Seized

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Evelyn sighed, sinking slowly to the ground, feeling her way before she sat. She wrapped her arms around herself for warmth as she considered.

The mob of cultists who’d come after her had been disorganized, abrupt. Could a group consisting of members who didn’t share a religious connection band together effectively enough to fuel a terrorist ideology? Could they really follow orders and act on their leader’s plan?

Images flashed through her mind. The frenzied delight in the eyes of the man who’d hoped to lynch her. The shrill voice and sudden furor of the one who believed her to be a Babylonian heralding the arrival of an apocalypse. The grim, disgusted tone of the guy who just hated agents of the government.

They were unlike any cult she’d ever seen or studied. Unlike any terrorist group she’d come across.

There was no real unity here. So what kept them together?

When the FBI didn’t just go away, would they turn on one another? And what would that mean for her?

* * *

“Move, move, move!” Yankee yelled, leading from the front as he raced toward the perimeter.

Kyle finished strapping on the extra weaponry he’d set down after coming off shift. The MP-5 slung over his back, the extra Glock strapped to his chest, the magazines on one thigh, flash bangs on the other. Hopefully he wouldn’t need any of it.

He raced up next to Yankee, his breath puffing clouds of white into the frigid Montana air, his boots crunching in the frost, his gaze swiveling left and right. As far as he could tell, no one had breached the perimeter. But nothing was certain, and he pulled his MP-5 to the front for easier access.

“We have intel?” Gabe asked their boss.

“All we know is that someone took a shot near the perimeter the local police established.” As more HRT agents joined them, Yankee continued. “We don’t know who fired. We don’t know what the target was, or if anyone was hit.” Yankee’s speed increased, but his voice remained calm. “Remember, unless there’s an immediate risk of loss of life, no one fires. We’re not giving them any excuses.”

The local PD was handling the perimeter, along with agents from the Salt Lake City FBI. What made this different from most standoffs was the fact that they were dealing with a lot more than just reporters and camera crews.

Antifederalist numbers had risen rapidly in the past few years, and they’d proven their willingness to flaunt their beliefs at other standoffs around the country. Unfortunately, it wasn’t just beliefs they were flaunting, but also an arsenal of weaponry that rivaled HRT’s equipment. And the know-how to use it.

The Salt Lake City office had already beefed up security at the perimeter twice since HRT had arrived early that morning, and reports had come back that the crowd of protesters was still growing. And too many in that crowd had come armed for war.

Kyle’s stride faltered as he finally caught sight of the perimeter. “Shit,” he mumbled, and kept going, gripping the stock of his gun, knowing that if he had to fire it casualties would be too high.

There was no other outcome, not with the sheer number of people pushing their way toward the perimeter. The sound seemed to reach him all at once, the roar of twenty-five furious voices without a united message.

How had they gotten here so fast? This part of Montana was remote, isolated. The population was fewer than five hundred and most of them didn’t live here year-round.

Some of the crowd had come in heavy winter coats and carried handmade signs. Those were the ones who would eventually give in to the need for warmth and head home, watch the outcome on TV. But about half the protesters were wearing serious outdoor gear, mostly in camouflage colors, and they were armed. A cursory sweep of the crowd showed him a few shotguns, some handguns and far too many rifles. He glanced around and spotted additional shooters perched in the spindly pine trees.

“Get the negotiator here,” Yankee said into his mic as he looked up into the trees. “The profiler, too.”

Kyle glanced across him at Gabe, whose jaw had clenched at the mention of his cousin.

“We’ve got protesters with radios,” Yankee muttered. “Are they talking to one another or did we miss something?”

Were all these people here because of an antifederalist principle, and not Butler specifically? That was definitely possible, given the number of fringe militia groups and antigovernment extremist movements in the area. Or could Butler be giving orders from inside the compound, bringing supporters here himself? Did he have a bigger reach than they’d realized?

If Butler could contact the outside world, that might explain the size of the crowd. Then again, it could also be due to the reporters jostling for position amid the protesters.

Kyle stared up at the closest shooter, braced near the top of a pine tree. It swayed under his weight, but he seemed at ease, holding a semiautomatic in gloved hands, a radio painted in camo colors strapped high on his chest along with enough extra ammunition to take on an army. A canteen was hooked to his waist next to a sheathed knife, and he wore a bulletproof vest under all the packets of ammo. He caught Kyle’s gaze and seemed to smile, though it was hard to tell through the heavy salt-and-pepper beard. The pine tree bounced as he lifted his weapon higher, lining it up with Kyle’s head.

