A guard opens the small flap to look out.
“Oh, hi there, sir,” I say in my sweetest, most harmless voice. “Do you think you can help me? My daddy died, and I’m alone. I heard there’re strong men here who can help me?”
“Hold on,” the guard says curtly.
My heart is pounding so loud I’m afraid they can hear it from inside. I stand in front of the door, clutching the strap of my bag.
This is insanity.
I can’t believe I’m actually doing it.
But Pete put together most of our plan for this morning, and he used to be a college history professor. He knows battle strategy—ancient and modern—and he knows human nature. He’s sure this will work, and if it doesn’t, we have a backup plan.
And another backup plan if the first one falls through.
So here I am. With my dress and braids and fucking basket. Just a sweet, harmless girl who’d never dreamed of fighting back.
After a minute, the regular-sized door opens, and I’m greeted by two men with weapons drawn.
“You can come in, honey,” one of them says, stepping aside and gesturing me through the doorway. “It isn’t safe out there for a little thing like you.”
“I know. I’ve been so, so scared. Thank you for helping. Y’all know how to treat ladies, don’t you? I won’t be taken advantage of here, right? I’m only seventeen.”
“No one’s gonna hurt you.” It’s the first guard who answers. “We’re all gentlemen here.”
I know that look in his eyes. He’s not thinking gentlemanly thoughts.
But it doesn’t matter. I keep beaming up at him and the other one as they take me into the guardhouse.
“We can’t let you all the way in until we search you,” the first one says. “Whatcha got in that basket?”
I offer him my tote without hesitation. “It’s just some clothes and my Bible. Oh, I do have?—”
I break off the words when the guard lifts a taser out of my bag.
The taser is Nell’s. She let me borrow it for this.
“What do we have here?” The first guard is obviously hiding laughter.
“Oh, I’m sorry. Is that bad? You can have it. I just brought it in case I got caught by bad guys on the road. I don’t even know how to use it. I don’t have to keep it.”
“You can keep it, honey.” The guard hands it back to me, shaking his head as if I’m a kitten who did a funny trick. “Just don’t play around with it. That could really hurt someone.”
“Okay. I promise I won’t play around with it.”
Then I turn on the taser and zap the first guard. And then the second one before he can even figure out what’s happening.
Then I zap another guard who comes running into the guardhouse, evidently having heard the second man cry out as the current hit him.
This taser definitely isn’t a toy. All three men end up on the ground.
I study the controls of the guardhouse for a minute until I figure them out.
Then I open the main gate of the compound.
Cade’s crew isn’t waiting outside of town like the news that spread to the militia said.
His crew and all the locals we could rally are waiting in those woods to the west where I walked over from earlier.
