Page 65 of Red Hunt

Peter looked at me, and I gave a subtle nod in Milli’s direction.

“Milli? What’s wrong?” Alan pushed through Blake and Peter. I held my breath, not sure how Milli would react toward him. But to my surprise and dismay, she started sobbing. Alan took the knife from her limp hand and took her in his arms. “What happened, Milli?”

She just shook her head. “Home,” was the only word I caught between her sobs. She wanted to go home.

My fingernails bit into my palms, and a sudden coldness made me shiver.

Alan looked at me, but all I could do was shrug my shoulders. Whatever had happened down here, I had no fucking clue. My throat constricted.

My expression probably conveyed my cluelessness because Alan dismissed me and concentrated back on Milli.

I had absolutely no idea what had just happened. None. And it was killing me.

Alan led her up the stairs and out the door. Her departure caused physical pain in my chest, the closing door like a heavy thud, closing the lid of a box, leaving me a sucking chest wound and not enough oxygen.

“What happened, dude?” Blake said, and only then did I realize Blake and Peter were still there.

I shrugged. Swallowed against the lump in my throat. “I have absolutely no idea. I was out on a run, and when I came back, she was down here and completely out of it.”

Peter crossed the room and focused on one of the laptop screens. “Here.”

Blake and I joined him.

I inhaled sharply when my eyes fell on the screen. “That computer shouldn’t be unlocked.”

“And she probably shouldn’t have watched that either,” Peter said. He maximized a video and by the still frame, I knew it was one of the clips we’d gathered from the newest forum. We hadn’t gone through that material. This was the ugliest part of the job—watching those clips, and I bailed out on it whenever I could.

“Fuck,” Peter said.

I looked at him the exact moment Blake groaned. “What?”

“Look at the face,” Peter said, his voice sounding choked.

I looked at the screen, avoiding the naked body of a child on display and focused on the face.

Coldness hit my core as if I was hit with a bullet made of ice, and my muscles turned rigid. I couldn’t look away. That face…Milli’s face. Softer, a child still, but unmistakably her. Naked, abused, and tortured.

My hands rushed to my mouth when bile rose inside me. I stumbled to the dustbin and puked my guts out.

Nothing in all my years—all the ugly I’d seen in war, all the ugly I’d done—nothing could’ve prepared me for witnessing Milli’s abuse.

I could feel Blake’s hand on my neck. I grabbed the bottle of water he offered.

“Did she say anything to you?”

Peter’s voice was icy. If anything, too controlled. Emotionless. They were compartmentalizing, their training having taken over.

I should be able to do the same. I washed my mouth. Took a couple of sips. Breathed through my nose and pushed my feelings deep, deep down: anger, fury, hatred for those guys who did that to her. I would use those feelings to fuel my drive to hunt them down. But I couldn’t let them control me.

“She thought I was one of them. Told me she’d slice me up like the pig I was.”

“Milli?” Peter almost chuckled but choked it down.

Blake scratched his neck, his eyes still on the monitor. “Well, you’d better get that cleared up—can’t let her think you’re one of those scum,” he said.

I nodded, but when my eyes met Peter’s, my confidence sank. What she had was a flashback of the worst kind. I knew she was strong, strong enough to have suffered hell and come out a functioning, funny, kind human being. She hadn’t let those bastards take her soul, but the way she looked at me, the hurt and betrayal shimmering in her eyes when she thought the man she’d spent the night with, the man she’d opened up to and made love to, was one of those monsters.

Would she be strong enough to forget about that? To disassociate that from me? She had to if we had any chance to get through that. And none of it was under my control.

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