Roarke tapped into his email on his iPad.
The photos were graphic shots of a pile of male bodies in blood-soaked clothing. Their heads hung bizarrely from the deep slashes in their necks. The bodies had obviously been staged—there was no way the men had died in the positions they were in. They looked like a human trash heap. All three were armed with rifles; the rifles were carefully positioned by slings on their shoulders to look impotent, useless.
But the most telling sign of staging: the dead man on the top of the pile wore a T-shirt emblazoned GRAB ’EM BY THE PUSSY.
Predictably, some of the photos were already being disseminated online as a meme, with the morbid caption “PUSSY GRABS BACK.”
It was sickening. Three dead men. And yet . . .
“They brought rifles to a demonstration?” he asked.
“Open carry is the law in Arizona,” Singh answered.
Roarke sat for a moment, chilled.
Laws are being passed all over the country to curtail peaceful protest—but bringing rifles to a protest to intimidate protesters is legal.
His gut was twisting, for all kinds of reasons. But underneath everything else was a thrill of exhilaration.
This is Cara. She’s alive.
There had been other instances of throat slashings that he thought were copycat killings. But here—the efficiency of the killing, the sheer reckless will it would take to murder three armed men like that . . .
Other people might say that it would take a whole group to dispatch them, but Roarke’s money was on Cara.
Singh broke into his thoughts. “Bitch, of course, is already claiming the murders are part of its campaign.”
“No,” Roarke answered automatically.
But does it really matter? This is the whole point of a viral action. It builds on itself. One murder emboldens another . . .
“As you suggested last night, I have been looking for recent instances of murder with Lindstrom’s M.O. in northern Arizona. There have been none that I could find.”
But Roarke felt a prickle of anticipation, sensing there was more to it.
“However, I have found several disappearances of white men in Arizona, in the Chinle area. Chinle is a town on the border of the Canyon de Chelly region of the Navajo Nation.”
“Indian nations,” Roarke said.
“Precisely as you thought,” Singh agreed. “Specifically, these men are recreational hunters. Three men in the past six weeks have disappeared in that area after telling friends and/or family that they were embarking on hunting trips. One of the missing men has served time on domestic battery charges. Another had a sexual assault charge that was dropped.”
Exactly Cara’s victim type.
“These men disappeared over the last few weeks. Now three more hunters are killed in Phoenix, with Cara’s exact M.O., less than six hours’ drive away. It is not a provable connection, and yet . . .”
Yet there was something resonant in it. Roarke could see it, too.
She’s alive. Alive and unhurt. At least, well enough to do that kind of damage to three men at once.
The next thought was unprofessional and immoral, but he let himself think it anyway:
That sounds pretty damn well to me.
Chapter Sixty
She is cold . . .
Holes in the ceiling above her . . . with snow sifting through. Men’s drunken laughter comes from the poker table in the next room.
She is more than cold. She can’t move.
Hands are holding her down on the sagging bed. Now someone is ripping at her clothes, grabbing her breasts, grabbing between her legs . . .
The laughter of the men fills her ears . . . and her own screaming . . .
Jade startled awake, her heart hammering with dread.
She was on the air mattress, Kris beside her.
Only dreaming.
Dreaming of that hellhole . . . the derelict farmhouse and the men . . . the men her non-step-non-father had sold her to for turns—
She sat bolt upright, biting back a scream.
“You okay?” Kris murmured sleepily.
Jade dug her fingernails into her palms until the pain made the visions fade. “Peachy,” she said, her voice hard. “Ready to brand some frat boy ass.”
The first time they’d branded him, they’d gotten nothing but screaming. He’d passed out before he could name any names.
And then Kris had pretty much lost it. She ran out of the stall, out of the stables.
Jade found her puking under one of the scruffy oak trees. Jade held her hair back, rubbed her shoulders as she sobbed. “That was h-horrible,” she gasped, between shudders.
She’d never seen it before. Jade had.
DeShawn had branded his girls. Once Danny had made her watch. So she would know how lucky she was. Because Danny would never do that to his girls.
He said.
Jade had treated Topher’s burn with hydrogen peroxide and some antibiotic salve made for horses.
And pain pills. Don’t forget that.
She kept putting the stuff on all through the day, and the burn looked as good as could be expected. Better than the burns on some of DeShawn’s girls. That was for damn sure.
“I just . . . I don’t want to be that kind of person,” Kris said later, when they were lying in bed, smoking a joint to try to get to sleep.
“You’re not,” Jade said flatly. She’d never seen Danny or DeShawn crying about what they did on a daily basis, much less throw up about it. They got off on inflicting pain. Kris didn’t. And Jade didn’t either. It had sickened her, too, the branding. And that was what was so fucking unfair. There were so many of them, men, who just did this like it was nothing.
“Believe me, you’re not,” she said again. “I’ve seen guys do that and laugh about it.” And the anger welled up. “They do it all the time. They don’t care. And they never pay.”
Kris was silent, and Jade could tell she was thinking about it.
“We don’t have to get off on it,” Jade said. “I don’t know how anyone could. But it has to stop. They have to pay.”
