by Sharon Sala
“Uh... I thought y’all had joint custody of the kid,” Gordy said.
“We do,” Tara said.
“So what’s the big deal? He came to visit. He’ll bring her back in the morning.”
“The big deal is...I think Jordan is in some kind of trouble. I tried to call and text her numerous times to no response. Then I got home and found her phone and charger hidden beneath her pillow. She would never leave her phone behind, let alone hide it, so what do you know that I don’t?”
Gordy took a quick breath. “Look, Tara. All I know is two years ago we both left Dallas to go to a psychic conference held at this big estate in the mountains above Eureka Springs, Arkansas. You know how Jud is about what he called his gifts, but he didn’t want to go alone.”
Tara’s heart skipped a beat. Of course! That was how Jud knew where Jordan was! That psychic part of him was something she’d always known about, but he’d never done much with it.
“So what happened at that conference?” she asked.
“He took to it like he had walked into a family reunion or something. He was more at ease and excited than I’d ever seen him. He kept saying this was what he was supposed to be doing. I felt like it wasn’t much of a conference. It wasn’t about workshops or speakers. They were just testing all of the attendees in several ways to see what they were best at. Jud scored off the wall on everything, and the dude running the conference got really excited and offered Jud the opportunity to come study with him and his group.”
Tara’s heart was beginning to pound. “What kind of group? What did they do?”
“I don’t know,” Gordy said.
“What’s the name of the group? What was the man’s name? Do you know where it was located?”
Gordy sighed. “I don’t remember the dude who recruited Jud, but I do remember the name of the group. It was Fourth Dimension, and no location was ever mentioned in my presence. That’s all I know, and he could be doing something else by now. That was two years ago, right?”
“Yes, two years ago,” Tara repeated, writing furiously to take down everything Gordy had been telling her. “Thank you. Thank you so much, Gordy.”
“You’re welcome, Tara. I hope your kid calls in real soon, and this all turns out to be nothing.”
“So do I,” Tara said and hung up.
Only she didn’t have to be a psychic to know that wasn’t going to happen, because she knew something about Jordan that no one else but Jud knew. When it came to psychic abilities, Jordan was her father’s daughter.
Tara needed help. She needed a good private investigator to track Jud Bien and find out where he took Jordan, and she knew who that would be. She turned to her computer and googled Charlie Dodge, and Dodge Security and Investigations. He was the best there was in Dallas, but when she called, it went straight to voice mail, and this mess was too complicated to just leave a message. So she sent an email to him, instead.
Three
The first stop Jud made was at a nearby gas station to fill up. All of Jordan’s luggage was in the back of the SUV and she wanted her phone, but she couldn’t get out on her side because he’d pulled up too close to the pumps. So she sat, waiting for her dad to come back and get it for her.
She watched him go inside to pay before he gassed up and wondered why he hadn’t just used a credit card, but when he came out he was carrying two bottles of pop, one of which was a Dr. Pepper, her favorite. She smiled that he’d remembered.
Jud opened his door, handed Jordan the bottle of pop with the cap already loosened for her, along with a package of Peanut M&Ms, another favorite, and then went to fuel up. Jordan dug into the candy and pop without thinking about her phone again until they were driving away.
“Oh darn it, I was going to have you get my phone out of my bag,” she said.
“We don’t have far to go. You can get it then.” He filched a couple of M&Ms from the bag, popped them in his mouth, then took a drink of his Coke. He put it into the cup holder, then pointed at Jordan’s Dr. Pepper. “Drink up while it’s still cold,” he said, wanting the knockout drops he’d put in it to work so he could get her out of the city.
Jordan giggled, took another big drink and then palmed some more M&Ms. The sun was on her side of the car and even with the tinted windows, it was hot on her skin. The effervescence of the pop and the slight burn of it going down her throat was refreshing. She took one last big drink and then set the bottle in the console, put the leftover candy in her pocket, leaned back and closed her eyes.
She never knew when they headed north out of Dallas, or when they crossed the border into Oklahoma. The sun continued to move toward the western horizon as they took an eastbound highway in Oklahoma an hour later.
It was dark when she finally roused, confused as to where she was and who she was with. Then she saw her father’s profile in the lights from the dash and, in that moment, saw a stranger. He turned his head and looked at her. She heard his thoughts, she saw his purpose and knew he’d lied to her, and that she’d been drugged.
“Where are we, Daddy?” she asked, her voice shaking.
“I’m taking you somewhere special,” Jud said. “To a place where you will help make great changes in the world.”
Jordan panicked. “I don’t want to make great changes!” she cried. “I want to go home. Take me home now!”
“I can’t do that,” Jud said. “You’re too important to me.”
“I’m important to Mom, too!” she cried. “I have a life of my own to live, and this isn’t part of it,” she said and started to cry.
Jud reached for her, and when he touched her, she yanked her hand back in sudden rage.
“Don’t touch me! Don’t you ever touch me again!” she screamed. “I should never have trusted you when you showed up. I was right all along,” Jordan shouted, wiping away angry tears.
