Messiahs by Matt Rogers (bookstand for reading txt) 📕

then her brow furrowed. ‘Then why are you here?’

‘We know what’s going on,’ Alexis said. ‘We’re here to put a stop to it.’

Addison’s eyes widened.

Alexis said, ‘You need to stay put.’

Addison shook her head, her face white. ‘No. I can’t. Not anymore. I need to get back to Gillette.’

‘To speak to the police?’

Addison went even paler. ‘No. I can’t do that.’

There was still terror in her eyes, but now there was something else.

Guilt.

Alexis thought, What did they make you do?

Now was not the time to find out.

Alexis said, ‘Does anyone suspect you’re seeing things differently?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Have you been acting differently?’

‘Maybe.’

‘You need to stop doing that. It’s only temporary, but you need to fit in. Don’t draw attention to yourself. You don’t know what they’re capable of.’

Addison clammed up.

Her eyes turned wet.

Alexis said, ‘What?’

‘I know what they’re capable of. They’ve made me do things…’

Alexis touched a finger to her lips.

Addison squeezed her eyes shut, blinked back tears. ‘Maybe I don’t deserve to get out of here.’

‘You do.’

‘I didn’t protest. I didn’t refuse to do anything they told me to do. I’m … I’m a terrible person. I deserve to die.’

‘You were scared. You knew what they’d do to you if you refused.’

Addison didn’t nod, but Alexis saw agreement in her eyes.

‘Go back out there,’ Alexis said. ‘Act normal. Don’t even think about what we just spoke about. Don’t treat me any differently. Let us do our thing.’

‘Who’s “us”?’

‘There’s a few of us.’

‘The two new guys?’ Addison said. ‘They’re with you.’

‘Don’t worry about it. Nothing happened here. Go about your duties. Don’t act suspicious.’

Alexis had enough experience now to know her advice was unproductive. Telling someone not to act suspicious makes them act suspicious.

Addison nodded, trying to stop her lower lip quivering.

Then she turned to walk away.

Alexis said, ‘Addison.’

The girl looked over her shoulder.

Alexis said, ‘Not a word of this to your brother.’

Addison nodded again.

Her face said, No shit.

Alexis figured Brandon’s brainwashing was beyond salvation.

Addison walked away, leaving Alexis alone on the outskirts.

She took a deep breath and steeled herself.

For the first time, the consequences of failure properly hit her.

Victims like Addison will die.

It put an invisible weight on her shoulders, crushing down on her, and there was nothing she could do to remove it.

53

The commune shrank away as King walked into the grassland, but it never disappeared entirely.

Such was the nature of the land. Aside from the hill that the Riordan farmhouse was positioned on, the prairie was flat in every direction for dozens of miles. There were slight undulations, but they were few and far between. King knew he would draw the ire of Maeve and Dane for disobeying, but it wouldn’t do him any good if they trusted him implicitly. He wanted to methodically rattle them, put them on the back foot, see how they reacted. It was all part of gathering intelligence. If they verbally assaulted him when he got back, he’d know they were volatile, unable to keep their emotions in check.

He crested one of the slight rises in the landscape and started to descend the other side.

He stopped.

Elias was fifty feet in front of him, lowering a corpse into a hole.

There was no blood. The body had previously been a man, maybe in his mid-twenties, with long hair and pale skin turned even paler in death. His neck was swollen and bruised — a mixture of purple and black. His lips were blue. Rigor mortis was already setting in.

Elias was sweaty with exertion. His blond hair was matted to his head and his face glistened. He looked up and saw King, but he didn’t pause. With a smirk he continued lowering the corpse until he could dump it into the grave. He’d dug the hole himself — a shovel covered in dirt lay beside it.

He brushed the dirt off his hands as he let go of the body.

Without looking up, he said, ‘You’re not supposed to be out here.’

King’s head and heart fought a silent battle.

His heart told him to kill Elias right there. Expedite the process. Go back to the commune, deal with the Riordans, and get the hell out of Wyoming. He’d seen more than enough to know that everyone in charge here deserved death. But his head told him to wait. Maintain the cover, look for weaknesses and openings in the Riordans’ defences so they could get the job done efficiently, without butchering it and enraging all the followers.

His head won.

Just.

He shrugged and said, ‘Does it matter if I am? You don’t think I’ve seen a body before?’

Elias seemed to appreciate the honesty and the straightforwardness. He straightened up, opening his shoulders, becoming warmer. Showing camaraderie. He said, ‘Well, I think they were waiting to reveal what this job requires.’

King said, ‘They never would have approached me if it was something simple.’

Elias nodded.

King said, ‘Who was he?’

Elias put his hands on his hips, stared into space. Thinking hard. Then he said, ‘I shouldn’t say. You should go back, pretend you didn’t see anything.’

‘I will,’ King said. ‘I’ll pretend not to know.’

Elias looked at him.

King said, ‘So?’

It swayed Elias. He said, ‘The outside world isn’t ready to find out about us. Not yet. It’ll happen in due time, but right now anyone wanting to speak up are whistleblowers. You saw what our government wanted to do to Snowden.’ Elias gestured into the hole. ‘I did what I had to do before he could flee our borders.’

King tried not to look at the corpse at risk of showing his infuriation. He battled down disgust as he said, ‘What was he going to do?’

‘He was weak,’ Elias said. ‘He knew what he signed up for but he changed his mind when he got here. Maybe the living conditions weren’t as luxurious as he hoped. Who knows … but he was going to steal a truck and head back to civilisation. He was going to alert people who absolutely need to stay in the dark.’

King glanced at the body, noting the swollen, bruised neck. ‘How’d