by J. S. Bailey
Bobby squinted. He couldn’t see anyone in the fourth vehicle, but it looked like the passenger side window was rolled down despite the frigid temperatures.
His senses spiked, and before he could convince himself that this might be dangerous for him in addition to Ellen, he rushed toward the car just in time to see a face wearing a ski mask pop up next to the barrel of a gun.
The would-be killer’s eyes widened, and Bobby reached the car just as the man clambered toward the driver’s seat. Bobby yanked the door open, grabbed the guy by the arm, and tugged him out into the parking lot.
If the man had been any bigger, Bobby would have been unable to accomplish this feat, but he was about the same size as Phil, so Bobby found it manageable.
“Get off of me!” the man spat, fighting to break free of the death grip Bobby had on his arm. “I’ll—I’ll shoot!”
Bobby dug his short nails into the man’s arm, and his fingers practically screamed in protest. “With what?”
The man raised his other hand and only just then noticed he was weaponless: his gun lay innocently on the passenger seat where the dummy had left it. Some hired killer he was turning out to be. He couldn’t have been professionally trained at all.
He tried to run again, but Bobby punched him in the face with his left hand as he maintained his grip with his right. As the man staggered back a half-step, Bobby’s anger-fueled strength enabled to flip him onto his stomach on the cold blacktop.
The man wheezed as Bobby dug a knee into his back so he wouldn’t be able to get up.
Bobby tugged the ski mask off the guy’s head and tossed it away, and the guy swore at him. “Who hired you to kill Ellen?” Bobby barked.
“What? Nobody hired me, man. I—”
“If you don’t tell me, I’ll snap your neck.” Bobby felt sick saying it, but he was done with mercy right now. There had been too much death this week. He didn’t need to witness any more of it.
“Her husband did!” the man squeaked as Bobby increased the pressure on his back. “He—he said he wanted to collect her life insurance money!”
Oh, crap.
A police car whipped into the lot just then like an angel from above—probably part of the security Ellen had requested. Two officers poured out of the car and came running toward Bobby with weapons drawn.
“Terence Barkley hired this man to kill Ellen!” Bobby shouted as he stood, his hands raised to show he wasn’t armed.
Fifty feet away from them, Terence broke into a run toward the road, but what the man didn’t anticipate was Kaori flying out of the rental car toward him with a feral cry. Terence made the mistake of pausing to reevaluate his escape—one of the officers rushed him and tackled him to the ground.
“I didn’t want to hire a killer,” Bobby heard Terence sob as the officer cuffed him. “I had to do it for the insurance money. A—a woman at the mall told me I needed to donate twenty grand to charity this Christmas. I didn’t know where else to get it from. I’m a good person, Officer. I wanted to do the right thing.”
Kaori came up to Bobby’s side, her face white. “Did he just say…?”
The rage Bobby had felt in Mia’s presence at the hospital swelled within him again. If Mia had told Terence to make such a donation, Terence would have been powerless to stop himself from making it.
“She has no idea what she’s capable of,” Bobby said, wondering just where Mia was now. The woman would have thought herself a do-gooder by telling a stranger to donate large sums of money to the poor and needy, but she didn’t stick around to see the aftermath of it all. How many people had robbed banks and burgled houses just so they could comply with Mia’s demands? How many people had resorted to murder?
Ellen’s face glistened white with shock as one officer forced Terence into the back of the cruiser. The other officer had cuffed the hired killer and was presumably waiting for backup.
Here are the monsters.
Mia had said that Bobby knew nothing, but one thing remained clear enough to him.
Mia, though she would adamantly deny such accusations, was a monster as well, and Bobby didn’t know what he could do to stop her.
BOBBY AND Carly sat alone in her parents’ living room one week later, shortly after Bobby had finally dropped off the rest of the canned goods at St. Augustine’s in Hillsdale. Winter Storm Echo had dumped nearly a foot of snow upon Autumn Ridge, and Christmas loomed like a festive behemoth on the horizon, yet neither of them found themselves in merry moods.
“This has been some month,” Carly said as she nibbled a sugar cookie her mother had just baked. Bobby nodded. They had lost Frank the First, Father Preston, Randy, and Matt, and very nearly lost Allison and Phil—not to mention the innocents who had died in the explosion in Eleanor. He had no idea where Bradley’s possessed brother had gone, and wondered if the man would come back to kill more of Bobby’s friends.
At least Thane would trouble them no more, and Bradley was doing well. Roger reported that the young man was making excellent progress at the safe house, and that he would likely be heading home within the next week.
