Chapter Six
Tamsyn
If she hadn’t already lost her voice, it would be gone now.
Sitting on the couch in Merrick’s living room, her legs curled under her, Tamsyn stared at the strangers infiltrating what she considered her safe space. The woman didn’t seem so bad, but the man…
Ice came to mind.
Cold, impenetrable ice.
Merrick had introduced them as Anarchy and Jasper when he let them in almost twenty minutes ago. Since then, she’d been living in a constant state of unease with pale, frost-blue eyes studying her every move. Not that she’d made many.
Anarchy rested a red portable screen on her thighs, her fingers flying over a set of keys with letters on them. Her eyes were a dark, warm brown, and her face was friendly.
“I don’t think you’re going to get any answers, kitten. The girl’s mute.”
“The girl has a name, Fairfax,” Merrick growled from beside Tamsyn. “I suggest you use it in her own home.”
“Don’t get your dicks in a twist,” Anarchy muttered absently, her attention on the screen in front of her. “I’ll get the answers I need when Tamsyn is ready to give them. Don’t push her, J. She’s not a criminal for you to interrogate.”
“Bet I could get her to talk.”
Tamsyn felt her tongue wither in her mouth. She didn’t know why they were here, only that Merrick’s friend Grit worked with them both at his old job. It probably wasn’t a good thing that they’d decided to pay Merrick a visit, especially when he didn’t seem to be on pleasant terms with Jasper.
“Merrick, do you know any good hiking routes around here? I asked Grit, but he wasn’t sure. Not too many guests come here for trailing around in the woods, I guess.”
“Uh… hiking?”
“Yeah, maybe somewhere to camp? We like to head out into nature every now and again to reconnect. Phoenix is beautiful, but Denver is just wonderful. Without the kids in tow, a few nights out in the wild would be the perfect break.”
Jasper’s eyes slid across to his wife, his starkly white eyebrow lifting in question.
Yeah, that guy was no hiker. Tamsyn got the impression his idea of a perfect break was breaking something on another human being. He was attractive, she’d give him that; tall, those freakishly blue eyes, his bone structure. Even his hair gave him an added edge, that otherworldly shade of white-blond.
Anarchy shook her hair away from her face—a darker, more golden shade than her husband’s—and frowned at the screen. “I’ve been looking at the area maps and Evander’s property lines end partway through the forest. We want to go higher, maybe up to the mountain ridge? Somewhere we can see the stars.”
Merrick grunted. “The ridge must be a good four, five day hike if you get good weather. Levi’s got his studio overlooking the valley; might be safer and fit in better with your schedule. Pretty sure he won’t give a damn if you want to commune with nature.”
Twisting her fingers together, Tamsyn kept her head down as panic began to rise from her toes and suck her down into hell. These people didn’t know the brutal terrain up there on the mountain, and they wouldn’t survive the monsters living up there.
“Tamsyn? Are you local to the area?”
She jerked her head up, eyes wide.
Deny, deny, deny .
Feverishly shaking her head, she dropped her gaze again.
“That’s a shame.” Anarchy sighed, her fingers still tap-tap-tapping. “No one knows the area like locals, and they usually know all the secret places tourists never see. Merrick said you were wandering around for a while out there; that sounds scary. Did you see any wildcats? That’s on my bucket list—things to do before I die,” she explained when Tamsyn frowned in confusion. “See a wildcat in its natural habitat instead of caged in a zoo.”
There were wildcats all around Ridge point. Bobcats and mountain lions were the most commonly sighted, causing uproar in the community if they prowled too close, but for the most part, they stayed well away from the humans in their midst.
A few years ago, though, the elders had sentenced one of the boundary security guards to death after he shot a lynx. The animal had been part of a conservation effort, protected under some outside law, and was wearing a collar when it died.
Tamsyn remembered the elders’ fury, their haste in destroying the collar and disposing of the carcass, and the way the guard’s tongue was removed before they tossed him in a coffin and watched their wives cover the casket with soil.
Buried alive, choking on his own blood, because he endangered the community.
For two days, Jedidiah ranted about idiots and consequences, taking his anger out on her whenever the whim struck. If she recalled, some officials arrived not long after, tracing the lynx’s tracks back to where the collar’s signal died.
Who knew such things existed?
The guard’s error cost the elders greatly—the trade required to redirect the officials was one of the largest she’d ever heard her father discuss.
“Little owl?”
Merrick’s quiet rumble dragged her out of the memory. She turned to look at him, feeling disorientated as the living room came back into focus. Offering him a weak smile, she tried to seem attentive.
“Have you ever seen a bobcat? A lynx?”
