Epilogue

“ A re you ready?”

Tracey still sounded like he was talking underwater in Jon’s left ear. At least he could hear on his right side, and for that, Jon was grateful.

“You bet your ass.” He stamped down the urge to growl, but he wasn’t sure he succeeded.

The staging area teemed with agents, several from the BAU, but most were from the Critical Incident Response Group. Even Sutherland was part of this operation in a surveillance truck.

With any luck, they’d have Enlightened Covenant Ministries shut down in a few hours, and all the kids “enrolled” would be home with their families just weeks before Christmas. It wasn’t ideal, returning them to those who sent them to this cesspit, but Jon consoled himself with ending the imminent torture at least.

“Here’s your earpiece.”

The technician handing out equipment then gave Jon an oh-shit look. News of his injury had made it back to Quantico almost before the team had returned to D.C. from Colorado with the Phantom in custody.

Now, if he put the earpiece in his good ear for communications during the raid, he wouldn’t hear his surroundings. Placing the small device in the canal of his still-healing left ear was probably ill-advised.

Instead of taking the equipment, he stared at the tech for too long while she stared back.

“Sir?”

“Thanks.” Tracey saved him and took the device from her. She scooted away without another word.

“How am I going to do this? That won’t go in either ear and still let me hear what’s going on around me.”

The concussive force of Rick Cavanaugh’s gun going off right next to his head while Jon rolled Matthew’s unconscious body out of danger had perforated his eardrum.

Honestly, he’d been lucky the damage wasn’t worse. A couple of inches closer or nearer his temple, and he could have a very different injury. Even a permanent one.

The pain had been intense, but overall it was healing in the couple of weeks since the arrest. His doctors didn’t think his hearing loss was permanent. After his overnight stay in the Durango hospital, the FBI’s medical team assessment had deemed him fit for light duty. The hardest part had been the flight home. Then the fight with Sutherland to be included on this raid to bring down Enlightened Covenant Ministries.

There was no force on Earth, short of death itself, that would have kept him from this infiltration.

He’d successfully argued that, with the number of agents needed to storm such a large compound, he could hang to the rear as part of the group gathering the evidence. Sutherland agreed with the caveat that if Jon was ordered to retreat, he do so without argument.

If he couldn’t manage the ear piece to hear such an order, Sutherland would make him abort.

“Put it in your good ear.” Tracey began unpacking it. At least it was wireless. “You stick with me and I’ll be your real-time ears. When I stop, you stop.”

It was dangerous, having what was arguably the second-most important sense compromised during a raid. During previous raids, flashbangs rendered him temporarily deaf, but this was a whole new level of vulnerability. He was thankful they often communicated with hand signals, but that didn’t stop him from worrying about not hearing if something went wrong.

Honestly, the disadvantages of the last couple of weeks, unable to place people nearby by the rustle of their clothes or footfalls, was intensely uncomfortable. Not understanding conversations left him out of the loop and off-kilter. He hated it.

Tracey’s solution wasn’t the greatest, but he’d do his best. They’d pry this raid out of his cold, dead hands, disadvantage be damned.

Once the earpiece and mic were in place, he strapped on his Kevlar and did the equipment check to ensure everything worked.

More agents arrived at the staging area in personal vehicles. Silverdale, West Virginia was remote and small, and a cadre of official FBI SUVs and sedans would attract a hell of a lot of attention. Nothing would get the townspeople talking faster than such a spectacle.

All morning, agents arrived three or four together in their own cars and trucks. Hopefully the Silverdale residents were buying the planted rumor of a nearby corporate mountain retreat.

As for the staging location, an abandoned logging operation beyond ECM’s long drive served perfectly.

Surveillance vehicles would monitor the whole infiltration from body cams, and CIRG’s commander would coordinate from there. Buses stood by to transport the students to a facility where they would undergo medical and psychological evaluation and treatment. Those who could be released would be reunited with their families, who would only be contacted after the children had been removed from captivity. Those needing more extensive treatment would receive the care required in an extended-stay hospital. Every student would be asked if other relatives could be contacted first, before reuniting with the family who had sent them to ECM.

Jon’s blood rushed with anticipation. From the moment he’d met Celia Greenwood and Roger McCallister, he dreamed of slapping them in cuffs and frog-marching them to a prisoner transport to face all the charges he could drum up.

So far, those charges involved falsifying West Virginia school accreditation and issuing high school diplomas without proper authorization, and as many child abuse charges they could levy, predicated on the medical exams.

