Page 61 of Gabe

It was a heartwarming scene, marred only by the fact that I had no idea what it all meant. I hated to interrupt, but there were several very important issues that needed to be addressed.

“Yeah. Excuse me. Two questions. One. What the hell is going on? And two. Can you untie us?”

I gestured with my bound hands as best I could to draw attention to them while also nodding toward Newt’s ropes.

Ozias wiped tears from his eyes without letting go of Milo. “Of course. I’ll explain in a moment. Let me find something to cut those ropes.”

He kept Milo’s head tucked against his shoulder as he stepped over the bodies on the floor and started rifling through the desk.

As we waited to be freed, Newt nudged me with his shoulder and leaned over to whisper in my ear. “I thought that kid was Tansie Bell’s son?”

I studied Milo for a moment. It was definitely the same kid from the picture that Tansie Bell had shown us.

“Well, she thought it was her son since he apparently looks just like her ex that got her pregnant, but there was no way to actually confirm it. Either Ozias knows Miss Bell and has also been looking for her son, or she was wrong and the kid was never her son to begin with.”

After a few minutes of searching, Ozias managed to find a pocketknife in one of the desk drawers, which he used to cut Newt and I free.

I stood from the blood-splattered floor and rubbed my sore, chafed wrists. Three dead bodies lay at our feet, which I was desperately trying not to think about. I felt no remorse for them. These people definitely deserved to die, but I’d also never been this close to such a fresh corpse.

Instead of focusing on the triple murder I’d just witnessed, I regarded Ozias with a critical eye instead. The man no longer seemed like an immediate threat, but I wasn’t willing to immediately trust him.

“All right. We’re free. Now explain.”

Ozias stared down at Milo, who seemed content to just keep his head buried against the man’s shoulder. “I’m not even sure where to start.”

“The beginning.” I snapped my fingers, drawing the man out of whatever memories he’d fallen in. “Come on. We’re in the middle of a swamp stuck on a pedophile’s secret dream island. We don’t have all day to sit around, and I need to know if we can trust you. So, what’s your deal? Why are you here?”

Newt grabbed my arm, silently asking me for patience, but I didn’t have much to spare. I was so ready for this whole ordeal to be over.

With a sigh, Ozias placed a hand over Milo’s head and lowered his voice to a whisper. “It started two years ago. A friend of mine died. Natural causes. They were sick. Their only family was their little brother. Because of the age gap, they were raising their brother more like a son.”

If Ozias was lying, then he was a damn good actor, because the pain on his face looked incredibly real.

“When my friend died, I promised to look after their brother, but I failed. Milo was put into foster care while the courts figured out what to do with him. By the time I managed to get custody, he’d disappeared.”

Based on all the information I’d learned from Gabe and Sebastian’s investigation, I could already picture what had happened.

“A young kid in the system with no living family. He probably seemed like an easy target that no one would miss.”

Ozias’s lip pulled back over his teeth like he was about to bite someone. “Well they fucked up, because I did miss him. It took everything I had, but I managed to track down what happened to Milo. When I realized who had him I tried to go to the police, but…”

“But they were no help,” I finished the sentence for him, having already heard similar sentiments so many times before. “Probably paid off to look the other way.”

My own blood started boiling from the thought, and I was ready to start biting people right alongside the man.

Newt moved between us, acting like a small ginger wall, and gave a pointed look toward Milo to remind us to keep calm. “I’m sorry to hear about your friend, Ozias, but that doesn’t explain what you’re doing here. Why are you working for these people?”

“Isn’t it obvious.” Ozias gripped Milo a little tighter. “If the police weren’t going to help, then I would have to get Milo back on my own. It took two years, but I managed to worm my way into their inner circle. Helping to kidnap you was the last hurdle to earning my way here. I wasn’t expecting to find Milo so quickly, but I’m not complaining.”

Newt stepped closer to the man. “Well, I’m glad our kidnapping could at least accomplish something positive.”

However, before he could get too close, I pulled him back to my side. “Hold on. That’s a sad story and everything, but I still have one question. This is a secret organization of pedophiles and child abusers. How, exactly, did you convince them that you were one of them?”

If my implication wasn’t clear just from my words, the distrustful gaze would have made things easy to understand.

Ozias stumbled back a step, though he never lost his grip on Milo. His face twisted into an expression of shame and disgust that was painful just to look at and he seemed to cave in on himself.

“It actually wasn’t that hard.” His words were so small, I had to strain to hear them. “All I had to do was say that I prefer to play with dolls that are… complacent, and the kids were kept so drugged up they had no idea what was happening. Or, not happening, in this case.”

---