The email found Katie at home on a gloomy Thursday afternoon.
It caught her on a rainy afternoon at the beginning of September, on a gray, cold, drab, day. The threat of an impending thunderstorm loomed over the sky outside in a big black cloud. It was the perfect day to work from home and lounge in her pajamas, armed with a good cup of coffee and a roaring electric fireplace. As the heavy rain beat against her living room window, Katie couldn't help but think it was a good thing she'd politely declined to go on a date for drinks with the weatherman later on. Outside, she could hear the honking of horns and screeching of tires, the stormy weather wreaking havoc on the traffic outside.
The email arrived with the short electric ping of a notification, announcing its arrival in her inbox. It succeeded in diverting Katie's attention from the notes she was typing into Microsoft Word, her eyes narrowing at the name on the right corner of her screen.
Rachel Jessop.
The name was unfamiliar to Katie. Her initial thought was it was someone looking to tell Katie her story, or maybe it was a source for another story Katie was working on. It wasn't unusual to get random emails from strangers looking to talk to an Emmy-winning reporter. Katie clicked on the email, realizing right away that there was no header on the email, just a short message and a link.
The path to Eden is clear for those who have Faith.
Come home, Kate. He needs you more than ever.
Katie's face crinkled, confused. "What the fuck is this?" she murmured to herself. Deep down, she had a feeling. She could feel her nerves shake, could feel her stomach clench and her chest lurch. Double clicking the link, she sucked in a breath as she was led to a video sharing site, where she was immediately greeted to the sight of a young man with sheared brown hair and a sorry excuse for a goatee. He wore a red plaid button-down shirt, and while she could see the exhaustion in his eyes, there was a contentment she could feel through the screen.
It was a vlog. The last episode, she learned. The man's name was Alex, and he was joined in the car by Sara and Hannah, who was driving the car. Life was taking them into differing directions, with Alex leaving the country to travel and Hannah joining the Marine Corps. Scrolling down slightly, Katie looked at the upload date. Almost a week prior.
"In our last installment, we read a letter from a man named Mark. Mark comes from a little place called Hope County, Montana."
Katie's ears perked at the mention of Hope County. A sudden, ominous cold took hold of her bones and rattled her nerves. She found herself sitting a little straighter in her desk chair. She listened to Alex talk about how beautiful the region was, pointing out the cows and the mountains. Katie had felt the same way on her first trip.
"Mark is accusing a group called Eden's Gate of taking over his town and holding people against their will. Doesn't sound legal, if you ask me, but he insists it's true."
"Because it is true," the girl known as Sara piped up from the backseat. "A number of people have been reported missing from Hope County recently. It doesn't necessarily mean Eden's Gate is kidnapping people, but there is something going on."
"It doesn't not mean they aren't kidnapping people, either," Alex retorted.
"Oh my God," Katie murmured. She sat back against her chair, a hand covering her mouth. Only a few minutes had passed in the video, and she already didn't like where things were headed. Katie listened, horrified, as Hannah revealed to their viewers that the police had found nothing worth investigating in regards to Eden's Gate, and Katie knew that was John's evil magic at work. It dawned on her that the trio in the car were amateur investigators, and she felt afraid for them. These kids — they were maybe early to mid-twenties, but they were kids as far as Katie was concerned — were driving into Hope County blissfully ignorant of what they were about to find.
The next part of the video revealed the trio sitting with the aforementioned Mark at the Spread Eagle bar. Katie recognized the interior of the place that had stolen her heart when she'd arrived so long ago. She even spotted owner Mary May Fairgrave at the edge of the frame, handing off a beer to a trucker. In his seat, Mark looked dejected and exhausted, sitting between Alex and Sara, dressed in muted plaid, the long sleeves of his button-down shirt rolled to the elbows. He revealed to the team that he was nursing a beer from the Whistling Beaver Brewery.
Mark painted a legally and morally gray tale of his sister being taken by Joseph Seed's "church". Katie knew cults were able to skirt by for a long period of time by bending the gray areas of the law to their advantage, and it appeared Joseph Seed was no different. With Eden's Gate, Katie supposed it helped that one of their highest-ranking heralds happened to be a former attorney.
