Chapter 32
Chapter
Thirty-Two
VES
I slowly pull into the parking lot of what has to be the sleaziest motel in the state of California, scanning the multiple cars, my eyes moving between some piece of shit from the seventies that has to be on its last leg, to the almost pristine BMW that looks like it just rolled off the showroom floor.
I stare into the front windows of each room as I pass, my SUV creeping along until I’m forced to turn and go deeper into this cesspool.
Following the winding path full of potholes the size of craters, I almost bottom out when I hit a dead end, one single room tucked away in the furthest corner, hidden by unkempt landscaping and a busted street light.
If this were any other situation, I’d laugh at how fucking cliche it is.
Butler picked the one of only two rooms completely removed from the sex workers, drug addicts, and god knows who else is hiding out in this shithole, the people he could try to blame everything on, essentially flipping the switch on a neon sign that’s flashing I’m a piece of hot, rotting garbage, I’m in here and up to no good, and I’m begging to be found by someone who makes it their job to murder assholes like me.
Since, I’ve had a slight change in my career, it looks like I’m that someone today.
I park out of sight, avoiding the window on the room, then get out, placing a hand over the gun on my hip as I move toward the door.
“I don’t know who the hell you think you are,” I hear Butler say, confirming he is the idiot who rented this room. “But you have less than five seconds to get the hell out of here before I—”
A gunshot rings out, shattering the glass a couple feet away from me, and I don’t even hesitate because my daughter is in there.
I kick open the front door, my gun drawn as I rush into the room but I stop short at what I see.
Butler is standing there in a white t-shirt and boxers, his suit crumpled in a pile on the floor, and he’s aiming his gun in the direction of the bathroom, but that’s not what makes this scenario even stranger—albeit infuriating—than it is.
No, it’s the two men aiming sawed off shotguns at him that he’s pointing his service weapon at.
I frown, moving my gun between them and my boss, my brow furrowing deeper as I pull my other gun from my shoulder holster.
The men are probably around six feet tall, six one at most, neither of them are what I’d call ripped, but I can tell that they’re both in extremely good shape with the way their clothes fit over the leaned, defined muscle.
The clothes and what they’re wearing is just as unusual as their presence here.
The two men are dressed almost identically.
Black military grade combat boots covered by sterile booties.
Black cargo pants and sweatshirts—one black, one burgundy—with the hoods pulled up and tightened over their heads, all of it sealed off and protected by a clear hazmat suit.
They have multiple layers of tight, vinyl gloves on their hands, sleeves tucked into them and taped with duct tape around the wrists to secure them the same way the bottom of the suit is secured to the booties.
And while all of that is very odd, it’s not the weirdest thing about how they look.
They’re wearing masks.
Masks that look like the faces of porcelain dolls, save for any kind of color to give them life.
Solid, aged white doll masks, tucked in and also taped to the hazmat hood, and the nose and eye holes have some sort of fine, black mesh on the inside, hiding the last trace of humanity you could find, and most likely acting as a preventative for leaving trace evidence.
It’s in that very second, as that last thought crosses my mind, I know exactly who I’m looking at, and why it’s been so hard to get a real profile for the serial killer I’ve been hunting.
These men are The Orphan, and they’ve been killing as a team the entire time.
“Thank god,” Butler spits as I point my second gun at the unknown men despite the fact that they aren’t the real criminals here. “It’s about damn time, I sent a call for backup as soon as these two broke in through the bathroom.”
I face my boss, noting how much he’s sweating, how frantic his movements are, and let my stare move over him again.
No, he didn’t. If he had, I would have heard the call over my radio, or been notified of it by phone as soon as he made it.
Lie number one.
He doesn’t know that I’m already onto him, that I already know he’s a sick, twisted, corrupt piece of shit, but I don’t think it would matter.
I think Craig Butler would try to lie his way out of this no matter what he knew, and I don’t have fucking time for games because there are two other people missing from this scenario, and they’re the ones I’m most concerned about finding.
“Did you, now?”
