Page 88 of Deceptive Lies

They’d stripped her naked while she was bound to the bed if the scraps of duct tape left on the bedposts were anything to go by.

She’d been there but where was she now?

Was she already dead? Was that why the men were outside? Were they having some sort of celebration that they’d killed one of their enemies?

He’d been so sure that whatever Mahmoud had planned for Willow would take time, but obviously he’d been wrong.

He should have trusted his gut. It had been screaming at him that Willow playing bait was too dangerous, and all morning he’d known that something was wrong. He’d allowed himself to be talked out of listening to his instincts because everyone believed those instincts were compromised by his feelings for Willow.

Attention drawn to the commotion happening outside, Cooper moved to the window, saw it was open, and a tiny tendril of hope lit inside him.

Was it possible Willow had been the one to open it?

All the other windows in the house were closed except this one. Could she have escaped?

Renewed by hope, Cooper jumped out it and once he’d gone a few yards forward he could see his brothers fighting the men who had been praying. In an attempt not to alert everyone in the area with gunfire, his brothers were using a combination of their hands and knives to eliminate each threat.

Desperate for answers, Cooper rushed into the fray, grabbing the closest man still standing and slamming him down to the ground, holding the blade of his K-Bar to the man’s neck.

“Where’s Willow?” he growled, low and dangerous.

The man sputtered but stared defiantly up at him.

Everything around him faded away.

He would get answers, no matter what it took.

Pressing the blade just deep enough to draw blood, he repeated his question. “I know she was here, where’s Willow?”

The man swallowed hard, forcing his neck deeper into the blade. “I … she …”

“She what?” he roared.

“We … the professor … he promised us …”

“Promised you what?”

“That we could share her,” the man blurted out. “That we could use her however we wanted until she died.”

Time felt like it stopped.

Horror burned inside him.

Of all the deaths he’d pictured over the last few hours, Willow being raped to death hadn't been one of them.

Something had happened though. Because Willow was no longer in the bed where the men had put her. She had to have gotten free somehow, so where was she? And where was Mahmoud? He wasn't there with the others.

“Where is she?” he demanded.

“She escaped. Came out the window. The professor went after her, told us to keep praying, we need to give thanks that God handed our enemy over to us, give thanks that he would allow us to touch her without becoming dirty because she is a sacrifice to our god,” the man babbled as tears streaked down his cheeks. Not really a man, more like a kid, he couldn’t be more than early twenties if that, maybe even late teens.

Not that the kid’s age would give Cooper even an ounce of guilt over what he was about to do.

Plunging the blade of his knife deep into the man’s neck, he yanked it free as he stood, his attention already moved on from the kid who would have participated in raping his woman until she bled out and died.

Around him was a sea of dead bodies, but the two people he wanted to find were nowhere to be seen.

“We’ll find them,” Jax assured him.

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