Laura opened her eyes but could not see anything. Just blackness with a shimmer of unfocused light at the peripherals.
She had come in and out of consciousness several times and her mind tried to make a narrative out of the fragments. She could feel her hands bound, and that she was on a hard surface. She tried to move her arms, but her muscles screamed in agony. She felt as if she had been in a car accident. Or beaten. That is what had happened. A beating.
Despite the pain, she forced herself into a seated position and let the blood circulate through her veins. Her head began to clear from the throbbing as she thought about what happened. She remembered swinging, clawing, thrashing against the madman. But to no avail. The initial blows had shocked her system, the subsequent ones fell on numbed nerves, and then she blanked out.
She could remember the sensation of being in the bed of the truck, jostling back and forth on a bumpy road.
Darkness.
A cave entrance.
Her eyes began to focus and she could see where she was. A cave.
Next to her lay Molly. Tied up also and unconscious. Across the room she could see Colten staring at her.
“What are you going to do with us?” Laura asked, still dazed and confused, forcing herself to stay conscious.
“Where are we?”
“I said shut up!”
Colten walked across the cave and slapped Laura in the face.
———
He was impatient. He looked at Molly and wanted fulfillment. Completion. He wanted to end the task he had halted several days before. But his hand was stayed by Seth’s command.
Colten stepped outside to calm his nerves. He wouldn’t be able to restrain himself if he remained in their presence, he knew that much. He was itching to get started. It was Christmas morning, but he was told he couldn’t open his presents. He stewed in his own inertia.
Seth came walking up the two-track, his stature not as strong as usual, but carrying just as much venom. He resembled a kid returning from a scolding in the principal’s office who then goes on to plot the means to blow up the school. He walked straight up to Colten and looked him in the eye but said nothing. Only stared deep into his heart. Colten flinched and diverted his eyes.
“What happened to you?” Seth asked.
Colten dismissed his broken nose. “Let’s just say it wasn’t a walk in the park.”
“So, did you get her?”
Colten looked back up and smiled an evil grin. “I got more. I got the girl too.”
The man did not respond with the enthusiasm that Colten had hoped for.
Colten erased the impish grin from his face and looked back to the cave. “They’re in there. All that’s left is to do the job.”
“No, that’s not all that’s left.”
“What do you mean?”
“Somebody’s coming. Coming up here after them.”
Colten looked around. “Who?”
“Jack.”
The woman’s husband. He remembered Jack vaguely like a memory easily discarded that lingers in the back of the head, refusing to be tossed aside. It came back to him.
The man who was with the woman.
The weak guy.
The one acting.
“Jack . . . ,” Colten whispered. He shrugged his shoulders. “What’s the big deal? He should be easy to put down.”
Seth looked up. His malice, his rage, his fear burning in his eyes and staring a hole through Colten’s head.
“He’s not coming alone.”