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HOW he was going to find me was another story.
I didn’t even know where I was.
Eric clucked his tongue and shook his head slowly from side to side. “I’m not going to kill you. Well, not right away. Now that I’ve found the Lord, I’ll need to exorcise your demons from your body first. Free them from your inner workings.” He held his arms out to the side and looked up to the ceiling with his eyes closed, breathing in deeply as if he were smelling something other than the mildew and dust permeating the room. He opened his eyes and lowered his gaze. “I’m going to save you, Andrea,” he whispered.
“You’re gonna save me, with that?” I eyed the bible in his hand.
He slammed it shut, stood and walked back over to the table. Eric rolled his eyes. “No, stupid girl. Not with the bible.” He picked up a knife with a thick black handle, its long serrated blade glinted against the light as he turned to inspect it, running a finger over the sharp edge. His smile fell, straightening into a flat line. He pointed the blade my way.
“With this.”
Preppy
I tracked Dre from the app on my phone, telling Bear where to turn until we found ourselves an hour from Logan’s Beach in a town called Estero Springs, driving the van through a gate with a sign that announced we were entering a State Historic site.
“I still can’t believe you GPS’d your wife,” King said.
“You can tell me what a stupid fucking idea it was after we find her,” I barked.
“Fuck, no. I’m gonna stick one in Ray’s neck the second we get home. Shit, maybe the kids too.”
“I lost signal!” I grunted, tossing my phone to the floor.
“What does that mean?” Kevin asked from behind me.
“It means that it stopped working,” I said.
“How?” Kevin asked. “It’s a chip in the back of her neck. The only way it would stop working would be if someone cut...”
Bear shot him a look and Kevin’s voice trailed off.
“She’s got to be around here somewhere,” I muttered as we parked behind a neat row of rounded trees. “Stay in the fucking van,” I ordered Kevin who was in the backseat. “Call us if you see anything coming or going. We moved deeper into the park. “The last trace was somewhere right in that direction,” I pointed north.
I pulled my gun. The unfamiliar terrain was the only thing stopping me from running full speed into the dark to find my girl.
King, Bear and I made our way quietly through the trees in the dark. There were a dozen or so small buildings around the perimeter of the property. “All of those houses are at least a hundred years old,” King said. “What the fuck is this place?”
“It’s the Koreshan State Historic Site,” Bear answered. “Some quack physician in the 1800’s started a cult and this was supposed to be his utopia. All because the motherfucker electrocuted himself one night and had an epiphany that the entire universe existed inside a giant hollow sphere. Wacky shit, huh? Guess most people thought so too, considering this place is now a state park that rents kayaks on weekends and hosts Mother’s Day brunch.”
“How the fuck do you know all that?” King asked.
“It says it right there,” Bear said, shining his light on a stone in the ground with a metal plaque fixed at an angle to the top.
“Did you hear that?” King asked. The leaves on a nearby rustled for a moment then stopped.
“Probably a snake or rodent,” Bear said.
“Shhhhhh girls. I think that’s where we need to go,” I said, pointing to a large two story yellow building beyond the clearing in front of us. I crouched down and used the beam of my flashlight on the ground so we could see any obstacles in our way without shining the light right through the windows and announcing our fucking presence to whoever the cocksucker was who had Dre.
I ground my teeth.
“How do you know that’s where she is?” Bear asked. “There’s a shit ton of buildings around here. Could be any one of them.”
“Because of that,” I said, lifting my light to the license plate of the familiar newer model Honda Civic parked along the side of the building. The trunk wide open and empty. The What Would Jesus Do bumper sticker glowing in the dark.
“I know who took her,” I growled.
“I called the brothers. They’re on the way. We’re gonna need more backup than your kid brother...” Bear’s voice trailed off in the distance because I was already halfway across the clearing.
I was going to get my wife.
Then I was going to burn East alive.
I’m coming, Doc.
CHAPTER TWENTY
Dre
All the feeling in my body came back at exactly the wrong time, right as Eric sliced his knife along the skin on the back of my neck where the scar from jumping from the trunk was still red. “AAAAHHHHHHHH!” I screamed as he dug his finger inside the fresh wound. He pulled out something small, blue, and shaped like a pill coated in my fresh blood. He laughed long and loud, before tossing it onto the floor in front of my face, crushing it under his designer shoe. “Looks like your husband tagged you with a tracker. Guess he’ll be here sooner than I thought,” Eric said, cracking his neck. “We better get started then.”
He turned back to his table, wiping the blood from the blade with a rag. While he worked he hummed “Jeremiah Was A Bullfrog.” He made his way back over to me with the blade gleaming once again. “This is going to hurt a lot.” He held up the knife above his head with both hands on the handle.
“No!” I screamed, trying to scoot back along the floor but I was still restrained and could barely wiggle, never mind move.
“In your name Jesus Christ I release the demons from the body of this sinner. I cast them from the dark out into the light!” He brought down the knife in one swift motion, straight into my shoulder. I felt the blade hit bone before coming out the other side, tacking me to the wood floor. I felt it all over again when he withdrew the blade, wiggling it around in my flesh to release its hold on the floor.
I was about to pass out. My vision blurred from the pain.
“Get the fuck away from her,” a very familiar voice commanded. When Preppy came into view radiating anger with his gun trained on Eric I thought it was all a dream or a hallucination.
Preppy stood there seething as his eyes darted between my gushing wound and the man holding the knife. If it was a hallucination, it was a damn good one.
Preppy was a mix of beautiful hatred and lustful revenge. He was already handsome with his burning amber eyes, sandy blond hair, a strong body full of lean muscles and tattoos that decorated every inch of his tan skin including the sides of his head, but in that room he looked like pure heaven with evil intentions and I couldn’t tear my eyes away. But standing there, nostrils flaring, I noticed a new kind of beauty in Preppy. Darker. More sinister.
Preppy’s face was twisted in anger. The cords of his neck were strained and tight. His chest puffed out in fury, heaving up and down against the fabric of his tight white tank top, the kind meant to be worn under a shirt. His suspenders were attached to his pants, but they weren’t on his shoulders, instead they hung down around each side of his thighs. The muscles of his forearms and biceps flexed under his colorful tattoos as he adjusted his grip on the gun in his hand.
Preppy was pure unadulterated power, crackling and zapping with energy like a wind vane struck by lightning. An electric aura of revenge encircled him as he maintained a focus I’d rarely seen from him
unless we were naked. Which made sense, because there was something very sexual about the way he moved forward. The confidence, the rhythm. The way the sweat beaded on his temple before sliding down his face and neck. Erotic, yet frightening.
It was a dance of revenge and Preppy had taken the lead.
Eric cackled when he saw Preppy moving and responded to his move by slowly sliding the blade under my chin, piercing my skin with the tip.
Preppy froze and Eric looked triumphant that he had the upper hand.
That was until Preppy fired and Eric’s bicep exploded. He cried out and slumped to the ground.
“Fuck, Doc!” Preppy cried. He ran to me and frantically searched my face. He ran his hands over my body to check for more wounds. He tore off a strip of his shirt and tied it around my
