Reaper's Salvation: A Last Riders Trilogy by Jamie Begley (reading e books .txt) 📕

ocean through the palm trees and through tropical foliage around them, there was rubble scattered around the long rectangular area.

“This used to be where we lived. Over there was the school.” Ginny went to a pile of rotted lumber. She heaved several of the dank, smelly boards away. “There isn’t even a scrap of paper here.”

“Careful. I don’t want you to get bitten by a bug or a snake. Let me.” Reaper started moving more of the boards, finding nothing more than bugs crawling out of their hiding places.

“Every single thing that belonged to the islanders and the school is gone. Everything. Why?”

“It’s been picked clean.”

Ginny closed her eyes in anguish at his words. Then they flew open. “Gavin …” Ginny looked around, even though she knew they were alone. “What if they aren’t dead?” She grabbed the front of his shirt to bunch it within her fists. “What if he moved them somewhere else and just told me they’re dead? Couldn’t that be a possibility?”

Reaper looked around the area. “It’s a possibility.” It was a possibility. However, though Reaper might have agreed with her out loud, inwardly, the thought was a dismal one. There had been too much care taken to remove every item from this once thriving community.

As they walked alongside the beach, they made their way back to the dock, allowing Reaper time to think. When they returned to the States, he could talk to some of his contacts from the military to see just what the government had on their records. Whatever it was, Reaper didn’t have great faith about it being the truth. More than likely, what had happened to the islanders had been swept under the rug. Recognizing some of Allerton’s guest who were sitting on the patio this morning, he felt that if they weren’t dead, they were either imprisoned in labor camps, or worse, used like him as sex slaves.

He kept the disgusting thought to himself as Ginny took off her shoes as they neared the broken dock and started walking barefoot on the pristine beach. Imitating Ginny, Reaper sat down on the sand to take off his shoes. He broke into a smile when Ginny ran toward the ocean, her feet making footprints in the wet sand, then ran back before the wave could reach her feet. Reaper remembered playing the same game when he was a child living near the ocean.

Twirling around, she gave him a bright smile. “Isn’t it beautiful?” Her smile dimming almost as soon as the words came out. Reaper cursed inwardly at the guilt-ridden expression that transformed her face from joy to sadness.

“Yes.” He had a lump the size of golf ball in his throat. All it took was one of her fucking smiles to pull him out of the nightmares of his past. If he found out that Allerton had kidnapped these islanders from this paradise, he would rip the fucker’s head off with his bare hands. The bastard didn’t have the right to take the light out of her smile.

The level of destruction in the village and the buildings on the outskirts had been too carefully gone through to have been a natural disaster. Whoever had done this had one purpose—to find what Ginny had taken, and they had needed the islanders gone to achieve that goal.

The demolition showed the wanton disregard for human life. If there was a God, at least He may be capable of some mercy for those who had committed this crime. Reaper, on the other hand, had no intention of showing any to whoever orchestrated this annihilation.

Ginny was standing where the tide was coming in, looking down at her toes as the waves came in then ebbed back. Taking a step back Ginny sank down onto the sand to circle her knees with her arms to stare toward Sherguevil Island. His hand unintentionally went to his shirt, over his heart. The primitive emotion that came over him was raw, unadulterated possessiveness.

It was the same feeling he’d had when Shade and Viper had taken the jelly she made. There was no rhyme or reason for the primitive instinct that intensified each day, every fucking time he touched her. He just knew that, when he looked at Ginny, a swell of possessiveness struck him ferociously, demanding him to protect what was his.

Keeping her within his eyesight, Reaper reached to his side to open the backpack and pull out the lunch that had been packed for them. Finding two club sandwiches, chips, and two bottles of sparkling water, he pulled them out and started eating one of the sandwiches as she walked along the beach. Reaper gave her the solitude she needed to adjust to the stark realization of what happened to her childhood home.

“Come eat, Ginny.” Tossing the empty paper wrap back into the backpack, he took out a pack of wipes.

Plopping down beside him, she showed him a pale shell she found. It was the size of a thumbnail. “Isn’t it pretty?” she winsomely. “Do you think Allerton will let me keep it?”

“I don’t see why not. Are you wanting to add it to your bracelet?”

“No.” Ginny placed the shell to the side to take the hand wipe that he was holding out for her. “I don’t want it damaged.”

A ton of bricks raining from the skies couldn’t hit him any harder at the difference between Taylor and Ginny. Taylor would never have given the delicate shell a second glance, much less treat it as if it had the value of a precious diamond. How Ginny had witnessed so much of the world’s ugliness and was able to remain uncontaminated by the events spoke as to a true testament to Ginny’s loving nature.

Taking the bottled water from him, she refused the sandwich. “I’m not hungry. My stomach still hasn’t settled from seeing Ivan Pavlov and Alek Lukin chowing down together.”

Reaper placed the paper-wrapped sandwich down on his lap to unwrap it and remove all the ingredients. Then he held