Bam. Bam. Bam.

Barron jerked awake, smacking his head on a hard surface. “Fuck.” Blackness engulfed him. His face and head throbbed like a bitch. What the fuck happened? Then he remembered; the cowboys had shown up…posing as buyers. He’d been sure he could take the younger one, but the fucker hit a hell of a lot harder than Barron had anticipated.

Shifting in the confined space, he searched for a way out. Where the fuck was he? He felt around and worked himself to his feet, and bumped his head against a clothing rod. The closet. The little fucker had stuffed him in the closet. He found the door handle and twisted, but the door refused to budge.

Bam. Bam. Bam.

What the hell was that? He paused and listened. Hammering. Someone was hammering.

Barron shoved against the door. It wasn’t locked—the knob turned freely—but it had been wedged closed. He gripped the handle and slammed his shoulder against the door a second time, harder than before. Whatever was securing the door held fast. He growled and bashed the door again…and again…and again—then suddenly tumbled out onto the floor as the chair dislodged and the door flew open. He struck down with a sharp grunt then scrambled to his feet. The room was empty except for…

The dead kids had been placed on the beds and covered with sheets.

They were not his concern.

The hallway reverberated with the distant echo of forceful hammering. It was coming from the main room where they kept the kids. Barron avoided that room and took an alternate path to the kitchen. If the cowboys had subdued Olson as well, it was likely they’d gotten Vinny also, but he had to check.

Silence met him from the kitchen as he approached the swinging door and cautiously inched it open a hair. He spied both Olson and Vinny on the floor, hands and feet bound up. It wasn’t them tied up that shocked him—but the mess they were lying in and…Vinny’s face. Barron stepped into the kitchen and almost fell on his ass as his foot slipped in a pool of tacky blood. “Fuck.” He moved around it and his expression twisted with disgust and disbelief at the sight of the cook’s horribly blistered face, hardly recognizable as human. “What the fuck…?”

The large pot used for the gruel was on the floor tipped over, the repugnant odor of the slop heavy in the air. The shit was all over Vinny’s head and chest as if he’d tried to dive into the muck. Or someone had dunked him.

“Hey,” Barron spoke low and nudged Olson. “Wake up.” The older man’s leg was bleeding through a tightly wrapped strip of cloth, and a small blood trail led back to the tacky pool Barron had slipped in. “Olson.”

The man groaned, started to open his eyes, then clamped them shut again in sheer pain. An ugly knot swelled his temple, the bruised flesh creeping across his brow and into his eye. “Barron…?” he rasped thickly. His forehead pinched, and he forced his eyes open a crack. “I thought…I thought that fucker…got you.”

Barron indicated his bloodied face. “Yes and no.” He looked at Olson’s leg. “What happened to your leg?”

“Fucker…shot me.” He strained against the cords binding him and winced in pain. “Get me loose.”

Barron stood up. “What the fuck did he do to Vinny?”

“Shoved his head in the pot of boiling slop,” Olson wheezed.

“Is he…alive?”

“I don’t know,” Olson mumbled. “He was making sound when the bastard knocked us out. Get me loose, now, before the fucking psycho comes back.”

Barron grabbed a knife from the butcher rack and returned to Olson. He squatted down and started to slice through the cords when he realized the hammering had stopped. Shit.

The kitchen door swung open. “Drop the knife.”

Barron gripped it tighter and slowly rose up, turning toward the large cowboy.

“You’re out of your cage.” The look in the cowboy’s fierce eyes was that of a madman. In his right fist, he clutched a large metal hammer. “Animals aren’t allowed to run loose in a zoo. Too dangerous.”

“Just stay back, motherfucker.” Barron raised the knife. “I swear to God, I’ll fucking gut you.”

“Come on, then, you sick fuck,” the cowboy growled. “You better hope your aim is spot on, because if I get a hold of you first…” He left it at that as he lifted the hammer, letting Barron figure out the rest.

“Get him, Barron!” Olson choked. “Gut that fucker!”

The cowboy moved in cautiously. “I’m gonna remember that,” he drawled at Olson.

“You’re not gonna remember shit with your guts dumped all over the floor.” Barron didn’t have much room behind him. If the cowboy backed him up against the counter, he would be at a disadvantage.

“You keep talking,” the cowboy murmured, daring him to act on his threats. With each step the cowboy took, Barron retreated an equal pace.

“You think you scare me?” Barron sneered. “Like they say, the bigger they are, the harder they fall.” He lunged forward, striking out at the cowboy.

He didn’t see the cowboy move, just felt the hammer connect with an explosive pain that detonated through his pelvis as his hip bone shattered and dropped him to the floor with a scream. He lost grip on the knife and the weapon skidded across the tiles. Barron gagged on his screams, unable to move, his body racked in unbearable pain. “Fuck!”

The cowboy stood over him, the deadly hammer clenched in his fist as thick veins slithered up the man’s powerful forearm. Without a word, his face twisted and he brought the hammer down a second time, crushing Barron’s right ankle, then his left.

Gargled screams erupted out of him as he writhed and convulsed on the floor.

“Can’t have you running off,” the cowboy muttered and walked out.

 

•♦•

 

Kelly ate her soup slowly, fearful of making herself sick. She’d forgotten that food could taste good. Savannah watched her as she sipped a soda, warm sympathy in her eyes. Kelly noticed something else in her eyes as well, that something that said maybe life hadn’t always been easy for her, either.

“Did you grow up in a nice family?” Kelly asked quietly.

That look in the other girl’s eyes deepened and she shook her head. “No,” she whispered. “Our parents…they weren’t good parents. The state took us from them and put us in an orphanage.”

