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“So, Marshal… Tell me about yourself.”
“Eat me.”
John clucked his tongue, shaking his head. “That’s not very nice.” He smirked. “And if you should end up with Jacob after me, never tell him to ‘eat you’. You definitely won’t like how he’ll respond.”
Burke was tempted to ask what he meant by that, but forced himself to stay quiet. It smelled of a tactic designed to make him talk: First you ask a question to sate your curiosity, then you’re getting into a conversation, and suddenly you’re accidentally letting things slip without meaning to.
Admittedly, Burke didn’t have much to tell the Seeds that would actually be of use to them, but it was a matter of principle.
Deputy Hudson sat at the opposite end of the room, bound and gagged to a rolling chair. Earlier, after the Peggies had brought Burke to John’s bunker and before John himself had come for a chat, she’d managed to get the gag out of her mouth. “Are you okay?” She croaked, spitting as though she still had some fibers stuck to her tongue.
Burke had nodded, unable to talk around his own gag. It wasn’t a total lie: He was alive and not seriously injured (how that had been managed after a helicopter crash and being in a car that had taken a drop off a bridge), so by his metric, he was okay. It was Rook he was worried about: He’d thought she was right behind him, but when he’d dragged himself to shore she’d been nowhere to be seen.
He hoped she was alright, but right now he had a bigger, more immediate problem to worry about.
“Marshal, let’s not play stupid, mm? Just answer my questions and Joseph can assign you accordingly. How many of your superiors know that you’re here?”
Burke’s mouth stayed firmly shut.
After fuckin’ Nancy proving her disloyalty to the Sheriff’s Department at the worst imaginable time, he couldn’t discount the idea that there were other agents of the cult outside the valley. He wasn’t about to name anyone in his chain of command, lest they be targeted for assassination or kidnapping.
“Your loyalty is touching, but this is a matter of convenience. I have other sources I can go to for this.” A cold, Cheshire-cat smirk unfolded on John’s face. “Some that might surprise you.”
It was a cheap shot, a little needle into Burke’s side designed to provoke a reaction, but he couldn’t deny that his stomach clenched at the thought of it. Was it possible that there were some leaks in the Marshal’s office in Montana- or worse, had the cult actually succeeded in infiltrating it, the way that they had the Sheriff’s Department? Fuck, that was a terrifying thought: Burke ran through every coworker he knew had worked on the Hope County case (there weren’t many), and all of them were people he’d worked with for at least a couple of years. He couldn’t see any of them betraying him.
Of course, that was the nature of betrayal, wasn’t it? You usually didn’t see it coming.
John was studying him carefully, waiting for some visible sign that the blow had landed. But Burke wasn’t a greenhorn, he could keep a straight face pretty well, and eventually John frowned. “Well, I’m sure you’ll get the full story later, as Joseph sees fit. When was your last communication with the Marshal’s office?”
“If you’re supposedly so well-connected, why don’t you figure that out on your own?” Burke sneered.
Over John’s shoulder, he saw Hudson’s eyes widen. She started shaking her head, like ‘No, no, shut up, don’t make it worse’.
“Now, why would I jump through those hoops when I have a direct source right in front of me? Talk, Marshal.” John’s tone was easy enough, but his body-language was betraying him: He was getting irritated with Burke’s lack of information, with his defiance. This room they were in had a variety of tools and weapons, and Burke was leery that he might end up meeting one of them intimately if he didn’t say something soon.
Still, he couldn’t bring himself to say anything. Part of it was loyalty towards his coworkers- but some of it was just pig-headed stubbornness, his best or worst trait depending on the day.
John stood up, pacing calmly over to a worktable at the side of the room. Hudson eyed Burke, but John had gagged her again and it was hard to figure out what she was trying to convey. Did she know something that he didn’t?
“You know, Marshal,” John remarked, voice tight, “I really do prefer that people just be honest with me. I really do prefer that people just not beat around the bush with me.” He picked up a hammer off the table, flipping it in his hand. “And you, you seem to be beating around the bush with me! And it disappoints me, because that means that I might have to resort to uglier tactics to get what I need.”
“Oh yeah?”
Hudson glared at him, shaking her head sharply. ‘Shut up, Burke!’ he could imagine her hissing.
“Yeah,” John drawled, approaching him with the hammer. “Yeah, I just might. Unless, of course, you want to actually tell me something?”
“Fuck you.”
“That’s what I thought.”
John brought the hammer down, right against the front of Burke’s vest. It hurt like a motherfucker and knocked the wind out of him, made him cough and gag for a minute. But once the initial shock and pain had subsided, Burke figured that he was probably okay- relatively speaking, anyway. The vest was designed to stand up to a bullet, so all the hammer had done was probably leave a bruise; much better than it would have been if he hadn’t been wearing the vest at all.
Burke, with some effort, straightened up, still breathing a little raggedly. “Wow, you hit like a bitch. Can’t even manage a good one with a fucking hammer.”
John’s expression grew stormy; past him, Hudson’s eyes rolled shut and she shook her head.
“Oh no? Well, why don’t we-?”
“John.”
There was an immediate shift in John’s demeanor: He straightened up, damn near jumping to attention, and the hand holding the hammer swiftly went to hide behind his back. “Joseph,” He said solemnly as Joseph Seed stepped into the room. How long had he been standing there? “I’m afraid I wasn’t able to get anything out of him.”
“That’s alright, John,” Joseph remarked lightly, eyeing John in a way that suggested he knew damn well what John had been doing before he’d entered the room. “It’s quite fine for now. I think it would be best to assign the Marshal- Deputy Hudson will stay with you in the meantime.”
Burke saw Hudson shudder in her seat.
Given recent events, it was understandable why.
“It’s fine,” Burke said snidely, impulsively. “I can stay here with John. We were having a great conversation before you walked in, really enlightening.”
“I’m sure it was,” Joseph said. “But I have other plans for you.”
Burke suddenly detected a strange smell, something… Maybe a bit like pot, but also like lilies? Definitely some form of flower, and it was really cloying, really strong, to the point where his vision was starting to get a little fuzzy.
A hand settled on his shoulder, too small to be Joseph or John’s. A flash of white, and now a young woman was kneeling in front of him, one he recognized from the church, Faith Seed, the little sister.
“The Marshal will go with you, Faith,” Joseph’s voice echoed as little pinpoints of light danced in Burke’s eyes.
Faith giggled, smiling sweetly up at Burke. But he detected something sinister, something malicious in her eyes.
“Thank you, Joseph.”
The world went white, and then green, and Burke was lost in the Bliss.
-End