Chapter 20

CHAPTER 20

Frankie

The ground beneath me rocked as I woke up. My cheek pressed against something hard.

Since when was the bed, I shared with Gabe so uncomfortable?

I groaned and tried to roll away, but I hit another solid surface. This wasn't Gabe. The man was muscular, but even he wasn't so literally unyielding.

Memories came back to me in a rush.

The carnival.

Ozias Wren.

A drop of blood running down Newt's wrist.

My head shot up, but the rest of my body didn't follow. I was lying on the floor of… something. I couldn't see enough to tell what. It wasn't a car, but it was definitely moving. I could hear the sound of wind blowing just above my head, and the smell of wet vegetation hung so thick in the air I could taste it on my tongue.

Like rotten salad.

Turning my head to the side, familiar orange hair filled my vision and provided a measure of relief. At least we hadn't been separated.

"Newt." I reached for him but found I couldn't move my arms. They were bound behind my back at an uncomfortable angle.

Desperately trying not to panic, I nudged Newt with my leg instead. "Hey. Newt. Wake up."

"Give your friend a break. That's a hard drug to shake off."

I jumped at the unexpected sound of a familiar voice.

"Ozias?"

A pair of boots stepped into view, stopping just inches in front of my face, before the man knelt down close enough for me to see him.

"You know me? Diligent little investigators, aren't you? Well, I should thank you. If you hadn't shown up, I would have had to wait a lot longer."

From my position bound on the floor I couldn't really glare up at the man, but I tried anyway. "Wait for what?"

Grabbing me by the back of my shirt, Ozias hauled me off the floor. The collar of my shirt dug into my throat, cutting off my air until I was placed sitting up with my back against a wall. Finally, I was able to get a good look at my surroundings, and my heart sank so low it reached my feet.

A swamp.

We were in a swamp.

Of all the places they could have taken us, why did it have to be a swamp?

Goosebumps prickled my skin just from the smell. There was no sign of civilization anywhere, and there was no telling where we were exactly. Louisiana was rich with swampland, and our small boat seemed to be right in the middle of a particularly remote patch of wilderness.

I curled my legs close to my chest. "Why are we here? What do you want with us?"

Ozias perched on the edge of the boat with one leg crossed over the other like he was lounging on a park bench. "Oh, I don't actually want anything from you. You're nothing to me. But, capturing you did earn me enough favor to gain access to the island."

I looked around again at our surroundings. Tall trees grew straight out of the murky water and the vines hung down from their branches in such thick clumps they looked like ragged curtains. In the daytime it may not have been too bad, but at night the shadows clung to every surface, and the boat's small light barely allowed us to see a few feet in any direction.

"Why would you want to come here?"

The man's grin made my skin crawl.

"So, I can have my pick of the dolls."

Dolls?

That had to be a euphemism for something.

Was he referring to the missing children?

He had to be.

What else would a member of a pedophile ring get so excited about?

That meant the children were here in the swamp somewhere, and this man captured Newt and I so that he could come here to…

My brain refused to finish that thought.

"You fucking pedo."

I kicked him, striking as hard as I could with my unbound legs.

He flailed for balance and almost fell over the side of the boat but managed to catch himself at the last second.

I wished he had fallen over. Even if he didn't drown, it would have at least made me feel better. The disgruntled look on his face was still enough to make me laugh.

Rather than retaliate, as I expected, Ozias just crossed his arms and scowled.

"You're going to regret that."

Before he'd even finished speaking, a set of large hands picked me up and held me in the air so my feet didn't even touch the floor. I'd been so focused on Ozias, and the swamp around us, that I never noticed the other man in the boat. He was huge. A mountain of flesh, with a face that looked like it had been carved from rock.

The man who held me didn't say a word as he brought me to the side of the boat and bent me over the edge. His hand was so large it encircled the entire back of my head, and easily pushed my face under the water.

Still a bit groggy from whatever I'd been drugged with, it took me a moment to realize what was happening. When I did, I thrashed against the hands holding me. I strained against the ropes that bound my arms, and I kicked my feet against the floor of the boat, but it did nothing. The hands of the man holding me down didn't even budge.

My lungs screamed for air. The instinct to open my mouth was strong, and I bit the inside of my cheek as I fought the urge. If I opened my mouth, I would only inhale the disgusting water and drown faster.

After what seemed like hours, the hand holding my head finally let go and I was pulled back up into the boat. Despite my best efforts, I'd still swallowed some water, and coughed desperately to clear my lungs as I lay on the floor of the boat.

Through my struggles to regain my breath, I could hear Ozias berating the other man.

"Hey, don't kill him. I worked too hard to capture these bastards. I'm not losing my ticket to the island because some meathead like you can't control his temper."

Pond scum dripped from my hair, and I shook my head to get the water out of my eyes. I wanted to retaliate and put on a brave face. I wanted to be like the hero of a movie who laughed at the villain's pitiful attempts at threatening them. However, I was also terrified of being shoved under the water and feeling that burn in my lungs again as my air slowly ran out.

Instead, I stayed quiet and inched over toward Newt. My friend seemed to be slowly waking up, and I didn't want him to panic. I positioned myself so I was the first thing he saw when he opened his eyes.

