Page 43 of Torment

“They lay low for a long time in their separate locations. My father gave me a cell number to contact him on, but he told me not to call him for at least a year after the shelter rescue. He said some people might be watching me carefully, seeing as I was his daughter, and they might realize what I was up to.”

Mason shook his head, his upper lip curling with disgust. “Why would you even want to contact him after what he and the other men did to you and the others? Why would you want to protect him or any of them? Are you really that fucking brainwashed?”

I rubbed my temples and sighed. “It’s hard to explain. I’m not sure you could ever understand it. I knew there was a real world after you explained everything to me all those years ago, and I knew that everything I was raised to believe in was a horrible lie, but at the same time… he’s my father. I had to help him. I couldn’t turn him in.”

“It never ceases to amaze me how fucked up you are,” Mason replied, shaking his head again.

I sniffed miserably. “I know.”

“Keep going.”

“My father and the other men eventually began to rebuild. They already had a few backup places ready to go, in terms of underground shelters with a mansion and farmland on top, so they picked one and started grabbing young girls to raise down there.”

“Where?”

“Like I said, there were a few. Their favorite backup place was in Kentucky. The second-best was in Kansas. They also had one in Minnesota.”

Mason nodded slowly. “You’ve lived in all those states, haven’t you?”

“Yes,” I murmured, dropping my gaze so that I seemed ashamed. “That’s why. I was helping them.”

He sneered. “Helping them how?”

“Well, firstly I helped them figure out which shelter was the best for their purposes. They finally decided on the one in Kentucky. After that, I helped them take girls. They were far more willing to listen to a young woman than a man. It was actually easy. Sometimes I just grabbed them right off the street when their mothers turned away. Or I’d lure them out of their yards while they played.”

Mason rubbed his neck, disdain flashing in his eyes. “And you think I’m a monster,” he said.

“I know it’s wrong, but it’s like there’s two sides of me,” I said, widening my eyes. “There’s a part of me that loves the real world and knows these things shouldn’t happen, and that the fake religion they teach the girls is a load of bullshit. But then there’s this other side of me which comes out sometimes, and I can’t shake it. That side of me still believes in the cult doctrines despite everything.”

That wasn’t entirely false. Even though I knew better now, I still had frequent episodes where my old training surfaced. It was just like what Lauren and I discussed over coffee on the morning she offered me the library job. We couldn’t help it. Out of the blue, the old memories and teachings would rear their ugly heads, and we would either have panic attacks or respond completely inappropriately compared to a normal person.

“They really messed you up in the head,” Mason muttered, letting out a sigh. “I should’ve known better than to get involved with a crazy cult bitch.”

With that, I knew he finally believed me. Injecting that tiny piece of truthfulness into the rest of my lies had obviously sealed the deal on the supposed veracity of my story.

He handed me the pen and paper. “I want you to write down every name you know. Your father’s new identity, and the Elders too. Then I want you to give me the coordinates for all of their backup places.”

“I don’t know the coordinates.”

“Draw some maps, then. You can do that, right?”

I nodded and picked up the pen. After slowly and methodically writing down a set of made-up names, I sketched out a map of an area in Clay County, not far from a small Kentucky town I lived in for a few months back in 2015. In truth, the place I was drawing was an old abandoned farm near a forest. No one had lived on that land for years, so no one would be affected when Mason showed up there searching for the cult.

After that was done, I drew fake maps for the alleged Minnesota and Kansas backup sites. I knew the areas as I’d lived in both places for a short time, so the roads and landmark names and positions were all correct. Mason could check it against a real map, and he’d see it was all there.

He assessed the maps with narrowed eyes, and then he finally glanced back up at me. “Give me your father’s cell number so I can try and track his location in case he isn’t at any of the places when I show up. I’m not letting him get away this time.”

I gulped. “I… I can’t.”

“Why not?”

After a few frantic seconds of uncertainty, a decent explanation popped into my mind. “Because I don’t know the number off the top of my head. It was in my phone, and you threw it out the car window when you took me. I didn’t have it stored anywhere else.”

He drew in an angry, injured breath. For once, he was mad at himself, not me. I could practically see the thoughts stewing in his head. I should’ve kept her fucking phone. I should’ve realized she had information stored in it.

Finally, he let out a sigh and grabbed my hand, roughly yanking me to my feet. “You’ve been a good girl today, Jolie. Maybe I should let you sleep in the spare room instead of your cell tonight, as a reward.”

My heart leapt. Yes. It would be much easier for me to try and escape from the nice room than the submerged cell with all its electronic bars and doors.

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