Chapter 19

19

Nick

Flashlight in hand, I descended the staircase into the bowels of the abandoned Michigan Central Train Station. While I should’ve been preparing myself for the next round of horror, images of Aubree’s naked ass under that dress had me about one thread from losing my mind.

The woman did things to my head. If not for the fact that I was forced to bring her meals, I should’ve stayed away from her room. I was certain I’d be plagued with nightmares after the trafficking bust, and yet, a drunken night with Alec had ended in dreams of Aubree waking me up and riding me in my bed as I lay half passed out.

The fuck was wrong with me? Two days ago, I’d wanted to tear the woman apart, and suddenly all I could think about was hiking up that dress and burying my dick inside her panty-less ass.

With the heel of my palm, I knocked my temple. “Get her out of your head,” I muttered, rounding the last flight of stairs. I had to focus. I had a job to do. The last thing I needed was images of her tight body and firm breasts jockeying for my attention.

Faint, almost ghostly screams echoed down the hall, as I trudged through water stagnant enough to leave a putrid sting in my nose. I followed the sounds that, to any other trespasser, might’ve been mistaken for the horrific cries of a ghost.

In time, he would be.

Brown and black stains coated the tunnel walls. The brick had been chipped away, crumbled in some parts, not only with age, but from scrappers who’d cased the place for all the copper.

Light bled beneath a door from inside, where I’d placed a lantern two nights before, when I’d imprisoned Julius after abducting him. As I reached there, muffled screams came into sharp clarity. The raspy quality of his voice told me the asshole must’ve screamed for two days straight.

In the center of the room, Julius sat blindfolded and strapped to a chair. “Who’s there? Please! Someone help me!” At his ankles, large wounds glistened where rats had obviously chewed. Fuckin’ room stank like shit, and I choked back the urge to upchuck right there on the floor. “Man, if that’s you. Please. I’m … I’m sorry … for what I did to that little girl.”

Those images, as much as I wanted to forget them, gave me the fuel I craved. The motivation to do what needed to be done.

According to Rev, word on the street was that Julius’s big brother Brandon had put out a manhunt for him. He wanted any information on the masked vigilante, as I’d been referred to in the news.

“I’ll do anything … you want. Anything, please.” His shoulders juddered with a sob. “Just get me the fuck out of here! Please! There’s voices at night, man! And fucking rats!” His skin had grown pale, mottled, as if he’d become sick from his wounds.

“I understand there’s an abandoned factory somewhere in the city where women and kids are housed before getting distributed to various pimps.” Arms crossed behind my back, I circled him, sloshing the shallow water pooled on the floor. “Is that true?”

“I …” He gulped a swallow. “I don’t know anything about that.”

“It’s my understanding that they’re drugged. Raped. Beaten. Tortured. Kept in cages. Like animals.”

His tongue swept over his lips, and he trembled as if he might cry again. “The girls we get are … they’re kept at motels. Not abandoned buildings.”

“According to your criminal records, you lured the girls to this abandoned shithole. Sweet talked them.” Julius had a reputation of being a sweet talker. “I’m just giving you a taste of how it feels to be taken out of your element. Scared shitless. Willing to do whatever it takes to get free.” I came to a halt in front of him. “Are you willing to do whatever it takes to be free?”

“Yes, yes, man. You want me to suck you off? I’ll do it. I don’t give a shit. Let me go, and I won’t tell a single mothafucka what happened here.”

“I don’t want you to suck me off, Julius. I want you to help me with something.”

“Anything!”

“So eager.” I smiled at his pathetic stupidity. “No wonder you don’t feel guilty raping little girls. I almost don’t feel guilty for what I’m about to do, either.”

His blindfolded face lifted, vacillating back and forth as he seemed to search the air for me. “What do you want from me, man?”

“I was sent by Culling to kill you,” I lied. “Your little crew is getting far too powerful, and he wants to take you down. Unfortunately, Culling has too many connections for me to take on by myself.” I crouched in front of him, and my nose crinkled at the stench of piss emanating from his body. “See, I don’t want to kill you, Julius. I think, deep down, you want to be good, don’t you?”

“Yeah. I don’t … I want out. I don’t want to do this shit anymore.”

