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A mystery only time would solve.
Shade glanced at the names on his list. The faded paper that held them had been folded into fourths, the edges of the folds now almost worn through.
He could decipher the letters and sound out the names now. He might not be able to do it quickly, but he could do it.
Thanks to Chelle.
Thanks to Josie and Maddie.
Thanks to their patience and understanding.
Almost every name had been written in a different handwriting. Some shakier than others, depending at what point during Shade’s visit he had the man write down the next name. Which actually was the one prior since Shade had been working backward from fourteen years old to four.
Every name on his list now had a line drawn through it. Except for one. The last person he needed to visit.
But it would.
There wasn’t much he wanted in life.
Chelle.
His brotherhood.
Revenge.
He needed to deal with that last want before he’d allow himself to have the first one. His gut instinct told him he’d be forever restless if he didn’t deal with his thirst for revenge first.
But it would soon be over.
He had one name to go. The original broker. The man who had invited a bunch of strange men into a big room in a big house. The man who ran that original auction where his mother stood naked on a wood platform while those strange men touched her and made her cry.
The room where Julian stood at the back with another man and watched his mother be sold. The room where he last saw her.
The room where he was forced to stand on that box and had his clothes cut from him until he was naked, too. The room where strange men also touched him.
The room in the house which was owned by the broker who sold him to the highest bidder.
The highest bidder whose name was now crossed off Shade’s list.
A straight line had been drawn through his name, similar to the straight line drawn across his throat, directly below the man’s bouncing Adam’s apple.
That man would not be buying any more little boys, abusing any more stolen toddlers, and he would not be the start of any child’s decade-long torturous nightmare.
No, he wouldn’t be doing any of those things anymore.
Shade was disappointed, but not surprised, to find his first “daddy’s” tastes hadn’t changed much over the last couple of decades. In fact, the little boy Shade found in his old “room” was maybe about three.
Shade wasn’t good at judging ages on children but whether the boy was three, four or even seventeen, it didn’t matter. The “daddy” didn’t deserve to take another breath. Shade only hoped he saved the boy from a lifetime of nightmares. Or at least, less of them.
He also hoped the boy had someone to go home to and someone to love him no matter what. At least, once the pigs found him after Shade left an anonymous tip on the missing and exploited children hotline an hour after he made sure no evidence was left behind. No evidence of Shade’s existence, but plenty of evidence on why the man’s throat was cut.
Not too many people would care about the man’s loss. At first they might, but in the end, when the man’s secret life came out, no one would even bother to pretend. Only pedophiles liked other pedophiles and sometimes not even then. Ones who thought being attracted to a twelve-year-old was acceptable, but four-year-olds? To them, that was sick.
That irony had not been lost on Shade, even when he was a boy named Julian.
Shade tucked the list back into his wallet and kept to the shadows as he moved along the side of the house and into the backyard. It was a big house in a gated community with a guard posted at the entrance. The neighborhood probably had its own security, too. Rent-a-cops who were most likely paid off to look the other way during the “invitation-only” parties and ignore the complaints about the amount of vehicles parked on the neighborhood streets. Because even though the parties were exclusive, they were highly attended. And nosy neighbors tended to notice.
Parties where the “caterers” delivered women and children in vans instead of food. Where the delivery vans pulled into the large garage and the garage doors closed behind them before those deliveries were unloaded.
The garage where the guests pulled in their own fancy vehicles and had their “party favors” loaded for them before leaving.
Yeah, Shade bet nothing had changed in the last twenty-six years. Though he doubted this was the same big house from back then. He was sure the broker moved every year or so.
But whether in this neighborhood or the last, or the one before that, the same cycle continued year after year. New location, new names, new faces, new perverted clientele.
