The guy started to weep silently. What a terrifying experience he’d come through. Hopefully, the hospital he was being transported to would be able to reverse whatever had been done to him.
A paramedic with a gurney was waiting at the top of the steep slope. Greer hoisted his half of the backboard onto the mobile cot. He was about to turn away when the victim stopped him.
“She did it.”
“Who? Did what?” Greer asked as the medics wheeled him away.
“Sally. She found help. She left to bring back help.”
Greer slipped his gloved hand into the young man’s. “Yes. She did. She was very brave. I’m sorry it took us so long to get to you.”
A tear slipped over the guy’s cheek. Greer watched as he was stowed inside an ambulance. When the ambulance pulled away, he moved down the slope to the spot where they found Sally. Her remains were being bagged for removal. She hadn’t come far, physically, from the site of her torture, but she’d moved worlds to reach out to him.
Maybe she had believed his promise of help after all.
Chapter Thirty-Five
Greer knocked on the Haskel’s door. Mrs. Haskel opened it. Fatigue shadowed her eyes. In just the few days since the outbreak was discovered, she’d aged a decade. It was as if she’d stepped outside the walls of her Shangri-la world and time caught up with her.
“Mr. Dawson.”
He tried to smile, but he didn’t have it in him. He knew she was hurting. She and several others in the community had spent the day pouring over forensic reconstructions made of those found in the mass grave in order to give preliminary identifications for the families missing loved ones.
He was there to burden her with yet another young face needing a name—Sally.
Mrs. Haskel stepped aside and invited him in. Sitting at her table were half a dozen people he hadn’t seen around the village. The community was crawling with outsiders now, so there were lots of people coming and going he didn’t recognize.
Mrs. Haskel made the introductions. He was stunned to learn that her visitors were former Friends who slipped away during their tithes rather than commit crimes. They were adults now, in ages ranging from early twenties to mid-thirties. She knew them, knew their families. Some had come back too late—their parents and siblings had passed from the smallpox.
All of them wanted to stay for good. Mrs. Haskel had had them checked out by the FBI. Greer couldn’t wait to tell Remi. This new development meant that these returning members could help the village navigate the current crisis, perhaps even offset the numbers of adults needed to foster all the kids orphaned by the disease or the arrests of their parents.
Why wasn’t Mrs. Haskel smiling? “This is good news,” he said.
She nodded. “It’s wonderful news. I spent the day with parents who got the terrible confirmation that their children will never be returning.” She looked at her visitors. “And now others who lost their kids long ago have them back again. It’s a gift.”
“I’m sorry to add to your burden, but I have one more girl I hope you can identify for me.” Greer showed her the reconstruction of the girl he and Remi found on the hillside.
She took the large photo. Her hands shook as she looked at it. “Yes. I know this girl.” She looked up at Greer. “Was she also in the mass grave?”
“No. She was outside the building, on the hill. She fell and broke her neck. We think she had gotten out and was going for help.”
Mrs. Haskel nodded. Tears filled her eyes. “This is—was—Rebecca Morris. She has no one to mourn her. She was an orphan when she left for her tithe.” She handed the photo back to him.
Sally.
“She has me. I will see that she has a proper headstone for her ashes.”
Mrs. Haskel nodded. “She and the doctor wanted to marry, even though it had been decided that she would marry the woodcutter because the WKB demanded it.” She shook her head. “So many lives ruined so needlessly.”
“What will happen to the Friends now?” Greer asked, though he doubted enough time had passed to answer that.
“We will continue,” one of her visitors said as he came to stand next to Mrs. Haskel.
Another from the group joined them. “We’ll return to our core values. We’ll still do tithes, but they will be visible to the whole community, in service to our community. They won’t be sin tithes anymore.”
“That way we’ll keep ourselves from becoming blackmail fodder for anyone like the WKB,” a third returning member said.
Mrs. Haskel gave Greer a sad smile. “Many of us wanted to end the way we were doing things. Especially when the WKB got so involved in our community. We didn’t know how to stop it without destroying ourselves. In the end, it destroyed us anyway.” She looked at him. “We should have fought sooner and harder—” she nodded toward the picture he held “—before so many innocent lives were thrown away just so we could protect our guilty ones.”
“The FBI hasn’t associated you with any crime, Mrs. Haskel.”
She shook her head. “I was a coward. I got pregnant early so that I wouldn’t have to do my tithe. But don’t mistake me. I’m as guilty as everyone else. I knew and did nothing.”
Greer sighed. He looked from her to each of her visitors, hoping they could in fact put the village back together again.
“Thank you for ID’ing Rebecca. I’ll see that she and the doctor are laid to rest together in your cemetery.”
*
Greer stepped in to Remi’s cabin. She looked up from her laptop, then hurried over to him. “What’s wrong?”
He showed her the photo of Sally’s reconstruction. “I asked several people if they knew her. They all did. She was Rebecca Morris.”
Remi reached out and touched his arm. “I’m sorry. I was hoping she was one of the ones who just ran away.”
“She was a fighter.” He shook his head.
“She came and got you.”