“She’s alive and still living on that damn compound in Iowa with another ‘master’. It won’t be easy getting to her, but it could work. If she were to come down here and speak to him, maybe, just maybe he’d listen to common sense.
“In the meantime, we’ve got drones getting programmed to go up and search. If that doesn’t work, Sniff and Lucy said we can use the dogs.”
“What about Alvin?” asked River.
“He’s out there doing his thing but that’s a lot of ground to cover and he doesn’t really know what Tyler looks like,” said AJ. “Give it time. We have the others safe and all together right now. We just have to get Nicole back.”
“He wants me,” said Willa standing in the doorway with her arms crossed. They all turned with their mouths open. She watched as her father slowly stood but it was Finn that charged toward her, gripping her upper arms.
“No! Abso-fucking-lutely not! Have you lost your mind? This man has killed dozens of women. You will not be the next one,” he said with tears in his eyes.
“Finn, I don’t want to be the next one but I don’t want Nicole to die either.” Kev watched his daughter and Finn, knowing that he was saying all the things that Kev would say.
“I don’t want her to die either, Willa. And damn me to hell all you want but if it’s between you and her, there is no contest.”
“I’m not asking you to choose. I’m saying, like so many other women here who have said the same thing in the past. I’m saying use me. You know that I can lure him to me. Right here at the café. You would all be there. He would get nowhere.”
“I can’t risk that,” said Ham before Finn said a word. “Let us see if we can find them this way first and get his mother down here. Don’t do anything stupid, Willa.”
“I promise. I won’t do anything stupid. Just know that I’m willing to do something stupid if you ask me,” she grinned. Standing on her toes, she kissed Finn and winked at him. “Come home. Soon.”
Finn nodded at her as she left the room, then turned, rubbing the pain in his chest.
“Hurts like fuck, doesn’t it?” said Kev. Patrick nodded at his son and the others all laughed as well.
“I think I’m having a heart attack,” he said sitting down.
“Nope, you’re just having your first experience with a very opinionated, very stubborn wife,” said Patrick.
“Wife. God, she’s going to be my wife and act like that all the time. I’m going to die young.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Seventy miles west of Kiron, Iowa was a large tract of land that seemed to have no name, no mailbox, and no way in. The people in town all said, ‘stay away’, the owners are rude, crazy, and won’t let you on the property. But the men of Shadow Warriors didn’t adhere to that advice.
From a very tiny grouping of trees, Irish, Ethan, Major, and Brix stood with binoculars getting an idea of the layout of the land. They spotted seven homes, all at least a mile from one another but built in an identical fashion.
Women were in the yards working, hanging laundry, tending to chickens and goats, but there wasn’t one sign of any men.
“What do they do, sit on their fat asses and just watch these poor women work themselves to the bone?” asked Major.
“It looks that way,” said Ethan.
He held the binoculars up to his face again and spotted a man dragging a woman behind him. She had a rope around her neck, gagging, her face red. As he passed each home, as if to parade her by them, the women looked down, not daring to say or do anything.
“What the fuck is he doing?” asked Brix.
“I don’t know but it looks like he’s headed this way. Move back,” said Ethan.
As the man and woman got closer, they could hear her gasping for breath, choking and coughing.
“You’ll never learn your lesson, will you Esther. You will service me when I wake and then again after breakfast. I don’t care if your body is old. You were bred to do this for me.”
“P-please,” she gasped. “P-please don’t do this. I won’t survive another one.”
“Another one,” frowned Major.
Cloaked beneath the stealth netting, they watched him drag her to a tree in the center of their little shady spot. He wrapped her arms around the tree, tying them tightly. Then, he tore the thin cotton dress from her back.
