CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
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Townes forced himself to slow his pace as he made a second pass around the circle in hopes to find something that could aid him in escaping this pit of hell. He refused to break and give in to the frustration of being unable to locate anything that could be of use.
Where was Moss?
Had he left Townes here to die?
He wouldn’t succeed in that endeavor. Townes would break his own ankle before giving Moss that type of satisfaction.
Someone from the team should be in the area by now. Brody would have had time to retrace movements from the crash site by now. The sun was lowering at a rapid pace, taking with it the humidity that had settled into this circled oven. There was some air movement, but it sure as hell wasn’t enough.
Townes wiped away his sweat, grateful that the blood had stopped flowing from his head wounds. He’d removed his dress shirt earlier, pressing on the worst cuts to stop the bleeding. The ribbed tank he’d worn underneath was turning black with dirt from where he’d wiped his hands after attempting to move some of the boulders.
If only he could obtain a large enough piece to try and release these shackles.
Townes lowered himself to the ground, wedging his feet on either side of the mounting fixture. He used part of the shirt that wasn’t caked with blood and wiped away the sweat from his hands before he wrapped his fingers around the chain. He leveraged himself so that he was leaning back and using every ounce of strength he had to pull on the links in hopes that some of the screws in the boulder would loosen.
Blood rushed through his ears as he strained every muscle in his body in an effort to achieve triumph. The only thing he succeeded in doing was causing the bump on the side of his head to throb insufferably. He didn’t believe he’d gotten the injury during the crash. Moss had most likely rolled his unconscious body into this hellhole. In all honesty, he was lucky to have only received a mild concussion.
“I see you’re awake.”
Townes thought he’d heard something rustling in the grass while straining over his attempt at loosening the chain from the hardware, so he was somewhat prepared. He casually allowed the soles of his dress shoes to slide away from the rock. He angled his legs so that he could rest his arms over his knees, emanating a casual air of indifference.
Moss fed off fear.
“That I am,” Townes said, not bothering to seek out Moss’ position. The sound of his voice would do that for him. “I’ve got to hand it to you, Moss. I wasn’t expecting you to lose patience so easily to bring this game to a close.”
“Is that what you think?”
Moss’ probing question set Townes on edge, though he did his best not to show his unease. He feigned wiping away a smudge on his shoe to buy a little more time. This was all a battle of wits, nothing more.
“Well, we discovered the body you left in the ruins of that cabin was your twin brother. I’m relatively sure you weren’t expecting us to connect the dots so easily. I can’t imagine how hard it was for your mother to keep him locked up on the farm,” Townes commiserated wryly. He figured now was the point in which he could push back with assumptions that would either get him killed quickly or give the team more time to find his location. “I’ve been wondering something, though. Were you the one who blinded him? Caroline Marinovic somehow found out about him, didn’t she? Did you sneak him into the diner one day? Did Caroline favor him over you?”
The painful whimper that drifted over the opening of the pit sliced fear through Townes in a manner he never experienced before. He was on his feet before his mind could warn him he was playing into Moss’ hands, but instinct to stop Shailyn from being hurt even worse than before was too strong.
What the hell was she doing here?
“Let her go, Moss.” Had Townes had access to a machete, he would have hacked his own leg off in a matter of minutes to finish what should have ended years ago. “I will kill you. Do you understand that?”
Moss was staring at Townes in abject fury. His speculation on the connection between Caroline and Moss had been confirmed, though it took him a second to process that information. He was too busy looking over Shailyn to ensure she hadn’t been hurt in any way.
There was a plea in her emerald green eyes for forgiveness. It was then he realized she’d purposefully put herself into the hands of Moss. She’d done so to save Townes’ life. His gut twisted at the sacrifice she’d made, because all would be for naught.
Damn it.
He’d done everything in his power to give Shailyn her life back. Moss would now kill them both, but not before he enjoyed serving both of them up a bit of torture.
“You’re talking about something you know nothing about,” Moss exclaimed after he’d gathered his composure. He then ran a hand over Shailyn’s auburn hair as if she were nothing but a mere doll. The way she closed her eyes made it obvious she was doing her best not lose the contents of her stomach. “All that really matters is that Shailyn is back with me. I’ve waited a long time for this moment.”
He tensed at Moss’ implication. He was going to force Townes to hear every scream of pain that fell from her lips. Nausea took hold, but he pushed it back as he made every effort to delay the inevitable.
