Right on cue, Kris appears beside her. The girls lock eyes for a moment, then Jade asks low, but loud enough for the frat boy to hear, “Didja get it?”
Kris nods, pats her pocket, speaks under her breath. “Car’s just around the corner.”
Jade tilts her head toward her new friend, takes Kris’s arm. “This is Casey. This is . . .” She hesitates, smiles at him.
“Alex,” he says, holding her eyes.
“Alex,” Jade repeats, with a lingering smile. “And I’m Mia.” Then she leans in to him, her cheek brushing his as she whispers into his ear. “Want to come around the corner and do a line?”
Roarke and Epps moved on from Ethan and wove through the crowd on the sidewalk. They found Detective Huerte on the postage-stamp-sized front lawn, taking statements from students.
Huerte spotted them, nodded thanks to the student he was talking to, and took the agents inside.
Both agents shielded their faces with their jackets as Huerte moved them down the inner hall through thickly drifting acrid smoke. “We’ve got the arson unit working. This was the only room that actually burned.”
Roarke and Epps stepped through the doorway and squinted through stinging eyes around the dining room, a smaller version of the dining hall in the house on Camino Embarcadero.
The smoke was bad, but the damage seemed strangely minimal. A blown-out window and several charred tables, as well as the blackened wall closest to them.
“This was the only damage?” Roarke asked Huerte.
“Just this room.”
Roarke and Epps looked at each other. Roarke was no bomb expert, but it was pretty clear that the ignition site was a room that would cause the least damage.
“Doesn’t look like a bomb to me.”
“It wasn’t,” Huerte confirmed. “The accelerant was gasoline. It was only dumped on those tables, the drapes, and that wall.”
“Was anyone hurt?”
“Just freaked out.”
Roarke stood with that, thinking. No one was hurt. The boys in the house would have been scared shitless, of course. But if you were going to bomb a place to cause maximum damage, this wouldn’t be how you’d do it.
“It’s almost like—”
Epps finished for him. “A distraction.” The agents exchanged a grim look.
Roarke turned to Huerte again. “Have we got a head count of the chapter members?”
“I’ve got officers working on that.”
“You need to get in touch with Alex Foy immediately,” Roarke said. “It’s very possible he’s in danger.”
Huerte’s face tightened. He didn’t pause to ask questions. He raised his phone, punched a number, and gave terse instructions.
Epps spoke low. “You think this was all to grab the other kid?”
“Him. Or one of the others,” Roarke said tensely.
One a day. It’s what they promised.
The detective came back to the agents. “Haven’t located Foy yet.”
It wasn’t proof—but Roarke wasn’t surprised. He told the detective, “There are two other KAT members who could be in jeopardy. We’ve got a video—I sent it to you a couple of hours ago.” Huerte frowned, pulled out his phone to check his mail. “You need to get with all those boys and lean on them to identify everyone in that video—the girl, if they can, and the boys. Stephens and Foy are two of them—but we have to treat the other two as targets, too.”
Huerte had the video open. It didn’t take more than a few seconds’ viewing for him to say, “Jesus Christ.”
“Yeah.”
“I’ll get my officers on this,” Huerte said. As the detective turned, Roarke said, “Wait.” He gestured to the room. “This is what they call the satellite house?”
Huerte turned back. “Right. It’s owned by the KAT chapter.”
Roarke glanced at Epps. “We’d like to look around the rest of the house. Is there another room with a built-in bar?”
“Downstairs.” Huerte pointed to a door at the end of the hall.
Downstairs was a wide room with a wall of glass opening out to a deck overlooking the ocean.
There were sagging couches and armchairs, a fully stocked wet bar, strings of Christmas lights. And of course it reeked of stale pot smoke.
Party central.
Nothing immediately identified it as the room in the video. But the agents moved around the room, scanning the furniture and room accessories, with one goal in mind.
Epps was the one who found it. “Boss.”
Roarke stepped over to the sofa. Epps pointed down at a table.
