Going Home (The Green Bayou Novels Book 1) Read online

  “Where the hell are we!” he demands, looking around the shack.

  “I don’t know,” I answer, trying to remain calm. “How did we get here?” I question further.

  “I’m not sure. What’s the last thing you remember?” Jacob asks.

  “I remember walking into the station and heading to the bathroom. When I turned the corner to enter the hall, everything went black. I must have been hit in the head because I remember a searing pain before I went out, and my head is throbbing now,” I answer.

  “I left the hospital about twenty minutes after you and drove the ambulance back to the station. It was dark and quiet inside, so I figured you’d gone to bed. I was feeling my way down the hall because I didn’t want to turn on the lights in case you were sleeping. Someone grabbed me from behind and injected me with something. That’s the last thing I remember.”

  “Are you chained, too?” I question.

  He looks unsure, but when he stands, he finds he’s shackled as well. His chain leads to a spot on the wall, and he can’t move very far either. Whoever chained us wants to make sure we can’t reach each other.

  “Jacob, check your pockets to see if you have your shears or your pocket knife.” He gives himself a quick pat down.

  “Damn! They’re gone.”

  “It was worth a shot,” I say, once again depressed.

  “Think hard. Do you have any idea who might have done this and why?” he asks.

  I shake my pounding head. Thanks to the brain fog, I honestly can’t think of anyone, but then a name suddenly flashes.

  “Brad,” I mumble.

  “Your ex-partner? You think?” Jacob asks.

  “Who else?” I question. He shrugs and sits back on the floor.

  I start looking for a way out; it might not be too difficult because the place isn’t constructed very well. Drafts float through the cracks in the walls, and the old, splintered door lets in tiny slivers of daylight. I get out of bed and try reaching the window with the hopes of figuring out where we are. If we’re near a house or business, I’ll yell for help until my voice is gone. I stretch as far as possible to lift the edge of the curtain with my fingertips. The window is grimy, but I can make out that we’re in the middle of a swampy area. My heart sinks.

  “I think we’re on a floating camp in the bayou somewhere,” I announce to Jacob. “I don’t see anything but water and trees.”

  “That’s about right.” Jacob frantically runs his fingers through his hair. He winces when I back away from the window and turn to climb into the bed.

  “Emily, your head,” he says, softly.

  I raise my hand to feel for a tender spot and find dried blood caked in my hair. I hobble over to the bathroom hoping for a mirror, but there is none. It’s bare except for a toilet and a very small stand-up shower.

  “I think it probably looks worse than it is, Jacob. You know how head wounds bleed. I have a goose egg, not a depression, so I should be fine.”

  I look over to the nightstand tucked between the bathroom and the bed. Tugging open the drawer, I find four bottles of water, all sealed, so I suppose they should be okay to drink. I toss two of them toward Jacob, and he places them beside him on the ground. After that, it’s quiet. Extremely quiet. Eerily quiet.

  Jacob breaks the silence by releasing his tension with a loud scream and grunt. I’m startled, but understand where he’s coming from.

  “Emily, you need me to take care of you. You’re hurt, but I’m bolted to a damn fucking wall!” he yells, slamming his fists against the floor. Tears well in my eyes, and I try to choke them back. He lowers his face into his palms and angrily rocks back and forth. “I need to get to you.” His voice cracks.

  “Stop,” I insist, trying to keep my tone strong and level to ease his worries. “I’m okay. It’s nothing life-threatening. Look, it was a hit to my head. We both know how hard that sucker is, right?” I want to lighten the mood some. “Let’s just focus on getting the hell out of here. Do you see anything we can use to break out of here?”

  “You’re right.” He lifts his head. “Let me look.” It does no good.

  Darkness falls, and the night is unusually cold. Jacob leaves the wooden chair he’s sitting in to curl up on the floor. Being that I have no shirt, my teeth begin to chatter, so I wrap a shoddy blanket around me to keep warm. Ever the gentleman, Jacob offers me his shirt, but I refuse it. He’s stuck on the drafty, wooden floor planks without any padding or bedding. He needs his shirt to help thwart off hypothermia. We finally fall into a fitful sleep, tossing and turning all night long.

