I tried to wiggle my fingers. I needed to get out of my restraints if I wanted any chance of escaping but they were still too numb.

“You see this?” he asked, holding up the bible. “This is what replaced Conner and my unnatural thoughts toward him. This replaced heroin.” He stroked the black leather cover lovingly. “I lost Conner, but I found someone much better.” He looked over to me. “I found Jesus.”

“So it’s not you, it’s Jesus who wants you to kill me?” I asked through the pain in my twisting guts. I wanted to keep him talking as long as possible to give Preppy time to find me.

HOW he was going to find me was another story.

I didn’t even know where I was.

Eric clucked his tongue and shook his head slowly from side to side. “I’m not going to kill you. Well, not right away. Now that I’ve found the Lord, I’ll need to exorcise your demons from your body first. Free them from your inner workings.” He held his arms out to the side and looked up to the ceiling with his eyes closed, breathing in deeply as if he were smelling something other than the mildew and dust permeating the room. He opened his eyes and lowered his gaze. “I’m going to save you, Andrea,” he whispered.

“You’re gonna save me, with that?” I eyed the bible in his hand.

He slammed it shut, stood and walked back over to the table. Eric rolled his eyes. “No, stupid girl. Not with the bible.” He picked up a knife with a thick black handle, its long serrated blade glinted against the light as he turned to inspect it, running a finger over the sharp edge. His smile fell, straightening into a flat line. He pointed the blade my way.

“With this.”

Preppy

I tracked Dre from the app on my phone, telling Bear where to turn until we found ourselves an hour from Logan’s Beach in a town called Estero Springs, driving the van through a gate with a sign that announced we were entering a State Historic site.

“I still can’t believe you GPS’d your wife,” King said.

“You can tell me what a stupid fucking idea it was after we find her,” I barked.

“Fuck, no. I’m gonna stick one in Ray’s neck the second we get home. Shit, maybe the kids too.”

“I lost signal!” I grunted, tossing my phone to the floor.

“What does that mean?” Kevin asked from behind me.

“It means that it stopped working,” I said.

“How?” Kevin asked. “It’s a chip in the back of her neck. The only way it would stop working would be if someone cut...”

Bear shot him a look and Kevin’s voice trailed off.

“She’s got to be around here somewhere,” I muttered as we parked behind a neat row of rounded trees. “Stay in the fucking van,” I ordered Kevin who was in the backseat. “Call us if you see anything coming or going. We moved deeper into the park. “The last trace was somewhere right in that direction,” I pointed north.

I pulled my gun. The unfamiliar terrain was the only thing stopping me from running full speed into the dark to find my girl.

King, Bear and I made our way quietly through the trees in the dark. There were a dozen or so small buildings around the perimeter of the property. “All of those houses are at least a hundred years old,” King said. “What the fuck is this place?”

“It’s the Koreshan State Historic Site,” Bear answered. “Some quack physician in the 1800’s started a cult and this was supposed to be his utopia. All because the motherfucker electrocuted himself one night and had an epiphany that the entire universe existed inside a giant hollow sphere. Wacky shit, huh? Guess most people thought so too, considering this place is now a state park that rents kayaks on weekends and hosts Mother’s Day brunch.”

“How the fuck do you know all that?” King asked.

“It says it right there,” Bear said, shining his light on a stone in the ground with a metal plaque fixed at an angle to the top.

“Did you hear that?” King asked. The leaves on a nearby rustled for a moment then stopped.

“Probably a snake or rodent,” Bear said.

“Shhhhhh girls. I think that’s where we need to go,” I said, pointing to a large two story yellow building beyond the clearing in front of us. I crouched down and used the beam of my flashlight on the ground so we could see any obstacles in our way without shining the light right through the windows and announcing our fucking presence to whoever the cocksucker was who had Dre.

I ground my teeth.

“How do you know that’s where she is?” Bear asked. “There’s a shit ton of buildings around here. Could be any one of them.”

“Because of that,” I said, lifting my light to the license plate of the familiar newer model Honda Civic parked along the side of the building. The trunk wide open and empty. The What Would Jesus Do bumper sticker glowing in the dark.

“I know who took her,” I growled.

“I called the brothers. They’re on the way. We’re gonna need more backup than your kid brother...” Bear’s voice trailed off in the distance because I was already halfway across the clearing.

I was going to get my wife.

Then I was going to burn East alive.

I’m coming, Doc.

CHAPTER TWENTY

Dre

All the feeling in my body came back at exactly the wrong time, right as Eric sliced his knife along the skin on the back of my neck where the scar from jumping from the trunk was still red. “AAAAHHHHHHHH!” I screamed as he dug his finger inside the fresh wound. He pulled out something small, blue, and shaped like a pill coated in my fresh blood. He laughed long and loud, before tossing it onto the floor in front of my face, crushing it under his designer shoe. “Looks like your husband tagged you with a tracker. Guess he’ll be here sooner than I thought,” Eric said, cracking his neck. “We better get started then.”

He turned back to his table, wiping the blood from the blade with a rag. While he worked he hummed “Jeremiah Was A Bullfrog.” He made his way back over to me with the blade gleaming once again. “This is going to hurt a lot.” He held up the knife above his head with both hands on the handle.

“No!” I screamed, trying to scoot back along the floor but I was still restrained and could barely wiggle, never mind move.