“Okay. Here’s what we can do. We need to get the FBI on our side. Culling’s too powerful to take down alone. They need to know what’s going down. So, I’m going to send a message to a contact I have. I think he can help, but he needs some evidence. Otherwise, I’m afraid I’ll have to leave you here to die. Because I just can’t bring myself to kill you. You understand?”

“Yeah, yeah.” He shifted in his chair. He must’ve been delirious from lack of food and water if he bought that bullshit. “I’ll do it.”

“Good. I’m going to start the camera, and I want you to tell me everything. Your name, your crew, and how Culling is involved.”

His lip quivered, head nodding frantically. “You’ll set me free?”

“Of course. I’ll have what I need against Culling. And, I promise, I’ll set you free.”

I flipped on the phone’s camera and pressed record, careful not to say a word. After a ten second pause, Julius began talking. In the ten minutes that followed, he confessed to the abductions, the drug deals, The Culling sweeps, and Culling’s own personal stake in the operation. All the missing pieces I couldn’t have garnered, not even on the deep net, came spilling out of his mouth.

Until, at last, he finished.

“Thank you, Julius.” I stuffed the small phone into a plastic bag, then into my pocket, and removed his blindfold, allowing him the opportunity to adjust to the light.

“Who … who are you? You look familiar.” His eyes squinted as he studied my face, until they widened, damn near popping out of his head. “You’re … I know you.” Surprise quickly turned to sobs. “I know you,” he said on a wail. “Please don’t kill me, man. Please.” He rocked as much as he could against the ropes. “This place. The voices. The ghosts. I’m fucking going crazy up in here!”

“Do you know how old my son was when you shot him in the back, Julius?” I hammered my fist into his face before he could answer, knocking a tooth free that splashed into the water. “Five. Five years old.”

After slicing into the man’s ear, my head is wrenched back, and a fist pounds into my cheek, until all I can do is drop to the floor, half conscious. The room spins out of control, and smack in the middle is red.

My son’s red pajamas.

He backs himself away from the room filled with a view that will ruin him for the rest of his life. “Daddy?” He cries, and all I want to do is scoop him up. Tell him it’ll be okay, hold him to make sure some small part of him hasn’t been destroyed by what he’s seen, but the blackness is filtering in quickly.

I crawl toward him. “Jay?” I reach out for him with a trembling hand.

Black boots block my view. “Hey … little man. I’ll give you five seconds to run. Five. Four.”

My screams reverberate inside my skull as the seconds tick quickly.

My son is silenced with a bullet.

“I’m … sorry.” Julius’s words carried a lisp and snapped me from memories. “We … we was told to …”

I hit him again, kicking his head to the side once more, and he spat blood. “His birthday was in two days. He’d been telling me all week how excited he was. How he couldn’t wait to blow out six birthday candles on his cake.” I choked back the tears at the memory, allowing the pain and fury to give me the crazed rush of adrenaline I craved. “But that never happened.”

“Please don’t kill me, man. Please.”

I tugged the knife from my hip with one hand and gripped his jaw, reaching in with the other to take hold of his tongue. He bit down onto my finger, and I drilled another punch to his face, knocking out a front tooth. Against the screaming and kicking, I sliced his tongue clean from his mouth.

Choking fits and gurgles had my lip crimping.

“Not so much the sweet talker now, are you, Julius?” I waved his severed tongue in the air and tossed it into the water. Cramming the barrel of my gun into his mouth, I chewed on my lip for a moment, waiting for his bawling to die down. “Hey … little man. I’ll give you five seconds to run. Five.”

His scream brought a smile to my face.

“Four. Three. Two.” I pulled back the hammer. “Are you ready to be set free?”

Blackness filtered in.

* * *

Peeling off the black leather gloves coated in sticky blood, I tossed them to the floor and nabbed a pair of tongs from inside a plastic bag. I had Alec to thank for all the sterile technique. He’d taught me all the ways that police processed evidence in the lab, how even the tiniest fibers could be analyzed. I’d had no idea an entire genetic code could be found at the root of a single human hair. Fascinating.

Alec was something of a Jack of all trades. While I probably would’ve been inclined to throw caution to the wind, sending the recording to DeMarcus Corley without a single thought for the possibility that they could identify me, Alec insisted on taking great care in eliminating the possibility.

Keeping to his demands, I set the envelope on a plastic square I’d laid on the front seat of my car and addressed the package to the only cop who’d earned my trust so far.

Perhaps he’d find some use out of Julius’s confession.