Page 97 of Bitter Falls

The gate’s got two sliding metal bars across it. Both are secured with combination locks, like I have on my locker at school.

Like the one I’d planned to cut off my dad’s cell.

It doesn’t make sense, but I feel like I’m making a choice here. Like if I cut these locks, I can’t cut Dad’s. I have to choose him, or the people who are helpless here at the gate.

And I know what he’d want me to do.

I use all my strength to cut through the first lock, then the second, and Remy slams the metal bars back, and he starts to charge through the open gate.

“No!” Harmony shouts, and takes his gun. She throws it away. “No weapons! No weapons!”

She’s right. The FBI’s out there. If we come out with guns and knives, they’re going to think we’re the problem.

I put the bolt cutters down. Harmony puts her knife down. She grabs Rose, disarms her, and puts the woman’s hand in that of a little, crying boy. Then she shoves them out the open gate. Then Remy. Then one by one the other women and children.

She turns to me and Vee, and coughs out, “Go!”

“You first,” Vee says.

Harmony vanishes through the gate. I can’t breathe, I have snot running down my face, and tears, and I want to throw up. I turn and pick up the bolt cutters again. Vee stiff-arms me back. “The fuck are you goin’, boy?”

“Dad,” I croak.

She takes the bolt cutters away and tosses them into the mist. I yell and swing at her; she ducks. She’s coughing and gagging, too, but she manages to say, “Your dad’s okay. We have togo.” Then she’s dragging me through the gate and into clearer air, and FBI agents are shouting at us to keep moving, keep moving, hands up, keep moving, and I’m stumbling and falling to one knee. I look back at the big steel fence, the closed gates, and I hear something weird.

They’re singing in there.

Father Tom’s people have stopped shooting. They’re singing some kind of hymn. Mostly men’s voices, but I can hear some pure, high notes. Some of the women too. The ones who wouldn’t leave. The true believers.

The FBI has us sit down on the side of the road, and they wash our faces and give us oxygen masks, and I start feeling better after a few minutes. It’s dark out here, cold, and the singing hangs in the air like the tear gas clouds. A few more people come out of the side gate. None of them are my dad, and I tell the man rinsing my face a second time that I need to go back in, that my dad is Sam Cade and he’s in there and they have tofind him.

“Connor?” A big man in a dark windbreaker kneels down next to me. “Connor Proctor?” I nod. I don’t know him. “I’m Agent Torres. Special Agent Lustig asked me to find you and stay with you. You all right?”

I have no idea. I don’t know whatall rightmeans anymore. The burning in my eyes is gone, but I keep crying. Is that all right? Is thisfeelingall right? I don’t even know what it is. Only that I’m so tired I want to sleep, and at the same time I have to go back. “My dad’s still in there,” I say. “He’s still in there.” I start to get up.

Agent Torres puts his hand on my shoulder and pushes me down. “Agent Lustig and several teams are already over the wall, and they’ll bring him out. You stay here.” He stands up and looks toward the fence. He seems tense and worried, and I realize it’s probably because of the singing. They shouldn’t be doing that. They ought to be surrendering.

His radio crackles, and he answers it. “Status?” he asks. I’m close enough to hear the reply from the other end.

“They’ve retreated into the church building. It’s rigged to blow. We’re working on it now.”

“How many in the church?”

“Maybe twenty-five men and women, no children we can see. We’ve disarmed two devices. Just one to go. Advise Agent Lustig that the leader is not, repeat,is notin the church.”

“Wait one.” The agent pushes buttons on his radio and says, “Special Agent Lustig, please be advised that explosive devices are in place at the church and are currently being defused, but the cult leader is still at large, do you copy that?”

“Copy,” the radio says. “Did you locate Connor Proctor? Sam Cade?”

Agent Torres cuts a look toward me, and I feel sick all over again when I realize what he’s about to say. “We have Connor Proctor safe, sir. No trace yet of Sam Cade.”

“Acknowledged, Lustig out.”

I lick my dry, still-tingling lips and say, “Check the shed, the one at the end of the concrete building. He’s in there, I think. Or at the lake. He could be at the lake.” I hope he isn’t. I don’t even want to think why he would be, 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.

Torres passes what I said along. Before we get an answer, the radio says, “All clear at the church. Located another device in another building, but it’s empty and—”

In the next second, there’s an explosion that tears the whole night to pieces, and it’s big enough to send pieces of wood and concrete flying through the air up, out, every direction. We all duck and cover, and when I look, part of the fence is mangled and bent from the force of it. My ears are ringing, and I just stare numbly at the fire rising on the other side of the gate.

---