Total pages in book: 60
Estimated words: 58987 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 295(@200wpm)___ 236(@250wpm)___ 197(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 58987 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 295(@200wpm)___ 236(@250wpm)___ 197(@300wpm)
An annoyance to be endured with the same patience you'd give to traffic or a tedious board meeting.
You learn to adapt and prepare. Long sleeves even in eighty-degree heat, long pants tucked into your boots like you're dressing for a tick-borne plague. You keep leather work gloves and a wide-brimmed hat with mosquito netting in the back of your Jeep, along with the industrial-strength DEET that probably causes cancer, but definitely prevents you from being eaten alive.
It's the price of admission to this particular cathedral, and you pay it without hesitation because the alternative—soft skin exposed to the wilderness—marks you as prey rather than predator.
You accept that the mountains take their pound of flesh in sweat and blood and itching welts, and you pay it without complaint.
For young men tied to posts and left overnight, however—naked and immobilized, unable to swat, or scratch, or shield themselves from the relentless assault of a thousand tiny mandibles—it's considerably more than inconvenient.
It's torture.
Well. Mild torture. Torture-adjacent, let's call it.
The path from the house to the clearing is about a quarter of a mile of dense forest. It's mostly a deer trail. Some places, it disappears all together. Becoming something to be felt, rather than followed.
Ryan Adamson is right where I left him yesterday afternoon. Sitting down against a tree trunk shoulders cranked behind his back, wrists held together with nylon rope.
Even if I left him clothed, he would still look like this.
Covered in spots of blood, welts, and looking like he lost his mind about ten hours ago.
He should consider himself lucky. Last spring there was a wolf pack up here. A pack that became accustomed to being fed human flesh from this very post. But territory boundaries have changed over the summer, so I guess our boy Ryan here got a pass on being eaten alive.
At least, in that sense.
When I approach, he looks up at me with that dazed, confused stare one only finds on statues of the Crucifixion of Jesus Christ. Eyes rolled back, vacant mind, suffering evident.
He doesn't beg. Or even try to talk when I bend down and untie him. And once he's unsecured, he falls over sideways.
I pull the sawed-off shotgun from my hip and point it at him. "If you think I'm going to carry you, you're mistaken. Would you like a chance to save your life? Or should I blow your head off right here?"
It's a true Helix moment for me. Because it's a lie.
Ryan's head wobbles as he tries to find my face. His eyes squint, trying to see me properly through the backlighting. But he doesn't answer.
"Do you have any idea how quickly ants would consume your body out here? How quickly they could strip the flesh from your bones?"
Still, he says nothing. Just continues giving me the old Jesus-Christ-Superstar look.
"Ask me how I know this, Ryan."
"Who…" his throat is so dry, he can barely speak. "Who the fuck sent you? Huh? What do you want? Money? Is it money? Did Larson send you? Was it Larson? I told that fucker, I've got his girl. She's lined up for next month. These things take planning. You understand, right?"
I nod. Solemn. Because I actually do.
Ryan takes this nod as affirmation. "So it is Larson? Fuck. What the fuck? Why is he such a psychopath?" He narrows his eyes at me. "You gonna tell him I said that?"
I cross my arms, shake my head, and press my lips together. "I don't even know who fuckin' Larson is."
"What?" Ryan's brows get so crinkled, they practically touch in the middle. "You just said—"
"No, you just said. I just agreed that I do understand how these things go. In a way. In a very specific way that doesn't involve anything of the kind of what you actually do."
"What the hell does that mean?"
I'm holding the sawed-off with one hand as I bend down, take a fistful of his hair in the other, and press the barrel against his chest. "It means that I absolutely understand how hard it is to find suitable candidates for one's… hobby. Except, it's not a hobby for you, is it Ryan? It's a business."
I yank on his hair as I stand. Forcing him to scramble to stand with me. Then I push him out in front of me and say, "Walk. Follow the trail."
He doesn't.
He's not used to this. The loss of control. It's new to him. He just stands there, looking at me with his fish-mouth gaping, trying to work out what the actual fuck is happening right now.
He'll never work it out. He so far behind. I'm running a masterclass in predator-prey dynamics and he still thinks this has got something to do with an order some Larson guy put in for a girl next month.
Obviously, that's not what this is about.