21. Kara
21
KARA
I directed the convoy of cars to a side street away from the start of Ethereal Eden’s property, not wanting their security cameras to catch us before we’d had time to coordinate the plan.
It worried me that even with Grayson’s organizing skills, there wasn’t much of a plan to speak of. Kyle and I had both gotten on the walkie-talkies as we’d driven the last hundred miles, trying to explain in as much detail as possible about the layout of the commune, security we knew about, where people were most likely to be gathered, and where my parents’ house was. Hopefully, Jacqueline would be sleeping in her bed, ready for us to just pluck her from it and get out of there.
That was what I’d told them over and over. That this place was full of women and children. We weren’t going in there to light the place up and send bullets flying.
Nobody was dying on my watch.
Not even Josiah. As tempting as the idea might have been.
Hawk and Hayden had argued with me about that, but I refused to let them spend the rest of their lives in prison for killing him. I wouldn’t lose my new family before I’d even truly gotten to love them.
A life in prison was the only future Josiah deserved. One that came with a lifetime of fear and terror at the hands of men just like him.
I wanted him to have the life he’d given to me. And to suffer every minute of it.
Death was too kind a punishment. Too quick. Too painless.
I wondered what the Lord would think of the dark thoughts that tumbled around my head. But if He thought anything other than they were well deserved, then I didn’t want anything to do with Him anyway.
“We need guys on the perimeter,” Hawk instructed, taking charge of the group. “Someone in the vans, ready to drive if we need to get away quick. We can temporarily ditch the bikes and the Jeep if we have to. The vans will hold more people.”
X screwed up his face. “I do not volunteer as tribute.”
“Yeah, hard pass on being left behind.” Whip cracked his knuckles. “If we aren’t killing anyone, fair enough, I’ll respect that, but I’m gonna crawl out of my skin if I’m just sitting here waiting while you guys have all the fun.”
Aloha pouted at the idea of leaving his bike but was the first to put his hand up for the job that clearly no one else wanted. “I’ll drive. But we come back for the bikes if we need to. I’m not leaving my baby here permanently.”
Hawk tossed him the van keys. Then turned to Grayson. “You want to drive the Jeep? Make sure your manicure doesn’t get wrecked?”
Grayson flipped him the bird. “Not a fucking chance. I’m wherever Kara is.”
“Same,” Hayden agreed.
They both looked at Hawk, like he might volunteer to be the other driver.
He scoffed. “Yeah. That might happen.”
One of Grayson’s friends, who I was keeping a wide berth from, even though they were here to help, raised his hand. “I’ll do it. I ain’t got no death wish tonight like the rest of you. That Josiah guy sounds like a crazy mofo. And really, my skills lie more with fire. I don’t think I’m going to be all that useful unless you want to torch the place?” He glanced at me hopefully.
I shook my head quickly. “No. But…thank you for the offer?”
I had no idea how I was supposed to talk to a man as psychotic as Torch. He had crazy eyes, and the constant flicking of that lighter was disturbing.
He gave a little sigh of disappointment but took the van keys and leaned back against it with his arms folded while he listened to the rest of us work through the details.
Hawk pointed at each of us as he talked. “Whip, Ice, Kyle, Ace, and Trigger go in from the far side of the property. X, Scythe, Chaos, Grayson, Kara, and me from this side. We’re all heading for Kara’s parents’ house where we believe Jacqueline will be sleeping, but as two teams in case one is intercepted.”
I looked at Kyle. “If your team gets there first, you need to be the one to go in and get her. She knows you, at least a little bit. She’ll be terrified if a group of strange men try stealing her out of her bed. I don’t want her traumatized any more than she already is.” I eyed my guys. “If we get there first, none of you will hold me back from going in that house. No matter what happens. You hear me?”
To my surprise, all three nodded.
A rush of adrenaline filled me.
The last time I’d been here I was terrified for my life. Now I was more scared of losing the people I loved.
Hawk rubbed a hand across the back of his neck, his T-shirt riding up just enough to flash a strip of tattoo-covered skin just above the waistband of his jeans. “If we all have some vague idea of what we’re doing, let’s go. Keep communications to the bare minimum. Sound is going to travel out here.”
Like groups of soldiers, we fell into two lines, figures dark in the deep shadows of the night. I was right in the middle of my group, with X, Scythe, and Grayson behind me, Hayden and Hawk in front of me. I stuck close to Hayden’s back and whispered corrections if Hawk started steering us off track. We stuck to the shadows of the neighboring property, the fences of Ethereal Eden gleaming silver in the moonlight and making the place seem more like a prison than a sanctuary.
