To the Ends of the Earth (Stripped #5)

by Skye Warren

  “Of course,” Mrs. Lawson says, her eyes serious. Whatever she’s been through in life, she understands hardship. She understands fear.

  My daughter is the only good thing to come of the sixteen years I spent in Harmony Hills. The hard prayer floors, the painful nights spent in divine worship. That’s what Leader Allen called it when he made me kneel, when he forced my legs apart.

  For years I sinned in my sleep, dreaming of killing him. Rescue came in the strangest form, maybe the only place it could have—from a man far more dangerous.

  From Luca Almanzar.

  An enforcer for organized crime, Luca’s done unspeakable things. He did some of them to me—taking me captive, tying me up, keeping me in his hotel bed. Something strange happened to my body when I saw him, a heat that I didn’t know how to name.

  That doesn’t matter now. He’s gone. Only Delilah matters.

  Chapter Six

  I pack the paisley suitcase we have from Goodwill with its fraying threads and broken zipper. There’s more than usual because of the bulky jackets we had to get, so I pack the rest in a white trash bag. The crackers and cereal from the pantry come with us. The stuff in the fridge will have to stay here. Only fifteen minutes until the cab’s supposed to arrive.

  There’s one thing left in the apartment that’s mine.

  I keep it under the sink in the bathroom, next to a stained bucket that was here when we moved in. It feels like the place farthest away from us, as if I’m storing a ticking time bomb. This book is the only trace of my past. The only proof of what really happened.

  It’s hard to pick it up but harder to leave it. That’s why I’ve dragged it around every place we’ve gone—a millstone. A burden. I stand, muscles protesting after a long day and a desperate run. The Bible feels like it weighs a thousand pounds.

  The lights in the bathroom go out.

  In the whole apartment.

  A storm. It happens often enough up here, taking the whole power grid down. Except the heavy light from outside the apartment is still on, casting a faint glow through the window.

  “Thought you could get away from me?” comes a low masculine voice.

  Oh God. Not a storm. It’s Luca. Somehow he got away from those men. Somehow he followed me. I whirl, holding the Bible against my chest. I hate having it this close. It’s more than a bomb. It’s radioactive, toxic to anything nearby. But I can’t let him have it.

  He’s only a shadow in the dark, his large frame filling the doorway.

  “What are you doing here?” I manage, my voice wavery.

  He laughs. “Little bird, you know why I’m here.”

  “Because you want me.” He took me to save me. That’s what he said. His body betrayed the real reason. The same reason Leader Allen prayed with me.

  “That’s only the beginning,” he says, his voice low with promise. “I’ve been chasing you a long time. You’ve got a lot to answer for.”

  I take a step back. “Please let me go.”

  “Where do you want to go?” he asks, his voice mocking. “Farther north to Denmark? To Iceland? Or maybe all the way to the Arctic.”

  My heart sinks because there’s nowhere left to go. Wherever I run, he’ll find me.

  Which means that Alex can find me too. Luca only cares about my body. He wants to do things to me, to sin with me. He wants divine worship with me. I’ve survived it before. I would survive it again. But if he can find me, that means Alex won’t be far behind. And what he wants is much worse. My brother wants to return me to Harmony Hills. And he wants my daughter most of all.

  “Fine,” I say, my voice breaking. I toss the Bible onto the back of the toilet and reach for the hem of my shirt. I didn’t waste time changing, so I’m still wearing the Last Stop’s uniform. It comes off easy, leaving only a plain white bra underneath.

  He sucks in a breath. “What the fuck are you doing?”

  “I’m going to f-f-fuck you. Then you can leave.” That’s the thing about courage; it’s a double-edged sword. It smooths the way toward doing things you never dreamed. I’ll do anything to convince him to leave us alone. I will do anything to keep my daughter safe.

  His growl makes the hair on my neck stand up.

  “You’re not going anywhere.” He flicks the bathroom light on, revealing the gruesome spray of blood across his face. I cry out at the gash over his eye, the long ridge of dried blood along his chest. He looks like a gladiator after a long-drawn-out battle in the arena.

