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“Jesus Christ. You fucking killed her already?” the guy who hates Martinez asks.
“She bit Martinez in the dick. He put a bullet through her head,” the new guy answers. “Just get her out of here. Place stinks enough as it is.”
Mason’s hand comes over my mouth and he pulls my head back against his chest to keep me quiet. I know that voice.
I stare as hard as I can through the crack in the door, and finally, I catch a good look at the new guy’s face.
Michael.
Tremors begin to slide through my body, the harsh reality of what I’ve been blind to for years running rampant through my mind.
If Michael’s in on this . . . does that mean my mother is, too?
“A moment of silence for the best pussy we’ve had all week,” the old man says as they all place their hands on their hearts.
“And may we get another soon,” another laughs.
“Amen.”
They’re silent for a single second before the old man shrugs. “Toss her in. I’m tired.”
I lurch for the door, but Mason’s arms won’t let me move even a single inch. Tears burn in my eyes, but it’s nothing compared to the gut-wrenching sickness in my stomach for the women they’ve killed. Raped. Tortured.
Michael chuckles, helping another guy throw the young woman in the flames.
Michael. The boy who wouldn’t hurt a fly.
“Still think he’s a good guy, little doe?” Mason murmurs quietly in my ear.
The men in the room are talking, but I can’t make out what they’re saying. My head’s spinning from the revelation that my best friend, and possibly even my mother, is a part of this.
“That’s the last of them. Let them bake for a while and we’ll be good to go.”
“I say we call it a night.”
“Got a bottle of whiskey upstairs,” the old man says, stepping out of view. Their voices drift toward the door and then down the hall, but all the while I can’t stop staring at the incinerator in the center of the room.
The scent is awful. Different than the decay and while that still lingers, this is . . . stomach turning. Like sulfur and rotten meat and everything else you don’t want to smell when you think of another person.
Mason and I sit there for God knows how long. Long enough for my legs to hurt from being cramped and long enough for the incinerator to die down enough that the heat isn’t scorching.
Finally, he wakes me from my haze, slowly opening the door to our cabinet, so it doesn’t make a sound.
“Hannah.”
Carefully, I climb off his lap, watching the incinerator, as if it’s going to reach out and grab me. Mason said none of the women on the floor were Missy and the men had mentioned someone let her go, but . . . wheredidshe go? She hadn’t come to me. Parker’s in jail. Mom would have sent her right back here.
Even as Mason wraps his fingers around mine and tugs me toward a small door that leads outside to the alley where everything started tonight, I can’t get the simple question out of my head.
Where in the world is Melissa Gaines?
Mason
“It wasn’t her, Hannah.”
She’s been quiet on the car ride home. After everything we found tonight, I don’t blame her. I regret bringing her here. I should have come alone. Or with Prince. She shouldn’t have to see the destruction her mother is causing. The mess her “best friend” is at the centerfold of.
She needed to know, though, and she never would have believed me if she hadn’t seen for herself.
