Westfall, Oregon, 11pm. The streets are fairly quiet as ATF agent Cassie Lathrop arrives in town in her jeep. She pulls up, puts her jacket on and wanders over to a couple of guys standing in front of a bar. She says she’s looking for a guy named Dennis Terril and asks if they might know where she might find him. The pair glances quickly at each other before the older man points down the street and tells her to try his office. As they wander off, he mentions that she’s probably a little too old for his tastes, though. She gives them a strange look before heading to the sheriff’s office, which has a badge on the door; Oregon State Sheriffs’ Association.
At Joe Braddock’s shack, windows shatter and curtains are shredded as Sheriff Terril and his hastily assembled deputies continue to destroy the place with machine gun fire. After a short while, Terril orders them to cease fire and then slowly approaches the doorway. He tells his boys to keep an eye out as he pushes it open and aims his pistol in front of him. Inside, all he finds is the photograph on the floor of Joe and Lucy’s fishing trip. “Well, damn…” is all he says.
Lit only by the moonlight, Wolverine and Joe Braddock scamper through the woods behind his shack, crouching down as they evade detection. Joe says that at least they stopped shooting but Logan replies that they’re saving their bullets for later. He comes to a stream and asks Joe which way now. Joe leaps into the stream and points the way, saying that they follow this till the road and then on to Jeremiah Lowe’s place. He tells Logan that Jerry is the guy he nailed in the jewels but he figures he’ll still help them. Logan stops and looks round. Joe tells him to come on, as they know they got away but Logan says no. He has other things on his mind.
He wants to chat with the sheriff but Joe tells him that he’d bad news and he’s bad news with a badge. He’ll kill Logan the first chance he gets. Logan is stubborn at the best of times. He looks down at Joe from a small ridge and tells him to get to his friend’s and then get the hell out of town. “There’s a shop in Portland called ‘My Cold Dead Hand,’ run by a guy named Blaine. Go there, tell him I sent you. Tell him why.” As he sprints away back to the shack, Joe asks him to wait; he doesn’t know his name but it’s too late as Wolverine is gone.
After finding nobody at the sheriff’s office, Cassie sits in her jeep and stakes the place out. Before long, a man with short blond hair pulls up in a white pick-up with some others and uses a key to enter the premises. Cassie watches intently. Once he’s inside, Cassie crosses the street and enters the office, finding the man with his hands in the drawers. “Dennis, I swear it better be here…” Cassie says, excuse me, and introduces herself as Agent Cassandra Lathrop, BATF. She shows him her badge and asks if he’s not Dennis Terril by any chance? The man stands and tells her that he isn’t; he’s just a friend of his. She asks if Sheriff Terril lets his friends rummage through his office when he’s not around but he laughs off the suggestion, telling Cassie that he’s a special case. He and Dennis are very tight. “I’m Cry by the way. Nice to meet you Cassandra.” She replies that she’s Agent Lathrop, asking if Cry is his nickname. He offers her a creepy grin and tells her that Cry’s his god-given name, because he makes so many ladies cry out for more.
He asks Cassie why the ATF is looking to talk to his friend Dennis; has he been playing with guns again? Something like that, she replies, but as she speaks she notices his fingers slipping into the drawer again. She orders him to step away from the desk but he asks why he should do that. Unseen by Cassie, two of Cry’s accomplices enter the office and close in on her. As she replies that it’s because she told him to, she turns and notices the two men, asking Cry if they are his friends. He replies that he’d call them followers as he twists the angle poise lamp towards her and lifts a can of mace from the drawer. “Yeah, that’s more appropriate; they follow me.” Cassie realizes the danger and reaches for her pistol, ordering Cry to put his hands over his head. However, before she can act, Cry sprays her in the eyes with the mace, blinding her and tells his friends to grab the gun.
The two men grab her arms as more mace pours onto her face. She struggles blindly and manages to get her pistol but she is outnumbered and severely disadvantaged. A punch to the face puts her down and she bleeds on the floor. Once she’s down she has no chance, and all three men rain blows upon her before Cry tells them to put her in the truck.
Outside Joe Braddock’s shack, the boys have found no trace of their prey, which annoys Sheriff Terril. He tells one of the Brothers to get the boys back in the trucks. Braddock got out and he figures he’ll head for one of his buddies. He tells the man to send a truck to Lowe’s place and another to Healey’s. He asks Terril if he wants them to arrest them but Terril doesn’t give a rat’s mom about Braddock. He wants the new guy; he wants to know why he’s here. As the trucks depart, he says to himself that this ain’t good. Behind him, lying in the back seat of his squad car, Logan fixes the back of his head with a menacing stare.