Kyle instantly tensed. His gut reaction was to swing his own weapon into position...and to wish he’d taken the time to grab his helmet. But this guy could hit a target; Kyle didn’t need to see him try to know that. He had fringe militia written all over him. A helmet wouldn’t make any difference. And aiming his own weapon could set the supporter off, give the guy an excuse to shoot first.

So, instead, he kept his MP-5 clenched close to his body, aimed down at the ground and said into his bone mic, “Inactive shooter, pine tree, at my three o’clock.”

“Got him.” Wyatt Thompson, the brand-new sniper on their team, came back immediately.

Kyle had no idea where Wyatt had positioned himself, but Wyatt’s father was a big deal in the army and apparently Wyatt had learned to shoot around the time he’d started walking. He was one of the best shooters they’d ever seen in HRT. The tension in Kyle’s shoulders loosened instantly, even as a reporter pointed directly at him, and then the cameraman behind her swung his lens to film them.

“There go your future undercover jobs,” Gabe joked, sounding calm as always, a hint of amusement in his tone.

Kyle resisted the urge to look over at his partner and roll his eyes. Hopefully someone on the FBI’s media team would stop that coverage from going anywhere, but undercover work wasn’t in his future, anyway. He planned to stay in HRT until they forced him to retire.

“I’ve got news on Jen’s car.” Greg’s voice suddenly came over Kyle’s radio and he pushed his hand over his earphone, although he could hear perfectly. The screams of the protesters seemed to fade into the background as his hands clenched his weapon too tightly.

If they’d found the car, did that mean they’d found Evelyn or Jen? Or, God forbid, a body?

“Evelyn’s cell phone was inside the SUV, but nothing else,” Greg said, his steady profiler voice giving nothing away, even though it was his closest friend in BAU who was missing. “The SUV was abandoned a couple hundred yards off the road. Someone was clearly trying to conceal it, and I doubt it was Jen or Evelyn.”

Someone from the Butler Compound had taken the SUV, probably hoping to hide the connection between the agents and the compound. Probably after they’d killed one of them. But which one?

“Mac!” Yankee yelled, and Kyle realized he’d stopped moving, that his teammates were still advancing toward the perimeter.

The Salt Lake City agents had brought in police barriers to halt the crowd, but several of them had been knocked over, and the agents and local cops had been pushed back twenty feet. The crowd was still swarming toward them.

“Where the hell is the negotiator?” Yankee demanded.

“We’ve got movement in the tower.” Wyatt’s voice came over the mic before anyone could reply about Adam’s whereabouts. “It’s not Butler, but the subject is armed. He can definitely see the protesters from there. A picture is coming at you,” he finished, and Kyle knew that last part was for the support staff in the tent, whose job it would be to try and identify the guy.

“I’m here!” a voice panted behind Kyle, and he recognized Adam an instant before the negotiator raised a bullhorn to his mouth and addressed the crowd. “We need you to move back behind the barricades. This is private land.”

“It’s not your land,” the protester closest to Kyle screamed. The Salt Lake City agents and the local cops moved backward, slipping behind the lines of HRT but staying close, some of them readying riot shields.

“Brothers!” They heard a new voice over a loudspeaker blaring from the compound. Ward Butler’s stones-on-a-grinder voice.

The crowd suddenly quieted, going still, their faces lifted toward the sound. “Thank you for showing your support today. We stand united against a tyrannical government. An illegitimate government!”

A cheer rose up from the crowd as Yankee looked back at Adam. “Get their attention.”

“We have a bigger problem,” Greg said over the mic.

“Where are you?” Yankee asked.

“Back at the tent. We identified the man in the tower. He’s small-time in the states’ rights movement, but he’s got a handful of arrests under his belt, and a very active blog.”

“And?” Yankee asked through his teeth.

“Unless Butler’s changed this guy’s tune drastically since his last blog post a month ago, he’s convinced the end times are coming. His blog is full of fictionalized accounts—Babylonians in the form of government agents storming the strongholds of the righteous and the battle to end it all. By his account, the FBI’s arrival is a sign of the apocalypse. That’s gotta be Butler’s view, too.”

Kyle glanced at his partner. If they stormed the compound, the cultists would fight to the death. And if there was a federal agent alive inside, she’d be dead as soon as that happened.

He looked back at the crowd, still waiting silently, anticipating Butler’s next words. If those words urged his followers to fight, could HRT hold them back? And even if they could, would it matter? Or would Butler begin his endgame?

6 (#ulink_f9122632-f4c5-5118-b9c6-de04a21d6d86)

The closet door opened fast, and Evelyn scrambled to her feet, her fists instinctively coming up, even though she knew it was futile.

Ward Butler stood in the doorway, a furious glower on a face that already seemed permanently bent in a sneer. “Move,” he growled, gesturing for her to come out from the corner.