  And he didn’t just manage to escape. He must have killed those men. That’s the only way he could have managed to leave that parking lot. All those lives on my head.

  More pain. More death. No matter how fast I run, I can’t seem to escape it.

  “I don’t understand,” I whisper. “Why me?”

  In the world he comes from there are a hundred beautiful women. Women who know how to wear pretty dresses and put on makeup. Women who know how to please a man as intense as Luca. Candace used to live in Harmony Hills with me. She was the first person to ever get out alive. And she turned herself into a siren, someone who could command men with a single flick of her perfectly manicured nail. She did it to prove that she could. And I…well, I can’t. I haven’t even been able to cut my long hair.

  He steps close, and I’m suddenly more aware of my naked tummy, my breasts covered only by a single layer of fabric. My chest rises and falls with heavy, panicked breaths.

  “You captured me, little bird.” He trails a blunt finger down my temple, lifting a long blonde lock. It looks pale and silky against his scarred fingertip. “I follow you for the same reason you run.”

  I run because I’m afraid, but Luca isn’t afraid of anything.

  I run because I love my daughter, but a man as hardened as Luca doesn’t know how to love. Most of all I run because my brother, Alex, chases me.

  Leader Allen convinced him my daughter is the result of immaculate conception. He believes that Leader Allen never touched me in those prayer sessions. And as the holy daughter of Harmony Hills, he’s bound to bring her back to the flock—whatever’s left of it after Leader Allen died. There are bigger forces that move us, a larger hand that guides our way.

  “I’ll give you anything you want, if only—”

  “If only I let you keep running? If only I watch you fall right into the trap your psycho brother’s set? If only I pretend I don’t give a shit what happens to you? No, Sarah Elizabeth.”

  “Beth,” I whisper.

  My name in Harmony Hills was Sarah Elizabeth. Beth’s the name I chose for myself.

  “Beth,” he says, voice rich with possession. “I’m going to keep you safe.”

  I don’t care what happens to me. “My daughter.”

  “Don’t you think I can protect her? I have resources, little bird.”

  He has cages. I’m not sure how safe he’ll keep my daughter or the price we’d have to pay. I don’t know how she’ll grow up in a city as sinful as Tanglewood. I haven’t been able to shed my restrictions like Candace.

  I’m not comfortable with drugs, with violence.

  With sex.

  “What are you afraid of?” he asks, low and seductive.

  The answer comes from somewhere deep inside me. “That I’ll like it.”

  And then where would Delilah be? I know that what Leader Allen did to me wasn’t right, but that doesn’t mean everything he preached was wrong. I can’t be the woman who likes those things, who cuts her hair. I want Delilah to have a choice about who she’ll be. That can’t happen with my brother and his extreme allegiance to Leader Allen’s teachings. It can’t happen in Tanglewood either, mired in the mafia, next door to a strip club.

  I want her to have a fighting chance.

  “Let’s make a deal,” he says, voice mesmerizing.

  My stomach twists because that feels like a trap. I’m a starving mouse looking at the shiny metal springs, wondering if I can beat them. Wondering if it’s still worth it if I can’t. “What k
ind of deal?”

  “Work with me to make sure Delilah is safe. Then you can decide where to go. Anywhere in the whole fucking world. I’ll take you there myself.”

  “And leave me there?” I ask, holding my breath. Would he let me go?

  He hesitates only a minute. “You can stay.”

  Chapter Seven

  While I’m thinking of my answer, debating whether I can trust him, he plucks the Bible from the back of the toilet. As casual as can be, he strolls toward the light off the kitchen. The heavy book flips open. I manage to grab my shirt, pulling it on as I run after him.

  I’m two steps behind him, reaching for the book. What page does he see?

  “‘In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth,’” he says. “‘The earth was formless and void.’”

  “‘And darkness was over the surface of the deep,’” I whisper. Genesis.

  He looks at me sideways. “Do you have the whole thing memorized?”

