Page 131 of He Sees You
I wait for the guilt, the horror, the human response to taking life.
It doesn't come.
All I feel is satisfaction.
The girls in the vans are screaming through their gags, terrified. I lower the gun, hold up my hands.
"We're here to help," I say, though I know how insane I must look—blood-spattered bride with a smoking gun. "We're getting you out."
Cain cuts their restraints while I keep watch. Some girls run immediately into the woods—we let them.
Thalia's people will find them.
Others huddle together, too traumatized to move.
The youngest is barely breathing.
"She needs a hospital," I tell Cain.
"Thalia's network has medical?—"
Car engines. Multiple vehicles approaching.
"The buyers," Sterling says. "They're early."
"Positions," Cain orders.
We've barely moved the girls to the back room when the first car arrives.
Judge Hamilton, seventy years old, respected in the community, grandfather of six.
He walks in without knocking, comfortable here. "Sterling, what's the delay? I have court in the morning?—"
He sees me first.
Recognizes me despite the dress, the blood, the gun.
"Celeste? What are you?—"
"Hello, Judge. Remember me? You used to give me candy at the courthouse when I was little."
"Sterling, what is this?"
"This is justice," I say, and shoot him in the knee.
He screams, collapses, crawling toward the door.
Cain blocks his path.
"You sentenced how many kids to juvenile facilities that fed into this system?" I ask. "How many 'troubled' teens did you redirect straight into trafficking?"
"Please—"
"No. No pleading. You didn't listen to them plead. Why should I listen to you?"
The next shot takes him in the stomach.
He'll die slow, conscious for most of it.