It was the lamp: the naked woman balancing a light globe on her toes.
Underneath the rush of triumph, Roarke felt sick. He took out his phone and started taking photos. Epps did the same.
“All right. What else’ve we got here?”
The agents prowled the room. Roarke stopped in front of the black curtain draped on a wall where no window would be.
He took the edge of the material and drew it back.
Behind him, Epps said, “You’ve got to be shitting me.”
They both stared up at the collage. Naked and half-naked girls. Close-ups of body parts branded with Greek letters.
Objects.
There was movement behind them. The agents turned to see Huerte standing in the doorway.
“Alex Foy is missing.”
Chapter Seventy
There was a clattering on the stairs, and Sandler came barreling in behind Huerte. He stopped in the middle of the room, glared at the agents. “How did you know Alex Foy was in danger?”
Roarke stepped away from Epps so that Huerte and Sandler could see the collage of body parts on the wall. He gave Sandler a moment to take a good, long look.
Beside Sandler, Huerte shook his head grimly. “These fucking guys,” he muttered. Roarke noted that Sandler had no visible reaction.
Roarke took a pointed look back at the wall, then spoke evenly. “There’s video footage of the gang rape that took place in this room. One of those rapists somehow figured it would be fun to record it. Topher Stephens and Alex Foy were two of the rapists.”
Sandler started to object, but Roarke spoke over him. “You’ve known that all along, haven’t you? Or suspected. It’s why you panicked about the spray-painting and the dummy hung in front of this house. Why you stepped right up and offered your services when you heard the Bureau was sending us. You probably pulled every string you had, all the way up to the director, to get ahead of the investigation.”
He glanced at the wall, the female bodies on display. “This is what your Tau house is about. This is what they’ve hired you to protect and keep out of the courts.”
Sandler opened his mouth, but Roarke rolled right over him again.
“But it’s gone way beyond a lawsuit now. Because of your lying and enabling, another of your fine young men has gone missing. Alex Foy’s parents have you to thank that their son is in all likelihood chained up in a barn somewhere, waiting to be branded with a hot poker like his rape buddy, Stephens. Because you thought it was okay to cover up a gang rape. This is on you.”
“You don’t know who you’re dealing with,” Sandler growled.
Roarke laughed. “Please. I know exactly who you are. I went to high school with guys like you. I went to college with you. I played football with you. I partied with you. I know who you are, and what you are.”
Sandler rushed him, a wild explosion of rage. Roarke grabbed his arm, twisted him around, shoved him up against the wall face first, arm bent behind his back. He spoke low behind him. “Really? Just try me. I’d love the chance . . .”
Sandler choked out toward Huerte, “You’re seeing this. Arrest this man.”
Huerte shook his head in disgust, gave Roarke a glance. “I’m going out to take statements about Foy.”
Roarke nodded, and released Sandler. Sandler backed up as both agents loomed over him.
“You don’t talk to those boys without a lawyer,�
�� Sandler snarled at them, then wheeled and followed Huerte up the stairs.
As he disappeared, Roarke and Epps locked eyes. “God help us,” Epps said, hollowly.
Roarke had to agree. At the moment, he’d be happy to let Bitch burn the whole system down.
Chapter Seventy-One
All night long, in the dark of the stable, he’d worked at his bonds.
The bitches had been gone for hours, which gave him time. There was nothing he could do about the chains and shackles. Even if he could figure out how to pick the lock, he’d searched every inch of the straw beneath him that he could reach, and there was no stray bit of metal that would help him pick it. The shackles were brand new, galvanized steel. He’d have to take not just a thumb, but a whole slice of his hand off to get out of just one side. Fuck that.
But wood—wood was vulnerable. And with the bitches gone, he’d had hours to work at the hinge. Pulling, twisting, straining at the chains . . . weakening the planks beneath.
It hurt the burn on his back—his mind would not let him say brand—like a motherfuck. A couple of times he thought he’d pass out from the pain. But finally, finally, he could feel the wood splintering, starting to give way.
