Page 19 of Creed (Rock Hard Mountain Men #3)

Creed

While Kayden and I had been locked away together, I hadn’t just been trying to crack the code to Lisianthus’s journal. I’d also been preparing myself for the inevitable interrogation we would face. A man like Chester Grieve would only be so patient. Sooner or later, he’d demand answers from us.

I had mentally run through every question and interrogation tactic I thought he would use and composed answers beforehand.

I thought I’d prepared for any possibility.

I was wrong.

Out of all things that the man could have asked, I never expected him to question why Magnus, Brody, and I had purchased our property in Emberwood.

There was no point in even trying to bluff an answer when I had no idea what he was looking for.

“I... don’t understand the question,” I was forced to admit.

Chester Grieve idly waved a folder that was probably filled with pages of information about me.

“I’ve looked into it. Neither you nor your companions have any ties to the area. No family nearby, and by all accounts, none of you have even visited the state, let alone ever set foot in Emberwood before.”

“So what?”

Cold eyes, frosted with their advanced age, regarded me without a hint of human emotion. A robot would have had more life in its gaze.

I’d seen that look on only a few people before. Those who were so hopeless they had nothing left in them, and those who were so sure in their convictions there was no room in them for anything else.

Chester Grieve was many things, but he was not hopeless.

“It just strikes me as odd,” he continued to say as if we were merely having a casual conversation. “I can understand if you didn’t want to live near family. Not all families are... harmonious, after all. But of all the random mountain towns in the country, why Emberwood?”

I recalled the day Magnus, Brody, and I had first discovered the property listing.

We’d been randomly looking through real estate sites in our spare time, mostly just trying to figure out what we even wanted.

Until then, we’d had a vague list of requirements, such as the amount of land we thought we could handle, and a price point we were comfortable with, but other than that, everything had been up in the air.

The idea of building our homes from scratch hadn’t occurred to us, until we randomly stumbled across the listing in Emberwood.

From the moment we saw it, something about the place just felt right. Plans for what we could do with the land fell into place as if we’d been discussing them for months. We could already tell exactly where Magnus’s garden would go, and where Brody would put his workshop.

But how could I possibly explain this to Chester Grieve?

The man was expecting a concrete answer, and I had none.

“We just... liked the place,” I eventually said.

I expected Chester Grieve to get angry over my lack of a proper answer; even to my own ears it felt like I was deflecting.

Instead, however, a smile spread across his face.

“You just liked the place? How very... sentimental.”

“Is there a point to this?” I snapped. Something about the man’s tone sent an unpleasant feeling snaking up my spine. The way he looked at me made me feel like a display in a museum, like I’d been unearthed against my will and given meaning that even I didn’t understand.

After a moment, Chester Grieve relented, and he sat back in his wheelchair in a more relaxed pose.

“I just wanted to check up on your progress. The contents of that journal are very important to us, and I want to make sure you’re giving it your full attention. No...” His eyes flickered over to Kayden. “Unnecessary distractions.”

I tensed, ready to fight if the man even suggested removing Kayden from me. However, surprisingly, Kayden stayed relaxed at my side. When I gave him a brief glance of my own, I found his brow furrowed, lost in thought. He hadn’t even noticed Chester Grieve’s hinted threat.

Before I could ask him what was wrong—or more likely steer the conversation in a different direction—Kayden spoke up.

“Actually, what is the point of this?”

The wheelchair creaked as Chester Grieve rolled a little closer. “The point is for you to solve the journal. That shouldn’t be hard to understand.”

Realizing the ire that he’d drawn to himself, Kayden squirmed in his seat, nervously eyeing the armed men by the door.

“I know, but, um... this is all because the Milford sis— I mean, your founder’s wives stole something from him when they escaped?”

“They didn’t escape,” Chester Grieve said through gritted teeth, properly paying attention to Kayden for the first time since we’d been kidnapped. “They abandoned their duty.”

“Right...” Kayden nodded, though he clearly didn’t agree.

I tried to silently signal Kayden to be quiet, but he kept talking.

“It’s just, you don’t even know what they stole, or if the journal will even help you.

