Salvation [Slick Rock 15] (Siren Publishing Ménage Everlasting)

by Becca Van

  Her heart flipped and pounded hard and fast against her ribs and she began to pant when she saw the rustic cabin at the end of the trail. It was so dilapidated. There were gaps in the wood siding, and the roof was sagging. It looked as if a good blow would bring the whole place down.

  When he stopped the truck, she gripped the handle above her head so hard she was sure she would have the impression in her skin for hours to come. He turned off the engine and then glanced her way, lifting the gun and pointing it right at her.

  “We’re finally home, baby. Let’s get inside before you get cold. We’ll have some dinner, and then we can spend the night having makeup sex.”

  Carly shook her head and stared at him. His gaze was totally vacant, as if there was nobody home. “You’re delusional, Scott. There never was, or has ever been, anything between us. You killed my brother and his friends, you fucking asshole. Why? Why would you do that?”

  Carly knew she shouldn’t be goading him, but the pain and grief welled up out of nowhere, superseding her terror. She didn’t remember releasing the handle above the door, but the next instant, she was lunging for him. Her hands wrapped around his wrists, and she tried to wrestle the gun from him, but she wasn’t strong enough.

  He yelled with rage and then slammed his elbow into the side of her head. Pain slammed into her temple and radiated deep inside of her head. She screamed and gasped as she tried to keep the encroaching darkness from taking her over, but she lost the battle and felt herself slumping sideways as she passed out.

  * * * *

  “There’s our truck.” Rocky pointed.

  “The sheriffs are here, too.” Ridge sighed with relief as he pulled up behind the stationary vehicles near the junction of a T intersection. He got out and was about to go and join the sheriffs and Cat, who were in deep conversation, when he heard another vehicle coming up behind them. Bull and Cat’s men had arrived.

  When everyone reached Cat and the sheriffs, Ridge started asking questions.

  “Have you found them? What about reports on the radio? Has anything come through from the other officers?”

  Luke shook his head.

  “Cat, are you all right, baby?” Hank asked as he swept her up into his arms.

  Ridge felt sorry for the other woman because she was crying and trembling, but he was too worried about Carly to offer his sympathy. Plus, he wasn’t sure if he opened his mouth that he would be able to be civil. He didn’t blame Cat for what had happened to his woman, but he was so scared for Carly he knew he’d sound like a real asshole if he spoke.

  “I’m so sorry,” Cat sobbed. “It’s my fault Carly was taken. I should never have called their house, but I couldn’t get ahold of you all.”

  Ridge swallowed his fear as he inhaled deeply. While he wasn’t blaming her, Carly’s actions had gotten her into trouble. If only she’d come to get him or one of his brothers. They could have gone to get Cat, and their woman would still be safe and sound.

  “It’s not your fault, Cat,” Ridge finally managed to say in a soft tone.

  “Ridge is right, Cat.” Barry stood next to Hank as he caressed Cat’s back.

  “I wanted to keep driving, but I don’t know this area, and I was scared I would end up getting lost.”

  “You did good, Cat,” Bull said. “If it wasn’t for you, we wouldn’t know where to start looking.”

  Cat nodded and wiped the tears from her face. Hank gave her a hug and lowered her feet back to the ground.

  “Luke,” Damon called as he moved toward the group. He’d been standing off the side talking to someone on his radio. “I had Will do a search on Scott Gold and anyone he could find in his family tree. His father owned a cabin, but it’s hundreds of miles from here. However, we’ve searched out for isolated places he could hold up. There is a line cabin that was once a part of a ranch not far from where we are right now. I’d bet my ass that’s where he’s taken her. I’ve got the coordinates.”

  Hope filled Ridge’s heart, and he took a step toward the truck before he even knew he was going to move. He stopped when he realized he didn’t know where he was going yet.

  “If you give me a minute, I’ll get a map from the car and show you all where the cabin’s located,” Damon explained before rushing back to his car.

