This Chapter is dedicated to the reader who sent me anonymous feedback through the site on Chapter 4.
Your kind comment came at exactly the right time.
Thank you to YukonNights for suggestions on scene selection, and to DeathMarch4 for the good advice on the problematic scene.
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Author's Note:
As a rule, I avoid prefatory notes about the content of a chapter because I don't want to try to influence the way you read it. I'm making an exception this time because I don't want you to feel like this chapter leads you on with the promise of things that aren't in it. There are no sexual encounters involving anyone other than Michael and Mariah. I'm sure many readers will see the opportunities for girl-on-girl, threesomes, foursomes, etc. I didn't want you to think those things were coming and be disappointed when they never arrived. I hope Michael and Mariah's encounter will leave you satisfied. ;-)
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It was about four in the afternoon on one of the most exhausting days in either of their lives. That morning, four of "mayor" Hawley's men attempted to abduct Mariah, using a ruse to coerce her to climb over the wall of the compound. Michael's entire security team had scrambled and intercepted them before they got far. During the standoff, one of Hawley's men drew a gun and was shot in the shoulder. He had already been questioned and released to the town doctor. Two other men ran away just as Michael arrived on the scene, and the fourth man remained locked in a holding room in the basement complex, awaiting questioning.
After Michael brought Mariah safely back to the compound, he was determined to get it through her head that he would not tolerate her endangering herself. He had driven his point home with a very real spanking before he fucked her with a possessive fury that left her aching. In the midst of delivering the spanking, he inadvertently referred to her as "the woman I love," and it made her angrier than he'd ever seen her. They hadn't talked about it, yet. If it was up to Mariah, they never would.
The day was still far from over, and they were sharing a shower in a temporary state of truce when it suddenly occurred to Mariah that Hawley must have Sarah.
"Michael, they have Sarah!"
Michael reacted to the fear in Mariah's voice without having any idea what she was talking about. "Who is Sarah?"
"Sarah Jenkins. My friend. You must have seen her on the feeds. She's the little tiny black girl with big natural hair. Michael, I have to get her away from them!" Her voice rose as panic crept in.
He held her by the shoulders and backed her slowly against the wall of the shower. "Look at me, Mariah." He had to give her shoulders a little shake before she focused on him.
"Take a deep breath. We're going to get her back. And by "we," I mean the security team. Not you. You are not leaving this house."
Michael quickly rinsed off and left Mariah in the shower to finish rinsing herself. He grabbed his radio and some clothes from his room and came back to her bedroom to dress. He had no intention of leaving her alone long enough to go running off on some harebrained rescue attempt. When she walked out of the bathroom, he was pulling his clothes on while he talked to Ezra over the radio.
"I don't know how she knows. I don't want to waste any time. She can tell all of us at once. Just have everyone meet us in the conference room."
Michael finished dressing, but Mariah was still struggling. She had been in too much of a hurry to dry off properly, and now her damp skin was sticking to the fabric of the bra and panties she was trying to pull on. He stopped her.
"We're going to get to the conference room before the rest of them. Slow down."
He brought her a towel from the bathroom. She did a better job drying off while he squeezed the water from her dripping hair and towel-dried it. He knew she wouldn't cooperate with blow drying it right now. As soon as she got her clothes on, she dashed down the hall. He caught up to her and took her hand.
"Mariah, you've got to calm down."
"You don't know what they'll do to her!"
His stomach churned. These were the same men she had gone with voluntarily after they threatened Henry.
"Baby, I promise we will get her back just as fast as we can, but I need you to focus."
By the time they got to the conference room, Mariah had collected herself. She was glad to see Yvonne was already there. She had some questions that were bothering her.
"Yvonne, do you know how those guys knew where I was this morning?"
"You know that hill on the other side of the road from the compound? There was a rough platform, built way up in a group of trees. There were two men up there and they had a telescope. They radioed the four guys outside the walls and told them where to throw the rock and where to throw the ladder over. Today was the third morning we saw people out on the road. Until now, they never did anything suspicious, besides just being all the way out here for no apparent reason. We think they just got lucky that you happened to go near the wall while they were out there waiting."
By the time Yvonne finished explaining, the rest of the security team was arriving. When everyone sat down, Michael prompted Mariah to start.
"Hawley's guys have my friend, Sarah Jenkins. Remember how you guys never figured out where I lived? Only a few people knew, and only Sarah knew Henry. She checked in on Henry, Julia and Duncan if I had to be gone for more than a day. She is the only person who knew Henry's name, or even that I had a dog."
