“The lines are still down and we’re not getting cell service out here,” she says. “I don’t need you going over there and getting everyone killed, including yourself. And that’s if you make it that far. Just because it’s not snowing anymore and the sun is out, doesn’t mean it will be a cakewalk to get back to your place from here. It’s still cold and it’s still dangerous.”
“I know,” I agree. “It just kills me to think mom and Kara are over there with that psycho and it’s only three miles away. I just want to grab a gun and save them.”
“I know that, Jake,” she says. “I feel the same way. I want nothing more than to saddle up my horse and take my guns over there and take care of that man, so he can never hurt another living soul. But we’ve got to be smart about this and we’ve got to come up with a plan.”
I watch as she starts pacing, before stopping directly in front of me.
“Do you think there’s any chance they could have gotten to that safe room your father built?”
I shake my head.
“I just don’t see how. He had us all tied up. Unless he felt safe around Mom and Kara because they were girls and he didn’t think they could do anything with a gun trained on them.”
“That would be his mistake,” Aunt Ava managed a smile. “Your mom’s smart and she’s a better shot with a gun than I am.”
“I know,” I smile back. “She can outshoot me, too. Daddy taught her well. But she’d have to be able to get to the guns and we locked them all up in the gun safe in their bedroom, thinking we’d be gone.”
She walks over to lay a hand on my shoulder.
“If anyone can get her and Kara out of this mess, it will be your mom.”
“She would sacrifice herself to make sure Kara was safe,” I say, swallowing the lump that’s formed in my throat as I think of what they’ve been going through since Graham and I were forced out of the house.
I can tell she doesn’t know how to respond to that comment, so she looks away. But it’s the truth. I know it. Graham knows it. Everyone in this room knows it.
Mom would give her life in a heartbeat if it meant she’d be able to save one of us.
I just hope she hasn’t already done that.
Faith
It seems like hours have passed since Daniel threw me across the room and storm stopped. I haven’t moved from my place on the floor.
Daniel looks at me with such malice, it’s not hard to imagine what he wants to do to me. I know how his mind thinks. I thought about him enough over the weeks he was abusing me and the years since I left.
He wants to kill me. Of that I am certain. His hesitation doesn’t come from his decision, it’s coming from how he wants to do it.
He won’t use his gun.
That would be too quick. Too easy. Too impersonal for him.
I’ve seen him look at the knives in the kitchen more than once. He’s thinking about taking one and stabbing me, but he’s also thinking that, too, would be too much, too quick.
He’s thought a million times over the years how he’d like to punish me for divorcing him and dying before he could exact his revenge. And now, he’s replaying all of his twisted fantasies in his mind, trying to decide which one will give him the most satisfaction in the end.
But I can tell by the look on his face that all of his options are coming up lacking. He wants to take his time, but he can’t. Not here. Not anymore.
The sun is shining, but it’s starting to set. He might, if he’s lucky, have a couple of days before someone comes to find out why the kids and I never made it to Florida. At the latest, Matt will be headed back.
He will probably rape me more than once. I’ve already come to that conclusion and steeled myself for when it eventually happens. It will not be the first time he’s raped me.
It’s just another form of abuse. He liked to hurt me when we were married, and he wants to hurt me now.
He’s thinking and the longer he thinks, the viler the things he’s coming up with. I can read him like a book.
“You don’t have much time left,” I say, and he looks at me. The hatred and loathing I see looking back makes me want to shrink against the wall he threw me against. “Matt will be home within two days now that the sun is shining. And my neighbors, who by the way are also my brother and sister-in-law, will be over to check on the house sooner than that. It’s nice to have people who love you enough to care about you and your family.”
He stands up.
“They won’t find much left of you when they get here,” he says.
My heart beats faster with his words. I was right. He wants to kill me. But more than that, he wants to punish me. In my mind I try and take stock of any injuries I got from him throwing me across the room earlier. I don’t think anything is broken. I’ve got some kind of a cut above my head, but I don’t think it’s anything serious.
I start to wonder if I could make it outside.
But that’s supposing I could get past him and out the door. The snow is deep. It would hinder my movements a great deal and he has a gun.
“Get up,” he orders, waving the gun at me. “Get up and get undressed. I want to see what another man’s been enjoying all these years.”
Matt
“We’re making good time,” Caleb says as we approach the ridge where we’ll turn towards the ranch. “It’s not as bad as I thought it was going to be.”
“Probably another three hours.”
“How’s your horse holding up?” he asks. We wrapped up their legs against the snow to prevent them getting frozen. The snow in the forest wasn’t nearly as deep as the open range, though the sun was melting what was sitting on the branches, breaking some of them off from the wet snow and sliding down to spook the horses at times.
It was slow moving, but we were moving.
“When do you think we’ll get to the house?” Caleb asks, as we take the trail by Granger’s Ridge. “By my calculations, it should be around five if we keep up this pace. Despite the snow, the horses have made good time.”
I nod in agreement as my eyes settle on my gun.
“That’s about the time I was thinking.”
The thought going through my mind make me sick to my stomach and Caleb must have noticed.
“I’m sure everything is going to be alright,” he says, though I know he’s just trying to reassure me. I’ve seen him checking his guns several times during the ride too.
“I’m scared what I might find when I get back,” I admit. “What if I’m too late?”
“Maybe they all got to the safe room and are just there waiting for you to come home and let them know everything is okay.”
I look at him.
“I appreciate you saying that,” I tell him. “I can’t get the image of Kara talking to him out of my mind. He could have shown up at the house and Kara would have let him in thinking he was just a nice man she’d just met. She has no way of knowing how dangerous he is.”
“Faith will protect them,” he says. “She would die before she ever let anything happen to those kids.”
“I know that,” I say. “But that’s what scares me. This man would have no problem killing her or any of them. He’s that dangerous.”
“I can’t believe, after all these years, he found her.”
I shake my head.
“It was just a coincidence,” I say. “He was just at the right place at the right time to see her and find out she was still alive.”