“Please,” he muttered. “Please please please.”
He braced his feet against the wall and started in for a really solid pull . . .
Then he froze, as a door creaked open somewhere in the stables.
Foy was heavy, dead weight. Jade had his arms and Kris had his legs, but the girls had to stop every few feet to set his ass down on the dirt floor of the stable so they could rest, panting like dogs.
Despite the rough handling, Foy showed no sign of regaining consciousness.
Coke cut with roofies, bitch, Jade thought, as she gasped for breath. I should market that shit.
She locked eyes with Kris, and they stooped to pick him up for one last slog, hauling him into the stall farthest away from Topher’s.
Inside the stall, they dumped him on top of a pile of straw.
Kris sat hard on a crate as Jade stood over him, staring down. “Bitch is out for the count,” she said.
Kris sat still, watching, as Jade grabbed the shackles and chains they’d screwed to the wall, and clamped them around Foy’s wrists.
She straightened, reached into the bag slung across her shoulder . . . and pulled out a knife.
She stood over him for a moment, staring down. Then she stooped to Foy—and used the blade to cut his pajama bottoms off.
Kris stiffens, staring at Foy’s body, suddenly unable to breathe.
Black underwear on tanned skin.
She is naked on the bed . . .
Can’t move. Can’t see.
Above her, jeering, drunken laugher. Then rough hands on her breasts. Fingers probing between her legs.
Someone ordering,“Yo, get back. It’s Foy’s birthday—he goes first.”
Her eyes flickering open.
Black underwear coming toward her, with that bulge.
Hands stripping off the underwear, a flash of penis.
“Turn her over, boys. I’m going anal.”
So many hands on her . . .
Then pain stabbing through her . . .
She stands, crying out.
Jade twisted away from Foy at the sound, to see Kris stumbling out of the stall.
She bolted out after her.
In the corridor between the stables, Kris was doubled over, gasping. “I can’t. I can’t. Please. I can’t . . .”
“Easy. Easy,” Jade soothed. But Kris’s breath was so labored it hurt to listen.
Jade turned and ran to the stable master’s quarters. Inside the room she put the knife on the shaky table and dropped down beside their boxes of supplies, rooting through until she found a paper bag. She dumped out packages of chips and candy and ran back out of the room.
Kris was on her hands and knees, wheezing. Jade pulled her upright, sat her against the stable wall, held the bag up to her face.
“Shh. Breathe into this,” she whispered. “Just breathe.” She clamped the bag around Kris’s nose and mouth, until Kris wrapped her hand around the bag and panted into it.
“Easy. Breathe.” Jade glanced anxiously at the shut stable doors.
We don’t need those assholes to hear this.
As soon as Kris’s breathing stabilized, Jade pulled her up to standing, led her back to their private room, and closed the door behind them.
“It’s okay,” she reassured Kris as she pushed her gently down to sit on the mattress. She sat beside her, put an arm around her, holding her lightly.
Kris was mumbling, but Jade heard her, all right.
“I don’t have a sister.”
Jade sat for a moment without speaking. “I know.”
“It was me—” Kris stopped as Jade’s words sunk in. “You know . . . ?” Kris pulled back, stared at her, shaken. “Since when?”
“From the start.”
Kris seemed speechless. Jade shrugged. “I get it. You had to do something. They do you like that, leave all that shit inside you . . .”
She had to stop, get hold of herself. She made her voice hard.
“You’ve got to get it out of you. Be something else. Be someone else. Anything.” She shrugged. “So hey—whatever works.”
Kris’s voice was trembling. “This morning . . . when we took him . . . He doesn’t even recognize me. I was just a piece of meat.”
“Yeah. That’s how they do.” Jade leaned forward, touched Kris’s knee. “He knows who you are now.”
But now that she’d started talking, Kris couldn’t seem to stop.