At the fence line, Hawk kneeled and pulled bolt cutters from his backpack, cutting through the wire to make an opening big enough for all of us to get through.
With every step, my heart beat faster. I was sure, at any moment, we’d trip some sort of alarm. That the floodlights would all turn on, or that the blaring of the siren they’d triggered the night we’d left would give us away again.
But we made it through the outer pastures where the cows lifted their heads at our approach but let us pass without more than a sleepy moo. I’d given us the more direct route to the house, coming in from the nearest side of the commune, rather than the other side that would take Kyle and his team past the house I’d lived in with Josiah.
I’d planned to come back here and collect evidence that could implicate Josiah in Alice’s murder, but now all I could concentrate on was getting my sister, my unborn baby, and the men I loved out of here.
We’d have to find some other way to see Josiah put in jail for the rest of his life. Jacqueline had to come first.
My heart clenched at the sight of the little cabin I’d lived in with Hayley Jade when she was a baby. The one Shari, the woman who’d raised Hayley Jade after she’d been taken from me, now lived in. I moved toward it instinctively, but Grayson grabbed my arm.
“Where are you going? Isn’t that your parents’ house just up there?”
I nodded. “But there’s another woman who needs our help in this cabin.”
Hayden and Hawk both stopped and glanced back at us, hearing every word of the whispered conversation because the night was so quiet.
Hawk shook his head. “We don’t have that sort of time to waste. The longer we’re here, the more chance there is of being caught. I don’t like how many vehicles there are over there.”
I followed his line of sight, my gaze bouncing across the trucks parked outside every house, and a lot more parked in a makeshift parking lot beside a big barn.
Hawk eyed them all warily. “That’s a lot more than you told us about. Unless Josiah has been buying cars for all the women and kids who live here…”
I shook my head. “Most of us don’t even know how to drive. Even those who came from the outside are never permitted behind the wheel. If the women go to town to sell at the market, they’re always driven in by one of the men.”
Hayden swore softly. “So we need to assume there’s more men here than there were. Probably not surprising, after his podcast went viral. It could have brought him a lot of new followers.”
Hawk turned to me. “Just Jacqueline right now, okay? She’s the target. If we can collect anyone else on the way out then great, but she has to be the priority. Shari is an adult, and she came here of her own free will.”
“Not for this life,” I whispered. “She didn’t come here for this. No one did. He forces her to offer herself to men for sex, Hawk. She’s the woman who raised Hayley Jade. We can’t just leave her here. Eventually, one of those men will kill her, and I can’t live with that. Can you? She’s important to our daughter, so she has to be important to us too.”
I prayed no one would balk at me calling Hayley Jade ours.
Because I meant it. Grayson might have had more of a friendship with her, and I knew he cared about her deeply. But Hawk and Hayden were the fathers she’d never had.
Queenie was the grandmother I’d always wanted for her. Aloha and Ice the uncles.
She was all of ours.
Scythe turned to Hawk. “We split up. X and I will go get the woman. You all go get the girl. We meet back here. We came in together. We leave together. Capiche?”
Hawk deferred to me, and I nodded.
I caught Scythe’s hand before he slipped away into the darkness. “She’s going to be terrified. She’ll fight you.”
X grinned with a boyish charm. “Don’t worry. Women like me. I’ll have her happily skipping by my side before you guys even get to your house.”
Scythe squinted. “You skip?”
“You don’t?”
“I have a five-year-old. Of course I skip. With a rope and everything. Double Dutch champion of the clubhouse, I’ll have you know. Totally kicked Queenie’s behind, much to her disgust.”
“Yeah? I could never get the double unders. Maybe you could give me some tips?”
Hawk glared at both of them like they’d grown an extra head. “Maybe you could both go do what we brought you here for and save your jump rope tips for a more appropriate time?”
Scythe and X both rolled their eyes as they slunk off toward Shari’s house, muttering about everyone being so serious all the time and how we were no fun at all.
Hawk blinked, turning his attention back to me. “Honestly, I don’t know why we brought them.”
Grayson shook his head. “X talks a lot of shit, but he’ll get the job done.”
Hawk sighed. “Scythe too. They’re oddly alike. It’s disturbing.”
Hayden motioned toward my parents’ house. “Let’s worry less about the psychopaths who can more than handle their own, and worry more about the four of us getting Jacqueline out without waking up the entire commune.”
“Good plan,” Grayson whispered back. “This place is creepy as fuck.”
He wasn’t wrong. I wasn’t sure if it was just that it was the middle of the night, and a wind whistled through the trees, creating an eerie sound. Or if it was just the energy of this place, the bad vibes Josiah had created here that somehow lingered even when people weren’t around.
