Page 173 of Brutal Prince

But I guess Marcus did, because he kept the video.

Sickened, I close the window and open the second video.

Sickened, but still curious as fuck.

Curious, but hoping against all hope this will reveal something I can use to find Indi.

I don’t recognize the second video, but it’s another faux interview with Jessica. She wanted to become an actress, so she was never shy of the camera. She’s absolutely trashed in this video. She’s in a bar, but it’s one I don’t recognize. Above the drone of conversation, music, and laughter, I hear another familiar voice.

Addy sounds as if she’s having a conversation with someone else off-camera.

Jessica, however, is pouting and batting her eyes to the camera, explaining how easy it was for her to get cast for the latest Spielberg movie.

But it was obvious Marcus was less interested in what she had to say than in her mouth, her tits, and her legs judging from the close-ups and where he was pointing the camera.

Was this one of those nights I had to drive to the middle of nowhere to pick her up when Addy disappeared on her or took too many drugs to remember she was there with a friend?

I end that video prematurely, and consider for a long moment if I even want to watch the next. I don’t know if I can bear watching another leering pseudo-interview.

Instead, I spend a few minutes hunting around in the computer’s file system, trying to gain access to anything that might have some hidden meaning.

I find nothing.

So I light myself a cigarette and sit back in Marcus’s desk chair, staring out the window as I smoke.

I shift, and the folded up paper in my pocket rustles.

It’s with morbid fascination that I take it out, unfold it, and smooth it open on Marcus’s metal study desk.

I carry on smoking my cigarette as I do my best to look past the actual image and find any clues it might hold. A landmark, maybe, or a significant object. But there are precious few significant objects. Two, in fact. My eyes keep going back the necklace. That tear-drop cut stone. I know it to be encircled in diamonds, but Marcus’s skill with a pencil doesn’t do it justice. He almost tore through the paper how he colored that stone near-black.

Indi’s necklace.

But Indi’s not the one wearing it. The woman is about two decades older. A bit plumper.

Indi’s mother.

And Marcus drew her exactly how Indi described her in her final moments.

Bound.

Gagged.

Naked.

There’s an object between her legs. It’s as darkly filled in as the stone around her neck.

I close my eyes and try to will away the image, but I can’t.

I’ll never be able to unsee that soda bottle.

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