The old Maynard cabin looked like a dead thing glimpsed from the outside. A rotting husk. It was strange. Shadows should obscure ugly truth. But the moonlight highlighted the old structure’s decrepitude in ways not obvious when viewed beneath the glare of the summer sun. Yes, it looked dead. Frail. Brittle. Looking at it made Abby think of a black-and-white photo she’d once seen of the hull of an old ship washed up on a stretch of lonely beach. The cabin was a standing ruin, a thing left over from an age long past.
Sadness encroached as she neared the cabin’s sagging front porch. She had a strong feeling the old ways and the old families were nearing the end of a long road. They had endured against the march of time and progress since before the days of secession and war. But the world outside Hopkins Bend just kept getting bigger, expanding and pushing into areas where before there had only been wildlife and lush wilderness. It didn’t take any kind of genius or seer to know the locals couldn’t keep the outside world at bay forever. Someday some smart person in law enforcement would begin to put some pieces together, maybe start to pinpoint a general area where so many people had gotten permanently lost on the way to somewhere else. Someone might then dig into the old files on Evan Maynard. And after that, the end would come pretty quick.
As Abby stepped into the cabin’s dark interior and paused to light the lantern that hung just inside the door, she wondered why the thought should make her sad. She’d all but washed her hands of Hopkins Bend. She planned to be gone from here forever by this time Saturday. She hated life here. Hated her status as an outcast, which was becoming more entrenched with each passing day. And yet this was the only life she’d ever known, here in this cabin and in the woods she knew well, among these people.
She went into the kitchen and lit another lantern. This one she removed from its hook on the wall and carried with her as she moved through the tight, dark pantry. She opened the door to the cellar and exercised great care as she descended the creaking stairs to the cellar floor. She held the lantern up and looked at Michelle. The woman she’d thought of as “the dinner” until earlier today was asleep, her body hanging slack from the rope securing her to the beam overhead. Her head hung to one side,
and her chest softly rose and fell as she breathed in and out.
Abby hung the lantern on a hook and approached Michelle. The woman kept sleeping, apparently undisturbed by either the intrusion of light or Abby’s proximity. That, or she was pretending to sleep. Feigning sleep was something most of them did from time to time, even though it never did them any good. Abby felt her breath quicken as she allowed herself a few moments to admire the woman’s toned and shapely body. She longed to touch her again. To let her hands go wherever they wanted to go. And do whatever they wanted to do. It was so painfully tempting…
She closed her mouth and held her breath.
Counted to ten.
Let the breath out.
And said,“It’s me.”
Michelle opened her eyes and looked at Abby. The dark eyes were unreadable in the flickering gloom, but the way they looked at her so steadily made Abby’s heart flutter. Michelle made a noise behind the gag, prompting Abby to pull it gently away from her mouth.
“God. Thank you.” Michelle breathed heavily. “You have no idea how hard it is too breathe only through your nose all the fucking time.”
“Sorry I had to put the gag back. Ma or my sister might’ve come around whiles I was gone.”
“So you did it to keep up appearances.”
“That’s right.”
“Can’t you let me down yet?”
Abby shook her head. “Sorry. Ain’t time yet.”
Michelle frowned. Her eyes shifted from Abby, stared into a dark corner of the cellar. Abby resisted an urge to brush the back of a hand across one of the woman’s finely sculpted cheeks. But resistance wasn’t easy. There was
something about Michelle that made a person ache with the need to touch her. Something beyond the superficial allure of beauty. Perhaps it was a hint of the exotic she found so compelling. A driver’s license or passport would identify her as Caucasian, but the vaguely almond shade of her skin suggested a dollop of Latino blood flowing through her veins. The lush lips and big eyes reinforced this suggestion.
Michelle was looking at her again. “Abby?”
“Yeah?”
A corner of the woman’s mouth twitched, almost curled into a knowing smirk. “Kiss me.”
Abby’s cheeks blazed scarlet. “What…? You want me to…what?”
Michelle smiled. “I want you to kiss me.”
She stretched her neck out, puckered those delectably plump lips.
Abby was trembling. “I—I don’t know…”
Michelle did smirk this time. “Seemed like you knew what you wanted when you had your hands on me earlier.”
Abby’s face flushed again. “I’m…sorry about that. I had no right.”
“It’s okay. I liked it.”
“You did?”
“Yeah.”
Abby wiped sweat from her brow and smiled nervously. “I…liked it, too.” Her heart was beating so fast, it felt as if it might explode as she made this admission. “You’re so pretty.”
“You need to kiss me, Abby. Now.”
She extended her neck again.
Puckered her lips again.
Abby leaned toward her.
Their mouths met.