  After what seems like an eternity, I ask Jacob for the time because my watch has disappeared. He pushes the button on his watch to illuminate the face. Besides his watch, the only light in the dark cabin comes from a battery operated flashlight I found in the bathroom. The cabin is so grungy; it’s difficult to tell the time of day by looking at the window.

  “Three in the morning,” he answers.

  The sounds of the swamp echo all around us. I’m used to these sounds, and what I normally consider a relaxing chorus of bugs and wildlife begins to sound foreboding. The croaking of the frogs suddenly stops, and the once noisy swamp is now stone quiet. I sit up in bed, straining to identify the new noise—a faint hum.

  “Jacob, it’s a boat,” I whisper. “What do we do? Should we yell for help?”

  So many thoughts race through my head, and I pray the source of the noise is some old fisherman jug-lining for catfish or something. That’s hopefulness speaking to me; reality has me thinking otherwise. The noise stops, and I feel the camp dip down to the right, and then regain its center. Someone has stepped onto the front porch. My heart pounds faster than ever before, and I wish we’d have had more time to devise a plan for some sort of attack.

  Jacob seems to read my mind. He backs himself up against the far corner of the room, deep in the shadows and out of the sight of any person to enter the front door. Jacob holds the chair he was recently sitting on high in the air and waits to smash it on the head of our captor. I click off the flashlight, leaving us to sit in the dark. The doorknob rattles, and I cower under my blanket, leaving only enough space for my eyes to peep through. The door creaks open, the knob bouncing off the wall, but there is no silhouette in the doorway, and no one enters.

  “Whatever you have, put it down. I’ll put a bullet in her if you try anything funny,” the captor warns.

  The dark barrel of a gun glistens in the light of the full moon, and my undivided attention is on it. Following it up to the arm that holds it, I know who has kidnapped us. My heart sinks, and my stomach churns.

  “He’s not lying, Jacob. There’s a gun pointed at me," I announce. Jacob puts the chair down slowly and reluctantly slumps into it.

  "Why are we here, Kent?" I question. He makes his way inside the door, and after it’s shut, he casually walks over to Jacob.

  “That was your one and only freebie, medic man. If you do anything else to cross me, I’ll put a bullet in you. I don’t recommend putting too much thought into becoming a hero. It’ll just get you dead faster,” he says, smugly.

  Kent shoves the gun into the waistband of his jeans and switches on a battery operated lantern he’s brought inside. Jacob’s jaw clenches, and he turns his head to look at the wall.

  “Good. Looks like we have an understanding,” Kent says, taking a seat on the couch. Jacob grunts.

  “And Miss Emily, you want to know why I took some of my precious time to bring you and your partner here to visit my camp? Well, why beat around the bush? Oh, and before I even start, don’t get your hopes up about your man, Pete, coming to rescue you. Come tomorrow, a deputy in, oh let’s pick a parish…” He scratches his head as if in deep thought. “Jefferson Parish sounds good, will have seen you two walking hand in hand into a restaurant near the airport. Your man will be heartbroken for a little while, but he will move on. I mean, he did once before with Sarah.” Kent stretches out his legs in front of him and puts his han
ds behind his head. When he mentions her name, my face turns stark white.

  “What about Sarah?” I almost hesitate to ask. I’m not sure I want to know the answer.

  “We’ll talk about sweet Sarah, if you want to.” He draws his finger across his eyebrow to scratch an itch. “She wanted to be with me. I could tell it every time we were near. She’d get all nervous and fidgety, a lot like you, Emily. That dumbass, Pete, tricked her into an engagement! He couldn’t make her happy because I made her happy. We had this secret thing going where I’d surprise her at night, and she loved it. I’d wait for her to go on a call, and then I’d hide in her bedroom at the station until she got back. Man, we would have such great sex! It was more than that, though. We played this game where she pretended she didn’t want it, but I knew the truth. She never screamed or told Pete, so she was into it. She loved me, not him.”

  From the look on his face, I figure he’s mentally reliving what he perceives to be a tryst. A shiver runs through my body, and I try not to vomit. This son of a bitch is seriously deranged! I swallow hard to choke back my revulsion and sneak a glance over to see how Jacob is reacting to Kent’s confession.