Where was his team? How in the hell had Moss gotten his hooks into Shailyn?
“Really?” Townes taunted, hoping he wasn’t making a mistake. Moss would surely see through his attempt at wasting time. He was too intelligent to fall for it unless Townes could find something that shook the monster at his core. “I figured you would have rather spent more time with your brother, considering it was him who took Caroline Marinovic away from you.”
Moss stared down into the pit through his rimless glasses that had been a staple of his features since he was in his teens. A flush of anger rose in his face just as quick as his step forward, giving Townes exactly what he wanted.
“Are you surprised that I could figure out what happened all those years ago, Moss?”
Townes purposefully shook his head in disappointment, catching Shailyn’s expression as she followed the chain around his ankle to the stone wall. He needed her to leave him here while she sought some type of safety. He still wasn’t sure how Moss got to Shailyn, but it was more than apparent that she’d come with him on her own free will. Her hands and feet weren’t secured.
“You left us with DNA that closely resembled yours, you went back to where Caroline had originally been buried, and you allowed Lucas Grove to live after the fact.” Townes tsked his displeasure, knowing full well that Moss would take the gesture as an insult. “You’re so incredibly easy to read, Moss.”
Townes immediately stepped forward and closed his hands into tight fists when Moss all but dragged Shailyn away from the side of the pit. The chain’s rattling wasn’t loud enough to drown out Shailyn’s protests.
He pressed his fists to his eyes as he struggled to figure out how to stop Moss from doing to Shailyn what she’d already experienced under his hand and what she saw in her nightmares every fucking night.
This was his nightmare.
How had they come to be here?
“Moss!” Townes understood that he was giving Moss what he wanted, but desperation was clawing at his chest. It was becoming harder and harder to breathe the longer Shailyn was out of his line of vision. “Did Caroline beg you to save her from your brother? Did being hidden and locked away cause your brother to go insane? Or was he jealous of Caroline? Did she blame you for dragging her into your family full of psychopaths?”
Townes could very well be off the mark, but he fully believed from Moss’ initial reaction that his brother had killed Caroline Marinovic. Had she gone looking for him only to find him involved with something illegal? Had he killed her to prove a point, or had he been just as fucked up in the head as Moss?
The team had gotten this lead a little too late.
“He showed me who I truly was.” Moss finally appeared on the right side of the pit, but he was without Shailyn. Where was she? The sun was setting, so it was becoming harder to see Moss’ facial expressions. His tone suggested he was calmer than before. That wasn’t what Townes had been going for and another wave of desperation hit. “Alexander showed me my true calling.”
Townes understood where he went wrong. Caroline might have begged Moss to help her in her time of need, but her pleas had somehow stirred that twisted, sadistic part of his soul.
It was the moment he became a killer himself.
“Tell me one thing before you begin whatever is you’re going to do,” Townes asked, sparing Shailyn only a few more moments of peace. He had to swallow in order to get the words out. “How did you find her?”
It wasn’t dark enough yet to hide Moss’ vile smile. Was that the hideous leer Shailyn had seen every time Moss slid the blade into her flesh? The urge to wrap his hands around Moss’ throat and squeeze the life out of him was overwhelming, but he was helpless chained to this wall.
Anguish clawed at the back of his throat.
“You have no parents, no siblings, and the contact list on your phone is filled with law enforcement names.” Moss pushed his rimmed glasses higher up on the bridge of his nose. It was as if he wanted to see Townes’ reaction clearly for his own enjoyment. “It didn’t take me long to have a friend of mine run the names. Only one stood out as a false flag.”
Townes would have continued to ask questions or done anything to delay the inevitable, but something caught Moss’ attention. He immediately disappeared. Being in this shallow crater made it hard to catch sounds that were in the distance. Townes remained still and held his breath in an attempt to hear what could be happening.
Had the team finally arrived? Had Brody been able to retrace Moss’ steps from the scene of the accident? Those details were still vague, because there was no way in hell Moss could have been directly involved. He didn’t have a scratch on him to indicate he’d been in one of the vehicles.
“No!”
Shailyn’s scream resonated through the air. Horrible images flashed vividly through Townes’ mind as to the torture Moss was inflicting upon her.
“God, no.” Townes words were strangled, but that didn’t stop him from planting a foot on the stone where the chain was mounted. He pulled with all his might, straining every muscle in his body in an attempt at freedom. “Moooosssss!”