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My heart thuds painfully against my ribcage.
What is he doing to her right now? Must find her. Must save her.
My hand bumps against something hard and plastic. I look down and I see a cell phone lying in the leaves right next to me. It’s not my cell phone; my brother must have left it for me.
My throbbing foot is neatly bandaged. That wasn’t mercy. Neither is the blanket. My brother wouldn’t let me bleed out or freeze to death out here when he’s got such fun things planned for me…and Tamara.
I know how he thinks, because it’s how I think. A quick kill is never enough. If someone deserves killing, then they deserve killing the right way. Slowly, with heaping helpings of pain and terror rammed down their throats until they vomit.
Charlemagne wants me alive but panicked. It’s why he’s left me in the middle of the woods, naked. It’ll take me a long time to make my way back to civilization, and he knows I will be torturing myself every step of the way, imagining what he’s doing to her.
I swallow a rush of nausea and grab the cell phone. It’s fully charged, but there are no bars. There wouldn’t be any cell phone reception out here, and even if there were, I wouldn’t use the phone to call for help. My brother will be monitoring every call made from this phone. He’ll also be tracking its location anytime I get a signal.
I see there’s one message. I press the button, and my blood freezes in my veins. The message is a picture of an unconscious Tamara, just her face, with a ball gag in her mouth. Her face is slack and her mouth is stretched obscenely around the bright red rubber ball. A message plays across the screen:
If you tell the police, I will find out immediately, and I will start mailing you body parts.
My Tamara.
What is he doing to her right now?
As I stumble to my feet, I picture the things he did to the social workers; those women who visited our cabin in the woods and did nothing to save us.
Our oldest brother even slipped one of them a note, but they were intimidated by my father, and they didn’t do a fucking thing to save us. They didn’t even interview us separately. Instead, they spoke to the whole family with my father sitting right there in the room. Then they went back to town and reported that we were just one big wholesome, happy, pioneer family living out in the woods.
And years went by, and my father killed my brothers off one by one, and brought girls back to our cabin and raped them in front of us, and then killed them too.
Charlemagne remembered those women who failed us. He nursed a grudge. When he was in his twenties, he tracked down the social workers who had left us in that hell, and he put their eyes out with hot pokers and broke most of the bones in their bodies before he killed them.
Is he doing that to Tamara?
Screams of agony echo through my mind. I hear the crunch of bones as if it’s happening right in front of me. I smell burning flesh.
Panic and insane rage explode inside me, and I run, with the blanket wrapped around my shoulders and the phone clenched in my hands.
Tripping over a branch, I fall to the ground and smash my face. White-hot pain flares from my shattered nose and knocks clarity back into my head. I welcome the pain. I’ve never been afraid of it. It’s my friend and my protector.
Calmly, I climb to my feet.
There’s a shift in my brain, something ancient and icy taking over. All those feelings of fear and fury are still inside me. I can’t make them go away. But I can store them somewhere else until they’re useful.
I stand perfectly still and slow my breathing. Then I look around to get my bearings.
I’m surrounded by a dense stand of spruce trees. The sun has almost vanished. A fat black column of smoke rises into the sky, melting into the blue-black of encroaching night. It has to be the smoking ruins of my former house. With my remote control in my car, I set the code to detonate as I drove away. All evidence of my past misdeeds is now reduced to cinders and ash, floating on the cold October breeze.
The position of the setting sun alongside the smoke column gives me a rough idea of where I am. I imagine that the smoking crater that used to be my house will be crawling with police and fire trucks. I remember hearing sirens before I got in my car and fled with Tamara, so I know Charlemagne called the police. I have no idea what he told them. Did he reveal enough to make me a wanted fugitive?
Until I know, I can’t go anywhere near the police. I am easily an hour away from the nearest major road. I picked this remote location for a reason. However, I do have emergency supplies and ATVs stashed in various spots on the property. I head for what I hope is the closest one, crunching over bare leaves, the gunshot wound in my foot sending a jolt of pain through me with every step I take.
Hold on, Tamara. I’m coming for you.
She has to know I’ll save her, right? She can’t give up hope.
I swiftly make my way through the thick underbrush. Deep in the recesses of my brain, guilt and terror hammer at the thorny barrier I’ve built around them.
It’s my fault she’s been taken. I will scour the Earth to find her, and when I do, I will build a fortress for her and keep her safe for the rest of her life.
I’m haunted by memories of her inner fire and her magnificent strength, all wrapped in velvety kindness. How bravely she battled for people she barely even knew: that homeless drunk who slept in doorways, the families at the battered women’s shelter. With the childhood she had, it’s an absolute miracle she has a decent bone left in her body, and yet she’s the kindest, most generous person I’ve ever known. I’ve never met anyone like her. I’ll never meet anyone like her again.
