Total pages in book: 63
Estimated words: 60198 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 301(@200wpm)___ 241(@250wpm)___ 201(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 60198 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 301(@200wpm)___ 241(@250wpm)___ 201(@300wpm)
“You want to come back home with me? Have something to eat?”
“Sure,” he says. He’s worked up an appetite on a long drive and after a good fight. The prospect of food is enough to make him stupid.
CHAPTER 4
Karl
We go to her house on foot after I stash my car in some bushes far enough away from the scene of chaos to ensure it hopefully isn’t easily found. We start walking through the forest she’s trying so hard to save. It’s not as small as she made out. Even at a decent pace, it takes a couple of hours to get there, and by the time we get there, I’m ready to eat pretty much anything.
“Here we are,” she says, a note of pride in her voice.
I don’t know what I was expecting, exactly. A big house of some kind. Some version of my father’s house, but in a more rural setting. Or a smaller house, but cozy. That’s not what I find.
A series of shacks run along the river. It’s less swampy here than it is in a lot of the state, but it’s still wet and there’s a thin sheen of green on everything. The buildings are old and have obviously been flooded several times. Over and over. Now they’re rotting out where they stand. I can see mold on the curtains from here. I can smell it, and I’m nowhere near it.
This is a poor place.
A really poor place.
This is the place where people who have nothing live with nothing. I’m guessing they hunt for their food, and I don’t mean with guns. This is a pack that wears fur more than it wears clothes. I find myself excited and horrified in equal measure.
The human side of me tells me that this is no way to live.
The animal side says it might be the only way to live.
When I open my mouth, being an asshole comes out. It’s my father’s voice, my father’s words. It’s like finding myself an unsuspecting puppet of an agenda I don’t really have and yet somehow seem to be pushing anyway.
“Why do you even want to keep this place? Better to cut it, drain it…”
I miss her fist coming. It’s small, and there’s not a lot of weight behind it, but it catches me right on the point of my chin and rocks my head back enough to make me lose balance. I’m going over backward before I can stop myself.
She stands over me, plants a boot on my chest, and snarls at me with all the fury she can muster.
“This is the point,” she says. “This is everything. If you won’t defend it, you’re useless to me, and if you’re useless to me, I’ll put you in the fucking river.”
I am as hard as I’ve ever been. So fucking aroused.
Little fucker dares threaten my life? I don’t fucking think so.
“We’ve done this before,” I remind her. “You know what happens next.”
I’ve thrown her on the ground before, and I’ve fucked her before, and I’ve taught her that I am bigger and stronger and meaner than her, and she doesn’t care about any of it. She’ll do this again and again. She’ll seek pain, and…
Click. Click. Click.
I hear three distinct clicks. When I lift my eyes up from her, three long guns point at my face. I look up into the face of three young men with thick dark hair and big brown eyes. They’ve got her eyes. Must be brothers. All of them are younger than she is; one’s definitely too young to be holding a gun on me.
“Meet my brothers,” she says. “This isn’t going to go the way you think it is.”
“And how’s it going to go?”
“We’re going to make sure this land is protected. No matter what. The lumber cutting’s going to be stopped. Forever. And if you won’t buy it for us, then we’ll buy it using you.”
It takes me a second to realize that the little bitch has kidnapped me.
She set this up. She seduced me. Lured me here. And now she’s closed the trap.
Ellie
I expected him to be angry.
I didn’t expect him to laugh.
He looks me in the eye and he bursts out with the kind of amusement most people don’t get to experience, let alone emote in a lifetime. He’s so absolutely tickled.
“What are you going to do? Lock me in a cage? Or are you just going to keep a gun on me all the time? Because the second any of your attention slides even a little, I’m going to have that gun.”
“Don’t worry,” Ellie says as her brothers stay silent. “I know how to keep a wild animal where it needs to be. Get him inside, guys.”
“Gittup,” the oldest one says, nudging me with his foot.
I could kill all four of these wolves, mangy, poor things that they are. I see hunger in their eyes. It would make me feel sorry for them if I were capable of feeling that sort of thing. Ellie is curvy, but that’s because she’s female. The boys are fed, but not well. They’re like wild creatures, rangy and mangy and generally feral. This is a kind of energy I haven’t enjoyed before.