Maybe it was the memories of every horrible thing he’d ever done to me in the big house he’d built to show his power and wealth.
A house of horrors I couldn’t forget, especially not now, when it was so close.
I wondered if my bedroom was still empty.
Or if he’d found a new wife to torture in my place.
The thought left a sick taste in my mouth. Hayden was right. We needed to get this done and get out of here.
I took the lead, staying low and to the edges of the buildings, but doubling our pace, the beating of my heart now clearing my head and pushing me on rather than leaving me scared and shaking the way I’d been the last time I’d been here
I avoided the creaky porch stair, relieved when the guys all did as well, and waited until they’d crowded around me. “You all stay here,” I whispered. “I’ll get her and come back down.”
“Not happening,” Grayson whispered, gaze constantly flickering over our surroundings to the houses next door and the communal area at our backs.
Hawk instantly agreed with him. “Zero chance of you going anywhere alone, Little Mouse, unless Grayson wants to do CPR and restart my fucking heart after I die from the stress of knowing you’re in that house unprotected.”
I sighed and looked to Hayden to be the voice of reason.
He instinctively knew what I needed, and how to handle Hawk as well. “You two will guard the front and rear entrances while I go in with her.” He glanced at me. “I assume one guide is more satisfactory to you? I’ll wait outside Jacqueline’s bedroom door while you get her, but that’s as alone as you’re going to get. Deal?”
I nodded quickly. Two of us could get in and out easier than four of us, if they were really insisting on me not going in alone.
I couldn’t imagine my own family hurting me.
But then I didn’t really know these people the way I’d once thought I did. The people I’d thought they were would have never forced me into marrying a man I didn’t love. They’d never have let a stranger take my daughter away from me.
Hawk went to argue, but Hayden put his fingers to his lips. “Your finger is hovering over that trigger like you’re just itching for a reason to pull it. This house is full of innocent women and children, and you’re not going to be the reason one of them is hurt.”
He swore under his breath and then jerked his head toward the door. “Go then.”
I twisted the door handle and blinked in surprise. “It’s locked. They’ve never locked the door.”
Hawk moved in to pick it. “Josiah’s clearly tightening up their security.” He fiddled with his little tool, jimmying it around in the lock.
“Or his people are scared,” Grayson murmured. “There are fences everywhere, that should give a sense of security from the outside world. But it won’t when the real thing they’re scared of is inside these walls.”
I stared at him. “What are you saying?”
He shook his head. “If they weren’t locking doors before, but now they are, maybe they’ve realized it’s not the outside world they need to be scared of. Maybe they’ve realized it’s Josiah who is the true monster.”
Instantly, with that doubt in my head, I wanted to save them all. Storm the house. Wake them all up. Beg them to come with us. It didn’t matter what they’d done. They were my family and I loved them. I didn’t want them here, living under the black cloud Josiah had created out of what had once been a peaceful, homestead country life.
Like Hayden could read my mind, he gave a silent shake of his head. “We can’t risk it. Just Jacqueline.”
He always knew what I was thinking. Or rather, could read me in a way nobody else could. That soul-deep connection we’d forged years ago was built on him understanding me, and knowing me until sometimes he knew my heart better than I did.
But he was right. We were reading a whole lot into a lock on the door.
The lock gave a tiny pop, and Hawk twisted the handle, opening the door slowly, his gun pointed into the darkness.
Hayden was right. He couldn’t be in here. He was too amped up.
I squeezed his arm as we passed him, hoping the small touch would be enough to calm him.
But I couldn’t wait around to see.
We made our way up the stairs on silent feet, me holding my breath, because I was sure if I dared to breathe it would be jagged and loud. We moved fast, Hayden’s fingertips grazing my back in a way that might have been distracting anywhere else, but here was just reassuring.
I paused at Jacqueline’s bedroom door and glanced back at Hayden, who gave me a silent nod.
I twisted the handle, and we stepped into her room.
I’d half been expecting Josiah to be sitting in her armchair with a loaded shotgun, just waiting for us.
But what we found on the other side was maybe worse.
Moonlight shimmered over glass beads and white satin. A wedding dress, one too tiny to be for any other member of the family, hung from a hook on Jacqueline’s wall.
Anger speared through me hot and fast, staring at the gown made for the thirteen-year-old asleep in the single bed, a stuffed teddy bear still clutched in her arms like it was the only protection she had.
Not anymore.
I could feel Hayden vibrating with anger behind me, and I knew instantly that leaving Hawk outside had been the right call. He wouldn’t have hesitated in storming down the hallway to my father’s bedroom and putting a gun in his mouth.
I knew Hayden wanted to. Even I wanted to. My eyes burned with hot, angry tears at the betrayal. My father had sold yet another of his daughters.