This seems like a lot of effort, you know, kidnapping us and everything, just to find some unknown object. ”

Watching Chester Grieve’s reaction, something clicked in my mind, like a gear I hadn’t realized was stuck finally started turning.

“You do know.”

Those three words were enough to get Chester Grieve’s focus off Kayden and back onto me. I intended to keep it that way, so although this would usually be a situation where I kept my thoughts to myself, I voiced them out loud to make sure I had the man’s full attention.

“You know what the sisters stole. That’s why you’re so determined to find it. Although, you clearly haven’t told anyone else. I wonder if your people would be so supportive if they knew what this is really about?”

“It is about justice and righting a wrong that was done to this community over a hundred years ago,” Chester Grieve snapped while gesturing at the men standing guard by the door.

“Take these two back to their room. I don’t want to hear another word about them until they finally have some answers for us. ”

With guns pointed at us the whole time, a pair of very familiar bags were shoved onto our heads, and rough hands hauled us out of the room.

It was exactly the same as every other time they’d had to move us, with one notable exception.

There was a small hole in the bag on my head.

It had probably gone unnoticed due to the black fabric. A hole this small wouldn’t normally make much of a difference but it just happened to be positioned perfectly for me to see out of it with one eye.

I kept my head down, staring at my feet and letting myself be jostled around to hide the fact that I could see.

The wooden floorboards were old and scuffed, with dust so tightly packed into the grooves between the planks it could never be fully removed.

Effort had been made to keep the floors in good condition, they were clean and there were numerous rugs dotted around, but nothing could hide the fact that it was old.

If this was where their leader lived, then the rest of the buildings must be in even worse condition.

That gave me hope. The room where we were being kept wasn’t a proper prison. It was just a basement room with a particularly stout lock. Old buildings had weaknesses that could be exploited.

I only needed one opportunity.

Once we stepped outside, I was momentarily blinded by the sight of sunlight. It wasn’t even a very bright day, more overcast than blue, but it had been days since I’d seen natural light, and my eyes needed a moment to adjust.

There were more buildings than I thought there’d be.

The cult had built themselves a proper little village out in the woods.

Yet, the more I looked, the more my suspicions grew.

Many of the buildings were in serious disrepair, and few had clearly been abandoned.

There also wasn’t as much human activity as the number of buildings would suggest.

The cult may have been a thriving community once, but they were beyond their glory days now. They probably only had half the numbers they used to have.

It was still more people than I could fight on my own.

Based on the number of buildings that were still obviously in use, I estimated their numbers to be between sixty and a hundred.

If even just half of those people were able-bodied and capable of wielding a weapon, that was a significant fighting force.

We couldn’t fight our way out. We’d have to sneak.

I tried to memorize as much of the layout of the buildings as I could. If Kayden and I escaped, we’d need to know where to go.

Though, that still left the question of how we would escape.

A glint of metal in the meager sunlight caught my eye. A few feet in front of us, near a particularly old and crumbling building, a nail lay in the dirt. It was a thick black thing, probably made from solid iron, with an unusually rough quality like it had been made by an inexperienced blacksmith.

That could be useful, if only I could get my hands on it.

Unlike before, this time my hands weren’t tied. There might be a chance.

As we came abreast of the nail, I made a show of stumbling over a loose stone. It was a difficult line to walk, making sure that my “fumble” was enough to get a reaction, but not so large that it looked fake.

The man holding me gripped my arm hard enough to bruise and yanked me back upright.

“Keep moving.”

I pulled back against their grip.

“Shove me one more time. See what happens.”

Of course, how could any man, especially one so comfortable with taking others hostage, ignore such a challenge.

The man shoved me again, harder this time. I could have kept my balance by shifting my weight on my feet, but instead I let myself fall.

Even with the hole in the bag, I still couldn’t see very well. It was a hard landing that roughly jarred my shoulder. My hands scrapped across the ground, nicked by small stones and other debris.

Someone’s boot planted itself on my back, pressing me down into the soil.

“Fucking idiot. Not much of a soldier, are you? Get up already.”