“The threats?”
He smirked. “Maybe you are listening. Yes, he didn’t just ask to be released. He said that if it didn’t happen soon, he’d start talking to anyone who’d listen.” An amused grin graced Dylan’s lips and his eyes narrowed. “The Light is everywhere. I’m sure that if it hasn’t already happened, very soon, the asshole who threatened to rape you will no longer exist. Who knows, if it’s another inmate, Hutchinson may get to know your fear of rape before he leaves this world. If I have anything to say about it, and now that I know what he did to you, I’ll suggest it.”
Part of me cringed at the idea that Dylan had that much power. The other part of me liked the idea of Thomas suffering for what he’d done to me. The evidence was mounting supporting my diagnosis of dissociative identify disorder.
“But you’re a policeman, a detective. You help people.”
“I do. I just helped you, for a second time.”
I looked down at my hands and lifted my fingers for him to see. When I did he closed his eyes and took another drink. I waited for him to finish before I said, “You knew. When we were at the morgue and the woman, the one who we were afraid was Mindy, you knew she was part of The Light?”
He nodded. “What do you want me to say, that I’m sorry? Because I’m not. It’s the way it is. You work the game in your favor or you lose. I’m not a loser, neither is Gabriel.”
I took a deep breath, my cramping nearly gone. “Mindy?”
“Last I heard, she made it to a campus. I’m not sure which one, and I honestly didn’t want to know.”
“But she wasn’t investigating The Light. Why did they take her?”
“She was investigating a business from outside The Light, Motorists of America, MOA. It’s a shell corporation. She stumbled across too many things, like you.”
I recognized that name. It was the company Foster had told me about—the one I had been too impatient to listen to him discuss. Oh, shit, it was the one that Foster had found when he was investigating Dylan. Dylan’s name was on a utility bill for a house in Bloomfield Hills that was owned by MOA.
Could that be where we were? Was this the house Foster had found by researching Dylan’s name?
Dylan ran his hands along the dark-blond scruff lining his defined jaw. “I fucking warned you. I told you to leave it alone, but you were too stubborn.”
I closed my eyes. “Did Bernard or Foster ever see my research?”
“Come on, you’re smarter than that.”
A tear trickled from my eye. “So they never knew what I’d learned?”
“No.”
“My parents?”
“Your mom still calls me.”
My chest clenched as I laid my head on my arms. “How could you do this and talk to her like you didn’t know?”
“I didn’t see any other options. Do you?”
“Yes,” I whispered. “Yes.” My words gained strength as I lifted my head. “I see many other options. Tell the truth. Tell law enforcement. Do something. Stop this travesty. What The Light is doing is human trafficking and drugs. Oh, God . . .” My volume decreased. “Do you know what happens? Last Sunday, here at the Eastern Light, I witnessed a man and woman—”
Dylan raised his hand. “I don’t want to know.”
“What? That doesn’t make sense. You’re supporting this, condoning this, and you don’t want to know?”
“We are all part of a greater good, part of the body. I have my responsibilities. I don’t need to know about the others and what they do unless it interferes with what I do.”
It was time for my eyes to narrow. “I don’t know what your responsibilities entail, but let me tell you, I watched a man be murdered. The woman, she survived to end up in the basement . . .” My stomach knotted again. “Now she’s dead.”
“If you’re talking about the woman in the bed, in the room where you were left, she was unconscious. The explosion was probably easier on her than the others.”
“How can you be so callous? How can you talk about life like it doesn’t matter?” Suddenly a thought occurred to me. “How? Wait a minute. Why are you being this open with me? Why are you telling me all of this?” My hands began trembling. “Are you going to kill me?”
Dylan stood and his footsteps moved about the kitchen. “Glass of water, Stella?”
What?