A mute, foundling girl hides from her pursuers with the help of a reluctant recluse. The two of them have nothing in common except deep emotional scars. Who is she? How did she end up unconscious and scantily clothed on Evan's isolated property? Why...
I must not have been unconscious for long because when I opened my eyes, daylight still shone through the barn skylight. My face felt as if it had been kicked by a mule. I spat blood along with one of my back teeth onto the straw floor.
Moaning, I maneuvered myself into a sitting position.
Five faces peered down at me, Titus, his two sons, and their wives. The damaged side of my face had swollen to where I could see my cheek out of the corner of my eye. I couldn't hear well out of the ear on that side. I recognized the pregnant wife I had seen earlier who had fed the pigs. The other one who had bashed me must have hidden behind the footlockers. Titus led me right to her and into the ambush. These wives were obvious willing accomplices. It was naïve of me to have assumed otherwise.
"It's him," one of the boys said, the one who had scouted out my property. "Your new wife was living with this man."
"Where is she?" I interjected. "Where is Sophie?"
Everyone ignored me.
One of the wives had my shotgun resting across her forearm. The other wife held my handgun. The son whom I hadn't seen before rifled through my wallet. He addressed the others. "Driver's license says his name is Evan Snyder."
Titus glanced at the two women. "You did good, Miriam. Now you and Agnes go back to the house. My boys and I need to talk to this stranger."
Miriam and Agnes handed over the guns to the so-called boys. They lowered their gazes and walked away, barefoot, like good little subservient creatures.
Titus pulled up a stool and lowered himself onto it to get eye level with me. I remained sitting on the floor. Titus spit a wad of tobacco. "You should've stayed out of this. Wasn't none of your business."
I shook my head to clear cobwebs. Damn, my face hurt. "Holding a minor child against her will makes it my business."
One of the sons laughed. "She ain't no child. She's a woman."
"Shut up, Zeke," Titus said. "I need to figure out what to do with our visitor."
"He's seen what's in this barn, Pa," the other one said. "We can't just let him go."
It didn't take a genius to puzzle out the plastic wrapped bales were cannabis. If I had to guess the footlockers were filled with harder drugs, maybe cocaine or fentanyl. I decided to play dumb. "Let me take Sophie out of here and we can all forget this incident ever happened."
"We can't do that, Pa. He knows about the drugs."
Titus shot his son a sharp look. "Well, if he didn't, Dale, he knows about them now, thanks to you."
It made sense now how this family made their living. No tillable land but a secluded, off the grid, tree covered property made for a perfect regional distribution center for organized crime. These men pretending to be some sort of Amish wouldn't raise any suspicion as to their lifestyle. Sitting on the floor, it hurt my head to look up, but I forced myself to meet Titus's gaze. "I care nothing about what goes on here. I came only for Sophie."
"She's mine now," Titus said in a tone telling me the subject was not open to discussion.
These people were sick or brainwashed in some way. I could tell Titus was thinking hard. My intrusion was something new to him, and he was considering how to deal with me. Whatever decision he made; I knew it would not be good for either me or Sophie.
I appealed to him again. "Look, Dale here knows how I live because he's been to my cabin."
Zeke chuckled. "We all have. When we took the girl."
"You know I'm a lot like you. I value my privacy and don't stick my nose into other people's business. I meant what I said about not caring what goes on here. That's your business."
"Except for the girl," Titus said. "You're making her your business."
I sighed. "Yeah, except for the girl. By the way, her name is Sophie."
"Her name was Sophie. I haven't decided yet what we're going to rename her."
He takes away their identity, makes them wear humble clothing and go barefoot, turns them into sex slaves. I could understand how these women would lose themselves after being broken down that way. I didn't know what else to say, but I knew my only chance was to keep him talking. "Why Sophie? What makes her so special that you paid a fortune and had to reach out all the way to Minnesota for her?"
"You said it yourself. She's special. Women are natural talkers, running their mouths all the time. It took a lot of work for the boys and me to cure Agnes and Miriam of that habit. This new one, not being able to talk." He paused to take a deep breath. "She's one in a million. I'd have paid double what I did for her."
"That's the difference between us. I'd give everything I own if it were possible to give Sophie a voice."
"She's still a budding woman," Titus went on to say as if he hadn't heard me. "It'll be at least fifteen years before her looks and body start to fade. I'll get my money's worth."
His words were more than I could stomach. "You disgust me."
"We're getting nowhere, Pa," Zeke said. He raised my shotgun and pointed it at me. "You know what we have to do."
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It's difficult to believe humans can be so evil. Unfortunately, they do exist. Do you think Titus and his family have any redeeming qualities?
