Page 109 of With Spite

Why else would…

Something covered my face, a hand maybe, then I was inhaling something sickly sweet.

That was the last thing I remembered.

The next thing I remembered was waking up in a barn.

“You’re a hard person to keep alive.”

I blinked and stared at the man in front of me.

It took a few seconds to blink the confusion from my eyes, then the dread started to pour through me.

Randel Conway stood in front of me, looking tired.

“Don’t go messing up all our hard work,” he ordered. “Calm down.”

Our?

Who was the other person to his “our?”

That was answered the next moment when Chan came in, looking angry and ready to commit murder.

“We should’ve just killed her and gotten it over with, Dad.”

Dad?

What the hell was going on?

“Shh,” Randel murmured. “We have to do this the right way. She has to stay with us for a night. We have to give her the full experience, don’t we?”

Oh.

My.

God.

Oh, my God.

Oh, my God.

Oh, my God.

“I’ll bet you’re starting to put two and two together,” Randel said as Chan sat heavily on the horse trough that was tipped on its side. “Do you know how I found you?”

I was staring into the eyes of a serial killer.

And I was already having trouble breathing.

I scrambled up to my butt and put my knees into the wood beneath me.

I shook my head, tears streaming down the length of my cheeks.

I couldn’t speak with the gag in my mouth, but that didn’t make Randel’s impatience any less forgiving. As evidenced by the way he ripped me forward by my shirt and got so close to my face that I could see the pores in his nose.

“I asked you a question.”

So I answered, even though my words came out garbled. “No.”