Chapter 2
“Shit. I’m going to be one of those cautionary tales in ATF training.”
-Cam
Before we got into Dakota’s truck, he made me hand over my burner phone, which he promptly drove over and crushed. It’s no big deal because I have at least three trackers on me that can’t be found by Dakota’s regular scanners.
As we drive, I pick at my cuticles, trying to calm my nerves. “Where are we going? Will there be drinks?”
Dakota puffs on his vape pen with a laugh. “Patience, Mellie. Patience.”
I shrug and look out the window, trying to memorize our trip to wherever he’s taking me. The truck bounces over rutty dirt roads in the backwoods of Indiana. It’s nearing midnight, and it’s not long before I become disoriented.
Shit.
Those damn Liam Neeson and Bruce Willis movies make it seem so easy to memorize your route, but it’s not hard to get turned around when you don’t have a reference point to work with. For all I know, Dakota could be driving us around in circles in a cornfield.
And Indiana has a shit-ton of cornfields.
I remain calm. This is what I trained for.
“What is this?Children of the Corn?” I laugh and try to give my handler a sense of where I am since they’re tracking me on comms.
Dakota glances over at me with a chuckle. “This is Indiana. There are cornfields everywhere.”
“True story,” I agree. “Although, I think there’s a song that talks about there being more than corn in Indiana.”
Dakota laughs again. “It was used for a theme park commercial back in the day. You’ve got a good memory.”
I tap the side of my forehead. “Have to.”
He smiles. “All of thatexplosiveknowledge up there. How do you find room for anything else?”
I try not to wince thinking about the bomb Ibuiltfor his cult. Dakota had a beef with the Van Buren County Sheriff and decided to blow up the guy’s family. I rigged the fake bomb to look like a gas explosion. And the ATF snuck the family out of the house before it went off. They’re safely in the protective custody of U.S. Marshals, for the time being, with Dakota none the wiser.
Dakota pulls the truck down a dirt driveway that ends in front of a two-story white farmhouse. “We’re here.”
“Where is here?”
“You’ll see,” Dakota gets out of the truck. “C’mon!”
I get out and look around. There are no other vehicles that I can see, but there is a barn about three hundred yards away from the house. Anyone could be hiding in there. There’s only one light on in the farmhouse, giving it that nobody’s home/serial killer vibe.
“You live in this deserted white farmhouse by yourself, or is Norman Bates your roommate?”
Dakota giggles and drags me up the front steps and inside the door. It shuts with an ominous click. I hear an automatic deadbolt slide into place. The hair on the back of my neck stands up.
Breathe. Don’t panic. Breathe. Don’t panic.
“Nice place you got here,” I whistle as I look around. All of the windows have bars on the inside that are locked with padlocks. “You must have some very imaginative pets if you need bars on the windows to keep them inside.”
Dakota simply nods and heads toward the back of the house. We end up in a dated farmhouse kitchen. It’s large but has no dishwasher and doesn’t look like it’s been used in the past decade or three.
“Nice kitchen,” I spy more padlocks on the windows. The backdoor has a reinforced bar across the middle. “Except for the security measures, this looks like abeforekitchen on HGTV.”
He turns suddenly. “You know the place is wired, right?”
I snicker. “Wired? For wi-fi? I hope so. That’s sort of a necessity these days.”
