Page 73 of Hidden While In Sight

It was the same asshole he’d been catching glimpses of for weeks now, but this time, he was dragging a terrified boy down the hallway to the room that had never been used. A boy who looked nothing like him.

The man he’d been targeting was white and blond and privileged, with a paunch from overeating below his suit jacket.

The kid was dark-skinned, with curly, black hair plastered to his skull and the boniness that came from starvation.

No way in hell they were related. Especially with the way the man started touching the sobbing boy. Diego couldn’t hear the sobs without his headphones on, but they echoed inside him anyway.

“Get over here. I’m taking care of a little girl.” Diego’s tone had dropped, cold and emotionless as he flipped off the monitors in front of him. That would have to be enough.

“What the—?”

Diego hung up on his startled friend. His hands shook with adrenaline, adrenaline he was going to fucking let loose.

“Keep away from the monitors!” he barked at Hannah.

She tensed at his tone and clutched at the kids.

“I mean it!” Diego didn’t offer an explanation. His mind was already getting sucked down a tunnel as he rushed out of the house.

He needed to get to the child fucker quickly, or he’d find him already balls deep in the boy, and Diego really would lose his mind then.

Ramiro was pissed. “You made a fucking mess of this.”

Diego continued scraping at his face with the towel, staring at himself in the mirror and not looking at his friend.

He needed to get more of the blood off. He’d scare Hannah otherwise.

“Even that kid is scared shitless of you.”

“Couldn’t be helped.” Diego grabbed a second towel. It was as scratchy as the first. The prick could have afforded softer fucking towels. “Almost didn’t make it in time.”

Ramiro sighed. “Fucking hell,” he muttered. His hand lifted, and Diego watched in the mirror as it lowered to rest on his shoulder. Ramiro squeezed.

“You okay?” he asked.

Diego stared into his reflected gaze, numb inside. “I lost it,” he admitted.

His rage had consumed him to the point that he barely remembered ripping the pedophile apart.

Of course the boy had been terrified of him. Diego had killed the man with his bare hands, unable to breathe, unable to look at anything else.

He’d done the same when he’d first encountered Naz. He’d been too late then. Naz was already as messed up as Diego by the repeated abuse. He worshipped Diego for killing for him. And then he became a killer himself.

The current, unknown kid seemed different. It had been the kid’s crying that had brought Diego back to himself. He’d been sobbing in terror. Terrified of him.

So he’d left the kid in the room with the body, smearing the outside wall with blood as he leaned against it, trying like hell to breathe as the kid’s continued sobs ripped him apart.

Ramiro had found him there and taken over.

And now Diego couldn’t get the fucking blood off his fucking face.

He dragged the towel over himself again.

“Just take a shower,” Ramiro said, putting a stack of clothes on the counter. “I need to burn what you’re wearing anyway.”

Diego’s hair was wet and plastered to his head when he emerged from the bathroom. Like the kid’s had been. He shut off the thought.

Ramiro walked him to the driveway. “Get that woman and her kids packed up and out of there,” he reminded him. “I already set up your next place. I’ll text you the address.”

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