Elizabeth Heiter - Seized

Jen kept her gaze firmly on Butler. “Of course you can let us leave,” she told him. “You haven’t taken things too far. Not yet. Let’s keep it that way.”

“Maybe you should lock them up,” the blond guy suggested, ignoring Jen. “Drive their vehicle out of here.”

“Why would you need to do that?” Evelyn asked. “If nothing’s happening—and we certainly haven’t seen anything that would require our attention—why would you want the FBI out here searching for us?” Before he could respond, she added, “And if you think her supervisor doesn’t know we’re here, you’re mistaken. This is the first place they’ll look if we don’t show up in the next hour.”

Butler shrugged. “Can’t be helped.” He nodded at his lieutenant. “Maybe you’re right about hanging on to them for a bit. Check them, Rolfe.”

“Ward.” Jen tried again as Rolfe frisked her for any hidden weapons. “I’ve always been straight with you. This isn’t necessary.”

He ignored her and then Rolfe was standing behind Evelyn, close enough to make all her muscles tense. He emptied her holster and took her cell phone. Then he patted her down so thoroughly that Evelyn knew he was practiced at carrying concealed.

She was convinced he had another weapon on him. Not that she could do anything about it.

He gestured toward the building, and she and Jen began walking in that direction. Jen looked shell-shocked and furious, but she stared straight ahead as her shoes crunched on the frost-covered grass. She made no further effort to protest, almost as if part of her was glad they were getting to see inside the compound.

Butler walked close behind them, his AK-47 leveled inches from Evelyn’s back.

“You staying?” Butler asked gruffly, and it took Evelyn a minute to realize he was talking to Rolfe.

She frowned and glanced over her shoulder.

Rolfe had fallen into step behind Butler, but his eyes locked on Evelyn’s as soon as she looked at him.

She stumbled, then averted her gaze. Why wouldn’t Butler’s lieutenant stay? Unless he wasn’t a lieutenant. Unless he had some other role at the cult. But what role would require him to leave? Then again, why had the driver of the truck left?

What the hell was going on at the Butler Compound?

* * *

“You’re going to Montana,” the head of BAU told Greg Ibsen as soon as he walked through the door of his boss’s office.

“What?” Greg stopped abruptly in the dull gray room. “Did Evelyn’s interview with Cartwright give us something?”

Greg tried to keep the surprise out of his voice. He’d been a profiler with BAU a long time. Long enough to know when Dan Moore was sending someone on a long-shot assignment as punishment.

Dan frowned at him, probably able to read every thought running through his mind, since he was a profiler, too. “No.” He tapped his pen against the towering pile of legal pads on his desk. “There’s another situation in Montana.”

“If Evelyn’s already there, maybe she should take it,” Greg suggested. He’d trained Evelyn, and he knew her as well as anyone could. Whatever the case was, she could handle it. And if Dan didn’t start giving her real assignments again soon, he was afraid she’d leave the unit.

“Too late. She’s on her way back,” Dan dismissed him, draining his cup of coffee as if it was water. “You’ll probably pass each other in the air. Besides, she doesn’t have much experience with this kind of case.”

“What is it?” Greg asked, dreading the call home he’d have to make, telling his son, Josh, that he’d be missing his first hockey game. Greg’s family was used to it; this was the life of an FBI agent. But it still wasn’t easy to hear their disappointment, shaded with resignation—as though they’d expected him to cancel.

“The Salt Lake City office has an agent who went off on an unsanctioned call. Her boss says she’s got a hard-on for the Butler Compound, a cult out in the Montana wilderness that’s technically under the Salt Lake City office jurisdiction. He’s pretty sure she went there. About an hour ago, her supervisor got a call from her. Apparently, she didn’t say a word when he picked up, but he heard part of a conversation, then a gunshot.”

“Okay,” Greg said slowly. “And they want a profiler because...?” It sounded like they needed the Salt Lake City SWAT team, fast.

“Because they haven’t had contact with the agent, and they don’t know her status. They aren’t a hundred percent sure she’s there, and the cult is a survivalist group. Completely antigovernment and, although they’ve never displayed aggression before, these people are skilled with their weapons. The Salt Lake City office is afraid a show of force will start a firefight.”

“Then shouldn’t I be reviewing the Butler Compound information from here to give them a profile?” Greg asked. He didn’t mind going to Montana if they really needed him, but he didn’t see how being on-site would help in this case. Especially since there wasn’t even a confirmed “site” yet.

Dan sighed and opened the top drawer of his desk, where Greg suspected his boss kept endless bottles of antacids. But instead of popping any, Dan closed the drawer again, looking pensive. “You’re heading out with a CIRG contingent. A hostage negotiator and a group from HRT.”

The Critical Incident Response Group was a special group within the FBI, made up of teams that could respond instantly to any serious emergency, anywhere in the United States or abroad. BAU was part of CIRG, the only part not located in Quantico, the next town over.

If he was going with a hostage negotiator and a bunch of Hostage Rescue Team agents, that meant someone high up expected things to turn very, very bad. The kind of bad that required more than just a local SWAT team. The kind of bad that required HRT agents, who did absolutely nothing but train for and execute tactical missions.

Unease settled in Greg’s stomach, along with the hint of anticipation that always came with a new case to profile. That was what had kept him in BAU for going on nine years. “What don’t I know?”

“Most of it you do know,” Dan replied, just as his phone began to ring. He tapped a button to silence it. “We’re looking to avoid an armed standoff here. But if this agent is inside that compound, we have to get her out.”

Greg nodded. The last time someone from the antifederalist movement had stood up to the government, it had become a media spectacle that seemed likely to turn violent at any minute. But the FBI, as well as local and state police, had walked away.

That incident in Nevada had driven all the wackos out of the woodwork. They’d shown up to pledge their support to the rancher who’d refused to move his cattle off federal land. And then they’d hidden in the surrounding brush, aiming rifles at federal agents from all directions and posting the images online.

It was a miracle no one had fired a shot. Greg knew the chances of another ending that peaceful were slim.

“I assume I need to head over to Quantico?” Greg asked, starting for the door.

“Hold on,” Dan said, his tone weary. “There’s one more thing.”

“You have a file on the Butler Compound?”

“Yes, but it’s thin. We evaluated the group last year, at the request of this Martinez agent, the one who’s missing now.”

“And?”

“And we considered them a low threat, basically a cult that wanted to be left alone to live without federal interference. They’re bound together by their desire to live off the grid. There’s probably a religious component tying them together, too, although we don’t have evidence of that yet. It’s a group that wouldn’t strike out unless the government showed up on their doorstep, but a genuine danger if that happened. Vince did the analysis.”