Kaori had opted to stay with Carly and her family through the end of the month, and after that, she would leave them in search of her replacement.
A cumbersome cast encased Carly’s left leg, and as she chewed her cookie, she glanced sadly at it. “I have some interesting news,” she said.
“Oh yeah?”
Carly hesitated. “Once my leg is better, I’m taking a job at the publishing company where Amber works. I did the interview over the phone the night before last, and they want me to start as soon as I can.”
He couldn’t guess why her tone sounded so somber. “But that’s great! Isn’t it?”
“It’s in Seattle.”
Bobby stared at her, unsure if this was a joke. “You’re leaving?”
“I need a break, Bobby. I almost died. If you had just—” She broke off, her face flushing.
“If I had just what?” Bobby asked, tensing.
“If you’d just taken me out of the cave the moment you knew that thing had possessed me, I wouldn’t have gotten hurt. But no, you had to act all noble and try to cleanse me there because you couldn’t wait more than a few minutes to get me to safety. Take that look off your face; I knew what was going on. Just because it took over my body doesn’t mean I wasn’t aware of anything.”
“Carly, I wanted to save you. I did save you.”
Her eyes started watering. “Do you know how much pain I was in? How much pain I’m still in? If you had taken one moment to use your brain, I’d be all in one piece. Not that I blame you for getting me possessed in the first place; that was my own stupid fault.”
“Carly, I’m sorry. I—I tried.”
“I know you did, Bobby. But I can’t keep doing this. I have to take a break for a while.”
Bobby could feel a tiny corner of his heart breaking: in a way, Carly leaving would be just like losing another friend. “You’re sure about this?”
She nodded. “I’m sure.”
NEAR THE end of the first week of January, Mia sat on a park bench, relishing the cold biting into her skin. The new year had dawned bright and hopeful for her, and she knew deep within her marrow that this would be the perfect year.
Her cell phone rang. She slid it out with a flourish and held it to her ear. “Hey, Shona. What’s up this time?”
“I found another candidate,” her friend said. “Elizabeth Johnson, age eighty-three, has about ten million in assets. She’s local. You can make her donate some of it to that children’s fund you’ve been talking about.”
Mia replayed the memory of Thane sticking his gun in his mouth and blowing his brains all over the cave like a frozen dinner left in the microwave too long. An evil life snuffed, just like that. It was practically child’s play, and Mia had suffered no loss of sleep over the matter.
“I don’t know,” Mia said. “I’ve been thinking these past few weeks. I might change up my M.O. a b
it. Forcing donations just isn’t as exciting as it used to be.”
“Okay…did you have anything in mind?”
Mia laughed and held up a newspaper she’d dug out of an overflowing bin. The headline article told the tale of a professor who’d raped a college student but was found not guilty due to the quantity of alcohol pumping through the student’s circulatory system at the time. Mia had just about blown a fuse when she’d finished reading it and had stewed about it for hours, wishing she could do something to help.
An evil life snuffed…just like that.
She said, “Boy, do I.”
Bobby’s story continues in
SOLEMNITY
I hope you enjoyed reading Surrender: The Chronicles of Servitude Book 3. It’s been both fun and challenging writing about Bobby’s journey, and now we only have two novels left before his story comes to a close! Bobby’s saga will continue in Solemnity: The Chronicles of Servitude Book 4 and conclude in Salvation: The Chronicles of Servitude Book 5. No release dates yet, but stay tuned!
And now I ask a favor of you, dear readers: if you enjoyed this collection, would you consider telling others about it? A great way to do this is by sharing your thoughts with other readers by leaving a short review on your review site of choice. Reviews can make or break a book’s success by helping other readers choose what to read next. They also increase a book’s visibility and credibility. The more positive reviews a book has, the more likely the newbie reader will take a chance on it.
Remember, a review doesn’t have to be long. “I really enjoyed this book,” will work, for example, or “This wasn’t the book for me.”
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I look forward to hearing from you!
~ J. S. Bailey
Many thanks again to my lovely editors, Kelsey Keating and Catherine Jones Payne! As always, this book would not be the same without their input and eyes for detail.
I also thank my readers from the bottom of my heart. I don’t know what I’d do without you all!
As a child, J.S. Bailey escaped to fantastic worlds through the magic of books and began to write as soon as she could pick up a pen. She dabbled in writing science fiction until she discovered supernatural suspense novels and decided to write her own. Today, her stories focus on unassuming characters who are thrown into terrifying situations, which may or may not involve ghosts, demons, and evil old men. She believes that good should always triumph in the end. She lives with her husband in Cincinnati, Ohio.
