Someone had linked photos, hence the label of the most horrific case of the century. They had images of the devices. The things that were used when they were bad. The box and the mask and the chains. The stockade and the whips with fish hooks on the ends.
There were pictures of The Cell. Of the stains. The worn mattress and the burial pit out back.
It all looked so . . . fake to Orion. Otherworldly, despite the fact she dreamed of it every night and saw it all when she closed her eyes, so she knew all too well that it was real. But seeing it on the news, used like meat dangling in front of a rabid, starving audience, made it seem somehow different.
The world was commercializing their suffering. Maybe the more it looked like a movie, the less people would consider the reality that monsters lived among them and could snatch their daughters off the street. And when Jaclyn died, and her funeral and her death were fed to the masses, posts began circulating on the cesspool of social media, a place Orion avoided at all costs. Questions about some of the girls’ pasts. Some were prostitutes, they said. Some were “partiers” like Jaclyn. Some “deserved it.” Orion fought hard to avoid every bit of it, to focus her concentration on the mission at hand. On the monsters who used her.
Those same monsters who stained the mattress with their filth were still doing it, Orion had no doubt about that. Their party had been busted, but another party was just a drive away.
There was no way men like that, with appetites like that, could just stop. It was a business. That much had become clear to Orion when the same “customers” came again and again over the years. The same smells, taunts, and demands. It wasn’t just two fucked-up men taking girls off the street. It was a whole fucking system.
Orion planned on bringing it down, starting with an adored doctor.
The money would help. Revenge was great when you were bloodthirsty, but you needed ample finances to get away with it. Orion had learned the ins and outs of murder cases in the state of Missouri, what got the killers caught, what they did right, and what they did wrong. She knew that in order to get away with her scheme, in order to defeat this new world of DNA and high-tech cameras, she would have to be smart, she would have to thoroughly plan, and she’d need a shitload of money. Poor people didn’t get away with vengeance and murder. Poor people were put away, whether innocent or guilty, and nobody paid them any mind.
Luckily, Orion was no longer poor.
Their lawyer was not lying about his ability to earn his salary.
Five million dollars.
Each.
Orion couldn’t fathom that kind of money. She couldn’t spend it in ten lifetimes, which was what had been taken away from her.
April, on the other hand, would do quite well at spending all of it, since it was she who decided Orion’s apartment needed to be . . . Orion’s.
Not that Orion knew who the fuck she was.
April apparently was confident in that. So, Orion had done something uncharacteristic. She trusted the woman who used to be her best friend to tell her who she was, or who she should be.
As the packages arrived, Orion was starting to wonder if April knew her better than she knew herself.
If someone looked at her outwardly, if someone read her story in the newspaper, they’d think dark colors. Hard edges. Cold.
But April saw deeper than that, so there was warmth, earth tones, soft throws, cozy pillows, beautiful art. Vintage rugs.
Orion’s apartment quickly turned into a home. Sure, she had more than enough money to move from the complex to an impressive house with land, with space. April had said as much. But the mere thought of that scared Orion. She liked sharing a wall with a stranger. She liked the houses piled on top of each other, she liked that she was down the hall from where Jaclyn lived—where she used to live. Someone else had moved in quickly, all of her stuff gone like she never existed.
April didn’t push, since she’d already put in enough effort shoving herself into Orion’s life.
“What?” she asked, after losing herself in her thoughts.
April paused the TV, curled up in the plush white armchair that swallowed her small frame. “I mean, I’m not married to my job as a waitress mostly because the tips suck and I’m generally crap at it, but becoming a detective sounds like so much work and I wouldn’t have a chance at maintaining a good manicure. I’ll do it, of course, to get the scoop, but I’d rather not.”
Orion blinked at her, hands sticky. She’d forgotten April had asked her a question. “Huh?”