(Blood and Bone, #2) Sin and Swoon(73)

I turn, grimacing, when I see a bell above the door tied to a string. These people are monsters. She was a modern-day Cinderella. And then something much worse.

I slip from the room, closing the door and locking it again so we can clear the rest of the floor. There’s a laundry room, a games room, and a utilities room. It isn’t as exciting downstairs as it is up. We creep along the stairs, each watching wherever the other person’s eyes aren’t, covering all areas.

Henrico is the perfect partner, but I still don’t trust him the way I should. We hardly know one another, and my previous partner whom I trusted with my life didn’t turn out to be the man I thought him to be.

At the top of the stairs, we enter an enormous living room and kitchen–great room combination. It’s so large there are three sitting areas and two fireplaces. The kitchen gleams with marble and excess. Henrico takes the right and I the left, ending up in a library off the dining room and circling back. He shakes his head and points at the round set of stairs in the middle of the massive entryway. I unlock the front door, just in case, and creep up the stairs after him. We have not made a sound nor heard one until we get to the top of the stairs. Then I pause, giving him an odd look. He wrinkles his nose, and I imagine we assume the same thing. I have to admit it never crossed my mind that this is what we would find.

But we do.

We clear all the rooms, including one with a wall of surveillance. I attach the remote access to the computers and cameras. Immediately Antoine goes to work.

There are several bedrooms on the top floor—five, to be exact. Each has its own en suite, again with marble and slate as the varying design features.

The lights are all chandeliers, and the walls all feature wainscoting and beautiful wallpaper. The whole house looks like it could be in a magazine.

Until we enter the last room, the one with the heavy breathing and grunting.

Then it pretty much goes to shit.

Henrico grimaces, turning his face away for a moment.

I continue in, feeling every part of me tingle with disgust and revulsion.

A man in his midforties holds a camcorder in his hands. He’s filming as another man and woman have sex, but not a normal kind of sex. The man is older, maybe in his late sixties. He’s tied down to the bed, spread-eagle. A soft and flabby woman in her forties, not a small woman and not a huge woman, lowers herself onto him, literally bouncing on his cock and balls. She is squatting over him, dropping her vagina in an awkward thrust. Somehow in the commotion and the large size of the room they do not notice us standing there with our mouths agape.

The woman has on a lacy bra, which about covers the clothing for all three of them. The man holding the camera is erect, completely, and naked, with his own penis going in and out of something very odd. I don’t know what it is, but he’s jerking off with it. I have a terrible feeling it’s a pocket pussy, something I saw once in a sex-toy collection.

Henrico leaves, not even able to keep a straight face. But I lean against the wall, still completely stunned at what we have found, until the man with the camera slips in behind the woman as she drops to her haunches and leans forward. I assume both men are inside of her, but I can’t take the view any longer. No one should have to witness that.

We exit the front door, sending a message to Stanley to meet us at the car.

He’s there before we are, giving us a look. “You find them?”

“Good God.” Henrico shakes his head. “She was right, what is in this house is much worse than anywhere else.”

He takes a minute, looking like he might take a knee. “So the two younger ones—” He gives Stanley a wide-eyed look. “And I am being generous with the younger.” He spins back to me. “The younger ones are the brother and sister? Who the fuck was the old man getting raped?”

I shake my head as Stanley starts to giggle, as much as a man in his late thirties with a mustache and a slight belly can giggle. Which is surprisingly more than I imagined him capable of. “The brother and sister were raping an old dude?”

Henrico makes a face again. “And filming that shit, man!” He looks like he might cry. “I am never getting rid of that image. Never. I could turn to drugs and alcohol, and that shit is gonna still be there. I won’t ever have normal sex again. I’m gonna cry and squeeze my eyes shut and pray it ends before my wife notices I’m sobbing.”

Stanley laughs harder; even I laugh a little.

Henrico gets in the car, waving a hand at the house and then me. “It is the Sunday before Christmas, Jane! And that was unholy!” He spits before he slams the door, and it’s Stanley’s turn to take a knee. He’s laughing so hard he can’t breathe.