Obstetrix(45)

David looked down into my face, and shook his head. “Come on, Dr. Elizabeth.”

“What, so you can shoot me like your last doctor?” I said.

He glanced over my shoulder at the child huddled on the second bed. “You don’t want to make me do this in front of Bethany, do you?”

“We need to discuss this with Pastor,” Sarah said. “Please, Brother David, I am begging you, we can surely discuss this with Pastor.”

There was a crash as Bethany’s mug hit the floor. “No,” Bethany said. “No no no no no no no. Help, somebody, help us, don’t let Brother David hurt Dr. Liz, somebody stop him!” Her voice rose from a protest to a shrill, urgent scream.

The door to the clinic burst open and I turned toward the door, hoping it wasn’t Ethan, thinking perhaps it would be Pastor John, and maybe he would intervene, as Sarah clearly thought he would.

Instead, it was a man I didn’t recognize. He wore goggles, hunter’s camo, a bulky bulletproof vest, and he had a gun trained on all of us. David let go of my arm and turned toward the stranger, a look of fear on his face. “Who are you?”

If David didn’t know who this man was, he must not be part of the cult. I flung my hands up and screamed, “Help, I’m a prisoner here! Please help me!”

The man in camo shoved David to the side; another man came up behind him and peered through his goggles at my face. “Lizzie?” he said.

“Yes,” I said. “Yes, that’s me!”

He ducked his head to talk into a walkie-talkie clipped to his tactical vest. “Gwinn!” he said. “Found your kid!” He turned back to me. “Come on, we’re getting you out of here.”

I grabbed Bethany by the hand and stepped outside. There were cars—multiple cars. Multiple people, dressed in hunter’s camo, carrying guns.

And my father, who came around one of the cars and grabbed me in a fierce hug.

“Dad,” I said. “You found me.”

“Of course I found you,” he said. “I just needed a little help.”





CHAPTER 9




“IS THERE ANYTHING HERE you need?” my dad asked.

“You have to help Joy,” I said. “And her baby—and Emma and Jason—Bethany!” I looked around wildly for Bethany—she’d been right behind me—and saw her running to her cottage. “That girl there, she’s just thirteen, she needs to come. Her whole family needs to come.”

“Is this your coat?” The man who’d found me was walking over with it. “What happened to that woman in there?”

“That’s Joy, she’s my patient,” I said. “She’s just had surgery.”

“We’ll secure this place,” the man said to my father. “You can get her back to Idaho Falls.”

I grabbed my father’s arm. “You have to find Bethany’s father. Her family was trying to escape and they got caught—”

“Liz, we should get you out of here,” Dad said.

“I think I found them,” one of the other men called. “Are you Emma? Good news, you’re all coming with us, I guess.”

“And Joy,” I said again. “But she’s just had surgery.” I pointed at the minivan, which still had its headlights on and all its doors open. “Someone’s got the key to that minivan. If you put down all the seats you can let Joy ride lying down. And her baby! Don’t leave her baby here!”

“Do you trust us to take care of this?” Dad asked.

“They’ve got guns, please be careful,” I said.

“That’s why I really want to get you out of here, Liz!”

“Okay,” I said. “Okay.” I didn’t see Pastor John anywhere. “Also, there’s this guy, Pastor John, he’s in charge—”

We heard a gunshot.

“Get her out of here, now!” one of the men in camo shouted. “Move in, move in!”

My dad shoved me into one of the waiting cars, and the person at the wheel took off.



* * *



THE ROAD WAS WINDING and bumpy. My father introduced the driver as his friend Tom. “How did you find me?” I asked. “Why—I guess I was expecting the FBI, if anyone. What happened?”

“I mean, I did talk to the FBI,” my dad said. “I started there. First, they gave me the whole speech about how adults had the right to disappear—you probably remember that from when Courtney went off camping in a snit—and then they said they were looking into it, and then when your text showed up, they said it didn’t narrow things down enough to know where you were. ‘Idaho is kind of a big state,’ that’s the line I recall the agent saying.”

Tom snorted derisively.

“But some of my buddies from the VFW were former drone pilots,” he continued. “And you can just buy a drone, these days, or rent it. So we came out here and started looking for a compound like what you’d described.”

“And you found me?”

“We actually found enough places like what you’d described we had to keep surveilling.”

“Turns out Idaho is kind of a big state,” Tom said.

“I’d started out thinking we’d find you and then give the information to the FBI to do the rescue, but we all kept talking and came around to thinking we should do it ourselves.”