  Jacob looks thoroughly disgusted, and his nostrils flare with anger. He catches me looking his way, and without saying a word, I know exactly what’s on his mind. I shake my head. Kent never ventured into the station to rape me, like he had done to Sarah, and though I’m gutted for her, I’m relieved for myself.

  “Then there was the night she found out she was pregnant. I saw her and Walt leaving the hospital in each other’s arms, so I hurried and slipped into the station to hide in the supply closet. Imagine my surprise when I overheard her telling Walt about the pregnancy and admitting the baby was mine!”

  He sits up a little to lean closer to me. His voice becomes a whisper.

  “She told him she felt I’d been forcing her to have sex with me, and she even used the word rape.” He shakes his head. “That jerk tried to convince her call the police immediately to press charges on me. He also told her she could get an abortion, and Pete would be understanding, and on and on. Blah, blah, blah.”

  He rolls his eyes as he settles back onto the couch.

  “Well, I couldn’t have any of that!” he raises the volume of his voice and slams his fist into the arm of the couch.

  I jump, but Jacob remains resolute, and listens intently.

  “Walter went into the bathroom to get her some tissue because Sarah was snotting all over the place, and that’s when I slipped out of the closet. Once they were both at gunpoint, the rest was easy. I asked Sarah to write a letter for me, but the cheating little bitch bawled so much she couldn’t finish it. I told her to just leave what she had with her engagement ring. After that, I made her sit and watch while old Walt called their supervisor. He said everything just like I told him to say. He was such a good boy.” Kent smiles as he remembers the moment.

  “After they were cuffed and gagged, they went for a ride in the trunk of my unit. My boat was waiting at a small boat landing hardly anyone knows about, so I got them here and was back at work without anyone ever suspecting a thing. That’s one of the good things about working in this area. You see, people expect you to be fucking around on the job. They don’t notice if you don’t have radio traffic for long periods of time,” he says, smiling to no one in particular. I don’t want to hear any more about Sarah and Walt.

  “Kent,” I say quietly.

  “Yes, my sweet,” he answers, leaning forward to take my hand into his.

  “Why did you do this to me and Jacob?” I ask.

  “I’m getting to that. My, my, my, aren’t we in such a hurry?” he teases. “Aren’t you the least bit curious about what happened to my Sarah and her Walt?”

  I already know what happened to them, and I don’t need to hear Kent tell the story. Excitement shows on his face, and I realize he’s going to do it anyway. I protest by shaking my head, but he becomes irate and shoves my hand away.

  “I’m going to tell you anyway!” he yells. I put my hands to my temples and slowly massage them. Kent takes a deep breath and lowers his voice to continue his story.

  “I brought Walt and Sarah to my home away from home, here, to have some fun. Your boy, Pete, was all heartbroken and stuff, but that was okay. Once he found out about the pregnancy, he let it go. You see, Pete knew it wasn’t his kid. All I had to do was tell him someone spotted Sarah and Walt together, and BOOM! That was the end of his pining for Sarah,” Kent brags. The grin on his face shows he’s very proud of his deviousness.

  I open my mouth to talk, but he shakes his head in warning.

  “I got rid of Walt right away. I mean, what good did he do me? But Sarah, ah Sarah. She and I had lots of fun for several days.” He stares off as he recalls the memory, but then grows irritated. “That’s until I came back after a shift to visit her, and I found the stupid bitch had hung herself with one of my sheets. No more of that though,” he says, nodding towards me. He inches closer to join me on the bed and runs a finger along my cheek.

  “You wouldn’t do that to me. Not after all the trouble I went through to be with you. Do you know how much planning it took for Cherie to wreck in that fuckin’ bayou? She was a little too eager to find out what really happened to Sarah. That night she made a scene at Chaisson’s, I knew she needed to be gone. Lucky for me, I got to kill two birds with one stone, so to speak,” he says, amused with himself. He turns his attention back to me.

  “Now, let me look at you. That cut must be pretty bad,” he comments, reaching out to touch my bloody, matted hair. I flinch, and he laughs.