When they went into Topher’s stall with the branding iron again, he started bawling like a baby.
“Today we have the letter A,” Jade said. “A for asshole.”
He gave out the names of his rape buddies so fast it spoiled the fun. Squealing, “I’ll tell you. I’ll tell you. It’s not me you want. I swear to God. But I know the guys who did it.”
“We’re waiting,” Jade said, with no remorse at all.
He never caught on that they were just holding the same branding iron again.
Chapter Sixty-One
The video of Topher Stephens had been sent to Mr. and Mrs. Stephens’s private email accounts through Topher’s own email.
Singh can see that the originating location has been blocked, though. The kidnappers have at least a basic knowledge of proxy servers.
While she has been working on tracking the email, Lam and Stotlemyre have been analyzing the video itself.
Instead of phoning the lab to check up on their progress, Singh pushes back from her desk and walks up the stairs to speak to the techs in person.
She steps into the lab, and finds blown-up screenshots from the video pinned up on boards all around her. The frat boy’s naked body. The brand burned into his back.
She forces her eyes away as Lam jumps up from a stool and bows, greeting her effusively. “Elen síla lúmenn’ omentielvo.”
Behind him, Stotlemyre sighs. “Ignore him. He’s decided to learn Elvish.”
Unfazed, Lam switches to English. “We’re making some progress. We’re thinking Stephens is being held in a barn, or stables. He’s lying on old straw, and it’s an unfinished space.”
Stotlemyre continues, “We’ve done all kinds of playing around with the sound, but haven’t been able to latch onto anything specifically identifying. No sound of street traffic, or industrial noise. It’s either a quiet space or an isolated
neighborhood, or a semiwilderness area, which is our guess. We were able to isolate bird sounds outside, very faintly, some wind—but that’s the extent of it.”
Lam nods agreement. “Now, the hooded figure is using a branding iron. We’ve grabbed the clearest shot we could of the burn on Stephens’s skin, and cleaned it up to provide an image of the brand.”
He moves to the whiteboard with wiry natural grace, and points out blowups of the enhanced images.
“There are thousands of farms and ranches in Santa Barbara County. The Santa Ynez Valley is riddled with them. But here’s where we could get lucky. We might find the brand is specific to a ranch or stables, and that could pinpoint where he’s being held. We’ve just sent these images in to the state Bureau of Livestock Identification to see if they can identify it.”
Singh is impressed. “This is very promising. I will report to ASAC Roarke.”
“No need,” Lam says cheerily. “I can call him. You go home. You’re looking a bit peaked, if you don’t mind my saying. Cormamin niuve tenna’ ta elea lle au’,” he adds, in really quite good Elvish for a beginner.
“Lissenen ar’ maska’lalaith tenna’ lye omentuva,” she answers, straight faced, and leaves the lab, gratified to hear the techs dissolve in delighted laughter behind her.
She goes back to her office and sits alone. It is empty, now. Outside the windows is a cloudy darkness.
And it is dark in the office as well. She has left the lights off, deliberately. The washed-out glare of fluorescent bulbs always annoys her to distraction. In daylight she turns off lights when she can, and relies on the natural light from the windows. When she is alone at night, like tonight, she far prefers to work by the light of her screen.
She catches a glimpse of her reflection in it as she sits down at her desk, and looks at herself for a moment.
“Peaked,” Lam had said. It is not a word she is familiar with, but she guesses it is an accurate assessment of how she feels.
She sits for a moment, listening to the silence in the office, to make sure she is really alone. Then she takes out her personal laptop and boots up.
As she has suspected, the men’s rights forums have continued to explode. It has been a day and a half so far. She has not been able to keep up. Starting yesterday with the announcement of Justice Armstrong as the SCOTUS nominee, the forums have been beside themselves with glee.
Now it’s open season on the bitches.
Liberal cunts are shitting themselves.
MAGA!!!!!
For the most part, she has stayed away today, for the sake of her own sanity. She is having to fight her own revulsion at the implications of the nominee. The Republicans, in the majority, have eliminated the possibility of a filibuster. A simple majority vote will put this rape apologist on the highest court in the land.
But now, as she skims the forums, she finds the tables have turned, somewhat.
Now the men are having a meltdown over the murders in Phoenix.
Of course.
The messages are being posted fast, in real time. She turns off the sound to mute the constant dinging.
But she cannot help herself. She checks one of the forums she knows Ortiz frequents.
And is instantly assaulted by the vile messages.
They want a war, they got a war. A rape war.
Hunt these Bitches down.
Anal for everyone.
The hair on the back of her neck has risen, and her stomach is churning.
She stands, walks around, stretches, forces herself to breathe, trying to disengage from the poison of it.
But eventually curiosity gets the better of her.
She approaches the computer again, sits in front of it. She considers carefully, then bends over the screen and types ungrammatically:
Someone told me it this was the Lindstrom bitch. Any sitings???
She sits back, waits. It is not long before the responses come.
That bounty still up for grabs?
I sure would like a piece of that lol
And then suddenly there was a post in all caps.
