Free Righteous04 - The Blessed and the Damned by Michael Wallace Page B

gun.
    “We’re armed, too,” Rebecca said. “Do you really want a shootout?”
    “It wouldn’t be a shootout, because you’d never reach your guns,” Miriam said. “I’m former law enforcement and I know what I’m doing.”
    “Yes, I’m aware of that.”
    “You should also be aware that I’ve killed people before,” Miriam continued. “I don’t like it, but I’ll do it if I have to.”
    “Come on,” Jacob said to Rebecca. “Let’s be reasonable. You step back and Miriam will lower her weapon. We’ll sit down and talk and you can tell me what you’re doing here, who is up there, and what you’re doing for my father.”
    “No,” Rebecca said after a moment, her tone cool, her posture relaxed. Her companion didn’t look so certain. “But I’ll tell you what we’re going to do so there will be no mistake,” she added. “We’re going to walk past. If you step to the side of thetrail while we pass—over by that tree—we’ll be out of each other’s way. Nobody will make any sudden moves. Got it?”
    “I can’t let you past,” Jacob said.
    “It doesn’t matter, because we’re going. If anything happens to us, it will be murder. You’ll have to live with that on your conscience. Ready? We’re coming.”
    And because there was nothing to do besides either offering weak threats or carrying them through—which was even more unthinkable—Jacob, Miriam, and David stepped to the side, by the tree, just as Rebecca had instructed. The other two approached with their hands out, nonthreatening. They edged sideways to get by on the trail.
    Jacob clenched his jaw in frustration as they passed. When they’d disappeared around the next bend, Miriam slapped out the clip and checked the chamber of her gun, before putting it all back in her backpack with a scowl.
    “Now what?” she asked.
    “It doesn’t matter,” David said. He was pale, but it looked more like exhaustion than fear. “Really, it doesn’t change anything. We were on our way up to spy out the Kimball camp. This doesn’t change that.”
    Miriam got out the binoculars and scanned the mountainside ahead of them. “It might, if that woman is working with the Kimballs and there’s another way to get to the camp. She might go around, warn them that we’re snooping around. Wreck our truck while she’s down there so we have no way to get out. Then we’re cooked.”
    “You saw that guy in the tank top and shorts,” David said. “He’s no Mormon. And she’s no polygamist, either, whether she’sfrom Utah originally or not. Is Taylor Junior so hard up for henchmen that he’d bring in gentiles?”
    “I’d agree,” Jacob said. “But the same argument goes for Father, too. Why wouldn’t he send Stephen Paul or Elder Smoot and his sons? But she’s driving Father’s truck. What are the odds that he didn’t know exactly where she was going and why?”
    “So your father is working with the Kimballs now?” Miriam asked.
    “That cunning bastard, what’s he up to?” David asked.
    “No,” Jacob said after a moment of reflection. “Father is one of the most righteous men I know.”
    “Righteous?” David said with a snort. “Guy wanted me to OD on heroin to prove a point.”
    “I don’t mean he’s always
right
. Or that he never resorts to underhanded tactics. But he has a sense of right and wrong, and his actions have a certain internal consistency. He’d never work with the Kimballs.”
    “Then how do you explain this?” Miriam asked.
    “I don’t know,” Jacob admitted. “I need to ask him. And I want some answers about what happened to Eliza and how she ended up at the dump. I’ll bet he knows about that, too.”
    Rebecca had pretended to be Madeline Caliari’s mother so that Eliza would go to Caleb Kimball’s desert compound. And if Father had been working with this woman, did that mean he’d known what would happen to Eliza? Caleb had tried to rape Eliza, had thrown her in a pit to starve. She’d