She hands me over the laptop, and I rest it against my thighs.
The extraction document shows zero results for our premade filter, and then I open the second page to the complete browser history.
I suck in a shaky breath. “Fucking hell.”
The search results over the last few weeks have been centred around a missing child. There are hundreds of links being searched, from the predator registers for individuals to any missing child cases spanning over a fifty-mile radius.
“Does this…does this belong to anyone on our list?” I ask, handing her back the laptop. If one of those Sumus members has harmed a child, I think we’ll skip contacting the victims and asking what they want.
They straight up deserve to die.
She chews her lip nervously, nodding her head as she stares at the screen. “It does.”
We’ve never dealt with anything to do with a kid before. All our records show women reporting the men belonging to Sumus.
This is a whole new level of territory we’re entering.
Regina pulls up our list of names; this guy’s name is in the year above ours.
John Edwards.
“This one could be dangerous, more than the others,” she says, and I turn to look at her.
“It’s always dangerous. This won’t be any different, Gina. We need to find out more first before we come to any conclusions, and also how they got the card.”
Regina looks back at the screen, pulling up her communication app and inserting it into the phone that scanned the QR code.
I rise from the bed whilst she gets to work, shoving on sweatpants and a T-shirt, then drying my hair. I’m halfway through when I feel her gaze on me in the mirror.
“What?” I ask, turning off the hairdryer.
“They’ve responded.”
Already?
I walk over to look at the screen, and sure enough they have.
Waves form in my stomach. From experience, the truly desperate only respond this quickly.
“Ask her how she got the card.”
The knots in my stomach pull tighter, the pit now in full churn mode.
People who are desperate like this always work their way into my heart, managing to pierce the armour I’ve hastily placed around it.
It’s a huge ordeal to reach out for help; anyone who’s never been in these situations thinks it’s easy.
If you’re unlucky enough to have been targeted by them, traditional methods just aren’t enough. You could have all the evidence, public resources, and the best attorney on your side. If it doesn’t get past the police here, nothing gets done.
You’ll soon find that people in a position of trust will back away from you once the name you report was part of the Sumus.
The members never kill the victims like you’d expect them to.
No, they seem to get a kick out of ruining your life, blacklisting you from every opportunity possible.
Then make sure you live out the rest of your days regretting you even tried to tell someone about them.
They end up going on believing they’ve no chance against the elite.