  * * * *

  Carly moaned with pain as she surfaced back to consciousness. Her head was pounding like a drum, and the skin near the left side of her temple and cheek felt hot and swollen. It took her a few moments to remember what had happened, and when she did, she gasped and tried to sit up. She only moved a few inches, but no further. She forced her heavy eyelids up and held in the scream of fear forming in her chest when she saw where she was.

  She was in the cabin that looked as if it could fall down on her head any second, and she was cuffed to a bed. She tugged on her arms and bit her lip when the skin on her wrists began to abrade and whatever was around them cut into her flesh. After glancing about looking for Scott and not seeing him anywhere, she half rolled to her side to study the handcuffs holding her captive.

  There was no way she would be able to get out of them. The small chain between the cuffs was looped around what was probably a wrought iron spindle. As she rolled onto her back again, a cool breeze blew in through the gap in the wood siding and wafted over her body. She slowly lifted her head and looked down her body. Her heart slammed against her chest and she began to hyperventilate when she saw that her tank and shorts, as well as her shoes, had been removed. She was lying on the bed in her bra and panties.

  She glanced toward the bedroom door when she heard footsteps on what she assumed was the small porch at the front of the cabin and hoped that whoever was there was about to rescue her. However, she knew that she was wrong when she heard the door open and then close again. Heavy footsteps headed in her direction, and she held her breath.

  She blinked when Scott appeared in the doorway with a soft smile. “Good. You’re awake. How was your nap, baby?”

  Is he for real? How can he act as if he hasn’t killed my brother and his friends and look at me with such possessiveness?

  “Are you hungry? Thirsty?” Scott asked as he moved further into the room.

  Carly whimpered and tried roll away from him when he sat down on the edge of the mattress. She flinched when he reached out and brushed a strand of hair off her cheek. His gaze zeroed in on the injured side of her face, and he grimaced with distaste.

  She wanted to yell and scream at him and tell him that it was his fault, but after his reaction to her last outburst as she tried to wrestle the gun from him, she stayed quiet.

  “We are going to be so happy together, Carly,” Scott murmured as he rubbed the strands of hair through his fingers. “I can’t wait for you to get pregnant. You’ll never have to work another day in your life. You’ll spend each and every day taking care of me and our kids.”

  Carly jerked her head away from him and held her breath when he narrowed his eyes at her. She sighed with relief when he rose, but when he reached for the hem of his T-shirt, sweat formed over her skin and she began to shake with fear.

  She stared in shock at his chest when he removed the shirt and flung it aside to the floor. His skin was a crisscross of scars and burns, and while she felt sorry for him because of the pain he must have suffered while he healed, she was scared and angry at being kidnapped.

  He glanced up to find her staring at his chest, and all of a sudden, he leaped the distance to the bed and hovered over her on his hands and knees.

  “See what they did to me? See why they deserved to die?” Scott shouted in her face.

  “I’m sorry,” she sobbed, hoping that by apologizing he would be placated.

  “They did this to me.” Scott pointed toward his chest, his face turning red with anger and the veins in his forehead and neck standing out. “They left me for dead, and then they kept you away from me. They had to die. It was the only way we could be together.”

  Hot tears welled and sp
illed down over her temples and into her hair. She wasn’t sure she was ever going to get away from him because he was completely insane.

  “Don’t cry, baby,” he crooned to her in a softer voice and wiped the tears from her eyes.

  He pushed up from his crouched position onto his knees and reached for the button on his jeans.

  Carly glanced about for the gun, but she couldn’t see it anywhere. She was so scared she couldn’t think straight. She laughed when she realized that, even if she did lay eyes on the weapon, there was nothing she could do anyway. Her arms were tethered to the rails on the headboard.

  “You think this is funny?” Scott roared as he stood up on the mattress and shoved his jeans down over his hips. “How about this?”