She squinted; the dim light in the hallway seemed bright after the total darkness of the closet. She considered refusing, but it wouldn’t help her.

Stomach churning, she stepped slowly toward him, peering down the hall. She’d expected a crowd of cultists, begging for another try at a lynching, but it was quiet. Not even Rolfe was with Butler this time, and it made everything seem ominous in a different way.

“Let’s go,” he said, pointing with his rifle back down the hall, over the trip wire and into the main hallway, which was also empty.

“Where?” she asked, glad to discover her voice didn’t squeak. It came out strong and clear, as if she still had some say in what happened to her.

“Upstairs,” he replied, and he opened another nearly invisible door, revealing a curving staircase.

The lookout tower. She’d wondered how they accessed it. Did he plan to throw her off it?

No, she decided as he slammed the rifle barrel into her back when she didn’t immediately start climbing.

The force of it shoved her forward, and she hit the first step with her shins, then went down on her hands. Her knees hit the edge of the metal stair, shooting pain through her legs and up her spine.

She pushed herself to her feet and began climbing, sensing more than hearing Butler behind her. The rumble of his voice reminded her of driving too fast over loose gravel, but he moved silently, with stealth, like a man who was used to stalking prey in the mountains.

He wouldn’t throw her out the window; it wasn’t high enough. She might survive that fall.

He was taking her up there so the FBI surrounding the building would see her. He was showing his hand, betting it was good enough to get him whatever he wanted.

Her pace quickened. Maybe she could tell them something, give them some kind of message.

But what? Her mind blanked. What did she really know that they wouldn’t already have discovered themselves?

Before she could come up with anything, Butler was jabbing her with the rifle barrel again and she stepped into the lookout room. It was a tiny space, with barely room for two people to stand, but there were windows on all sides, and the sloping mountains toward the entrance provided a view well into the distance.

Ward didn’t climb up into the room with her. He stayed on the stairwell, just out of sight of any snipers who might be watching. He kept his rifle aimed at her, despite the fact that there was nowhere for her to run, no room to fight.

She spun in a slow circle, looking through the windows, knowing for certain that an HRT sniper was staring back at her. Probably several. But wherever they were, she couldn’t spot them.

She took in the steep mountain behind the compound, protecting the cultists on two sides. It was covered with new snow, and in other circumstances, it would have been a gorgeous view. A little stark, but this was nature in a purer form than she usually got to see, mostly untouched by man.

She turned toward the front of the compound, and saw a crowd of protesters. Their features were blurred from up here, but signs rose above them. Facing the protesters was a line of men and women, some in blue; they had to be FBI and local police.

While she was locked in the closet, she’d heard Butler’s puffed-up voice talking about how the protesters were ready to fight the police, that all he had to do was say the word. She’d scooted closer to the door when she heard Rolfe reply, trying to make out his words, but he’d kept his voice so much softer than Butler’s. She still wasn’t sure what he’d said; her best guess was “Not yet.”

She’d also heard them say something about April 19—a date a lot of antifederalists held in high regard. She couldn’t tell what they’d been saying about it. That had worried her, because violent believers had used April 19 as a battle date—it was when the raid on Waco had happened, when the Oklahoma City bombing had happened. But April was a long way off, and right now she had other problems.

As she gazed out the window, she saw that the protesters were contained, although there were more of them than she’d expected. She could see the signs bouncing up and down, but there was no mad rush toward the compound.

The sound of Adam Noonan’s voice made her jump, even though she’d heard him speaking all morning. She looked up at the sky, at the sun casting pink over the mountains. Was it evening already? The hours had blended together while she’d hunched in that closet, trying to create a strategy to stay alive.

“Mr. Butler, let’s meet face-to-face.” Adam was pushing the same message Butler had ignored all day.

To Evelyn’s surprise, Butler lifted his own bullhorn, one she hadn’t even realized he was carrying. “We have your agent. It’s within our rights, when someone trespasses on our land, to execute them.”

Evelyn felt her whole body jerk, and instead of looking at Butler’s other hand, the one still holding that rifle, she looked past him, down the staircase. But it was empty. No Rolfe to talk Butler out of killing her. Was Butler’s plan to shoot her while her friends watched, too far away to do anything about it?

“Let’s talk about what you want, Ward,” Adam said, and nothing in his tone revealed that he’d known her for the entire time she’d been at BAU—not quite two years. He sounded neutral, invested only in making peace between Butler and the government.

That was his job, but it still left a sour feeling in Evelyn’s gut. She studied the distance to the protesters now, the distance to any police presence, and knew for certain that HRT would never be able to storm the compound. Not before she was killed.