Prologue
Three Years Ago
June 20, Tuesday
Shiloh
The air was heavy and thick. Suffocating in the way that a hot, humid summer night in south Texas had you sweating and struggling to breathe through the muggy air. The song of the cicadas was the only sound as I stared up at the night sky. There wasn’t a cloud in sight, no light pollution out here in the hill country, nothing to obstruct my view of the stars and the narrow, crescent moon. The darkness was unnerving when I first moved here, but now I liked it, craved it, sitting outside at night, swallowed by shadows.
I released a sigh, my lungs heavy, using my toes to push off from the wood planks beneath me to keep the rocking chair in motion. The fabric of the thin nightgown was stuck to the sweat that dripped down my back. I pulled my hair over my shoulder, trying to find some reprieve.
I was too stubborn to go back into the house, into the air-conditioning. I’d bask in the oppressive, mosquito-filled air aslong as I could. It was better than being trapped in the house I’d called home for the last year and a half.
I’d given up hope that I would see anything other than the compound named Eden. A complete misnomer—there was nothing paradisical about this place. I knew it the first time I stepped foot on the property. Had enough intuition to see past the façade of perfection they painted, just not enough to see what kind of hell it actually was.
No one knew. Not Carlos who sent me here as bait and left me trapped. Not Agent Nguyen who promised to come to my rescue if I agreed to testify in trials against Los Siete.
I didn’t realize that I had sealed my fate the moment I agreed to join their church, agreed to marry Theodore Walsh. I truly believed that I would be safe here for a couple of years while I waited for the FBI to get me out. I could do anything for a couple of years if it meant I’d get my revenge.
I shook my head at myself as I watched the blinking lights of an airplane flying high above me.
Revenge. I scoffed.
It seemed like a distant memory now. Nothing but a child’s naïve daydream. They’d never get the punishment they deserved until we all met our maker. Until we were all burning here.
Sometimes I wondered if I was already there, already in hell. But then I remembered my friends, remembered the innocent children trapped in Eden with me. This couldn’t be hell if they were here too.
I ran my fingers over the smooth grain of the arm rest and closed my eyes against the rush of emotion welling inside of me. If I wasn’t such a selfish sinner, maybe I wouldn’t have been sickeningly relieved to be bleeding out the life that could have grown inside of me. I spent hours and hours praying, begging, pleading to God to prevent me from having a child. I didn’t understand why He would punish an innocent and helplesschild. Bringing a baby into this world, into this wicked family I was a part of, felt like the sickest crime I could ever commit.
The first time those two pink lines showed I was in shock. I didn’t know how to feel. I had never wanted children, and the prospect of being responsible for the life of another human being was overwhelming. One week later I had my first miscarriage. I was devasted despite having been scared to bring the child into this world. I cried for days but forced myself to stop because it upset Theo more. I would never forget the disappointment on Theo’s face when the clinic confirmed the miscarriage, when they found no medical reason for me to have lost the baby. It was the first time I became acquainted with spiritual cleansing.
They claimed it was a baptism, a way for the Holy Spirit to enter your body and expel any evil that was lurking there. The first time they only held me underwater for twenty-two seconds. Long, but not long enough to make me think they might drown me. No, each baptism there-after was longer and longer until I began to question whether their goal was to actually kill me. Thrashing, uncontrollably choking back water as Theo, Kit and Elder Sam held me underwater and prayed. Relentlessly.
Six—no, seven times now. Seven miscarriages. Soon, seven spiritual cleansings. They didn’t seem to be working. I knew the Bible now, more than ever, and I knew the significance of that number. A part of me wondered if this would be the final one. That number had followed me here. Los Siete. And now…the seventh miscarriage. Maybe the curse would finally be lifted.
Theodore and his parents believed that this was a generational curse, one passed down from Theodore’s grandfather who had failed to lead the church to what it was today thanks to Kit. Mother was also afflicted by miscarriages, making Theodore an only child. They had no idea that they were praying over a murderer. I used to pray that their ritual might clean the stain that marked my soul, but I’d given up hope.
Hope wasn’t worth the risk. Not here. Not in Eden. Hope crushed your soul worse than the belt that whipped your back when you let Satan in. So, I didn’t bother hoping that this being the seventh one might actually mean something.
I knew that the people who’d promised to rescue me from this hell were never going to come. I knew that I was going to be trapped here until I died. So, I did what I could to make myself happy, to believe that this was the best I was ever going to get, to accept my reality would never change. Volunteering to work in the children’s ministry at church, tending to the community garden, becoming part of the mother’s helper committee that assisted moms and newborns with the transition to life post-partum.
But in the last two months my world had become the size of a pinprick. Theo was obsessed with limiting my access to anything that might corrupt my soul. He wasdesperate. A year and a half married to a barren wife, in a community where a woman’s worth was measured in fertility and blind obedience, had sent Theo to the edge of his patience. He was about to take over his father’s position as the leader of the church, and I was failing him.
It didn’t matter how much effort I put into fulfilling my role as his wife. The house could be spotless, his meal’s cooked to perfection, my body used for his pleasure at any time…without a child, everyone’s eyes were on him. Which meant everyone’s eyes were on me when Theo let me leave the house.
I shuddered at the thought of what was coming tonight when Theo returned home from his leadership meeting and discovered his wife had failed once again to grow life.
I wiped my sweaty brow with the back of my hand. I only had another hour before he was home, before I needed to crawl back into the skin I shed the rare times I was alone. It was becoming harder and harder to distinguish Olivia from Shiloh.
The snap of a twig had my eyes swinging to the copse of red cedar trees that lined the left side of our property, providing us with some privacy from my in-law’s much larger home about a football field from our own. My eyes strained, scanning the pitch shadows for the animal that likely made the sound. It was well past the hour for most of the wild animals on the nearly two-thousand-acre compound to be out, although it could have been a deer or a coyote. It wasn’t uncommon to see them on occasion wonder across the back of our property. This side of the compound was never cleared. It had been left natural for wildlife to flourish and acted as hunting grounds for the community to use.
I leaned forward in my chair, my muscles tensed as I watched and waited for another sound from the hiding animal. Nothing.
I sighed and figured it was time that I went in and double-checked the house was up to Theo’s standard of tidy. I didn’t need another reason for him to belt me.
I stood from the rocking chair, adjusting my damp nightgown and gave one last look up to the moon. The groan of wood behind me sent my heart into my throat. I froze, another groan following the sound of footfall.
He’s home.