  Shame clenches my throat. “That was the only way I could know it. I didn’t know how to read.”

  Candace taught me a little bit when she helped me escape Luca. Then she went back to Ivan Tabakov, a man renowned for his cruelty. Now she’s called Candy, because she’s a different girl. A smart, sexy, strong person. Not like me.

  And I had to keep running. Had to give my child some chance at a normal life, the kind without cults, without criminals. There are people who live that way. I pass them, their windows dark as they sleep, but I can’t seem to become them.

  His hand touches mine, his fingers large and calloused against the back of my hand. “Beth.”

  I blink away the dark memories. “Why would you help me?”

  “I’m a selfish man,” he says. “I want you. I’ve wanted you from the moment I saw you in that godforsaken house, wearing that see-through shift and holding a rifle.”

  “Then why?” I gesture helplessly to the bathroom, where he’d turned me down.

  His hand curls along the side of my arm, tickling me. I twist away from the sensation, and he uses the motion to hold my hand. Skin to skin. Palm to palm. His thumb sweeps over the tender skin. This shouldn’t feel so intimate—soul to soul.

  His green eyes glitter. “When I fuck you, you’re going to want it. Understand?”

  I swallow hard. “I don’t—”

  “No, you don’t understand. Which is a damn shame considering you gave birth to a child. But I’m going to fucking teach you if it kills me.”

  The memory comes to me, that strange heat in my body. The laxness of my limbs. Is that what he means? Is this what it means to sin? My thoughts swerve away because I have my hands full with survival.

  “You said you could make Delilah safe?”

  His eyes narrow, but he lets me change the subject. It’s the only subject that matters. “Yes, but the first thing we need to do is get her out of this godforsaken state. When God made the surface of the deep, I’m pretty sure he was talking about Alaska.”

  It’s the worst thing I could do at a time like this, but somehow I find myself laughing. His irreverence, his insistence. The irrepressible feeling of safety I have whenever he’s around. “Where will we go?”

  “First we’ll take Delilah down to Candy and Ivan. They’ll watch her, keep her safe.”

  “No.” Every cell of my body fights the idea of bringing Delilah into that nest of sin. Ivan Tabakov runs a criminal organization. He once owned the strip club where Candy worked when she escaped. That’s not a place to raise a little girl. That’s not what normal is about.

  “No one can get through Ivan’s fortress of a house. Not even your brother.”

  Leader Allen sent my brother to terrorize the girls who worked for Ivan, threatening Candy so she’d come back to Harmony Hills. That plan backfired because Ivan had already fallen in love with her. His protection was fierce and brutal—resulting in Leader Allen’s death. If anyone can protect Delilah, it’s Ivan Tabakov. “We can’t stay there forever.”

  “Not forever. Only until your brother is caught.”

  If my brother is caught, he’ll be put on trial. He’ll be found guilty. He’s hurt people in the name of God. I know he deserves to be punished, but I’m still the product of my upbringing. I don’t want to be the one to do it.

  Delilah’s little fist. Her dark curls. I’ll do anything to protect her. And my brother won’t rest until he finds me. Until he brings her back into the fold, the lost lamb.

  Then I understand why Luca’s really here. “You want to use me as bait.”

  It’s a relief, after thinking he would force me. I shouldn’t feel even the smallest pang of disappointment.

  His jaw tightens. “Your brother went after the girls at the club. He went after Candy. Tabakov won’t rest until he’s been found.”

  “I’ll do it,” I whisper.

  “I won’t let you get hurt,” he says, his voice hard.

  He can’t promise that, but it doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter what happens to me.

  Darkness was over the surface of the deep. The deep isn’t really Alaska. It comes from the Hebrew word for chaos, for confusion. For the restless motion of waves. If there’s one thing you learn from the Bible, it’s metaphor.

  The chaos continues until God creates the earth. The story is meant to tell us God’s power, his might, but all I ever thought, as a little girl in a dirt-floor room, is that something existed before him.

  The darkness was here first.

