Mr. Williams barely looked up as I rose from my desk, leaving my shit as I exited the classroom ten minutes before the bell. AJ wasn’t answering me, and she’d been gone too long.
I thumbed a quick message to the guys on my way down the hall.
Grey: Something’s up.
Chances were I was being paranoid and she was just too fucking antsy to be stuck sitting in class, but if that were the case she would’ve answered my texts by now. I pocketed my phone and reached my hand back behind me, ready to draw the gun there if I needed to.
Heavy, thudding footfalls sounded around the corner ahead and I clenched my jaw, fingering the outline of my gun through my shirt, working the thin fabric up and out of the way.
“AJ?” I hissed, sweat slicking my chest.
Five more steps and there she was.
Ava Jade didn’t stop as she rounded the corner, staring straight ahead, her hands in fists at her sides. Her face red. Her body rigid. Murder in her eyes.
I scanned her for injury, but she seemed unharmed.
“AJ,” I repeated, stepping in her path.
“Move.”
“Hey,” I said, a lick of anger racing up my spine as I gripped her arm, hauling her to a stop. “What the fuck is going on?”
She spun, slamming her palm against my forearm to break my grip on her. Pain radiated up my arm, and it was my face that brought her back to me, if only for a second. She blinked, realizing what she’d done and stopped, inhaling deeply through her nose.
“Where were you?”
Footsteps ascended the stairs at the end of the hall and she stiffened, watching like a hawk until Corvus and Rook crested the top of the staircase, their faces hard as they zeroed in on us.
“What happened?” Corvus demanded, hurrying down the hall, his sights fixed on Ava Jade.
Rook drew his gun, stepping past us to peer around to the next hallway. “Clear,” he muttered, replacing his gun in the back of his waistband, a knot forming between his brows as his gaze landed back on Ava Jade.
She was practically shaking with rage, her jaw locked.
“Ghost?”
Her light eyes tracked a path to Rook and the glass in them shattered, her shoulders shuddering as they fought to fall. “He’s a fucking monster,” she said, her hand unconsciously going to her stomach.
“Who?” Rook demanded, his gaze darkening. “Name him.”
“Williams.”
I cocked my head at her. “Mr. Williams?”
She nodded.
I racked my brain, remembering every time I caught him staring at her in class, but I’d just been with him during AP Math while she was in the bathroom. He couldn’t have done anything.
“Did he fucking touch you?”
Her eyes found mine, confused. “You think he’d still be breathing if he had?”
No. I didn’t. But then what the fuck was she talking about.
“Sparrow, start talking. What happened?”
She rolled her shoulders back, taking another shaking breath before she began.
AJ explained about the girl she ran into in the bathroom. She told us how the girl had given Williams head once for a better grade. And later, how he’d used a video he’d taken of her giving him head as blackmail to get her to do other things, threatening to post it on the internet and ruin her life.
“He took her somewhere. To a place that she said had a video camera set-up with a bed and nothing else. She didn’t know where it was because he would blindfold her to take her there. He…”
She choked before continuing. “Fuck,” she said, lifting her hand to bite her knuckles to stop whatever she was going to say next. “He’s a fucking pedo. What were your rules about that?”
This question she posed to Corvus. “Hmm?” she prodded. “They don’t get strikes. They go straight to the grave, right?”
A muscle in Corvus’ jaw ticked. Rook was already glaring down the hall like he could will Williams to leave the classroom right this minute so he could shoot him in the kneecaps.
Corvus’ brow pinched. “Not without proof.”
“What that girl said isn’t good enough?”
He shook his head. “No. If we relied on the word of fourteen-year-old freshmen there would be a lot more unmarked graves in Thorn Valley… filled with some very undeserving corpses.”
Ava Jade’s eye twitched.
“But,” Corvus continued. “We will look into this.”
“Fine,” Ava Jade said. “We look into it now. Right fucking now.”
Rook was already nodding. “Grey, get the address. The fucker will be busy with classes for the next few hours. We’ll scout his place while he’s busy here. If he was taking videos, we’ll find them.”
“And if he was?” Ava Jade prompted.
“Strike three,” Rook confirmed, his nostrils flaring.
AJ nodded gravely. “I want to help.”
Rook’s lips parted, the creases in his forehead smoothing as he searched her eyes, then nodded.
I set to work logging into the staff side of the academy’s online portal from my phone.
“Should we bring Becca? I don’t want to leave her here.”
“I’ll call Tiny. He’ll come and stay with her until we come back. Good?”
“Yeah. I’ll text her to let her know.”
“She’s not going to like that,” Rook said.
“She’d like coming with us a lot less.”
AJ had a point. Becca was stronger than I’d ever given her credit for, but normal people had limits, and what we would do if we found out the girl was telling the truth would go far beyond Becca’s. Besides, Tiny was basically a giant cuddly bear with a gun. He’d probably braid her hair and order her a fucking chocolate cake.
“Got the address,” I announced.
“Let’s go.”
Behind us, the bell rang as we made our way down to the Rover, alert for any signs of attack.
Diesel would kill us if he knew we were going on a little side-quest for our humanitarian project right now, but Ava Jade wasn’t wrong. If Williams was what that girl claimed, he had no place in Thorn Valley. Letting him get away with doing what he was accused of even one more time would be one time too many.
Plus, if he’d done it once, we knew from experience it was very fucking likely he’d done it before. Layla might not be the only one.
