Read Out of the Dark for Free Online Page B

him a favor, and he wanted the use of their crime lab. If they were lucky, the fingerprint left in paint on the picture might give him a name. It was a long shot, but nothing he could afford to ignore.
     
    Raphael had the aisle seat on the bus bound for New Orleans, putting himself, as always between Jade and the rest of the world. Jade was asleep, curled up in the window seat with her head against the window. The air conditioner vent was blowing directly on her shoulders. He could tell by the way she was sitting that she was cold, so he reached up over her head to adjust the flow.
    Even in her sleep, