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“I think…” he swallowed hard. “I think Dad, and the circus, was involved in a child sex trafficking ring.”
Silence.
Utter and complete silence.
Then Zip stood up and shrieked, “What?”
Her high-pitched, what the fuck, ‘what’ was echoed in all of our thoughts.
“I can’t prove it yet,” he admitted. “Hell, I have no clue how to even go about doing it, but there are too many things that are lining up in some of the paperwork.”
“What kind of things are you seeing?” I asked.
“Well,” he said as he got up and walked to his office. He came back with a stack of papers. “This for instance.”
He showed us a picture.
I remembered it, actually.
A kid had gone missing after our show. The kid had gone home, the parents had put her to bed, and the next morning she’d been gone.
We’d helped look for this kid all over the area before we’d left.
The only reason I’d really remembered her when we’d heard the news was because she’d come up on stage with me. I’d been fifteen at the time, and the girl had come up and helped me finish my act. She’d been a really cute kid with bright eyes the color of a black diamond.
“What about her?” I asked.
Keene looked sick to his stomach, then looked at his fingers before clenching them so hard into a fist that they turned white.
“What’s this?” Hades asked, smearing chocolate on the folder that Keene had on his counter.
Keene squeezed his eyes closed, stood up, then walked toward her.
He caught the folder, ignored the chocolate on it—which totally wasn’t like him—and came back to the table.
“Come here,” he ordered Hades. “I can’t say this more than once.”
The seriousness of his tone was making my good mood suddenly plummet. Any and all earlier good vibes from the encounter with my mystery man were gone. Replacing those feelings was one of deep foreboding.
“Keene…”
He flipped the folder open, and we all frowned.
“What’s this?” Zip asked.
I leaned forward so I could read—damn my bad eyesight causing me to practically shove my face up against the paper—and blinked.
“Names?” I asked. “Hey, this right here is the name of that little girl that performed with me in my show.”
Keene looked green. “These are all children that I was able to pinpoint attending one of our shows…that later went missing when we left town.”
Silence.
Utter silence.
“What are you saying?” Val asked, sounding weird.
“I’m saying,” he looked at the ceiling. “We have…had…the perfect cover story for children going missing. And then transporting those missing children somewhere that wasn’t where they would be thought to be looked for.”
Sick.
I felt sick.
“Do you think our father had something to do with this?” I asked, my voice sounding strange, even to my own ears.
“Yes,” Keene said simply. “There’s more.”
So for the next fifteen minutes, he showed us every single detail he was able to uncover. From dates of missing children lining up with our tour dates, to other details like brand-new trailers bought and sold within the same weekend.
It went on and on and on, these horrible coincidences that just kept getting worse and worse the more he explained.
“And every single one was chosen by Dad. Do you remember?” Keene asked. “I can pick four at least that I remember him pulling out there.”
“He was ringmaster. That was his job,” Zip said, sounding skeptical. Or was it hopeful? Was she trying to convince herself and us that this wasn’t what it seemed? Because it wasn’t going to work. Even my rose-colored glasses were seeing the answer plain as day. Something wasn’t right. “You do the same thing every show that you’re the ringmaster.”
Keene looked ready to throw up. “The difference between me and Dad is that mine really are random. And I let them go home safely with their parents, never to be bothered again.” He shifted in his seat. “But do you remember his bad moods? Do you remember how much happier he’d be after he picked those kids?”
I closed my eyes.
When I opened them, I happened to see Tony looking like she was horrified.
But that horrified look was directed at someone.
“Wait,” I said as I looked at Tony tossing looks in Hades’ direction. “What’s going on?”
Hades looked down at the napkin that she’d used to clean the chocolate off with. It was in shreds after listening to what Keene had just said.
Keene frowned and looked up. Seeing me looking in Hades’ direction out of the corner of my eye, he focused on her, too.
There was a knock on the door.
I got up and answered it, unsurprised to find Hannibal on the other side.
He didn’t leave Hades for long. At least, not unless it was his job calling him away.
If that was the case, he just called every hour to check on her.
“Hey,” I said, sounding weird.
His eyes focused in on me.
