Page 67 of Sinful Reality

“I think that’s pretty close.” Gloria inches off her chair and leans over the paper to confirm. “That’s him. I should probably get home to?—”

“What about his ears?” Smooth, the artist messes up the lines, essentially forcing her to correct him or admit she’s full of shit. “Pointed near the top?”

On the right-hand side of the screen, Pax moves through a shadowed hall toward his men and turns at a bedroom door, allowing the camera to take in all things pink. Curtains, bed spread, carpet, and rug. The walls are pink, though the lampshade is white… with pink tassels. “For fuck’s sake.” He inches across the threshold to discover a small writing desk with a heart-shaped mirror and plastic makeup palettes, the kind little girls use when they want to dress up but aren’t allowed to use the real thing.

Carefully, he runs a gloved finger across the shiny desk and brings it up in search of dust.

“It’s like a time capsule,” he rumbles. “But it hasn’t been forgotten. The place is spotless, but,” he picks up an American Girl magazine and brings it closer, “dated ‘95.”

“Jesus,” Aubree groans. “She didn’t change a thing in all this time.”

“The room is stuck in the nineties,” Pax murmurs, “but it wasn’t closed off and ignored. It stinks of chemicals in here, too. And there isn’t a speck of dust.”

“Do you hear that?” Chavez’s eyes narrow to thin slits, his head tilting fractionally to the left. “Is that music?”

Pax turns and quietly creeps back into the hall. “I know that song.”

“It’s The Magic School Bus,” I whisper, the words crackling along my dry throat. “They’re watching cartoons.”

“Sick.” Fletch runs a hand through his hair and tugs just hard enough to feel something other than torment. Anxiety. Anticipation. “They snatch this baby from her home, dump her somewhere else, and when they’re not fucking torturing her, they’re trying to entertain her?”

“He’s stuck in the past,” Aubree explains. “He’s not capable of doing anything else. And she’s not Janiesa in his mind. She’s Serena. Watching cartoons together is probably completely normal to him.”

“Let’s go down,” Pax whispers, gesturing along the hall. “Main floor is clear. Heading to the basement.”

“Be careful.” I bounce my foot and lean forward, resting my elbows on my knees and my chin in my hands. “She’s going to be small and weak. He could kill her if he panics, and he probably wouldn’t even mean to.”

“I think it’s time for me to leave now.” Gloria packs up her oversized purse—miraculously, the same one in every screenshot Cato took from the footage overnight—and hugs the leather to her chest. Her eyes are shifty, jumping from the camera to the page, to the artist’s face, then down again. “It’s been so long since I saw that person,” she explains. “Years. But I think that’s pretty close.”

“Can we discuss his walk?” The artist readjusts in his seat, flipping pages to start again. “A man’s walk can be quite distinctive. The way he rolls his shoulders. The way his foot comes off the ground.”

“No, I?—”

“You wouldn’t have even noticed these things consciously. But subconsciously, the details will be tucked away in your mind. If you could give me just twenty more minutes, we’ll have a pretty accurate idea of who we’re looking for.”

“Approaching the basement door,” Paxton murmurs, the words so quiet, it’s hard to make them out. “One entry, one exit. No windows large enough for a body to crawl through. We’re going silent once I make the order. Ready on go?”

“Oh God. Oh God. Oh God.” I bounce my knee and nibble on my thumbnail, only to startle in my seat when a hand drops to my shoulder. Like an animal caught in a trap, I wheel around in horror and find Archer’s kind gaze.

“Try to breathe through it.” He circles my chair and perches on the edge of my desk. He doesn’t block my view of the screen, but he forces himself into my vision. “This is almost all over.”

“What if we’re too late?” Horrifying tears burn the backs of my eyes, stinging and turning my vision blurry. “What if the last thing she ever knew was three weeks without her mom, torment, starvation, and worse?” Emotion backs up in my throat, threatening to choke me if I’m not careful. “What if wedofind her alive, but he’s already stolen her innocence?”

“What ifs don’t count when we’re doing the job.” He pries my handfrom my mouth, cupping it between his palms and blowing warm air between them. “What ifs serve nothing but to distract a man when he needs his senses and take away from a job well done.”

“Archer—”

“This is the closest anyone has ever come,” he argues. “In twenty-four years, this is the closest we’ve gotten to making this better. For the girls.” His eyes flicker between mine. “For you.”

I swallow the painful lump of anxiety nestled in my throat, groaning because the slide hurts.

“Tearing yourself apart withwhat ifschanges nothing. Trust Pax to do the job and bring her home.”

“Let’s go,” Pax whispers, carefully twisting the door handle, slowing the action when a squeak echoes through the speakers. But The Magic School Bus grows louder, too. The happy chatter of a character readying to explore the human body.

With the world’s slowest turn, he releases the catch and drags the door open, then lifting his weapon so our view is essentially along the barrel, he moves onto the stairs first. One foot, as he tests his weight and experiments with the sound of old wood under a two-hundred-pound man. But when all remains silent, he slowly continues down.

I don’t see his squad mates, since he’s in front. For all I could prove, Pax is going down alone. Though my rational brain knows better.

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