The past few weeks, he continued to go to Chelle’s on the weekends to paint. He also went over to her house the nights the girls were working late to continue with his lessons. Even better, a couple of times during the week they met at the motel. No lessons, no painting. Just them and that bowl of wraps.
He could read a few simple words now, which was more than he ever expected, but it was still difficult. He often got the letters turned around and had a hard time visualizing the words, whether in his head or on paper. Trying to read a short sentence could be excruciating and frustrating. While he’d wanted to give up many times, Chelle refused to let him quit.
She was determined to get him to the point where he could at least read at a basic level. But all Shade wanted to do was be able to read the names on his list. He’d been working backwards, starting with David. Before he left David’s house, he forced the fucker to tell him the name of the man he bought Julian from and had him write the name, along with his own, on a scrap of paper. When he was done with “Daddy David,” Shade drew a line through his name. Just like the line he made across David’s throat. The same one Julian tried to draw all those years ago when he was fourteen and failed.
That night, Shade didn’t fail. He got the info he needed and made sure David would never hurt a child, or anyone, again.
He saved the next name, who turned out to be a broker, to memory. After finding that broker and getting him to write down three more names on his list of men who had owned Julian—names he remembered only too well—he sliced that motherfucker’s throat, too.
A different type of monster, but a monster all the same. A man who bought and sold, sometimes even traded, children didn’t deserve to breathe.
After that Shade was stuck. He had three names he couldn’t read. It hit him later he should have recorded the broker saying those names with his phone. But then, a voice memo could end up used as evidence.
In this situation, the less evidence the better.
Even so, Shade wasn’t in a rush. He had been willing to take his time to find each and every one of them. Even if it took him the rest of his life.
The only problem with not taking care of that business sooner than later, Shade knew none of those fuckers stopped their perverse habit of buying children to satisfy their desires. None of them would ever change. The sooner Shade got to them, the sooner they’d be done doing the shit they did to kids like Julian. The only good child molester was a dead one.
He couldn’t think too hard on all the other ones out there Shade didn’t know firsthand. He was sure there were plenty more deviants in the world. As long as there was a supply of children, there’d always be a sick demand.
And it wasn’t just children bought and sold, as evidenced by his mother being the original target. Julian, at the time, ended up being an unexpected bonus.
He was only missing one owner yet. The man who bought him at the first auction when he was four. The motherfucker who owned Shade until he was six years old and became “too old” for him.
A six-year-old was too old for the sick motherfucker to fuck.
A six-year-old like Daisy.
That right there was one reason why he watched closely over Cassie and Daisy whenever he could. His excuse was to protect them from being snagged by the Shirleys, so no one questioned why he did it.
But if someone snatched Daisy, that motherfucker would have more than only Judge to deal with. And Judge would lose his fucking mind.
Hell, the whole club would.
But for now, he needed to get out of his head and concentrate on tonight’s mission before he did something stupid and got caught.
Before the night was over, he hoped the Shirleys’ number would be down to seven because tonight he was taking another one. He just needed to find the one he was looking for.
He had skirted the main compound by coming from the west, hoping like fuck he didn’t step on a goddamn landmine or booby trap. He had picked his way carefully through brush and around trees to go directly up to one of the smaller clearings, one more remote because it was higher up the mountain. An old camper had been parked there so long ago, it was now mostly hidden by weeds.
In a past scouting trip, Shade noticed signs of someone living in it, which surprised him since it appeared abandoned. One night he’d watched a Shirley bend his wife, or aunt, or sister—whatever the fuck she was—over a broken picnic table that sat right outside the door of the rusty camper. The woman, who couldn’t be much more than eighteen, if that, wasn’t fighting so Shade assumed she was willing. In fact, the female was vocally encouraging him. Really fucking loudly, too. Otherwise, Shade would’ve stepped in. But since he wasn’t taking out any of the Shirley women unless in self-defense, he needed to get that fucker alone. Living remotely and away from any of the other Shirley residences made the man a perfect target. Shade just needed to time it right, so he wasn’t spotted and the Shirley was caught off guard.
He was so high up the mountain tonight Shade couldn’t risk dragging the body back down to where the van was parked.
While his preference would be to go in, slice throats and leave the bodies where they fell, he had to change up the pattern to keep them guessing. Whether by having them disappear completely by reducing the bodies to ashes at the crematorium or leaving the corpse behind and making it look like an accident. Or even dragging the body to a spot where it could start decomposing or the coyotes or bears, or whatever other meat eaters roamed the woods, could find it and enjoy a good meal.
“Circle of life” and all that fucking happy crap.
He paused at the edge of the overgrown clearing. The Shirleys loved to breed, they just hated to weed. He moved from one cover to the next, trying to get as close as possible, listening for signs of life inside the broken door of the dumpy camper.
Shade wouldn’t even let Jury or Justice live in a rust trap like that.
He needed to stop worrying about shitty dwellings, discarded garbage, overgrown weeds and Shirley women getting fucked from behind, and find his damn target so he could get the fuck out of there before morning light.
Since it was late Friday night, he’d like to get at least a couple hours of sleep before heading over to Chelle’s to paint.
A scampering noise came from behind him, along with the breaking of branches and twigs under feet.
Whatever it was wasn’t trying to be stealthy and was moving quickly. He hoped to fuck it wasn’t a hungry coyote.
He adjusted his grip on his knife and spun to face whatever it was head-on, and as he did so, realized it wasn’t an animal coming for him at all. At least one with four legs.
No, this little animal had two legs and was almost on him.
Before his brain could process what the fuck was happening, since the last thing he expected to see was a young boy, the aluminum baseball bat made contact with his leg, collapsing it at the knee and knocking him to the fucking ground.
What the fuck!
He rolled onto his belly and tried to get up so he could grab the kid or bat or both, but before he could, the kid howled like a banshee and took another wild swing, making contact with his head and scrambling his brain worse than normal.
Luckily, he was able to dodge a direct impact, but the extreme agony that followed knocked all the oxygen from his lungs and prevented him from rising again.
He groaned when he tried to roll over to prevent another strike.