Page 89 of The Captive Missing

Standing in place as long as she could, Val welcomed the physical pain. It made her thoughts go away. Once she finally returned to bed, she pulled the heavy blankets around her and let her exhausted body shake itself to sleep.

* * *

Over the next month, Val threw herself headlong into the reality that surrounded her. When she wasn’t helping Ava with the underground, she assisted Connie around the farm. She used the skills she learned from living on Javier’s ranch to help with cooking, cleaning and tending to the groups of Militia that moved through.

Physical exertion was the only thing that kept the worry about her son at bay, so Val threw herself into almost constant work. She mucked animal pens, fed the pigs, milked the cows, and tended the flock of sheep.

Even in the cold of winter, the compound grew its own food using a series of greenhouses. Val spent long days bent over rows of vegetables, weeding. She tended onions, peas and asparagus. Back in the kitchen, Connie taught her how to preserve all the food in jars.

Together they spent hours washing, cutting and preparing the food for long term storage. It was exhausting and often dirty work, but it was work, and it was the only thing that left Val feeling close to okay.

Ava’s visits to the farm became fewer and farther between. She was getting large now, closer to her due date. Though she didn’t say it, Val knew the father, whoever he was, probably wanted her at home with him. During Ava’s last visit to the compound, she gave Val an update on Cambric. With that, came the painful news about Charlie.

After Val went missing, he had stopped eating. News of his apparent hunger strike then filtered through the walls at Cambric until more than half the captives stopped eating too. It took The Agency weeks to get the entire thing under control and by then Charlie had been heavily medicated. Despite the drugs, they were still having to forcibly tube feed him, even now.

When Ava stopped talking, Val rose to her feet and locked herself in the nearest bathroom. Dropping to her knees, she vomited repeatedly in the toilet. Charlie was starving because of her. Jace was in danger because of her. Jason still thought Cambric had her. How many more people would have to suffer so that Val could be free?

It suddenly seemed so very selfish and unnecessary. Part of her wanted to give up. Part of her wanted to go back to The Agency and put a stop to everything.

Ava rapped on the door, but Val failed to answer. Sitting back on the wooden floor, she drew her knees up to her chest and pressed her forehead down against them. Ava tried the handle. It was locked.

“Please come out, Val,” Ava spoke quietly, fingertips drumming on the door.

“Call Cambric.” Val cleared her throat. “Tell them where to come get me.”

Through the closed door, Val heard Ava’s sigh. Then footsteps walking away.

In the end though, Ava didn’t call Cambric.

In the end, she called her brother.

Val didn’t know where he came from or what he had been doing before, but within several hours Clay Montgomery was sitting on the floor outside her door. He didn’t use a key to open the bathroom. He didn’t dismantle the knob or kick in the door. He just quietly reasoned with her.

“Cambric will never let Charlie kill himself,” he said. “They’ll medicate and force feed him until he snaps out of it. He’s got a client list and the whole breeding thing.”

“It’s not just him,” Val’s voice cracked. “They can get my son.”

“Jace is still out of the country.” Clay again. “I’m keeping an eye on things. They can’t touch him.”

“Other captives are suffering.”

“Other captives are finding freedom.” Clay slid a single sheet of paper beneath the door. “Here’s a list of names. The underground is up and running inside Cambric again. You are making this happen… by staying here and staying quiet.”

Unfolding from her ball on the floor, Val crawled over and read the names. There were three. Three more had been saved this month alone. And that was just from Cambric. Closing her eyes then, Val bit at her bottom lip. If she went back to Cambric, they would know she had escaped. It would jeopardize the whole underground and she just couldn’t do that. Not now.

Shoving up from the floor, Val put her hand on the doorknob and opened it.

Chapter 26

A thin layer of snow was stuck to the ground. Val’s breath came out in puffs, hovering just in front of her face as she hiked. Ahead of her, rays of sunlight pierced through the canopy of thick pines. Glancing up, she could see the backs of the other men. Rifles slung over their shoulders, their boots crunched almost imperceptibly in the mix of slush and dead leaves. The Militia’s hunting party moved along slowly, placing their steps carefully on the slanting slope.

Deer season was coming to a close. It was mid-December now and this particular group had yet to take a single animal. Though Val had been reluctant to participate, Clay Montgomery had been insistent. And he wasn’t a man you said no to. Not easily anyway.

She had eaten the meat provided to her over the past months, he reasoned. All of which was hunted and taken humanely. Clay believed in having an intimate relationship with one’s own survival and it had become a tenant upon which the Militia was run. They never wasted the animals they took. All of the meat was eaten, the skin was processed and used or sold. He claimed the act of killing itself was an important lesson. And for some reason, Clay wanted Val to learn it.

It was Clay that hiked just in front of her now. The point position was taken by another man, though. Clay already knew how to take down deer and the others still needed to learn.

Looking down the slope, Val could barely make out glimpses of the compound. Through the tree trunks and array of branches, the red barn stuck out, its flashy color drawing the eye. When she had commented on the color, Clay had explained that they wanted the valley to blend in. Anyone flying over would see it as a well-tended homestead, not a place worthy of further inspection. Hide in plain sight, he had said. Sometimes that’s the best place to be.

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