Stranded with My Stepbrother

Chapter 21

Jocelyn swallowed, her throat undulating against my shoulder. I reached back and took her hand in mine.

“Why is it complicated? If you’re looking for a reward, I’m sure you can make some sort of arrangement with my stepdad or my mom,” I replied.

Girard sucked his teeth, rocking on the heels of his steel-toed boots. “Well, you see, son, this here is an illegal logging operation.”

“Oh crap,” Jocelyn whispered.

I squeezed her hand tighter. “That’s no business of ours. We just want to get to a hospital.”

“I’ll bet you do. You two look pretty banged up. But now you know we’re back here, well, that creates problems for us,” Girard said.

“Caleb?” Jocelyn breathed next to my ear, the stress in her voice having ratcheted up almost as high as the pounding in my blood.

“Sir, I promise you, we’re going to forget all about it. We just need a way out of here. Hell, we don’t even know where we are anymore,” I tried reasoning with him.

Girard shrugged. “Afraid that isn’t going to work for us, son.” He let out a high-pitched whistle.

The other men back in the encampment started stalking toward us.

“Oh God. Oh God,” Jocelyn said.

I knew her eyes were darting around, just like mine, trying to find some way out of this. “Um... thank you for your time. We’ll just be going, then.” I didn’t even have to tell Jocelyn to run.

It wasn’t much use, though. Jocelyn was wearing clunky, awkward wading boots while I was barefoot. The combination did not make for speed for either one of us. Whereas our pursuers were wearing steel-toed, rugged terrain footwear.

We made it about half a mile before two men tackled me to the forest floor and Girard snatched Jocelyn by her hair.

“Jacey!” I called, panicking.

“I’d be worrying more about yourself,” one of my attackers said.

I struggled. I was in good shape and worked hard to keep myself that way, but there were two burly lumberjacks holding me down. I wasn’t exactly equal to that.

Still, when they hauled me to my feet and Girard marched Jocelyn past me, I bared my teeth at him. “If you harm one hair on her head...”

“You’ll what? Threaten me to death? I’m shaking in my boots,” Girard deadpanned.

“We’ll have to go back and make sure they didn’t leave a trail. There’re probably people looking for them,” one of the other lumberjacks said.

Girard nodded. “Come on, let’s get these two locked up until we decide what to do with them.”

“If they were around Little Wiikaa, Bill will know,” the two lumberjacks who went back into the woods said to each other.

Jocelyn looked at me. We had a pretty good idea of who “Bill” was. The question was, what would these men do when they discovered Bill?

We were half-marched, half-dragged to a windowless shed and thrown inside on the rough plank floor. The door slammed shut, but light still came in faintly through cracks between the wallboards and around the door.

I reached out for Jocelyn, my hand finally landing on her shoulder. She crawled immediately into my lap and hugged me.

“We have to get out of here before they find him,” she said, voicing my own thoughts.

“I know.” I let my eyes adjust to the low light of the shed then began looking and feeling around. There was nothing in here of consequence, just things that they wouldn’t want to get wet—extra blankets and clothes—as well as other supplies we might have even kept under our tarp, such as bottled water. The most dangerous item in the shed was a butterknife someone had left in a half-eaten loaf of bread.

Jocelyn, meanwhile, was exploring the back of the shed, pushing her booted feet experimentally against the boards. “I think we might be able to kick them and break them,” she whispered to me. “But I didn’t get a good look at what’s on the other side, and I’m afraid they’ll hear us.

“We’ll have to wait for night, then, or for another opportunity to present itself,” I sighed, raking a hand over my hair. “In the meantime, let’s eat something, drink some water, and rest a bit. It’ll be a couple of hours before they find Bill.”