Say Goodbye (Romantic Suspense #25) - Karen Rose Page 0,7

need to die eventually, because he’d found Gideon and Mercy and had probably updated them on everything about Eden since they had left. For that, if he was still alive, he’d pay.

And then I’ll come back, force Pastor to give me those damn account numbers once and for all. He’d stayed in the same toxic pattern, serving Pastor for far too long. He hadn’t realized how much time had passed until he’d been shot.

Nothing like a near-death experience to reset one’s priorities.

“It’s all right,” Pastor said evenly, making it clear that DJ’s outburst wasn’t all right. The fucker. “Will you locate little Abigail? She may have been taken into the foster care system.”

Because he’d told Pastor that he’d killed and buried Amos after finding him hiding in the back of his pickup when he’d stopped in the next town. He hadn’t mentioned Abigail at all. He wasn’t sure why. Maybe it was because she was a child and he hadn’t considered her a threat. Pastor had assumed she’d escaped.

“I’ll try,” he said.

Pastor’s lips pursed, a sign of his displeasure. “She’ll tell someone about us. Luckily she’s so young that no one will believe her, and luckily she’s the only one to have gotten away.”

For a career criminal, Pastor was damn gullible. He actually believed that all the escapees had been rounded up over the past few years. To be fair, DJ had used surrogate bodies, like his father had before him. When the escapee couldn’t be found, he found a random person—usually homeless or a runaway—about the same size and coloring, then killed them, mutilating the body so that it couldn’t be identified.

Pastor believed that no one had ever escaped Eden.

Pastor was an idiot.

“Luckily,” DJ agreed. “I’ll get the supplies, scout out a new location, and search for Abigail Terrill. Is there anything you’d like to add?”

Pastor shook his head. “No, but I would like you to fix the satellite dish before you go. I haven’t been able to get online since we moved here to the caves.”

A move that had been necessary because Amos Terrill had been thick as thieves with the FBI. If Ephraim hadn’t spilled his guts, it was almost certain that Amos had. So they’d moved the community to their ultimate safe space, a series of caves just outside the border of the Lassen National Forest.

It had been DJ’s storage spot for their drug harvest for years and his father’s before that, the rock shielding their stash from government eyes in the sky. Neither conventional satellite imagery nor infrared cameras could find them here.

“I’ll try,” DJ promised, but he was lying through his teeth. There was no way he was fixing the Internet. He hadn’t allowed Pastor online while his wounds were healing, claiming he was too weak to manage it. But the truth was that Pastor could not know that Mercy and Gideon were alive, and, given the shoot-out the month before, they could still be in the news. “But the dish was damaged in the last move.” DJ threw an accusatory glance at Coleen. “She didn’t pack it correctly.”

Coleen looked down, her jaw clenched. “I did my best, considering how heavy it was, and that I had to move it into the truck by myself. I couldn’t ask for help, because you were hurt and Ephraim was dead and nobody else is supposed to know we have a satellite dish.”

She actually had done well. There was nothing wrong with their dish, but he couldn’t let them know it.

“We need to bring in another elder,” Pastor said thoughtfully. “One young and strong enough to help with things like that, but old enough to bring some wisdom.”

“Also one who won’t go crazy with rage, knowing we lied to them all these years,” Coleen added carefully.

Pastor chuckled, because Coleen was the only person allowed to be candid with him. She’d earned the right through thirty years of being Pastor’s lapdog, but even she tiptoed around the man. One never knew what mood he’d be in at any given time, on any given day.

“True.” Pastor studied his manicured nails, a sure sign that whatever he was about to say would not be what DJ wanted to hear. “I’m considering Brother Joshua. He was extremely helpful in coordinating our move, and considering we only had the one truck you brought back, DJ, this move was one of our most stressful. We packed the congregation into the truck like cattle, but with over a hundred people, plus the heavy equipment,