Bitter Falls (Stillhouse Lake, #4)

by Rachel Caine

I can’t put into words the wave of slow horror I feel. I remember that nightmarish house in Wolfhunter, and what Sam told me of the women out at Carr’s compound.

“That’s the night I managed to slip away. The night Remy went with them. I took my chance, and I escaped. I traded him for my child’s life. And I think about that every day.”

I want to go. I need to go. She’s confirmed the place—Bitter Falls—where we might find Connor and Sam. But there’s a magnetic, awful pull to her self-loathing and her guilt.

I don’t ask where she’s going when she leaves. I hope she disappears. I hope she and her son find some anonymous corner of the world to make their own, far away from compounds and saints and the dead. But me? I’m going to war.

I don’t think anything breaks, and when they leave me bleeding and breathless on the dirt floor, they toss down a half-empty bottle of water and a piece of bread. Literal bread and water. Good they know the classics.

Recklessness is very, very dangerous in this kind of cult. It makes them brazen and suicidal. Father Tom, like all these self-appointed assholes, will hang on to power until the bitter end, and making sure all his cultists precede him to the grave ensures that. Plenty of precedents for it, from David Koresh to Jim Jones.

“You’re making a plan on how to get out of here and get the boy out too. I respect that. But that boy is mine. I’ll see you both dead before I let you leave.”

“I looked you up, Sam. Such a shame your sister had to cross paths with a monster like Royal. God really does work in mysterious ways, doesn’t he? Setting you and Royal’s wife together. But there’s a certain triumph in that too. You don’t need to destroy him if you’ve taken what he once had. His wife. His children.”

I’ve never felt such a prisoner as I feel right now, trapped in the drowning well of this man’s threat and charisma.

I’ve succeeded in cracking open his shell, and for a second there he is: the real Tom. Angry, feral, clever, hungry Tom.

He looks . . . happy as a kid at Christmas. He’d love to carve me to pieces. I think he’s going to for a long few seconds, and while that happens I just . . . vanish. I think about Gwen. The kids.

I believe Father Tom when he says his people are lethal. I go cold and sick when I think of Gwen being caught by them. I don’t want to imagine what could happen.

I sit down and pick up his pillow, then silently hug it and breathe in the scent of my son. I want to cry. I can’t.

He’s going to get my boys killed, and I don’t know whether to blame him or myself. I should have known that getting Lustig involved was a risk; he’s not a free agent, and he has protocols to follow.

I nod, though it goes against everything in my nature. Sometimes I have to let those I love lead the way too.

She needs to leave with us, I think. She doesn’t belong here.

I lunge to my feet. I don’t even think before I do it. My fists are clenched. “Don’t hurt him!” It just kind of bursts out of me.

I want to believe Aria; she’s pretty and my age, and she seems to like me. Sister Harmony just seems angry.

Kissing feels really good, and I never knew that. Guess I should have—everybody talks about it like it’s amazing, but there’s something more real about that feeling than I’ve ever known before.

My stomach drops when I see who they’re holding. Dad.

“Tell me something I don’t know,” she snaps, which shocks me. It doesn’t seem like something someone who buys into Father Tom’s women-aren’t-human shit would say. More like something my sister would, though.

She’s got that Mom presence and energy, and I just nod. Then she says, “They’re opening the side gate. Someone’s coming in.”

I can feel Aria’s stare digging into me from behind, and I don’t know how I ever found her pretty. I hate that I kissed her.

I don’t know what she’s thinking, but I know she feels trapped. I do too. I feel like Vee showing up is the best thing and the worst thing all at once. If she’s here, I have to think that Mom’s not far behind. And probably other people too.

This last-second reprieve doesn’t feel like victory. Our time’s run out. He’s going to kill my son. He wants to.

Hypothermia’s really setting in now; I’m shaking like a tree in a hurricane as my body tries to spin up enough heat to protect my core.

There aren’t any animals in the barn, thank God. Just storage. I don’t want to think about what I would’ve done otherwise, because right now I have a ruthless streak a mile wide.

How can Mike not know that anything but a stealth approach is a terrible idea? Maybe it isn’t Mike. Maybe it’s some gloryhound local agent who doesn’t realize he’s about to kick off a brand-new Waco.

know I should be afraid of her. Horrified, too; she just killed someone. But she’s like Mom, a warrior, protecting those she loves.

I stop and look at her. She’s never held a gun before, I can tell; her hands are shaking worse than mine.

about thirty seconds later she’s got the engine going, and she flashes me a brilliant grin as she slips into the driver’s seat.

Let the woman learn in silence with all subjection. She learned better than Father Tom ever expected.

but I remember seeing him there, seeing that last look he gave me, and even though my eyes are burning and leaking, now I know I’m crying for real. Dad, please. Please be okay. Please.

The only thing that saves his life is Lustig shouting, at the same time, “We’ve got Connor, he’s safe!”

We pass Father Tom lying on the ground, face in the dirt, screaming as the FBI handcuffs him. I’m glad I didn’t shoot him. I want him to suffer.

I don’t need Stillhouse Lake anymore. I have what I need right here. All around me.