He couldn’t know that, because I have changed into the dress he gave me. I could have showered. He really wouldn’t know unless he was watching me.
“I just . . . I’m really upset and confused. I don’t know if I should be here.”
“How about you come and eat, then we can talk more about that?”
I glance at him. “You kidnapped me. I don’t trust you.”
His smile grows warm, but scary. “I understand that. I’m not asking you to trust me; I’m just asking you to eat. You must be hungry.”
I give him a skeptical expression, then sigh. “I am.”
“Come along then.” He leads me out into the area where the campfire was set up, and I face the scalding stares thrown in my direction by a few of the people watching me.
“I thought you were all forgiving people?” I mutter.
“We are,” he says, shooting a glare at the frowning people that has their faces dropping immediately. They instantly replace their frowns with smiles.
My god. The power he has over them is terrifying.
“Please, sit by the fire and stay warm. I’ll collect some food.”
I sit on a log resting by the fire and watch him go toward the long tables of food being catered to by a group of ladies. To anyone who didn’t know better, they’d say this was just a normal extended family enjoying living without modern-day devices. That they just loved the world and nature.
That would be so incorrect.
“Here.”
A plate is thrust at me, and I stare down at the contents. No meat, all veg and plant foods, but it looks nice. I mumble a thanks and take it, placing it on my lap. Josh sits down beside me, and I dare to ask the question I’ve been wanting to know since I got here. “Where’s Hayley? I wanted to apologize for getting her into trouble.”
Josh’s face doesn’t change, but the air around us does. It gets thick and dangerous. “Hayley has gone away for a while. Her actions were unacceptable.”
My heart pounds, but I know I have to keep it together. It takes a few moments before I can stop my voice shaking enough to say, “Her actions?”
“She helped you escape.”
“No, I made her think she would be better off. It wasn’t her fault.”
“But it was,” he says simply. “She knows the rules and she knows the beliefs.”
“Has she gone to stay with family then?”
He doesn’t answer, and something cold washes over my body.
“Tell me about yourself, Lucy. I’m desperate to know what has caught my brother’s eye after so long?”
I flinch, but not because of Heath, instead because of how casually he can change the conversation and how much the terrified lump in my throat is growing in fear for Hayley.
He takes the flinch as a reaction to Heath. “I’m sorry, of course you don’t want to talk about it.”
“I don’t,” I mutter.
“Perhaps you’d like to ask me a question?”
“I have one,” I admit.
“Please.” He gestures with his hand. “Anything.”
“You see Heath pushing me or handling me roughly as abuse, yet I know you’re capable of the same, and it’s okay when you do it. How do you figure that?”
He’s quiet for a second and I worry I’ve blown my cover, but he answers, and his voice is calm and collected. “Men like Heath use their strength for power. I’m not the same. I do only as God instructs and sometimes that may seem unpleasant, but it’s only carried out because those people are going against his wishes. All wrong-doings have a punishment; they have for as long as the world has been spinning. I’m just carrying out what I’m asked.”
“How does God speak to you?”
He smiles at me. “If I told you, I’d have to kill you.”
I shiver.
“God speaks to everyone, Lucy. You just aren’t listening.”
He doesn’t tell them to kill people. “I still don’t understand why he’d ask you to take a life.”
“Our bodies are just vessels. I can’t take the soul from them; I can’t kill it. I’m just taking away the evil it’s been placed in. In doing that, those souls go back to where they belong—in God’s hands.”
I think I’m going to vomit.
I stare straight ahead. “The food is lovely.”
He smiles. “We do our best to live off the land.”
“That would take a lot of effort,” I say, trying to calm myself because my insides feel as if they’re going to explode and give me away.
“Living is no effort.” Mr. Perfect has an answer for everything.
“Ah look, the dancing has begun.”
I look up to see a group of young women, maybe in their early twenties, dancing around the fire. A group of old men leer at them, and it takes everything I have not to run over there and knock their teeth right out of their dirty mouths. I force myself to just watch, acting interested when really, all I want to do is run out of here and light the entire place on fire.
“Do you see how happy those ladies are? How free? How nothing but enjoyment fills their bodies?” Josh asks.
“Yes,” I say, and it’s not a lie.