Elizabeth Heiter - Seized

The men ranged in age, but otherwise they looked the same to her. They were all white, their eyes glued to Ward Butler, who stood facing them, radiating power.

There was plenty of camouflage in the room, and a lot of weaponry, casually slung over shoulders. Everything from AK-47s to shotguns to bows and arrows. Most of the men wore thick facial hair and had rough, weathered skin and angry expressions.

The anger seemed to intensify as Ward Butler announced, “Here she is, our own personal symbol of government tyranny who thought it was her right to enter uninvited into our refuge.”

Twenty faces swung her way, and all that fury directed solely at her made Evelyn instinctively take a step backward.

“Kill her,” someone shouted and, as one, the group surged toward the doorway. Toward her.

* * *

“The shit’s really hit the fan,” Sam “Yankee” McGivern, the head of HRT, announced as he walked into the Tactical Operations Center.

TOC was a glorified tent, but inside were state-of-the-art communications devices, hooked up to satellites that worked even in the inhospitable Montana wilderness. Greg’s spot was crammed into a corner of the tent, next to the negotiator, Adam Noonan. He glanced around, realizing Adam had left the tent without his noticing.

Then he raised his eyes from his pop-up desk, seeking the sound of Yankee’s booming voice. At six and a half feet, the man’s head scraped the top of TOC, and he exuded strength, exactly the kind of figure FBI headquarters probably loved having as the lead in their version of special operations. He even had a scar running across the left side of his face, marring otherwise completely smooth, dark skin.

He strode through TOC, weaving around the operators and directly over to Greg, who sat a little straighter.

The sounds around him filtered back in again as his focus lifted more fully from his laptop. HRT agents, a Special Agent in Charge from Salt Lake City and support staff were all working frantically around him, but with a common discouraged slump to their shoulders. From outside the tent, Adam’s voice came over the bullhorn.

Greg wrapped his hands around his thermos, hoping warmth from the coffee would penetrate where his gloves were failing. Judging by the temperature of the thermos, he needed a refill. “What now?” Greg asked Yankee, hearing the exhaustion and worry in his own voice.

It was approaching midmorning, and despite Adam’s repeated attempts to contact the cultists, no one had responded. But somehow, word had spread about what was happening here, because the protesters and news crews had appeared in much bigger numbers than they’d expected.

Meanwhile, Greg had spent the time trying not to think about Evelyn, the closest thing he had to a partner at BAU. Instead, he’d been reading and rereading everything he could on the Butler Compound and its members, hoping he’d find some way to help her. Assuming she was still alive.

He tried to push the thought aside, but it had been intruding for hours now, ever since word had come down that the cultists had been overheard talking about a dead federal agent. He needed to focus on whatever he could do to help Adam make a connection with someone inside; if the group wouldn’t talk to them, it limited their options significantly.

Details about the compound members were sketchy at best. According to the old profile written up by BAU, Ward Butler was a hard-core survivalist with a handful of weapons possession, resisting arrest and tax evasion charges lodged against him over the years. He’d spent some time in jail, but had always gotten out, and as the years went by, he’d slipped farther and farther off the grid. He’d risen to the top of a local militia group before dropping out entirely and forming his compound, supposedly a gathering place for like-minded survivalists.

As a fringe militia leader, he fit the bill. Obsessed with weapons, antigovernment, believing that society would ultimately crumble and he’d need a bunker and the skills to live off the land. A man seeking power in a like-minded community. But he didn’t seem like a typical cult leader—primarily because they tended to be charmers. They were usually as good at manipulating words and ideas as they were people. Ward Butler, on the other hand, had an outright angry, almost antisocial personality. But then, there were as many cults as there were personalities.

“There’s something going on inside,” Yankee said in his deep Southern drawl. Apparently, his nickname was ironic, given to him by the other members of HRT.

“What is it?” Pinpricks of pain shot through his fingertips as he gripped his thermos harder, and he realized his hands were frozen. Apparently, the heating system in TOC couldn’t handle the Montana mountains.

“Take a listen, would you? I want an assessment.” Yankee nodded at the headphones, discarded on Greg’s desk, that would hook him up to the parabolic mics.

“Mic three,” Yankee added as he hurried back the way he’d come, to talk to the Special Agent in Charge who’d arrived from the Salt Lake City office.

Greg traded the thermos for his earphones. As soon as he slipped them over his ears and turned to the right mic, a flurry of loud, angry voices made him cringe. It was hard to understand anyone with all of them talking at once, but one voice stood out.

“We need her alive,” the man yelled over the fray.

Her. They had to be referring to Jen or Evelyn. One of them was still breathing. Relief and fear coursed through him in equal measure as his eyes were drawn to the picture brought in by an agent from the Salt Lake City office.

Jen Martinez was a forty-five-year-old mother of two. In the picture, she seemed happy and confident, a grin on her face and her arm around the waist of her husband of more than twenty years. Standing on either side of the couple were their kids. A daughter in high school and a son in middle school. The daughter resembled her mom, in appearance and attitude. The son took after his dad—or would, as soon as he emerged on the other side of his current awkward stage.

Every time he looked at the photograph, Greg felt the immediate need to avert his eyes. It was too close to the pictures he kept tacked up in his cubicle back at Aquia, of his wife, Marnie, and their two children, Lucy and Josh, the same ages as the Martinez kids.

He’d made the call to Marnie on the way to the plane, and she’d given the phone to Josh. His son had put on a good front, but Greg had heard his disappointment. Josh’s very first hockey game, and he’d missed it. Worse, Josh had sounded hurt, but not surprised.

Greg loved his job. He couldn’t imagine leaving it. But he spent too much time away from his kids—time he was constantly trying to make up to them when he was home.

If his partner was alive, that meant Jen Martinez was never going home to her children.

His eyes were drawn once more to the photo, to the kids who were waiting to hear if they still had a mother. Then he forced himself to look away, forced his mind back on the mission.

He glanced over at his cousin Gabe, a member of HRT who’d recently come off shift and was listening through his own earphones, frowning. He remembered the years after Gabe’s mother was killed overseas. She’d just been in the wrong place at the wrong time during a spree shooting.

Greg’s parents had tried to help Gabe and his sister get through it, while their dad grieved by pushing everyone away. Greg recalled all the times Gabe had spent at their house, staying in Greg’s old room while he was away at college. All the times Greg’s parents had spoken about the hell Gabe and his sister and father were going through. Shut it down, Greg told himself.

“We know who’s talking?” he asked loudly. Who was trying to keep Evelyn or Jen alive?