Butler nods quickly, glancing at me before his eyes move back to the serial killers who have him in their sights. “We need to fix our system if response time is so delayed. That fucker almost took my head off.”
“I’m sure he did you a favor when he missed.”
“What the hell are you talking about? What are you waiting for?”
“Where’s Cali, Butler? I know you have her.”
His head swings in my direction, fear slipping into his features briefly before he spews his next lie. “They took her, not me. I tracked her here. These two are the ones you want.”
“Why are you in your underwear?”
Butler swallows hard but doesn’t skip a beat. “They made me strip, just before you walked in.”
“Is that so?” I ask as I walk a little further into the room toward what I now see to be an adjoining door to the room on the other side of the wall.
“You really expect me to believe they”—I nod toward the team who are still very much focused on this dumbass—”broke from behaviors that have been repeated for thirteen kills, kidnapped a six-year-old, took her to a shitty motel, then when you came in to save the day, told you to strip down to your old man lingerie? ”
“March, you son of a bitch, you know—”
“So, you’re telling me the guy working the front desk isn’t going to ID you as the one who paid cash for this dumpster fire? He’s not going to say you showed up here with a little girl matching the photo in my wallet?”
Butler hesitates for a moment, a beat of silence passing before his lips pull into a sneer. “You couldn’t just fucking retire, could you? Couldn’t quietly take your package and pension, and leave the bureau behind you?”
“That’s what this is about?” I say, a little shocked that this bastard went to these lengths just to push me out. “The fact that I didn’t retire early?”
“I can’t fucking believe… They wanted to promote you, March, not me, but when your little brat started taking up more of your time, they had to reconsider.”
I drop my aim and shoot Butler in the knee without thinking twice, a shock of joy rocketing through me as he howls in pain and stumbles to the bed behind him.
“Bastard!” he cries out as he drops his gun and cups his shin with both hands. “Fucking bastard, you shot me!”
I take out his other knee and grin, “Don’t make me do it again. If you answer my questions, I might even let you live.”
“Okay!” he shouts as I get ready to fire again.
“That promotion was mine, it is mine! I wanted you gone years ago, but the higher ups know how valuable you are to the bureau. They promoted me in your place, told me to my fucking face that after thirty years, I was just a placeholder until they could have who they really wanted running things. I’m a goddamned puppet!
This is your fault, March, not mine. You forced my hand! ”
“Where’s my daughter, Butler?”
“I don’t know.”
I shoot his left shoulder and growl, “Where. Is. My daughter?”
“I don’t fucking know! Don’t shoot me again!” he squeals. “I gave her to your ex when I heard the window in the bathroom break, told her to take her and go.”
I rush toward him, his confession like a signature on his death warrant, and shove the barrel of one gun into his mouth while I shoot through his right palm with the other and bury my knee in his sternum.
“You better know where they’re going, Craig, or so help me, I will shoot your lying tongue straight out of your skull, and I promise, that will be the only piece of you left, and I will make sure no one ever finds it. ”
His eyes go wide and tears stream down his face as he shakes his head, his words muffled around the end of my gun as he tries to speak.
I nod as I remove it and shove it up under his chin, and he gasps. “I swear, I don’t know! I admit that I called her and told her where you are, but I don’t know where she’s taking her!”
I hear a sound behind me and glance over my shoulder.
One of the two men tapped his booted foot on the ground and when they see me lift my gaze in their direction, both of them give me the slightest nod in the direction of the adjoining door.
She’s still here.
For some reason, these two cold-blooded killers haven’t made one move toward me, they haven’t shifted their focus from my boss once, and regardless of the way that they've made Butler their target, they’ve chosen to help me.
They don’t have to use words for me to know that’s what this has turned into.
They most likely saw Butler take Cali—I wouldn’t doubt it since my entire life has been plastered on screens everywhere lately and smart serial killers tend to follow their own cases—and decided he was their next victim.
They know he’s a piece of shit, and they seem to want to vanquish people like him in order to defend those who can’t defend themselves.
It’s basic math. That’s what they do, there’s probably some deep seeded reason why, and they chose to help me and my daughter because we couldn’t be further from what they go after.