Greenwood and McCallister were also in hot water for tax evasion, thanks to Patrick Byrne getting down and dirty following the money. Branches of that money tree reached other “schools” along the eastern seaboard where ECM’s affiliations were growing. More names were being added to the list to investigate. Other camps were coming under scrutiny.

Ideally, this raid would be the first of several, these kids just the initial wave released.

A hush fell over the agents as the time drew close. The compound’s single-track road was meant to bottleneck the guard station and prevent a wider approach.

Jon’s first visit, and the pen recording, had gathered enough intel that they’d been able to plan for this.

The buses meant for the students’ exfiltration would first drop agents halfway down the single-track road, past the bridge. They would disembark and spread through the trees, walking through the forest and overwhelming the guard shack before any alert could be made to the security guards patrolling the compound. Security was pretty light—limited to a handful of guards—and they weren’t armed with anything stronger than tasers. They expected resistance only from unarmed kids.

The first phase of the plan was executed well. When the guard at the shack got a load of the wall of agents descending on the compound, he damn near shit himself. He didn’t even try to alert anyone—he just bailed from the small outbuilding and ran for his car. The agents nearest tackled him football-style and cuffed him.

The overwhelming response worked, and they quickly overtook the A-frame administrative building. Jon followed Tracey inside, his hand on his shoulder while he swept his gaze side-to-side searching for Greenwood and McCallister.

It was unfortunate he couldn’t hear very well, because when agents pulled the administrators from the office and led them down the stairs with their hands zip-tied, they were shouting up a storm.

Tracey smiled over his shoulder at him. All he could do was shake his head helplessly and point at his ear.

“Later.” Tracey mouthed it.

Jon nodded.

They marched up the stairs, and Jon went straight to the filing cabinets, pulling the files and piling them on the conference table where he’d sat with those despicable people and pretended to be Jon Mitchell, bigoted Baptist father with a gay son who needed “correcting.”

Now, he was going to get justice for all the real kids that had been abused and brutalized. For these teens, it stopped today.

Hours later, their evidence team carried box after box out of that office and loaded them into an evidence truck to be processed and scrutinized to understand the depth of what this place had done.

Jon ditched his ear piece once all the principle suspects had been arrested and taken to the nearest federal facility for booking. Sutherland joined them in packing up the evidence. They’d discovered another room full of more cabinets. Files and files on more students. Previous attendees? Jon didn’t know. They’d figure all that out.

Sutherland clapped him on the shoulder, careful not to go too hard as was his usual manner. “Good job, SSA Anderson. This one is big. I can feel it.”

“Thank you, sir.”

Perry and Sarena joined them, seeming as tired as Jon felt.

“I do, however, believe this will be the last big collar credited to the BAU as it runs under my name.” Sutherland turned to Perry. “Starting next week, your new Supervisory Special Agent in Charge is Perry Vaughn.”

They all clapped and hooted. Grinning wide, Jon stepped forward and shook his friend and former teammate’s hand vigorously. “Congratulations, boss.”

Perry seemed pleased and embarrassed in equal measure. “Thank you, Sutherland, but perhaps in the middle of a crime scene isn’t the time or the place.”

“Ah.” Sutherland waved his hand. “It’s the last time I’ll see one. I wanted to give Unit 4 the good news first on a collar that started with your team. You’ve earned it. All of you.”

“Thank you, sir.” They each shook Ron’s hand.

“It’s been a pleasure working with you, and I think you’re all a credit to your badges.”

“Now you’ve gotta stop before we get all weepy.” Perry started toward the front of the building. They followed as a group into the evening.

The crisp mountain air felt good on Jon’s skin, but it also reminded him of where they’d been weeks before, arresting Richard Cavanaugh for the murders of five men, all because of the damage done to him from a place like this.

Closing down Enlightened Covenant Ministries was a great start. He only hoped they really had saved these kids today.

Breaking toward the parking lot, their group separated into the pairs they’d arrived in while Sutherland peeled off to connect with the CIRG commander, who was wrapping up the scene.

Tracey sank behind the wheel of his Mustang while Jon got into the passenger seat. In a comic reversal of their situation, Tracey had finally been cleared to drive while Jon’s ear injury meant he couldn’t. The glee in the rookie’s eyes at being reunited with his beloved Mustang Fastback had tempered Jon’s discomfort at his temporary loss of freedom. Tracey offering to drive him around had made things seem symmetrical.

Besides, riding in the sports car wasn’t exactly a hardship. Feeling the engine’s rumble was almost as good as hearing it.

