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Manycame before him.
This man standing before me in his dark pants, his polo-neck sweater, his slick self-satisfied smile…he has buttons, just like me. And if I can figure out the right ones to press, it won’t take me seven days to get the fuck out of here.
5
FYRE
The kid was hesitant to give me his name, but when I told him mine, he finally relented. Samuel’s not a bad driver. He hasn’t taken his eyes off the road even once, his hands gripped white-knuckle tight at ten-and-two on the steering wheel. We’ve been doing forty the last ten miles, and he doesn’t seem to be inclined to speed up.
“How far still, mister?” Samuel asks when a nearby sign comes up. I guess he’s hoping it’s my turnoff.
It could be. Or maybe it’s not. I don’t have a fucking clue. “I told you, you can call me Steve.”
“St-steve.” The kid parrots the name like he’s struggling to come to terms with this situation. “So, uh, how far still, Mi—Steve?”
The sign is meaningless to me. I’ve only ventured this far into Waspwood Forest on a handful of occasions, and each time I’d been using my phone’s GPS. Amazing how little information a brain retains when it’s relying on technology.
“Where were you headed, Samuel?”
He flinches every time I use his name. “A few miles up ahead.”
“Then we’re together until the end of the line.” I almost call him kid.
He’s only a few years younger than Charlotte. That thought sends me into a dark, downward spiral of self-loathing and hate.
How am I any different from Red, or Peter, or the other depraved sickos I’ve dealt with in the past? I was only too happy to snatch up poor, damaged Charlotte and use her like a fucking paper napkin. I was telling myself it was all to help her, but I had my own selfish reasons for what I did to her.
The things I forced her to do to me.
It doesn’t even make me happy to know that my plan worked.
Samuel gives me a nervous side glance when I huff out a bemused breath. I turn away, staring out the window as I curl my fingers against my mouth.
When you spend as much time as I do hunting down pedophiles and human traffickers and violent sexual deviants, there comes a stage when logic no longer seems to apply. Sure, human psychology can explain away a lot—the compulsions, the fixations, theneedsthese sick individuals have.
But there’s something almost esoteric to the way they organize. How they network and collaborate and fuckingnesttogether. Not physically, but mentally. Emotionally.
I tapped into that ephemeral web of depravity with Charlotte, and I never even realized it.
How Red found me, I can’t explain. I was sure to erase any kind of metadata from the videos and images I sent out.
Samuel gasps when I slam my forehead against the window. I feel Arrow stiffen before she starts panting, her eyes showing the whites, but staring straight ahead.
Idiot! Fucking idiot!
“You ever done something so stupid, you can’t even fathom how you’ve made it this far in life?” My voice is bitter, and when I glance at the kid, his eyes are round.
“Yeah, sure, mister,” he says quietly. I can tell he’s regretting having stopped for Arrow, not that she gave him much choice at the time. “We all do silly things every—”
My acidic laugh cuts him off. “Silly?” I shake my head, my mouth pulling into a tight line. Arrow’s panting mists up the windshield, but the kid doesn’t seem to notice. “Silly things don’t cost people’s lives.”
Samuel starts to shake. He gives his lips a quick swipe with his tongue. “Um, so, my turn is up ahead.” His hand trembles when he switches the indicator on. “So, um, if it’s okay, mister, I’m gonna let you off here. I’m sure someone will come past soon, get you where you, um, where you need to go and stuff.”
The silence as he pulls over is arctic. Or maybe it’s the winter air seeping into the cab. He stops, the truck idling roughly, and I hear him swallow over the sound of the engine.
“That’s okay, right?”
“Yes, of course.” I open the door, and see him sag in relief as I climb out. Arrow glances in my direction, then carries on staring ahead.
