AllFreeNovel
Share Us
If the killer was on the grounds, there’d be a fight. No way was Jericho going to let some asshole kill Rachel. As a general rule, he wasn’t a fan of revenge. Especially revenge when someone had been protecting a kid as Rachel, the doctor, and the foster parent had done. So, no matter what gripe this killer had, Jericho wouldn’t let him or her carry through on his plan.
Another “not so easy part” was that merely stepping into Stronghold would be a pisser of an experience. Way too many bad memories there. His old man had beaten the hell out of him more than a couple of times. And neither of his parents had believed in praise or affection. Instead, they’d dole out a cold, hard reality that anything he wanted or needed, Jericho had to get for himself.
So, he’d learned to hunt, fish, and forage off the hundred or so acres of woods that surrounded the Stronghold compound. He’d learned to fight. To shoot.
To survive.
Rachel had been part of that. She’d been the main reason he’d gotten through it while going through her own pisser of an upbringing. Thankfully, Tilda had made her upbringing somewhat easier by at least caring about Rachel and providing the basics as best she could. Tilda had also passed along some of that caring to him. That’s why it was a no-brainer to help her.
“I wish I could be sorry about bringing you into this,” Rachel continued a moment later. “I mean, I know it won’t be easy for you to go back to Stronghold.”
She hadn’t had to read his thoughts to know she’d just voiced what he was thinking. Nope. Rachel knew the mental crapshow he was going through right now with this blast from the shitty past.
“I wish I could be sorry,” she repeated. “But I’m not because if you’re as good as the media says you are, then you’ll save Aunt Tilda.” She paused, tightened her grip on the handle. “Are you as good?”
Being modest wasn’t going to relieve any of the pressure cooker stress she was feeling right now, so Jericho went with what was true most of the time. “You won’t be sorry I’m in this,” he said.
And he hoped like the devil it was true in this case. He wasn’t a hundred percent on missions. Sometimes, he failed. Sometimes, that had soul-crushing consequences. But the majority of the time, he won, and that meant whoever he was trying to save, rescue or whatever won, too.
He needed Rachel and Tilda to win.
Jericho had to slow down some when he took the turn off the already narrow country road to one that didn’t have the right to even call itself a road. At best, it was a path, littered with potholes and weeds sticking up through the dirt and gravel surface. Definitely not a welcoming, well-traveled route, but then that’s what the founders of Stronghold had had in mind.
“Keep a look on the trails to make sure no one has parked there,” Jericho instructed. Something Jericho was already doing, but it didn’t hurt to have a second pair of eyes since it was dark.
He took another turn. Then, another. No signs to follow, but Jericho didn’t need them. He knew exactly where he was going, and he was mentally prepping himself for whatever hell waited there.
Thinking back to the part of the report he’d read about the attack on Hildie’s daughter, he hadn’t seen any mention that there’d been two or more involved in her brutal assault. Just the one and the message he or she had delivered in a voice meant to conceal the identity and even the gender. So, just one.
Maybe.
But that didn’t mean the killer hadn’t brought backup with him this time.
“Are you armed?” Jericho asked as he made the final turn.
“I have my pocketknife.”
He sighed but didn’t question why she had it with her. It’d been her mom’s and apparently before that, her grandfather’s. So, it was Rachel’s only possession from her mother. Her attachment to it was sort of like his slingshot, though it didn’t have any family legacy component to it. However, Jericho had made it himself, and after it’d saved his butt more than once, the slingshot had its own legacy.
“There’s a snub-nosed .38 in the glove compartment,” he told her. “And a Sig-Sauer if you want something bigger.”
She went with bigger, taking out the Sig. Jericho didn’t have to ask if she knew how to fire it because he’d been the one who taught her to shoot.
After threading around a deep bend in the so-called road, Stronghold came into view. Or rather the high fence with razor wire did. It had that whole high security prison vibe to it, right down to the metal sliding gates that could withstand a serious impact. A series of chains and locks kept it secure.
Once, the place had been a rustic vacation/campsite with RV hook-ups and a dozen small cabins. When the site had gone belly up, and the owner had declared bankruptcy, a handful of survivalists had bought it for next to nothing and then converted it to off-grid with solar panels.
His father had been one of those investors, and when Jericho had been barely eight, his dad had crammed the family—Jericho, his three older brothers, and their mother—into the six hundred feet of living space that had never been meant for a family home.
Still, they’d managed, and the place had gotten significantly roomier after both his brothers had left when one had been eighteen and the other two at sixteen. Like Jericho, they’d joined the military and then two of them had ended up working for Ruby.
His mother had died, too.
Here.
Right at Stronghold.
And his father had been responsible.