As they hugged the tight mountain roads, Jon turned his thoughts back to the day’s events. While they’d done well, he still felt it was a drop in a bucket.

“Hey, you’re awful quiet for a guy who just saved hundreds of kids.”

The Mustang’s dashboard light limned Tracey’s face as he shot Jon a quick glance, then returned his attention to the dark strip of asphalt in front of them. They were part of a line of cars leaving the ECM compound, so it wasn’t as dark as it could have been, but Jon was grateful for the moment of isolation, where he could be open with his partner.

“I know what we did today was a good thing, but I can’t help but feel like it’s a very small drop in a very big ocean. There are more of these conversion therapy places out there, and we don’t even know their names, let alone have reason to shut them all down.” He laced his fingers together in his lap, letting the Mustang’s rumble soothe him.

“To these kids, though, today matters.” Tracey downshifted as they rounded another sharp curve and the interior lit in the red of the taillights of the car in front of them.

Then the engine purred as the line sped up again. Jon felt it in his chest. “I know. I’m happy we could get them out. But I also worry because we’re giving the majority of them back to parents who put them in that place to begin with.”

Tracey glanced over, pensive. “Smart money says many of these kids will tell their parents they’re ‘cured.’ Do you really believe they’ll admit to any kind of same-sex attraction to their families ever again?” He shook his head, keeping his eyes on the road. “I don’t think as many of them will get shipped off to another camp as you’re afraid of.”

A deep pit of darkness opened in his stomach. “But for how many of them will it be too late?”

“What do you mean?”

“How many Richard Cavanaughs have already been made from this one camp?” There it was—Jon’s biggest discomfort spoken aloud.

“Jon.” Around the last curve, Silverdale came into view. As their caravan drove down the town’s main street, Tracey pulled out of the line and into the lone operating gas station, the one beacon of light in the otherwise shut-down business district. It was probably the town’s only open business.

“What?”

Tracey turned in his seat after putting the gearshift in neutral and pulling the parking brake, leaving the engine idling. “You’re not responsible for the Richard Cavanaughs of the world.”

“I know that. I’m responsible for stopping them.”

Tracey shook his head. “Not entirely. Listen to me. What we did today was save these kids from becoming future Beckett Tafts and Ethan Wrights and Dalton Lewises. We’ve stopped many traumas from happening. Not all of them, but a lot of them. We’ve stopped that camp from bringing in new kids to exploit and torture. And the kids who were already there, we’ve kept a lot of them from having to choose to abuse to stop their own abuse, which is no choice at all. We’ve done well today, and that’s because of you.”

He took Jon’s hands pulling them apart and stopping his fingers from warring with each other.

“Look at me, please.”

Jon took a deep breath. Tracey’s words rang true. But…. “All those names in those filing cabinets. All those kids they’ve done this to.” He finally met Tracey’s eyes, not bothering to hide his pain. “So many we didn’t stop. How many of them might take their trauma too far?”

Rubbing his knuckles, Tracey shook his head. “No. How many more filing cabinets won’t get filled now?” He leaned forward, and Jon met him halfway until their foreheads touched and their breath mingled. The line of cars had disappeared and they were alone but for the clerk inside the gas station, who paid them no attention since they hadn’t gotten out of the car.

“You once told me you got into the FBI to find the bad guys by using their darkness against them. By playing their games and getting under their skin. Baby, you did that today. The bad guys at Enlightened Covenant Ministries felt safe to do despicable things and you said, ‘Not today. Not on my watch.’ Those kids could have been there months or years longer, but they’re not , and that’s down to you.

“Not only that, but you do the hard part so few of us can do. You get closer to that darkness than anyone else. You make the worst of suspects think you’re one of them, get them to open up, and then you bring them to their knees.” He brushed his fingers against Jon’s cheek, his face going soft in the barely-lit interior. “I cannot imagine what it costs you, but you don’t flinch. Don’t for a second think that what you do isn’t enough. Because it’s amazing. Enlightened Covenant Ministries is just the beginning, Jon. For every child that came out of that school today, there are another dozen who’ll never go there.”

Swallowing against the tightness in his throat, he couldn’t reply. He palmed Tracey’s face, beard soft on his skin, and kissed him. Gratitude didn’t begin to cover the swell of emotion taking over his chest, replacing that horrible melancholy.

Finally, he pulled back, took a deep breath, and found his voice. “Has anyone told you you’re a ray of sunshine?”

Tracey laughed. “My family used to call me Sunny when I was little.”

Jon joined his laughter. “It suits you. Let’s go home. We’ve earned it.”