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Hudson was worried.
“I want to go with you.”
Pratt coughed, spat out some of his coffee and started choking on the rest. Hudson thumped him a few times on the back until he could breathe again.
“Rook,” She said, trying not to sound condescending, “That’s maybe not a good idea.” It wasn’t just that Hudson had a personal, kind of selfish fear of having to scrape another partner off the pavement after being riddled with bullets; she did, but it wasn’t the only reason she was hesitant to involve Rook in Joseph Seed’s arrest. Rook was new to the law enforcement business. She was (barely) twenty-four and still looked like some college kid playing dress-up in a deputy’s uniform. It said nothing for her actual abilities, but Hudson hadn’t seen her in action enough to know she could handle herself.
And Rook would need to be able to handle herself if she was going to be getting in on this impending clusterfuck.
“I can help,” Rook protested. “You said that there’s going to be at least fifty- uh- Peggies on the compound. You’re going to need backup if the worst happens.”
Pratt was giggling. “Jacob Seed’s gonna tremble in the face of your wrath, Probie.”
Hudson thumped him on the back of the head this time.
“I’m just saying,” She continued as Pratt grumbled into his coffee mug, “You’re new here. You haven’t dealt with the Peggies yet, and they’re not exactly your garden-variety crazies, Rook. They’re top-tier ‘call the goddamn National Guard and arm them with bazookas’ crazy.”
Rook combed her fingers through her ponytail; it was a nervous tic Hudson had noticed was common for her. “Well,” She said, slowly, “I have to deal with them eventually, don’t I? Better to know when it’s coming, with all of you there, than at random and alone.”
“She’s got a point,” Pratt mumbled. “I mean, it’s not like arresting Joseph Seed is gonna make them all pack up their crazy and go back to normal. If anything, it’s going to get worse.”
Hudson rubbed her eyes.
She didn’t like this idea, period: They didn’t have enough people because apparently the Marshal’s superiors didn’t think they needed anyone else to arrest one guy; and their ability to escape was limited to a helicopter or a very long swim across the lake. There were a thousand and one ways this could go south, and statistically speaking at least one of them would probably come to pass.
Goddamn it. This was rural Montana, things weren’t supposed to be nearly as crazy out here as they were in the cities.
“I’ll talk to Whitehorse,” Hudson said finally. “But it’s up to him, not me, Rook. He may not want you in on this. Doubt he wants to scare you off so quickly.”
“It won’t.” Rook straightened up a little, and Jesus, she was so cute trying to look all serious like that. “I know it’s gonna be shit. I can handle it.”
(Hudson sure hoped she could.)
[---]
Pratt was surprised.
“I gotta say, Rook,” he chuckled as he cracked the tab on his soda, “You’ve got balls. Most new kids would think twice about volunteering for this sort of thing.”
Rook shrugged. “Just… Want to make myself useful.”
“Yeah, well, there’s making yourself useful, and there’s strolling onto Eden’s Gate property to arrest their so-called Prophet. I hope Hudson’s made it clear what you’re getting into?”
Rook nodded. “In pretty graphic detail.”
Pratt didn’t doubt it; Hudson of all people would be gun-shy about letting another partner walk into a blatantly dangerous situation. He was concerned for Rook, obviously, but it also worried him that if Rook did end up taking a bullet during this little escapade that Hudson would go off the deep-end. Part of what kept him from doing dangerously stupid shit on a regular basis at this job was the potential guilt he’d inevitably feel if Hudson ended up freaking out.
For his part, Pratt thought this whole thing was nuts. Burke clearly had no goddamn idea what the Peggies were like, had no idea just how fanatical they were. Oh, he’d give the guy his due- hard not to, since it was rare to run across people with the balls to pick a fight with Joseph Seed- but he clearly didn’t know what the hell they were walking into.
Rook, Pratt figured, didn’t quite know either. She’d never been face-to-face- or rather, face-to-chest- with Jacob Seed before; if there was any moment where she’d immediately regret getting in on this, it would be the moment when Jacob Seed got all up in her face while protecting his brother. He’d snap Rook in half.
“So, are you going to the church?”
“Nah. I’m manning the helicopter, and you guys are going to the church.”
Rook frowned. “You’re staying at the helicopter alone?”
Pratt hesitated. “Yeah,” he said. “But it’s fine. I’ll be armed, and if all else fails I can take off and leave you guys behind.” He grinned and winked at her.
