Page 68 of Sinful Reality

The television grows louder, and the click-hum of someone’s tongue becomes the new sound rolling through my speakers.

“That’s a nervous tick,” Aubree murmurs. “An attempt at regulation.”

“Him or her?” Fletch wonders.

“He’s probably not feeling so great,” I rasp past an achingly dry throat. “Mom isn’t home, and he’s alone with the sister. Not hisactualsister, but the replacement. And we already figure we know what happened that first time.”

“No.” Shaking her head, Gloria anxiously bundles her jacket and takes a step back when the artist sets his pencil down. No longer the cool, collected woman I spoke to on the phone. She’s nervous without her son. Erratic when she hasn’t got eyes on him. “I don’t know how he walked, and I’m tired now. I need to go home to rest.”

On Pax’s side of the screen, he approaches the bottom step andbends to get a clearer view beyond the wall that shields the room. A television much like the one in the living room sits atop an old brown cabinet, the screen facing us, which means its viewers have their backs to us.

“There he is,” Fletch grumbles. “Just a boy, in a grown-ass man’s body.”

Lachlan sits cross-legged on the rug, his back arched and his elbows on his knees. He plays with a small toy ship, whistling while he acts out the ship’s speed through invisible waters. His hair is longer now than it was in his earlier years. Past his ears and a little matted in the back, and because he rocks while he plays, his shirt rides up to reveal skin patchy with dermatitis.

She probably makes him bathe in bleach.

“To the right.” Aubree straightens on the couch, leaning forward to see the screen better. But I’m closer, so I narrow my eyes and spy the small bundle curled up on a beanbag. Unlike Lachlan, whose attention is firmly on the television, Janiesa’s sweet eyes clock Pax in an instant. Spilling over and dancing with a million cries for help.

But he brings his gloved hand up, pressing it to his lips so even a five-year-old could understand.

Quiet.

“She’s not getting up.” I choke down the lump in my throat and attempt to tug my hand from Archer’s. “She’s five. She shouldn’t be able to sit still and follow Pax’s order like that.”

“She’s a very brave five-year-old,” Archer counters gently, holding my hand while I, too, rock forward. “And she’s in survival mode. She’s not a standard five-year-old anymore. She’s grown and smart, and she’s kept herself alive for almost a month already.”

Pax gestures with his hand, circling it. But if I thought to wonder what that might mean, his men respond quickly, fanning out on either side of him to form a line.

“I don’t feel so well.” Gloria fans her face and shuffles toward the door. “I feel quite ill. So I’m leaving now.”

“I’ll call you an ambulance.” The sketch artist jumps to his feet, setting his book and pencils aside, and strides across the small room totake her arm in his hand. “I can’t leave you alone when you’re under the weather, Ms. Donohue.”

“I don’t need an ambulance! I need to go home.”

Paxton crooks his finger, pointing toward Janiesa, then gesturing back in his direction.Come to me. But every move she makes, every muscle she tenses, is highlighted by the crunch and crinkle of the beanbag chair. So she gently shakes her head, fat tears dribbling from her eyes and trailing across her face.

“I could lose my job if I let you leave in this state, Ms. Donohue.” The artist opens the door, allowing light and noise and the rest of the world in, when before, it was just them and a pencil. “If I let you out of my sight and you fall because you’re unwell, I would be in a world of trouble.”

“I changed my mind.” She tears her arm from his grip and charges into the bullpen. “I don’t feel sick. I just feel like I no longer want to help.”

“But Ms. Donoh?—”

On Pax’s side of the screen, the cop I think is Tyler, slowly marches forward, his gun up, his cheek nestled on the stock, and his eyes on Lachlan. But his boot makes contact with a toy. The cry of a ‘mommy!’ from the soundbox is like cannon fire in the night. Then the cartoon playing on the screen pauses for an ad break, the screen going black and creating what may as well be a fucking mirror.

Startled, Lachlan jumps and spins, his eyes wild with terror, his face dirty with dust and old food. His clothes are too small, so a portion of his stomach hangs over his shorts and droops lower than his shirt can cover.

Then he panics and swings toward Janiesa.

“Hands up!” Five separate, distinct voices shout at once, though Pax’s is the loudest, the most distinguishable to me. “Put your hands in the air, Lachlan Donohue!”

Janiesa screams, finally. It’s a bit like a child immediately after birth, I suppose. Silence. Shock. The infant doesn’t cry the moment they leave their mother’s womb. It takes a moment for reality to settle in, for their lungs to open, and the penetrating shout to be freed.

She rolls in the beanbag, the chair more than three times her size, soit’s like swimming through foam. She fumbles and climbs, searching for a firm handhold, only for the chair to collapse in on itself.

Her movements grow more frantic when Lachlan’s shout joins the fray. His booming shriek. His terrified eyes. He looks at Janiesa, then to Pax. The guns. Even the TV again. He’s like a wild animal caught in a dozen headlights, no clue which way to turn, but brutally aware his favorite toy is readying to flee.

“Hands up,” Chavez repeats, stepping closer. “Turn around, lie on your stomach, hands behind your head!”

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