Only to awaken hours later to the sound of the dogs barking in excitement . . .
He heard the scuffling sound of footsteps near his window and flew out of bed. Cautiously, he peered around the wooden frame of the curtainless, dirty window. It was a clear night with plenty of star shine. He saw the unmistakable outline of Emmitt’s tall, powerful form walking toward one of the barns. There was a pack or bag of some kind thrown over his shoulder. As Jake watched, a slender, pale forearm fell from the bag. The hand hung limply in the empty air, the fingers unmoving. A sick feeling rose in his stomach.
Oh no. Not again.
Anxiety shot through him at the recollection of finding another girl once, two summers ago. Afterward, he’d prayed it’d only happen that one time. He’d hoped Emmitt would never venture into this particular scheme for profit again. Wasn’t it bad enough that he abused and took advantage of animals the way he did? Now he was going to subject innocent human beings to his, and other men’s, sick appetites?
But fear shot through Jake’s veins for yet another reason. Emmitt had gone batshit crazy when he’d found out Jake had seen and spoken to that other girl two years ago. He’d promised to kill Jake, and Jake believed wholeheartedly he’d do it. Emmitt had held him down on the barn floor and nicked his tongue with his huge buck knife, ranting about how he’d cut his tongue out completely before he killed him if he ever uttered a word to anyone about seeing that first girl.
And now, here was another one.
What if she was dead?
No, Emmitt had as much use for a dead female as he did a cold dog.
An icy sweat broke out over his body despite the fact that it was probably ninety degrees in his tiny, unventilated room. He may not get the exact specifics, but he understood now more than he had when he’d been eleven years old and discovered that first girl. He knew what rape was from the sly, ugly innuendo of not only the adult men who were drawn to Emmitt’s place, but his experience at Poplar Gorge Junior High. Boys could be graphic, even if most of his idiotic classmates didn’t understand a tenth of what they were talking about.
Whatever his uncle had in store for that female was the stuff of nightmares. He knew about sex and breeding, not only from living with dogs and in the middle of the woods surrounded by nature, but from his uncle and other men who attended the fights. Prostitutes were often brought in on fight nights—rough-spoken, hard, usually drug- addicted women that Jake regarded with mixed distrust, pity, and disgust. He’d heard the disturbing exchanges between those women and men in the woods or out on the landing in the darkness of night. Whatever his uncle had in mind for that female with the slender hand, it somehow involved turning her into one of those pitiful women.
Where’d Emmitt nabbed her from? Surely his uncle couldn’t have been so bold as to snatch her from nearby Poplar Gorge, the town where Jake sporadically attended school. He hadn’t known at first where Emmitt had gotten that first girl. Later, after doing some research at one of his favorite sanctuaries, the Poplar Gorge Public Library, he’d found out. There’d been several newspaper articles on the kidnapping in the Charleston Gazette. She’d been taken from a campground ten miles down the river.
She’d never been found by the police, that Jake knew.
Could he possibly scout out a couple of the campgrounds in the morning? If there was news of this new missing girl, maybe he could somehow leave a hint as to where she was before Emmitt transferred her elsewhere?
Don’t think about it. Block it from your mind. There’s nothing you can do.
Jake couldn’t help that girl any more than he could save the other one two summers ago. And he couldn’t save Mrs. Roundabout from what was going to be an agonizing, painful death from her injuries no matter how much he tried to doctor her. Emmitt reminded him several times a day of how useless he was. He couldn’t save himself from Emmitt. How could he p
ossibly save anyone else?
Nevertheless, he didn’t go back to bed that night. The memory of that small, motionless hand haunted him. For some reason, he needed to see the face of its owner.
He waited until he saw Emmitt leave the south barn and lock the doors with a heavy chain and padlock. He pretended to sleep as he listened to Emmitt’s heavy tread approach the house.
Eventually, even the dogs his uncle had put into the south barn to guard the girl quieted their bloodthirsty barking. Jake waited until the sky over the trees turned a pale gold.
Dawn was for the clean of spirit. That’s what his Grandma Rose liked to say. Jake knew from experience it was the period when Emmitt slept the deepest. He also knew dogs that had been given an excessive amount of blood and meat often slipped into a deep sleep afterward. Jake suspected Emmitt had given the guard dogs just that, not only to gain their cooperation and temporarily silence their bloodlust, but to amplify their murderous hunger upon awakening . . .
Moving with the silence of an experienced eluder, Jake snuck into the kitchen and opened a cabinet, searching for food. He slipped out the back door and across the grounds to the south barn. He could pick the lock his uncle had put on the door. Being a prisoner of sorts himself, Jake had learned long ago how to open every lock Emmitt owned on the property. But he hesitated. The clanking sound of the chain sliding through the clasp was a risk. It might awaken the dogs. Or Emmitt.
But he knew of other openings and secret places. He was small enough and agile enough to slip through them.
As he climbed to the highest branches of the old maple at the back of the barn, the sun’s rays shone through the top of the tree line and pierced the thick foliage. Ignoring the forty-foot drop below him, he shimmied out onto a narrow limb. There were some advantages to being skinny . . . although this trusty branch was bending more and more with his weight each passing summer.
Clinging to the limb like a leech, he reached his goal: a window in the hayloft used for ventilation. It was too small for even him to crawl through. The tiny glass pane was intact. It was open as far as the hinge would allow.
He peered inside the window. The maple tree was now ablaze with first morning light, and it was hard to adjust his eyes to the darkness of the interior barn. Suddenly, there was a flash of brilliant copper in his eyes, and a face appeared in the window. He started back in surprise. He and the girl were only inches apart. Her skin was pale, but reddened. She’d been crying. The next thing he became aware of was her eyes. They were huge and the color of the sea—or at least that’s what he imagined, never having seen an ocean or sea. He recognized what he saw in her eyes from firsthand experience, on the other hand.
Pure fear.
She opened her mouth, but he put his finger to his mouth in an urgent hushing gesture.
“The dogs,” he mouthed, barely a whisper leaving his lips.
“He said they’d kill me,” she whispered, and he saw the wildness in her eyes. Jake knew the layout of the barn. Emmitt had put the girl in the loft and stationed some of their more vicious dogs at the bottom of it. Emmitt hadn’t been boasting. Those pit bulls would tear her to pieces if she tried to escape.
“The dogs won’t kill you,” he whispered, straining to sound confident when he wasn’t. Instinctively he understood that she verged on panic. If she started screaming, it’d waken the dogs, and his uncle in turn. “Stay calm around them. Keep your fear boxed up tight. It’ll only make them more aggressive if they sense it.”