Wild Men of Alaska 04 - Wild Men of Alaska - Four Book Bundle

fell.
    Her hoarse screams went unanswered.
    “Don’t,” she cried. “Please, don’t do this.” She’d done what they wanted. Stopped fighting them months ago, resigned to her fate from being a kidnapped victim to the prophesied daughter and wife to Jedidiah.
    The knife trembled in his hand, and he tightened his grip. “You failed to conceive and therefore must be cleansed.” He brushed tears from her face with gentle fingers. “Now, hush. It’s time.” The knife rose above her and he closed his eyes, his voice ringing throughout the verdant forest. ‘Kill every woman that hath known man by lying with him.’ Numbers 31:17.
    Like that had been her choice.
    He bestowed a look of caring patience upon her. “My child, I will make you sacred in order that you may ascend into the Kingdom of our Lord.”
    “I don’t want to ascend. Let me go home. Please. I just want to g-go h-home.” Sobs shook her emaciated frame.
    “I am sending you home, my daughter, my wife. Soon you will be with our Lord.” Tears filled his dark eyes. “‘O daughter of Babylon, who art to be destroyed; happy shall he be, that rewardeth thee as thou hast served us.’ PSALMS 137:8.”
    He kept repeating chapter and verse as though still teaching her. He brushed his lips across her forehead. “Know that I will miss and pray for you often as you prepare a place for me and our brothers and sisters in our Lord’s Kingdom.” The hand holding the knife rose above her again. The blade didn’t tremble as it sliced downward.
    The thick forest embraced her screams and the rich earth swallowed her blood.

C HAPTER O NE
    “For we are but of yesterday, and know nothing, because our days upon earth are a shadow.”
    ~ JOB 8:9

    Present Day

    “Cache, I know you’re in there. Open up!”
    Cache Calder hobbled to his front door, a crutch under his left arm. He was going to kill the son of a bitch on the other side. Why was it so much to ask to be left the hell alone?
    He yanked open the door to find his poodle of an editor, Tom Passey. “What do you want?”
    Tom pushed his way into the apartment. “If you’d answer your blasted phone, I wouldn’t have had to trek all the way across Manhattan to tell you.” Tom looked around the dim and dirty apartment. “Wow. I’d heard you’d gone into cave-mode, but this...is disturbing.” He kicked an empty pizza box out of his way and continued toward the drape-shrouded windows.
    “Get the hell out of here, Tom.” Cache held the door open, using the doorknob to keep himself upright.
    Tom flung the curtains wide and turned. Cache averted his head as the sun sliced like fire through his brain.
    “Fell off the wagon, huh?” Tom surveyed the sea of Chinese takeout containers rivaling the discarded pizza boxes. He wrinkled his nose and fingered the edge of a Styrofoam box containing leftover petrified chili cheese fries. “What happened to your health nut regime?”
    “Can’t find a health food store that delivers,” Cache grumbled. Obviously Tom wasn’t going to leave until he had his say. Cache pushed the door shut. Pain radiated up his leg, and he shook with the effort it took to stay on his feet. He limped to the recliner, sank into the cushions, and tossed the crutch to the floor, feeling every tense and aching muscle in his forty-two year old body sigh with relief.
    “Cache, I know that the last few months have been tough, but it’s time you got back to work. World Events needs you.”
    Cache glared at Tom standing there without any effort, dressed in a navy Versace pinstriped suit, his dark hair slicked back, the top buttons of his paisley silk shirt left purposely undone. What did this pompous piece of leftover runway model know about how tough the last few months had been? Tom hadn’t been in the Middle East when the insurgent’s bomb had exploded. He hadn’t watched helplessly as his friends had been blown to bits.
    He hadn’t been cursed with surviving.
    “I don’t give a rat’s ass about the magazine.” Cache gestured to his leg wrapped in a brace. “I can’t work with this.” His leg was a raw jigsaw puzzle stitched back together. He had more steel pins and screws holding it together than a Frank Lloyd Wright house. He was lucky to still have it. Though there had been times, when the pain was so intense, he’d wished it gone. Guilt drowned him. What right did he have to bitch and moan over a little thing like pain, when Hank and Sarah were dead?
    “I have the