Truthfully, the idea of being left alone in the helicopter unsettled him. In spite of whatever vivid delusions Burke seemed to be rocking, the Peggies did not have a single fuck to give about law enforcement and there would easily be enough of them on the compound to make trouble for him if he was left alone. They were planning to make this all quick, but Burke underestimated just how quickly the Peggies could cause a problem.
“Maybe I could stay behind with you,” Rook suggested. “Hudson isn’t too keen on me coming, and I doubt Whitehorse will be either- maybe if I stayed at the helicopter with you they’d feel better about it.”
Damn. Rook was a nice kid (“kid”, he called her; she was only two years younger than him). Pratt couldn’t lie, he wouldn’t mind having a second gun in the helicopter with him if things went bad.
But no point in worrying Rook about it.
“Don’t worry about me, Rookie: I can handle myself.”
(He hoped.
God, he hoped.)
[---]
Whitehorse was reluctant.
It had been three minutes since Rook had made her request, and he hadn’t spoken a word since.
She was starting to squirm a little in her chair, and if Whitehorse was being honest, it was exactly that sort of nervous tic that made him hesitant to give his assent. Rook did not have Hudson’s years of experience, nor did she have Pratt’s eerie ability to stay calm under pressure. She was a newbie, a greenhorn, and under any other circumstances that wouldn’t be a problem.
But it was now.
“Rook,” Whitehorse sighed, “I know you know this is going to be a clusterfuck.”
Rook straightened up, nodding. “I know.”
“I know you know that you are not experienced.”
“That’s why I want to come,” Rook said calmly, even though he saw her squeezing her hands tightly on her lap until the knuckles went white. “I can’t get experience sitting in an office.”
Well, Whitehorse couldn’t fault her logic on that front. “You will have to be calm.”
“Of course.”
“If we do something stupid, like shooting some asshole because we panicked, we’ll all be out of our jobs by Monday. John Seed’s a real prick of a lawyer and he will relish playing up our fuck-up in front of a judge. We can’t have mistakes like that, Rookie.”
“I know, sir.”
She did. Whitehorse had been at this job long enough to know the difference between a cocky kid overly confident in their ability to do what they needed to do, and a newbie who had a good idea of the dangers… If not a particularly realistic, firm comprehension of them. Rook wouldn’t know the level of shit Eden’s Gate was capable of until she was knee-deep in a river of it, and Whitehorse was hesitant to throw her into that river right out the gate.
Whitehorse had lost two coworkers over the course of his career: Danny Forrester, and Jim Rambeau. Forrester had taken a shotgun blast to the guts and bled out on the side of the road before the ambulance could arrive (Whitehorse had come dangerously close to losing Hudson, if only from the guilt she’d felt); Rambeau had been Whitehorse's predecessor, shot in the head during a domestic dispute twenty years ago. Those had been the only two Hope County Deputies to be killed in the line of duty in fifty years.
And Whitehorse didn’t know what it was- cop’s intuition, or maybe a kinder God than Joseph Seed’s throwing him a warning- but he had a terrible feeling about their plan, about this arrest, and feared beyond words bringing that death toll up. If he lost Hudson or Pratt, Whitehorse would feel guilt- but it would be tempered by the fact that they were both experienced officers doing their best. But if he lost Rook, he would hate himself for allowing her to accompany them into a situation she had no hope of being able to cope with so soon.
But whether he liked it or not, there was strength in numbers.
Besides: Rook would catch hell on the compound, or she’d catch it in the county at large in the days after the arrest.
“Alright,” Whitehorse agreed, that deep dread churning insistently in his gut. “Alright, you’ll come with us.”
Rook nodded, expression straight but eyes bright. “Thank you, sir.”
“Don’t thank me yet, Rookie.”
She’d be alright.
(He hoped so, anyway.)
[---]
Burke was skeptical.
“Little green, isn’t she?” He remarked quietly to Whitehorse as they looked over the basic map of the compound, plotting out the best route to get in and out of the church with Joseph Seed as quickly as possible. “I mean, you keep calling her Rookie, so I assume she hasn’t been here all that long.”
“It’s a nickname- her real last name actually is Rook,” Whitehorse responded calmly. “And if you’re insisting that we do this with just you and my people on the ground then we’re gonna need all the help we can get.”
