Page 65 of Psycho
“A what?” Lucas asked, relieved to see nobody else seemed to know what she was talking about.
A picture popped up on the screen before them. It took a minute for Lucas to truly understand what he was looking at. It was almost comically horrific, like a poster for some slasher film. There was a woman on a medieval rack, face contorted in agony, and a man in leather pants and a bag over his head wielding a curved blade. The entire picture had a red overlay and the words ‘five days’ blinked over it.
“This is a red room,” Calliope said, as if that somehow explained everything.
“We have eyes, Calliope,” Adam said, earning an elbow in the ribs from Noah. “What?” he stage-whispered.
“What’s a red room, Calliope?” Lucas asked patiently.
Once more, she made a whine, like she struggled to even get the words out. “A red room is pay per view darknet torture porn.”
A shock went through Lucas’s whole body. “What?”
Calliope took a deep breath and let it out, saying her next words slowly. “A red room is where people pay to watch and participate in the rape, torture, mutilation, and murder of unwilling participants,” she clarified, her voice shaking. “As you can imagine, these rooms only stay open for a specific amount of time, and they’re incredibly lucrative. Usually, they’re filmed overseas because it’s harder to track them down. But I think these are happening right here.”
“You’re telling me that these women are being kidnapped so that people can pay to…torture them?” Lucas said, suddenly grateful he’d heeded Calliope’s warning.
He’d imagined it would be bad, horrible even. He’d seen the bodies, had witnessed first hand the torture endured by these women, but knowing that it was not only for one sadistic bastard’s compulsion but…as entertainment? As profit? Lucas’s vision swam, his head spinning. He couldn’t breathe. Those girls… All of those girls were dead? How many people had watched? Participated? Committed atrocities from the fucking comfort of their own fucking homes?
Lucas could hear August talking to him, but he was too busy practicing dragging air into his lungs and blowing it back out. He was going to pass out. He needed his meds. Suddenly, hands were on his face, holding his head up, but it wasn’t August. It was Noah. “Lucas. Focus on my voice. I think you’re having a panic attack.”
“My pills. I have my pills in my pocket,” Lucas managed, his mouth suddenly a desert.
Noah reached for Lucas’s jean pocket, but August slapped his hand away. “I’ll do it.”
Lucas saw Noah raise his hands, as if to show he wasn’t touching Lucas, before his vision swam again. This time, it was from the sweat pouring into his eyes.
His heart hammered in his chest, and some part of him worried he was having an actual heart attack. He was going to be humiliated later, but, right now, he needed to focus on pulling himself together. This wasn’t helping anybody. He swallowed the pills August pressed between his lips.
Noah was in his face again. “You’re okay. Just practice breathing with me. In for five. Hold for five. Out for five. Again. You got this.”
The attack felt like it took forever, but it lasted probably less than ten minutes or so. He flushed when he noticed everybody looking at him. “Sorry,” he muttered. “I haven’t been sleeping much lately.”
Noah nodded encouragingly. Thomas gave him a sympathetic smile. August had a death grip on his hand. The other’s just watched him carefully.
Archer pointed to Noah with the scone in his hand. “That’s alright, the little one puked the first time he sat in on a meeting.”
Noah shot up his middle finger. “Sorry, child sex trafficking makes me sick. Two weeks ago, you drank an entire case of cheap red wine, destroyed our bathroom, vomited everywhere, then passed out in it. The housekeeper almost called the cops because she thought she’d stumbled into a crime scene.”
Archer rolled his eyes. “She was being dramatic. She overreacted.”
“It looked like the hallway scene fromThe Shining,” Atticus added.
Avi snickered. “Yeah, I saw the pictures on TMZ. It was pretty fucking gnarly.”
“Is this an intervention, or can we kill some people?” Archer asked.
Lucas shook his head at their banter, wiping his hands over his face. “What do we do?”
“We kill him, obviously,” August said.
Asa picked up a pen and tapped it on his chin. “But who’s bankrolling this? Like, if this Kohn guy is just the executioner, they’ll find another one if we kill him, no?”
Thomas nodded. “Asa’s correct. Who’s bankrolling this operation, Calliope?”
“If I had to put my money on anybody, it would be the squeaky clean Russian,” August said.
“The Russian? Is that some kind of codename?” Atticus asked.
