Dauntless (Lawless Saga Book 4)

by Tarah Benner

  “Take it easy,” said a voice from the door.

  Lark froze. Gideon, the creepy man from the Sons of David, was standing on the other side of the tractor. He was holding a pistol and wearing a serene expression, which sent a flash of rage through Lark’s system.

  She couldn’t believe the men had managed to get the drop on them, but here they were — surrounded.

  Gideon’s eyes flashed in triumph, and he took several long strides toward Bernie. He was pointing the gun directly at her head, but Bernie didn’t flinch or beg him not to shoot.

  “Now, let’s everyone just remain calm,” said Gideon.

  Lark continued to struggle against the man holding her, but he was stronger than he looked. All of the men were dressed like Gideon — long-sleeve cotton shirts, dark slacks, homemade shoes — which led her to believe that they must belong to his psycho cult.

  “Obey them that have the rule over you and submit yourselves,” said Gideon. “For they watch for your souls.”

  “You better watch out for your soul,” Lark growled, twisting at the hips and attempting to break free from her captor once again.

  “Whom should I sacrifice so that you might understand?” asked Gideon calmly. “The blond?” He kept his gun trained on Bernie for a moment before adjusting his aim to Portia. “Or the mother-to-be?”

  Lark didn’t say a word. She was too busy craning her neck to see whether the man holding Portia had a gun. She was certain that hers didn’t, and she didn’t think Bernie’s had one either.

  “I think I’ll take your friend,” said Gideon, moving his gun back to Bernie.

  “No!” cried Lark.

  Gideon smirked.

  Lark swallowed. She hadn’t meant to give anything away that he could use against her, but the word had flown out of her mouth before she could stop it.

  “You think I don’t know your mind, Lark?” Gideon said in a low voice.

  Lark’s eyes widened.

  “Oh, yes. I know who you are. I’ve been watching you all for weeks.”

  An icy shiver rolled down Lark’s spine. He’d been watching them for weeks? There was a disturbing thought. She didn’t know how he’d managed to spy on them without their noticing, but it gave her the chills nonetheless.

  “As it happens, I know all about you and your friends,” Gideon continued. “It’s very easy to discern the identities of a band of escaped felons . . .”

  Lark’s horror and surprise must have shown on her face, because Gideon added, “Oh, yes. I know about your past. I know all about you, Lark.”

  “You don’t know anything about me,” she growled.

  “Oh, but I do,” said Gideon, taking a step toward her and lowering his gun. “I know your mind . . . I know your soul. I even know your sins, but we are willing to overlook them.”

  “What do you mean?” Lark murmured, a fresh wave of apprehension washing over her.

  “We are in the process of growing our flock,” said Gideon. “We were hoping that one day our families might merge . . . once we have cleansed yours of its impurities.”

  Lark didn’t want to know what he meant by that. She only knew that the longer Gideon talked, the more likely it was that Soren, Simjay, Axel, or Walt would wander up to the barn to see what was taking so long.

  “Strong, healthy young women like yourselves should not be discarded just because you are sinners. For the Lord said, ‘Turn to me and be saved.’” A glazed look of rapture came over Gideon’s face. “It is not too late, Lark Roland . . . You and your friends can still be saved.”

  Lark was breathing hard and fast. She didn’t know how Gideon knew her last name. She’d stopped struggling to preserve her energy, which had allowed her captor to secure an even stronger grip over her windpipe.

  She glanced at Bernie, whose wide-eyed look told Lark that she was thinking the exact same thing: These people were fucking nuts. They’d been spying on them for who knew how long, and Gideon wanted to take them back to their compound to become second and third wives. Lark wasn’t going to let that happen.

  Gideon turned to Portia, who looked as though she were contemplating what it would feel like to stab her captor’s eyes out with a rusty fork.

  “Your unborn child need not grow up a bastard, Portia. Gabriel has agreed to take you into his household and raise your child as his own.” He nodded to the sweaty man holding Portia in his arms.

