Felicity tried to keep her mind off the lack of water. Once she found cell service, she’d have help and water.
Her head pounded along with her thundering heart. She knew she could outrun her father, but he had a gun, which meant she had to do a lot more than just outrun him. She had to get away completely.
Now, Ace, he could probably catch her if he was the one chasing her. Her father was a big man, and though she remembered a certain agile precision in landing a blow, she doubted it extended to endurance running.
But Ace was tall and lean and crazy. That was the worst part, really. He seemed almost normal sometimes. She’d found herself listening too intently to what he had to say.
Charismatic wasn’t the right word because that had too positive of a connotation. Compelling maybe. Even knowing everything she did about Ace—which was probably only the half of what Ace was and had done—she’d been compelled to listen to what he had to say.
It made her feel sick. Or maybe that was the dehydration.
She allowed her pace to slow, then stop, turning in a careful circle to study her surroundings.
She’d gone straight for the canyon land, which may not have been her smartest choice what with the lack of water, but it was better than the wide-open grassy plains. There were a million places to find cover in the rocks, crevices and caves.
And that was only if her father found her.
She was currently in a long, deep crevice. Some of the wet from yesterday’s storm had dried, but there were still damp places where the sun hadn’t touched. Not safe drinking water, but she considered it for a minute.
Maybe she should go back. Knife in hand. They weren’t supposed to split up. This was all wrong.
She climbed up a portion of the rock wall that would allow her to see out over the horizon while still keeping her mostly out of sight. She scanned the area, the tall spires and rocky hills. The sky was a brilliant blue, as if a tornado hadn’t blown through less than twenty-four hours ago.
The air was hot, but it was Badlands air. Home. Heart. She’d be okay.
The land provides.
The thought comforted her for a second or two before she realized it was Ace’s voice. Ace’s words.
She pushed out a breath, nausea stealing over her. How could a madman’s words be comforting? Had she gone crazy? Was she that weak?
She shook her head. Maybe she was, but she could choose not to be. She could fight it. It was like being shy, and her stutter. Those things still existed within her, but she fought them away.
So she would fight the terrifying idea she had something in common with Ace Wyatt. Just as for years she’d fought the terrifying idea a man who’d beat his young daughter was her own flesh and blood.
And that flesh and blood had come after her, no doubt. She looked around again, a double check to make sure her eyes weren’t deceiving her.
She caught the hint of movement to the east and squinted at it. Then, since she had time, she dug through her pack and pulled out her binoculars. She focused on the area where she’d sensed movement.
In between two spindly spires of red rock, a figure was moving. He was still far enough away the binoculars didn’t magnify features enough for identification, but based on the size and location, she had to believe it was her father.
He didn’t look like an adept hiker. He stumbled and picked his way over rock. She could continue to outrun or out-hike him if she chose.
But she would no doubt become too dehydrated to function after a while.
What were her options? He had a gun and he was clearly stronger than her. She couldn’t fight him. She had no gun to ward him off. Just that knife in her pack.
She considered waiting till he got close enough and then throwing it, but she’d never thrown a knife in her life and it seemed too big a risk to just start throwing her one and only weapon.
Rocks might work. She was strong and had good aim, but he’d have to be really close for them to do any damage.
She kept watching him through the binoculars. Maybe she wouldn’t have to do anything at all. One good fall and he’d be out of luck.
One good fall. What if she created the fall? She could take him out. Even with him having a gun, all she’d need to do was give him a little push. Well, more than a little, but a push. Or trip him somehow. She could incapacitate him or trap him in a deep crevice.
It would be tricky and dangerous, but it would be a better option than trying to find cell service without any water to drink. If she took out her father here, she could get back to the cabin. Close enough to it and she could access her Wi-Fi and send a text.
If she was careful and quiet, she could do it without Ace even knowing she was back. Surely he wouldn’t take Gage anywhere until her father returned with her in tow.
She’d hope, anyway.
In the meantime, she’d take her father out.
THE PAIN EBBED and flowed, excruciating waves of it, dulling into something almost bearable. Almost reasonable enough he could fight through, open his eyes and figure everything out.
Then another wave would take him under. Black, black, vicious black.
But then something happened, a familiar sound, a familiar panic. He found consciousness gasping for air and eyes flying open. His vision swam for a good few seconds before it cleared.
And there was Ace.
With the whip.
Gage tried to remember he wasn’t seven years old any longer. He was an adult. Whatever his father could dish out, he could take.
But that whip was the nightmare he thought he’d escaped. He wouldn’t let those old memories rush into his brain. There was enough pain there. He had to focus on the present. Where he was and if Michael was here—because if he wasn’t, he was still somewhere after Felicity.
Felicity. He’d focus on her and not the echoing crack of that whip.
“Good morning, son. Or should I say, good afternoon?”
Gage didn’t say anything, though he wanted to demand to know how long he’d been out. He wanted to demand a whole myriad of things, but he didn’t trust his voice with that whip in his father’s hands.
Ace shifted it from one hand to another. “Did you think I’d forgotten? You never forget your son’s weaknesses.” Ace smiled, a grin that was all sharp edges and sure as hell crazy.
Except Ace always knew what he was doing. So maybe he was just evil. Maybe all his talk about being anointed and chosen and born from the dust were the things he used to justify all that potential for horror he had inside him.
Gage had never really cared to find out. Especially when that whip was involved.
He wasn’t a child anymore. He was not a child anymore. The whip would hurt, but it couldn’t break him. He couldn’t let it. That was what his father wanted, so he wouldn’t give it to him.
But his body wasn’t getting the message. There was the nausea, which he could blame on the concussion he had to have been given. The heart-pounding, sweaty-palmed terror making his limbs weak—that was all whip.
