Page 25 of Creed (Rock Hard Mountain Men #3)

Creed

Even in summer, days in the mountains were cold.

The bag of supplies Robyn had brought was invaluable; we weren’t in danger of going hungry for the next few days, but we still had no tent.

Even Kayden and I would find it difficult to rough it in the forest. For the children, especially Mavis, who still suffered from a severe cold, it could be fatal.

We needed to make sure we had proper shelter to sleep, if nothing else.

That first day in the cave, while our wet clothes dried in a patch of sunlight near the fire, I pulled out Lisianthus’s journal.

Without paper or pen to write with, translating the code was more difficult, but not impossible.

It was slow going, but word by word, I managed to piece together what the next few pages said.

Lisianthus Milford—I would not call her Grieve since that wasn’t the name she had chosen—had meticulously planned out their escape route long before they left the cult and she’d written all of it down, explaining in detail where their plans worked, and where the natural landscape caused them to deviate.

It was coming in handy now. Although not as good as an actual map, it was the next best thing, and I was able to come up with a general plan for our route through the woods.

“Still focused on that journal?” Kayden asked when he sat down next to me. He’d been helping to take care of the kids, making sure they ate.

A pair of soft snores from the back of the next cave we’d taken shelter in told me that they were asleep, kept warm by the fire and the majority of our blankets and dry clothing.

Even as Kayden settled in next to me, the heat of his body chasing away the coolness of the stone I was leaning against. I didn’t dare look at him directly. Most of his clothing was again drying by the fire, leaving him in just a pair of boxers.

A cave in the middle of the wilderness, taking shelter with two children, was no place for me to be getting excited, but I couldn’t help my body’s reaction to the sight of him.

Just to be safe, I kept my eyes firmly glued on the words and rough maps that I’d scratched into the dirt.

“If my remembered map is correct, and the information in Lisianthus’s journal is mostly accurate, then we should be able to reach a town, Whimborne, in about two days.”

Kayden studied what I’d drawn out in the dirt, careful not to touch anything.

“So, you know where we are?”

I nodded. “Yes. Since the Milford sisters managed to travel there on foot, I knew it was doable, but there was never an accurate account of how long it took them. Luckily, we aren’t as far from Emberwood as I feared.”

“So, we get to Whimborne. Then what?”

“Then we find the nearest phone and call for help. Magnus and Brody could probably drive out to us in a few hours.”

“Call your friends?” Kayden gave me a strange look. “Is that really what we should do first? What about the police? We were kidnapped. That’s... highly illegal. Surely, contacting the police should be our first priority.”

Before he’d even finished speaking, I was already shaking my head. Despite being a world traveler, it was easy to forget how innocent Kayden actually was.

“In small towns out in rural areas like this, everyone knows everyone. There’re probably at least a few members of the Tamed Souls on the local police force.

No. It’s too much of a risk. If we call Brody and Magnus, then at least we know help is on the way.

They can decide how much law enforcement needs to be involved. ”

Hunkering down more next to me, Kayden wrapped himself tighter in the one blanket he’d kept for himself. It seemed to be a child’s blanket, and barely fit around him as he laid his head on my shoulder.

“You know more about this stuff, so I’ll have to take your word for it.”

I ran a hand through his hair, already feeling his muscles relaxing as he began drifting off to sleep.

“Don’t worry. I promise, I’ll get us through this.”

Kayden mumbled something that was probably meant to be an agreement, but he drifted off mid-sentence, and his words turned in a subtle snoring.

Chuckling to myself, I turned my attention back to the journal.

Translating the code without paper and pen to write with was a lot harder. I could scratch out some words in the dirt, but a lot of the conversion had to be done in my head, and there was no way to permanently record anything that I did manage to figure out.

Because of this, when the next word I translated from the journal made no sense, I assumed I’d just messed up somewhere.

I worked through the code again, making sure to carve out everything in the dirt to ensure its accuracy.

The word remained the same.

“Wait.” I glared down at the page, certain that I must have misunderstood something. “That can’t be right, can it?”