  Lark could tell by the lust that flashed through his eyes that this man would have said or done anything to get a woman like Portia bestowed upon him as a hostage wife.

  Portia’s lip curled in disgust. “I think I’ll pass.”

  “You ungrateful whore!” snapped the man holding Lark. “How dare you refuse Gabriel’s generous offer with such scorn!”

  Lark couldn’t see her captor’s face, but she could hear the venom in his words. Something about the way his arm tightened around her throat made her fear thicken like hot milk in a pan.

  “Uriah, do not be so quickly provoked in your spirit,” said Gideon. “It is to one’s glory to overlook an offense.”

  Lark swallowed and caught Portia’s eye. She tried to communicate that Portia needed to distract her captor, but Portia’s eyes were ablaze with fury. She wasn’t in a place to make a plan. She was seeing red.

  “Gideon,” said Bernie’s captor. “We should be going. It will not be long before the others come looking for them.”

  “Yes. Yes, of course.”

  “We’re not going with you,” Lark growled.

  The men all froze, and Lark could feel a dangerous silence pressing in all around them.

  “I’d rather be dead than be your wife.”

  Gideon turned to her slowly with a look of unrestrained fury. When he spoke, his voice was soft and full of ire. “You would do well not to speak to me like that ever again. I am your future husband, and you shall honor and obey me.”

  Lark just stared at him. She could tell by Gideon’s flashing eyes that he was totally serious.

  “I’ll shoot your friends, if that’s what it takes,” Gideon murmured. “You must learn to submit to your husband.”

  “You aren’t going to shoot them,” said Lark, throwing caution to the wind. “You’ve already promised them to Gabriel and . . . that guy.”

  “Replacements can always be found,” Gideon snarled. “There are plenty of women who would be grateful —”

  “Oh, cut the crap,” snapped Lark.

  “Let me put it to you this way,” said Gideon, his voice trembling with perverse excitement. “If you come with us, you may be able to bring our families together. You will be reunited with your friends, and we will all share in the bounty of God’s great gifts. If you refuse, I will find a way to get in touch with Agent Cole, and I will tell him exactly what I know about you and your friends.”

  At the mention of Agent Cole, Lark’s blood turned to ice in her veins.

  “Oh, yes,” said Gideon. “I’ve met your friend Agent Cole. He stopped by our home just last week to inquire about a group of escaped convicts who might be roaming the area.”

  Lark glanced at Bernie, who looked just as horrified as she felt. Gideon wasn’t bluffing. There was no other way he could have known Agent Cole by name.

  “Now . . . If you come with us willingly, I believe that we can all find a way to get along. I might even be able to forget about the Baileys harboring dangerous criminals in their home. If you refuse, you will all go back to prison, and I will get this farm and Walter’s water rights — one way or another.”

  Lark’s heart was pounding in her throat. Her mind was racing, trying to process Gideon’s fucked-up motives for kidnapping them and bringing them to his farm. He couldn’t seriously believe that the Baileys and their friends would all want to come live on his creepy compound. But maybe Gideon’s true intention was to diminish the Baileys’ numbers so they could more easily take the farm by force.

  Lark felt torn by two very unfavorable possibilities. On the one hand, she
could fight and risk getting one of them shot. Soren and the others would come running, but there was a chance that it would be too late.

  The other option was to go with Gideon without a fight. They could see for themselves what they were up against, escape, and return to the farm ready to exterminate the Sons of David for good. Option two was definitely risky, but it had a better outcome than option one.

  “Fine,” said Lark in a quiet voice. Bernie’s eyes grew as round as dinner plates, and Lark knew she was wondering what the hell she could possibly be thinking. “We’ll go with you, but you have to swear to leave our friends alone. That includes the Baileys. Deal?”

  Gideon seemed to regard her for a moment, as if he were relishing Lark’s first act of submission. Then a smug smile spread across his horrible face, and Lark felt her insides squirm. “Deal.”

