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"Is this like, where you live?" I asked.
"Not really. For each cycle I take a sabbatical from work and live in the mansion or bunkers. No, this is what we use as a basecamp before starting each time."
Drake stayed tense as we approached; he even urged me down into a low crouch.
"Do you guys keep a guard here or something?" I asked.
"Not usually. Sometimes our assistants will come out here for some rest. I doubt anyone is here, not with everything happening, but it’s better to be safe."
The front door was unlocked, a testament to how confident Drake was that this area was completely hidden. Inside, the house looked even smaller than it had from outside. A single big living and kitchen area, with a bathroom off the kitchen. One bedroom with a queen sized bed. Another bedroom sat opposite, but it had been turned into a storage cache. Food, lots of food, possibly where they retrieved the stuff we used to cook with. On the far wall several shelves lay attached to the wall. On them sat multiple handguns and boxes of ammunition, knives in sheaths, bundles of cash tied together with rubber bands, and small metal storage boxes. From one box, Drake extracted what looked like a passport and driver’s license. He stuffed two bundles of cash into each of his sweat pant pockets, before shoving two more toward me. I stared down, dumbfounded at the stack of bills in each of my hands. Ben Franklin stared back at me stoically. Each bundle had to be at least ten-thousand dollars. It was more money than I’d seen in my life.
"How rich are you?" I asked before I could stop myself.
"Don’t worry about that, here, take this."
I stuffed the bills into my pockets and took what he offered. A pistol. The weight of it heavy and dangerous in my hand, the metal cool and slick against my palm.
"It’s a revolver," Drake said, "already loaded. All you have to do is aim and pull the trigger. Got it?"
Still staring at the gun, I imagined what it would look like to see Sam’s brains fly out the back of his head like bloody snot from a sneeze. I grinned. "Got it."
Drake grabbed a new shirt from a closet and then led me to the small shed that sat behind the house. When he opened the door, it revealed a small pick up truck and a motorcycle. Along one wall several bright red gas cans sat in a neat and orderly row. It appeared at least one or two cans were missing. Rather than bring that up to Drake, I followed him as he pushed the motorcycle out onto the grass.
He handed me a helmet from a peg inside the door and then swung a leg over, tucking both of our pistols into a small saddlebag that hung across the gas tank. Everything was happening fast. A tiny part of my mind refused to believe what was transpiring. I worried that any second I’d sit up in bed, back in the mansion, device bolted to my arm, ready for another day of purgatory. Even the sound of the engine as Drake kicked it to life sounded surreal. After all the silence in the house, the scream of a motor didn’t make sense. All I’d heard for weeks were the screams of pain and agony, the patter of blood on the floor, and the scrape of forks on a plate. The only respite from those repetitive sounds were the times Drake and I found a few moments together. The moan of his voice in my ear and my gasps of pleasure as he fucked me giving me something new to hear.
We screamed down the dirt path toward the house, my arms wrapped around Drake’s midsection. Ahead, a thick column of smoke rose above the canopy of trees in roughly the same area as the warehouse and mansion. A tremor of worry hit me then, but I didn’t point it out to Drake. Maybe it was nothing.
We returned to the fence. The dirt path had faded to a grassy lane, and eventually an electric gate that moved on a pulley. Drake stopped and shut the motorcycle off. The gate stood wide open.
"Did you open it?" I asked, assuming he had some sort of remote.
He shook his head and pointed to a small keypad beside the gate. "Punching in a code is the only way."
"What does it mean?" I asked.
Drake didn’t answer, he looked up at the sky. He’d noticed the smoke as well. Without speaking, he started the motorcycle again and gassed it, going slower as we wound through the trees. It didn’t take long to find out where exactly the smoke was coming from. As we pulled up outside the warehouse, billowing clouds of smoke poured from the garage door at the side. Drake stopped the bike and got off. Following him, I removed my helmet and walked closer to the doorway. In his hand, Drake held his pistol out and ready. There would be no need for weapons.
We couldn’t get closer than twenty feet to the open garage door. The heat from inside was too intense. Roiling flames licked and flashed through the smoke. The outline of the mansion was visible as reddish orange lines where the fire traveled across every flammable surface. The fake plants had all already burned or melted, revealing the interior in its entirety. The bunker stood, door open, flames leaping out of it as well. Everything gone.
"Did they kill Payton and Bri too?" I asked.
Drake stared at the flames for a few seconds before answering. "I would assume so, but no way of knowing now."
My lips opened, ready to ask what we do next, but the ring of Drake’s cell phone caught me before I could speak. A loud notification chime chirped loud enough to hear over the roar of flames. Drake frowned as he pulled the phone from his pocket.
He’d received a text message with a video attachment. Drake clicked it. My jaw dropped when it played out on the small screen.
The video was a compilation. All of me. Footage of me karate chopping Claudia’s throat, killing her. Me again, brutalizing Branson. Another of me skinning the woman on the table, the camera angled so you couldn’t see the picture of my face tied to her head. Over and over, video after video of me torturing and murdering people. Blood, body parts, writhing bodies. It looked like images ripped from a serial killer’s mind.
"Oh shit," I muttered.
A second notification popped up, this time for an email. Drake clicked it. The same video had been sent to him. That wasn’t the bad part. What made my legs turn to jelly were the addresses copied on the email. The FBI, the Georgia State Police, The Georgia Bureau of Investigation, the U.S. Marshall service, and a half dozen more.
My face was easily visible on every video. There was no way they wouldn’t figure out my identity once they investigated. I was totally fucked.
"Drake?" I asked with a shaky and panicked voice. "What do we do now?"
He shoved the phone into his pocket and took my hand. "We have to get out of the country. Now."