I SMELL PUSSY.
Singh goes instantly on alert. The post was followed almost instantly by another, more ominous one.
I SMELL MUSLIM PUSSY.
THERE’S AN INTRUDER IN HERE.
Singh feels her heart start to race.
They have of course misidentified her spiritual affiliation. Men like these cannot distinguish anything beyond their limited understanding. But clearly they know her skin color and her sex. She has been noticed. Someone has hacked into her fake accounts, or perhaps it is a forum administrator who has determined her identity . . .
Not good.
The all-caps messages continue, coming from several different posters.
WE KNOW WHO YOU ARE, BITCH.
BLACK CUNT.
Singh quickly logs out of the computer and sits in the dark, with just the glow of the screen saver and the racing of her pulse.
She has been playing with fire. Now the fire has turned to face her.
Look not too long into the abyss . . .
She stands abruptly, grabs her coat and bag from the back of her chair, and hurries from the dark room.
Chapter Sixty-Two
Roarke sat in the gazebo. His lower back was aching and he felt lightheaded. And to his surprise, it was already nearly dark.
He’d been aware on some level that the sun was going down. Of course dusk came early; it was still winter. But somehow he’d been at the Stephens home, glued to the video of Topher’s branding, all day. It had been hours since he’d eaten.
He blinked as the shadows moved.
And a figure stepped out of the dark, startling him.
“Mrs. Stephens. I—didn’t see you there.”
She was highly agitated, he could see. Not just nervous, but swaying slightly on her feet. Drunk, or high. Both unsurprising. A husband like that. A son like that. The cognitive dissonance must be a constant psychological tension.
She extended her arm, and he saw she held something dark in her right hand. For one paralyzed moment Roarke was sure it was a gun, that she intended to shoot him . . .
Then he realized she was holding a phone.
“What is this?”
When she didn’t answer, he stepped forward and took the phone from her hand. The screen was open to a video. Roarke clicked the Play icon, stared down at a wobbly film, taken in near-darkness.
There was rhythmic breathing and drunken male sniggering. Glimpses of the backs of young men on their feet, swaying as they looked down, watching something going on . . . and a feminine whimpering . . .
Roarke felt his gut twist as he understood what he was looking at.
The male voices were slurred, but he could make out some of the drunken commentary.
“Extra points for anal.”
“If he can get it up.”
“Stick it in her mouth, let her do some of the work.”
Roarke lowered the phone, sickened. He looked at Mrs. Stephens, standing in the shadows.
“How long have you known about this?”
She was silent.
“You got it off Topher’s phone?”
“His computer.”
So Mrs. Stephens was spying on her grown son’s computer use. Charming. But at the moment, useful. He looked her in the face. “Mrs. Stephens, what do you expect me to do with this?”
“I thought . . . I thought if you could find the girl . . .”
He had no idea how she was going to end the sentence, so he waited.
She twisted her hands together in agitation. “She must be the one. Or she told someone. So if you find her, you might . . . you might find Topher.”
He felt a wave of contempt.
She looked back at the house. “Please. Don’t tell my husband. He can’t know I . . .”
Roarke stared at her. She dropped her eyes. “Just find him.”
“Yeah. We’ll do what we can to save your son,
the rapist.”
Chapter Sixty-Three
Just past the tiny Arizona town of Ehrenberg, Cara crosses the California border at the Colorado River.
She stops at the agricultural inspection station, where she affirms to the inspector that she is carrying no fresh produce, and is waved on. Of course she is. She is white, blond, female. No possible threat to anyone.
Across the river, she passes Riviera Marina, a fourteen-acre park along the river, in the city of Blythe.
She knows this park.
Blythe, after all, is her hometown.
Where, as a child, she first met It.
She is now just an hour and forty-five minutes from Palm Desert. But she does not think that Ortiz wants her, “the package,” brought to his home. He has some other rendezvous in mind.
She avoids Riviera, with its rowdy RV lots and motorboats and noisy personal watercraft, and drives instead toward the smaller, off-road Waterman Park, with its primitive camping sites.
On the way she passes ramshackle houses. Fast-food joints and burrito stands. Palm trees. Always palm trees. She can practically smell the meth cooking. Her family had lived in a much nicer area.
Not that that had helped them.
She makes a brief stop at another post office drop box she keeps in Blythe, to pick up more IDs, more cash, some accessories.
There is something else in the drop box: the phone she took from Roarke that night on the beach in Santa Cruz.
She has not carried the phone with her. It has been sitting in this drop box at her point of exit from California, with the battery removed.
Roarke had wiped all data from it almost immediately after she took it. But he never disconnected the line.
Perhaps he kept it online to catch her, if she is ever foolish enough to use it. That would be the logical explanation. But not every action is governed by logic.
She slips the phone in a pocket, returns to the truck, and continues on toward Waterman Park, stopping at a convenience store to buy water and some provisions from an indifferent young clerk. As a precaution, she is now wearing glasses, a wig. But the disguise hardly matters. The young rarely notice their elders.
Hunger Moon (The Huntress/FBI Thrillers Book 5) Page 20
