Read Online The Dead Run by Adam Mansbach - Free Book Online

he’s one nasty motherfucker.”
    â€œI’m afraid you lost me with the technical jargon there, doc.”
    She actually smiled. Score one for the team.
    â€œCare to elaborate?”
    â€œWell, like most cult leaders, Seth’s past is mysterious.”
    â€œBecause he lies about it, you mean. Better your followers don’t know you spent ten years shampooing carpets before becoming the Chosen One.”
    â€œThat’s usually the case, yes. But Seth is genuinely impossible to trace. No tax records, no birth certificate, no social. He claims to have ‘walked out of the desert’ twenty years ago—”
    â€œNot hard to believe, around here. Half of what I deal with on a daily basis is people walking out of the damn desert.”
    â€œâ€”after wandering for forty years, like the ancient Hebrews.”
    â€œOkay, yeah, that’s different.”
    â€œOh, and he says he’s descended from the high priest of an ancient god. Who’s going to pass his powers down to Seth, bringing an end to the world as we know it.”
    â€œSounds like pretty standard stuff—a little from column A, little from column B. Where do the girls come in?”
    â€œI’ve never gotten close enough to find that out. Melinda Richards was my best source, but she’d only heard rumors. I know he recruits families with young daughters. By the time the girls disappear, they’ve been off the grid for years.”
    â€œAnd you believe he’s killing them.”
    â€œNo, I think he’s trafficking them. Telling their parents they’ve gone off on some kind of missionary trip, then selling them into sexual slavery.” Cantwell’s jaw tightened, as if she were grinding her teeth. “Forget about luxury cars and villas and all that. The new status symbol, if you’re a Mexican drug lord, is a harem of virgin girls.”
    â€œI didn’t know that,” Nichols said evenly, wondering where she was getting this stuff.
    â€œGiven the choice, Sheriff? I’d rather be dead.”
    The sheriff glanced over his shoulder, at the shotgun lying in the backseat. “If you’re right about any of this, Seth’s compound will be heavily fortified. What do you think we’re gonna do, just stroll up to the front door, ring the bell?”
    Cantwell’s eyes burned up the road. The Audi’s speedometer edged past ninety.
    â€œThe one solid piece of information I got from Melinda is that before the girls disappeared, they were removed from the living quarters and brought to an old barn, far from everything else. She was terrified of that place—of her daughter ending up there. It’s how I finally convinced her to get out. And unless I miss my guess, that’s exactly where Sherry is right now.”
    A ARON S ETH’S B UICK rolled slowly up the rutted road and came to a stop before the compound’s meetinghouse. He shut the door without a sound and ran a hand over his thinning brown hair, carefully parted and meticulously combed.
    He was a slight man, neatly attired in khakis, a white shirt, and a blue blazer adorned with an American flag lapel pin. At first glance, his most notable feature was a lack of notable features—an overall plainness so pronounced that the eyes slid right off him, made a second glance seem like a waste of time.
    It was an impression he had spent years cultivating.
    If one looked longer, one might notice some other things. That he never seemed to sweat, for instance—as if the brutal afternoon sun beat down on everything but him. Or that he possessed a strength and quickness remarkable for his age.
    Whatever age that was. For the longer one looked at Aaron Seth, the less it became possible to say, with any degree of certainty. He might have been seventy and exceptionally spry, or forty and formerly hard-living.
    Seth could not have said himself. His memories of childhood were blurred and distant, a