“And how long were you in the cellar?” Brian asked after Kate had finished describing what happened to her on the day she left and in the following days. We’d called Dean last night after our conversation with Kate, and he’d made arrangements to have everyone on the team here at eight to hear her disclosure. Brian and Camille were the only ones in the living room with Kate. The rest of us were watching the interview on monitors Dean had set up in the dining room. Abbi had been sleeping when people started arriving, and I’d told Scott he should wake her for it, but he’d insisted we let her sleep, since she’d been up most of the night with Kate.

“Forty days and forty nights, just like Jesus,” Kate said while she played with Shiloh’s fingers. It’d taken everything I had to sit through her descriptions of the cellar. For a second I thought I detected a hint of pride on her face at having survived down there for that long with no human contact besides Ray, but it was gone that quickly, leaving me doubting that I’d seen it at all.

“Refresh my memory, since it’s been a long time since my Catholic school days—what exactly was Jesus doing in the desert?” Brian asked.

“While Jesus was being groomed and prepared for his ministry, he was taken into the wilderness, where he was tempted by the devil for forty days and forty nights.” Her voice changed whenever she quoted scripture or anything else related to their theology. “His experience was actually much worse than mine. The devil was relentless in his pursuit.”

Watching her talk about Love International would’ve been fascinating if it wasn’t so disturbing. She was barely coherent, but the moment the conversation shifted into discussing Love International, she became an articulate and well-spoken individual. I had never studied psychology, but I didn’t need to have a background in mental health to see she’d been brainwashed and indoctrinated with their propaganda. She’d obviously been coached. She was like an automaton trained to respond to certain trigger words.

I watched Camille during the interview as much as I watched Kate. She kept quiet, allowing Brian to ask all the questions, but her eyes were laser focused on Kate. I would’ve loved to get inside her head and see what she was thinking about all of this.

“Was the devil relentless in his pursuit of you?” Brian asked.

She nodded.

“That must have been awful.” Was the concern in Brian’s eyes genuine, or was he just trying to get her to talk? I couldn’t tell. “What did you do to get through it?”

“I read.”

“What did you read?”

“The Bible. I read to Abbi. That helped.”

“Did you do anything else?”