The first flick of Michelle’s tongue was all it took to make her lose all control. She wrapped her arms around the woman and leaned into the kiss. Michelle hooked a strong leg around Abby’s waist and locked their bodies together. Abby felt the thrust of Michelle’s erect nipples through the fabric of her dress. The sensation stoked the flame of her arousal to an almost unbearable intensity. She twisted out of the sweaty embrace long enough to pull the dress off over her head. Then she threw herself against Michelle again, desire blinding her to everything, including the way the woman winced as the chains binding her wrists chafed painfully against her flesh. It also obscured the dim creak made by a foot placed carefully on the wooden staircase behind them.
Michelle pried her lips away from Abby’s mouth and spoke in a hoarse tone between panting breaths. “Take…me down. We’ll make love…right here.”
Abby cupped Michelle’s face in her hands and felt sweat against her palms. The slick sheen covering every inch of the woman’s body shimmered in the lantern light. To Abby, she looked like a glowing, ethereal goddess. Michelle leaned closer, soft lips brushing her mouth again, breath hot against her tingling flesh. “You can’t imagine how good I am.”
Abby whimpered deep in her throat.
She struggled for focus. She needed to think past the overwhelming desire consuming her long enough to figure out what to do. It was tempting to say fuck everything else and do what Michelle asked. She imagined herself stretched out on the cellar floor, Michelle doing amazing things to her body with her skilled hands and mouth. That image alone was almost enough to make her fetch the key. But she forced herself to hold on a little longer. To think some more. She’d told Michelle tomorrow evening would be the best time to attempt an
escape, but she’d only said that to buy herself some time while she tried to make a final decision about what to do. Her mind had been made up for some time by this point, though.
Okay,
she thought.
I’ll let her down.
We’ll go tonight.
With Ma and Laura out whoring around—and Laura’s brats scattered to God alone knew where—there could be no better time. The cabin above the cellar was empty and might stay that way for hours yet. Abby felt a rising excitement as she saw that the time to make the bold move she’d fantasized about had finally arrived.
“I’ll get the key.”
Michelle’s eyes went wide with surprise. It was clear she hadn’t believed Abby would actually do it. “Really?”
Abby cupped the woman’s face again. “Really. We’re getting the fuck outta here.”
Tears formed in Michelle’s eyes and rolled slowly down her cheeks. She sniffled. “Thank you.”
A voice rang out like an explosion somewhere behind them. “WHAT IN GOD’S NAME IS GOING ON DOWN HERE?”
Abby jumped.
Michelle groaned and said,“Fuck.”
Abby unwrapped herself from Michelle’s sleek body and turned around to see Laura Maynard standing at the foot of the cellar stairs. Her sister’s mouth hung open in astonishment. She stared aghast at Abby, looking at her in the manner of a person in the presence of something truly abominable.
Her sister’s voice rang out again: “YOU FUCKING PERVERT!” She moved several steps toward them and thrust a finger toward the cellar stairs. “GET YOUR CLOTHES ON, YOU GODDAMN FREAK, AND GET THE FUCK ON OUT OF MY HOUSE!”
Abby just stared at her.
She imagined her sister hearing the moans and whimpers as she’d come down the stairs. Imagined what she must have thought when she saw them together. When she’d finally understood that something other than the usual abuse of the prisoner was happening. And in that moment, Abby understood just how completely and irretrievably lost her old life was now.
Laura took another step toward her and thrust her outstretched arm back toward the stairs again. “Did you not hear me, you perverted piece of shit? I want you out of my house. Now. God help you if I have to tell you again.”
Abby bristled inwardly.
Her
house?
As if Ma was dead already.
As if she had already assumed ownership of the Maynard legacy.
Abby lowered her head and charged her sister, her mouth open wide, as a roar of pure fury tore out of her lungs. Laura stood paralyzed in open-mouthed shock for a moment. But only for a moment. She turned and ran for the stairs, hit the bottom step in about a second and ascended the first few steps quickly. Abby let out another yell as she hit the staircase and pounded up the steps after her. Laura glanced over her shoulder as she reached the top of the staircase and screamed at the look of murderous rage on her sister’s face. She banged through the door and tried to slam it shut, but Abby rammed her shoulder against the old and brittle wood. The door creaked and splintered, flew to pieces as Abby barreled into the tight space of the pantry. Laura screamed again as she flew through the door to the kitchen and tried the door-shutting tactic again. She undoubtedly meant to lock Abby inside and keep her there until Ma or someone else returned.
But Abby would not be stopped.
She had a destiny to meet.
With Michelle.
Nothing
could get in the way of that.
