Exit Strategy. Shirlee McCoy

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СКАЧАТЬ keep on fighting, but how about you don’t fight me?” He moved her forward, nudging her toward the old church where she and Josh had gotten married. It stood on a hill overlooking the compound, its clapboard siding whitewashed and gleaming in the moonlight. Behind it, a small cemetery spread out across two acres. Just beyond that, the fence protected the members of Amos Way from intruders. Or kept them from leaving.

      She didn’t know why he was leading her there, and she dug her heels in, tried to stop their forward momentum. She stumbled, would have gone down if his arm hadn’t wrapped around her waist.

      “Keep moving,” the man murmured, his fingers loose, his grip light. “Do you want John to join us?”

      “I want to leave!” she responded, her voice raspy and hot sounding.

      “You and me both,” he replied, prying her hand open and taking the key from it.

      She wanted to scream, cry, beg for mercy, but that was another thing she’d learned a long time ago—don’t let your opponent see your fear.

      “You want to go, then leave,” she managed to say, and he shook his head.

      “It would be nice if it were that easy, but John has this place sealed up tight. Getting out isn’t going to be as easy as getting in, and even that wasn’t all that easy.” He lifted her wrists, used the key to unlock the handcuffs, pulled a knife from his gun belt.

      Her mouth went dry, and she tried to back up.

      “Calm down, Lark. I’m not planning to use this on you.” He bent over, sliced through the ropes at her ankle.

      Blood flooded into her feet. She didn’t have time to think about it. He gave her a gentle push toward the church.

      “Here’s how we’re going to play things. You’re going to keep looking terrified—”

      “Looking?” she mumbled, and he met her eyes, offered a half smile that did nothing to ease the hardness of his face.

      “Just keep on being terrified. John wants me to question you about whatever it is you took from Elijah.”

      “I didn’t take anything.” She hadn’t had a chance. She’d managed to sneak into Elijah’s house during the evening prayer meeting, but she’d been caught before she could do more than open his file cabinet. Whatever he was hiding, whatever the compound fronted for, she hadn’t had time to uncover it.

      “That’s not what John and Elijah think.”

      “I don’t really care what they think.”

      “Maybe you should since they had you hog-tied in a trailer.”

      “And sent you to question me,” she pointed out. “You probably know more about what they want then I do.”

      “Probably not. I’ve barely spoken to Elijah, and John keeps things close to the cuff.”

      “So you’re just blindly following orders?”

      “I’m helping a friend,” he said, glancing over his shoulder and frowning. “Essex was worried about you. The police weren’t listening to his concerns, so he asked me to check on you. I guess it’s fortunate for you that he did.”

      She’d met Essex a year and a half ago, not long after Joshua’s death. She’d been substituting at the school where he taught fifth grade. At the end of the year, she’d been offered a contract to teach full-time. The job had been a godsend. So had Essex. He’d taken her under his wing, brought her home to meet his kids and wife. He was the closest thing to a family she had.

      She’d hoped he’d worry when she didn’t show up for work, but the first day of school had come and gone, and the police hadn’t shown up, no one had come looking for her. She’d realized she was on her own, trapped because she’d been just foolish enough to think she’d be safe in a place that had killed her husband.

      “How do you know Essex?” she asked, still not convinced this wasn’t some kind of bizarre trick to get her to let her guard down, give in to whatever it was they had planned for her.

      “We were army buddies.”

      That fit. Essex had retired from the military a few years before he’d become a teacher. “How many kids does he have?”

      “Four.”

      “How old is he?”

      “Do you know?”

      “Yes.”

      “I don’t. It’s not something we discussed. I can tell you this, though, he’s got a scar on his forearm from saving my hide.”

      That fit, too. At least, the scar did. She didn’t know about the life saving part. She’d asked about the scar, and Essex had simply said that he’d been injured while serving in Iraq. “What’s his wife’s name?”

      “Janet. Kids are Essex Jr., Eleanor, Eliza and Elliot. Don’t know what the E name thing is, but I told him he needs to cut it out,” he growled. “Now, if you’re done with twenty questions, how about we get down to business?”

      “What business?”

      “Getting out of here alive.”

      Whether he was telling the truth or a lie didn’t matter. What mattered was that her arms were free, her feet were free. Soon the blood that pulsed back into her toes would calm, the throbbing pain would ebb and she’d have feeling back. That would make escape easier, and that was all she cared about. That and taking Elijah Clayton down. She might not have found evidence in his office, she might not have gotten her hands on something that could prove he was as dirty as the old hound dog he kept tied to a stake behind his house, but she knew he’d killed Joshua. Or had him killed.

      Either way, Joshua’s blood was on his hands.

      She’d known it the day she’d found Joshua, his hunting rifle in his hand, a bullet hole through his temple. She’d known Joshua. He was careful and cautious. He didn’t take chances. The accident that had taken his life wouldn’t have happened to someone like him. Couldn’t have happened. The police had bought the lie, though. Why wouldn’t they have? Even Joshua’s parents had believed it.

      Lark had been too numb to question what she was told.

      She’d let her in-laws plan the funeral, let herself be led through days of grieving. When it was over, she’d packed up a few things, left the compound because it was too filled with memories of the only man she’d ever loved.

      It had taken a couple of months for the truth to settle in, for the nagging disquiet to be replaced by the certainty that there was more to Joshua’s death than a simple accident. She’d started digging, then, researching Amos Way, its history, its former members. There weren’t many of those. The ones she’d found hadn’t been willing to talk.

      That hadn’t stopped her.

      She’d kept asking, thinking she was clever enough to stay a step ahead of Elijah. Obviously, she hadn’t been.

      She moved up the church stairs, СКАЧАТЬ