Was it to Josiah? Was Jacqueline to marry him and take my spot?
I leaned down, sweeping her soft hair off her face.
She looked barely older than Hayley Jade, and my fingers shook with a mixture of adrenaline and fear and anger. “Jacqueline. Wake up. It’s me. Kara.”
Her eyes fluttered open, then widened in confusion.
Her gaze flickered over my shoulder, and terror filled her expression. She opened her mouth.
I clapped my hand over it before she could make a sound. “Don’t scream. He’s a friend. He won’t hurt either of us.”
She shook her head frantically, scooting back on the bed, clutching the covers to her chest.
Hayden’s voice was barely a whisper. “Don’t say anything. Just listen to your sister. We’re only trying to help.”
Jacqueline froze at Hayden’s command. Then dropped her head meekly.
I didn’t like it, but for once the meekness that had been trained into her might be of use. It would have been quicker to just get Hayden to toss her over his shoulder, but we couldn’t risk her screaming.
“You’re coming with us,” I whispered frantically, grabbing her jacket from the back of her desk chair and trying to put it on her. “We know all about what’s been happening here. The photos—”
Her head jerked up. Tears filled her eyes then overflowed. “He made me…I’m so embarrassed.”
I stopped and hugged her tight, even though I knew every second we stayed here was dangerous. But she was a child and, in that moment, she needed someone to say it was going to be okay. “You have no reason to be. You’re leaving with us and you’re never coming back. I have a home. A safe one. Far away from here, and I’ll take care of you.”
“ We’ll take care of you,” Hayden corrected. “But you have to come with us. Now.” His lip curled as his gaze caught on the horrifying child-bride wedding dress. “Before Hawk comes up here and sees that and sends bullets flying all throughout the compound. I don’t think I can talk him off the ledge again.”
I wasn’t sure I could either.
Jacqueline tugged on her shoes, but that was all we let her bring. Everything else was left behind, an entire life she’d never see again.
And it couldn’t happen soon enough.
We moved down the stairs quicker and more carelessly than we had when we’d gone up them, but suddenly I couldn’t get away fast enough. I ran out the front door, Jacqueline behind me, Hayden protecting her from the rear. A light came on in my parents’ window, but by then we were already in the shadows, Grayson and Hawk falling in behind us, the five of us moving back toward the meeting place where Scythe and X waited with Shari between them.
I gawked at the gag in her mouth and her hands tied with duct tape behind her back.
I shot Scythe and X dirty looks. “What on earth did you tie her up for?”
X shrugged. “Women normally like when I do that.”
We all stared at him, but Scythe was the one who filled the rest of us in. He held a cloth to his face that was dark with what looked like blood. “She put up a fight. We had no choice.”
I stared at him. “She’s half your size!”
“Her claws are sharper than Hayden’s kittens, and I’m already ripped to shreds from those furballs, so excuse me if I made my life a bit easier with some duct tape. This was me being nice! Normally if someone scratched me like that, I would have carved my name in their skin with my knife—”
Hawk elbowed him. “Not helping your case here, bro.”
“They won’t hurt you,” I promised Shari, connecting my gaze to hers. “I want to take the tape off, but you have to promise me you aren’t going to scream.”
She nodded quickly, edging closer to me.
I ripped the duct tape from Shari’s hands, and she yanked the gag out of her mouth. She glared at X and Scythe. “If you’d just told me you were with Kara, I wouldn’t have fought you!”
X glanced at Scythe. “Didn’t we say that?”
Scythe paused. “Shit. I don’t think we did.”
X cringed. “Ooops, our bad. Complaints can be submitted to the head office—”
Gray suddenly stood a little straighter now we’d sorted out the drama. His head swiveled side to side. “Where’s Jacqueline?”
I spun around.
She’d been right behind me. But now suddenly, she wasn’t.
Panic speared through me. We’d all been focused on Shari and X and Scythe. Had none of us been watching her?
“There!” Shari pointed to the other side of the communal area.
All I could see of her was her golden hair, flashing in the moonlight, before the shadows swallowed her up again.
“Where the hell is she going?” Gray muttered as we all moved to follow her.
She ran in the opposite direction of her house. Away from all the homes, where people slept. If she was going to alert Josiah of our presence, then she was going the wrong way.
When none of us answered, Shari filled the silence. “She’s going to the women’s center.”
I stopped and stared at her. “Why would she go there? After what Josiah makes her do?”
Shari swallowed hard, not questioning how I knew about that. Details didn’t matter now.
She pressed her lips into a tight line. “I don’t know for sure, but if it were me, I’d be going back for the hard drive with all her photos on it.”