Oh, she couldn’t lie to him. Besides, what difference did it make if she admitted it? There was a lot of open space and territory in this area, and the wildlife to go with it. She dipped her head once.
“Oh, did you see a lynx?” Eyes shining with excitement, Anarchy clasped her hands together and bounced on her seat. “They’re really rare, like critically endangered. I read that there’s only around two hundred and fifty of them in Colorado, but they don’t even know if there is that many. The numbers could be a lot lower. They’re protected under the Endangered Species Act across the country.”
Tamsyn just shrugged. They were very big cats with fluffy coats, sharp claws, and teeth that could leave nasty holes in a person. Pretty to look at from afar, but she didn’t feel the urge to stalk one through the mountains.
“I’m so jealous!” Squealing, the blonde’s fingers started that irritating clacking again.
A warning itch scratched between Tamsyn’s shoulder blades. Something didn’t feel right about this; she felt a distance between her and Merrick that hadn’t been there last night when they’d eaten in the fancy restaurant. Her suspicions about Jasper were making her anxious, and his wife was amplifying that anxiety.
Slowly, struggling to catch her breath with the pressure smothering her chest, Tamsyn unfolded her legs. Every instinct was telling her to run and hide, and she was close friends with them now. Her bare feet settled into the carpet as she shuffled to the edge of the couch.
“What do you need, darlin’?”
Don’t look at him, don’t make eye contact with anyone.
The men in the room were obviously a different species of male. The power they held in their eyes, that emanated from them physically, was unlike anything she’d felt before; the elders and lower males in the community vibrated with bully energy, but these two… they possessed something Jedidiah and the others could only dream about at night.
Jasper snorted a laugh. “How fast can she run?”
“What?”
“She’s gearing up to bolt.”
“Maybe if you stopped intimidating her, she wouldn’t feel the need to,” Anarchy chastised, glancing up with a sympathetic smile as Tamsyn made the mistake of peeking in her direction. “Ignore him, he can be an asshole.”
Her husband’s mouth curved so menacingly, it was like watching a blade form. Sharp, wicked, one side curled up higher than the other so he showed a glimpse of a tooth. “Oh, kitten, I’m going to take so much pleasure in destroying yours tonight, they’ll hear your screams in the city.”
Okay, that was her signal. There was a special kind of malice in his voice, a familiar glee to which she was highly tuned. She’d heard it before from the elders, from the men who’d completed a trade and were joking about sealing the deal .
Hurting their brides, raping them, ruining them.
Merrick’s fingers grazed her arm as she lurched up, stumbling away as fast as she could without falling on her face. Curse words rained over her in masculine tones, then a single, harsh command snapped out and cemented her feet to the floor.
“ Stop .”
“Give me one damn good reason why I shouldn’t lay you out, Fairfax.”
“Because I’m trying, in my own way, to help. If you’ll allow me?”
Trembling, Tamsyn squeezed her eyes shut and silently begged Merrick to say no. Couldn’t he see what Jasper was, what lurked inside him? Her heart hammered against her ribs as even the clacking of the keys stopped, leaving the quiet crackle of the fire to fill in the silence.
Cold kissed the nape of her neck, bathing her spine in ice. The fine hairs on her arms prickled an instant before long, narrow fingers touched her shoulder lightly, ripping a strangled, garbled noise from deep within her chest.
She yanked away, curling her body away from the threat, then moaned as her bladder released in fear, urine soaking the thin pants she wore and pooling around her feet.
“Ah, pet.” Jasper’s voice softened so drastically, he almost sounded like a nice man. “Someone has been cruel to you, haven’t they? I haven’t been much better. I’m sorry for that; sometimes I forget that even strong women have their limits.”
“Not everyone’s a masochist, J.” Anarchy tsked quietly. “Merrick, if you point me in the right direction, I’ll get her some clean pants.”
“It’s okay.” There was barely restrained violence in his voice. “I’ll go get her cleaned up. I think she needs a break anyway.”
“If it helps, I think we’re done.”
“Excuse me?”
The surprise in the words forced Tamsyn’s eyes open. There was a crack inside her widening by the second, pushed apart by the growing tension in the room. Whatever was causing it didn’t bode well for her; she recognized the dread in the pit of her stomach as a warning sign.
“I can leave the laptop so you can read through the data I’ve accumulated based off the information I got from Tamsyn. You reacted badly when I mentioned heading for the mountain ridge,” she explained, smiling sadly at her as Tamsyn turned. “There’s a website for a project community here in Denver called Ridge Point. It’s buried, I won’t bore you with the details, but…”
Dead air filled her ears as dread became nausea in a heartbeat.
“Looking at this, it’s been professionally designed.”
Tamsyn took a step back.
