Shade paused. He believed him. He’d need to find his mother himself. But now she wasn’t the only mother he’d need to find. “What kind of filmmaker bought the boy’s mother?”
When Miller was slow in answering, Shade pulled up the flap of flesh again and began to saw more away from his body.
“Stop!” Miller shrieked. “Just stop. I’ll tell you...” His head flopped forward and he panted loudly. “I’ll tell you. Just... Just... stop. Please...”
“Ain’t heard the answer yet,” Shade warned and yanked on the loose corner of flesh.
“I... Fuck! The kind she doesn’t recover from.”
Shade let the slippery chunk of bloody flesh slide from his fingers. “What the fuck does that mean?”
When he took out the trash, he normally did it in a calm manner and felt nothing. Numb. Dead inside. The same way he’d felt for many years of his youth. He would draw inward to deal with what was happening around him, to him. But what Miller just said made his heart thump. And if his heart was beating, he wasn’t dead inside. He was very much alive.
What Miller revealed also made him remember bits and pieces of discussions Julian heard whenever he was sold or traded back to a broker. Discussions, and even jokes, about what happened to the women who weren’t “pretty enough” or had become drug addicts. Or the kids who got too old or were considered untrainable.
Jesus Christ. Shade struggled to pull in his next breath.
A fucking snuff film.
The world was full of sick motherfuckers. Sick, sick motherfuckers. Both the people making snuff films and the people who jerked off to them. Goddamn sick.
“You sold her to that agent?”
“He was the highest bidder.”
“What was his name?”
“They don’t use their real name. Every time they show up, they use a different one to stay anonymous.”
“How do the winnin’ bidders pay?”
“Cash. It’s all in cash. Occasionally in gold. There’s never any paperwork. No traceable payments, no receipts, no real names. It’s cash and carry.”
Cash and carry.
For a human life.
“My mother. Was she sold to a filmmaker, too?”
“I told you, I don’t remember who bought your mother. How stupid are you?”
How stupid are you?
Do you have brain damage?
Are you retarded?
Your mother must’ve taken drugs when she was pregnant with you.
He bit the inside of his cheek until he tasted blood.
No. Not now.
He ignored the oozing flap of skin hanging from Miller’s back, grabbed a handful of his hair and yanked the man’s head back until it couldn’t go any further, then he pulled some more until the broker’s throat was stretched tight. Instead of his throat, Shade placed the blade along the man’s receding hairline. “How ‘bout I scalp you instead?”
“I swear I don’t remember!” Miller screamed, his face red and tears leaking from the corners of his eyes, piss dripping off his lap and puddling on the seat of the chair. It smelled like he might have even shit himself.
Shade leaned forward, stared directly down into Miller’s wide blue eyes and whispered, “Think harder,” letting the sharp edge of the blade bite into his tanned skin at the top of his forehead.
Tanned because he probably sat around the pool out back during the day. The pool that came along with the big house in this exclusive gated community. Bought with the souls of women and children.
Fucking motherfucker.
“Don’t! Please... Please...”
“How many women and children have you sold who you’ve forgotten?” Shade nudged the blade deeper into the man’s skin, causing a few droplets of deep red blood to roll down his temples and into his thinning gray hair.
“I... I don’t know. I don’t know!”
“Guess.”
“I don’t know... Maybe... Maybe... a hundred?”
No, that wasn’t right. “Wrong answer.”
“Maybe five hundred. I didn’t count!”
Shade removed the blade from his now bleeding hairline, leaned down and put his mouth closer to Miller’s ear. He murmured slowly, “Don’t think that’s the right answer, either.”
His grip tightened on the broker’s hair and his hand holding the knife moved in a blur.
He wasn’t wasting any more time on this motherfucker. Not a goddamn second more.
A wet gurgle was heard before the man’s neck gaped open. Shade loosened his fingers and Miller’s head remained tilted back. His eyes became unfocused and the remaining air in his lungs hissed and bubbled from his throat.
Blood began to roll down Miller’s naked chest and over his lap, down his thighs and drip onto the cream-colored ceramic tile under the chair.
Shade stepped over to the kitchen sink, scrubbed his knife clean, dried it on a dishtowel and tucked it back into the sheath strapped to his calf.
He left his latex gloves on when he washed the blood off his hands. He’d dispose of them elsewhere. Most likely burn them along with his completed list.
Then he did what he always did before leaving one of these fuckers’ houses.
He jogged up the stairs, found the attic and from there worked his way down, checking every room, every closet, every possible location a child or an adult could be hidden or kept captive.
For a newer, luxury home, the stairs down to the basement shouldn’t creak the way they did. As he took each noisy step down to the level below the earth, the temp dropped at least a degree or two.
The basement walls and floor were made of concrete, reminding Shade of a burial vault. The smell of bleach assaulted his nostrils. The eerie quiet invaded his brain. And his heart was doing its best to escape his chest.
He blinked as his world began to close in on itself. He fought it. The darkness. The memories.
The dank smell of dark basements came flooding back.
No. Not now.
In a house like this, the basement shouldn’t be musty or dank. It should be well-lit and finished off into a rec room.
Or a man cave.
A room the whole family could enjoy.
Not turned into a dungeon.
He paused on the last of the squeaky steps and took a deep breath so he wouldn’t turn and bolt back up them. With clenched jaws, Shade forced himself to turn his head. To see.
To see past his memories. To see the present.
What he saw weren’t actual cells. Not made of concrete and bars found in prison or jail. Nothing permanent like that.
No, they were cages. Ten of them that could be easily relocated to the next big house with a big room that could hold a lot of strange men with pockets full of cash.
The portable cages were made of thick black wire. Holding pens. Not for animals for which they were designed. But for humans.
Women. Children. Maybe even men.
All were empty.
But one.
The one at the very end. In the darkest corner of the basement. Farthest from any kind of window that might allow even the smallest amount of light to shine in, might give the tiniest amount of hope.
In the cage were two things.
A boy. And a bucket.
A fucking boy. And a fucking bucket.
Shade’s nostrils flared at the stench rising from the bucket, recognizable over the smell of the bleach, and he hadn’t even approached the cage yet.