“How can it be worse?” Duncan asked, and I had to wonder myself what could possibly be worse than a child forced to have sex with grown men and women?
“I’m going to tell you something, and I am trusting you, Sal, that no one else will know this information.” King was quiet as he waited for Sal to answer.
Sal looked at each of us, and we nodded. “You have my word.”
Another beat passed before King shared what he knew. “I have the files from the Trick Pony.”
All four of us in that room froze. We looked at each other, wondering how to ask the question we desperately needed the answer to.
“How far back do they go, King?” Mac asked. When Sal glared at him, he shrugged.Leave it to Mac to bulldoze right through.
“2002,” he answered, and we all collectively sighed. He had the information we needed.
“I need those files, King.” I could use those to cross-reference the names we had.
“They won’t do you any good.”
“Why not?” Duncan asked.
“Because, according to Indie, Devlin Scott was the face of the Trick Pony, but he wasn’t running the show. We have client lists and victim lists. But we don’t have the money.”
“How does she know this? How old is she, twenty-seven, twenty-eight?”
“She’s twenty.”
“Then how would she know anything? If she was only fourteen when she escaped, she was a kid,” I argued.
“She was,” he confirmed. “I haven’t told you everything yet. Indie was part of another program. One where the children were hypnotized and trained.”
“I thought you weren’t going to go into details?” Duncan asked, glaring at the phone.
“This was different. Indie didn’t remember this training. It wasn’t until Nav found information on the program and we asked Indie about it. That was when we learned what she had been through.” King paused. “She was trained to be an assassin. They hypnotized four- and five-year-old girls for ten years and taught them how to fight. And how to kill. There were dozens of them. And when Indie remembered everything... Jesus, I still can’t believe it, and I’ve seen what she can do. They pitted the girls against each other until only the strongest survived.”
I sat back in my chair. Sal sank down onto the couch, and Duncan stared out the window. Mac, though, he took it the hardest. He put his fist through my wall.
Mac’s father was an evil son of a bitch. He taught Mac how to fight by beating the hell out of him when he was growing up. Claimed he was teaching his son to be a man.
“Where are the rest of the girls?” Duncan asked, breaking the silence.
“We know one of the girls killed herself after they escaped. Indie thinks maybe Jenny remembered what they’d done, or shejust couldn’t handle what she did remember. Either way, she took her life to end her suffering. Another one of the girls is in Oklahoma. As far as we know, she doesn’t remember anything.”
“How did Indie remember?” I asked.
“There were poems in the files. Triggers to set them off, allowing whoever said the trigger to control what they did. There was also a failsafe. A way to release them completely, with their memories intact. Indie chose that option. She didn’t just remember her training; she remembered names. Men and women who were part of the program.”
Sal’s head snapped up, his attention focused on the phone. “Please don’t say it, son.”
“I’m sorry, Sal. Tyran Fitzpatrick was one of those names.”
“SON OF A BITCH!” Sal yelled. He grabbed the glass I’d left on the coffee table and threw it across the room.
“King,” I said. “What were the other names she mentioned?”
“George and Dakota Stone, Sylvia St. James, Jane Craven, Gary Hughes. Those were the ones she mentioned first. There are others.”
“Can you send me those names?” I asked, trying to ignore the fact that the woman who gave birth to me and another woman who I’d come to realize was my sister, were both mentioned.
“Nav will send you an email.”