Terril drives back into town and drops his hat on the passenger seat. Suddenly, there’s a ‘snikt,’ and Terril finds his right arm is pierced by a claw, which comes straight through the seat. He senses the pain as Wolverine, his face covered by shadows, says hello. Sweating, Terril asks who the hell he is. Wolverine warns him not to do it, not to go for the gun but Terril sweeps his left arm over and receives another claw in his left shoulder as punishment. “Damn, that hurts!” screams Sheriff Terril and Wolverine points out that it’ll hurt more if he doesn’t talk to him. Terril says he can go to hell but a third claw pierces his right shoulder and he begins to sweat profusely. His voice wavers as he tells Wolverine that he’ll kill him. “Big talk from the man with the badge,” he replies. Terril asks him what he wants.
Wolverine asks him where he’ll find Cry. Finding little choice but to cooperate, the sheriff tells Wolverine that he’s in the desert, about twenty miles southeast of there. There’s an abandoned mine; that’s where he’ll find him. Logan has his face right up to the partition, asking if there’s anything else. Terril says that he’ll never reach him; he’ll hide behind the Brothers and their guns. He’ll kill Logan before he gets over the wall. “He’ll try,” Logan replies. Terril, now released from the pain the claws were causing, asks him why he cares. Braddock’s brat was a tease and she got what was coming to her. Logan’s face erupts in anger. Before too long, he steps from the car and thanks the sheriff for his help and, as he heads towards his office, the Sheriff remains in his car, dead, with the partition ripped to shreds and blood dripping all over the windscreen.
Wolverine wanders through the office and discovers the can of mace lying on the floor and a pool of blood. He dips his finger into it as his eyes begin to water. He tastes it before wandering outside, rubbing his eyes. “Man I hate that stuff,” he says as he notices the red Jeep Wrangler parked nearby. He sniffs around the Jeep and wanders what ‘Klamath Girl’ is doing there, and where she is now.
Elsewhere, the locks of a steel door slide open and two men carry Agent Lathrop into the room. They unceremoniously throw her weary body onto the floor and one of them points at Sister Lynn, telling her that Cry asks for her company. She smiles maniacally as she joins the two men, leaving Cassie to pick herself up. The room is sparse, grubby even with only a toilet, a sink and several bunk beds occupying the space. Several women approach her, offering to help her. One tells her that you never know when Cry will call for you and another says that they’ll get her cleaned up just as soon as they can, and into a proper dress. Cassie raises her arms, telling them to get the hell off of her. She has a black eye, screaming that she is a federal officer and has been kidnapped. “What the hell kind of a place is this.” One dark-haired young woman, sitting in a top bunk, tells her that it’s a cult, or a harem, or a prison; take your pick. Behind her, scratched into the cell wall is the name Lucy with ten days crossed off.
The women, all wearing what appear to be white hospital gowns, huddle into a group as Cassie speaks to her. She climbs down from the bunk and informs Cassie that Cry calls them his ‘wives.’ Every so often one of them is ‘escorted’ up to see him. That girl’s gone for a few days, then she comes back here and someone else goes up. Some of them, like Sister Lynn; they’re anxious to go. “Not you,” Cassie asks. She asks defensively if she doesn’t look like good bride material, before washing her hands and saying, “No, not me, no way, not ever me.” She introduces herself as Kim and offers her a damp cloth as Cassie has blood on her face. She thanks her as she wipes her mouth but notices some of the other women, looking almost jealously at her.
Kim climbs back onto her bunk and lies down. Cassie asks how she gets out of there but Kim says she doesn’t. She’s tried but Cry has got twenty, thirty guys who all come running when he calls, all of them armed. Even if she made it to the outside, she wouldn’t make it over the wall. Cassie points her head in the direction of the other women and asks what their deal is. Kim replies that they think they love him. She thinks that maybe he’s a mutant, maybe it’s just hostage psychology but they buy it. They’ll do anything for him. Cassie asks her how long she’s been here. About a month she tells her, though it’s hard to tell. She says she was hitching on I-84, trying to get to Boise when she got picked up by one of the Brothers. Now, here she is. Cassie asks if she’s been ‘escorted’ to Cry. Kim turns her head away, saying that she has, once, but she disobeyed him, so he did this. She holds her hand up, revealing her left thumb to be missing. Cassie is clearly shocked.
The morning is approaching as Wolverine crosses the desert, kicking up dust as he walks determinedly towards a precipice overlooking a natural basin. Down below stands Cry’s fortress, complete with water tower. Another building stands nearby to the east. Logan shoves one fist into the palm of his other hand and grins.
