by Willow Rose
“You took him, didn’t you?” she says. “You took him like you took Paige Stover, like you took poor Kim and Casey Taylor, along with Maria and Tara and all the others, didn’t you?”
Boxer stares at her, eyes and mouth open. He doesn’t know what to say, how to deal with this.
How does she know all this?
“You did, didn’t you? I can see it in your eyes,” she says and points at him aggressively. “I know you’re the Boxer. I know it’s you!”
“Uh-oh,” his brother says behind him, in between sips from his bottle. “You’re in trouble now, brother. You’re in deep trouble.”
Boxer closes his eyes. He slumps his head, then turns around and yells at his brother:
“SHUT UP! SHUT UP! You’re dead, for crying out loud. Why won’t you leave me ALONE?”
Chapter Eighty-Eight
April 1975
They do it in the middle of the night. Bao and Danh stay awake till everyone else on the ship has fallen asleep, some so drunk they never make it to bed, but simply pass out in their chairs.
They don’t talk about what they’re going to do. They don’t have to. Driven by their anger and lust for revenge, they grab on to the two machete knives that Bao stole the night before and hid underneath Danh’s jacket, while they waited for the right time to arrive.
They are close to shore now. All day they have been able to see land on the horizon, and according to what they have heard, the captain plans on making it to the harbor the very next day.
Except he will never set his feet on solid ground again.
They start with the sleeping quarters downstairs, sneaking down one step at a time, sweat springing on their foreheads, holding their breath, stepping lightly so they won’t be heard.
Danh gets the honor of taking out the first one. He chooses the man who dragged Long away on that fatal evening, the guy who gave Danh the medicine as payment for his sister.
Danh hardly feels anything when he places the machete on his throat and simply slides it through the flesh and bones without even blinking. Blood gushes out from the wound and soaks the floor. Danh takes in a few fast breaths, watching the body as it is emptied of all life.
Danh is a little disappointed. He thought it would feel better than it did, but he still isn’t satisfied. He realizes he really wants them all to die. When Bao started talking about revenge, Danh hadn’t been sure that was what he wanted. He knew he wanted to see this guy dead, but the rest? Now he has no doubt in his mind.
They all have to die.
Danh grabs the necklace from around his neck and pulls it off, then leaves the room before he enters the next.
One by one, they slaughter them in their sleep, all the sailors sleeping, even one that is still awake, coming running towards them pointing his machine gun at them, but so drunk he can’t find the trigger. Danh watches Bao slaughter him and the headless body falls to the ground with a plump sound.
Danh feels no sadness, no mercy for these men, as they fall by their feet one after the other. He feels completely empty, and as they finally finish off the captain, Bao yells the cry of a warrior, holding his machete high in the air, putting one foot on the body beneath him. Danh stares at him, empty inside, until the second his eyes lock with those of a man creeping up from behind holding a machine gun.
It all goes so fast, he doesn’t get to warn Bao before the shots are fired. The bullets hit Bao and his chest soon explodes, his blood hitting Danh’s face.
Danh leaps through the air towards the man, cuts both his hands off with the machete, and screams as the man falls backwards before he cuts his throat.
Danh then throws himself at Bao’s dead body. He is crying, helplessly trying to revive him. He lies like that for a few hours, while the ship drifts in the deep ocean, being helplessly thrown back and forth by the waves.
It’s not until after the sun has set that he suddenly hears voices, foreign voices that are approaching. He doesn’t want to let go of his brother’s body and holds on to it, even as the ship is filled with army pants with black boots and more yelling surrounds him.
I am never letting you go again, Bao. Never.
Chapter Eighty-Nine
April 2016
“Leave me ALONE!”
The guy, Boxer, is standing in front of me and is yelling loudly, but he’s not yelling at me. Instead, he seems to be addressing his anger at someone inside the house, someone standing behind him, but I can’t see anyone, even though I stretch my neck. All I can see is a green suitcase.
I decide I am tired of waiting. I want to see for myself if my son is here or not. I walk in, push him aside, and hurry through the living room, my eyes scanning the area for anything or anyone.
“There’s no one in here.” Chloe is right behind me. “Who the heck is this guy talking to?”
I shrug and look back. Boxer stays put. He doesn’t seem to notice us or even care that we’re in his house. He is still yelling.
“You’re dead. Don’t you understand that? You were killed. I saw you blow up. Stop bothering me! Leave me alone.”
We stop for a second and watch as Boxer grabs his head between his hands and falls to his knees, sobbing.
“Please, just leave me alone.”
What’s with this guy?
I decide I don’t care. Meanwhile, I run into the kitchen and look in every cabinet, calling my son’s name.
“Salter. Salter, if you’re here, yell or knock or something!”
We go through the two bedrooms, looking under the beds, in the closets, and in the bathrooms. We even go to the attic. Chloe lifts me up so I can crawl in. I get very dirty, but I don’t find Salter, nor any sign of him or Paige being here.
“There’s a room in the back, downstairs,” Chloe says. “I saw a door when we came in.”
“Let’s check it out.”
