Read Online Make Me Say It by Beth Kery - Free Book Online Page B

from her remembering.
    He nodded once, his hold on her loosening. “I’m sorry. I think a little of your nightmare rubbed off on me. You looked really scared. I shouldn’t have asked so many questions.”
    He saw the tension melt from her sloping shoulders and graceful back. “It’s okay. I’m sorry for freaking you out. I guess we all have nightmares, right?” she asked him uneasily.
    He nodded, reaching to stroke her silky shoulder, reassuring her even as he reassured himself.
    Yeah. Everyone had their nightmares. The truth was, Jacob had some that involved a knife, too. Not just any knife, either.
    The
exact
same knife that apparently still haunted Harper’s dreams.
    * * *
    Twenty Years Ago
    After they’d locked the sedated dogs in the barn, he’d furtively led Harper over a freshly mown lawn to the edge of the forest. He removed his backpack.
    “Climb up onto my back,” he whispered.
    “
What
?”
    “Your walk leaves a trail. I’ll wipe it when I go back. Just
do
it, Harper. Get on my back.”
    Even though she looked exasperated, she put her hands on his shoulders when he turned around. He draped his pack in the crook of his arm and hoisted her onto his back. Willfully ignoring the sensation of her hands fastened on his skinny muscles and her breasts pressing against his shoulder blades, he entered the forest. Fifty feet in, he set her down next to an ancient, branchy oak.
    “The angle on the house is good here, see?” Jake said, pointing toward a clearing in the trees. “I’m going back for a few minutes to do something. You stay here. If you see my uncle come out, or any other man come onto the property, hide up there,” he said, pointing at the intersection of the trunk and seven gnarly, thick branches. “There’s a hole in the trunk up there. Just slide right in it. You’re little enough to fit. I hide there sometimes from Emmitt, so I know he doesn’t know about it. If I don’t come back to get you soon, wait until you’re
sure
the coast is clear, and head in that direction.” He pointed to the west. He noticed her alarmed expression. “I’ll be back in less than five minutes. I’m telling you this . . . just in case.”
    She caught his arm, halting him as he started back toward Emmitt’s property.
    “You’re crazy. Let’s go. What do you have to go back for?” she hissed.
    “There’s something I have to do,” he repeated, holding her stare as he calmly removed her grasping hand from his arm. “It’ll only take a minute.”
    She looked mutinous. “I’m coming, then,” she stated, stepping toward him.
    He caught her at her shoulders.
    “You’re
not
. I’m sorry. I told you that you had to do what I said, and you agreed. This is something I gotta do alone. Don’t pitch a fit about it.”
    The anger slowly drained from her face. Maybe she sensed his grim, sad sense of purpose.
    “Okay. But . . . hurry,” she whispered tensely as he turned.
    He merely nodded once. He turned and slunk back onto Emmitt’s property.
    * * *
    She had lead feet, Jake thought numbly several hours later. He hadn’t hesitated to tell her, either, as they hastened through the woods earlier. Now he heard her stomping on the cave’s dusty stone floor a good fifteen seconds before she appeared by where he knelt next to a tiny trickling waterfall.
    He knew from years of solitary exploring that the waterfall filtered down through stone from the top of the bluff. It was pure for drinking. Caves like this one pervaded the Appalachian Mountains, but this particular one was different. It was unique to Jake for the sole reason that Emmitt didn’t know of its existence. Jake knew this from the simple logic that Emmitt had never successfully discovered Jake there, despite the fact that he’d combed the woods and hills looking for him on dozens of occasions in the past.
    He’d brought them there because he was uncertain about the tranquilizer and how long his uncle would be knocked out. Here, he