Her name on his lips liquefies my insides. “There are billions of girls in the world, Clay. Thousands who will buy the Kool Aid you’re selling, unfortunately. Why her? Why can’t you just leave her be?”
He staggers to his feet, his face livid. “Because she is mine!”
He’s not going to stop looking for her. Never. “I have money. I’ll give it all to you if you promise to give up searching for her. That’s what you want her for, isn’t it? To be your next star attraction? Tell me what she’s worth, I’ll pay it.”
“How? You think that rich asshole you were cavorting with will bail you out? I say he has enough problems of his own right now.”
The vice around my heart tightens. “What are you talking about?”
He snaps his fingers. “Right. You’ve been in the dark, literally for the last two days, haven’t you? Earl, bring the laptop. Show Lucky here all the excitement she’s missed. If you ask me, you’re the star attraction everyone’s interested in now.” He waves the document at me. “Maybe I should revisit my decision. You’re an Internet sensation now. Your premium has gone up—”#p#分页标题#e#
“What the hell are you talking about?” I demand louder.
Earl steps back into the light, a laptop clutched in his hand. He snags a chair and sets it down with the laptop a few feet from me. With a nasty smirk, he hits the button, stands back and folds his arms.
At first I’m not sure what I’m seeing. The camera is shaking badly, the person holding it hiding behind a curtain or drape. The shot gets better when a woman walks into view, accompanied by a man. The footage is years old, but I recognize a younger Maxwell Blackwood immediately.
He walks the woman into a bedroom suite. On the bed, two half-dressed men wait. The expressions on their faces are ones I’m unwillingly familiar with. Maxwell murmurs in her ear, then turns to leave. She tries to grab him, her sobs escalating. He pushes her back toward the bed. When she protests, he reaches into his pocket and pulls at a set of handcuffs and secures her to the bedpost.
“You can’t go back on your promises, Adele. I’m disappointed in you.” He leaves her there, walks out. The men rise from the bed, and move towards her.
My heart shreds as the name registers. Adele. Quinn’s mother.
The camera cuts to another, similar footage of Adele with other men. On and on. Six in total. Then to a different scene. Maxwell is sitting on a sofa with Adele. He’s wearing a suit, she’s in her nightgown. Again there are hints of a drape in the corner of the screen. He talks in a low, insistent voice. She’s weeping softly and nodding. After a minute, he nods to someone off camera. A woman walks onto the screen and hands Maxwell a vial of pills.
As she turns away, I see her face and my breath catches.
It’s Quinn’s stepmother, Delilah Blackwood.
Maxwell carries on talking to Adele, one hand soothing her back. The footage is fast-forwarded to where he sets the pills down in front of her and kisses her temple. She rises, goes to a drawer, and returns with a black clothed lump. When she sits down, he pats her hand.
“You’re doing the right thing, Adele. It’s for the greater good,” he says.
He leaves the room. Adele reaches for the pills, shakes them out into her palm and swallows them with a glass of water. Her movements are slow when she parts the black cloth and picks up a gun.
No!
The camera wobbles. “Mama?” The cracked voice of a boy not quite yet a man.
Adele’s head turns slowly towards the voice, the gun rising in her hand.
The camera swings downward, then falls to the carpet. Feet rush in and out of shot.
“No, Mama! No!”
The still rolling camera records the sound of the shot.
Then the endless screaming starts.
I absently note the sobs ripping from my throat, the wetness on my face. Somewhere beyond the buzzing in my head, I hear Earl chuckle.
The footage moves on. Quinn in his early twenties, sitting on a sofa. He’s being asked questions by a woman with her back to the camera. They’re about the state of his mental health.
His shrink.
His answers are monosyllabic. Every now and then, he smirks at the camera over her shoulder. The video rolls forward, until, unbelievably she gets up and begins to undress. Quinn issues instructions, which she follows, all the way through giving him oral sex. And through it all, his eyes stare soullessly into the camera.
Fast-forward again through the shrink’s footage. At one point it stops at a plaque in her office. Adriana Nathanson.
Then comes the one that sends a spike straight through my gut.
Quinn and Delilah. Nausea punches through my diaphragm. My whole body heaves and I prepare to hurl. At the last instant it subsides, but I can’t take my eyes off the depravity happening onscreen.#p#分页标题#e#