Бентли Литтл - The Disappearance

And there was Joan.

She was lying on a bed in the middle of the windowless chamber, facing away from the door, and she looked awful. She was half-naked, and her cheeks, neck and shoulders were covered with what looked like drying vomit. Her face was red and swollen. But she was alive, and the instant he moved in front of her, she burst into tears. Tears began falling from his eyes, too, but this was no time to dawdle, he had to get her out, and he immediately he began working on her restraints—thick rope that had been tied into slipknots over and over again until the slack was down to nothing.

“We’re getting out of here,” he said. And because he didn’t know what more to say, he said it again: “We’re getting out of here.”

“How—” She tried to talk through her tears but the words were little more than hiccupped sobs. “How did you find me?” She sniffled hard and heavily. “Where are we?”

“It’s a long story, but we’re on a ranch in a nature preserve in the middle of the desert. And we’ve got to get out of here fast. The Homesteaders are gone, but they could be back any minute.” He wished he had a knife or longer fingernails. He was still on the first knot and not getting very far.

“Are we in California? What day is this?”

She’d been drugged. He should have known, should have guessed, and as he finally started to unravel the knot keeping down her left hand, he hoped that she would be able to walk. There was no way he’d be able to carry her.

His mind was racing, covering twenty topics a second. He was trying to release her from her bonds and at the same time figure out how to get out of this canyon without being seen. They probably wouldn’t be able to use Reyn’s car, he figured, so he was trying to estimate how far it was to the preserve’s nature center and how long they would have to remain hidden until someone showed up to open the place in the morning. And shouldn’t he tell Joan that he loved her? That was how it worked in movies during rescue scenes. The protagonists usually kissed, too, although that was not going to happen. She had thrown up, and it still smelled, and he was trying to hold his breath as much as possible so he wouldn’t gag. And—

There was noise from outside the house.

A voice.

“Ruth!”

Father.

Gary froze for a second, then began furiously pulling at the knot. A fiber from the rope stabbed his index finger, but he ignored it and kept working.

“Ruth!”

The voice was louder.

He could sense Joan’s panic, but somehow that calmed him. One of them had to keep a level head, and he focused on the task at hand as his fingers finally loosened a loop of rope, pulling the end free. At least both of them were smart enough to keep quiet. He finished untying her arms, then untied her right leg while she took care of the left. Quickly, Gary helped her sit up, then stand. Picking up a corner of the bedsheet, she bent down, wiping the vomit from her chin, mouth, neck and shoulders. Gary pulled off his T-shirt and put it on her. It was long but not quite long enough, and she tugged down the bottom hem.

He didn’t kiss her, but he hugged her. “I love you,” he said.

“I love you, too.”

“Ruth!”

Father was in the house.

Gary picked up his tire iron. They needed to get out of here. Now. They could no doubt find a hiding place within one of the rooms, but they would be found very easily if they did so, and when the Homesteaders returned, escape would become virtually impossible. If they were ever to make it out, this was the time. He peeked around the corner. The hallway was empty, and he turned back toward Joan, motioning silently for her to follow. Still holding down the bottom of the T-shirt, she moved next to him—

—and screamed.

Gary swiveled around.

Father.

He was standing in the center of the hallway, and Gary had never seen eyes so cold in any human being. He had no idea how Father had gotten here so quickly. It was as though he’d just appeared , and a jolt of fear passed through Gary as he looked upon that fierce, hard visage. Every instinct he had was telling him to run back into the room and slam the door, but when Joan screamed again, it broke the spell, and anger filled the space within him. This was the man who had kidnapped Joan, who was responsible for the murders of Reyn and Stacy and Brian and Teri Lim and Joan’s parents and who knew how many others. He was an evil motherfucker whose twisted preachings had caused the ruination of dozens, perhaps hundreds, of lives over several generations.

“The Lord shall smite you!” Father shouted in a deep, booming voice.

Gary rushed him.

He hadn’t known he was going to do it until he did, but he raised his tire iron and charged, intending to beat the bastard’s brains out.

Father stumbled back, and at that moment Gary knew for sure that he was just a man. He saw alarm on the bearded face, but evidence of Father’s humanity, rather than engendering sympathy, served to stoke Gary’s fury. He dashed down the hall, ready to bring down the tire iron on the son of a bitch’s head.

Father retreated into the front room and from somewhere produced a weapon of his own: a long shepherd’s staff. It must have been leaning against a wall, and Gary cursed himself for not having noticed it earlier. Nevertheless, that overgrown cane was no match for his metal rod, and he moved into the room, Joan right behind him.

With his beard and his staff, Father looked like Moses, but he was quicker and more agile than he appeared, and before Gary knew what had hit him, the long length of wood had lashed out and struck his arm— hard —causing him to cry out in pain and drop the tire iron. Father smiled cruelly.

Scrambling, Gary grabbed the tool and backed away, instinctively crouching low. The staff swung around again, barely missing his head. He was close enough to Father to do some damage, and he hit the old man’s shin with the metal bar. There was definitely a connection—he felt the solidity of the impact through his hand—but Father’s reaction was not what he expected.

Because there was no reaction.

The man’s legs did not buckle; he was not knocked off his feet; he did not even cry out. Instead, he stood his ground, and his staff came crashing down on Gary’s back. Gary fell to the floor, pain whipping through his body from the point of contact like lightning, a jagged bolt that hit muscle and organ and bone on the way. He rolled to the right, wincing in agony as the end of the staff hit the floor inches from his face.

Looking up, he saw Father’s hard eyes and thin, heartless smile. He cringed, waiting for the blow that would kill him.

With a wild, animalistic cry, Joan launched herself at Father. She leapt on him, knocking him over, clawing at his face with her raked nails as he went down. “I hate you!” she screamed. “I hate you, I hate you, I hate you! You’re a liar and a murderer and you’re wrong! You’re wrong! You’re wrong! About everything!”

It was a strange thing to yell, especially under the circumstances, but Gary understood. And he knew how hard it was for her to say those words. She’d been brought up in Father’s religion, and no matter how far she’d strayed, no matter what he’d done, there’d always been a part of her that still believed.

Father threw her off, but Gary lurched to his knees and instantly took her place, landing hard on Father’s chest, pinning down the old man’s arms.

And then he was pounding Father with his fists, hitting him hard, and it felt good. His knuckles connected with Father’s nose and cheek and jaw, and with each blow there was a satisfying crunch. Blood splattered and soaked into his beard, and though the old man did not make a sound, and even stopped struggling after the first few seconds, Gary kept whaling on him.