Page 20 of Creed (Rock Hard Mountain Men #3)

The boot on my back squeezed the air out of my lungs but I still managed to cough out a few words.

“And how... am I... supposed to do that with you standing on me?”

Multiple voices grumbled as hands grabbed me and dragged me to my feet.

Not far away, Kayden was looking around blindly with the bag still on his head, demanding to know what was going on.

“It’s fine,” I assured him. “These fine men were just helping me up after I tripped.”

The sarcasm in my voice was unmistakable.

We were brought back to our room without further incident, and the bags were removed from our heads.

My pages on the table had been moved while we were gone. Someone had looked through them.

Did they think I was hiding something from them?

How stupid. Even if I was, I wouldn’t leave it lying around for them to find so easily.

Our captors left, and the door was locked behind them. The moment we were alone, Kayden immediately grabbed my shoulders and spun me to face him, his face twisted in worry.

“Are you okay? I heard you fall. Did they hurt you?”

“I’m fine,” I insisted again. When we’d first been locked in here, I’d checked every inch of the room for hidden cameras or microphones. By now, I was certain that they weren’t watching us or listening in, so I confidently held up my hand and unclenched my fist.

The nail sat on my palm.

“I’m going to get us out of here.”

After our meeting with Chester Grieve, I was more unsettled than before.

The man wanted something out of us, out of me specifically, more than just the journal. He was looking for an answer to a question I couldn’t even fathom.

I was left even more determined not to give the man what he wanted. At the moment, it was a moot point as I hadn’t cracked the journal yet, but even when I did, I couldn’t give it to him.

Our only hope would be to escape before I finished the journal.

After our meeting, other members of the cult checked on us more frequently than before. At least once an hour during the day someone would come by looking for an update on what progress I’d made. Each time, I had to have something to show them, or they threatened to move Kayden to a separate room.

Because of this, I had to keep working on the journal. So, I handed the nail over to Kayden to take care of.

While I was busy writing out codes, Kayden sat on the floor, painstakingly rubbing the nail against the concrete wall and slowly filing it down into a thin point.

Old locks were bulkier than new ones, and had bigger keyholes, so it was my hope that the nail could be filed down into something that could be used to pick the lock.

That was step one of our escape plans. After that, I still wasn’t sure what to do, but it was a start.

A knock came at the door. Kayden quickly hid the half-filed nail up his sleeve. A knock meant it was probably Robyn bringing our next meal, but we couldn’t be too careful.

I called out for the boy to enter.

When he opened the door, I caught a glimpse up the stairs beyond where I could just see several armed men standing guard.

My view of our guards only lasted a moment before the door shut behind the boy and we were once more cut off.

“How are you doing, Robyn?” Kayden asked as the boy set his laden tray down on the table. His voice sounded concerned.

Robyn muttered a quiet “Fine” as he started setting out the different dishes.

I could see why Kayden sounded so concerned. Robyn’s complexion was paler than normal, and there were heavy circles under his eyes. His hands shook, causing him to fumble and drop one of the bowls.

I managed to catch it, grateful for the lid on the bowl, or else its contents would have ended up on the floor.

“Whoa, Robyn, sit down,” Kayden insisted, pulling out a chair for the boy.

It took very little coaxing before the boy practically collapsed into the offered chair and hung his head in his hands.

“I shouldn’t stay here,” he spoke straight at the floor. “They’ll be suspicious if I take too long.”

Kayden knelt beside the boy’s chair, stroking a soothing hand over his back. “Okay. Just take a moment to breathe and then you can go. What’s wrong? Is there anything we can do?”

It was a meaningless offer. We could barely take care of ourselves let alone do anything to help the boy, but Kayden’s concern seemed to calm the boy down, nonetheless.

The young man sucked in a deep breath; some of the color returned to his skin and he sat up straight.

“Are you trying to escape from here?”

Kayden and I shared an equally baffled look.

“Um,” Kayden stumbled over his words. “That’s not...”

Robyn interrupted, his words gaining speed as he started to ramble. “Everyone says that you’re some kind of expert soldier, and that you must have some plan to try and escape. That’s why we must be careful with you.”

