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Pinching my eyes closed, I took a deep breath in through my nose before I finally forced them open again and sat back so I could see his face. “Hawk,” I started, desperate to get him to hear me. “Some random guys have taken your sister. We need to do something. To find her. Every second we sit—”
“They aren’t random.”
His words were short, sharp, and definitive.
It wasn’t a question.
Or a possibility he was mulling over in his head.
“It’s their M.O.,” he continued staring at the wall silently while his left hand reached for his right arm. “The dark vehicles you can’t see into, no plates, heavy aftermarket additions built for war—built to cause pain. That’s The Valley.” His fingers traced the scarred skin that decorated his forearm, a story I still had yet to hear in full and that I wouldn’t rush him to share with me. Those scars cut deep through the skin, as though someone had carved them into his flesh, although the barbed wire tattoo that coiled around and down to his hand did a good job of disguising them to the naked eye.
I blinked a couple of times, my mind still a little slow as I pieced together the things he was saying. “I thought you said The Valley was like one of those religious groups. Trying to find their way to the heavenly gates and treating women like slaves.”
After our brief conversation about The Valley, I’d looked into places like it.
Cults.
That’s what they were.
I couldn’t find a lot of information about The Valley itself, but I fell far down an unexpected rabbit hole, pulling up article after article about other places like it. The men in charge, the abuse, the underaged girls forced to marry and have baby after baby.
The way they are so convinced it’s the only way to be happy or get into this place in the clouds and avoid the fiery pits of hell.
“It’s all that, but so much fucking worse, and you should have never been pulled into it.” The way Hawk’s eyes grew narrow and shadowed sent a chill down my spine. That kind of cold icy chill you get when you’re watching a horror movie, and you can feel the jump scare building, but the main character was just standing there.
They should be running.
But they weren’t.
They were, for some reason, just standing there, waiting for it.
Maybe that was my sign, the blinking light in the darkness screaming, ‘run.’ Cults, car accidents, pregnant women being dragged away by men in masks—everything indicated that I should get the hell away from there.
And yet, I didn’t.
Instead, I crawled to the edge of the bed, got to my feet and placed my hands on Hawk’s shoulders as I stepped in between his legs, edging them apart so I could shuffle in a little closer. He blinked a couple of times, my presence now in his space and distracting him from whatever destructive thoughts were rushing through his mind.
“Stop it,” I said sternly, mimicking the words and tone he’d used on me only a few minutes ago.
It instantly calmed the storm swirling around him, and the corner of his mouth twitched into a smile for a second. He stopped tracing his scar and instead hooked his hands around the back of my thighs, cupping them under my ass and lifting me slightly.
I followed his lead, straddling his hips and moving my hands from his shoulders, hooking them around his neck. I licked my lips, ignoring the sharp sting from the split, and cleared my throat before I spoke, “I want to hear your story,” I whispered.
He rolled his shoulders back and sat a little taller.
That was how he gathered himself, making sure his head was held high before he spoke about a time in his life when he wasn’t so strong.
“The Prophet punished anyone who stepped out of line or questioned The Valley’s focus. When someone got too close to the truth, they were basically sent to slaughter, but it was covered by this bullshit ritual.” He lifted his arm, and our eyes moved together, drawn to the damaged limb. “Snakes. If their bite killed you, you weren’t worthy. If you survived, God had a plan for you. Want to take a guess at how many people survived?”
“You did.”
“I was the only one.Ever.” He placed his hand on my thigh, shaking his head. “Bishop got there just in time. He got me to the hospital that had the right antivenom, but some of the tissue in my arm was already dead.”
Fucking hell.
My family threw me out on my ass, but they didn’t try to murder me.
I sucked in a deep breath, my heart pounding a little harder, faster, but the things that happened earlier were starting to make sense. These people’s beliefs outweighed everything else. They were more important than freedom and more important than human life. And it seemed there were people at The Valley willing to use violence and force to ensure that their followers never swayed from their faith.
