The Relic Runner Origin Story Box Set Ernest Dempsey (top 10 books of all time txt) 📖

His brother sat with his legs crossed a few feet away. Oliver's sniffles echoed in the dark room. The only light glowed dimly from somewhere outside the door and radiated through the cracks at the top and bottom. It was better than utter darkness, but not much.

Oliver wasn't a helpless kid. His instincts had been to scream and to fight off their captor with every ounce of strength he could summon. Those fanciful notions evaporated when the man produced a gun and threatened to kill them both if they so much as uttered a single word.

Then the man shoved pillowcases over their heads and marched them through the forest. They had no idea where they were being taken, with only the trail at their feet as a point of reference. After five minutes of hiking at gunpoint, they were steered off the trail and forced to continue up a hill until they reached a spot where sunshine warmed their clothes.

Jamie had spent enough time outside to know they'd probably walked into a meadow or small clearing. That knowledge did him no good. Without a way to leave a message—some kind of sign that he and Oliver had been there and were being taken—knowing where they’d been was of no consequence.

He considered pretending to trip and fall, perhaps dig into the earth with his shoes to leave prints. That desperate plan would have only angered their captor, a tall, grim-looking man with a head shaped like a brick and his dark brown hair cut to match.

Within minutes of arriving in the meadow, the boys were removed from the tall brown grass and placed in the back of a pickup truck with their hands bound behind them. The kidnapper hadn't been gentle, tightening the zip ties to the point the circulation in Jamie's fingers began to tingle. It took a good amount of wiggling his wrists on the bumpy ride to get the blood flowing correctly again.

He'd told Oliver at least ten times during the journey that everything was going to be okay, that their mom and dad would find them and the cops would arrest this guy and put him in prison for a long time.

Jamie wished he believed it.

Maybe a small part of him did—the part that still wanted to believe in Santa Claus and the tooth fairy.

He didn't know how long they'd been down in this basement or dungeon or whatever it was, but he felt like it hadn't been more than a couple of days. The oppressive darkness was broken three times a day for the boys to be fed, but that didn't do much for helping either of them get a grasp on where they were being kept.

The cinder block walls surrounding them were barricaded by a wooden door. The cell took up around sixty to eighty square feet. They'd been given a bucket and told that was their toilet, and to set it at the door each day when their food was brought.

The dim yellow light that came through the cracks temporarily brightened whenever a slot at the bottom of the door slid open for them to shove the slop bucket through or for the food plates to be given.

Jamie wasn't stupid. He knew they were being kept for something, but he didn't want to consider what that could be. And there was no way he'd share any such theories with his little brother.

There'd been stories that Jamie had heard when he was younger than Oliver—about kids who disappeared. Some tales were just that, urban legends passed down in the kid circle to scare others. Then there were others, told by his parents as a warning.

These were the ones that haunted Jamie's thoughts as he sat in the dim, musty cell.

His entire life, his parents had warned him not to talk to strangers and used examples of other missing children as examples, real-life cautionary tales. They never mentioned human trafficking by name, but Jamie knew it was something that happened. Was that what was going on here? Was this sicko keeping them down here until their slave trader came to pick them up?

Jamie would never have thought anything like this could happen to him or his brother. They lived a normal, suburban life with good, hard-working parents. Now all of that was gone.

He felt a tear lurking in the corner of his eye, threatening to break loose and dive down his cheek. He rubbed the back of his wrist against his eyelids to keep the tear from escaping. Jamie felt like he had to be strong for his brother. Crying would only make things worse.

Jamie heard a moan from somewhere else in the basement, and it shook him from his thoughts. He'd heard the sound before, but he didn't dare say anything. The man who'd taken them warned them about talking while in captivity. They were to remain quiet.

For what?

It's not like they could find a way out of this place, and even if they could, where would they go? They had no point of reference, no way of even knowing where they were. For all Jamie knew, they could be minutes away from his parents' campsite or several miles.

That was the one thing he could determine: distance.

Their kidnapper hadn't driven far. It took less than ten minutes for them to arrive here—wherever here was—once they'd been stuffed into the back of the truck. That meant they were close to the park, to their parents' camper.

The cliché throbbed in his mind. So close, yet so far away.

Jamie heard the groan of a young person's voice again. It didn't make him feel better, but he took a small measure of comfort in knowing that he and Oliver weren't the only kids down in this hole. But why, and for how long?

"I'm tired, Jamie," Oliver breathed. "I want to go home."

The words cut through the silence and stabbed straight through Jamie's heart. He turned and looked at his brother with empathy. "I know, bud. I do too. We'll get