Page 123 of Little Children

‘It’s okay, Noah,’ she murmured, again holding her finger to her lips.

On her right in the last pen, already strung up with his feet dangling two feet above the ground, was Lewis.

The carcass of a dead pig lay at his feet.

Emotion numbed her throat as she threw open the gate into his enclosure. She stepped over the decomposing flesh of the animal and reached above Lewis’s head to the knot that bound his wrists.

It wasn’t complex, but he would never have been able to reach it.

‘I’ve got you,’ she said, easing him down to the ground.

‘They’ve never done that to me before.’

And she knew exactly why. They’d decided Lewis couldn’t win fights and make them money. His only useful purpose now was to replace the pig.

‘It’s okay, Lewis. I swear they’ll never hurt you again, but I need you to help me, okay?’

He nodded eagerly. She wanted so badly to comfort this battered kid who was still willing to offer his trust to a stranger, but they had to get out of there.

‘Is it just the two of them?’

‘I think so. We call them Mister and Missus, and I haven’t seen anyone else.’

‘Will they come back out here tonight?’

He nodded. ‘Mister will come soon with supper. Cold toast and jam.’

That wasn’t going to take long to prepare, so now she knew she couldn’t just wait. She’d be discovered and wouldn’t have a chance against them.

She couldn’t take them both on in the house, and she couldn’t risk them getting away.

She had to get them out on her terms.

‘Okay, I’m waiting for my friends to come, but I’ve got to do some stuff first. There are bolt cutters in the top pen. Are you up to freeing the other boys and getting them to the door?’

Despite the beating he’d had in the ring earlier and his many injuries, he nodded energetically. She just wanted to hug the life out of him, but she didn’t have the time.

‘Okay, do it,’ she said before heading back to the top of the barn.

There were two of them and one of her. She had to think quick if she planned on getting out of this alive.

Eighty-One

She opened the gate to the storage pen and stepped inside.

She grabbed some of the things she could use and headed back out the door, taking care to crouch down into the darkness as she headed towards the van. Starting on the side furthest away from the building, she hammered a nail into every tyre and then paused.

No one was getting away in this vehicle.

There was no sound from the front of the house, so she tied a piece of rope to the drainpipe nearest the van and then crawled in front of the windows and front door. She raised the rope one foot up from the ground and tied it to the drainpipe on the west side of the house.

She looked along the line of rope. Perfect.

Then she rushed back to the barn and opened the door.

‘Ready?’ she asked, walking into the group of boys, all dressed only in underpants. Every boy except Lewis still had a metal ring attached to their wrists. Lewis had had the sense to cut at the thinnest point of the chain for speed.

Six pairs of eyes looked to her as they all stood shivering in the cold air. Their gazes shone with a mixture of fear and hope. She wanted to wrap them all up in blankets, but the priority was to get them to safety.