“You’re right, I should be,” he shot back cheerfully. “But you know, Neil,there are just so many loopholes in the legal system…” He laughed with gusto, sounding delighted. “I was operating my network, building my business, giving all sorts of people a place where they could discover themselves and explore their sexual fantasies. You probably didn’t know this, but there were plenty of important people using my site: judges, lawyers, doctors, law enforcement, politicians… The dark web is the blackest part of the internet’s soul. On my end, I could verify who had accessed the site and track my users’ data. I got email addresses, phone numbers, home addresses, everything I needed to threaten whoever tried to get in my way.”
He grinned in that delighted way again, like he was proud of what a slimy bastard he was. “I held their careers, their public images, in the palm of my hand, and they knew it. So I played a few cards to reduce my charges. I wound up doing a few years behind bars, took a rehabilitation course here and there, and, of course, spent a little time in a psychiatric facility.” He drew perilously close to Neil and circled him slowly, smiling that unceasing smile. He was so puffed up with sick satisfaction at having wriggled out of his rightful sentence. “Sure, I maybe have escaped doing real time in the end, but I didn’t want to spendanytime in prison, Neil. And, if it weren’t for you, I never would have. I had a good thing going, and then your call to the police blew it all to hell. You are the reason the cops came looking for me after they arrested Kim. It was your pigheaded rebelliousness that ruined everything. When Kim told me that you were uncontrollable and unsuited to our needs, I doubted her. I thought you would change. That, with time, you’d learn how to obey like the other little shits. But you never did. Instead, you destroyed everything we’d built. You destroyed all of our lives.” Ryan’s eyes had turned cloudy with twisted evil.
“I have been in hell ever since the day that you…” he stabbed a finger at Neil with all the rage he could summon up, “ruined everything! I was arrested; I was threatened and attacked when my so-called crimes were spread across the front pages of every paper in the city. Meanwhile you…everyone thought you were some superhero, saving all the little bastards like you from big, bad criminals like us.” He stopped in front of Neil, daring him to respond.
“You’re a deranged lunatic. I did the right thing!” Neil blurted out fearlessly. He was sweating from the pain, purpling bruises spread over his face,and his eyes had emptied of all emotion, replaced instead by two pits of fire.
“When I was in prison, all I thought about was how to get back at you. After I attacked a few of my fellow inmates and attempted suicide a couple times, a judge allowed me to be transferred to a psychiatric facility. I had realized pretty quickly that it would be a lot easier to get out of there than a maximum security prison. I pretended I was crazy just to get out and find you so I could end you.” He laughed, smugly pleased with himself, and I shuddered.
“You weren’t pretending, you crazy son of a bitch!” Neil shot back. By then, he’d managed to stagger back up on his feet, but Bryan pounced on him, grabbing him by the shoulders and holding him still so Ryan could take the opportunity to backhand Neil so hard the corner of his mouth began to bleed. I sucked in a breath at the sudden violence and then screamed. With a strength I didn’t know I had, I stood up, but Britney immediately elbowed me in the stomach, sending me back down to my knees. She knocked the wind out of me, and I curled forward in pain.
“Quiet, skank,” she said menacingly. She positioned herself right next to me so she could keep an eye on me. I shot her a glare filled with undiluted hatred before turning my attention back to Neil, who was looking at me.
“Don’t touch her, you cunt!” he shouted furiously at the blond girl. He twisted madly against the rope, but two of the other guys came up to stop him.
“Fucking hold him,” Ryan cut in, impatiently watching his lackeys struggle to pin Neil, despite the fact that he was still tied up. One of them aimed a kick at the base of his spine, and Neil contorted in pain but did not cry out. He wasn’t going to give them the satisfaction.
He landed on the floor, gasping for air.
“Neil!” I cried, but he just spat a glob of blood at Ryan’s shoes and lifted his face to glare at him.
Neil’s eyes were alight with rage. I was afraid that he wasn’t going to be able to stop himself from provoking that madman and that we would never get out of that warehouse alive.
“You know, Ryan, you and I do have something in common—our incredibly fucked-up brains. So you must know that you can hit me all youwant, torture me, kill me…but I’ll never let you break me. You don’t scare me, and you never will.” He grinned, all defiance, but then he fell into a coughing spasm. He was obviously in bad shape, and I wanted nothing more than to run to him and hold him in my arms, to try to bolster him in some way. But Britney was on top of me, preventing me from getting up.
“I suggest you quit trying to irritate me,” Ryan said menacingly. Neil just laughed in his face. It was a tense laugh because I could see that Neil desperately wanted to hit him, but he couldn’t, and that rage was spreading like a poison inside him, a corrosive acid that ate away at his reason.
“No! Don’t hurt him anymore! Please.” Despair filled my voice, and tears rolled down my face at my own helplessness. There was nothing I could do to save Neil, nothing I could do to end this insane situation. Ryan turned to look at me, and his eyes narrowed in consideration. For a moment, I even managed to delude myself into thinking that he might actually listen to me. Then he turned his attention back to Neil, kneeling before him, and his stare turned spiteful.
