The Safest Lies. Debra Webb

that’s where I’ll start.” To Cecelia she said, “You put the word out about me asking questions.” She shifted her attention to Tanner. “Make sure the local news reports a missing federal agent. No name, just a description,” she reminded.

      Tanner nodded. “I can make that happen.”

      “I’d like to familiarize myself with maps of the area, particularly around the church.”

      Ross spread the maps on the conference table and started the briefing regarding landscape. Sadie took her time and carefully committed the maps to memory. One of the things that made her good at her job was her ability to memorize maps and recall landmarks. For a girl who grew up in the city, she was a damned good tracker. As good as any hunter she’d ever worked with and she’d worked with a few.

      More than anything, she paid attention. The old saying that it was all in the details was more often true than not. The details were crucial. One didn’t need a photographic memory to recall the details. She just had to pay attention.

      “What about the church?” Sadie considered the map of the area around the church, which appeared to be well outside town. “I need some additional history on the church.”

      “My father started the church about thirty-five years ago,” Cecelia explained. “He was a very cruel man, capable of anything. He had many devoted followers who turned to my older brother, Marcus, after our father’s murder. There are those who still believe one or both to be messiahs of a sort. I’m confident the most deeply devoted know far more than they’ve shared. If they hear about you, you better believe the word will go where you want it.”

      Ross pushed a folder in Sadie’s direction. “This will give you a good overview of what we know. It’s not complete by any means, but it’s as much as anyone knows.”

      Sadie opened the file and skimmed the first page. “I’d like some time to go over what you have and then I’ll drive out to the church, hide my car and start digging around. If I’m lucky, someone will come looking for me in short order.”

      “For the record,” Chief of Police Brannigan spoke up again, “I still think this is a bad idea.”

      Sadie wished she could convince him otherwise but to an extent he was correct. This was most likely a bad idea.

      But their options were limited. Sometimes the bad ideas were the only feasible ones.

       Chapter Two

      Dusk was settling way too fast. Sadie had knocked on doors in the vicinity of the church—not that there were that many. She’d asked straightforward questions, calling the group she sought by name. Then she’d driven to the now-defunct church of the Salvation Survivalists and she’d started poking around.

      Breaking in had been a breeze. The ATF and the FBI had gone through the building numerous times and though every entrance had been secured, the lock on the back door was damaged. All of ten seconds were required to rip the crime scene seal away and finagle the thing open. As easy as taking candy from a baby.

      It was possible a couple of days might be required to garner the attention she sought. Not good for her target. Levi Winters might not have a couple of days. On the other hand, it was possible he wasn’t a hostage at all and was happily ensconced among friends deep within this suspicious group. His sister, Cecelia, was convinced he was a hostage, but sisters didn’t always know the whole story.

      Sadie’s sister certainly did not.

      She and her sister had never been friends. Maybe it was the ten years that separated them in age or the fact that her sister had chosen a path Sadie despised. Pricilla Buchanan was a criminal defense attorney. Her entire existence was focused on undoing what law enforcement personnel like Sadie risked their lives to do. Of course their mother insisted they were both angels, but she was wrong. Their mother wanted to see good in everyone. Pricilla was not good. She was self-centered, self-serving and indifferent when it came to justice.

      Sadie kicked aside thoughts of her older sister as she strolled the halls of the extremist church whose followers still refused to speak ill of their most recent infamous leader. The man, Cecelia Winters’s older brother as it turned out, had been hiding smuggled guns. He’d sworn he had no idea how the weapons had ended up in the secret underground hiding place beneath the church. He’d gone so far as to attempt to claim the weapons had been there since before his father died almost nine years ago. Talk about a scumbag. Then again, apparently his father had been an even bigger lowlife.

      Ross and the others suspected Marcus Winters had been holding the stockpile of weapons for the Resurrection. Despite the seriousness of the charges he faced, Winters refused to spill his guts. Whomever Marcus Winters was protecting he was too damned afraid to make a deal, even for the promise of a new life in witness protection.

      The moment he’d been arrested he had shut down like a dying cell phone battery and hadn’t spoken since.

      Anything that might provide clues about a connection between the church and the gunrunning extremist prepper group was long gone. The tunnel between the church and the Winters home was set for demolition. Cecelia mentioned that she intended to sell the place the moment it was released from evidence. She wanted to wash her hands of that ugly past as soon as possible and who could blame her? Based on what Ross had told Sadie, the woman had already paid a high price for standing up against her family.

      Sadie followed the directions she’d been given to find the tunnel area. Mostly she was killing time. The longer she hung out in the area the more likely she was to run into what she was looking for. At least that was the hope. If she were really lucky things would happen as quickly as she hoped.

      Ross had given her a piece of information to use as leverage once she had infiltrated the group. His contact from the ATF insisted this would be immensely useful. She’d gone into missions with less, but this felt a little slim by any measure.

      The entrance to the tunnel was barricaded. Sadie turned and headed back in the direction she’d come. She took the stairs two at a time and returned to the church’s main sanctuary.

      There was nothing else to be done here. She turned for the front entrance and stalled. A man sat on the very back pew. His hair was gray—not the white gray, the silver gray. It poked from beneath a fedora. A full beard did a hell of a job of camouflaging his face. He wore overalls and a button-down, long-sleeved shirt, no matter that it was as hot as hell outside. It was difficult to assess if he was armed. Her view of him from the chest down was blocked by the back of the pew in front of him. From a merely visual perspective he appeared reasonably harmless.

      Sadie, however, was too smart to assume any such thing based on appearances.

      “You must be that missing fed.”

      Though he said this in a low, rusty-with-age voice, it seemed to echo in the hollow sanctuary. Not particularly threatening and yet with simmering power.

      “That’s me. Sadie Buchanan.”

      “I hear you and a fed friend of yours have been looking for me.”

      Obviously, he meant Deacon Ross. “I don’t know about anyone else and I definitely don’t have any friends around here, but I’ve been looking for someone. That’s a fact. Can’t say whether that someone is you.”

      She dared to walk toward him, one step at a time down that long center aisle. The rubber soles of her hiking boots were quiet on the wood floor.

      “What is it you think you’re looking for, Ms. Buchanan? Or should I call you Agent Buchanan?”

      Sadie sat down at the pew in front of him, turned in the hard seat to face him. “Sadie is fine. After yesterday, I doubt that anyone considers me an agent anymore—except maybe for the purposes of prosecution.”

      The story that she was an agent on the run was the best cover she could come