Page 74 of Deceiver

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Bill makes me drivepast the town and out the other side. My phone rings the entire time, vibrating in my pants. I’m desperate to grab it, to answer it, to tell Western how sorry I am. I can’t believe I thought he was the bad guy in all of this. I can’t believe I didn’t trust him. Of course he has been saving the boys, it all suddenly makes so much sense to me now. He is the hero and I branded him a monster.

My heart screams in pain.

Bill continues to talk as if we’re on a casual date.

He brags about how clever he is, about how Western is going down, about how he has enough proof to bring the entire club down for life. Then, he’ll just move to another town and keep his little ring of terror going. Only this time, he’ll be earning more because now he knows that he has been earning far less ‘selling’ the boys to what he thought was a buyer taking them overseas, when all along it was Western setting it up to come back to him.

Now he can make double the amount.

He thinks he has won.

I have to outsmart him.

I have to get out of this car, get to the club and warn Western.

This has to end, and it has to end now.

“It won’t matter,” I say, trying to throw him off. “If the club goes down, people will become far more aware of what’s happening and you won’t get away with it. Your little plan will be out in the open and you’ll fail.”

Bill chuckles. “There are towns far enough away that I can take my business to where it’ll be like chopping fresh meat, untouched.”

He makes me sick.

“Western was in prison for twenty years. He was being accused of having something to do with it back then. How can it have possibly gone on for so long. If they had ‘evidence’ back then, they would have charged Western and the club.”

“We threw that in for good measure, a bit of town gossip. There had been talk of the missing kids, but there was no proof. Why not throw it out there for people to wonder about when it comes to Western? After the shooting, people were more concerned about the monster in town than they were about the few missing teenagers that the police had already announced were runaways. I was more careful after that, scattering my sales between five or six different states. Can’t put all your eggs in one basket.”

This is what power gets you.

Bill and whoever he’s working for own the police in this town, and no doubt many others. That means, they can spin a story whatever way they want. They couldn’t pin the foster kids going missing on the club, but they could make sure the town thought it was them. They could make sure Western’s name was ruined, and in doing that, they would be covering their own tracks to keep their own little plan going.

It's genius.

Bill continues talking when I don’t answer.

“The only thing that club did that was smart, was to become a buyer for the boys. They started saving them, like they’re some sort of fucking heroes. They couldn’t have honestly thought I wouldn’t find out. I find out everything. That’s why Daniel is lying in a grave right now, his son beside him, because he dared question me when it was his child on the line.”

Is that why Bill killed Daniel, because he threatened to bring what he was doing to light?

“I don’t understand how you can take boys so easily, and nobody notices.”

Bill grins, all proud of himself. I know he’ll brag because he thinks he has won. He is certain this is the end of the line for me. I want him to brag because I want as much information as I can get.

“Money talks, Bonnie. You would be surprised what people would do for cash. Those foster families are doing it half the time for extra money that they get for those kids. We roll in, find the worst ones, and we offer them a hefty sum to report their kids as a runaway and allow us to take them. I’ve rarely had one disagree. The ones that do, don’t get a chance to speak out.”

I swallow the lump in my throat.

What does that mean? He kills them.

“Everyone has secrets, Bonnie. We find out all their secrets before we go to them. Then, if they don’t agree to sell the kids, we give them a glimpse of what their futures might look like if they don’t give us what we want. Daniel was the only one to fight us, to dig deeper, to try and play the system and he was ended for it. After that, we were smarter about it. We made sure we were picking the families who we knew were struggling.”

To know if a family is struggling, he’d have to have access to financial records.

Whoever he’s working for, has their finger in a lot of pies.

“You’re disgusting,” I grind out. “Those kids have had it hard enough. They deserve better.”

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