Still a kid. But not quite.
“I’m not… I can’t take care of you. You need to go. I’m not able to—”
Someone knocked at the front door. He hadn’t heard a car pull up. Sure it was Abby, here to explain everything, Luc yanked open the door.
Not Abby.
Luc squinted into the dark, wishing he’d replaced the porch light bulb.
His visitors were a group of heavily armed men. About five, he guessed, although there could have been more farther out.
The hair on the back of his neck rose and the panic at Sammy’s intrusion was replaced by a new sort of adrenaline. “Can I help you?” he asked, standing taller.
“Hello there, sir. Isaiah Bowden, from next door. Over yonder.” The man in front wasn’t the tallest or the most imposing, but he had the most presence. He was on the small side, especially compared to Luc, with orangish hair under a sturdy black hat. Beneath that, small, close-together eyes were shadowed in a pointy face. He was the only man not holding a gun, which, in a perverse sort of reversal of everything, made him more intimidating than the others.
“I recognize you,” Luc said, forcing his jaw to loosen.
Drawing closer, the man—Isaiah—put one hand out for Luc to shake.
The second Luc’s hand touched the other man’s, something happened: the night darkened and clouds skittered across the sky, giving the moon her only appearance of the night. It wasn’t a comforting cameo, and Luc wanted to take it back—remove his hand, step back into his house, lock the door, and never open it again.
After a half-dozen exaggerated pumps, Isaiah finally released his hand, and Luc fought the urge to wipe it on his jeans, scrub it with disinfectant.
He needed them gone.Now.
“That you, Samuel?” the man asked, yellow eyes lifting out of their shadows to focus over Luc’s shoulder. “What are you doing all the way over here?”
Luc glanced back at Sammy, who didn’t respond. For the first time since he’d arrived, the kid looked closed up, uncommunicative. In that instant, Luc decided that Sammy wasn’t going anywhere.
“Looks like you found our stray, Mr…”
“Stanek,” Luc supplied. “Sammy tells me he needs—”
“Oh, we’ll take care of Sammy’s needs. Won’t we, boy?” The smile on the man’s face didn’t reach his eyes. Luc was tempted to close the door and lock it, but they’d get through eventually. He glanced at their rifles, picturing the walls of his cabin riddled with bullets in some kind of Wild West standoff.
“Poor Sammy simply doesn’t know what he’s about. We’ve always had a hard time with this one,” said Isaiah. At a slight dip of his head, two of the men came forward to flank their leader, their old-fashioned clothes reminding him of a movie he’d seen, full of black magic and witchcraft. Complacent judgment. Unkind ignorance.
“What can I help you with?”
“We’re just here to get our boy.”
“I don’t think he wants to go with you.” Breathing hard at the wrongness of the situation, Luc turned back to look at Sammy and said, “Do you want to go with them?”
“’Course I do,” Sammy said with a smile. Luc immediately regretted the question. The kid didn’t get it at all, did he?
“Do they care for you, Sammy? Are you safe there?”
The kid’s bright eyes skipped to Luc, and his face twisted up in surprise. “’Course they do. It’s my home.”
“We take care of our own, Mr. Stanek,” said the ginger-haired messiah on his doorstep. “We protect them with our lives.” Luc narrowed his eyes at the man, pulse ratcheting up. Was that a threat? It sounded like a threat, especially with the way those men held their guns—stiff and at the ready. “We’re also very attentive to our closest neighbors. We’ve been here a long time, sir. Hamish Merkley, the founder of our Church—God rest his soul—bought this land more than forty years ago. You understand how important it is that we all get along. We wouldn’t want to get mixed up in your business, now, but we’ve always got an eye out, should you require attention from us.”
The threat wasn’t even subtle, was it? If he didn’t do what they wanted, they’d get him.
“What of Abby?” Luc asked before quickly correcting himself. “I mean, um, the person Sammy spoke to me of.”
Isaiah blinked and paused, jaw set and eyes narrowed on Luc. “Don’t you worry about Mistress Merkley, sir.”
Merkley.Was Abby related to the man who had started the cult? The one who’d bought the land they’d settled on?