"Hey, shhhh. Don't make a sound. We don't want to get their attention."

Blue eyes looked at me in fear as Newt quickly took stock of our situation, but he listened to me and didn't say anything. I gave him a rushed explanation of what was going on, speaking mostly under my breath so our captors wouldn't hear me.

"We're gonna get through this, okay. We just need to stick together and stay calm."

Newt swallowed a few times and nodded. "The pins."

I frowned at such a seemingly out of place comment.

"The pins we were wearing," Newt explained further. His eyes flickered over to Ozias and the other man before looking back at me with a pointed expression.

He didn't want to give away too much, but I finally understood what he was saying. When we'd been kidnapped, we'd been wearing GPS pins with cameras in them so Sebastian could see everything we were doing. The pins were gone now, probably removed while we were unconscious, but Sebastian would have seen us being taken. That meant he and Gabe were already looking for us. We just had to survive long enough for them to find us.

A little bravery returned to my soul. I imagined a ticking clock counting down each second until Gabe and Sebastian arrived. All we had to do was outlast the clock. It wouldn't be easy, but at least the goal was simple.

Newt and I kept to ourselves and tried not to draw any more attention while we were on the boat. We sailed into the heart of the swamp, much deeper than any commercial tour would have taken us.

At least another half hour passed before we came across a structure among the trees.

The building was surprisingly modern for its surroundings. A low squat design with a small upper floor, it had been built right on its own platform to compensate for the lack of stable ground. It was not the kind of place where anyone would usually choose to build anything, right in the heart of a massive swamp, but it was the perfect area for something that needed to remain a secret.

Newt's shoulder bumped mine when he leaned over to whisper in my ear. "This land is completely wild. It's probably preserved. How is there a building here?"

"The same way these things always work. If you line the right person's pockets, you can get away with anything."

The boat pulled into an empty spot in the building's expansive dock. Knowing the purpose of the building, I was glad to see the dock mostly empty, but hated the fact that they needed such a large dock in the first place.

Upon arriving at the dock, however, we ran into a problem. Or, more accurately, Ozias ran into a problem. The person in charge of the building's security wouldn't let Ozias off the boat, and the two got into an argument.

"We had a deal," Ozias shouted, gesticulating so wildly that he rocked the boat.

The security officer didn't look impressed and kept one hand positioned on their impressively large gun.

"The deal was for you to help us capture either the Roth brothers or Agent Long. We have no use for their little whores."

Ozias was a surprisingly brave individual and didn't back down despite facing someone so heavily armed. "No, the deal was that I bring you something useful and I'm allowed on the island to have my pick of the selection here. Well, these two are useful. You can use them to lure out at least one of the Roth brothers, and that FBI agent. I've held up my part of the deal, now give me what I'm due."

The argument went back and forth for a few minutes but was eventually ended when the security officer received instructions from someone on his radio.

"Fine, you can come onto the island. But you're meeting with the boss first. If he decides these two are worth something, then you'll get your payment."

Several pairs of hands dragged Newt and I off the boat. No one listened to our protests or even seemed to notice our struggles. We may as well have been bags of flour being hauled from one place to another.

I'd never felt so powerless. Not even when we had to make a mad escape from the hospital. At least back then there had been something we could do. There were actions we could take to try and solve our situation. Now, there was nothing. Newt and I were being marched at gunpoint to face the very man in charge of all our recent suffering. Even if we could free ourselves from our ropes, we wouldn't make it two steps before we were gunned down. These people had already made it clear that we meant nothing to them. The only reason we were alive is that we weren't worth killing yet.

Inside the building, we passed the entrance to a long hallway on our way to the stairs. The brief look I got down the hallway showed rows of doors on either side, all heavily reinforced. It was like a perverse mix between a hotel and a prison.

I didn't count the doors. I didn't want to know how many children were probably locked away behind them.

Just the sight of the hallway made me want to scream, and I picked up my steps to hurry away from it. However, I was stopped abruptly when I ran straight into Ozias, who stood staring down the hallway with eager eyes.

"Keep moving," someone said, and shoved Ozias with the butt of their gun. "You haven't earned anything yet."

I gnashed my teeth, savoring the idea of tearing out the man's jugular any way I could.

Or maybe chop off his hands. Yeah, that was a satisfying idea.

Imagining everything I would do to the man if I could helped to keep me calm as we were marched away from the hallway and up the stairs.

The second floor of the building was much smaller than the bottom, consisting of just a few rooms. Newt and I were deposited inside a large office and left sprawled on the floor like a pair of broken toys.

It was a miracle I managed to land on my shoulder and not on my face.

Struggling to sit up without the use of my arms, I first noticed a couch on the far side of the office. The large piece of furniture dwarfed its only occupant. A young boy lay asleep on the couch, curled up on one end in a tight ball like he wanted to try and wrap his arms around himself as many times as possible.

There were bruises on his wrist and he looked too thin for his size. Only a small portion of his face was visible over the cushion he slept on, but it was enough to identify him.

It was Tansie Bell's son.

I couldn't look at the boy for long and turned my head away. This brought me face-to-face with the stout desk that took up the majority of the room, and the man sitting behind it.

Senator McLeod.