Page 55 of Gabe

“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.

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