Burn Down the Night (Everything I Left Unsaid #3)- Molly O'Keefe Page 0,108

rewarded only with deceit and betrayal. Isn’t that right, Jennifer?”

Jennifer nodded like her neck was broken, a shaky jerky thing.

“Who…who betrayed you?” I asked. I could feel Jennifer trembling against me and I didn’t know if it was from fear or shock or anger.

“Gwen,” he said.

I had been right. The informant had been Gwen. Gwen, the old woman who recruited us into the camp. The motherly type who’d seemed so trustworthy and kind. “What happened?”

“She’s been talking to the FBI, telling them our plans. She was going to bring them down on our heads.”

“He killed her,” Jennifer said. “Shot her in the head, right in front of everyone.”

“Because she deserved it!” he screamed, spittle flying, hair flopping.

“And then you made all those women and children take the pills!” Jennifer yelled back and I grabbed ahold of her sweatshirt; this time it was me pulling her back. “What did those children do to deserve that?”

“Better to have died in peace than to have their lives shattered by outsiders.”

“You don’t even believe that!” Jennifer cried. “You just didn’t want anyone alive to talk.”

Lagan lifted his eyebrows. “Perhaps that is something you should remember.”

“Jennifer,” I breathed. “Stop. We can’t stop him like this.”

“You can’t stop me at all,” Lagan said. “Didn’t you learn that lesson already? You and your ridiculous bombs. You can’t beat me. I have the power of the Lord on my side. What do you have, Olivia? What have you ever had? Give me your phone.”

I pulled it from my pocket and threw it. It landed in the grass a few feet from him. He rolled his eyes at my petty mutiny and stepped forward and smashed it with his foot.

I sucked in a breath at the sound of the screen cracking.

Now, there was no way I could warn Max. No way I could stop what was coming.

I had been a fool to believe I could.

—

Lagan walked behind us while Jennifer led me to a stone shed at the end of the clearing, nearly hidden beneath the trees. The wooden door was open. Outside the door was a pile of stakes and spades, shovels and lawnmower blades.

Everything we could have used as a weapon.

I remembered my gun in the drawer at the condo with a frantic fondness.

Lagan was a very thorough lunatic.

“In you get,” he said, waving the gun toward the door, and like docile little sheep, we did what he asked. The door shut behind us and I heard the scrape and click of a padlock. The shed was full of lawn equipment and smelled like grass and motor oil.

It was dark except for the small bit of sunlight streaming in through a high window.

I turned to face Jennifer, cataloging all the changes, the thinness and the fierceness.

“I’m sorry,” I breathed. “About Gwen and the kids.” She turned her face away, staring at the dust motes in the sunlight coming through that high window. “That must have been awful.”

“It was my fault.”

“Oh no,” I whispered, putting my hands on her shoulders, stroking her arms through her sweatshirt. Her hands were freezing cold and I held them between mine, trying to warm them up. “I know it can feel like that sometimes, but that was Lagan—”

“I was the informer.” Jennifer’s eyes pierced right through me.

“You…what?” I must not have heard her right because there was no way my baby sister had been—

“I was the informer. I have been for a year.”

“Since before I left?”

“Since practically the moment we got there. I knew you thought we’d landed in some kind of happy commune, but I knew where we were. I knew what Lagan was. And there were kids—” She stopped, turning her head away, her throat working like she was swallowing back bile. “As soon as he started letting me go into town with Gwen on the supply runs, I contacted the FBI.”

God. She was so different. So changed. Where was my little sister? The girl I left behind in that compound was not the girl standing beside me. Woman, I guess. She was hard as nails. So hard, I felt soft compared to her.

“All that time,” I said. “Why didn’t—?”

I couldn’t even finish that sentence. Why didn’t you tell me the place was bad news? Why didn’t you tell me you were an FBI informer? Why didn’t you tell me you were no longer a child?

“Because I’ve been doing what you tell me all my life,” she said. “And I knew once you figured it out, you would want to