  Chapter Eight

  That’s how I end up at Mrs. Lawson’s door again empty-handed. Luca stands a few yards back, watching to make sure no one from the Last Stop comes around. It makes me shiver to imagine those bodies—how many were there? They’ll be hard by now, lying on the pavement. When will someone find them? It might not be until tomorrow at ten when the cook opens for lunch.

  There’s a move in the white lace. I’m sure Mrs. Lawson sees Luca. There’s a longer pause before she opens the door. Her eyes narrow as she glances over my shoulder.

  Luca normally looks terrifying, but with those bruises, the blood, it’s an especially scary sight.

  “It’s okay, Mrs. Lawson.”

  Her harrumph says she knows what she knows. “Come inside, child.”

  As soon as she shuts the door, she turns the deadbolt. “I’m calling the police. Don’t matter what he takes from your place or if he trashes it. You and the child are both inside here, and he’s not coming inside. Not without meeting the side of my baseball bat.”

  I give her a kiss on the cheek, and she blinks in surprise.

  She’ll be one of the few things I’ll miss about Alaska. “He’s not going to hurt me.”

  He’s not going to hurt Delilah, which is the important thing. What he does to me alone, in the dark, when I’m his bait…that might hurt. Not the kind of pain he has now, from being hit and kicked. The kind inside you, in places you don’t know about until they’re rubbed raw.

  The hallway is still dark, the door still open.

  Delilah’s still asleep, her dark curls stark against her curved cheek.

  I pull her warm body into my arms, cuddling her close. She makes a sound almost like a squeak before nuzzling her face against me. She wears the warmest wool nightgown I could find in preparation for these little walks, her hands and feet covered with the same thick material. It helps even inside the apartments, where cracks in the insulation make it impossible to keep warm.

  Mrs. Lawson blocks the doorway. “I’m not gonna see you again, am I?”

  I can’t ever come back here, even if I escape Luca again. “I’ll miss you.”

  She shakes her head. “If you ever need to run away from that man outside, you call me first.”

  My tears prick. When I imagined running all those years in Harmony Hills, I never thought anyone would help me. They told me stories about the sin outside. That didn’t scare me half as much as the calloused disregard. We were a community, they said. We took care of our own.

&n
bsp; They didn’t take care of me, though. They hurt me. And I’ve found little pockets of community all along the way, shining like diamonds in the gutter.

  “Thank you,” I say, my voice thick.

  She steps aside. “I’ll miss that little angel, besides.”

  The little angel doesn’t stir even when the cold night air touches her cheek. I say goodbye to Mrs. Lawson not with a word, but with a long look that tells a thousand warnings—the kind that women who’ve known violent men can share.

  Luca’s face looks worse under the flickering lamplight, more wild. He gazes down at Delilah’s sleeping face with an expression I can’t read. “We’ll stay the night,” he says. “Our flight leaves in the morning.”

  I don’t know whether Delilah’s sleeping face gives us the reprieve, but I take it. Keeping her warm inside my apartment is hard enough. Out here it’s below freezing.

  “Thank you.” I cross the small walkway quickly, slipping into my apartment with practiced ease. Luca follows behind, glancing around before locking us in.

  Her little bedroll is still laid out in the one bedroom of the apartment, where she usually sleeps. She curls up against the pink and purple stars on the pillow, arms immediately wrapping around her stuffed unicorn. In some ways she’d had to live like me—in a bare room, with only a thin comforter as her mattress. In other ways her life is completely different, filled with color, with wonder. With love.

  I turn to leave her and almost run into Luca.

  “Dark hair,” he says, but he’s not looking at Delilah.

  He’s looking at my long blonde locks.

  Delilah’s curls crown her face, a beautiful raven color that I’ve never seen before. Leader Allen had already grayed by the time I knew him. I like to think it’s hers alone, that she didn’t even have a father. That’s what my brother believes. That it was a virgin birth, the baby given to me by God. Only despite what I’d rather believe, I know the truth.

  “It’s beautiful,” I say. “She’s beautiful.”