Abby smashed through the door an instant before it could close. Laura screamed again and staggered backward as Abby bulled her way into the kitchen. Her butt met the edge of the dinner table, and she let out a strangled yelp as Abby closed the rest of the distance between. Abby’s fist shot forward and slammed into Laura’s soft midsection, bending her over at the waist.
Laura wheezed and looked up at her through eyes misty with tears.
Eyes bright with shock and fear.
Abby’s fist came down again.
Laura’s nose yielded with an audible snap beneath the heavy blow. Blood gushed from her nostrils as she spun away from the table and hit the floor. All coherent thought left Abby’s mind then. Abby was gone during that time. In her place was a savage thing made of fury and violence. She straddled Laura and pinned her to the floor. Her fists rained down again and again. Endlessly. A blur of motion as Laura’s lips turned to pulp beneath the blows. A few teeth came loose from her gums and her mouth filled with blood. And still the blows kept coming. Abby didn’t feel the punishment her fists were absorbing. It was as if she had blocks of steel welded to her wrists.
She had no idea how much time had gone by when she finally stopped hitting her sister. Maybe a minute or two. Maybe ten or fifteen. It hardly mattered by then. Laura was still alive. A blood bubble at a corner of her mouth popped as a weak breath rolled out. But her eyes were glassy and unseeing.
The bitch wasn’t going anywhere.
Abby got slowly, shakily to her feet.
She took a look around the kitchen.
There.
The big meat tenderizer.
She grabbed it from a hook on the wall and settled herself atop Laura again. She didn’t do anything right away. She watched Laura’s eyes. Waited for them to focus and look at her. Waited for her to see what was happening to her.
Laura’s vision seemed to clear at last.
She looked at Abby.
“Please…”
Abby snarled and raised the heavy steel tenderizer over her head.
Laura shook her head weakly. “No…please…”
Abby’s hand came down.
Steel cracked against skull.
There were more blows.
A lot of them.
When it was over, Abby washed her hands with soap and a jug of water. She felt strangely calm and still didn’t feel quite like herself. Maybe that was because she wasn’t the same person she’d been just a few minutes ago. She’d undergone yet another change. She knew now what she was capable of doing to get what she wanted.
What she was capable of was anything at all.
I’m getting what I want,
she thought.
I really fucking am, and nothing can stop me.
She returned to her sister’s limp body and knelt to seize it by the wrists.
Then she began to drag it toward the splintered pantry door and the cellar beyond.
Somewhere around the end of the third or fourth time Justine coerced him to hardness yet again and had her way with him, Pete happened to look at just the right section of darkness beyond the pen and saw that they had an audience. A lean figure stood several feet away, watching them from the shadows. The rear of the house was some thirty yards from the cages, too far away for the back porch light to illuminate the person’s face. Pete’s first thought was the voyeur was Carl, but no, the dark-outlined figure was too short to be that son of a bitch. This guy had to be the third Preston brother, the one whose name he didn’t know. He stretched his neck and squinted his eyes in an effort to make out more detail, and instantly regretted it. He couldn’t see the man’s hands, but judging by the frantic motion of his right arm, one of them was at his crotch, going up and down like a piston. Pete felt sick. The redneck bastard was jerking off. He wanted to yell at the guy, tell him to stop being such a goddamn pervert, but what was the use? The asshole would just do what he wanted anyway. And he might get mad.
Pete didn’t want him mad.
God, no.
Justine’s vivid account of her boyfriend’s mutilation and murder was always right at the edges of his thoughts, even as she was in the midst of fucking him half-blind, like
now. He didn’t want to wind up like that. But it seemed inevitable. And every time he thought that, a black hole seemed to open in his heart. Christ, but he didn’t want to die, and especially not like that. He was too young. There was still so much to do. So many adventures still to be had. It wasn’t fair. And worse, he knew too well how it would go down. He would beg. Plead. He would cry. Promise anything. And they would laugh at him. Taunt him. And then introduce him to a level of pain he’d never imagined could exist.
Justine clamped a hand around his chin and forced him to look at her.
She was on top of him, her body undulating as she rode him. He watched her breasts bounce as his hard-on throbbed inside her. She smiled and her hand went to his throat, closed tight around it, cutting off his air. Pete wheezed. The instinctive panic he’d felt the first several times she’d done this hit him again. But after a few moments, she relaxed her grip and he sucked in hard, filling his lungs with sweet, glorious air. She laughed. She laughed every time she did that. It was scary. But he couldn’t bring himself to make her stop. And why should that be a surprise? She’d already proven many times how thoroughly powerless he was against her.
She slapped him and laughed again.
