AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Damien Malik’s mother, it appeared. At least as the answer to the second question.
Dess had closed her eyes, her lips pressed tight as if she was resisting the urge to vomit. I wouldn’t have blamed her if she’d given in to that urge, even though it would have made our exit a lot trickier. She drew in a few shaky breaths and forced her eyes open again.
Together, we sorted through the photos. There were five of them in total, each of a different child. The youngest I’d estimate was four and the oldest maybe ten. All of them were dead; all bore similar wounds that spoke of horrifying torture.
By the end of it, I didn’t want to steal the contents of the box. I wanted to burn it out of existence. And preferably out of my mind too, if that’d been possible.
Dess was still staring at the last photo, which showed a girl who looked to be about six years old. Her blond hair was streaked with her own blood, two of her delicate fingers chopped right off her hand where it’d stiffened against the floor in death. Dess drew her forefinger over one of the wounds on the corpse’s side, a jagged one that gaped open.
“The knife they’d have had to use to do that kind of damage,” she said in a strained voice. “And the way they must have dragged it through her body to make that kind of mark… It would have been excruciatingly painful. I’m not sure I’d do it to my worst enemy, let alone a kid. And they all have cuts like that, more than one. How could anyone be that cruel to someone so helpless?”
A memory flickered up in the back of my mind of a different broken body, and I swallowed thickly. “Some people are just horrible.”
“And why does my grandmother have them?” she added, that additionally horrible layer to this situation sinking in.
Echo glanced at the photos and shuddered. “That is fucking sick,” he muttered, and pulled back toward the door as if he couldn’t stand to even be near the images. I gave him a few points for having some sense of morality.
With my jaw clenched against my nausea, I snapped my own photos of each of the Polaroids. The thought of having those images on my phone made me want to set it on fire too, but we needed to be able to examine them later. There might be clues we didn’t have time to pore over right now… and I’d like to be able to have a bucket at the ready when I did, in case my stomach finally heaved itself up my throat.
None of this made any sense. Yes, we’d had our suspicions that there was something fishy going on with the Maliks, but never in a million years would I have thought it’d involve torturing children.
Of course, the torture and the deaths themselves might not have anything to do with any of them. Maybe these were images from crimes they’d discovered that they were trying to fight back against.
If that were the case, though, I didn’t know why they’d have kept the evidence in a safety deposit box instead of giving it to the police.
As soon as I’d gotten my photos, Dess shoved the box shut. Echo scurried over for just long enough to lock the door that hid it. Then he ushered us out of the room with as much urgency as if it were filling with poisoned air, which I hoped wasn’t actually the case. The mission had gotten noxious enough as it was.
We dodged the same security measures on the way out, Echo moving with ruthless efficiency. As soon as we were back out in the night air, which tasted unbelievably fresh washing into my lungs, he shot a glance at Dess. “I want nothing more to do with this,” he said, and marched away without another word.
I couldn’t say I blamed him.
Dess was silent all the way to the car. When we reached it, she got into the back instead of the front and dropped her head into her hands. I slid in next to her, not sure whether she’d want to be touched. Not sure whether I could manage to touch her in a way that’d be comforting when I was so twisted up inside myself.
“Why did she have those pictures?” she whispered. “Where did they come from? What’s this supposed to mean?”
“We’ll figure it out,” I said, my voice sounding distant to my own ears. “We’ll get to the bottom of it.”
“Five of them.” Her head jerked up, her eyes widening with panic. “What if it’s still happening? What if whoever hurt those kids is still doing it?”
I knew the right answer to that question. Resolve hardened inside me, pushing down my queasiness. “Then we’ll stop them,” I said firmly.
Dess’s forehead furrowed. “How can you be so sure?”
“I just know we’ll find a way. I’ll find a way.” I paused, and then let the story spill out, as much of it as I was willing to say. “You know what I’m like—how hyperactive I am. I was even worse as a kid. I got on people’s nerves, and a bunch of kids in the neighborhood bullied the hell out of me for it. The worst of it was—”
The words stuck in my throat despite my intentions. Dess frowned, gripping my hand. “What happened?” she asked softly.
The obvious concern in her tone unlocked my voice. “I had a dog. A mutt, no special breed—fox terrier mix or something. He was the only thing I had back then that didn’t mind how I was. And one day the bullies—they grabbed him out of my yard—I found him in the back alley, all battered and bloody. Dead. It looked like they’d kicked him back and forth until his bones broke, and then they smashed his skull with a rock.”
Fury flared in Dess’s gaze. “That’s more than bullying. They were psychopaths.”
I shrugged. “They were vicious kids. I don’t know how much they even understood what they were doing. Maybe they thought of it like a stuffed animal. Whatever. It doesn’t help anything for me to rage about it now. But when it happened—I was so mad at myself that I hadn’t managed to protect him. That he’d gotten hurt like that because of me. That was when I swore to myself that I’d never be so powerless I couldn’t save the things and people that matter to me again.”
“You don’t even know those kids in the photos,” she pointed out.
“I do know that I’ve seen them,” I insisted. “And I sure as hell care that it doesn’t happen to anyone else. So you’d better believe I’m going to fight until we destroy whoever’s responsible.”
And it wasn’t just the kids. Did Dess even realize that she now topped my list of people who mattered to me?
If uncovering the story behind those children would help her, I’d walk through Hell itself to figure out what happened and how it was connected to the Malik family. I wouldn’t let her meet a similarly horrific fate.
I would protect her, no matter what I had to give to do it.
