Page 9 of King of Cruelty

“The posters.” I pointed. “Why are they lit up? Why pay the electric bill for this dead, abandoned place only to light up these posters, andwhythese five posters? They’re all horror movies.”

Bane and Sunny slowly lowered their guns, coming over to see what I was talking about, but I could tell by the looks on their faces that understanding wasn’t dawning.

“The monsters,” I hinted. “The monsters or the evil that was fought in these movies. Do you see?”

“You’re going to have to help me out, gorgeous,” Sunny said. “I don’t watch horror movies.”

“Me either,” said Liam.

“Same,” Bane agreed.

That mildly surprised me but it probably shouldn’t. Their lives were already steeped in blood, gore, violence, and the evil of mankind. Of course they didn’t want to deal with it in their off-time.

“Okay, well then, I’m sorry,” I said softly, squeezing Sunny’s hand, “but inPan’s Labyrinth, there’s a monster who’s uniquely known for having eyes on his hands, not his face.” I pointed to the next poster. “In that movie, everyone is under attack by a large swarm of killer bees.”

“In this one,” Sienna said, taking over. “The main guy is tormented by horrible, gruesome visions until he loses his mind and kills himself. And in this one”—Sienna’s hand fell on the case holding a sinister poster of a wickedly grinning woman—“there’s a family of doppelgangers who are secretly killing their counterparts one by one and taking over their lives.”

“That’s right. So if we put all that together, we have...” My shaking finger moved through the air. “Eye. Bee. See. And—”

“You,” Sunny rasped, his knuckles whitening on the gun handle. “I’ll be seeing you.” And then Sunny shuddered too, feeling the same creepy wrongness in this space that I felt immediately.

“I’ll be seeing you?” Liam repeated, his gun slowly coming up and leveling at the posters like he wanted to blow away their disturbing message. “Are you sure? It could be coincidence.”

“I don’t think so.” Sienna backed away, slipping her hand in mine. “It’s like my sister said. Why waste money running electricity to this building just to keep these poster lights on?”

“They’re running electricity to this building because it’s their hideout.” Bane whipped around, eagle eyes scanning the gloom. “They’re here somewhere according to the tracker. We need to spread out and look for any sign of them.”

“Yeah,” Sunny agreed, although he didn’t look away from the posters. “For all we know, our folks put these posters up. Not those bastards. Plus, I didn’t seeGet Outand even I know the bad guys in that movie were a bunch of racist, body-jacking shitheads,” he said, speaking of the final poster. “How does that fit into their message?”

I jumped on two words. “Your folks?”

“That’s how we know this place.” Liam’s voice reached me through the dark. “There used to be apartments in this very spot, but they were torn down and the movie theater was built in its place. That apartment building was once our mother’s home.”

My brows shot up.

“She lived here when she met our dads, and then they kidnapped her away from all of this.”

“Kidnapped?” Sienna asked absentmindedly. She was still staring at theGet Outposter.

“Oh, yeah,” Bane chimed in. “Mom likes to very heavily emphasize that her first date with our dads was them kidnapping and putting her in a cage because she witnessed them committing murder. And after she says that, they all bust up laughing.

“Bunch of weirdos,” he muttered, almost making me laugh.

Almost.

I rubbed my arms, somehow warding off a chill in the stuffy, overheated room. There were a million eyes on the floor, and it felt like they were all watching me. I knew I should be searching with the guys, but I didn’t want to move too far from Sienna, and Sienna wasn’t moving at all.

“Sienna?” I probed, but she didn’t look away.

“Our parents bought the property and built this movie theater on it,” Sunny continued the story as he slowly opened the theater door and shone his phone light inside. “It was a partof their effort to help the old neighborhood. Breathe life into it. Make it a safe place to live again.”

“But it didn’t work.” I didn’t make it a question, because it wasn’t one. This building wouldn’t be standing empty in a neighborhood I was always warned to avoid if it had worked.

“No,” Bane confirmed. “A local gang started running a drug ring out of the place. Slip a few baggies in with the popcorn. Slide a couple bills in a dark theater. Plenty of people coming and going and all of them having a legit reason to be there. After all, officer, we were just watching a movie.”

I shook my head. There was something criminally ingenious about that.

“All the employees were being threatened. They were too scared to tell my mom what was going on, but she found out real quick when rival gang members blew into the place and shot it up. Ten people were killed.”

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