We run downstairs and find the door, then open it. I turn on the light. There is nothing in the room except a big dog-crate placed in the middle of the white tile. It’s extremely clean for a room supposed to house a dog.
“Where is the dog?” I ask.
Not a dog toy anywhere in sight, no dog food, no bowl of water, not even dog hair. But there is something else. Where you close the door to the crate, a lock of long black hair is trapped.
I pull it out and hold it up in the light to better study it. “This here, my friend, isn’t dog hair.”
Chloe looks at it. Her eyes are serious. “You’re right. This is definitely not dog hair.”
She pulls out her phone.
“Who are you calling?”
“I think it’s about time we involve the police in this,” she says. “We’re in over our heads here.”
While Chloe speaks to the police and convinces them to come here, we hear the front door slam shut. Our eyes meet the second before I storm back to the living room only to find it empty, the front door closed, and the suitcase gone as well. I run outside and see a white van disappearing down the street.
Chapter Ninety
April 2016
The mansion soon grows dark and quiet. Tara crawls inside a closet to go to sleep, and she tells Paige to find a spot where she can sleep hidden and be ready to crawl back up in the chimney should the game start all over again.
“You never know when he’ll start counting again,” she says.
“Does it happen at night as well?” Paige asks.
“Usually, the nights are peaceful,” she says. “So are the times when the man leaves the house. But don’t let him find you. You must hide at all times.”
Paige creeps under a couch and tries to fall asleep, but she can’t. She is too scared and misses her mom so terribly. She still doesn’t know if what Coach Joe said was true, if she was really hurt or not.
Paige’s back is hurting from lying curled up underneath the couch, and soon she crawls out. She walks to the window, grabs it, and tries to open it, but with no success. She stares into the darkness of the river in front of her, won
dering where her mother is and if she’ll ever see her again.
She thinks about Tara and how long she has been here, trapped in this house, hiding from the man, and she wonders how long she herself will have to do the same. How long before he figures out to look up the chimney? Will she just be waiting for it to happen? Is that really all she can do?
Paige’s stomach is rumbling and she remembers what Tara told her about the Cheerios in the pantry. She decides it can’t hurt to sneak there now. She is starving and can’t sleep.
Carefully, Paige sneaks out the door and walks down the hallway, hoping she is going in the right direction. The carpet on the stairs helps her to not make a noise. She walks carefully towards the kitchen, which she remembers running through when looking for a hiding spot. She just hopes she won’t get lost in this house. She doesn’t want to lose Tara or the good hiding spot. She wants to make sure she is capable of finding her way back, so she memorizes details about the rooms and hallways she walks through. A painting, a vase or a sculpture.
Finally, she reaches the kitchen and spots a door she thinks must lead to the pantry. To her surprise, she is right. It’s a sight for sore eyes or hungry mouths. An El Dorado of cereal boxes from ground to ceiling. Not just Cheerios, but all kinds of cereal. Any kind, really.
Paige grabs a box of Captain Crunch and opens it. It makes a lot of noise and she stops to listen if anyone could have heard her. She holds her breath until she knows there is nothing, no one in the kitchen, before she sticks her hand into the box and stuffs her mouth with the cereal till she can contain no more.
Full and exhausted, she slides to the ground, leans her head on the box, and closes her eyes.
Just one second. I just need one…
She wakes up with a start. There is cereal on the floor and she hurries to clean it up, then place the box back on the shelf. She opens the door to the pantry and pokes her head out to make sure no one is on the other side before she sneaks out and through the kitchen. As she passes through one more living room, she sees a light coming from underneath a door that is left ajar. She stops and stares at the light, when she hears a still small voice coming from the other side.
“There you go…your majesty.”
Curiosity makes Paige sneak closer, till she can peak inside using just one eye. The room looks like a church room…statues and smoking incense sticks placed on a sort of an altar. In the middle sits the man. Paige gasps with fear when she sees him. He is bent over something, holding it close to him while he cries. Paige gasps again when she realizes it is a woman. The woman has long black hair that he caresses and brushes. She isn’t moving. Her body is stiff. Paige takes a step backwards, clasping her mouth as she slowly realizes the woman isn’t alive.
Chapter Ninety-One
April 2016
“Let me get this straight. You found this hair stuck on the crate?”
Chris Fisher looks at me, holding the lock of black hair that I have given him in his hand.
“Yes. I believe it belongs to Paige Stover. But I have no proof of that. All I know is it isn’t dog hair. And Paige has black hair like that.”
“And you believe this guy is the same one who chatted with Paige Stover and called himself the Boxer?” he asks.
“Yes.” I turn and look at Chloe, who is working with the guy’s computer. “I have a feeling she might be better at filling you in on that. Right now, I am only focused on finding my son.”
“And the guy, the man who lives here who you believe is the Boxer, who took Paige Stover, where is he now?”
“He drove away. I told you this already; come on, Fisher. We need to move on here. My son is out there somewhere. I need to find him.”
Fisher nods, but is not ready to let me go yet. Chloe interrupts him just as he is about to ask me another question.
“I think I might have found something, but…”
Chris Fisher turns around, notepad in his hand. “What is it?”
