Page 88 of The Presidents Shadow

“I’ll take it from here,” says Maddy, who pushes back her shoulders, eyes on the rat that scurried into the corner, taking a few pieces of McCarthy’s hair with it.

Suddenly, the rat changes direction. It crawls across McCarthy’s thigh, rushes up his chest, claws at his face, then stops, draws back its head to display short, vicious teeth, and takes a significant bite out of the detective’s right cheek. Blood spurts out, then turns into a steady dribble.

The detective flinches, then turns to the side and spits. “That all you got?”

The rat immediately moves closer to McCarthy’s right eye. When he instinctively shuts it, the rat delicately takes hold of his eyelid, pulling it out, then snapping it back against his eye. Again, blood drips. The rat crosses the bridge of McCarthy’s nose. The rat takes another chomp out of the other cheek. Matching rivers of blood flow down both sides of his face.

It is then that McCarthy finally starts to tell the two young women what they want to know.

CHAPTER 112

MADDY PSYCHICALLY COMMANDS the hungry rat to stop torturing McCarthy. But the rat doesn’t go far. It simply leaps to McCarthy’s shoulder and rests there, awaiting further instructions.

“Get him off of me,” McCarthy says.

Maddy quietly answers. “Yeah, eventually. But for now—tell us everything you know about what’s been going on. Tell us about Chloe. Tell us about Travis.”

“You know a lot of this shit already,” McCarthy says, cautiously eyeing the rat.

“Just make believe that we don’t know anything,” Maddy says. “You seem pretty convinced that we’re stupid, so why don’t you start at the beginning. But I wouldn’t go slow—brother rat will get hungry again.”

“Okay,” says McCarthy. “Okay. This might not come as a big surprise, but Carla Spector has a list of clients that have very specific tastes. They want a certain kind of drug,and they want a certain type of young girl—or boy—to bring it to them.”

“I see,” says Maddy, though she wishes she didn’t.

“Wait a minute,” says Belinda. “Do you mean like what happened to Joanna?”

“What?” Maddy asks, almost losing her control of the rat. “What happened to Joanna?”

“She’s fine,” Belinda says quickly. “But one time she said that instead of doing a drop, her driver took her straight to Carla. There was some big-deal guy on the other end of a video call. Joanna and a bunch of other girls had to walk in front of the camera, and he, uh… he picked one.”

“Picked one?” Maddy asks, her gaze going to McCarthy, who shrugs.

“Yeah,” Belinda goes on. “She said she was real bummed, because Carla said whoever the guy picked was going to have it made. Money. Travel. Clothes. Whatever they wanted.”

“Sure,” Maddy says skeptically, still looking at McCarthy. “I’m sure that’s exactly how that played out.”

“Yeah, sure,” says McCarthy meekly. “I’m sure they’re all together on a beach somewhere sipping daiquiris, or some stupid girl drink with a toy in it.”

“What does that sound like to you?” Maddy asks Belinda.

“Bullshit,” Belinda says.

Maddy closes her eyes and clasps her hands together.

When she opens her eyes a few seconds later, threecockroaches are crawling up McCarthy’s arms. They make their way to his neck, then his jawline. He squeezes his mouth shut, but the lead cockroach pries his lips open. Its legs are just entering his mouth when McCarthy folds. He starts talking. In fact, it seems that McCarthy won’t shut up.

It’s a bizarre, astonishing, repulsive tale that he tells.

The chosen kids—about thirty of them over the past two years—are provided to special clients with special tastes. This means wealthy, important types. The lowest of scum sitting in the highest of income brackets.

“Chloe?” Maddy asks. “Travis?”

McCarthy nods but doesn’t add anything.

“What happened to my friends?” Belinda yells.

The cockroaches spring back to life. One of them is halfway up McCarthy’s nostril before he relents.

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