Jud frowned. “What do you mean?”
“You aren’t worth the tears I shed before, and I will die before you’ll make me cry again.”
The words were like a gut punch. “You don’t understand, baby. You’re like me. We belong together. There is so much that we can do with our powers.”
“Don’t talk to me, Jud. I’m not like you. I’ll never be like you. You’re a runaway coward. Life got too boring...too hard...and so you ran away from us. I don’t know what you think I’m going to do for you, but I won’t. I will never play your games.”
Jud was trying not to panic. Bringing trouble into Fourth Dimension was frowned upon. It wasn’t unusual for the Sprite novitiates to cry and miss home, but no one had ever come in defiant. He reached across the console and grasped the soft flesh on her arm, remembering the years when she was little and they’d curled around his neck.
“They aren’t games, daughter.”
But the moment Jordan felt his touch, she saw her future, and the horror within her rose up into her throat.
“I’m going to throw up,” she said. “Either pull over, or prepare to ride the rest of the way to Kentucky with vomit.”
Shocked that she knew where they were going, Jud hit the brakes and wheeled off onto the shoulder of the road, then got out running, opened the passenger door just as she leaned out and threw up...over and over and over, until she was so shaky she couldn’t breathe.
Jud pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and tried to hand it to her. She spit on his hand and closed the door in his face.
Jud stood there in the dark with her vomit at his feet and then wiped her spit off his hand. He threw the handkerchief in the ditch.
He got back in the car, put the keys back into the ignition and hit the child lock on the door. She couldn’t get out now if she wanted to.
“Do you want a bottle of water?” he asked.
“Fuck you, Jud.”
Jud slapped her across the mouth before he thought, and then groaned.
>
“I’m so, so sorry, baby. I was just startled to hear such an ugly word coming out of your mouth.”
Jordan turned to face him then, while the blood trickled down from the lip he’d busted.
“You’re bothered by a curse word, but you’re going to pimp me out to some old man just like you. Some old man who will fuck me. So what’s it to you, Daddy?”
Jud started the car and peeled out, slinging gravel behind him as they left. His gut was burning. His heart was pounding so hard that he thought he might be having a heart attack. The shame he felt was transient, but it was there, because he could not deny one word of her accusations.
He was bringing her to Fourth Dimension for breeding. But it wasn’t as if they were going to be marrying children. They weren’t allowed to pick their mate until after they’d reached puberty. He had his bride already picked out, but until he brought back a donation for someone else, he couldn’t claim her. Jordan would have time to learn about them before it was her time to be chosen. She would come to understand the importance of her place there. She was only twelve and he knew she had yet to bleed. She’d grow into the idea. It was the path of women to bear children and make the house a home.
While Jud was convincing himself what he’d done was okay, Jordan had blocked all of her thoughts from Jud and was thinking of her mother and how panicked she must be. She knew now that her phone was not in her bags, or they would have heard her mother’s desperate calls trying to find her. Thank God she’d sent that text. At least Mama would know who took her.
Jordan saw the shadowy reflection of her own face in the window as she looked out into the night. She didn’t look like herself anymore. Maybe because she’d thrown up the last vestige of her innocence on the side of a highway, and it had been too dark to see the place where she’d died.
She didn’t know it yet, but in a strange way, her favorite movie was going to be what saved her. Ever since she’d seen the movie Wonder Woman, she had been completely taken with the idea that a young, beautiful woman could also be powerful and fight bad people, and in Jordan’s mind, she was entering a world filled with bad people, and her father was her betrayer. She wasn’t an innocent in this deception. She would fight them every step of the way.
* * *
Jud was popping uppers to stay awake for the drive, and the knowledge of what awaited Jordan was enough for her to never close her eyes again.
They were in Kentucky by daylight, but once again, Jud needed to stop and refuel, and this time he didn’t trust her not to run. If she got away and told what was going on at Fourth Dimension, they’d all wind up in prison.
“I’m going to stop for gas,” Jud said. He slid his hand in his pocket and grasped the syringe filled with Nitramal. It was something they’d developed at Fourth Dimension for quiet transport, and he needed control of his recalcitrant daughter.
“Good. I need to pee,” Jordan said. “And I need water, but I won’t drink a drop of what comes from your hands, just know that.”
Jud frowned. “Stop defying me. I am your father.”
“No, you’re not, Jud. You’re the stranger danger Mama talked about.”
“Then you leave me no choice,” Jud said. He flipped the cap off the syringe, jabbed it into her neck and shoved the syringe all the way down.
“No!” Jordan screamed, frantically grabbing at her neck, but it was too late. She could already feel the drug moving through her bloodstream, through her body...into her brain...and then everything went black.
Jud yanked out the syringe and the cap and dumped them in the trash at the pumps, then ran inside to prepay.
He bought a case of bottled water and some chips in a can, and carried them back to the car. He put the water beneath her feet and the chips on the dash, then filled up the car and left.
