“You think you’ll take over?” How could he have missed such overwhelming ambition? It would never have occurred to him that someone as homely and easily overlooked as Bart would ever aspire to so much. “You’ll never make it without me.”
A half smile curved Bart’s lips. “I knew the time was coming. You’re not the man you used to be. You let the drugs win. And now I have no choice but to step up and lead our people. I can’t give in to Mr. Mott’s demands. He’ll take the Vessel and bring the police.” He lowered his voice so that only a select few could hear. “And you know what’ll happen then.”
“Nothing will happen!” Ethan cried. “We could be long gone. Together. What if he had this gun to your head?”
“That’s what I am wondering,” Bart said. “Would you sacrifice what you want most—for me?”
Growing impatient, Nate jerked Ethan to the left and fired. Pain seared Ethan’s foot. He screamed, thought he might pass out and began to beg. “Let me go. Please. I haven’t done anything to you. It was Bart. It was all Bart. I wasn’t even there last night!”
The disgust in Bart’s sneer didn’t matter to Ethan. Bart had betrayed him first.
“Look at what you’re afraid of.” Bart pointed at Nate. “He’s so injured he can barely stand, yet you start sniveling? I hope he sends you to hell,” he said, and parted the crowd as he left, head held high.
Despair settled in as Nate put the gun back to Ethan’s temple. He wasn’t going to get out of this. He couldn’t believe it. All his life he’d been able to avoid any consequences he didn’t like. There’d always been someone to bail him out, some way to escape. Frantically, he searched the crowd for another savior. But there was no one.
“Tell your people what you’ve done with Martha,” Nate said. “Tell them what you’ve done or the next bullet I fire will be fatal.”
He had to comply. Nate knew the truth. “M-Martha’s in the pit.”
“Louder!”
“Martha’s in the pit,” he screamed. “But she deserved it! I was only meting out God’s justice. She failed us all!”
“Is it God’s justice to rape her until she hemorrhaged?” someone else shouted. It was Todd, Martha’s husband. He pushed his way to the front, carrying his wife’s lifeless body. A bedraggled Sarah followed closely behind. “You raped her and then you left her to bleed to death! Sarah will confirm it,” he announced to everyone else. “Sarah, who’s never told a lie in her life, will explain how our prophet holds secret meetings beneath the Enlightenment Hall, where he and the other Guides drug our wives and rape them at will. Look at her! She’s dead,” he sobbed. “You can see for yourself!”
“It’s true,” Sarah added, also crying. “They killed Martha in the vilest way imaginable. I watched them myself.”
One by one, the hoods came off, revealing dumb-struck faces as, one by one, each Covenanter came to see or touch Martha. It was almost too much for Ethan. A few minutes earlier, these people had been chanting in unison with him. He could do no wrong in their eyes. How could they gaze at him with such abhorrence now?
“And Courtney?” Nate asked.
Ethan scrambled for the lie he’d been telling since Courtney’s disappearance. “She’s—”
The gun nudged him harder. “Don’t do it,” Nate said. “Tell them the truth or I will. Either way I’ll search until I find her body if it means I have to dig up the whole compound.”
“She’s d-dead,” he said with a sob. “Bart killed her!”
“No!” Joshua’s wife gasped and looked to her husband for a denial. But Joshua said nothing. He didn’t have the chance. Bart had returned with the armed guards who’d been walking the perimeter.
“Ethan Wycliff is a fallen prophet!” he shouted. “Take him into custody for crimes against us all.”
The security staff moved to respond, but Todd and Sarah and several others intervened. “No! Bart, the twelve, they’re all just as guilty. They’ve lied and used every one of us.”
Those words rang in Ethan’s ears. They’re all just as guilty. There would be no Armageddon, no final battle. They’d lost their strength because they’d lost their unity. Because of Bart. The one person he’d loved and trusted above everyone else had betrayed him….
Weak-kneed, Ethan no longer felt capable of supporting himself. When he sagged against Nate, Nate let him sink to the ground. It was over. With Martha’s corpse there for all to see and her husband crying over her, Paradise had fallen into upheaval, a melee of blame and recrimination. This was the end, and no one could change that. Didn’t Bart realize? Didn’t he know what he’d done? The covenant of secrecy had been broken, and Paradise depended on the covenant. “This is your fault,” he wailed at Bart. “You caused this!”
“No, you caused this.” Bart appealed to the guards again. “All are guilty—except me. Arrest them! Arrest the Brethren, along with the unbelievers. They’re the devil’s own. I have no doubt they had a hand in all of this.”
The guards, young men Ethan had prayed over and led, put their rifles to their shoulders. They were turning on him, just like Bart. Ethan couldn’t watch. His end would be as ignominious as Manson’s.
Refusing to see the scorn in their faces, he looked away, but soon saw that he wasn’t the only one in whom they’d lost faith. At Nate’s insistence, and with Todd and Sarah’s support, two members of security forced Bart up against the altar—beside Ethan. Others went after the Guides who’d slunk off, hoping to get away in the confusion.
When Nate released her, Rachel felt as boneless as a rag doll.
“You okay?” he whispered, covering her with a Covenanter’s robe.
Was she? She didn’t know. Her thoughts were spinning. But she understood that Martha was dead. Martha and Courtney. She tried to speak, to express her sadness, but the words wouldn’t come. How would they ever break the news to Courtney’s poor mother?
At least Mrs. Sinclair would have some closure, Nate said, which made her wonder if she’d managed to express herself after all. She’d been right about her daughter—Courtney would’ve come home, despite their differences, if she’d had the chance. Ethan had taken that opportunity away from both of them. But he’d never be able to hurt anyone again. Nothing else seemed to make sense, but that did. He’d finally fulfill his dream to be like Charles Manson because he, too, would spend the rest of his life in prison. So would Bart and all the other Guides. Even Maxine, the housekeeper, would have to answer to the law.