Road's End (The Narrow Gate Book 4) by Janean Worth

Author:Janean Worth [Worth, Janean]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Author's Art
Published: 2016-11-15T07:00:00+00:00

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Jack sat in stunned silence, seething. He glared at the girl, Gemma, who stood across the small clearing where the Enforcers had made their temporary camp. She was talking with one of the burly men, her eyes glinting in the light from the huge fire that the Enforcers had built in the center of the camp to keep the Fidgets at bay.

He was not near enough to hear her words clearly. He and Merrilee and the others, except for the woman Hertha, were bound hand and foot and lay where they’d been tossed near the horses.

Jack chafed against his bonds, trying again to loosen them, though he knew that he wouldn’t be able to. He’d tried several times to free himself since they’d arrived.

“Merrilee, are you okay?” he hissed, his eyes seeking out her small, sagging form in the deepening gloom of dusk.

She didn’t answer, but he could see that her eyes were open, so she was not asleep or unconscious. Still, she acted as if she hadn’t heard him, staring straight ahead into the fire, her face frozen in a mask of nothingness.

Her expression frightened Jack more than the sudden appearance of the Enforcers had. She looked as if she had lost touch with her surroundings, and her glassy eyes held no spark of any emotion at all.

It seemed as if she had already accepted the fate that they’d meet when they were taken back to the House. As if they were already there, and the Sovereign had already meted out his punishment to all of them. As if she were already dead.

Jack shivered, but it had nothing to do with the temperature of the air. Merrilee had given up.

Bolstered by weeks of freedom and exposure to the hope that infused the Word, Jack would not give up. Not when they still had a chance to escape.

He called to one of the other Strays, a boy of thirteen, one of the newest Strays to the House, and consequently one of the healthiest and strongest of them because he’d endured fewer days of starvation and deprivation than the rest of them had.

“Daven, can you untie me if I roll toward you?”

Daven, still possessing a bit of the rebellious spark of youth, nodded eagerly, his eyes burning with hatred as he stared past Jack, his gaze focused on the Enforcers.

“I will try my best,” Daven said, with feeling.

Jack grunted in acknowledgement and then began to twist his body, using his shoulders and hips as leverage points against the ground, flopping toward Daven like a fish just pulled from the river.

He was tied so tightly that even those small movements were difficult, but, after a few minutes of struggle, he was able to position himself near Daven, his bound hands pressed up against the other boy’s bound hands.

“These ropes are so tight that my fingers are nearly numb. This might take a while,” Daven said as he began to fumble with the thick ropes around Jack’s wrists.

Jack flexed his wrists, attempting to loosen Daven’s ropes as the Stray sought to do the same for him.

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