Arrow's Rest, Joel Scott [best book club books TXT] 📗

and had got people up jumping and crying on their way to pulling out their chequebooks. Some of them had even called him the Preacher. He had the true gift. It sounded like he was doing pretty well for himself now, maybe it was time to give him a call and settle things between the two of them. They’d never gotten along back then, too much alike perhaps, but that was a long time ago and things had changed for both of them. Maybe his son could help him out here. Another possibility was the commune in Arizona that had taken the last two child brides. The cross-border trafficking charges arising from that had eventually been dismissed but there had been some hefty lawyers bills and a lot of bad publicity for Plentiful. His American counterpart Karl, a tall bearded man in a business suit with a cold smile and flinty eyes, had helped out with the legal costs and said he owed Jeremiah. Maybe now was the time to call in that debt.

His thoughts were interrupted as a cup of coffee was brought in and set down on the desk in front of him. It smelled delicious, as did its bearer, Lucy, the saucy young one with the knowing eyes. Perfume was forbidden in the commune, but there was a musky personal scent attached to her that stirred him. Every so often a girl came along who didn’t fear him, maybe even looked forward to her initiation, and he felt that she might be one of these. He thought of them as his Delilahs, sent from God to test him. He didn’t know which one he was looking forward to more, Amy or Lucy. Sugar or spice.

Jeremiah roused himself and began writing a letter, slowly and carefully printing each word and checking his spelling in the old dog-eared Webster’s dictionary that sat on the corner of the desk. One of his many daughters would gladly have sent an email, but he didn’t trust any one of them to keep silent. They were relentless gossips. He finished the letter and placed it in an envelope and copied out Karl’s address from a business card he took from a drawer. He looked up and Lucy smiled and a thrill ran through him.

“Ask your mother to look up an address for me, will you, sweetheart? Jared Kane is the name, shouldn’t be more than one of those. In Vancouver I understand. And fetch me some American postage.”

Chapter 1

The man in the mask laboured on, his mind detached from his thick body as he toiled in long, swinging thrusts that slammed the woman’s head into the teak headboard in a steady hammering rhythm of lust and pain. He had readied himself for her earlier that evening, his phone shut off and the messages all on hold as he punished his body relentlessly, lifting weights, running in place, doing push-ups and chin-ups, gasping and sweating until his veins popped blue and swollen and he had to stop for lack of breath and buildup of lactic acid.

When he was like this he could endure forever, the exercise and the alcohol and the drugs joined in an unholy communion that raised him above and beyond the labouring body that worked and sweated for the elusive orgasm that would release him into that semblance of normality he put on each day like a cloak.

Not yet though. Only a faint glimmering promise at the edge of his consciousness. Perhaps another ten minutes, perhaps another thirty, it made no matter. Like everything else in his life, it had to be struggled for. Nothing came easy. And if he ever even thought about it, that was the way it ought to be. In another place and time he was a respected man, but that person had left after the first bottle, and what remained was mindless appetite.

The woman lay with closed eyes and clenched fists, trembling with fear and exhaustion, hoping only for an end to it all. It seemed to have gone on for an eternity, a mindless mechanical coupling where his cruel, impersonal hands bent her body to grotesque shapes as he hunched and worked over her endlessly. She realized she no longer existed for the man: he was caught up in a private fantasy of which she was only an anonymous part, a receptacle, and any other would have served as well.

She tried once more to scream, but her voice was raw with fatigue and despair, and the unformed wail caught in her throat. She began to pray, long-unused phrases issuing unheard from her bruised lips as the agony compounded to a whole new level and she started to black out with the fierceness and terror of it all. It went on and on, and what remained of her sanity cast frantically about for escape and found it in the memory of a cloudless day, and she caught it to her and shrouded herself in the white glare of sails in the sun and the soft hiss of water sliding past a gleaming wooden hull.

Chapter 2

It was one of those perfect sailing days on the west coast of British Columbia, where the late summer winds can be as fickle and inconstant as the promises of its politicians. Cat stood at the rail, head thrown back, savouring the warm breeze as the autopilot guided Arrow along her track, beating hard and gaining every second on the chartered Hunter with its crew of novices flogging its sails a quarter mile to windward. They made a clumsy tack, oversteered, and then sailed too fine again, conscious of her swift overtaking.

She played it safe and headed off their stern another ten degrees before going below for a fresh bottle of water and a new layer of suntan oil. She had been on the bright water for five hours now and was nearing her limits. When she swung back up on deck a short minute later, the Hunter