"What about his original owner?" Michael asked. "He would know his name."
Mariah didn't waste time trying to figure out how he knew she wasn't Henry's original owner. "Henry is the name I gave him. I never told anyone but Sarah. That note they threw over the wall identified him by name, so they had to have gotten that information from her. She wouldn't have given it to them voluntarily."
Ezra nodded. "Okay, let's operate on the assumption that they got the information from Sarah. Why do you think they still have her?"
"If they had let her go, she would have tried to warn me. You would have seen her at the gate. Besides, they'd keep her because tomorrow is the fifteenth. They have a party on the fifteenth of every month. Most of the time, Hawley's guys pay women to come to their parties. There are always women who need the tokens badly enough to do it. But, everyone knows that if they happen to have their hands on any woman when the fifteenth is getting close, they'll hang onto her for the party. It's happened at least a handful of times that I know of. They gave the women tokens afterwards, as if that made it okay, but the women were there against their will.
"Sarah's exactly the type of person they target. She's single and doesn't have family. They know nobody's going to come looking for her and there won't be anybody in town raising hell about it. She's not likely to fight them, and she wouldn't be a physical threat to them even if she tried. Sarah's tiny. I don't think she's more than five feet tall, and probably doesn't even weigh a hundred pounds. She's everything these jackals see as prey, and we HAVE to get her right away." Mariah's voice broke. "Please."
Michael reached for her hand when he heard the agitation creep back into her voice. It was vaguely embarrassing, but also reassuring. If it were up to her, she would forgo the reassurance in favor of dignity, but this was not the time to fight him over something of only symbolic importance. She allowed herself to draw comfort from the warmth of his hand around hers.
Ezra nodded. "We won't waste any time, Mariah. I promise. I'm going to question Carruthers about this, but I need you to give me some background information. To have any kind of an idea whether Carruthers is being truthful, I need to ask him for information I already have, to see whether he lies to me. Right now, I have practically no information to work with."
Mariah nodded. "What do you want to know?"
"Let's start with where they have their parties. If she's being held for that reason, she's either already there or will be brought there. I know they like to hang out at the lake house off of Three Notch Road. Is that where they have their parties?"
"Yes. They use the cabins around it, too, but I think they would have her in the Lakehouse itself. The cabins would be easy to check, though. There's not normally anyone in them. The cabin windows are all blacked out, but each one has the same layout. There's a front room, a back room, and a bathroom."
Ezra glanced at Michael to see if he was noticing how much Mariah seemed to know about Hawley's setup. From the way Michael's jaw was tightening, Ezra guessed that he had.
"What about the lake house?"
"There are two stories above ground, but there's also a full basement. The basement is all one big room. They keep it locked up because it's where they make their drugs and keep their valuables. There's a cellar door, the kind that's sort of like a hatch, on the side of the house. If you open the hatch and somebody's in the cellar, they'll see you right away. I think the other way to get to the basement is better.
"There's a door in the back of the house that opens on a very small landing. There are a few steps going up to a door that opens on the ground floor, and then there are steps going down to the basement. About halfway down, the stairs turn again at another landing. It would be easier to avoid being seen going that way. The stairs creak, though."
Michael's hand tightened hard around Mariah's, and she pulled her hand away. Ezra thought it was probably a good thing that Mariah wasn't facing Michael, because he was livid.
"Is the basement where you think they would have her?"
Mariah hesitated. "No, but I'm not sure. It's where it would make the most sense to keep her, but I don't think they would want her near their loot. They've got tokens, drugs, and valuables for trade down there."
"Okay, what about the ground floor?"
"There's a front door and a side door, but they both open onto the living room. It would probably be easier if I draw the layout for you so you can see where the lines of sight are. I doubt they have her on the ground floor. The bathroom and the closet are the only places on the ground floor where it would be easy to lock someone up."
"So, you think she's on the top floor?"
"Yes, but it really is just a guess. There are two ways to get to the top floor. There's a staircase opposite the front door, and there's a deck on the back of the house. The deck has a sliding glass door that can be lifted out of the track. The deck is off the master bedroom. The whole top floor is just bedrooms and a bathroom. There's a long hall straight down the middle that connects with the main staircase, and the bedrooms are on either side of the hall."
"What about locks and alarms?"