  Carly’s fear was replaced with sympathy when she saw Scott’s legs. She had no idea how he was even standing, let alone able to walk. The damage to his legs was far greater than that on his chest. His left thigh had a huge chunk of muscle missing from it. It must have taken hundreds of operations and skin grafts to cover the tissue beneath the skin.

  “It’s ugly, isn’t it?” Scott wailed as he sank back down onto his knees. “No woman would ever want to see this, let alone touch it.”

  “It’s not ugly. It’s a badge of honor, of courage,” Carly said, hoping her kind words would make him see reason, but she knew he hadn’t even heard her when she looked into his eyes. They were glazed over as if he was lost in memories.

  She pulled on the handcuffs, testing the spindle the chain was wrapped around. The metal bracelets clanked on the iron, drawing Scott from wherever he’d been.

  He smiled at her, scrambled from the bed and bent over to remove his shoes before taking his jeans off. When he straightened, she began to quake with terror. He had an erection, and he was looking at her as if she was a piece of meat. She gasped and began to cry when he shoved his boxers down and he eyed her body up and down as he licked his lips.

  “It’s time to start our family, wife.”

  * * * *

  “Have any of you found anything yet?” Rocky asked as he scanned the road and the edges of the forest looking for tracks along the US Highway Fs Rd 535.

  “Not yet,” Bull answered over the portable radios Damon had handed out.

  “The turn off has to be close,” Luke stated.

  “What are we going to do if he isn’t at this cabin?” Rocky asked Ridge.

  Ridge met his gaze briefly before turning back to the road. “He has to be here. There’s no other place he could be.”

  Rocky sighed and rubbed a hand over his face. He was so anxious he felt ill, and though he was scared for Carly, he knew he couldn’t let his fear take over. He needed to remain alert, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t pray while he was at it. He’d never been a very religious man other than believing there had to be something to all the near death stories he’d heard, but he would try anything if it meant he and his brothers would have their woman back in their arms before the night was over.

  There was hardly any light left now that the sun had sunk below the horizon, but he and the other men would spend all night long looking for Carly if need be.

  “Stop!” Rocky shouted.

  Ridge slammed the brakes on and skidded to a halt. Rocky glanced in his side mirror and sighed with relief that the others hadn’t been following too closely, otherwise they might have been rear- ended.

  “What did you see?” Ridge asked. “Never mind. I see it.”

  Ridge indicated before driving slowly forward another couple of yards, and then he turned onto a barely visible track between two large trees.

  “Cut the light,” Rocky ordered.

  Ridge turned his headlights off. Rocky hoped that Scott didn’t hear the truck coming, because if he did, he might end up killing Carly before they could save her.

  “Don’t go any farther,” Luke commanded over the radio. “Damon said the cabin is about a mile from here. We need to go in on foot.”

  Ridge stopped the truck and shut the engine off before he and Rocky got out. They both walked to the back of the vehicle to retrieve their rifles. They had already been armed with pistols since there was always the danger of snakes in hot weather, but a rifle could shoot from a further distance than a handgun. Rocky just hoped they wouldn’t have to use either. He didn’t want to have to shoot another man. He’d killed way too many when he’d been serving in the military, but if Carly’s life was in danger, he wouldn’t hesitate to make the kill shot.

  * * * *

  Carly tried to roll away when Scott climbed back onto the bed. He grabbed her hips with cruelty, his hard fingers digging into her skin and surely leaving bruises behind. She brought her knee up hard and fast as soon as she was on her back and laughed hysterically when her knee connected with his balls.

  Scott gasped and gagged, but instead of rolling away from her as she’d expected, he fell on top of her. The breath in her lungs whooshed out as her diaphragm was squished, and while she managed to take a breath, it was only a small one. He was a lot bigger and heavier than she was, and his full weight was bearing her down into the mattress. He was also writhing around on top of her, and she felt as if her ribs were about to be crushed.

  All of a sudden, he shoved up to his hands and knees. The evil, crazed look in his eyes had her cringing, and she tried to push back up the bed using her feet.

  He snagged a hand around one of her ankles, and then he slapped her hard across the face.