She draws in a deep sigh. “It’s kind of disturbing…I’m not sure…”
Fisher walks to her and looks over her shoulder. “What have you found?”
“First of all, I can tell you that this computer definitely belongs to the Boxer and that he has been in contact with Paige Stover for a long time, chatting with her online. His history alone reveals that he has been visiting her Instagram profile and Musical.ly profile several times a day. He has written messages to her as well, especially in Minecraft, pretending to be a thirteen-year-old boy from Daytona, whose nickname is Boxer. He has downloaded many pictures of her from her mother’s Facebook profile, from Paige’s Instagram, and even videos from Musical.ly.”
“So, he was stalking her,” I say. I look at Fisher to make sure he gets it all and understands that this means…that Danny had nothing to do with the disappearance of Paige Stover.
“There’s more. There’s a lot more,” Chloe adds. “First of all, Paige wasn’t the only girl he was watching closely like that. I found pictures of Tara and Maria Verlinden as well, and of Kim and Casey Taylor, Jenny and Stacey Brown, and I bet if I look a little more I’ll find Joan and Nicola Williams as well.”
“So, he was watching all of the women who disappeared with their children, the same that we gave you the names of,” I say. “I told you those cases were connected. Now do you believe me?”
Chris Fisher rubs his stubble, which is about to become a real beard one of these days. I am guessing he hasn’t had much time to shave lately. A shower would probably benefit him as well.
“All right,” he says. “I’ll buy into some of your theory here…but what I really want to know is, where the heck are they? I mean, Kim and Casey we have found, but where are the rest? What did he do with them?”
I shrug. “Could they have ended up in the river as well?”
“No,” Chloe says. She is staring at the computer screen, looking paler than usual. “The girls weren’t for himself.”
She looks up at me. I don’t understand what she is telling me. “What do you mean, they weren’t for himself?”
“I mean, he sold them. Look at this.”
Chapter Ninety-Two
April 2016
So this guy was kidnapping single moms and their children, and selling them off on the Internet. I can’t believe any of this. I am staring at Chloe while she speaks, completely freaked out about this revelation. How could anyone be so cold, so calculated and cynical? To sell people? To sell mothers and their kids?
It’s got to be the most disgusting thing ever.
“So what we have here is nothing but a salesman. He’s not even the killer?” I say. “He didn’t kill Kim and Casey Taylor, he just sold them off to someone else? I mean, who does that? And who buys them?”
“It seems to be the same guy ordering them,” Chloe says, still focused on the Boxer’s computer. “I don’t know how much you people know, but there is a part of the Internet for guys like Boxer, where criminals can buy and sell anything and never be traced.”
“The Dark Web,” I say.
“I thought it was the Deep Web,” Fisher says.
Chloe looks at us, annoyed. “That’s what the media calls it, but there is a distinct difference between those two things. I’m not going to go into too much detail, but the Deep Web is distinct from the Dark Web." The Dark Web is the encrypted network that exists between Tor servers and their clients, whereas the Deep Web is simply the content of databases and other web services that, for one reason or another, cannot be indexed by conventional search engines.”
She has already lost me and I am pretty sure she has lost Fisher as well.
“Nevertheless,” she continues. “I have found and decoded an encrypted chat in here between him and this guy who calls himself Dr. Seuss. Boxer sends him pictures of the girls, and Dr. Seuss chooses from the gallery.”
Chloe shows us the many pictures. I recognize two of the girls from Salter’s school. It makes me sick to my stomach to realize this guy has been watching our neig
hborhood’s kids like that, trying to sell them off.
“As far as I can tell, Paige Stover was delivered to Dr. Seuss a few days ago. Her mother was supposed to be with her, but…well you know what happened to her. My guess is Paige is there right now, in the hands of this Dr. Seuss.”
“So, who is this Dr. Seuss?” Fisher asks. “And how do we find him?”
Chloe sighs. “That’s the problem with the Dark Web. You can’t trace anyone. You can’t find them. They can do anything they want in here and never be prosecuted for it. There’s a lot more to it than just criminal activity, but that’s for another day when we have more time.”
“So…” Fisher starts, then stops himself. He looks as confused as I feel. “So, how do we find Paige Stover?”
“We don’t,” Chloe says and leans back in her chair.
“What?” Fisher asks, not accepting the answer.
“At least I don’t. I can’t do it.”
“Didn’t they write down a meeting point or anything?” I ask. “How does Boxer know where to drop off Paige Stover?”
“I don’t know,” Chloe says. “My guess is they had another way of communicating as well when planning the details, things that aren’t able to incriminate them, like using a phone. It would help a lot if we could get our hands on Boxer and maybe his phone.”
Fisher sighs. “I’ll have every man looking for him around here. I’m sealing this house off and will have forensics out here right away. And we’ll get ahold of this guy’s phone records ASAP.”
“What about Danny?” I say, directed at Fisher.
“What about him?”
“You’re keeping him at the station. Isn’t it about time you let him go?” I continue.
Fisher sighs. “I can’t. At least not till I have more to go on. I’m sorry.” Fisher picks up his phone and walks out.
Chloe gets up and walks to me.
“What do you want to do now?” she asks.