“I know how tough you are, Neil, and I know that you’re not afraid of anything. That’s why I’ve had to plan all of this down to the smallest detail,” he said in a deep, unsettling voice. “I had Bryan watching you at the university. He was my spy. He noticed that you’d often sketch pentagrams in your notebooks during classes. Did you know that Kim had one tattooed right on her back?” he asked, squatting down on his heels. He bored those frozen eyes of his deep into Neil’s, who just stared back wrathfully, saying nothing. “You might not remember, but I bet your subconscious does,” Ryan continued. Neil’s eyebrows rose as he struggled to keep a clear head. I knew how much it hurt him to recall that woman at all, so I figured he was trying to fight the memories back down and not show any weakness. His gaze flickered to me, and for a moment it softened.
But then he abruptly cut our eye contact and turned his attention back to Ryan, his gaze dripping with disgust.
“Why 2511? What does it mean?” he hissed through gritted teeth.
Ryan slowly got to his feet, taking his time, straightening his pants before he answered.
“I’ve always been fascinated by numerology and esoteric symbology. Iused it to twist your mind into whatever shapes I desired. The riddles themselves were intended to confuse you, but they also contained messages that would have revealed everything if you’d only figured out how to read them. 2511 was just another riddle that you failed to solve. All you needed to do was understand what each number meant. The number two can symbolize separation, like the kind you forced upon Kim and me when you decided to play hero. You did know that we were lovers, right?” Ryan cocked his head to one side and feigned a sorrowful sigh. “The number five is associated with Mercury and thus with cleverness…my puzzles were rathercleverif I do say so myself. Don’t you agree?” he asked mockingly.
Neil tried again to pull away from the men pinning him, but they held him fast. Ryan went on without pause. “Finally, eleven is a profoundly powerful number. It symbolizes divine justice. I was taking justice into my own hands. I needed to get my revenge on you. Attacking your loved ones was only ever a way to drive you out of your mind, to make you afraid, but you stayed strong. You remained stupidly brave right up to the end. I closed the circle perfectly with the final riddle, number seven: photo, mosaic, missing piece. Remember my puzzle with Logan’s acrostic inside it? I sent it along withphotosof everyone in your family, except you. You, therefore, were themissing pieceof mymosaic.The true target.” In one swift, sure motion, Ryan pulled a gun out of the back of his waistband. I was completely petrified as he aimed the gleaming metal barrel right at Neil’s forehead. The psycho handled it with obvious skill, his outstretched arm steady, his index finger hovering over the trigger, ready to fire without a moment’s hesitation.
Neil swallowed hard, but he showed no sign of shock or terror. He just alternated his gaze between Ryan and the weapon, watching. I could see the beast inside of him: the unstoppable, dangerous, and uncontrollable one.
“Well, I’ll be fucked… Nobody told me this was the where the party’s at.”
Just then, an unexpected voice bounced off the walls of the warehouse. I turned to find Xavier, flanked by the rest of the Krew as they walked toward us. Ryan turned to see who the intruders were, and while he was momentarily distracted, Neil seized the opportunity to elbow one of the guys holding him in the crotch and then headbutt the other. The two of them hit the ground immediately, and Neil aimed a disarming kick at Ryan’s wrist. Thegun tumbled out of his grasp, and Neil quickly kicked it away.
“Who the fuck are you?” Ryan seemed disoriented. He looked around, trying to see where the gun had gone, and then turned back to Xavier, who continued to swagger through the warehouse.
“The Krew. Haven’t you heard of us?” The black-haired boy grinned before whistling nonchalantly.
The basketball players, Bryan included, all backed away fearfully. I realized why when I saw Luke draw even with Xavier, pulling a knife out of his leather jacket. Meanwhile, Jennifer and Alexia swung baseball bats with a challenging ease.
Xavier came to a stop right in front of Ryan, and before the latter could speak, he pressed an index finger to his mouth. I had no idea what the hell Xavier was doing, but I did know that he was crazy and had no limits. He immediately spotted the gun that Neil kicked right at him and stooped to grab it before anyone else could. Then, he immediately pulled one of his own from his jacket.
Now, he held one gun on Bryan, who immediately lifted his hands in surrender, and the other on Player, who blanched but remained motionless, staring at him.
“We followed you after you tossed Neil and Selene into your shitty van. You should have paid a little more attention. All you had to do was look in the rearview mirror once. We were right on your ass the whole way here,” Xavier explained, his voice low and menacing. “Now, none of you dumbfucks move, or I’ll shoot you and anyone who tries to stop me.” He jerked his chin, signaling us to move over to him. Neil drew closer to me, and I gasped as I felt his breath wrap around me like a warm blanket. My head was spinning, and my body was weak, but just being near him gave me the strength I needed to keep fighting.
