“We’ve provided Mercy Callahan protection,” Molina snapped. This wasn’t playful banter. She was reining him in, and he didn’t like it. At all. “Agent Reynolds can take care of himself. If you can’t agree, perhaps the Bureau isn’t a good fit for you after all.”

There it was, then. The choice.

He could hear his aunt Dana’s voice in his mind. Keep your friends close and your enemies closer, Tom. And then his mother. Do the right thing, even when it’s the hard thing.

He gave a curt nod, knowing he’d continue doing what needed to be done. “I understand.”

“I have your word?” Molina asked, her jaw taut.

He was tempted to cross his fingers behind his back, but that was childish. “I will not feed Gideon and Mercy information in the future. You have my word.”

Molina narrowed her eyes at him. “Why don’t I believe you?”

He managed a thin smile. “I gave you my word. Ma’am.”

There were, of course, so many other ways to get vital information to them. If it was a matter of life and death, if Gideon and Mercy’s safety was on the line, he’d find another way.

“All right, then.” She gave him a sideways glance, sharp as a knife. “What else do you know, Agent Hunter? I take it that you’ve checked out all of the former Eden sites.”

“Of course. The notebook we found in Ephraim’s safe-deposit box had a very accurate map. None of the locations are currently occupied, though it was still valuable to find that map. We learned that their earlier locations are obvious from the sky, but the more recent ones are not. They’ve effectively utilized ground cover, building earth homes. We thought we might locate them through infrared, checking for heat signatures, but so far that’s been a bust.”

Ephraim Burton had left a veritable Eden playbook in his safe-deposit box, with detailed descriptions of all of the Founding Elders’ sins, meticulous records of the cash stored in the offshore accounts, and the map of previous Eden locations. Tom assumed that it was some kind of dead man’s switch, that if he was killed mysteriously, the contents of his box would somehow be made public. And indeed, it had ended up in the hands of the FBI.

“You found the most recent location?”

“Yes, ma’am. But there wasn’t anything there. Nothing living, anyway. We found evidence of animals—a lot of very fresh shit in a variety of sizes. It was still fresh, maybe a few days old. We also found a lot of animal blood. It appears they slaughtered at least some of their farm animals. Maybe they couldn’t take them all. We didn’t miss them by much.”

“Did you tell Miss Callahan and Agent Reynolds that you have a list of the old sites?”

“I told them we’d found the very first Eden, but not the other sites. That would have made them want to explore each one, and I didn’t want them to be seen there in case Pastor and DJ returned for some reason.”