Page 5 of Captive

Seriously, an unreal set of eyes on her.

“What?” I huff, wanting to be done with this already. The sooner we return to it, the sooner we can get the hell out of here, even if we have to take the girl with us. One step at a time.

“I’m having some performance issues,” Royal mutters. “She’s watching us.”

“Yes, she is—” Before I can say anything else, I watch as Royal goes to grab one of Brock’s pillows, the one behind the others, the only one that doesn’t have any blood splatter on it, though not for long thanks to the blood on his gloves.

In less than thirty seconds, Royal has the pillow case on top of her head, but apparently he decides it isn’t good enough, because after her face is covered, he spins the chair around and angles her toward the corner.

When he returns to the bed, I ask, “Better?”

“Oh, yeah. Much.”

The girl, though, doesn’t know to keep her mouth shut. She says, “I never knew a serial killer could get stage fright. It’s kind of funny.” And then she must remember what she told us earlier, because she quickly adds, “Not that I saw anything at all happening here. It’s just a normal night, yeah. Totally, one hundred and ten percent normal. And you guys? Complete strangers to me.”

It’s too late, though. She knows who we are. She must know we’re the D.D.K., and that, of course, D.D.K. isn’t a singular person. If seeing us kill Brock wasn’t bad enough, knowing who we are is worse. Unfortunately for her, she’s only digging herself into a bigger, deeper hole here.

I catch Royal’s stare and say, “Just keep going. We’ll handle her later.”

He doesn’t argue with me, surely because he knows I’m right. The two of us get back to work, and maybe it’s because of the girl in the corner, or maybe it’s simply because we both know we’ve already taken too long here, but we make damn good time. We finish cutting up Brock and displaying him on the bed, leaving whole inches separating his pieces parts, and then it’s time to pack our bags, hide our blood-soaked saws, and get out.

But, of course, can’t leave without the girl.

So, as Royal slips a chloroform-laced rag beneath the pillowcase on the girl’s head, I go to grab the bag he found beneath the bed. I’m getting the feeling the bag didn’t belong to Brock at all, that it belongs to our third wheel.

The girl’s head limps back as she passes out, and I sling the bag over my shoulder. Royal unties her, stuffs our rope into our bags, and then picks the girl up. Together, we leave the house in the dead of night—or, more correctly, in the early morning hours before the sun rises in the horizon. We only take our masks off once we’re in the car, no longer parked near the house.

On our way home, I shoot a discreet text to Hawthorne, who then will contact the next part of the machine, the ones who’re used to cleaning up messes.

Royal drives, and I sit in the passenger seat, though I do keep shooting glances in the back every now and then. The girl is totally passed out, the pillowcase still on her head. “Should we have buckled her in?” I ask.

“Nah, she’ll be fine,” Royal says.

“What if we get into an accident?”

“If we get into an accident right now, I think the unconscious girl’s health and safety will be the last thing to worry about.” He means the bloodied stuff in our bags, the worst of which would be the blood-soaked saws.

I say dryly, “Then I guess drive safe.”

“Don’t I always?” He sounds annoyed, like I pushed him too far, but then again, sometimes that’s just Royal. He can be an asshole every now and then, especially when things don’t go according to plan—and tonight? Tonight definitely didn’t go according to any plan, just ask the girl in the back.

“What do you think she was doing there?” I ask him. Her bag sits on my lap, and I dig through it and pull out a very sharp, very clean knife. Now that we know she was there the entire time, this little kill kit… there’s no way it belonged to Brock. If it did, Hawthorne would’ve known about it.

“Beats the fuck out of me, but we’ll get to the bottom of her, and then…”

“Then what? It isn’t like we can let her go. She saw too much.”

“Yeah, she’s fucked.”

I frown at him, but since he’s driving and it’s dark out, he doesn’t see it. As I return my attention to the knife in my hand, I mutter, “I wonder if this kill kit is hers. If it is, that means she was there to kill Brock, too.”

Finally, I must’ve said the right thing, because Royal’s demeanor changes a bit. He gets tense, his hands tightening around the wheel, and his voice comes out much deeper than before, “You think she had a vendetta against him? You think she was one of his victims?”

Brock Hard was a serial rapist. He liked to go to bars and drug women, and he knew which bars to go to where the owners would always look the other way. It’s quite possible the girl was a part of it somehow.

“I don’t know,” I say, because I don’t. “But what are the odds she’d be there the same night as us? The odds have to be insanely small.”

“I don’t give a shit about the odds, that’s Hawthorne’s thing.” He groans. “This fucking sucks, man. This shit was supposed to be easy. Give us a target, let us do our thing, and then we duck out and wait until we have our next.”