“An orphanage?” Kelly felt sick at the thought of this lovely, sweet girl in a place as horrid as she’d been in.

“Not one nearly as bad as the orphanage you were in,” Savannah assured. “But…bad things still happened.”

Kelly lowered her spoon, her heart breaking at the implication. “Were you…”

Savannah shook her head and tears filled her pretty eyes. “Not me.” She swallowed thickly. “My brother. Abel. He…he took my place to keep me safe and…and untouched.”

Her vision blurring, Kelly whispered, “How…how long did it go on?”

Savannah’s chin trembled. “Two years.” She plucked a napkin from the dispenser and dabbed her eyes. “But we finally ran away, and Max took us in, then Abel met Devlin and they fell in love, and now we’re all one big happy family.”

Kelly wondered how much she was leaving out of her story but didn’t ask. What really mattered was that they got their happy ending, wasn’t it? “Who’s Max?”

The question brought a big smile to the girl’s face, vanquishing the pain of the past. “Just the most awesome, amazing dad ever. Him and Horatio, his new husband.” Warm love glowed on Savannah’s face. “They’re the beloved patriarchs of our ever-expanding family.”

Kelly smiled. “Must be nice,” she murmured. “Having a big family.”

“It is,” Savannah said. “Until Max took us in, it had only been Abel and me. We only had each other, no one else.”

Like Raimi and me. Would she and her little brother be blessed with a nice family one day? She gazed at Savannah and wondered how it would feel to be a part of her family. She had said their “ever-expanding” family…did that mean they took in new members?

 

•♦•

 

“What did Cory have to say?” Cruz guided the truck up the gravel road and emerged from the trees as the large structure came into view.

Cochise put his phone away. “He talked to Axel.” His face strained, lips tight. “Axel said Clint called him, all messed up over something that happened here.”

“What?” Cruz frowned and instinctively stepped on the gas, pushing the truck forward a little faster. “Is he all right?”

“Physically,” Cochise murmured stiffly. What they might find inside the orphanage was anybody’s guess. Clint—like Cochise—didn’t do so well with the emotional, psychological pain as they did with physical pain.

“What happened?”

“Axel didn’t know. Clint didn’t give him details.”

Parking the truck behind a white moving van, Cruz killed the engine and looked at the huge house. “Do you think any of the men are still alive in there?”

The Egyptian shrugged. “Don’t know.”

Cruz exhaled hard and opened his door. “I hope so,” he said coldly. “These sick fucks deserve to die slow and in a shitload of pain.”

Cochise nodded and climbed out. His concern at the moment was Clint. They were both capable of losing their grip, and Clint had been here alone this time with no one to pull him back.

The other rigs parked behind the truck, driven by Sanchez and a few of Cruz’s men. Cochise, Cruz, and Sanchez led the procession up the weed-riddled path onto the porch. Cochise opened the door and entered. The first thing he saw was the dead man on the floor, nose smashed into his face. Dead as a doornail.

“Looks like the cowboy started the party without us,” Sanchez murmured.

They looked around. There was a door to their left and Cruz walked over and opened it. He went still. “Jesus,” he breathed.

Cochise joined him and looked into the room. A small cluster of kids sat on the floor before the fireplace, their gaunt faces aglow in the firelight. Cochise hadn’t thought anyone could look worse than the kids they’d rescued from the warehouse. He was wrong.

Movement drew his focus to the sofa where two more kids sat staring at the men, wide-eyed in fear. These two looked healthy and wore normal clothes, rather than the filthy rags the other kids had on.

“The cowboy?” Cochise asked them.

The oldest of the two, a girl, swallowed thickly and stammered, “Out-out there…i-in the other room.”

“Don’t be afraid,” Cruz told her. “We’re here to help. We’re friends of the cowboy.”

The girl relaxed a little and nodded. “He-he was upset,” she whispered, and tears thickened her voice. “One…one of the little girls…died in his arms.”

“What?” Cruz murmured dreadfully.

The young girl pointed to a loveseat that was pushed off to the side in heavy shadows. Cochise stepped into the room and walked over. A child lay against the throw pillows, wrapped up snug in Clint’s warm jacket. To look at her, it was hard to believe she had been alive recently.

“Oh, my God,” Cruz whispered, joining him. “No wonder he was messed up. Clint’s a tough fucker, but kids are his weakness.”

Cochise was startled by the sting in his eyes as he imagined the cowboy holding the child while her life slipped away. He cleared his throat as it began to knot up and left the room. He passed through the entryway and into a narrow hall, Cruz and the men right behind him.

The horrid stench struck them before they made it to the door up ahead. The men swore and covered their nose and mouths.

“What the fuck?” Cruz muttered through his hand.

Cochise’s nostrils burned but he ignored the foul stink and shoved through the door, bringing them into a large room that could have passed for the bowels of hell. Literally the bowels. The smell of piss and shit overrode the other repugnant odors. A couple of the men vomited, and Cochise couldn’t blame them; his own stomach—as resilient as it was—churned dangerously.

“What the…shit?” Sanchez was staring at the huge expansive wall off to the side of the door.

Furrows cut across the Egyptian’s brow and he walked closer. The other men followed.

“What is this?” Cruz murmured.

Cochise shook his head and slowly rubbed his mouth. “Beats the fuck out of me,” he mumbled.

“Did Clint do this?” Rodriguez asked low, uncertain. “If so—why?”

The longer he looked, the more Cochise understood the significance of the display; the six narrows beams that had been nailed to the wall, forming three large crosses…and the barbed-wire crowns with long nails wedged through the crudely woven wire.

Clint meant to crucify these men.