Sin lowered her gun and blew out his left ankle. He crumbled to the ground in a slab of leather and screams.
“The next one blows your nuts off. Where are the girls?”
Miller held up a bloody hand. “They’re in the storage closet behind the stage.” His other hand went to his crotch for protection.
“Did you hear that?” Sin yelled out.
“I have them,” Fletcher yelled back. “They’re all accounted for.”
“Who else is in the room?” an electronic voice said.
“This isn’t the show I paid for,” said another.
“But it is exciting,” came another. The voice sounded labored and excited.
Sin’s head snapped towards the monitors. “Are you jacking off to this? You sick fuck!” She faced the camera and addressed those on the other side of the camera. “What gives you—any of you—the right to exploit and ultimately murder another human being? Why don’t you all get together and burn, cut, sodomize, and kill each other in one big circle jerk. That way, we’ll all be happy.” She paused to take a breath. “Money,” she yelled, “does not give you the right to treat others with indignity and disrespect.”
“Oh, but it does, Ms. O’Malley,” a voice fired back. “With money comes power and with power, we can do and live as we please, and nothing you do will change that. You think your little ‘show’ today has stopped us? You’re wrong, you haven’t stopped anything. We will regroup, change our modus operandi and continue doing what we do with whomever we wish to do it to or with!”
The other electronic voices rose in agreement.
Beside her, Miller laughed in accord with the speakers words.
Sin bent down and pulled the black cowl off the sweaty, red-faced police chief, keeping her gun aimed at him. Holding the hood high in the air, she once again addressed the ‘guests.’ “I can’t stop all the perversion in this world, but . . .” she squeezed the trigger of her revolver. Miller screamed, bringing his hands to his now bloody crotch. Sin then looked at the camera and fired off a series of shots, destroying the video feed.
“What just happened,” a voice yelled. “I can’t see what’s happening.”
“She took out the video feed,” another hollered.
“I can stop this prick,” Sin said, finishing her thought. She raised her pistol slightly and put the next bullet through Miller’s head, “and I promise you,” she growled, “I will stop each and every one of you!”
Fletcher came around to the front of the stage with the girls. He told them to stay put and then disabled the audio feed.
While he was getting instructions from Charlie on how to dismantle and remove the hard drive from the computer system, Sin was entwined in an emotional, tearful embrace with the girls, slathering them with hugs and kisses.
Tia held on to her longer than the rest and whispered in her ear, “Perla Angel de la Muerte.”
Sin swallowed her tears and huffed. “Si, Tia, yo soy la Perla Angel.”
For possibly the first time, Sin believed the words as she repeated them.
Letting go of Tia, she looked around the room at all the implements of torture that were planned for Tia and the other girls.
I am the ‘Pearl Angel of Death,’ she thought, and I will hunt and find each and every one of those people.
47
Sin sat on the beach and watched as Maria splashed in the water with Tia. Alejandra was nearby, laughing.
Ten days had passed since everything went down at the church. Unknown to everyone but her, Charlie had recovered the hard drive from the studio and discovered the addresses of all the participants or ‘guests’ as they were called. He used NSA software as well as the computer IP addresses to help nail down their locations.
All but one―El Presidente.
Using the information found on the hard drive, Charlie had been able to trace the internet feed back to a computer somewhere in D.C. but no further. Every time he had a bead on its whereabouts, it seemed to move. What was evident was the fact that the identity of El Presidente and the mole were one and the same.
“How’s Thomas?”
Sin smiled weakly at Charlie’s voice. Her demeanor saddened by the question. “He’s fading. Hospice is at the house on twenty-four hour crisis care. Carmelita and her rosary beads haven’t left his side.”
“I’m sorry, Sinclair.” Charlie sat beside her. “He is a tough old bird. It seems he was just waiting to make peace with you before succumbing to the inevitable.”
Sin scooped up a handful of sand and let it slide through her fingers like water through a sieve. “I know. I should be there with Carmelita, but I needed to clear my head.”
“Are you up to discussing some business?”
Sin nodded. “Even that shit will be a distraction. What do you have?”
“A couple of things. First,” Charlie said, “we need to hit the ‘guests’ before they catch wind that they have been identified. If the mole figures out that I’ve identified them and tracked down their physical addresses, they will scatter like roaches to light.”
Sin leaned back on her elbows and took a deep breath; her attention still on the girls. “Do you think it’s possible for them to recover their innocence?”
Charlie looked out at the water. “They’re young. They’ll be all right.” His attention turned to Sin. She seemed miles away. “Sinclair, I need you to listen to me, this mission isn’t over.”
She turned to Charlie, her hair blowing across her face with a gust of wind.
“What is the second thing you needed to talk about?”
“Has Graham tried to reach you?”
“Yeah, he’s lighting up my phone like it’s the freakin’ Fourth of July. He even came down here looking for me.”
“And?”
“And Carmelita told him she hadn’t seen me since I left Tumbleboat seven years ago. My bike is in your hangar, so he had no way of disputing her words.”
“Yeah, well, he’s been pretty persistent. He keeps calling me, also.”
“Hit ignore, he’ll get the drift, eventually.”
“It’s not that simple,” Charlie