The whole situation made her feel sick.
"My sister Linny…she's been spending all sorts of time with this man named John Seed…"
The mere mention of his name made her teeth clench. While a good amount of time had passed since she'd left the area, the anger John invoked within her hadn't ebbed or dulled. A mixed flare of outrage and fear panged acutely inside her chest. Katie listened as Mark told the team that the same thing Jacob told her so long ago on the back-roads of the Whitetail Mountains — that Joseph had prophecies of the world coming to an end. He believed the world was going to fall apart, and that only Joseph and the Project could save everybody, leading them into the new world that would emerge in the aftermath of the Collapse.
After that, the trio were on their way to their first sermon with Eden's Gate. It appeared to take place in the middle of a wide open field. The sound of John's voice in Alex's hidden camera made her eyes narrow, and the sight of him made her scowl and her fists clench. He stood at the head of the makeshift church, in front of the American flag with their church's insignia imprinted into it, dressed expensively, eyes covered in obscenely expensive sunglasses. A sudden shift of Alex's hidden camera made Katie's bitter anger give way to a sharp pang of pain at the sight of Jacob standing behind John as the youngest Seed sermonized all the ills of the world to a tent full of desperate and adoring followers. Dressed in camouflage, Jacob watched over the room, expressionless.
He looked about the same as he did when she'd left, his short red hair shaved at the sides, beard big but trimmed and well-kept. His dog-tags and rabbit's foot popped against the tan T-shirt he wore beneath his camouflage shirt. But she noted he looked tired. Her heart skipped beats at the sight of him, her heart breaking at the expected development of Jacob throwing himself into Joseph and John's shady dealings. She found herself silently, desperately chastising Alex to move his camera whenever Jacob fell out of frame. She wanted to study every detail, to see if she could pick up something, anything that would give away the point of the message this Rachel girl was sending her.
Listening to John speak, Katie understood why so many of his former colleagues in the legal field were so complimentary of John and his skills. He spoke like a showman, and he kept the crowd raptured and captivated. He knew all the right spots to lift his voice, where to lower it, to pause and break and build to a crescendo. She could feel the anticipation through the screen like she was there, inside the tent, and by the time Joseph stepped into frame to take John's place, Katie found herself shaking her head in disgust at the sight of grown men and women falling to their knees in front of these con-men.
Though his voice spoke kindly, Katie could feel something sinister simmering underneath the surface of his words. Joseph Seed was no prophet. As far as Katie was concerned, he was just another crackpot with an end of the world theory tucked into his back pocket. Somehow, he'd convinced so many people that he was right, and she wondered what it was about Joseph that drew so many to him, instead of to John, the brother who oozed snake oil from every pore.
"Something is coming. You can feel it, can't you?"
In stark contrast to his gentle voice, Katie could hear nothing but the catastrophizing words of Old Man Seed falling from his lips. Joseph looked far more respectable than his father, but the words he spoke weren't any less crazy. Katie tried to study Jacob's reaction, but the camera shifted and Jacob was gone.
Then, the sermon was over. The trio, with Mark, were sitting against a big log. Alex explained to the camera that they'd followed Eden's Gate to this clearing. Off camera, Katie could hear the shrill cries and pleas of a woman begging to be released. She screamed for them to stop. She said no. The camera turned and Katie felt her stomach twist in knots at the sight of John Seed standing in the water to his knees, talking while a man dumped something from a pale green canister into the water. On the shoreline, a handful of people huddled together, watching in fright as the girl standing waist-deep in the water struggled against a muscular blond follower who held her roughly by the elbow and the hair.
It took Katie a moment to realize she was watching a forced baptism. Disgust coiled in her belly at the thought of John Seed deeming anyone sinful or impure. She knew what he'd done, and she knew he had a closet full of skeletons that nobody would ever find. John screamed about cutting sins from the woman's soul and Katie had to wince as the blond follower violently slammed the woman's face underneath the water, her arms flailing in a futile attempt to save herself. It was horrific.