Pete’s whole body ached. She’d used and abused him beyond the normal limits of what he thought he could endure. Had he thought this was their third or fourth go-round? It was hard to be sure. The evening had been little more than a blur of sweaty, seemingly endless sex. So he had kind of lost count. This could be the fifth time they’d been at it. Hell, the sixth. Who the fuck knew? It was crazy. He was as horny as the average guy his age. He had a healthy libido. But prior to tonight, he would not have thought it possible to get back in the saddle so
many damn times in one night. But the girl had magic fucking fingers. Every time he came, she’d let him rest for a very short while, then go to work on him again. God…the things she could do with her fingers, mouth, and tongue. He thought of what Megan was like in bed. Good. Very good.
But nothing like this.
Not even close.
The sting of betrayal he felt every time his thoughts went in this direction was less severe every time. This time it hardly hurt at all. Justine had said she could make men do what she wanted. She could wrap any man around her little finger. Perhaps she hadn’t been exaggerating. So what did that mean? That he belonged to her now? He had to be as crazy as she was to even toy with the idea.
Justine slapped him again. “Do you like it when I hit you?”
Pete gulped, looked up into her glittering eyes. “Y-yes.”
“You see? You’re already mine.”
Pete didn’t argue. Why bother?
The rhythm of her writhing body slowed to an exquisite grind. Pete moaned and screwed his eyes shut, arched his back toward her.
Then he heard something.
A scrape of metal against metal.
He frowned and thought,
What was—
Justine yelped as she was ripped away from Pete and thrown to the ground several feet away. Pete lay there panting, his mind a whirl of confusion as he struggled to figure out what was going on. Then he sat up and saw the Preston brother standing in the center of the cage with his back to him. He was fumbling with the fly of his jeans and advancing on Justine, who screeched and scooted backward into a corner. The dogs in the other
cages howled and leaped against the chain-link fencing, making it rattle loudly. Pete glanced toward the house and the closed back door, expecting to see it swing open any second as one of the other Prestons came out to investigate the racket. But that didn’t happen. The door stayed shut and no other lights came on inside the house.
Pete’s attention shifted abruptly to something else.
The gate. It was open.
This was his chance to make a run for it. He had no choice but to give it a shot. He got to his hands and knees, felt his toes curl into the dry ground, his leg muscles tensing like those of a sprinter in the last seconds before the report of the starting gun. Freedom was just six feet away. He could get out of here and find Megan. They could get away from this place and back to the lives these fuckers had tried to steal from them. A voice from the back of his mind screamed at him to go, but he couldn’t make himself do it.
Not yet.
He found himself staring at Justine. She was still in the corner, unable to retreat any farther. The Preston brother had his pants down around his ankles and was kicking them off. In another moment or so, he’d drop to his knees and ram himself into her. The man was clearly a prisoner of lust, perhaps had been driven mad with it as he watched Justine do those amazing things with her body. Pete could hardly blame the guy. Watching that would drive any man mad. Mad enough to be careless.
Pete got to his feet and approached the man as stealthily as he could from behind. He was only a few feet away when the man dropped to his knees and leaned toward Justine. Pete let out a roar and launched himself at him, wrapping a muscular forearm around his throat and wrenching him away from her. He rode the man to
the ground and shifted his arm so that the crook of his elbow was against the front of the man’s throat. The man screamed and thrashed, but Pete locked his arm in place by gripping his upraised wrist with his other hand. From there it was only a matter of keeping his grip in place and steadily increasing the pressure. The man’s struggles soon began to abate and finally ceased altogether. Pete kept the pressure on for an additional minute to be sure the guy was really gone. Then he let out a big breath and let go of him. He rolled the man over and stared for a moment at his still features, then sighed.
Then the enormity of what he’d done hit him.
It rocked him, made him feel faint for a moment.
Holy fuck,
he thought.
I just killed a man.
He felt a strange twist of grief deep in his guts, but that didn’t last long. He remembered where he was and what these redneck fucks had done to him. And then he felt nothing but anger and a rising sense of righteousness.
Fuck this guy,
he thought.
Burn in hell, asshole.
Justine was on her feet now.
She came over and spat in the dead man’s face. “Pig. You deserved to die.”
Pete looked at her. “Truer words have never been spoken.We’re getting out of here.”
Justine smiled.
Then she threw her arms around him and hugged him so hard he couldn’t breathe for a moment, which of course reminded him of what he’d done to the Preston brother. He disengaged himself from her and said, “Yeah, I’m happy, too. But we don’t have time to fuck around.”
Justine nodded. “Yes. There’ll be lots of time for fucking later.”
This girl, she had a one-track mind.
Not that he minded.
He found his clothes and hurriedly put them on. Then he clasped hands with Justine and they walked out of the cage, leaving the dead man alone with the howling dogs.