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“Sure,” LaDerrick promised. “She’s the mother of the woman that you made me run a background check on a few weeks ago. Though, from what I’ve been able to discover, there’s absolutely no contact between mother and daughter. Mom and son, yes. Mom and daughter? The last known contact was a text some time ago from Mom to daughter that said: I need money. Daughter didn’t reply.”
Fuck.
“Thanks,” I said. “Can you start getting me surveillance on all of the individuals on the list?”
“Absolutely,” LaDerrick said. “Though, it’s already half done.”
Knowing he could take it from there, I went back to the other three on the list who weren’t related to the girl I couldn’t stop thinking about.
First dude was some utility worker who was only there when needed. And they hadn’t needed him in the last six months since he wasn’t registered to work in the state of Texas, and this was their home base now. Number two was a dude who was currently having cancer treatments and hadn’t been there in a year.
But number three…
Well, number three had deserved being thrown off a building anyway with the way I’d heard—and seen—him treating Crimson when I’d first met the family.
And now, well…now, I was going to enjoy getting him to talk.
The drive to the Singh Circus took fifteen minutes from my loft apartment in the heart of downtown Dallas.
I was dressed more casually today, which helped me blend right in with other staff that was coming and going from the area.
I walked straight to where I’d seen the fucker the last time I’d been here and found him on the phone in his office.
He was talking loudly, saying that ‘nobody listened to him anymore.’
I reached for my gun and took the silencer out of the other pocket.
Screwing it on like I had all the time in the world to work with, I waited for him to notice me.
It took him five more minutes.
When he finally turned around, I was more than aware of what his conversation was about, and I was screaming mad all over again.
He was talking about that ‘fat bitch redheaded cunt.’
I didn’t need to get confirmation to know that he was talking about Crimson.
He saw me standing there and froze.
“I…gotta go,” he said quickly, looking at me like he’d seen a ghost.
“You know why I’m here?” I asked.
He blinked rapidly, as if he was hoping that if he closed his eyes, maybe when he opened them next I wouldn’t be there.
“Y-yes,” he stuttered.
“And why do you think I’m here?” I wondered.
He swallowed hard. “I didn’t hurt any of them.”
I gave him a pointed look. “How about we sit right here and you tell me exactly what happened. Then, when you’re done and I’m sufficiently satisfied that you gave me everything, I’ll give you a quick death. But if I’m not…if I think you’re holding even one thing back, I’ll make sure that this is the worst experience of your life. Over and over again.”
His eyes started tearing up.
“I…I…” he started. “I didn’t want to do it.”
“Nobody can be made to do anything,” I said. “Everyone has a choice. Sometimes, when you make that choice, it hurts like a bitch, but you still had the choice to make.”
He looked sickened.
“Come on, fess up,” I suggested. “Let’s make this a little easier on the both of us.”
“Why do you care?” he asked.
I let the years and years of dealing with people exactly like him bleed into my eyes. Then said, “Because, all those little voices who really didn’t have a choice got to be too much one day. And I couldn’t go another day without dedicating my life to helping those little girls and boys get vengeance.”
He looked away.
Then he started talking.
“It all started when Ansel Singh recruited me to work for him. He even sent me to fashion school to make this all seem legit.” He looked at his hands. “I’ve felt so sick all these years.”
I didn’t say anything to that.
He was sick.
A sick mother fucker who was going to rot in hell when I was through with him.
For the next twenty minutes, I listened to him give me a play-by-play accounting for the last ten years. None of it was entirely surprising. Once you heard one man’s sick motives, you’d heard them all.
It all boiled down to them being weak, and not wanting to fight the sick urges that roiled inside of them.
“I really wouldn’t have done any of this if Ansel hadn’t made me,” Stefan St. Croix helpfully pointed out.
I nearly rolled my eyes.
He inched closer to the scissors that were on the table.
“Don’t,” I ordered.
“I can’t go down like this.” He lunged.
I didn’t flinch when I pulled the trigger. Flinching stopped happening about two hundred pedophiles ago.
“Hasn’t anyone ever told you that you shouldn’t bring scissors to a gun fight?” I asked as he fell to the floor.
