Left to Kill (Adele Sharp #4) - Blake Pierce Page 0,42

His tied hands still hung in front of him, but his feet were free. He hurried up the steps and kicked open the door at the top.

He’d been expecting a house, or some sort of room. Instead, he found himself at the bottom of a long shaft. For a moment, he didn’t quite realize what he was looking at. It seemed like they were at the bottom of a well. And the staircase was built into the side of the base of the well. A long metal ladder stretched up from the base of the well to the top. He could just barely glimpse light coming through from the moon above. But as he stared at the ladder, horror filled him. He couldn’t climb it with his hands bound. As he stood there, in his underwear and undershirt, the cold settled on him. His bare feet scuffed against the ground, and he glanced toward the well. A second later, he realized glass was scattered at the base of the ladder. Thick shards of glass, glinting, threatening. His feet were bare.

Desperately he search for another way out of the well, but the sides were sheer, stony. It went up for nearly thirty feet. He couldn’t climb the ladder. He tried to drop, to rub his hands roughly against the stones. But there was no time.

He heard the thumping of footsteps on the creaking stairs behind him. He spun around, desperate, trying to protect himself. He felt a hard blow across the side of his face, and he felt someone grab his bound wrists and drag him, pulling him.

He tried to protest, but then the person hit him across the wound on the back of his head, and his skull exploded with pain.

With stars darting across his vision, he allowed himself to be guided and dragged halfway down the stairs again, away from the ladder in the well, away from any escape, back, and toward the basement.

“Fool,” the old man was whispering in his ear. “No screaming, no shouting, no being rude to your siblings. Just some simple rules. And yet you go and do something as fucking stupid as that.”

Diedrich was thrown to the ground, stumbling in the dirt. He spun around, eyes wide, pleadings burbling to his lips, but he couldn’t form a coherent sentence. The pain in his head, the cold, the fear were too much.

Diedrich had flashes and glimpses of the raging gray-haired man above him, shouting, spittle flying. He saw the others, all eight of them, step back, hunched, whimpering.

“We’re a family!” screamed the gray-haired man. “A family! There are rules. Without discipline there is no compliance. Without authority, there’s rebellion. With rebellion there is no home. Without a home, we have a house—and a house is a burden which leads to abandonment! Don’t you understand what I’m giving you!” He kicked Diedrich once, twice.

Diedrich just curled up, lying on the ground in front of his cage. After a bit, the old man’s temper seemed to recede.

“No attempts at escape,” he said. “We don’t abandon the family. The number one rule. And what do we do when someone breaks the rules? Number three?”

There were now sobs in the room, some whimpering. Number three, in a trembling, terrified voice, said, “Please, he didn’t know—”

“What do we do when the rules are broken, number three?” the gray-haired man said, louder, cutting him off.

More whimpering, and then, “Punishment.”

“That’s right, punishment,” said the gray-haired man.

Diedrich blinked a few more times, some of the dark spots clearing from his vision, the pain receding in his head. As his gaze settled once more in the poorly lit illuminated room, he saw the psycho reach toward his waist.

There was a soft scraping sound. Diedrich stared, stunned, wide-eyed, as a thick bowie knife was pulled from a sheath at the man’s hip. Diedrich hadn’t seen it at first, as the hem of the shirt had covered the handle.

Now, though, the wickedly sharp blade appeared.

“Disobedience merits punishment,” said the man, wiggling the knife toward Diedrich. He took a step forward.

Diedrich, in that moment, knew he was about to die. The day had started so normally. He’d searched the forest, wanting to help. And now this. It wasn’t right.

The old, gray-haired man held the knife forward, stepped closer to Diedrich, but then he grabbed the young Asian girl. He glared at Diedrich and didn’t look away once. The girl was sobbing now, limp in his hands, like a lamb before slaughter.

“Disobedience,” said the gray-haired man, “merits punishment.”

And