When the woman was finally pulled from the water, Katie could see what Mark had meant in the bar about his sister. All the fight and life had disappeared from the woman. She appeared drugged and unsteady, and it dawned on Katie with muted horror that whatever they'd poured into the water could have been some variant of whatever John had slipped into her wine that night at the ranch. The blond man led the woman towards the shoreline, where John was waiting for her with open arms. From their hiding spot, the group whispered amongst themselves that Eden's Gate was really drugging the locals.
Then, there was a click off-camera. Katie recognized the sound instantly and her chest clenched.
It was the sound of a gun hammer cocking.
"What do we have here?"
For a moment, Katie forgot how to breathe.
Her worst fears were confirmed when the camera turned swiftly, revealing Jacob on the other side of the gun. He was pointing it at Alex. Her heart dropped into the soles of her feet as Jacob reached forward, snatching the camera from Alex's hand. The angle Jacob appeared at now was wholly unflattering. Katie thought he looked confused by it, like he didn't know how the camera worked.
Jacob never looked into the lens. Instead, he kept his eyes on the group.
"You guys don't belong here," Jacob deadpanned.
Then, the video went dead.
It snapped back to life abruptly, startling Katie, and now, she watched the kids running and shooting for their lives. "Mark was right," Alex told the camera urgently. "If anyone is seeing this…please send help. Please. Don't forget about us. We need help…"
Katie felt a solitary tear slide down her cheek. The video was over. She sat, hands over her mouth, in thick, stunned silent, contemplating just what she should do about the situation.
Clearly, in the years since she'd seen him last, the nefarious whispers that had started at the corner of Hope County during her visit had metastasized into something truly horrific and malignant.
Nausea gripped her hard.
"What have they roped you into, Jacob?" she whispered at the black computer screen. Katie sniffled, wiping at her eyes with her fingers, shaking her head. "I know you love them, but they're going to get you killed."
Closing the video, Katie re-read the short email that had captioned the link.
Come home, Kate. He needs you.
Katie wasn't sure what to make of the message. It felt like some kind of setup, like a bad trap probably set up by John. Or maybe some strange recruitment tool for Joseph.
But the thought that Jacob might need her help had her feeling conflicted. He'd told her what he wanted, and where she'd stood. She meant nothing to him. He didn't care about her, and if she really wanted to be honest with herself, he probably never had. Even when they were young. Whenever she thought about him, which was far more often than she wanted to admit, she had to remind herself of the fact. She was nothing and nobody to Jacob Seed.
She looked at the email. Just who in the hell was Rachel Jessop, and just how close was she to the Seeds?
Katie jumped, startled when her phone rang. Reaching for it, she saw it was Alicia. "Ali…"
"Turn on the news right now!"
"Ali…"
"Whatever station. Doesn't matter. Oh my God, Katie, did you see any of this while you were out there?"
"Okay, give me a second, Ali." Reaching for her remote, Katie turned on the TV, moving it over to the news. Her jaw dropped.
HOPE COUNTY UNDER SIEGE.
"Oh my God."
"Something about a cult. It's like Waco or something. Jesus. Was this the church you were running after?"
"Yeah…" Katie's eyes were wide. "Oh my God."
"Something about a YouTube video and the feds…but everything went wrong…"
"Oh my God." It was all Katie could say. Before she could even register what she was going to do, Katie was in her bedroom, grabbing her suitcase and throwing it onto her bed.
Maybe he did need her. Maybe he was going to need her to help get his story out. Maybe he was already sitting in a jail cell in Missoula or God knows where else. Katie wondered just what was going to happen.
"Katie, are you okay?"
"Yeah. Yeah. I'm okay. I, uh…I gotta go." Hanging up the phone, Katie began throwing whatever she could into the suitcase, grabbing toiletries, clothing, her hairbrush. She was sure she'd forgotten a few things, but the suitcase was already so full she had to throw her weight against it to close it.
This time around, she suspected it was going to be a longer time spent away from home.
She was heading back to Hope County.