“I will see to Tabitha and Lily.”
She nodded, urging a weakened David to his feet. Diego had been telling the truth. Her strength had multiplied unbelievably as she singularly hoisted him upward.
A scream brought her hopping out of the cell, supporting David over her shoulder. “Diego!” she shouted, seeing him slam backward into the wall, held with an invisible hand.
“Lily! Help me!” The woman’s scream was tortured, desperate.
“Tabitha? Listen to my voice,” Tani said. “We are here to help you. Do you understand me?” There was no answer. She addressed the redhead. “Lily? Are you bound?”
“No.”
“Your cell should be unlocked. All of them should be. Help Tabitha. She’s delirious. We need Diego to get all of you out of here.”
A furtive hand closed around a metal bar. The cell opened slowly. “Oh, my God! You did it!”
“Quickly, Lily. Distract her. We don’t have a whole lot of time.” Titania kept a locked arm around David’s waist. Seconds ticked past.
Lily lurched to Tabitha’s bedside and began crooning to her, brushing her hair with a shaking hand. The other two cells popped open, the remaining women eyeing the scene in shock.
“Come on! Get out of here!” Titania’s sharp shout broke them out of their spells, her chin pointing toward the stairs. “Upstairs! We need to get everyone out before they realize you’re gone.”
They rushed out of the room.
“What about Tabitha?” Lily looked over her shoulder, desperation in her eyes.
“If she’ll release Diego, he can carry her. We need to go. Now!”
Lily nodded sharply and began talking with hushed haste to Tabitha. When the manacle enslaving her at her ankle shattered, Titania knew Diego was free. Lily gasped, watching it fall to the ground.
“Can you walk?” he asked, nearing the two women again.
“I can, but she won’t let you touch her. I can’t carry her.” Lily paled visibly, shock and exhaustion taking their combined toll.
“I can take David. Titania will carry Tabitha. We have to find the others and lead them to the pick-up.”
As one, they whirled for the exit from the basement. “More alarms. Nathan is buying us more time.” Diego swept David into his arms.
Titania stood over Tabitha’s prone form. “Hold on, Tabitha. Lily is coming with us. Everyone is getting out of this nightmare.”
It was awkward at first because of Tabitha’s height, but with Diego leading the way up the stairs, they wound their way out of the basement.
It was chaos outside, the compound lit bright as day by searchlights and men running in all directions, trying to find the reason for the malfunctioning sirens and alarms.
“There’s Nathan,” Diego said almost immediately, holding the two women around the waist, frightened but obedient.
“They almost ran into the house. I couldn’t let them.”
Diego nodded once. “Stay close. I can camouflage us until we reach the woods.” His tone was curt, expecting to be followed. Lily moaned beside her.
“It’s all right, Lily,” Titania soothed. She glanced at Tani, her eyes dazed. Thunder shook the sky a few miles away. Tabitha shivered in Titania’s arms. “Hold on,” she whispered, offering a warm wave of hope to her charge.
The trek was slow until they disappeared into the nearest wooded lot. When they reached Houston, the two who were physically able, climbed into the Ferrari without a single protest. Houston left with a quick word. “Don’t take too long,” he said to Diego and Titania.
Diego faced the others. “We need to get these three to safety.” He tossed a final, heated look toward the house. “Tenorio cannot escape again.”
“Diego, we have to get Tabitha out of here. She’s in shock, and in pain.” She was still shivering, regardless of how much Titania tried to help her.
Diego nodded, saying sharply, “Nathan, I am about to take you to my home. If at any time you betray me, be warned, you forfeit your life. Do you understand?”
Nathan agreed, his expression no less grim. “I understand. I accept your rule.”
“You didn’t have much of a choice,” Titania muttered.
“Cara,
can you reach Tabitha enough to soften her mental images?”
She nodded, accepting that there was no other way to transport the three who had been tortured the most. With a sharp motion to Nathan, he pulled Lily’s unfocused expression to his own to blur her memories and thoughts, and they disappeared from the hidden recess of the woods. Fat raindrops began to fall, obliterating their steps in the undergrowth.
Titania stopped reading, marking the page for the next person to pick up and start again. She watched a still and silent Tabitha on the bed with concern. So much had happened, not just to Tabitha, but to all of them. She, herself, had not escaped unscathed.
So much of her life had changed; the sleeping girl only seemed to emphasize that fact. Like Tabitha, the life she’d known was gone. Forever. She hadn’t allowed herself to dwell on the changes too deeply, but sitting in the quiet of the room, reading to the young girl night after night, drove it home. All she had known had changed.
She curled the book into her chest, her arms wrapped protectively around it, as though it were a shield against her worst fears. Simultaneously, the warmth of strong arms comforted her from a distance. Her eyes drifted shut, sinking into the way he could wrap her into his thoughts and his embrace, regardless of the distance. His caress was subtle on her mind, and she knew he would be returning soon.
Titania had faith that she could and would adjust to her new life. Diego was teaching her so much; his patience probably deserved an honor all by itself. She smiled, a small secret one thinking about all the little things he let her try, even when she knew he likely should try to rein her in. He let her challenge herself, to try to learn. He would do anything to keep her happy, and she loved him for even thinking it mattered. Just being with him, knowing he was there when she awoke and that he would be there for each sunset, was enough to make her happy.
