Page 31 of Ricochet

It was there that I found my next victim via a naked twelve-year-old girl named Sapphire, presumably for her blue eyes.

The chip that I’d stolen from Aubree turned out to be a bonus as well, which had me questioning why it’d been given to her. On it, blue prints and contracts, approved by the city council president, for residential development of Brightmoor were listed alongside contact information for some of the city’s most notorious criminals, including Angelo Donati, Capo of the Donati crime family. It seemed Brightmoor would be leveled out and some fancy condos built around a shopping complex. Only problem? Lot of old timers still called the shithole their home—some who’d been there for years and couldn’t afford to just up and move.

It seemed I’d stumbled upon the plan for Devil’s Night. Giving me more reason to be suspicious of the woman. Why would Culling entrust her with such vital information? Information I didn’t suspect would be anywhere but that chip—portable enough to be tossed, if necessary.

In my room, I performed my usual weapons check: two Glocks strapped across my chest, dagger in my boot, hunting knife with a gut hook sheathed at my hip. After tucking the mask inside the pocket of my jeans, I made my way back to Aubree’s room and set dinner down on a chair.

Her eyes roved me up and down. “Heading out?”

Ignoring her question, I unchained her arms and legs, watching with pointed interest as her eyes turned quizzical.

“You’re leaving me untied?”

“Yeah.” I glanced back at the plate of chicken, rice and vegetables. No fork or any utensils, meaning, she’d have to eat with her hands. “I don’t have time to feed you.”

With widened eyes, she stared up at me. “Fun night planned, huh?”

Twisting on my heel, I headed for the door. “You could say that.”

Upon exiting the room, I locked it and whistled for Blue, who obediently trotted up the stairs. Without a word, he sat beside the door, and smirking, I squatted in front of him. “Don’t let her go anywhere. Got it?” A lick of his tongue across my cheek affirmed his understanding, and I pushed up from him, wiping the dog slime from my skin.

On my way down the stairs, I checked my texts. I’d sent the first about two hours earlier, requesting an hour with Sapphire.

I’d received a response: ‘three hundred, anything I wanted’.

Vomit gurgled in my throat. Fucking twelve years old. It used to be drugs that ruled the streets, but with the DEA making so many busts, a lot of criminals had turned to sex trafficking. Unlike the one-time sale of crack cocaine, they could turn profits all night long on one girl alone. A gang-bang meant triple or quadruple the sales.

I stared down at the address lit up on my phone—a by-the-hour flophouse, where prostitution and drugs were known to be rampant, on the shit side of Cass Corridor. Sometimes, the rooms were rented out for months at a time.

“Be there in twenty,” I said aloud as I texted back, then hopped into Shelby, my beloved ’67 fully-restored black Mustang, and took off in the direction of The Pantheon motel.

The motherfuckers had no idea what kind of storm was about to hit.

***

I arrived within a half hour and parked my car in the small lot on the side of the building, wedged between two fire-gutted shitholes. From beside me, I lifted the files for Rick ‘Grim Reaper’ Harris, his brother, Jonathan ‘Pyro’ Harris, their shared girlfriend, Theresa Cruz, the recruiter for the trafficking ring, and Julius ‘Casanova’ Malone, whose brother ran the Seven Mile Crew. The texts I’d received had come from Rick, Jonathan’s older brother.

As the Crew had become more renowned, operations had expanded, branched out into different avenues—prostitution, arms dealing, contract killing. For whatever reason, those four stooges had decided to stick together, which worked just fine for me. That’d be four more cocksuckers in the bag.

A surge of adrenaline spiked my veins, the way it did before every kill. There’d be no mercy. The three men were responsible for not only the rape and sodomy of girls and boys as young as ten, but they also partook in the acts, filmed it, tortured and ultimately mutilated the ones who ended up diseased or pregnant. The resulting babies were sold on the black market, and a percent of profits fattened Michael Culling’s pockets, so long as he remained quiet and stayed out of their business.

I fitted the mask over my head and tugged my hoodie over it, exited the car, and strolled up to the front of the three level motel. Graffiti coated the chipped brick, and some of the windows had been painted black. Gave off an ominous warning that some bad shit went down behind those windows—the kind of place that’d make a parent clutch a child’s hand just walking past. Three-three-five was at the top level and one of the bigger rooms in the joint—perhaps two rooms put together. I climbed the stairs to the top floor in less than a minute and knocked on the door.

Only a few seconds passed before a skinny white male I recognized from the files as Jonathan ‘Pyro’ stood in the doorway. Pale and smoking weed, he looked me up and down, twitching my trigger finger. “Nash?”

I’d given him a fake name. I’d also told him that I wanted complete anonymity, so the mask probably came as no surprise. Surely those places were no stranger to fucking weirdoes. The assholes who strolled up in gimp masks.

I nodded in response to his question, and he jerked his head, inviting me inside.

Like walking straight into the mouth of hell, I’d found the lowest depths of human depravity. Two cages lined the wall, inside of each was a young girl sat naked and hunched over her small bruised body. Neither of them could’ve been more than sixteen, seventeen, and my stomach coiled, a caustic knot of wrath burning inside of me.

Fuck. Keep it together.

I had to know how many of the pathetic cunts were in the place first. Third floor made for a tricky escape, and if there were others in the shithole who were in on the ring, I’d have at least two girls to get past whatever roadblocks might get in my way—making the body count potentially much higher than I’d anticipated.

On the couch beside the cages, a brunette woman with dark eyes and light brown skin smoked a cigarette in front of TV, like nothing seemed remotely fucked up about any of the situation.

“Sapphire’s just finishing up.” Jonathan nudged his head toward a closed door in the hallway behind him. “Got the cash?”