her. Out of hearing range of anyone else, of course, but I wore her down. She finally caved and mentioned it to Dad.”

“Do I need to guess how that went over?”

“You probably can. Dad wasn’t having it. He blew up and they had a major falling-out. They argued for days. Dad said LaRoche was right. I shouldn’t have gone to the hospital, that I was different now and not in a good way.”

“Ouch.”