The Safest Lies. Debra Webb

all the fancy landscape. Like the primitive keeps she’d seen in her travels, the windows were tiny in proportion. There were other buildings beyond the larger one, but she could only see the rooftops in the distance.

      She stared overhead. Frowned. There was no sky.

      She scanned what should have been the sky for as far as she could see. Steel and some sort of panels stood high above her. Reminded her of a massive warehouse. But no clouds or sun or anything else that said sky.

      Wherever they were, they were not outside. But the SUVs had rolled to a stop right here. She glanced over her shoulder at the one she’d only just emerged from. The ride had seemed to stay on level ground. There had been no downhill or uphill movement. The ride had been smooth but not so smooth that she wouldn’t have noticed a change in elevation. There could have been an elevator somewhere that brought them below ground. But that didn’t seem right, either, since they hadn’t stopped long enough to roll into any sort of elevator until a minute ago, when the engines shut off and they got out.

      The man behind her nudged her forward with the muzzle of his weapon. She took in as much of what she could see as possible, committed it to memory as they moved forward. Wherever they were, the place was certainly fortified for battle. If they were underground as she suspected, she supposed the purpose was for surviving a nuclear attack. Additionally, being underground would explain why the feds and local law enforcement hadn’t already spotted the compound from the air.

      By the time they rounded the corner of the largest building she’d seen so far, only two of the men remained with her. Prentiss and the other two had gone in a different direction. The one with the gun at her back kept her moving forward with the occasional nudge. Beyond the large building were increasingly smaller ones. Along the east side of the wall the smallest structures were numbered. They sat in a long row like cabin rentals at the lake. Only there was no lake—not that she’d seen so far anyway—and this was no vacation. The long, low building that stood the farthest west from the center of the grounds had no windows and appeared to be their destination. The squat roofline told her it was one story. She saw only one entrance along the front, assuming what she was looking at was the front.

      The second of the two guards unlocked and opened the door. Number one nudged her to go in. The guards followed close behind her. An immediate left took them down a long white corridor lined with doors on either side. No windows on the doors, either. Midway down the corridor, they stopped at a door and number two guard unlocked it with a few clicks of the keys on the control pad. Once the thick door pulled outward, Sadie understood this would be her accommodations for now. Until they decided what to do with her, she imagined.

      “I’m supposed to be meeting with the man in charge,” she reminded number one.

      “Tomorrow.”

      The door slammed in her face.

      She turned around. A dim light came from around the perimeter of the room. There was a steel cot, a toilet hanging on the wall with a sink formed in the tank. Just like the ones she had seen in the few prison cells she’d visited.

      With a quick drawing back of the covers, she checked the mattress, ensured the sheets weren’t tainted with anything she could see or smell. Fabric smelled clean enough. She paced the small room and considered her options. There had been four men with Prentiss. She hadn’t seen any others when they arrived but that didn’t mean there weren’t hundreds around here somewhere. There was no accurate body count for this group.

      If the Resurrection was like most of these extremist groups, there would be several hundred on-site. This was obviously a headquarters. The setup was too good to be anything else. The Bureau had been gathering information on extremist groups like this for decades. But this one had somehow managed to stay under the radar. The members didn’t talk. Fear, she imagined. It was human nature to talk about the things in which one was interested. Being a part of something like Resurrection would typically provide bragging rights for those who had a penchant for the extreme. But there was no bragging from these members.

      Their silence made them even more dangerous. Restricted the available intelligence to gather, making the jobs of Sadie and others like her far more difficult. Law enforcement personnel depended upon informants and the information garnered on the streets. When information stopped flowing, it was impossible to find footing in a given situation.

      Sadie braced her hands on her hips and moved around the room again, this time more slowly. She considered the walls, thought about the door when it had opened. The walls were likely made of concrete just as the door was. Thick concrete, eight inches at least. The floor and ceiling of this building appeared to be the same as the walls. The smooth, cold finish of the concrete was interrupted only by the small blocks of light around the walls near the floor. The cot was metal, the sheets a thin material more like paper than fabric. No good for constructing a hangman’s noose. She turned back to the door. The lock wasn’t the usual residential sort. It was electronic and required a code.

      Getting out of here wouldn’t be easy. If she was really lucky, Levi Winters was in this same building. Assuming he was a hostage. Hopefully, he would know a way out and would be willing to go with her.

      That was the problem with being underground or, perhaps, burrowed into a mountainside. Getting out was generally somewhat complicated.

      She’d been in tighter spots, Sadie reminded herself.

      All she had to do was find her target and she would locate a way out of here.

      It was what she did.

       Chapter Three

      The woman was trouble.

      Smith Flynn studied the screen monitoring her movements. She paced the six-by-eight cell as if the journey might end some other way the next time she turned around. She hadn’t stopped since being placed inside. This restless behavior was for the benefit of anyone observing.

      He had watched her arrival. She had walked into the compound, shoulders back, chin held high, all the while discreetly surveying everything in her field of vision. Sadie Buchanan was neither afraid nor uncertain. Her arrival at this compound was not by accident any more than was the timing of her appearance. She was on a mission.

      Whatever she was doing here, unfortunately she was his issue now.

      He did not like unexpected issues. Even fearless, attractive ones like Sadie Buchanan.

      “What’s your take on this new development?”

      The voice drew Smith from his musings. He turned to Prentiss. The older man had been running the group known as the Resurrection for a very long time. He rarely had much to say but when he spoke anyone within hearing distance listened—not because he was so articulate or interesting, but because they wanted to live. Prentiss did not take disrespect well.

      “She has an agenda,” Smith said, not telling the other man anything he didn’t already know. “It’ll take some time to determine what that agenda is.”

      Prentiss nodded, his attention fixed on the screen. “I don’t like killing women. There’s something innately wrong with a man killing a woman. It’s a sin like no other, except for killing a child. Any man who would kill a woman or a child is lower than low.” His gaze swung to Smith. “But, if you tell me she’s lying, I will kill her.”

      Smith didn’t waste time pretending to consider the situation. “I can tell you right now that she is lying. No question there.” He turned his attention back to the screen. “The question is why. We’ll need that answer before you kill her.”

      Prentiss nodded. “You’re right. Until we have the answer, she belongs to you. Do with her what you will, just get the truth for me.”

      “I always do.”

      The old man stood and headed for the door. Smith waited until the door closed before turning back to the screen. He wondered if this woman had any idea just