“I went to that Halloween party and I was drinking . . . so so much. I don’t remember anything after an hour.”
Of course not. You were drugged out of your mind. That’s how they get us.
“I danced with him. T-Topher. He had . . . his hands all over me. That’s the last thing I remember until I woke up in the Basement. There were four of them. Standing around . . .”
There are four of them, plus Darrell. Playing cards in that broken-down farmhouse, while she’s off in a back bedroom, trying to sleep. But she can’t sleep. Somewhere inside, she knows why Darrell offered to watch her that weekend. And Alison, that joke of a mother, just let him. She let him . . .
“They were laughing,” Kris choked out.
The drunken laughter.
“And saying things . . .”
The snow sifting down from the cracks in the ceiling.
“I couldn’t move. Someone was holding me down.”
Hands all over her, pinching her breasts, holding her down.
“And they fucked me. They kept fucking me . . .”
One after the other, over and over again . . .
Fuck them. Fuck them to hell.
A sound fills the room, a wild keening sound, and Jade doesn’t know if it’s coming from her or from Kris.
But Kris is standing, swaying. She grabs for the knife that Jade left on the table, runs out into the line of stalls.
She throws open the gate of Foy’s stall. The gate slams against the wall.
The sound jars Foy to consciousness. He struggles to sit up, and his face changes as he sees Kris bearing down on him, raising the knife.
“What? What the fuck—”
They are his last words, as Kris slashes at his throat with the knife. His scream dissolves into a horrible wet gargling sound.
Jade stands in the open gate, watching as Kris stabs him again and again and again. Blood sprays and he gurgles, choking on his own blood.
After a time, Jade walks over to Kris, puts her hand on her back until she twists around to face her. Blood flies. Jade reaches out fast, grasps her wrist . . . and eases the knife away from her.
Down at the other end of the stables, Topher is screaming. “What the fuck? What the fuck? What the fuck?”
Jade turns around, leaves the stall, walks down the outside dirt corridor.
She steps
into Topher’s stall.
He is on his knees, straining against the shackles. One has come loose from the wall.
Topher jerks around and sees her standing there. She knows how she must look: blood spattered in her hair, on her white cami . . . and the bloody knife in her hand.
But he’s staring at her face. “You,” he chokes out.
“Where do you think you’re going?” she says, flatly.
He scrambles back in the straw, yanking at his chains.
She steps slowly forward, staring at him. “You really don’t get it, do you?” Her voice is toneless. “You still think you’re going to survive this. Be some kind of hero for escaping your evil captors. You don’t get that you’re the bad guy. And you can’t be allowed to live . . . because you don’t even get that you did anything wrong.”
He is on his knees, jerking and twisting the chains, raging. “You can’t kill me. You can’t fucking kill me—”
She steps forward, grabs his hair between her fingers, and slashes his throat.
Then steps back and watches while he bleeds out onto the straw.
“I just fucking did,” she says softly to the dark.
DAY SIX
Chapter Seventy-Two
The skull-masked figure stares out of the frame, empty eye sockets seemingly fixed on the viewer. That hissing, spectral voice reverberates from the screen.
“And so it has begun. Day one of the new order.”
The video cuts to a shot of the pile of bodies in the Phoenix alley. The camera pans over the corpses, a cold, lingering look at the violence, then focuses tight on the bloody shirt reading GRAB ’EM BY THE PUSSY.
The voice continues over the image. “Predators beware. Your words will no longer be tolerated. Your actions will no longer be tolerated. We are everywhere. We are watching. We will not stand by. Even now we are gathering your names and addresses. One a day will die, or more.
“We will end rapists until we end rape.”
Andrea Janovy sat in her wheelchair in front of the TV, watching the latest from Bitch. The footage cut to the White House spokesman, already ranting in impotent rage.
Janovy smiled a cold smile. Then the doorbell rang.
She backed up her wheelchair to go into the hall.
Hunger Moon (The Huntress/FBI Thrillers Book 5) Page 22