it was part of the scene he’d set. The garbage Claire had spied in the first movies was not really garbage. Paul had wadded up fast-food bags and paper cups, but there were no grease stains or moldy dregs of soda. Even the bloodstain on the mattress looked fake, which made sense because the movies Claire had seen always showed the woman chained to the wall.
The wall.
Here it was, less than ten feet in front of her. Dark, burgundy blood had permeated the concrete block. The shackles had bolts on them to hold wrists and ankles. There were no locks because the chains were far apart enough to prevent one hand from freeing the other. Claire stopped herself before she pulled on the chains. Just because things looked fake did not mean they were. The blood on the floor was real. You couldn’t duplicate that smell, and if you were just doing it for the appearance of reality, you wouldn’t use real blood.
Claire lifted her foot. The toe of her shoe was sticky where she’d accidentally stepped in the blood. She waited for the repulsion to roll over her, but she was too numb to feel anything.
Her sneaker made a Velcro-tearing sound as she walked over to the computer. Bird computer speakers on delicate stands were perched on either side of the monitor. The finish was white, because that complemented the silver bezel around the monitor, just like the white amplifier completed the system.
Claire turned the chair sideways so she could still see the door in her peripheral vision. If she was going to be attacked again, at least she would see it coming this time. She tapped the keyboard, but nothing happened. The large screen was made by Apple, but it looked nothing like the iMacs she was used to. She ran her hand along the back in search of the power button. She guessed the large white cylinder by the monitor was the computer. She pressed her fingers on the buttons until Apple’s start-up tone blasted through the speakers. Claire dialed down the sound on the amplifier.
There were cables stuck in the back of the computer, more white Thunderbolts that connected to several twenty-terabyte storage drives daisy-chained together on a metal shelf. She counted twelve drives. How many movies could fit on twelve massive drives?
Claire didn’t want to think about it. Nor did she want to stand up and examine the other equipment on the metal shelves. An old Macintosh computer. Stacks of five-inch floppy disks. A duping machine for copying VHS tapes. Multiple external disk drives for burning copies of movies. Typically, Paul was archiving the early artifacts from the family business.
Everything would be Internet-based now. Claire had watched a Frontline on PBS that showed the vast, illegal market on the dark web. Most people used the hidden Internet to illegally trade stolen movies and books, but others used it to sell drugs and trade in child porn.
Claire thought about Paul’s American Express bills with the mysterious charges they never talked about. How many private charter flights had Paul paid for but never flown? How many hotel rooms had he rented that they’d never stayed in? She had assumed the expenses were bribes to Congressman Jackson, but maybe not. Her husband was meticulous in everything he did. He wouldn’t want to raise suspicions by abducting too many girls in his own back yard. Maybe Paul was using the flights and rooms to secretly move women around the country.
And maybe the Congressman was as heavily invested in the business as Paul.
Paul had been a teenager when his father died. He was living at a military boarding school one state over. There had to have been an adult who took over Gerald Scott’s business while Paul was getting his education. Which could possibly mean that the Congressman’s mentorship had run a parallel track: One side helped Paul establish himself as a legitimate businessman, and the other made certain that the movies would still be made.
And distributed, because there had to be quite a bit of money involved in sending out these movies.
Claire had seen Johnny Jackson and Paul together on countless occasions and never put it together that they were related. Were they hiding their relationship because of the movies? Or because of the government contracts? Or was there something far more troubling that Claire had yet to uncover?
Because there was always something far more troubling with Paul. Every time she thought she’d hit bottom, he found a way