Page 40 of Red Hunt

At dusk, the moment came and Max left. But not without him carrying me up the stairs and placing me on the sofa first. He made sure I had enough snacks within reach to last me throughout the evening, and he squeezed my knee gently before he placed a fresh ice pack on it. “You promise to take it easy?”

I felt a little like one of those women in an old-school western, a damsel in distress rescued by the hero from the unimaginable things the bad guy wanted to do to them, just to be left by said hero so he could go defeat the villain, fluttering eyelashes and a sigh and hand to the forehead included.

Boy, was I pathetic or what?

“Of course.”

“Just relax, stay off the leg. I guess tomorrow it will be a lot better already.” With that said, he kissed my forehead—my forehead—waved, and was gone.

An hour later, doing nothing but rehashing the day: all the things he’d said; all the things I’d said; every move he’d made; and after I relived every touch, I finally gave up. I flipped on Grandpa’s TV. But after another hour, I gave up. My mind was just too riled up.

Yep, definitely pathetic. I grabbed my laptop and started my standard routine of connecting multiple VPNs masking my IP and location, then used the onion browser before I opened my chat client.

radical_angel: Hey, guys.

nemeanLion: Hey, Angel.

radical_angel: I’m sorry I’ve been a bit absent. Had some IRL stuff happening.

In real life indeed. Usually, my life was so boring, nothing interfered with my on-screen time. But since yesterday, nothing in my life had been normal. Especially not Max.

I checked out who was online—red_hunt sadly wasn’t. I could’ve used some friendly banter to take my mind off Max.

Oracle Who: I despise IRL.

hash-boy: *lol*

nemesisA: guys, we got a situation.

electrona: ?

johnQ: ?

hash-boy: ?

Nemesis A: remember that auction thing there was some chatter about? There was a message mentioning a little town called Whitebrook, which was deleted a minute after it was posted. I hacked the account of that user, just to see what he’s been up to…found a video.

Oracle Who: of?

nemesisA: a girl, drugged up, abused. I think there’s a real chance they’re auctioning off humans.

I could feel my pounding heartbeat, and my breath sawed in and out of my suddenly dry mouth. This was not what I had expected. I hadn’t been online, hadn’t concentrated on the most important thing in my life. Lucky for us, nemesisA was there; otherwise, we might’ve missed the posting about the auction.

But Whitebrook? It just couldn’t be. There must be a lot of small towns called Whitebrook? No chance something like this would happen just a town over, right? Right? I grabbed my phone and did a quick search, which came up with exactly two Whitebrooks. And one of them was in the UK.

Shit.

johnQ: shit

radical_angel: Shit.

nemesisA: yep, my thoughts exactly. But there’s more. The stupid fuck forgot to turn off geo-tagging when shooting the video.

hash-boy: wow, that’s like next-level stupid. So we know where she’s at?

nemesisA: got the location. now…how to proceed? @Oracle Who, any ideas?

Oracle Who: Since I assume nobody here is from around there, we should alert local law enforcement. Anyone?

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