  12

  Lark

  The ride back to the Sons of David compound was surprisingly civil. They drove off in the same hideous brown station wagon that Gideon had driven before, Gideon and Uriah sitting up front while Gabriel and the man without a name rode in back. Lark, Bernie, and Portia were sandwiched together in the middle-facing seats.

  Under different circumstances, Lark might have found their situation funny. It was like being taken hostage by some ultra-conservative version of the Brady Bunch. They’d been silenced with strips of duct tape, and their hands were bound behind their backs.

  Lark wished more than anything that Denali had been by her side as he normally was. He would have sounded the alarm that there were intruders on the property, and the Sons of David would never have gotten the drop on them.

  It was only a matter of time before the others noticed their absence. Lark just hoped that they could escape before Soren, Axel, Simjay, and the Baileys came charging in with no idea what they were up against.

  Lark caught Bernie’s eye as they bumped along the rough country road. She wished that she could communicate telepathically so she could tell Bernie that everything would be all right. She wanted to say that they would all laugh about this later and that she wouldn’t let her be married off to crazy redheaded beard guy — no matter what she had to do.

  Since Gideon had called Walt his neighbor, Lark had mistakenly assumed that the compound was just down the street from the Baileys’ farm. But apparently “neighbor” meant something different out in middle-of-nowhere New Mexico. The ride in the station wagon seemed to drag on indefinitely. They passed dozens of dusty, barren fields, abandoned farmhouses, and a few mobile homes, but there wasn’t a single car or person in sight.

  They drove for miles over narrow, winding roads, and eventually more trees began to appear. They came to a halt outside a cattle gate tucked in a stand of sad scrubby trees, and a man in a dirty linen shirt moved to unlock it.

  They bumped down a gravel driveway that badly needed some potholes filled, and Lark took a silent inventory of her surroundings. The Sons of David compound didn’t look all that different from the many abandoned farms they’d passed along the way. The fields looked dry and too sparse for peak harvest. Chickens were pecking lazily at the dirt, and Lark could see several pigs lazing in a pen.

  A few buildings were situated along the property in various states of disrepair. There was a large barn out toward the edge of the property that looked weathered and drafty and an ancient farmhouse with peeling paint and a rough, crumbling roof.

  More than half a dozen newer-looking structures had been inexpertly erected out behind the farmhouse, but they looked more like shacks than houses. Lark guessed that getting a house of one’s very own complete with a wife or two ready to procreate was as close as one got to “making it” with the Sons of David.

  They circled around a pile of old tires before coming to a halt in a dirt field outside the farmhouse. The men got out one by one and half pulled, half lifted them out of the station wagon.

  Lark instantly had the feeling that she’d been thrust into an episode of The Twilight Zone. At least a dozen adults were milling around outside, all of them dressed in old-timey clothes. Most of the men were out in the fields harvesting maize, and the women were busy hauling buckets of water and hanging clean laundry out to dry.

  Apparently the compound didn’t have running water or modern plumbing. Lark could see what looked like an outhouse situated on the edge of the property, and she shuddered when she imagined a late-night pee break in the dead of winter. Things were certainly primitive.

  Everyone stopped and stared as the men hauled Lark, Bernie, and Portia out of the vehicle. Most of the women wore uniform looks of disapproval, while the men followed them with hungry, curious eyes.

  Lark swallowed down the surge of vomit that was threatening to make an appearance. She didn’t want to be there, and her body was rebelling. She shivered as Gideon placed his hand along the small of her back and guided her forcefully across the field. Lark thought at first that they were headed for the main house, but they veered to the left and scuttled between two of the little shacks.

  Lark didn’t like this. She didn’t know where Gideon could possibly be taking them. There was nothing out past the shacks except the long metal sheds they used for livestock and the rickety old barn out toward the edge of the property.