“The website is for paid members only. They insist on an application, background check, and evidence of funds. Women need not waste their time applying,” Anarchy muttered in disgust, obviously reading as she spoke. “Applications are to be accompanied by a wire transfer of… fuck, twenty-five thousand.”
“Just for an application?” Jasper asked.
“Yeah, and I’m just gonna take the backdoor here.” More clacking, a few whispered curses. “Whoa. Well, this is seriously fucked up.” Brown eyes flicked from Jasper to Merrick, then landed on Tamsyn. “This is what you’re running from. I don’t blame you.”
“What?” Merrick demanded, moving to wrap his arm around Tamsyn’s waist when she swayed.
“The Ridge Point community was founded in 1927 by a small hierarchy of wealthy businessmen who were dissatisfied by the progression of women’s rights. They started a weekend club where wives could be exchanged for goods for the duration of the weekend. They expanded this to longer periods until they began building the original compound in 1938. The following year, several members were drafted into the army for the Second World War, most of whom didn’t return. The project was put on hold until 1947 when they resumed construction and extended membership to a lot of new blood.”
“Can we get to the vital information?”
“This is the vital information.” Eyes racing across the screen, Anarchy’s face twisted into a mask of disgust. “By 1950, they were fully established in the compound, with a whole new set of rules. Basically, sifting through all the misogynistic shit, men are kings and women are nothing but chattel. They operate using a council of elders… blah, blah, blah… yeah, this is some weird Handmaid’s Tale fuckery right here.”
She was numb, Tamsyn thought. From the top of her head to her cold, wet toes, she was numb. All her secrets, her dark past, were coming tumbling down around her, leaving her nowhere to run, nowhere to hide.
“Oh, I love it when they advertise their bad guys. Twelve council members, each stemming back from the original founding members. Just as equally, I hate being right.” Spinning the laptop around so they could all see the screen, she sighed. “Jedidiah Drake. Bad guy numero uno.”
A photograph filled the screen. Her father’s eyes glared at the world from behind the glass, disapproving and stern. It was an old photo; he was at least thirty years younger, and the woman standing to attention by his side was long dead.
Saliva pooled in her mouth, but before she could prevent it, her stomach muscles contracted and she threw up violently.
“I’d say that’s confirmation,” Jasper said in an ominous tone.
“Can you get that photo to Grit, Anarchy? In fact, any photos identifying these assholes. If they show up here, the security teams need to know who they’re dealing with.” Merrick made soft, soothing noises as Tamsyn’s stomach continued to rebel. “Easy, little owl. Try and take a breath. We’re not going to let them near you, I promise.”
“Already compiling a file to email to him.”
“She’s the woman’s double. Got some attributes from her father, too.”
Exhausted, Tamsyn tried to stagger back, but Merrick just lifted her into his arms. “I’m gonna go take care of her. Whatever else you need from her will have to wait. I’ll call housekeeping to deal with the mess.”
Jasper grunted. “I might as well make myself useful while Archie works. She’ll be here for hours now she has her teeth into this. I’m used to piss and vomit, Merrick, we have three kids with a fourth on the way. I’m a fucking pro at the fine art of cleaning up.”
“Thanks.”
“Consider persuading her to find her voice. The more we know about how these men operate, the safer we can make her. Archie is a genius with tech, but she can’t hack a personal connection or the data in your girl’s head.”
Tamsyn rolled her face into Merrick’s shoulder as her head went light. If she talked, she’d lose her tongue before she lost her life. A woman’s loyalty was always dedicated to the community first; until she married, then it was sworn to her husband, who presented their mutual faithfulness to the elders.
She would uphold her oath to the community, not for her own safety, but to save Merrick from a similar fate. A man within the community who defiled an unmarried woman was hung by his wrists, castrated, and left for the crows on the ridge above the compound.
In all her years of eavesdropping and silently listening to her father’s discussions, not once was there any mention of what punishment an outsider would endure for the same crime—either the idea of someone from the outside ever finding them and committing such a deed hadn’t occurred to them or what happened to outsiders wasn’t talked about, ever.
Her guess was the latter.
The only way to keep a secret was for one person to know it.
“She’ll talk when she’s ready.” Merrick pressed his lips to the crown of her head. “Come on, little owl. A few minutes to get your bearings won’t harm anyone.”
She hated that he was carrying her, his arm touching her soiled pants. There wasn’t a level of embarrassment sufficient enough to cover the fact she not only peed herself, but compounded that mortification by losing her stomach contents as well.
Closing her eyes, she tried not to focus on the disastrous morning, or the sick fear that now Anarchy had pinpointed the community, Jedidiah would know exactly where she was hiding. Where to find her. How to steal her back.
The clock ticking down her time just got a whole lot shorter.
*