Looks

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“That’s why you took the lamp.” Isaac said as he remembered the scene they had stumbled upon in that isolated mansion. He couldn’t rid his mind of it, the sight of splattered blood on the walls, the smell of rotting blood, the bodies bloated with decay and covered in flies and maggots.

Sometimes he thought he could still smell it, like the smell of the rot was stuck in his nose. It made him sick and his stomach roll.

He was smelling that smell now, and it seemed to have been brought upon by Hank’s words.

They were back in the hotel room – not the same one they had stayed in when they first arrived three weeks ago. They had moved to other ones when they realized finding Gia and Holiday may take longer than they thought, and they moved from city to city. Gia had ushered both of the children into the bathroom – he could hear the shower running, it had been running for a long time. His eyes flickered to the closed door again, he couldn’t keep his eyes off it. His leg bounced with nerves where he sat on the edge of one of the beds.

They were here. They had found them. After the scene at the mansion, he hadn’t thought they would – find them that is. He hadn’t known what to think. Becky was dead, beaten to unrecognizable pulp of blood and tissue covered with decay. They weren’t even one-hundred percent sure that had been Becky. He hadn’t known what happened to Gia and Holiday, but the scene had put great fear in his heart.

They had searched the mansion, which had been ransacked of all valuables and in a disarray.

They had found the room Gia and Holiday were likely kept in and a photograph tucked between the frame and the thin mattress. It was a copy of the same photo Isaac had been sent a year earlier of Gia, Holiday, and that man.

Igor had recognized the man, or thought he had, but he had to check. So, they had to wait two days until the man came with them news that the man was a part of a small group of white supremacists ran by the man – Aleksey Harbuz – older brother, Danilo Harbuz. Igor described them as a violent group, who were suspected in, but were rarely ever held responsible for a multitude of crimes. Some members got snagged for crimes here or there, but the group as a whole was not linked to anything with solid evidence.

It was pretty clear that a large number of individuals had raided the home, the tire marks where they had kicked up dirt and tore up the manicured lawn with their cars were still left behind.

Violent bigots, that was who like had Gia and Holiday. The same but different from Becky, and in the worst way. Isaac didn’t know what they had done with Gia and Holiday. He didn’t know what to think. What did a group of bigots want with a black woman and a half-black child? Isaac thought the worst. Hank assured him though that if this Aleksey wanted them dead – they would have been among the dead bodies in the mansion. As cruel and as blunt as that sounded when the man had said it – Isaac took comfort in the words.

He was scared though, even more so when a few days later they picked up and went to another city because Igor was pretty sure the group lived on the outskirts of the city, only to find that the area they had once resided in had been abandoned (apparently the group had skipped town after committing some robberies). It took another two weeks for Igor to track down the group again and they had been on their way there when they had run across Gia on that road, bloodied, hurt, and with two children clinging to her.

Igor, who had been following in a car behind the one they had rented, told them to take Gia and the children while he went to check the house. The amount of blood on Gia told them that whatever was down that road wouldn’t be good.

Hank had spent the last forty minutes on the ride back to the hotel talking to Igor on the phone – clearly careful of his words and mindful of the others in the car. Isaac had watched his face though, to keep from turning to Gia in the backseat – she very much looked like she didn’t want his eyes on her. Hank was clearly quite pensive, worried, and unsettled. Isaac had known the man long enough to recognize his emotions easily. It took a lot to unsettle Hank, considering what his job was.

The ride was silent other than that. Hank hadn’t wanted to take Gia to the hospital even though that had been the plan considering her physical state, but he had changed him mind after something Igor had told him over the phone.

Hank told him once they were back at the hotel and Gia had taken up the offer to clean up herself and the children.

“Yeah… her prints were likely all over the thing. Without it, we can more easily pin the murder of Becky on one of the supremists. As for the what happened in that house…Igor agreed, it was just a case of deadly domestic violence that he stumbled on while investigating fraud committed by the group. After years of abuse and disrespect, Sofia Harbuz, lost it and murdered her husband with one of the drugs, she as an ex-nurse still had access too when she went into the hospitals to help out – she was suspected of stealing narcotics for the group from job anyway – so that part works in our favor as well. I’m also pretty sure she recently took a trip to the nearest hospital, so that helps. What was I saying? Fuck…, right, so after murdering her husband she was caught by Danilo and they ended up killing one another. That’s the story we’re going with.”