  Lark wanted to turn around and demand to know where they were going, but she was still duct taped, and she doubted that Gideon would have told her anyway. They were completely at their captors’ mercy.

  She swallowed and glanced over at Bernie, who was crying silently as she walked. Big fat tears were trailing down her face, and her breathing was rapid and irregular.

  Lark’s heart clenched. She was the one who’d gotten them into this mess, and she was growing less confident by the second that she would be able to get them out of it.

  They were miles from the Baileys’ farm. She’d tried to keep track of their whereabouts as they drove, but apart from which turns they had taken — right, right, left, and another right — she had no idea where they were.

  She knew that Soren would come for them eventually, but how long until he put it together that they’d been kidnapped by the cult? He knew Lark and Bernie had been angry with him. What if he thought that they’d just up and left of their own volition?

  No, Lark reasoned. Soren knew her better than that. He would worry, and eventually the Baileys would remember their creepy encounter with Gideon and the Sons of David.

  Then another horrible thought occurred to her: What if that had been Gideon’s plan all along? What if he wanted to lure her friends to the compound to fight them on their own turf?

  But Lark’s stream of panicked thoughts was put on pause when they reached the barn doors. A fresh wave of terror beset her as Gideon slid the doors open and shoved them inside a dark, stuffy space that smelled strongly of manure.

  Lark had a wild thought that she could try to overpower Gideon. His revolver was tucked into a holster on his right hip, and if she could get her hands on a weapon, they might be able to escape.

  But this thought was snuffed out almost immediately as Gideon gave her a hard shove that sent her flying toward the ground. Lark tried to throw out an arm to break her fall, but her hands were bound behind her back, and she just slammed facedown into the dirt.

  She let out a cry of fury and turned to aim a kick, but Gideon grabbed her roughly by the ankle and held her legs together so that Uriah could bind them with rope. He lifted Lark off her feet and slammed her down against a wall, and Lark felt something cool and round like a pipe against her back.

  Gideon found more rope and lashed her to the wall like an animal, and Lark watched out of the corner of her eye as the other men restrained Bernie and Portia.

  Once they were all tied up, Gideon stepped back to admire his handiwork with a cold, psychotic smile. “That ought to hold you,” he said. “Can I get you anything? Hot towel? Refreshments?”

  His smile widened at his own joke. The fact that he’d left them all bound and gagged in a barn that reeked of manu
re said everything about how much he cared about their comfort.

  “I’m sorry, dear,” he said to Lark. “I know your accommodations are pretty spartan, but you need time to repent before we are wed.” He bent down to get a closer look at Lark, taking in her sweaty top and heaving chest. “I have a feeling that you will need a little extra time to purify your soul.”

  13

  Soren

  Soren paused for a moment to wipe the sweat from his brow. The morning had started off cool and crisp, but with the sun beating down on him in the open field, his shirt was completely soaked with sweat.

  He looked around for the tractor and realized that he hadn’t seen it or the girls in quite some time. Baskets of cut pearl millet were piling up around them, and the girls weren’t even on their way back yet.

  Walt and Simjay seemed ready for a break, so Soren grabbed his milk jug full of water and ambled back toward the barn to see what was taking so long. He knew Walt’s tractor was getting old. It was possible that it was stalling again or that they were running low on fuel. Soren couldn’t hear the motor running, which meant the tractor must have died.

  But as Soren drew closer to the barn, a bad feeling started in the pit of his stomach. It didn’t have anything to do with talking to Lark. In fact, he missed talking to her so much that he was actually looking forward to it — even if it earned him a scowl from Bernie.

  At first Soren didn’t know why he felt so uneasy, but then it occurred to him that the barn was much too quiet. He strained his ears to see if he could detect the sounds of chatter and laughter, but all he heard was silence.

  Soren shook himself mentally. What was wrong with him? Everything was fine. In just a moment he would crest the hill and see Lark coming out of the barn, wiping her hands on a greasy rag and complaining that Walt’s tractor had died again. But she didn’t.