“Hell, I think I might just do that anyway after standing in this shithole,” Cade said.
I turned my attention back to Scud. “Are there more?”
“More?”
“Videos.” He shook his head but winced again when my gun burrowed into his jawbone this time. “Come on, Scud, a talented guy like you? I can’t imagine you went all this time without making more of your filthy shows.”
“No, I-I didn’t.”
He was lying. I gestured for Cade to look through the closet, and I could tell by the fear on Scud’s face that we were going to find something he didn’t want us to find. Within seconds, I heard Cade groan.
“Oh, hell no,” he said, stepping back, his gloved hands clasped around a stack of Polaroids. He handed them to Ruger. “You are not going to believe this shit.”
Scud’s eyes closed. He knew this wasn’t going to end well for him. Whatever was on those Polaroids was going to seal his fate.
“This just ain’t right,” Ruger said, showing me two of the photographs.
My stomach tightened with disgust. Scud was a sick fuck, and I would never unsee what was in those pictures.
“You s-said you w-weren’t going to k-kill me!” he stammered.
I looked him in the eye and thought of Annie Stonebrook dying of an overdose. Her last moments painful, undignified, and all caught on camera and broadcast for the perverts of the world to see, because men like Martel got off on watching it.
I thought of the images on the Polaroids. Of the other girls in the videos, the ones who survived but who would have to live with what he’d done to them for the rest of their lives.
And then I thought of the ones he had yet to meet and break.
“Oh, I’m not killing you.” I leaned in. “Not here, anyway.”
Ruger shoved his gun into his spine. “We’re going for a little drive.”
Leaving the cesspit that was his obvious home, we slipped into the dawn light and took him to the abandoned drive-in theater a few miles out of town. On the empty lot, there was an old building we liked to use for club business. It was a good location. No one could hear the screams out there.
Waiting for us was a scary motherfucker we only knew as Blowtorch. He liked to inflict pain, and we always got our money’s worth whenever we used him. He was capable of things not many human beings could stomach, and it was exactly what Scud deserved.
Because he was about to dish up a hot serving of karma to Scud with his blowtorch.
Ruger, Cade, and I stood on and watched, disconnected from the pain and suffering we were witnessing because we had seen what Scud had done to those innocent women on those videos. We’d seen how he’d ignored his victims’ cries for mercy as he’d brutally raped them. We’d heard them begging him to stop as he tortured them.
Now it was his turn to beg.
When he finally passed out from the pain, I nodded to Blowtorch, and he killed the flame. Walking over to the unconscious Scud, I slapped him awake until he finally looked up at me through glazed eyes and a sweaty brow, his slack mouth drooling blood, spit, and puke.
I pressed my gun to his chest. “This is for all the nasty shit you did to those women.”
And I shot him.
I shot him right through his miserable, black heart.
As I rose to my feet, I looked over at Cade and Ruger, who both remained expressionless.
The job was done.
Scud Boney was just one more thread in Gimmel Martel’s dark web of perversion that I had picked apart and destroyed.
No one would miss him, and the world would be better off without him.
TAYLOR
I was having one of those days. The type that starts with your alarm not going off because of a power outage overnight, and usually ends with you drowning your sorrows in a bottle of wine and a bag of Doritos as you contemplate life and where the fuck it all went wrong.
Unfortunately, I wasn’t at the wine and Doritos part yet.
It wasn’t even lunch time.
And who was I kidding, I couldn’t even afford a bag of Doritos.
I walked to my car feeling the hot sting of embarrassment on my cheeks. I’d just come from my first job interview since losing my job at Slingers. But it had been a nightmare, to say the least. I’d been completely unprepared. I thought it was a simple bar job, slinging beers in another dive bar. But when the guy who was interviewing me—an overweight guy in his fifties with a cigar propped between his yellow teeth and beer stains down the front of his white polo shirt—told me to take my top off, I was a little taken aback. When I refused, because hey, I didn’t realize I was applying for a topless waitress position, given they never mentioned it in the ad or the phone call inviting me in for an interview, he started yelling at me to get out and to stop wasting his time.