Elizabeth Heiter - Seized

“If...” Evelyn started.

“You’re here.” Jen cut her off, hands on her hips. “Just take a look, would you? There’s something there. I know it, and I need help.”

The desire to follow procedure, to do things by the book, rose up hard. Once upon a time, she’d been a stringent rule-follower. But the desire to contribute again as a real profiler—to get out of limbo—was stronger.

“Tell me what you want,” Evelyn said. “And where’s your partner?” As a profiler, Evelyn didn’t have one, but that was rare. Like most law enforcement, the FBI liked to pair up their agents.

Relief rushed over Jen’s face. “I’m between partners. Mine just transferred to another office. But I heard you were here, and I couldn’t miss this chance.” She suddenly seemed to notice Evelyn shivering. “Want to get out of the cold?”

“Yes.”

Jen laughed and nodded at the battered SUV next to Evelyn’s rental. She beeped open the doors and climbed inside, turning on the engine. “Hop in.”

As Evelyn got into the passenger seat of what was obviously Jen’s Bureau-issued vehicle, she flipped the heat up to high, then said, “Give me the basics.”

“I can do better than that.” Jen buckled up, gunning it out of the parking lot.

A bad feeling came over Evelyn—the strong, sudden certainty that she was heading into something she shouldn’t. It mingled with annoyance that Jen had tried to trick her, instead of just asking Evelyn to go somewhere.

“Where precisely are we going?” she demanded, buckling up even as she debated asking Jen to turn around.

“Butler Compound,” Jen replied.

“How far is it?”

“About an hour,” she answered, but from the way she said it, Evelyn could tell it was actually longer. “And then I’ll drive you right back.”

Evelyn frowned down at her watch. If she missed her plane, she’d be even higher on Dan’s shit list. Which hardly seemed possible.

And if she was going to leave BAU, she wanted it to be her choice, not because Dan Moore had kicked her out.

Jen must have seen her annoyance. “I want you to see the place for yourself,” she blurted. “Maybe then BAU will finally believe it’s not just some harmless cult.”

“What do you think it is?”

Jen glanced at her, intensity in her eyes, then back at the road. “A threat.”

* * *

“This is remote,” Evelyn said, staring out her window at the woods. The trees were thinning as they climbed in elevation, but it was still wilderness. The sun had fully set now, so she found it hard to see much beyond the headlights of Jen’s SUV.

They’d been driving just over an hour, and Evelyn had seen nothing more than the occasional lean-to or shack. Snowcapped mountains rose up in the distance. The view was beautiful, but she couldn’t imagine anyone living out here.

“Yeah,” Jen agreed. “Very remote. Good place to hide out, away from prying neighbors. Away from law enforcement, too.”

Jen had finally hung up the call she’d taken almost as soon as they’d gotten in the car, which had prevented Evelyn from getting any more information about why they were going to the Butler Compound. But she’d learned plenty about Jen from her half of that conversation.

“That was your supervisor, huh?”

“Yes,” Jen said. “And before you ask, no, I’m not supposed to be doing this. He thinks I’m running down a lead on another case. Which was probably obvious from that call. He has no idea I tracked you out to the prison.”

Evelyn nodded. “He may not know about me, but he knows what you’re doing.”

“What?” Jen whipped her head toward Evelyn, and the SUV jerked. She corrected quickly on the poorly maintained road. “Why do you say that?”

“I could tell from your call.”

“You could hear him? What do you have, bat ears?” Jen asked. She’d taken the call on her Bluetooth, instead of putting it on speaker.

“No. But that’s what makes me a profiler,” Evelyn replied. “Trust me, Martinez. He knows.”

It had been obvious from the way Martinez had kept repeating answers to the same questions about her location. Detailed questions, as though her boss didn’t believe a word she was saying.

“Shit,” Jen muttered. “He warned me to stay away from this.”

“Want to tell me what I’m getting into here?”

“Okay. So, the compound is pretty isolated, as you can tell. This group is cut from the same cloth as Cartwright.” She glanced over at Evelyn. “Which reminds me, while we’re there, call me Jen. Not Martinez. Just Jen. That’s how they know me.”

Evelyn shot her a disbelieving look. “They know you?”

“Yeah, I’ve been out there a couple of times. Kind of unofficial, doing the rounds, that sort of thing. They come out and meet me, talk for a while. Usually Butler himself, sometimes with a few of his followers.”

“And they bought your reason for visiting?”

“Oh, yeah. Salt Lake City is a big field office, but this area is sparsely populated. People around here are used to law enforcement periodically making goodwill calls.”

Evelyn frowned, but didn’t argue.

“You ever work at an RA?” Jen asked.

Evelyn shook her head. Most agents now started at one of the bigger field offices, but back when Jen had begun her FBI career, they were still sending a lot of newbies to resident agencies, smaller satellite offices.

“Well, I have. Place quite a bit like this actually, out in Nevada. And it was par for the course, law enforcement checking in on everyone now and then.”

Evelyn nodded, still not sure it was a good idea for Jen to be making these visits. On the other hand, direct contact was the best way to get information on a potential problem group.

“Anyhow,” Jen continued, “my last partner and I introduced ourselves as FBI, but with first names only. No reason to tell a bunch of racists that I’m married to a Hispanic man.”

“They’re going to love me,” Evelyn muttered. Her mother was of Irish-English descent, but her father had been Zimbabwean. There was no hiding her heritage.

“Yeah, well, the profiler who showed up being a big, white, Aryan-looking guy was probably too much to hope for. Don’t worry. The most they’ll do is glare at you.”

“That’ll be fun,” Evelyn said, already regretting that she’d agreed to this as she glanced at the dashboard clock. She didn’t really mind the animosity of suspects—that was pretty common—but this visit was sounding more and more like a bad idea.

And if the most she had to fear from them was the evil eye, what kind of threat were they?

“The leader, Ward Butler, was friends with Lee Cartwright when they were kids,” Jen explained as she sped along the barely paved roads.

Evelyn stared at her. “You know Cartwright’s claiming he’s got a copycat, right?”

“Yeah, I heard. I wouldn’t take anything that guy says at face value, though. He’s not exactly the type who’d warn the government. He’s more likely to watch the news from prison and cheer when it happens. Or taunt law enforcement, acting like he knows who’s copying him, just to get a rise out of us.”

“Okay,” Evelyn said. “I can see that. But if Butler and Cartwright are friends...”

“Were friends,” Jen corrected her. “Like twenty years ago. They grew up together, but there’s no indication they’ve been in contact in a long time. Then they had a complete falling-out when Cartwright went violent, and Butler started his compound.”

“So you’re saying Butler’s group isn’t violent,” Evelyn said, getting frustrated. “Why are they a threat?”

“They haven’t been violent yet,” Jen replied. “But I think they’re going to be.”