Page 18 of A Reaper's Devotion
“But I live in a nice neighborhood.Probably with nosy neighbors, and they like to meddle.So, I’ve got to stash them inside the house, but in a way that makes it impossible for them to move.I can’t allow them to make too much noise.”Daniel joined in and he spun around.
“This shit is fucked up,” Cyrus said.
However, they started to look at the basement for possible signs of a door, or something that could stash a human.
After looking through the whole basement, they found absolutely nothing, and Cyrus was pissed.“Then it’s got to be upstairs in the main house.”
When they got to his house earlier, none of them had even considered what they might find.
They carefully moved from room to room throughout the downstairs.Cyrus was the first to go upstairs, and he thought about the good girl.What if the good girl was exactly that, a good girl?So, she got to stay upstairs in the guy’s bedroom.
He went to the room he assumed was Luke’s and stepped inside.Tipping the bed up, he checked to see if there were any hidden doors or secret hideaways.There was nothing.
Next was the en-suite bathroom, and finally, he began to pull out all the clothes, and that was when he saw a small door with a single key inside.Without waiting for a response, he flicked the key and twisted it.He opened the door, and there, chained with her arms above her head, was the girl from the “good girl” side.She was sweating, and her eyes looked wild.There were fading bruises all over her body.
“In here,” Cyrus said, calling out to the others.
“Fucker,” Hank said.
Her mouth had a single layer of tape across it, and she looked terrified.The good girl got to say in his bedroom.
Daniel took the lead, and Cyrus stepped back.One woman was found, and he went and stood by the man’s window.As he stood in the window, he looked at the man’s garden.It was pristine, but he noticed there was a single garden shed at the bottom of the yard.The garden was just a layer of grass, nothing indicating someone who liked to garden.He didn’t like the look of that shed.
“She’s in the shed,” he said.He just knew it, and as he made his way downstairs, then out into the yard, he got to the shed and found it locked with a bolt.This time there was no key, but he didn’t need one.Lifting up his foot, he brought it down to the door and slammed it open.
The “bad girl” was curled up, shivering.The son of a bitch had left her in the garden shed, as the night’s had started to go cold, without a single layer on.She was completely naked, and it looked like she had some wounds that had started to become infected.
****
“How can anyone do that?”Willow asked.
Cyrus shrugged.“I don’t know.From what the two girls were able to tell us, he attacked them on the street.He knew they came from families that, according to them, wouldn’t give a shit.”
“He must have messed up with that other girl he attempted to take.Her parents were already looking for her.”
“It’s fucking messed up.He didn’t kill them, but he didn’t think anyone was going to stop him.Both women have been with him for about two years.”
“Two years?”Willow asked.“How?”
“I guess a lot of people where he lives don’t know each other’s business.Not every place is like Lost Creek.”
“Do you think you’d know if someone was kidnapping and keeping girls ...against their will?”She looked toward him.
“Yeah, I’d like to think we run a tight enough ship that we’d know when shit was hitting the fan.”Cyrus sighed.
“What’s going to happen now?”Willow asked.
“The sheriff is dealing with it, and Luke becomes another person’s problem.”
“You don’t like that?”She saw that it bothered him.
“No, because there’s a chance he’ll go to prison and not serve a long enough sentence, then he’ll come right back here to seek revenge.It’s fucked up.”
She placed a hand on his arm.“It’ll be okay.”
“So, I guess you and I better talk about what we do and don’t know about each other,” he said.
Willow smiled.“That depends on whether you want to.”
