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And she’d fight him tooth and nail to the end.
Don’t let him out of your sight!
He won’t draw this out forever, Sam. You have to do something. Something now!
If only she knew what.
* * *
“Shit!” Bentz stood on the brakes.
Shuddering, the Jeep slid wildly as Bentz cranked hard on the wheel to avoid plowing into the car stopped dead in front of them.
“Hey!” Bobby-Dean yelled from the backseat. “Watch the fuck out!”
Clive whispered, “Holy Christ, man!”
Grinding to a stop, spraying gravel, and nearly ramming into the back end of the old Chevy, the Jeep missed the rear bumper of the Impala by less than an inch. In his headlights, he recognized the car, its fender dented in several places, one tire axle-deep in water, as Father John’s vehicle.
His blood ran cold. “Stay here,” he told the two men, and slid his gun from its holster, then stepped outside where the sound of the bayou—the insects buzzing, frogs croaking, water lapping—greeted his ears. He reached into his vehicle again and grabbed his flashlight to switch it on and sweep its bluish beam over the landscape.
Near the Impala, the vegetation had been flattened, a trail of bent weeds indicating that something or—more likely someone—had been dragged deeper along what had once been a road but was now only ruts with stones and exposed roots, a protrusion of drier land jutting into the swamp.
His heart pounded an uneven cadence.
This was it.
This was the place where Father John lay in wait. He knew it. Could feel the bastard.
With his free hand, he tried using his cell phone, got no reception, and swore under his breath. “Son of a bitch.”
He turned back to his Jeep. “Changed my mind,” he said, focusing on Clive. “Get out. Walk—no run—until you get a signal and dial nine-one-one. Tell them Bentz needs backup and give them the address.”
“This place ain’t got no address,” Clive complained as he and Bobby-Dean climbed out of the rig, the interior light cutting through the darkness.
“Then explain where it is. But go. Go fast!”
Bobby-Dean was already jogging up the double ruts.
Bentz didn’t have time to wait. Samantha Wheeler was either being tortured or dead already. He took off, using the flashlight’s beam as a guide as he swept it back and forth over the thick ferns and vines that clogged the road. Half jogging, he kept to the trail, what had once been an access road and now was little more than a break in the thick weeds.
If only he wasn’t too late!
Pulse thundering in his ears, he hoped to high heaven that Bobby-Dean and Clive, not the most responsible people he’d ever met, had the good sense to call 9-1-1 for backup. ASAP.
God help me.
God help Sam!
Around a final bend, he saw it.
A dilapidated structure loomed in the darkness, a broken-down behemoth now covered in vines and brambles and ferns growing wild, water tupelo and cypress trees ringing the area, rising tall, like ghostly sentries surrounding a castle.
From somewhere nearby an owl hooted and he heard the whir of a bat’s wings overhead as the ever-present Spanish moss danced eerily from the thick branches. He didn’t think of water snakes or alligators, or bears or pumas, just forged on, taking a thin land bridge, the swamp encroaching, surrounding the massive pile of rubble, water tupelo trees vying with the cypress in the bayou.
He swept his flashlight carefully over the muck and followed the drag marks to the pile of debris and saw an opening where once there had been a door, and now was just a dark hole. His insides turned to ice as he thought of Samantha inside with the madman who intended to exact his painful vengeance upon her.
Was he too late?
