Jai sprawled in the stuffed chair, and Ace and Eric sat cross-legged across from the futon, in front of the TV, their meals balanced on their laps and cups of coffee on a battered coffee table.
Ace indicated Brady should sit down on the ground across from Jai, so he set his plate on the coffee table and lowered himself to the clean if worn carpet.
“Sorry about the tight quarters,” Ace told him. “Sonny wanted to bring in the kitchen chairs, but I told him that would just make the place more crowded.”
“Not a problem,” Brady said, conscious once again that he was being offered hospitality by people who were literally giving him all they had. He smiled and raised his donut to Ernie. “Thanks again for these.”
Ernie grinned, and even through his obvious delight at being noticed, Brady could see he looked troubled.
“Should we get right to it?” he asked.
They all glanced at each other, and Ace started to speak.
“Okay,” he said. “So, about what? Nine days ago?” Everybody nodded, and he continued on. “A couple of fellas who absolutelyhadto die, died. The Lord works in mysterious ways and all that. But the things they were doing—”
“Raping children and filming it,” spoke up the sloe-eyed angel sitting practically knee-to-knee with Brady. “It’s important we say it, Ace, because they’re the victims here, and it needs to stay front and center.”
Ace grimaced. “Point taken, son. These two guys were a couple of baby-raping fuckers who were giving the children in the preacher’s church chlamydia, if we need our gross-meter maxed out. These men died. They left a phone, pointing to other people they may have been sending pictures to. Brady here,being a good guy, was trying to get his boss to turn that phone over to the powers that be—”
“The DA, or the FBI, or the detectives in Los Angeles,” Brady filled in, and everybody nodded.
“That’s a good list,” Ace said. “And that brings us to what happened next, and that’s on you to tell us.”
“I had it in my hands,” Brady said, his voice aching with anger. “And I said we needed to turn it over to the FBI, to the Center for Missing and Exploited Children—there was a goldmine on that phone. I….” He swallowed sickly. “I couldn’t look beyond a couple of pictures, but we get workshops on this shit. Pedophiles share pictures. Very often they share pictures with people whoreallydon’t want you to know their secrets. The phone had the potential to be key. And I was standing there, watching Roy Kuntz’s body smoke and trying not to puke, and Cuthbert yanked it out of my hands.” Brady shook his head. “We argued about it, but I got called to the next scene, the preacher’s house, and had to leave. I’m the one who called the FBI, Missing and Exploited Children division. The guy went out watching his own homemade porn, and there was—Christ, there was aday care centerright next to his office. My contact, Jessica Chambers, showed up, and I….” He grunted with frustration. “She was solid,” he said, almost to himself. “I could have sworn she was solid. But over the last week or so, she’s gotten more and more… distant on the phone, and I swear to God, the last time, she had to go to the bathroom to talk to me, and she told me to stop calling her.”
He paused and glanced up at the room and realized that there wasn’t a raised eyebrow or a sign of disbelief in the lot. But then… he frowned.
“You all knew most of this,” he said, remembering how Ace had introduced the subject. He frowned.The Lord works in mysterious ways.“Howdid you know all of this?” And thenboom, like a lightning bolt. “And how did you know about the chlamydia? That… Ididn’t even know about that.”
All of those sympathetic, angry,alliedfaces went carefully blank, and he gasped as things fell into place.
He turned to Eric, feeling betrayal shaft through his heart. “Didyoukill the Kuntz brothers?”
“He did not,” Jason Constance said. “He wasn’t even in town when that happened.”
“Well, I arrivedasit was happening,” Eric said, casting him a glance that was a muddle of hurt and resignation.
Brady turned back toward them all. “Then who—”
From the corner of his eye, he saw Ace open his mouth, and then Burton said, “Let’s just say it was a group effort. We all contributed something to that.”
“I didn’t,” Cotton said quietly. “But I would have.” He met Brady’s eyes, and Brady realized that for all of his loveliness—and there were envious angels out there, Brady was certain—his enormous brown eyes were hurt, perhaps eternally. “I know what it’s like to be preyed upon,” he said softly. “I’d do anything to protect a child from that.”
Jason Constance reached down and squeezed Cotton’s shoulder, and Brady felt some of his anger—his righteous indignation at finding himself in a nest of unrepentant murderers—fade.
Arlen Cuthbert had ripped the phone out of his hand, enabling more monsters to walk the earth. Brady knew—knew—most of the men in this room had done only good things with the resources they had. The Kuntz brothers had been monstrous—and they’d needed to be stopped. If these people had stopped them, it had been because they’d rightly guessed that nobody else would.
But still… he needed a beat. He pushed himself to his feet and sensed rather than saw an electric tension fill the room.
“I’m not… not going anywhere,” he said gruffly, suddenly claustrophobic. “I… I promise. I just… need some air.”
He wobbled his way out through the kitchen, hearing Eric’s voice in the background and then Ace’s, calm and adamant, saying, “No, I got this.”
Ace gave him the courtesy of letting him get outside first so he could lean against the sun-heated stucco wall like a stunned lizard.
Breathe. Breathe. Breathe. In. Out. Repeat if necessary. Breathe. Breathe. Breathe.
The sun was directly overhead now, and the front of the house was nicely warmed. Brady’s skin thought about being too hot, but decided maybe heneededto bake for a minute, to have the confusion and achiness cooked out of his bones.
