Taken in My Sleep by My Stepfather David and His Friends novel · Chapter 9 of 24

Chapter 9: Were You Taken?

I was dressed and on the porch before the car stopped.

Bernard was beside me, shirt half buttoned.

David stood one step lower with his arms folded.

Ellis and Garson came out of the cabin behind us, and nobody said anything.

The car was a silver Volvo, and a county sheriff's truck pulled up behind it.

Clarence got out of the Volvo first.

He wore a charcoal coat and good shoes in four inches of snow, and he looked rested and handsome.

His mother stepped out of the passenger side with her pearls on.

A deputy climbed out of the truck, hitched up his belt, and looked from the cabin to the lake to the four men on the porch.

"Zelda," Clarence said.

He crossed the yard fast and took my face in both hands.

I let him for one second.

Then I stepped back out of reach.

"Baby, thank God." He sounded breathless. "I've been out of my mind."

"You sent sixty-one messages about flowers," I said.

"I was trying to keep things normal."

"You never asked where I was."

"I assumed you were safe." He glanced at David, and the warmth in his voice cooled. "You were with family. Until I heard this morning exactly what family."

His mother lifted her chin.

"Deputy," she said. "That's her stepfather. That man carried my son's fiancée out of a hotel in the middle of the night, with three others, and kept her here against her will for two days."

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