“I don’t care about the trafficking investigation right now, Cillian.”
“I know.”
My hands are fists at my sides—one swollen and hastily bandaged, the other white-knuckled around my phone. “I need to find her.”
“And we will.” Cillian’s voice carries the weight of an oath.
Lorcan jogs over from the access road, phone pressed to his ear. He drops the call and faces us. “The Iron Guardians have been tracking Buford’s trafficking pipeline since we gave them the heads-up. They tracked a property purchase in central Wisconsin. Rural. Two hundred acres. Paid for through a shell company connected to one of Buford’s known aliases.” He holds up his phone. “Viper’s people confirmed satellite imagery of construction activity on the property as recently as yesterday. New structures going up. Fencing. A cleared road.”
Wisconsin. Three hours north. Maybe four.
“He’s rebuilding the compound,” I say.
“Viper’s team is staging in Wausau,” Lorcan continues. “They can have eyes on the property within hours.”
I’m already striding toward the car. “Tell Viper I’m on my way.”
“Ronan.” Declan’s voice stops me mid-stride. I turn. He’s silhouetted against the dark mass of the empty chapel, arms at his sides, every line of him radiating the particular bearing of a man ready to go to war. “I’m with you.”
“We all are,” Lorcan adds.
I look at my brothers—Cillian, Declan, Lorcan—these men are not asking permission. They’re reporting for duty.
I nod once. “Let’s go get my wife.”
Chapter 19
Prudence
My knees are in the dirt again—different dirt, wetter and darker, thick with the smell of freshly turned earth and raw lumber. The compound in Wisconsin is half-built. Frames of new buildings rise behind me, walls without roofs, doorways without doors. The chapel is nothing more than a cleared rectangle of ground with a wooden cross hammered into the earth at one end.
But the whipping post is finished. Of course it is.
Father’s hand presses down on the crown of my skull, and my forehead drops toward my knees. My shift dress is coarse against my skin—the same rough fabric, the same dull gray. My hair is pinned beneath a cloth covering. My feet are bare in the cold dirt.
Everything from Ronan is gone. I left the phone that held Ronan’s voice and Nora’s number and Saoirse’s name with a tiny heart beside it. I left the wedding rings. As for the lace undergarments, the cashmere sweater, and the soft leather boots Nicholas chose, all of that was stripped within an hour of my arrival, folded into a box I watched Sister Amity carry away.
I have been here less than a full day.
“Children.” Father’s voice glides over the assembled Flock. “Before you kneels a cautionary example of the serpent’s reach.Sister Prudence walked among the fallen. She ate of their food. She wore their garments. She lay in the bed of a worldly man and gave herself over to the pleasures of the flesh.”
Murmurs ripple through the crowd. I keep my eyes fixed on the ground between my hands.
“And what did those pleasures bring her?” Father’s fingers press harder against my scalp. “Corruption. Shame. A spirit so stained by sin that she crawled back to us, begging to be made clean.”
I did not crawl. I walked. I walked because I believed his words—that I was a curse, that loving Ronan was damning him, that the fire waiting for me would consume him too unless I removed myself from his life.
But kneeling here now, with Father’s palm pinning my skull and the Flock’s obedient hum pressing in from all sides, I…I no longer know what I believe.
This does not feel like salvation.
Father releases my head and steps back. His voice lifts. “Seven days in the Reflection Room. Thirty lashes at the post. And a public confession before the assembled Flock, so that all may hear the wages of disobedience and be warned.”
Thirty? Twice as many as the fifteen he sentenced me to the day Ronan intervened.
I’m not sure I will survive. In the Reflection Room, food and water are forbidden. Seven days will leave me unable to stand or walk. Thirty lashes is excessive, but in an already weakened state, surely I will die.
Is that the point of this? Did Father coerce me back only to inflict, in front of the Flock, a punishment so harsh I cannot survive it?