Williams’ place was a pedo’s wet dream.
Secluded at the outer edge of the city, surrounded by trees with no neighbors for miles.
Of course, that alone didn’t mean he was guilty, but I couldn’t help noticing it as we stepped out of the Rover and onto his freshly paved driveway. AJ shared a look with Rook and I knew she was thinking the same thing I was.
Ava Jade stormed ahead of us, rushing his front door. She kicked it in with one long heavy stroke of her leg.
Now was not the time to be getting turned on, but…
I cleared my throat, jerking my head after her. “Let’s go.”
We followed her inside, down a narrow hall that broke off into three directions. Up the stairs. Into a living room to the left, and a kitchen to the right.
Rook stormed up the stairs, where it looked like Ava Jade had gone if the boot prints on the off white carpet were any indication. Corvus went through to the kitchen, and I went the opposite way into his living room. My nose wrinkled at the smell of the place. It reminded me of the group home. Musty with an undercurrent of microwaveable food.
I tossed the couch cushions first, then moved on to the coffee table, tugging out both drawers to tip their contents onto the carpet. Nothing.
The bookshelves.
I tipped the spines, flicking each one out of its place until they were all in a pile on the floor at my feet.
A corner of white paper stuck out from one and I bent, lifting the heavy tome, a copy of a book called I’m Not Sam. I lifted the paper from the pages, but found it blank. Though, beneath were words that jumped out at me. I grimaced, reading a small part of the page the makeshift bookmark had been stuck in.
Was his taste in fiction enough to condemn him? I was starting to think it might be when I heard AJ call from upstairs. “Get up here,” she shouted, and I let the book fall closed, dropping it to the pile at my feet with the others.
Corvus and I met in the hall, and I followed him up the stairs. “Anything?” I asked Corvus.
He shook his head. “You?”
“Super fucked up book. Not enough to be sure.”
A door was open at the end of the hall when we got to the top of the stairs, bluish light bleeding onto the carpet.
The sound of a girl crying filtered past my ears and my stomach tightened as we went into the room, finding AJ sitting at a small desk in a small room, Rook hunched over her, his face a twisted mask. The heavy blackout curtains were drawn so tightly over the window that the entire room was black save for the light of the monitor screen.
AJ suddenly pushed away from the desk, knocking Rook back in her haste. “I can’t watch anymore,” she growled, shoving past me as she left the room, thudding back down the stairs.
I went to Rook, still staring at the screen like he couldn’t peel his eyes from it even if he wanted to, the murderous intent in his stare deepening.
I didn’t need to see it, didn’t want to, but I needed to know what we were dealing with.
On the screen a video played. Recorded on a shitty camcorder in what looked like a dingy basement type of space. Mr. Williams wore a mask while he fed his cock to a little boy, but there was no mistaking it was him.
Behind the still-playing video was a wide finder screen with hundreds of tiny little video files. Each one labeled not with names but with ages and sexes.
I didn’t want to believe the smallest number was accurate.
“Turn it off,” Corvus roared.
Rook clicked over to another video instead, his body rolling with rage.
Corvus shoved Rook back and grabbed the entire monitor from the top of the desk and smashed it on the floor, stomping on it for good measure, his breaths sawing in and out through his teeth.
“In our fucking town,” he hissed. “Right under our fucking noses.”
Guilt pooled in my stomach like acid, and I swallowed back the taste of bile rising in my throat. I’d always known Williams was a bit of a creep, but this? I’d been in his class for months now, and I hadn’t seen this. I should’ve.
Corvus’ turned his fury on me. “Want to tell me how this fucking slipped your notice, Grey?”
A muscle in my jaw ticked. I shook my head. I had no excuse to give.
“He was clearly good at hiding it,” Rook said numbly, his stare still fixed to the busted monitor. “His kind often are.”
Not for the first time, I felt a deep peace at knowing I’d killed the man from Barrett’s Home for Boys. I still didn’t know exactly what he’d done to deserve the broomstick Rook shoved up his ass, but seeing him now, I thought I might have a better idea.
I wished I didn’t.
“Come on,” Corvus said, calmer now, putting a hand on Rook’s shoulder. “We have some justice to dispense.”
“Wait…” Rook trailed off, his eyes slanting as he considered something for a second and then walked out the door to the room without another word. I followed him down the stairs, hearing what he’d heard. Noises from below.
We followed the sound to where the dining room table had been shoved to one side of the room, the oval shaped rug beneath thrown back to reveal an open hatch and dark stairs leading down.
The smell from below made me hold my breath as he descended into the darkness after AJ.
A lightbulb swung at the end of a long orange cord fixed to the ceiling. Casting a wavering light over AJ as she stared over a short double bed, the gray sheets stained with something darker. A rat skittered past our feet, its hind leg caught in a trap that it dragged along with it.
The culprit to the noise we’d heard from above.
“Ugh,” I cringed, stepping back. I fucking hated rats.
“Move the Rover,” she said, the zip of a blade whizzing through the air preceding the sound of the rat’s final squeal. “We do this here.”
“I need my kit,” Rook said.
“I’ll take you,” I told him.
“I’ll wait here with AJ for him to get home,” Corvus said. “Take the main roads. In and out. If you aren’t back here in twenty minutes—”
“We will be,” Rook promised Corv, and I believed him. There wasn’t a single thing on this earth that would stop him from returning to this dank basement to dole out justice for the children who would be forever scarred by what had been done to them.