  “You fucking bitch. You’ll pay for that.”

  Carly started crying, and once the tears started to flow, she couldn’t stop. She gasped and wailed as she bucked and kicked out with her free leg, hoping to get him off of her. Her foot connected with his chest, and while his yell sounded as if he was in pain from her blow, he didn’t release her. In fact, he managed to grab hold of her other ankle.

  When he put pressure on her legs and tried to push them back toward her body, she fought him with everything she had, but she just wasn’t strong enough.

  He’d managed to get her legs up, with her knees pinned up against her ears. She looked up and felt as if she was about to die of horror when he stared down at her panty-covered mound and knew he could probably see more than she ever wanted him to. She was wearing a G-string, and with the position he’d managed to get her in, he could no doubt see some, if not all, of her pussy.

  She shook and quivered as she bucked beneath him, and she managed to get one of her legs free from his hold. When she kicked out, her foot connected with his face, and she heard bone and cartilage break.

  He fell back to the end of the bed, moaning as he held a hand to his bleeding nose as he panted.

  Carly wiggled up the bed until the cold spindles were digging into her back and her arms were in an awkward positon behind her back. She wrapped her hands around the wrought iron spindle, and when she had a good hold, she used her whole bodyweight and wrenched forward. Hope began to surge anew when she felt the rail move, so she tugged on it again and again, until her hands, shoulders, and back hurt, but she wasn’t about to give up.

  She froze when Scott got back onto his hands and knees, his nose swollen and already bruising, with blood seeping out over his lips and down his chin. He leaped from the bed and rushed from the room. She sighed in relief, but that relief was short-lived. He came back into the bedroom with the gun in his hand, and he pointed it at her head.

  Carly shivered and whimpered as she closed her eyes, knowing she was about to die.

  She thought of Ridge, Bull, and Rocky, and though she’d told them she loved them and they had reciprocated, she hoped that they wouldn’t grieve her forever. She prayed that once they were over their grief they would find another woman they could learn to love, and she them.

  Carly had no idea how long she sat there as she prayed, but she finally opened her eyes to see that Scott was still standing where she’d last seen him, with the gun still pointed at her. When she saw him flinch and that his eyes were glazed over, she kn
ew he was once more lost inside of his memories.

  His mouth twisted with horror, and then he sank to his knees and covered his head with his arms. Although she wondered what was going on, she didn’t really care. She was being given a moment of reprieve. She hoped that moment turned out to be a very long one.

  * * * *

  Bull cursed under his breath when he saw there was only one entrance to the cabin. He had been hoping that there was a back door as well as a front one. Though the building didn’t look very solid, he didn’t want to have to go through a small window and end up bringing the whole place down or getting cut up from the glass. He, his brothers, and the other men were all well over six feet tall and broad shouldered, and he was worried they would get stuck half in and half out and end up being an easy target.

  “How are we going to do this?” Bull murmured as his brothers, the sheriffs, as well as Barry and David, gathered around. Hank had remained behind on the main road with Cat.

  “Let Luke and I go in first. We’re the law, and we’ll be a distraction. You guys go around the back, take out the back wall, and get your woman.”

  “And how do we do that without bringing the whole place down?” Ridge asked.

  “That’s not going to work,” Rocky stated. “Those logs are too thick for us to break through. If we tried, we could end up hurting our woman. There is no way in hell we’re jeopardizing Carly’s safety.”

  “He’s right,” Luke replied. “We’ll go in first, and you come in after us. We’ll try and talk him down. If that doesn’t work, we’ll take him out.”

  Bull nodded, as did the other men.

  “David, Barry, you keep watch from outside. That place is small, and there isn’t going to be enough room for all of us to go in there.”

  Bull removed his gun from his hip holster, checked the clip, and after pushing it back in, removed the safety.

  Luke and Damon stepped out from the trees and headed toward the cabin. Bull took a deep, calming breath and drew on his military training as he pushed all emotion aside.