It was a four-hour drive into the Appalachians to reach the compound, and Jordan was asleep for two of them. When she finally woke up, they were deep in the woods and he pulled over to let her pee.
“You are now in more danger from the animals in these mountains than you are from me. Pee, then get back into the car and there will be no more injections.”
Jordan got out without looking at him and closed the door between them to do her business. She staggered as she got back in, and Jud thought she was going to faint, then guessed she was dehydrated.
“That case of bottled water has not been opened. You can see that. Nothing has been injected into them. None of them are leaking. Drink some water or you’ll arrive unconscious and won’t know what’s happening. Is that what you want?”
Jordan was trapped and she knew it. She reached down between her legs to get a bottle of water as he began driving away, and then struggled to tear through the plastic wrapping before she finally got one free. She was weak and she knew it. That was dangerous. If she was going to survive this ordeal until Mama found her, she had to stay strong.
She drank half the bottle before she took a breath, and then opened the can of chips and ate them one at a time, chewing slowly and washing each bite down with another drink of water. She ate half the can of chips and emptied two bottles of water before she stopped.
“Feel better?” Jud asked.
“I feel like the turkey that’s being force-fed before Thanksgiving. That’s how I feel,” Jordan said.
Jud sighed. “Look. You’re not going to be gang-raped. You’re not going to be sold at auction. You’re going to live with girls just like you who are waiting for their turn to get married. They’ve all been chosen. They’re just not ready.”
Jordan didn’t respond. She didn’t want him to know how much she’d seen of what that place was about when he’d touched her before. She didn’t want any of them to know. She’d been blocking her skills for years so that she wouldn’t do or say the wrong thing at school, or out in public, so this was just more of the same. The only difference was that all of the men were more or less like Jud. The plus was that the girls they’d brought in weren’t like her, so the men would not be expecting her to have powers to use against them, and she didn’t think her father was going to tell them, for fear she’d cause trouble for him. If she was a failure, he wouldn’t get to marry the girl he’d chosen.
Her eyes narrowed as she glanced at his profile and saw the frown on his forehead.
How do you like me now, Jud Bien?
He gasped, then stared at her in disbelief before returning his attention to the road.
“How long have you been aware of your skills?” he asked.
“All my life.”
“Why didn’t I know this?” he asked.
She smiled. “I don’t know. Why didn’t you? I knew about yours.”
He said nothing more to her. If he could, he would have turned around and taken her back right then, but then she’d tell, and he had no one else to donate.
The ride was silent for the next couple of hours, except for the crunch of Jordan chewing as she ate the rest of the potato chips and drank another bottle of water.
They passed through a little town called Shawnee Gap, but when they left the highway at the edge of that town and started up a mountain on a blacktop road, Jordan glanced in the outside mirror, watching the last vestiges of civilization disappearing behind them.
The road went up, sometimes curving, sometimes a straightaway, but always gaining altitude. And the forest was getting so dense it was difficult to see beyond the shoulders of the road.
“We’re almost there,” Jud said.
Jordan didn’t comment.
He reached across the console again, wanting to reestablish some kind of relationship before they arrived, but when he started to touch her, she jerked back.
“In your dreams, you bastard,” she said.
Jud frowned. “You do not embarrass me in front of my people. Do you hear me?”
“Or what?” Jordan said. �
�I’m not afraid of you. Not of any of you. You disgust me, Jud. Your little cult is nothing but a bunch of child molesters. Even if I haven’t experienced it yet, I know how sex works. You’ve got to get it up before you can get it in, and I will laugh at them, whether they’re limp or hard. I will call them ugly. I will make fun of how they look. They may beat me. And they may rape me. But I won’t cry, and I will not submit.”
Jud couldn’t believe he was hearing these words coming out of his little girl’s mouth. He’d gone after a child, but he’d been gone too long. His stomach was in knots as he braked to turn onto a narrow, one-lane road off to the left. After winding through brush so thick it scraped the sides of his car as they passed, they arrived at the gates to a massive, walled-in compound. He glanced at Jordan. She was motionless...staring at what was before her, and he wondered what she thought. The two-story house she could see through the gates was quite ornate, but the rest of what she could see was little more than long metal buildings erected on bare ground. Considering the wealth of green growth around the place, it looked strange for there to be nothing green inside.
“We’re here,” Jud said unnecessarily and then leaned out the window to key in a code at the entrance.
An alarm sounded as the gates began to open.
Jordan’s heart skipped a beat. As defiant as she’d been, she was scared, but they’d never know it. Her own walls were up and there wasn’t a code for getting into her mind. She was in control of that.
Men came out of buildings from all over the compound as Jud circled the drive that led to the front of the estate, but Jordan was looking for the girls. Then she saw faces at the window of a long single-story building at the far end of the compound. There they were. That was where she would be kept.
The front door at the big house opened, and a man of great girth and height walked out wearing a long white robe. His hair was gray with a few remaining streaks of mousy brown. The length of it was well below his shoulders, but his face was clean-shaven and shining like it had been greased.
