Page 110 of Torn In Two

I picked it up and pocketed it. “I’ll keep that until you earn my trust. Which might be a very long time, because let me be clear, I’m pussy-whipped as all fuck and will do anything for that woman, including taking you in off the streets. But that doesn’t mean I ain’t watching you every second of every day. If you so much as step a fucking toe out of line, I will come down so hard you will beg me to send you back to your God. You hear me?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Stop fucking calling me sir.”

“Yes…” He clamped his lips together. “I don’t know what else to call you.”

I sighed at the conversation I’d had earlier repeating itself. This kid reminded me of all the prospects we’d had come through the gates over the years. Not many of them lasted.

I predicted this kid would be crying into his cereal before the end of the week and begging me to let him leave.

“If you’re in, you’re in, kid. Do you get that? I can’t have you changing your mind and running back to Josiah.”

Kyle finally looked me square in the eye, zero hesitation. “I’ll never go back there. I can promise you that. I just need somewhere to lie low until Josiah and the cops stop searching for me. I won’t cause any trouble.”

I could see what Kara had.

The pure honesty in his eyes. The desperation that made you want to help.

Against my better judgment, I nodded and started the engine. “Fine. Is there anything else I should know before I let you in those gates? This is where you tell me anything at all you can possibly think of, because if I find out later you kept something from me, things are going to get heated.”

Kyle paused. “Actually there is.” He pointed at his phone. “May I?”

“Go on, then.”

He picked it up, and to my surprise, after he hit a few buttons, he didn’t turn the screen around, he leaned forward and adjusted the volume on the dashboard.

“What’s this?” I asked, clutching the steering wheel, impatient to get going now that I’d decided I was letting the outsider in.

“I’ve been listening to Josiah’s podcast,” Kyle admitted.

There was a low rumbling growl in the back of my throat.

Kyle hurried to explain. “I just wanted to know what was going on with my parents and to know if Josiah was talking about me or Alice or what had happened to her. I swear, that’s all. But there’s something you should hear. Bear with me a second.”

He skipped the podcast back before letting it play again.

Josiah’s smarmy voice filtered through the speakers, filling the interior of the truck. “Now that takes care of this week’s sponsors, there’s something desperate and disturbing I need to discuss with all of you, members of my Ethereal Eden community. Something I’ve been keeping bottled up inside that has been destroying me piece by piece every day I keep my silence. On the advice of police, I held my tongue, but I can no longer do that for my heart is broken, a part of it stolen away in the night.” Josiah drew in an audible breath, his voice shaking. “If you are listening to this, I need your help. I desperately need your help.”

I gripped the steering wheel tighter, a sick feeling washing over me, already knowing where this was going.

“My wife, my beloved, sweet, kind, obedient wife has been taken from me. Forced from her home by men who know not of the Lord’s word. Sinners who have turned her good-natured heart against me and our people. The Ethereal Eden family who love and cherish her.” He paused and sniffed.

“And the Oscar goes to…” I muttered.

Kyle cringed. “It gets worse.”

“Of course it does. The man can’t do anything by halves, can he?”

Josiah, apparently done with his fake display of hurt and sorrow, started again. “My wife, my heart and soul, she is but a weak-willed woman. It is not her fault she has been swayed the way she has. She doesn’t know any better, but without my guiding hand, I fear for her immortal soul. This is where all of you come in. You listen from all over the country. From California to New York and everywhere in between. If you listen each week, I have to believe you believe in me. That you believe in the work we’re doing at Ethereal Eden, and even if you haven’t joined us in person yet, you are my brothers. You are my family. And family sticks together.

“So I beg of you. Bring my wife back to me, as well as the child who was stolen with her. She is believed to be in the Saint View or Providence areas, with known ties to the Slayers Motorcycle Club. Retrieving her will be no easy feat. She will fight. She will lie. She will run. But that is the devil inside her! That is what we must overcome so she can take her rightful place by my side. Her captors will fight back, so you must be clever. Take weapons. Use any force you see fit. Because without my queen, my empire is incomplete, and I cannot carry out the tasks the Lord has set upon my shoulders.”

I swore beneath my breath. “I’m going to kill him. Slowly and fucking painfully.”

“You’ll never get to him,” Kyle said quietly. “My parents have left me so many voicemails, telling me about all the new security they’ve put in at Ethereal Eden. Josiah is telling them it’s to keep them safe from the men who took Kara and Alice, but obviously that’s a lie.”

“It’s to keep them locked inside.”

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