CHAPTER EIGHTEEN #2
I didn’t say anything else. I had to bide my time and hope Byron, or preferably Reynolds, heard me about the caves. If he knew so much about them, he had to know where they were.
Right?
Skeeter walked down to the first cave and walked in.
There was a large, damp path on either side of the river of water that flowed into the cave.
The cave seemed huge, and it quickly went from the bright, sunny day outside to being darker and darker the further in we went.
Skeeter knew where he was going, and he clearly had some sort of plan.
“Where are we going?”
“Deeper into the cave. There’s this large area that’s kind of like a room. It stays mainly dry, even at high tide. I’ve been staying there.”
I followed him. I didn’t want to arouse his suspicions, but I wanted to say more about the caves and really drive home where we were.
Finally, we arrived in a cavernous, dark area.
A tiny amount of sunlight came in through a small hole worn in the top of the ‘room.’ It must have a flowing water source above it, because it was dropping a small, but steady stream of water into what had turned into kind of a pond off to one side of the room.
It didn’t look like the pond overflowed, though, because the floor of the cave room was dry.
It was cool and humid in the room, and I wondered if there were any bats hanging around.
Literally. I looked all around the top of the area, but most of it was too dark for me to see anything.
“Sit down.”
I looked at Skeeter, almost startled to remember he was with me. I’d been so busy checking out the surroundings I’d kind of blocked out the fact that I had been, you know, kidnapped by a psycho murderer.
There was a bench-like jut in the cave wall where he was pointing. I sat down. I didn’t want to do anything to piss Skeeter off any more than he already was.
He puttered around the cave room, obviously used to the surroundings.
I’d been gone for weeks now. Had he stayed here the whole time?
There was a sleeping bag, the remains of some food wrappers, and a few torch-style flashlights that he had placed around the room in a standing position.
He turned a couple on now, and it provided a decent amount of light.
I quickly scanned the ceiling, happy to see there weren’t any bats in the area. I liked bats; I just didn’t want to live in the same room with them. Especially if it was a cave where I was being held captive and would have no way to run away from the bats.
Enough about bats.
I tried to make myself calm down and think of a way to give away our exact location to Byron, if he was listening.
“So, you’re never going to believe this, but I actually learned about these caves. Do you want to hear about them?”
I knew I was taking a risk. Sometimes Skeeter just told me to shut up, but a lot of times he actually liked it if I told him useless trivia-type information when we were in the privacy of his rooms in the MC clubhouse.
He even enjoyed watching Jeopardy! and shaking his head when I knew most, or all, of the answers.
He rolled his eyes, but the corners of his mouth quirked up a little. “Sure, Jess. Geek out while I try to get a fire going.”
I told him as much of the pirate lore Reynolds had told me about as I could remember. I’d tuned him out at some point, but I’d gotten the gist of it. I tried to make it sound as interesting as possible to Skeeter.
“No shit. So, pirates used this very cave?”
“Yeah, probably. Did you look in the other caves or just go into the first one you came to?”
He sat back and admired his stack of wood before lighting it.
“First one I came to.” He sat on the ground and leaned against the wall opposite me, stretching his long legs out in front of him.
“It was high tide when I found this place, and I was tired. I didn’t want to try to climb around and see if the other caves were better.
Then when the tide went down, I didn’t care enough to check ‘em out. Now you’ve got me wondering if there could be pirate gold in one of these caves.
” He looked around. “Or even in this one. This cave goes way back in more than one direction. I stopped exploring, though. I was afraid I’d get lost.” He shuddered.
“There could totally be gold,” I said excitedly. I was trying to get him interested enough to go search in the other caves and leave me alone here.
He shook his head. “I always said you were the prettiest nerd I ever knew. Made me wonder how many other pretty girls were actually nerds underneath all that prettiness.”
I shrugged. “Probably a lot.”
“You’re into this pirate shit, huh?”
I nodded.
“That why you got that boyfriend with a patch over his eye?”
I could almost imagine Reynolds’ laughter if he was listening right now. “Yeah. It’s pretty hot.”
“I could’ve done that, Jess. Worn a patch, I mean. If that’s what it would’ve taken to keep you.”
I sighed. I hated it when he said sweet-ish things. It used to give me this sense of hope, thinking that he was really a great guy deep down. He wasn’t. He would say those sweet things and then kill a guy, or fuck a sweetbutt right where I could see, or sell some poor woman into trafficking.
He couldn’t fool me any longer. I knew exactly who he was. But I had to pretend that I didn’t. It could save my life.
“That would’ve been cool.”
“Yeah?”
I nodded. “I, um, like pirates a lot.” I didn’t. All I could picture was some old fat guy with a grizzled beard, gold teeth, and a wooden leg.
No, that didn’t do it for me.
“Maybe you should go look for that gold,” I suggested. “I could help.”
He narrowed his eyes at me. “Why do you want the gold?”
“To help my mom. And it would be really freaking cool, don’t you think? To find pirate gold?” Maybe I could push him onto some sharp rocks or something if we walked around the cave entrances.
“Nah.” He got a strange look on his face. “We don’t need gold anyway.”
A cold feeling settled in the pit of my stomach. “What do you mean?”
“We won’t be here to cash it in or anything.”
Shit. Shit. Shit. “Why not? Where will we be? California? You always said you wanted to go there, and…”
He threw a flashlight at me. It crashed into the cave wall right beside my head before falling to the ground in pieces. “Shut up! Quit trying to act like you want to be with me.”
I shut my eyes and tried not to shake. He was getting violent. I’d seen him like this so many times. The memories of what he’d do to the men and women around him were too horrifying to think about.
He’d never hurt me badly before, but there was a first time for everything.
“But I do want to be with you! Those people kidnapped me and made me go with them. I was trying to get away from them to find my way back to you.”
“Bullshit!” he screamed, standing up. His face was getting red. “I saw the way you looked at that guy all the time. You never once looked at me like that. God! Don’t you see what you’re doing? You’re making me all mad, Jess! You know that’s bad, so stop it.”
“Sorry.” I cringed. Too late, I remembered he also hated people who were meek and apologized for everything. I was always walking on eggshells around this man. I couldn’t believe I’d survived five years in his presence.
“Don’t fucking say you’re sorry! You don’t even mean it,” he strode over and jerked me up off the bench-like outcropping.
“You were happy with that guy. I saw you. I’ve been watching you everywhere you went.
He kept a good eye on you, like a bodyguard.
” He studied my face as he held me tightly by my upper arms, my feet dangling off the floor.
He was more than a foot taller than I was and so strong it was scary. “That what he is?”
“He, um, works in security,” I barely managed to get the words out before he threw me on the floor. I crashed back against the hard rock wall of the cave, my head thudding hard before stars exploded in front of my eyes.
That’s the last thing I saw.