She knew they were still in danger. He may not say it, but Diego knew, which meant she knew too. And it wasn’t just Tenorio who was causing him to worry. He’d been doing a good job of shielding her from the worst of his concerns, but she was a fast learner when it came to what she was capable of, and his fears were now hers. There were more than just herself and Diego to protect now. She had faith in him, and in their growing family. They, including Tabitha, would survive this.
Titania stood from her chair next to Tabitha’s bed. It had been two weeks, and the young woman had shown very little life since they had been rescued. All the girls were helping out, taking shifts with Tabitha, familiar voices talking to her, reading, trying to bring her back to the world. A world that had badly mistreated her and had given her no reason to want to be a part of it. Her body was healing, but very little else was.
She ignored the monitor and the IV attached to the young woman. She had never asked how Nathan and Diego had procured them or the steady infusion of vitamins and liquid they had stocked in the refrigerator. It now held as much food as it did medical supplies for their guests. There were some things she just didn’t want to know about.
Titania sighed and brushed the blonde hair, cleaned and trimmed now, away from Tabitha’s face. She didn’t look up when a body filled the bedroom doorway.
“How is she?” Nathan didn’t come in, staying in the door, but his gaze was no less worried. They had all been there to hear Lily and David’s accounts of their time spent with Albert Tenorio.
“No change,” Tani whispered. And she’d been trying to reach her every night. Nathan stepped aside when Diego appeared, letting him move before him in the doorway. She knew the agony of Tabitha’s nightmare was visible in her eyes when she found his gaze.
“She may never recover,” Diego said, his tone even, but it still broke her heart to hear him say it.
“We can’t turn her over to a hospital. Tenorio will hunt for all of them.” She automatically wound her fingers through the still hand lying on top of the covers, giving strength, uncaring if it was acknowledged or not.
“None of them are going anywhere until we know they are safe. Tenorio has left California for now.” He slid a look toward Nathan, who seemed to signal in agreement. “It is only a short respite for him. In the meantime, we will care for the women and see that David heals as well.”
“The girls are for that. They’re in no hurry to rush back out into the world.” She saw Diego silently agree with Nathan.
Tani was amazed that the two men had formed a friendship, knowing Diego’s many years of solitude and distrust of the Brethren. She hadn’t had the time to question Nathan, but she was convinced that he was different in the same ways Diego was.
She allowed a small, twitched smile when Laney’s words came to her. Her family was definitely getting weird. None of their guests, including David, knew about the differences between herself, Diego and Nathan. They had set up the shifts to help camouflage their inability to be with them during the day. Houston and Laney helped to keep it secret as well, being there to field any problems. So far, no one had even cared, or had the energy to question their rescuers or their schedules.
Nathan passed one last furrowed glance over the woman in the bed, then turned for the front of the cabin. She heard him speak quietly to Houston, and the front door closed. “He will not be gone long,” Diego murmured as he neared the bed.
“I know, but I still worry, especially with no one knowing where Tenorio is. At least he’s comfortable here with us.”
“I believe they all are.” He joined her in the room, and she saw him study Tabitha in the bed. “Amy and Kathy have been the least traumatized, and knowing what they suffered…” He paused and shook his head slowly. “I honestly do not know how Tabitha managed to stay alive.”
Titania swallowed the lump in her throat. “I don’t know either. I just know I’m not letting her give up.”
She squeezed the hand curled into her own palm, sharing her conviction, feeding that belief to Tabitha. “
We’ll help you through this, Tabitha, but you have to come back.”
Diego’s lowered voice rumbled through her mind.
“
Come, cara. It is time for us tonight.”
Her heart sped up at the light touch, the caressing sound.
After a final squeeze to the motionless hand in hers, she went to leave. And froze. She snapped her attention to their intertwined hands, hers and Tabitha’s, then moved to her face.
“Diego,” she whispered, her voice shaking, almost breaking with happiness. “She’s awake. She’s holding my hand!”
Diego stilled, all his concentration focused on the woman in the bed. His usually harsh-lined mouth lightened a fraction when he captured Titania’s anxious gaze. “She is returning to us.”
Titania knelt at the bed’s edge, a surge of hope making her hand tremble when she lifted it to touch Tabitha’s forehead. That small spark of life from a woman who had no reason to live showed Titania how much she did have to live for. And she was going to see that she had that chance. For all of them.
About the Author
With more than half a dozen ebooks currently to her credit and her first print book released in 2008, Diana Castilleja has kept busy since she started writing professionally in late 2004. Diana currently resides in central Texas with her husband and son. When not focusing her energy on her family and her writing, she loves to travel and haunt bookstores. She's lived in several states across the South and Midwest, as well as traveling to Mexico. With moving every year or changing schools from the fourth grade until her sophomore year, she learned that reading was a fast escape. The freedom to read about anything and everything has fueled her adult imagination. She also enjoys romance, horses, and yes, still loves to read. Right now, she's probably attacking her keyboard writing her next book. If she's not, she should be!
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