Eighteen

I crept over to the door and listened, holding my tongue until his footsteps faded away. Then I let loose on Joseph

I wanted answers. I wouldn’t let up until I knew where he was holding Luke and Mike. I wanted to know when Elijah ate. When he slept. When he went to the bathroom. I needed to know every last detail of his schedule so I could sneak away without him noticing.

“Where are they?” I hissed, my body vibrating with a lethal mix of fear and rage. “Tell me right now where Luke and Mike are or so help me God I’ll—”

I went to smack Joseph, to punch him, to do whatever it would take to drag the truth out of him, but he caught me, trapping my wrists against his chest with his hands. “Dee, don’t,” he whispered softly. “You can get angry with me all you want, but I’d lose that tone before you speak to my father again.”

Joseph was in no position to give me advice; it was his fault I was here in the first place. And I’d speak to his father any way I pleased. “Are you out of your mind?” I screamed. “Who gave you the—”

He held up a hand for me to stop. Instinctively, I shut up and looked at the door. It was closed; no jingling knob, no footsteps, and no muffled voices on the other side.

I slowed my breathing and refocused on my goal rather than my building rage. “Where is Luke? What did you do to him?” I asked again.

“Why can’t you trust me on this? I told you, they’re fine.”

“Trust you? Are you kidding me?”

I picked up the pile of clothes his father had left for me and threw them at Joseph. “You kidnapped me, drained half my blood, and then bartered me away as your father’s bride in some sick attempt to save your sister. I don’t know about you, but where I come from, that doesn’t breed trust. Now where are Luke and Mike?”

“They’re locked in the shed,” he quickly said, his mind obviously on something else. “And what do you mean, ‘bartered you away’ to my father?”

“In the shed. The one we were hiding out in? The Livor?” I asked, running through the layout of that dark, ten-by-ten-foot structure in my head. I looked up at the clock on the wall. It was one in the afternoon. If I was calculating right, then they’d been there five, maybe six hours tops. Not enough time to starve or become dehydrated, but plenty of time to lose their minds. I hadn’t thought to check the thickness of the walls, but Luke was strong, and Mike had one set of lungs and a nasty temper to go with it.

What little hope I’d managed to hang onto faded the instant Joseph started talking. “I turned the irrigation pump on before I left. Nobody will hear them over that noise. And believe me, that’s a good thing. You don’t want them found by anyone around here anyway.”

I shrugged off his words. Luke was used to tackling two-hundred-pound kids on the football field. Mike too. That old shed with its scratched-up walls was no match for them.

“And where did you get the idea that I’d give you to my father in exchange for my sister?” Joseph asked, repeating his original question. He looked confused, maybe even a bit offended.

I turned away from him, annoyed. If he was too stupid to figure that one out, then I wasn’t going to help. “Nothing. Forget it.”

“I meant what I said earlier, Dee.”

“Isn’t it Rebekah now? And you said a lot of things, most of them lies,” I fired back.

“I never lied to you,” he yelled.

I laughed. I couldn’t help it—his profession of innocence was so damn absurd it was funny.

“I. Didn’t.” He took a step closer and stared down at me. I swallowed hard and stepped back, kept right on going until my knees hit the mattress, forcing me to sit down.

Joseph saw the flicker of panic cross my face and backed up. “I promise I won’t hurt you, Dee,” he said placing extra emphasis on my name. “But please, slow down and listen to me for a minute.”

He unbuttoned his shirt, deliberately keeping his attention on me as the white of his undershirt came into view. There was a slowness to his movements and a barely audible wince of pain under his breath. I scooted farther away from him, confused. I had no clue what was going on, but the more-than-obvious pain on Joseph’s face told me one thing for sure. Joseph wasn’t planning on hurting me, not in that way anyway.

“You think you’ve had a tough time here? That my father has treated you badly? You haven’t seen half of what he can do,” Joseph warned.

He turned around and lifted his undershirt up over his head. The fabric caught in spots, the thin white cotton adhering itself to the weeping wounds. Red welts marked his back, each one strategically placed to hit more flesh than bone. I knew exactly what they were, my mind flashing back to the black leather belt my father was so fond of wearing. There’d been no “chat” that morning, no peaceful reminder to fall back in line. Elijah had beaten him with a belt.

My dad only hit me with a belt once, and it was a long time ago. But I remembered it well, still cringed whenever Luke took his belt off. Joseph might hurt now, but if memory served me right, those marks would sting like hell the second day, when the slightest of movements would force them to crack and re-open.

“He did that to you?” I asked.

It wasn’t a question, but Joseph nodded anyway.

“He tried to get you to tell him where they are, didn’t he?” I asked, and Joseph shrugged. “Why didn’t you tell him? Why would you let him do that to you in order to protect Luke and Mike?”

I couldn’t wrap my brain around any of this. We’d downright refused to come in here willingly and save his sister. Yet Joseph had taken a beating to protect them, to protect me. That made absolutely no sense.

“I was raised in this. I’ve been hit more times than you can imagine. Don’t worry,” he said with a weak smile. “I won’t break. If he starts in on me again about where they are, I won’t give into the pain. I figured you would, so … ”

No, I wouldn’t. I hadn’t yet. I didn’t break during the thirteen years I lived with my father, or when the girls in the group home taught me my place. And I definitely wasn’t planning on breaking now.

But Joseph had no way of knowing that.

“I know what you must think of me. But try to remember, I never had a choice in any of this. Nothing here is as black and white as it seems, Dee. You can’t simply decide you want to leave one day and get up and go. It doesn’t work that way.”

“That’s not true,” I argued.

“You’re an idiot if you think that,” Joseph replied. “My mom and I planned our escape for over a year. We hid all of our tracks, and he still found out. If you want to get out of here, then we have to play his game for now. Let him think he’s won, buy me some time to figure something out … a way that gets all of us away from him.”

When he said “all,” he didn’t just mean us and Luke and Mike. He meant Eden too. That would take time, and time was the one thing I didn’t have. “How long do I have to play along?” I asked.

Joseph ran a hand through his hair and sighed. “Luke was pretty clear about not helping me save my sister, but I’d stake my life on the fact that he’ll come in here to get you.”

“And?”

“Well, I’m banking on that—not only for Eden’s life and mine, but for yours too.”

I shook my head. If that was his plan—waiting on Luke to come to me—then he was dumber than I thought. I had no intention of sitting around here, dressing up and playing Elijah’s bride. I was outta here, with or without Joseph and his precious Eden.

But for the first time since I’d met Joseph, it felt like I had leverage, something I could use to force his hand. Luke.