My Keeper

Prologue

Tessa smiled lazily into the sky as she let the hot summer sun bathe her in its rays.

She was wearing a red floral sundress that matched her red painted lips. Pinched in at the hips, red satin flowed around her as she sat cross-legged in the soft, green grass.

He couldn't help but just watch her as she leaned her head back to let the blonde waves waterfall from her head; rounded sunglasses adorning the top of her head. She stretched catlike giving him a whiff of that vanilla perfume, she knew he oh so loved.

He loved her with a fierce intensity that shook him. So fiercely, his past self would have suggested he check himself right into an insane asylum.

As she turned to catch him looking at her, and watched a smile curve those ruby lips, affection grow in her eyes; he knew that she loved him back with the same fierceness. What he did to deserve that, he didn't know. But he was the luckiest bastard out there.

"You ready to go?" he asked tenderly as he took her slender hand in his. She leaned forward to give him a whisper of a kiss before nodding her head.

They walked, bare feet in the grass, back to the little home where she lived with her family. They usually didn't stay this long at the park when they came, but it was a beautiful day and 'the sun was calling for them,' as Tessa had said.

And as usual, he couldn't turn her down.

As they turned down the pathway they always took to get back home, Tessa stopped. She turned her head, narrowing those forest-green eyes.

"Everything okay?" he asked as she ducked to look through some branches.

Her voice was a whisper. "Do you hear that?"

He came up behind her to look over her shoulder, but came up short. "What is it?"

"Sounds like some kind of whistle," she frowned as she tried to shrug through some shrubs.

"Tess, baby, let's just go home."

As if she didn't hear him, she continued to walk through. When her body completely disappeared behind the wall of green bushes, he sighed in exasperation and followed her.

Pushing through the bushes, he saw her frame squinting into the sky. "Tess, come on—"

Then he heard it.

A whistle.

But not like any whistle. It had a more eerie melody to it. Almost as if there were something haunting whispering after it.

Tessa looked back at him and gestured her head to the right and started heading in that direction, stretching out her hand to follow him.

The whistling got louder as they followed the new trail through the trees of a secluded and rather creepy forest. It looked like the set of a horror movie.

He went up behind Tessa and held her close.

"Not gonna lie, Tessie, but this is starting to freak me out," he shivered. Tessa giggled and kissed his cheek.

"Don't worry, sweetie, I'll protect you," she smiled sweetly. He laughed softly at that. 

They walked up to the hanging branches of a willow tree and pushed them aside to see a strange building.

"The whistling's coming from there," he whispered lowly; as if he spoke any louder, someone would hear them.

The pair walked towards the building, when something in they heard rustling to the side of them.

The two barely had time to register the sound before three men in white suits, and an old woman in a black dress, came up behind them; a strong pair of arms grabbing Tessa and pulling her away.

"What the hell do you think you're doing?" he asked angrily to the man holding Tessa.

The old woman draped in what looked like black curtains, gave a pointed look towards the other man and nodded. One of the men immediately came up behind him and forced him away from Tessa.

Tessa was screaming, but he could do nothing as the man pulling him was stronger than sin. He got shoved into a truck, threats spilling from his mouth of what he was going to do if anyone touched Tessa, it all falling on dead ears.

"Let me go," he struggled as the man grabbed a tiny red container out of his pocket, liquid sloshing around inside.

"Don't worry," the man said calmly. "You won't remember any of this." The man held his chin incredibly tight as he poured the liquid down his throat.

It only took a couple seconds before the bathroom cleaner tasting liquid started to go to his head. His mind went foggy. His eyelids incredibly heavy.

"Tessa," he fought out as he barely registered the rags getting tied to his hands. "I'll find you. I promise."

Then everything went black.