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“Why does Thorne have a bunker anyway? Is he a survivalist or something?”

Brooks made an uncomfortable sound in the back of his throat, then said, almost hesitantly, “No. He takes women down there. He…sometimes he just…keeps the women down there for a long time.”

The hair on the back of my neck stood up. Like he was planning on doing with me? Thorne’s words in the video came springing to the forefront of my mind.

It’s been too long since the last one, hasn’t it?

“A lot of women have disappeared over the years, but the cops never trace anything back to him and they just stay missing. He has ties with a lot of powerful people.”

“Does he… has he killed anyone?”

“Yeah. He has.”

Shock flickered through me.

He lowered the screen of his laptop and met my eyes. “Court doesn’t just want to steal from Thorne, that’s only part of it. He wants to stop him. For good. We all do.”

Stop him? As in kill him?

It seemed I was right about there being more to this whole operation. But I hadn’t needed to resort to thievery at all because Brooks was offering up the information for free.

“How… How did you guys figure all this out?”

Brooks sighed and leaned back in his chair. “It started with Sherry Bateman. We all grew up with her here in Davenport, but she moved out to Glen Falls after high school. That’s when she went missing. We found out later she’d started working at one of Thorne’s stores at the time. She still came back to Davenport a lot because there was some guy she was seeing here—Davenport is a little less than an hour from Glen Falls—so we’d see her at this bar we went to every Saturday night, and then one day she just stopped showing up. Court asked around about her, but nobody knew where she was. She didn’t have any family; her mom died of a heroin overdose when she was a kid and her dad was in prison for life. Nobody cared that she was gone, not really. But Court cared. We cared. And we knew Thorne had certain…preferences.”

I wanted to ask how they knew that, but Brooks kept talking.

“Court went to the police, but they didn’t give a shit about it. She was just another poor nobody to them. Frank—Court’s boss—didn’t know anything either, so Court went sniffing around Thorne’s place in Glen Falls, watched him for a while. One day, he saw Thorne dragging something big to his car. Something wrapped in a lot of plastic. He watched him throw it in the trunk, and he followed him. Thorne drove to the river, dumped it in, and left. Court went after it, and when he got it out and cut through the plastic, there was Sherry. Only…”

Brooks sighed and raked a hand over his head, sorrow filling his eyes.

“It wasn’t really Sherry anymore. Thorne had completely disfigured her to the point she was unrecognizable. Her fingers had been cut off. Her teeth removed. Cuts and burn marks all over her body. Court only knew it was Sherry because of the tattoo on her shoulder.”

My eyes burned as I tried to hold the tears at bay. That would’ve been me. That poor fucking woman. “What…the fuck,” I whispered, shoving my plate away from me.

Brooks’ jaw tightened and he nodded. “Yeah. We figured she wasn’t the first to…that there were others. Well, we knew there were others but we had no idea he was killing them. Not like that. And Court’s mom⁠—”

A door slammed, and then Cade shouted, “Brooks, we got Cane’s for you!”

Wait, Court’s mom what? What about Court’s mom? But I didn’t have time to ask Brooks because Court, Cade, and Vincent strolled into the kitchen carrying a bunch of plastic bags. They set them on the counter, and when my eyes met Court’s, I must’ve looked utterly spooked by everything I’d just learned.

He dropped his bags on the counter and was kneeling at my side in three swift steps, hands cradling my face like I was the most precious thing. “What happened? What’s the matter?” His concern sent a sharp pain through my chest, and I shook my head.

I cleared my throat. “Nothing.” I looked down at my plate, realizing I didn’t have a utensil. I gave him a crooked smile. “I can’t seem to find any silverware.”

He searched my eyes, as if he was debating whether he should dig past my lie to get to the truth or let it go. I breathed a relieved sigh when he decided to let it go. His mouth curved in amusement, and he left the room. When he came back a few moments later, he handed me a plastic fork.

The kitchen was overflowing with sounds of all kinds, now that they were home. Talking, laughing, crinkling bags, drawers opening and closing. The chaos that surrounded me was helping numb the utter terror that Brooks’ words had sparked in me.

I kind of wished I hadn’t learned a single thing, that I could’ve just stayed in the dark completely. Sherry’s life had sounded so much like my own that it wasn’t hard to picture the same fate for myself.

It wasn’t hard at all to imagine how easy it would be for a nobody like me to vanish in a world that would never even notice.

“You got that?” Court raised his eyebrows.

After forcing myself to eat, all the guys except Court had gone down to the basement. That’s where they talked and schemed and whatever the fuck else it was they did.

Court and I were sitting in his living room, me on the couch and him in one of the two armchairs across from me.