Kent had more to say, but his voice was drowned underneath the leafy green stalks slapping the car, sounding like a hundred pairs of shoes tumbling around a dryer. The noise sent Xander back to the day he’d found Isleen and that bitch driving his truck through the field. Here he was, about to find Isleen again.
He’d learned a lesson. Isleen wasn’t going any farther than arm’s length away from him. If he had to cuff her to him, he fucking would.
Dead ahead, the line of trees meandered through the landscape, the trees’ heights contrasting sharply with the fields surrounding them. A quaint gravel road ran alongside the wood line. He hadn’t seen that little lane until just now.
“You see that road?” he asked Kent.
In dawn’s bittersweet light, it all appeared to be a picturesque scene. Something he’d expect to see on a calendar or a postcard. But there was something intangible—maybe the way the trees clawed toward the sky, maybe simple bad juju—that made the place bizarrely unappealing. A shiver ripped through Xander’s entire body.
“There are cars parked among the trees.” Kent pointed. “I count…five. Shit. Best-case scenario, five men. Worst case, if every car was full, twenty-five.” Kent pulled his cell off the clip on his pants and hit a button. “This is Kent Knight with the BCI, badge number 5487, requesting backup and a bus to my current location.” He ended the call without giving them any more information. “This is one of those better-to-ask-forgiveness-than-permission situations.”
“Yep. I know the feeling.” Xander was actually starting to like the guy.
“We don’t want to go in asses flapping in the wind, outnumbered and outgunned. So I need you all to listen to me. When I tell you to do something, do it. Don’t fucking question me. We’re going to pray like monks no one hears us coming. Pull out of the field over there.” Kent pointed to an area just past the last parked car. “And then we’re going to hang back, evaluate the situation, and proceed accordingly. Everyone down with the plan?”
Dad and Matt voiced agreement. Xander mumbled something that could pass for yea or nay. Fuck Kent’s plan. Xander had a plan of his own. Get to Isleen. Period. The end.
Kent kept talking, kept giving orders, but Xander tuned him out. All his attention zeroed in on a point through the trees. Her location. What had she been through this past week? Beatings and starvation like before? Or this time had things been worse? Nightmarish images from every horror movie he’d ever watched flashed through his mind. He clutched the steering wheel so hard he wouldn’t have been surprised if it snapped in half.
Stop it. Stop thinking that way. No matter what she’d been through, she was alive. She’d only been gone a week. Not the years she’d endured before. This couldn’t be as bad. It couldn’t. His heart didn’t believe the lies his brain was trying to sell.
Even though they didn’t have to travel more than a mile across the field, it felt like a small bit of forever until Xander let off the gas and pulled the car onto the gravel road next to the tree line. He rammed the car into park and then bolted from his seat, ignoring Kent’s loud whispers for him to stop. What was the guy going to do? Shoot him? Not likely.
A pathway opened off the road, so he darted onto it and found himself sprinting through a serene copse of trees. The sun shot beams of light through the leaves, casting a warm golden glow over everything. Birds sang chipper songs. He heard the rush, gurgle, and slosh of water. He smelled moist earth, river water, and the terrible tang of blood.
Through the screen of trees, he saw everything. Its magnitude and severity so much worse than anything his imagination could have conjured up.
Chapter 23
Time broke, giving Xander’s mind space to take it all in. Memorize it. Relive the horror of it in his nightmares for the rest of his life.
A coffin-shaped box of black metal on the shore, lid open. She had been kept inside that steel prison. Beyond the box, sunshine dappled the water, casting a pink gossamer shimmer over Isleen’s drowning body.
Four naked men held her. A fifth man cruelly shoved her face under the water.
Xander’s stomach collided with his heart. Something inside him popped, the feeling similar to a pressure release, like the cork on his sanity had just blown. He stumbled and nearly went down, but caught himself and kept running toward her.
“Iisslleen!” He howled her name, the sound somewhere between wounded animal and feral dog.
The man with his hand over Isleen’s face lifted his gaze. His eyes were cold and lacking a conscience. He raised a large knife in the air and still held her under the water. A ray of sun glinted off the bloody blade. “I command you to stop, or I will slay the Dragon with my sacred sword.”
Every cell inside him screamed to keep going. But he wouldn’t make it to her in time to prevent that knife from piercing her flesh.