It’s just a weapon like any other.
But it wasn’t. Not for him.
“Why do you get the whip, Gage?”
Gage wouldn’t respond. He wouldn’t. He didn’t have to give in. Not anymore. This wasn’t the same game it had been when he’d been a defenseless boy.
Maybe he was tied up in what appeared to be some kind of cave...always a cave. But he was thirty-one years old. A grown man who’d fought drug addicts and arrested child molesters and done what he could, everything he could, to right the wrongs he came across.
He had to survive this wrong. He’d done it once, much younger but with his brothers’ help.
Now he was an adult, and if Felicity had gotten away, it could be with his brothers’ help again.
If Felicity and his brothers could find him.
Big, big if.
Ace stepped forward, still moving the whip handle from hand to hand.
“The rules are the same, boy.”
Gage shuddered as if he was still that little boy. As if the years meant nothing. His size meant nothing. There was Ace and that whip, and Gage was nothing in its wake.
No.
“I ask a question, you answer it. Why do you get the whip?”
“Because my father’s a psychopath?”
The crack slammed through the air the same time the stinging, breath-stealing pain lashed over his leg. He couldn’t hold back the hiss of pain, despite knowing it was exactly what his father wanted.
It would be worse—get worse. His father’s whip was weighted and could break bones with the right slap.
Gage could survive it. Better to survive it than give in like he’d had to as a kid.
“Why do you get the whip, Gage? You and no one else?” Ace cracked the whip between them, and though Gage cringed at the sound, no blast of pain followed it.
Psychological warfare. It wasn’t enough to just hurt his sons—he wanted to break them. The problem was, if you were broken, the pain would stop.
For a time, but the war never stopped. There would always be this war between Ace and his sons, because they’d dared to be good instead of capitulate to his evil.
He’d promised himself never to be weak in the face of his father again. But giving Ace what he wanted without truly believing it wasn’t weakness. It was survival.
What wouldn’t Gage do to survive? To make sure Felicity had survived?
“I get the whip because I’m the smartest,” Gage said, his voice already battle weary.
“Good,” Ace replied in the same tone a teacher might use when a student finally succeeded with a difficult concept.
It made Gage feel slimy, slick with self-disgust and the ever-present heart-pounding fear. But if he threw up, he knew exactly what Ace would have to do.
He had to be tough. Tough enough to survive. Tough enough so that Ace would leave him alone and torture someone else. Anyone else.
It was his own fault. If he could make more mistakes, be more of a disappointment, Ace wouldn’t try to mold him, make him. If he could be less, this wouldn’t happen.
Sometimes he even believed that, no matter that it was a sad, self-serving lie.
You are not a child.
But he felt it. Felt those old feelings and thoughts taking over as if they were a spirit set on possessing him. He couldn’t get the words out of his head, the pleas he’d offered as a child desperate for the pain to stop.
“So much potential in you, Gage. And you failed all of it. What you could have been. What you could have done. You’ve failed. Just like Jamison and Cody. Did you know they could have killed me? Both of them. It’d all be over. Instead, here I am.”
“Do you want to see if I’ll kill you?” Gage asked, giving the bonds that held him a little jerk. “I’d be happy to oblige that little experiment.”
Ace laughed. “We’ll get to it. We will. I’ll give you all a chance to end me, because only the one who ends me could ever take my spot.”
“We don’t want your spot.”
“One of you will. I was chosen for a reason, Gage, and one of you will be, too. Perhaps you six are my great challenge. My cross to bear. Every leader faces them.”
“I can’t decide if you’re crazy or just evil, but you barely run your own gang anymore. You’re hardly a leader. Seems to me, the Sons don’t need you, Ace. Hasn’t jail taught you that?”
The next hit was so quick and vicious Gage howled in pain and shock. Ace’s grin widened.
“The pain can end. You know how it can end.”
“I’m not worried about your pa—” Another crack and painful slap, though this one wasn’t as hard or unexpected. Gage breathed through it, even as he felt blood begin to trickle down his thigh inside his pants.
Based on his father’s reaction, Gage knew one thing. The Sons were struggling without Ace at the helm. Ever since Jamison and Cody had managed to get Ace behind bars, the Sons had been sloppy.
Or maybe...
Could it be that the Sons weren’t struggling at all. It was Ace, losing power over the group that had followed him blindly. Wouldn’t that be worse to Ace—continuing on just fine without him and so many of his top men dead after a planned explosion by Cody’s former North Star Group?
The thought—the utter possibility—almost made Gage laugh. It reminded him that everything had an end. And maybe he wouldn’t live out his father’s end, but his brothers would.
Felicity would.
She wasn’t here, and neither was Michael. There were too many scenarios, too many possibilities of where Felicity could be and what she could be facing.
He had to survive this next little while just to make sure she survived. To make sure.
Then he did the thing he’d sworn to never do again.
Because sometimes you had to break a promise to yourself to keep a more important one to someone else.
“I get the whip because I’m the biggest. The smartest. The one best suited to take over, but the weakness of my mother needs to be beaten out of me.”
Another blow, but he’d been expecting that, too. Giving in to what Ace wanted never truly offered relief. If it were that easy, life would be a heck of a lot different. For all of them.
“Isn’t that how it goes?” Gage asked, failing to make his voice sound properly deferential.
“Try again. Try to mean it this time. Feel the truth. The weakness will be whipped out of you, Gage. Here. Or you’ll die. Jamison won’t save you this time. Brady won’t save you. Even that little redheaded dimwit can’t save you. It’s you and me.”
“And one of us will end up dead.”
“Oh, son, now you’re speaking my language.”