Burke didn’t miss the passive-aggressive note in Whitehorse’s voice, and leaned forward. “Look,” He said quietly, but firmly, “If it were up to me, I’d have a couple of my guys with us too. But between you and me, ever since Waco the Federal Government is real titchy about going in and arresting cult leaders. They don’t want another situation where dead kids are being pulled out of a smoldering compound because they went too hard too fast. Right now, it is what it is and we have to work with what we got; so we’re just gonna go in, arrest Seed, and get out- no fuss, no muss.”
“You massively underestimate Eden’s Gate’s fondness for fussing and mussing.”
Burke had seen it a thousand times: Small-town cops got territorial over their beat, and really hated it when the Feds came down and started giving them orders. Frankly, he didn’t give a shit about whether or not Sheriff Whitehorse liked him or not- he was here to serve a Federal Warrant and that was what he was going to do. Guys like Joseph Seed needed a reminder that they weren’t the law of the land, and it had become apparent that the Hope County authorities weren’t willing to drop the hammer on him the way they ought to.
If Whitehorse didn’t like it, then maybe he should have handled it himself before it had a chance to get this goddamn bad.
“I’m just saying, are you really comfortable with bringing Rook in on this? I mean, from all you’re telling me about how nuts these people are and what they’re supposedly capable of, it kinda feels like tossing her into the deep end with the sharks.”
Whitehorse sighed. “We all gotta cut our teeth somewhere,” He rumbled. “And trust me when I say that Joseph’s arrest is going to make this county a real hostile place for a while. May as well rip off the band-aid now.”
“What,” Burke said, “You think the cult’s gonna start some sort of Holy War over Seed’s arrest?”
Whitehorse shrugged. “Jim Jones force-fed his followers poisoned Kool-aid when the end was coming. Problem is, Eden’s Gate isn’t thousands of miles away in the jungles of Guyana- it’s in our back yard.” He fixed Burke with a piercing look. “This is why I’m hoping that you and your department understand the delicate nature of this situation, Marshal. At the end of the day if the backlash is gonna hit anyone, it’s gonna be my people.”
Burke got it. He wasn’t stupid; he knew better than most that things could go real bad real fast. “We’ll have a handle on it, Sheriff. That I can promise you.”
(It was a promise he hoped to keep.)
[---]
Rook was hopeful.
She wanted to fit in at the Sheriff’s Department.
She wanted to prove she could be a good cop.
She had spent the majority of her life being low-key: Quiet, unassuming, good but never great, nice but never noticeable. She wasn’t out for glory- just the satisfaction that she could do this job and do it well. That she could succeed at being useful to others and work at a job she enjoyed.
Still, it was overwhelming. Rook was entirely new to Hope County and barely knew anyone in the heart of it as well as her coworkers did. She lived just on the other side of the mountains, not too far from the Sheriff’s Department and only five minutes away from the apartment complex both Hudson and Pratt lived in.
“What’s it like having Pratt as a neighbor?” She’d asked Hudson one day. Hudson had responded by groaning, covering her face with both hands and drawing her legs up onto her chair, curling into a ball.
“You love me and you know it!” Pratt called from the hallway as he’d fiddled with the vending machine.
Rook liked them. And maybe it sounded needy, but she wanted to be liked by them, and by Whitehorse. She wanted to be taken seriously, something that had been a persistent difficulty throughout her life, since she tended to look a bit younger than she actually was (last week, some lady at the drug store had asked her what had driven an eighteen year-old to join the Sheriff’s Department instead of going to college, and Rook had had to explain that she was in her mid-twenties.)
Being a cop tended to cause people to take you seriously.
But even then, Rook wasn’t under the delusion it would come automatically, especially in a small town where everyone knew everyone and she was still an outsider. She would have to work for the respect that came with the badge, and she was ready for it.
So yeah, Rook was going to do this ‘arrest the cult-leader’ thing. She was going to throw her hat in the ring, on a practical level because she knew they needed the manpower, and on a personal level because Rook wanted her coworkers to know she could be relied upon to carry the weight and do her job well.
So Rook was hopeful.
Hopeful that things would go well, hopeful that she wouldn’t completely screw up and make a fool of herself, and hopeful that Whitehorse, Hudson, and Pratt would be glad to have her as a coworker.
She had a chance to prove herself, and she would do everything in her power to do so.
Whatever it took.
-End