  “You have nothing to be scared of,” he whispers in my ear. He traces the lobe with his tongue, and it takes all I have not to go ballistic on him. Staring straight ahead, my knees drawn to my chest, I look over at Jacob. Hatred oozes from every pore of his body. He sits like a caged tiger ready to pounce. As if he senses Jacob’s eyes on him, Kent looks over at Jacob.

  “You know what? After playing everything back in my mind, I realized I got rid of old Walt too soon. That’s the only reason you’re still here. I have some really big plans, and you need to stick around for a while,” he announces to Jacob as he saunters over to where he sits.

  He pulls the chair out from underneath him and orders him to kneel in the corner. Kent drags the chair to the opposite side of the room.

  “I wouldn’t want you to get the not-so-smart idea to throw this at me or something during the show.” He rubs his hands together and walks towards me while pulling off his t-shirt. “Oh, yeah. Your friend’s in for a real treat,” he says, creeping towards me. I shake my head.

  “Stay away from me, Kent. Please, just leave me alone,” I plead. The bastard looks more excited, so I stop talking.

  “Emily, I know you’ll enjoy this. You just have to give it a chance. Look at you shaking because you want me so bad. Don’t fight it; just give in to it,” he whispers when he sits next to me on the bed.

  Tears stream from my eyes as he kisses my shoulder, and my stomach threatens to start dry heaving at any minute. He tugs on the cup of my bra.

  “Oh, that’s so nice,” he says.

  “You leave her alone!” Jacob screams, charging in our direction, even though he doesn’t get anywhere close to the bed.

  “What are you going to do about it, medic man?” Kent teases. Jacob fights even harder to free himself from the chains, but it’s to no avail.

  “Don’t hurt her! Keep your fucking hands off of her!”

  Kent laughs as he removes his pants and slides closer to me. When he asks me to lie next to him, I refuse, and he grows even more excited.

  “Oh, Emily. Don’t be shy,” he says, running his finger along my chest. I slap it away and he tires of my protests. Grabbing a handful of my hair, he forces my face toward his erection, and a scream catches in my throat.

  Jacob once again tries to get to me, and I realize to escape this situation I need to stay calm. I have to think. My mind race
s with potential ideas and their consequences, and I finally settle on one. It’s a desperate move, but I can’t think of anything better. I allow my mouth to go to his thigh and swallow hard to push the bile threatening to come up back to my stomach. Once some of the nausea passes, I dart my tongue out to lick the soft, fleshy part of Kent’s inner thigh. He tosses his head back and moans slightly. His fingers leave my hair and begin slowly stroking my back.

  “Emily, don’t,” Jacob yells. I shake my head.

  “No. Jacob, it’s okay. I’ll be okay. Just let me do this.”

  “Yeah, Jacob. Shut up and enjoy the show,” Kent says, grinning ear to ear. I give Jacob a look while nodding my head slowly and hope he realizes it’s a signal that I have a plan.

  “Please, stop fighting the restraints, Jacob. You’ll hurt yourself worse. I’m fine. Let me do this.”

  “Ah, that’s right, Emily. Tell him how good it’s going to be. I knew you wanted me. No use in fighting it. They all want me,” Kent brags. Jacob, hoarse from all the screaming, slowly slumps down into the corner and refuses to watch.

  I return my attention to Kent, rubbing my hands up and down his legs until I feel his muscles start to relax. I keep a close eye on him, and as soon as his eyes close, I bite down as hard as I can on the tender, exposed flesh of his inner thigh. I damn near tear a chunk out of his leg, and I prepare for the repercussions.

  “You fucking bitch!” he yells, smacking me so hard across the face that I fly off the bed and nearly land in the bathroom.

  The erection he was so proud of quickly disappears as he inspects the damage I’ve caused. I don’t dare smile in front of him, but when I see the impression left by my teeth, and the blood pouring down his leg, I feel accomplished. He rips a piece of the threadbare blanket, and ties it around his thigh before stepping into his pants. Grunting from the pain, he hobbles his way slowly to the door, kicking a grocery bag into the doorway on his way out.

  “You think you won. Don’t you, bitch! All you’ve done is make me want you more. I will have you, and next time, I won’t be so pleasant about it! It might take a while for this to heal, but expect me to come back with a vengeance! You will be punished heavily for what you’ve done. First punishment comes tonight. Say goodbye to your partner.”