I moved on to the rest of the sentence, hoping that maybe some context would give me a better understanding of what the journal was talking about.

It did. After just a few more sentences of translation, I fully understood what the journal was talking about; I just didn’t understand why Lisianthus had changed from her detailed record of their escape, to such a... seemingly random topic.

I couldn’t go to sleep, since someone had to keep a look out in case our pursuers caught up with us.

Kayden had agreed to switch off with me halfway through the night so I could also get some sleep, but that still left me with many hours where I had nothing to do but obsess over Lisianthus’s writing.

And the story contained within her journal had just taken an interesting twist.

Our luck held out for the next few days.

There were no signs of our pursuers so we’d moved to traveling during the day instead of at night.

The weather remained calm, without a hint of rain or other conditions that could slow us down.

Plus, Mavis’s cold finally broke. We still had to carry her.

She wasn’t back to full health yet, and even if she was, a six-year-old couldn’t keep up with our hiking pace.

However, it was still good to see her awake and conscious for most of the day.

She was a calm child, always sitting still and content to be carried most of the time. That might have been due to the leftover fatigue from her illness, but there was an alert curiosity in her eyes as she watched the forest passing by around us.

As we traveled, I asked Robyn about his community.

He told me about the people he’d grown up with, mostly adults.

It was a varied mix. Some were kind, others not so much.

Mostly interestingly, however, was the fact that, despite the Grieve family running the cult, there were only two Grieves left.

Chester Grieve, the man that had imprisoned Kayden and me, and the man’s son.

Chester Grieve’s son was already approaching middle age, and so far, he hadn’t managed to have any children, despite having several wives.

If he didn’t manage to reproduce soon, the Grieve family might be coming to an end, and there had been a lot of squabbling among the adults about who would take over leadership if that happened.

As far as I was concerned, that bloodline couldn’t die out soon enough.

We passed the next two days of our trip without much trouble. When we reached a break in the trees, and the town of Whimborne came into view, I dared to feel hopeful.

If we could just find a phone in town to call Brody and Magnus, then we had a good chance of getting out of this without encountering our captors again.

Whimborne was a small place, barely worthy of being called a town.

Most of the roads weren’t even paved, and the buildings looked like they hadn’t been properly refurbished since the pioneer days.

It was our best chance of going unnoticed by our pursuers, who would likely assuming we were headed for one of the larger towns nearby.

However, in a small place like this we were also more likely to be noticed by the locals.

“Wait here,” I told Kayden, who was crouching with the children in the shadows at the edge of town. “I’m going to go find a phone. I shouldn’t have to go far, but if I don’t come back in the next few minutes, find a place to hide yourselves and wait for Magnus and Brody to come get you.”

Just as I turned away from them, a hand tugged at my sleeve.

“Mister Creed,” Robyn said as he looked up at me, his voice small but steady. “Let me come with you.”

Although he was twelve, just one year from being a teenager, Robyn was small for his age. I had to kneel to be on level with him.

“It’ll be safer for you to stay here with Kayden.”

He immediately shook his head. “No, I should come with you. I know all the people from my community. I’ll recognize them easier.”

The kid had a point. Other than the individuals who kidnapped us, I hadn’t met most of the members of the cult.

With a sigh of resignation, I nodded. “All right, you can come with me. But if I tell you to run, then you run, all right?”

The boy nodded and stood up as straight as he could, like he was about to charge into battle. “I got it.”

“All right. Let’s go.”

I shared one last look with Kayden as he cradled Mavis in his arms, then turned and left with Robyn right on my heels.

The two of us slunk up to the backside of a building at the very edge of town.

Made from old brown brick, it looked like it would fall down at any moment, but from the activity I could hear just out of sight, the place still seemed to be functioning.

It was a post office, as far as I could tell, with several large garage doors in the back for accepting deliveries.

More importantly, however, there was a ladder just off to the side of the garage door that led up to the roof.

“Come on,” I said to Robyn, pointing at the ladder. “Up here. We’ll be able to get a better look at the area from the roof.”