At this, Kayden was completely speechless, but before I could try to respond, Robyn whispered one last sentence.

“I hope they’re right.”

His words were spoken under his breath, as if he was afraid to even let them touch the air.

Bracing myself for what I was about to hear—because I could tell from Robyn’s tone that it wouldn’t be good—I knelt beside the boy as well and asked him to explain.

The story came rushing out of him in one tangled mess of whispered words.

He’d been in charge of taking care of his sister, Mavis, since their parents died. Recently, he’d overheard some of the elders of their community making plans for who Mavis should marry.

The girl was only six.

Apparently, The Tamed Souls had been losing people over the years, and they were desperate to increase their numbers. So, they were encouraging their members to marry earlier and earlier.

Ordinarily, a child’s parents would have the final say in their marriage, but with no living parents, Mavis and Robyn were helpless against the desires of the adults around them.

The moment Mavis was physically developed enough to bear children, she’d be married off, and there was no telling how old her husband would be.

By the end of his explanation, Robyn was clinging to my arm, tugging at me as he begged.

“Please, if you escape from here, please take my sister with you. I can’t watch this happen to her. I’ll do anything.”

Comforting children was never one of my strong suits. I awkwardly patted the boy on the head, hoping it would soothe him at least a little bit, as I shared another look with Kayden.

Even without exchanging a word, we were both in agreement.

“I’ll do you one better,” I said to the boy. “You and your sister can both come with us. But I’ll need something from you first.”

Robyn sniffed and wiped away tears that hadn’t fallen yet, looking up at me with a fearful hope in his eyes. “Anything.”

“First, I need a watch or something that will keep track of time. We can’t even tell if it’s day or night in here.”

Robyn instantly started nodding, even before I’d finished speaking.

I held up a hand to get his attention again.

“And second... what can you tell me about those guards by the door?”

Robyn was right. The guards were suspicious after he took longer to drop off our meal than normal. Now the guards were on high alert, so we wouldn’t be able to act right away. We’d have to wait a couple days until that suspicion calmed down again.

This gave us plenty of time to plan.

Robyn was careful to never loiter in our room again. He delivered the information we needed a few sentences at a time whenever he dropped off a meal.

With each new delivery, a picture began to form in my mind.

Many guards gathered around when our door was opened, but other than that, there was usually only one person standing by the entrance to the building.

Furthermore, there was a group of guardsmen that patrolled the village at night.

They technically covered the entire perimeter of the area, but they didn’t pay as much attention to the north side of the village where most of the buildings were empty.

“Why are you still working on that?” Kayden asked as he continued to file down the nail. It was mostly done, and he just needed to refine the point of the tip into the correct shape.

I looked down at the papers spread out before me where I was still working on cracking the code of the journal. “If my work pace suddenly slows down, they’ll get suspicious. Plus, I can probably buy us some time by handing over part of the journal.”

The relentless sound of iron scrapping against concrete stopped when Kayden set down the nail and came over to look at my work.

“So, you figured it out?”

I held up one of the pages that held legible words.

“Partially. It looks like Lisianthus used several different codes in her journal. I’ve managed to figure out one of them.

I’m going to make sure there isn’t any dangerous information in the journal, but assuming it’s harmless, I can hand over this part to keep our captors off our backs for a while. ”

After pressing a kiss to my temple, Kayden stored the nail up his sleeve and then threw himself down on the mattress.

“What information could the journal hold that would be dangerous for us?”

I tapped my pen against the table. When my mind was too busy, I often calmed myself down by absently writing or doodling. So often, I’d wished for pen and paper when my stress was high and there was nothing to write with.

Now, I had too much to write, and I needed a distraction from my usual distraction.

“Dangerous may not be the right word,” I said as I drew a trail of dots along the edge of one page.

“But our captors are looking for something in this journal. Once they get what they’re looking for, they have no reason to keep us around.

I want to make sure I don’t accidentally hand over their answer too early. ”

The code that Lisianthus used on her journal was a simple one. What made it so hard to decipher was the fact that she used multiple layers of simple code.