Once Noah was outside the room, Adam set about fixing the mess they’d made, grateful there were paper towels still sitting on the counter, though, from the looks of the place, they weren’t used for cleaning. When he was done mopping up Noah’s vomit, he removed the trash bag and replaced it before tying up the used one and dropping it outside the window to take with them. But he didn’t leave, not yet.
He needed to check for the footage. If Gary was recording, he had to be editing somewhere. It didn’t seem practical to do it in his home, not this far from filming. Adam went through the house, slower, more methodically, taking his time to open every door and closet. He found it in what looked like a linen closet. A sophisticated setup, similar to those used by high-rise buildings, though Adam hoped the resolution was better.
Adam had no choice but to snatch the entire hard drive. He had no way of cloning it or even downloading what was there. He just had to hope whatever they already had would be enough to identify the other players, so Adam could just kill Gary before he became a problem.
With his findings in hand, he made his way back out to the Rover, throwing the garbage bag in the back along with the hard drive. Noah just sat, staring straight ahead, his fingers twisted together in his lap, tears streaking his face. As soon as Adam slid into the driver’s seat, Noah said, “I’m sorry.”
Adam frowned. “What? Why?”
“For puking all over the place? For freaking out? All of it? We just had sex for the first time last night and you’re cleaning up my vomit. Jesus.”
Adam blinked, trying to see the correlation between those two things but missing the point entirely. “We’re going home and you’re not going to work tonight. I don’t give a fuck what Gary thinks at this point. Something on one of these hard drives is going to give us what we need, and if it doesn’t, I’m going to start cutting off pieces of him one at a time until he gives up their names. You’re not going back there.” When Noah opened his mouth, Adam shook his head. “This isn’t up for negotiation. You’re done with that place.”
“But my trailer…”
“You can move in with me.”
Noah shook his head. “No. I’m not giving up my trailer, even if we move in together. I’m not. That’s not up for negotiation either.”
Adam’s eyes widened at the renewed panic in Noah’s voice. “Okay. Call out sick tonight. I’ll have a tow company take your trailer to my dad’s house. He has a garage that fits 14 cars and three boats. I’m sure one small Airstream won’t be a problem. But once the trailer is out of there, so are you. Deal?”
Noah deflated, all the fight seeming to leave him at once. “Yeah, okay. Deal.”
Adam had to pull over for Noah to throw up three more times on the way back to the city. Each time, he’d fall back into the passenger seat and Adam would hand him a wet wipe from the center console like he was a suburban soccer mom. It would have been funny if Noah could pull himself out of…whatever was happening to him.
He tried to push the memories back down, but he couldn’t. Every time he so much as blinked, he was right back in that fucking room with all those people. The dam walling off all those memories had finally ruptured and Noah was drowning.
He couldn’t escape it. Hands touching him, men hurting him, the sound of his own cries and the laughter that followed… It felt like it came from everywhere, like he was trapped in some house of mirrors where a threat lurked in every pane of glass with no way of knowing which threat was the real one.
He could smell that room, not as it was now but as it had been back then. The stench of cigarettes, sweat, stale beer, and men’s cologne…sex. He shouldn’t have known that smell back then. It wasn’t right. It wasn’t okay. Nobody should have had to endure that. But above it all—the strangers, the pain—the thing that was ripping him apart on the inside was his father’s voice. At first cajoling, promising toys and ice cream, then angry, then furious when he wouldn’t stop crying.
How had he buried that? How? What magical part of his brain had covered that up for years? When did he start to forget? How did he make it go back? He needed it to go back. He couldn’t stop crying. Not huge wracking sobs, just an endless stream of tears rolling down his cheeks against his will.
Once they were back at Adam’s house, he wouldn’t even let Noah call his job. Adam made the call, telling whoever was on the other line that Noah was sick and wouldn’t be in, his tone leaving no room for questioning. He removed Noah’s clothes and put him to bed but set up his laptop on the blanket beside him, putting on cartoons like he was a child. He felt like a child. He felt like that child. The child his father had handed over to be tortured and abused.
Holy shit. He was that child. That was him. His father did those things to him. He’d let others do those things, too. Had recorded them. Somewhere, there were videos. Videos other people could see. His stomach heaved but there was nothing left to throw up. Adam had left a metal trash can beside the bed anyway. Just in case.
Noah had known all these things had happened to him, had seen previews of what was to come, had filled in the blanks after seeing the video Adam handed him that night. But it wasn’t real to him, to his brain, just a concept, a thing that he only understood in abstract, like outer space. It was out there, somewhere, but he wasn’t likely to ever experience it. But now, there he was, floating through his memories with no oxygen, just waiting to die.