Page 96 of Acceptance
The man smirks in his orange jumpsuit, and it pisses Colt off. “He won.”
“Who?”
“The boss.”
He looks at Brock, who wears a matching look of confusion on his face. “What the fuck are you talking about?”
“You didn’t notice anything about all of the victims?”
“Guess I didn’t pay that much attention. I don’t get off on dead women like you do,” he admits.
“They’re all blonde with blue eyes. And the ones with curly hair? He spent extra time with the curly haired ones. Like your wife, huh?”
Tony rolls his eyes. “He? Disassociating by talking in the third person? You confessed to killing those women, Gerard. These guys caught you, remember?”
Shaking his head, Gerard leans back as much as he can with his restraints. “No, I was just the fall guy.”
“So, what? You were offered the chance to slice up that poor woman from chest to groin to throw us off?” Brock asks. “Or was that the payment?”
“I didn’t touch her.”
“You were the only one in the warehouse.”
The sound of a door slamming in the distance echoes in Colt’s mind. Undertaker mentioned it that night, too, but no one else was seen. And the cameras Brock pulled up later didn’t show anyone running away.
“You’re so easily led astray… I almost shouldn’t help you,” Gerard says. “The boss ran when you got to the warehouse. He knew you would.”
“Why should we believe that?” Colt asks.
Shrugging, he looks around like death doesn’t loom over his head the moment he leaves this room. “What the fuck do I have to lose at this point?”
“Your fucking life,” Brock snaps.
“That’s the deal. You keep me alive until you find the boss. I want him to know it was me who helped lock him up like he did to me. He said nothing would ever stick when you caught me, but he was wrong. He lied.”
Colt crosses his arms over his chest. “Now, I know you’re playing with us. Everyone knows what happens to rats in here.”
“Look!” he says, slamming his fists on the table. “I didn’t sign up to be locked away and killed for his sick crimes, alright? I agreed to do a job, and all it was supposed to be was roughing up that brunette, Marnie. She saw him in the hotel that night. That’sit. Then he paid me to let you think you’d won, but he didn’t give me enough to justify this. I want to fuck him!”
Lifting an eyebrow, Colt tilts his head. “You want to… fuck him?”
He growls. “No, I want to fuck himover, you dipshit! You know what I mean!”
“So… that’s your plan? Tell us we have to keep looking for a ghost, and we keep you alive indefinitely until we find him?” Brock asks. “That’s not going to happen.”
“Why the fuck do you think it took so long to give them the identities of those victims, huh?”
Shaking his head, Colt can’t decide if he’s being led on or not with this conversation. People can say crazy things when they’re looking down the barrel of a gun.
“Guys like you want to relive your crimes. You dragged it out because you got off on it all over again,” Tony says. “You think you’re the first one to do it?”
“It took a year because I don’t know who the fuck they were. Look in my cell. I have the letters with the code from the motherfucker who did it,” Gerard says and locks eyes with Colt. “His name’s Phillip.”
“Phillip what?”
“I don’t know his last name. I told you, I was hired to rough up that girl and be a distraction. But I do know he hates one of your original members. He hates him so much that he’s killing women who look like your wife.”
An Original Ten has an enemy. Not the first time they’ve come across this.
