I look back toward the stairwell we passed. The kids all watch us but don’t seem fazed by us breaking in at all. I’m sure they’ve seen worse in this neighborhood. I go up to them. “Do you know the man who lives in that apartment?”
They stay silent.
I pull out my decoy wallet. “I’ll make it worth it. But you have to tell me the truth. If you lie, I’ll come back for my money.” I keep my gun in my other hand. I have no plans of doing anything like that. But they don’t know that. I want to put the fear of God into them so that they’ll tell me the truth.
A girl that looks like she can’t even be ten speaks up, “I know where he hangs out down the street.” Her knotted blonde hair hangs in her face. I can’t make out if she’s lying.
One of the boys nudges her. “Shut up.”
He then looks at me, his brown eyes trying to size me up. “What’s the information worth to ya?”
I count six of them. I then pull out six of the one-hundreds I keep in my decoy wallet. I figure if someone lifts it off me, they need it more than me. I keep my cards and my ID in my shoes when I know I’m going to be walking the street. “A hundred for each of you if you tell me where.”
Fanning it out so they can see each bill, I hold the money just out of reach.
Eyes wide with greed, they all start talking at once. I’m sure this could feed them for a week or more.
“Shut up!” I growl.
They all fall silent. I motion to the girl. “Where.”
Her eyes never leave the money. “A mile that way.” She points to the South. “There’s an abandoned neighborhood. He hangs out in one of the crack houses. I’ve seen him take his working girls there when we’re breaking windows. Sometimes I hear screams from the basement. It has anAspray-painted in red on the door.
Despite the heat, my skin tingles with goosebumps. I swear if he’s hurt a single hair on Carissa’s head, I’ll shoot him and make his body disappear myself. I’ve been in this town long enough that I know how to do it.
I raise a brow at her. “If you’re lying, I will be back for my money.”
She shrinks back. “I’m not lying, mister.”
I feel bad for scaring them but can’t be headed toward another dead end. I don’t know when they took her. And it’s been hours since I found out she was missing.
Leaning forward, I give them each a bill. One of them checks it against the light outside one of the apartments.
“Mine’s real!”
I motion to Jenkins. “C’mon we’ll take your car.” Leaving my car here means it might get stripped or stolen by the time we get back. I don’t care. I can buy ten new cars if that one gets stolen. I just don’t want him to lose his car because of me, he doesn’t make nearly as much as I do.
We hop inside and he peels out of the parking lot.
“I know the neighborhood she’s talking about. It’s supposed to be demolished in four months to make way for renovations to this area. When the banks started evicting people, I was getting calls left and right to help them fight it. In the end, there wasn’t much I could do other than make the banks pay out more than they wanted, so the people could have money to move elsewhere. Turn right up here.” I point.
Jenkins snorts. “Building something out here and not addressing the crime is like putting a cute band-aid over a festering wound and expecting it to fix the problem.”
He turns his car down the street and we look for the one with red spray paint. Abandoned houses like this just beg for people to commit crimes in it. They’re going to have a hell of a time getting the cops out here to kick out all the squatters. I have my doubts that they’ll be able to build anything here.
He slams on the breaks. “There.” He points at the house directly in front of us where the road ends in a cul-de-sac. The headlights light up the brown house. All the windows are broken out, and the door hangs off its hinges, but there’s a redApainted on it.
I waste no time getting out of the car and taking out my gun as I sprint across the ground. I hope that kid was telling the truth. I hope it more than anything. Jenkins hurries to catch up with me. We have our guns drawn again. The house is dark, but the headlights from the car illuminate most of it. We quiet our steps. That girl said he does things to women in the basement here, which means this house has one. A lot of the houses in the cheaper neighborhoods are only one level. This one must be an exception.
I still when I hear voices. They’re muffled.
“Help!” Someone calls. It’s Mary.
I can’t hold myself back anymore. I rush forward, following it to a door that leads downstairs. Several lanterns light it up.
They’re in the process of pouring gasoline everywhere around the girls who are tied to one of the support beams. I round the corner my gun aimed at the man closest to her. “Carissa!”
“Knox!” she sobs. “I can’t get the zip ties to break!”
