John Gilstrap - Threat warning

That I say happened? Ryan didn’t like the sound of that. Who would make up something like this? He told the story about driving through Old Town Alexandria, and the long, harrowing ride out to here. Then he talked about being beaten up and having to stand there while his mom read stupid lies.

“I couldn’t see through my hood,” he concluded, “but I assume they must have had a camera there, or else why would they have her do that? Maybe it’s up on the Internet or something.”

In the dark, he could see the sheriff’s head nodding-not as if he was saying yes, but as if he were thinking about things.

“What’s wrong?” Ryan asked.

“That is really some story,” the sheriff said.

His stomach fell. “You believe me, don’t you?”

The man’s silhouette turned in the dark. “Would you believe it if you had just heard it from someone?”

“Yes!” Ryan yelled loudly enough for his voice to crack. “Here.” He released himself from his seat belt and pulled his coat, his shirt, and his sweater over his head as a single unit. “Look at these bruises.” He tried to hold his ribs up in a way that they would be visible in the dim light of the car.

Neen seemed startled, and then chuckled. “Put your clothes on, son,” he said. “I’m not saying you’re lying, I’m just saying it doesn’t all add up for me. I’ll get someone to look at the bruises later.”

“It has to add up,” Ryan said. A growing panic made him speak louder and faster than he wanted to. “It’s true. I have to rescue my mom.”

The sheriff piloted his car toward civilization. Ryan could see the sky lightening, but it didn’t look like dawn. “So why didn’t you bring your mother with you?” he asked.

“I couldn’t. She wouldn’t fit through the window.”

“So this prison they put you in-”

“It wasn’t a prison, it was a room in a basement.”

“A guest room.”

“No, not a guest room! It had locks on the doors, and they beat me up! Why won’t you believe me?”

“Don’t shout at me, son.”

“I’m not your son, dammit! How can I not shout when you won’t even believe me?”

The sheriff’s stern look polished itself to something frightening. “I’d watch that mouth of yours, unless you want another beating.”

What was wrong with this guy? Was everybody in this town crazy, or just stupid? Maybe a little of both. Ryan wanted to scream that to Neen, but he held back. One way or the other, he needed this idiot’s help, and pissing him off would accomplish nothing.

Instead, Ryan said, “I’m sorry. I’m just really, really scared right now. If people come down there and find…” He hesitated to avoid mentioning the dead body, and covered with, “… that I’m missing, they’re going to go ape sh… they’re going to be angry. God only knows what they’ll do then.”

“These people who captured you,” Neen said. “What do you know about them?”

“I know they’re weird. They call everybody brother and sister, and they like to wear hoods. They’ve got lots of guns. They shot up a bridge on the night they took us. Killed a lot of people. I think they’re all about killing people. I think they’re terrorists.”

The sheriff turned onto a better-paved road. “For all these guns and all this violence, they just let you climb out a window and escape?”

“They didn’t let me do anything,” Ryan said. “I snuck out.”

“How?”

“What do you mean, how?” He sensed that the sheriff knew he was holding back, but Ryan didn’t want to give up the business about killing Brother Stephen. Sure, it was an accident, and it was the truth, but the truth hadn’t been working for him so far with this guy.

The road led to the end of what appeared to be a long driveway. The sheriff gunned the engine and they started climbing the hill. “I mean, how does it happen, when you’re in a locked room, that there’s an open window in the first place? And while we’re at it, with armed guards all around, how do you grow a set big enough to escape in the middle of the night?”

“I told you that we were being held prisoner. My mom still is.”

“And how did you get past the guard?” Up ahead, at the top of the hill, a mansion loomed large. Built of white stone with tall white pillars in the front, this looked a lot like the White House. It looked a lot like the house he’d skirted when he was first running away. Could it be the same one after all this driving?

And how had he missed the guards the first time around? They wore black uniforms and carried rifles.

They were the same uniforms and rifles he’d seen in the compound.

Something dissolved in Ryan’s gut, and tears rushed to his eyes.

“Might as well tell me now, son,” Neen said.

Panic shot like electricity up Ryan’s spine as he scoured his universe for options that did not exist. If he tried to fight the sheriff, he’d never have a chance. The guy was huge. If he tried to run, they’d just shoot him down. If he “Ryan Nasbe,” Neen said, “I’m afraid that your bad day is about to get a lot worse.”

Please, God, protect Ryan. Let him find safety. Let him send help. Please.

Christyne wasn’t much into prayer. With a husband who made his living in perpetual harm’s way, prayer grew exhausting after a while. And having watched far too many flag-draped caskets being wept over by wives and children who no doubt prayed for their loved ones’ safe returns, she’d grown a kind of fatalistic outer shell about God and His plans for people. If He wanted them to live, they’d live; if He wanted otherwise, otherwise would happen.

She never admitted her fatalism aloud, of course-especially not among the other Unit wives, who often were fiercely religious-but it brought her an odd sense of peace to entrust all of it to God without her presumptuous interference. Who was Christyne Nasbe to presume that she could know more about the Grand Plan than the divine architect Himself? By placing the fate of her family in His hands, she freed herself to live her life in the present, prepared to accept the good or bad that the future might hold for her while embracing her powerlessness to influence any of it.

When it came to Ryan, though-her frustrating, attitude-filled, beautiful, flawless Ryan-none of that rationalization meant anything.

She needed God’s intervention, and she needed it now.

It felt as if he’d been gone for hours. Surely there had been enough time for him to find help. Enough time for him to find safety. It had to be true simply because the alternative was unthinkable.

Here in the dark and the cold, surrounded by the pall of death, Christyne told herself again that it had been right to let Ryan go for help. She told herself that she wouldn’t have been able to stop him no matter what she did.

How would she ever know whether she’d made the right decision? How can anyone plan for something like this? Later, when all this was over and either they were free or their bodies were discovered somewhere, people would judge for themselves whether she’d been a good mom or a bad one.

She could almost hear the questions she’d be asked by the morning television hosts: Why didn’t you stay at Fort Bragg, where you have friends to support you and your child? Do you think it was wise to let a sixteen-year-old wander out into the night by himself? Wouldn’t it have been better for the two of you to stay together? How does it feel to have killed a man so young, one who was barely older than your own son?

She could hear the questions because they were always the questions that were asked after the fact. In today’s news media, everything bad that happened to children was always the fault of the parent. That her husband was in the military would only cause them to question that more closely.