Not anymore. We came to rescue their bodies—and their souls.
I don’t know how much time passes or how many I kill before Blood gives me the all-clear signal.
“Your targets aren’t here, Amos.”
“What?”
“Maria and Jonathan escaped again.”
The fury from knowing they slipped away again drags my hate to the surface.
“Bag the bodies,” I order. “We can’t bring out the kids while they’re still scattered around.”
There’s a cleanup team[2] waiting nearby. After Blood calls them in, it takes less than thirty minutes to finish up.
The dead are taken to a warehouse next door, and my men begin processing the house for any evidence that could lead us to Jonathan and Maria’s whereabouts.
Meanwhile, we’ll retrieve the children and hand them over to the FBI, who are already waiting. But once the kids are out of here, unfortunately for the feds, this whole place will go up in flames. We never leave a trace—not even when it’s the government that hires us.
We start sweeping the house, now looking for the kids, when a sound to my left grabs my attention.
“You hear that?” I ask Blood.
“Yeah. Sounds like it’s coming from under the stairs.”
There’s some kind of closet there, and motioning for silence, I head over with my gun drawn.
“Come out!” I shout, sure it’s one more coward hiding.
“No,” a tiny voice answers, catching me off-guard.
“Who are you?”
Silence.
“It’s a child, Amos. And they sound really young. Let me try to talk to them,” Blood says, approaching the small door. “Hey . . .we’re not going to hurt you. I promise. You can come out.”
Almost a full minute passes before the door creaks open—very slowly. A little boy, maybe five years old, steps out. He’s filthy and painfully thin, but what grabs my attention are his eyes. They’re dark. Deep.
They don’t look like a child’s eyes. They look like they’ve seen all the pain in the world.
“What’s your name?” I ask.
He doesn’t look at Blood—the one who spoke to him—but at me.
“Bruno. Are you a liar?”
“What?”
“You’re not the bad man?”
“No. I’m not a liar. My name is Amos. I came here to save you.”
Chapter 27
I just finished my first week of classes, and my head is bursting with ideas. More than ever, I’m sure I chose the perfect career. But something the professor said today—about how she believed it was important to specialize in a specific area of fashion—stirred up a lot of thoughts.
I reflected on her words and tried to remember how and when I first felt drawn to being a seamstress—which is what I thought the profession was called back then.
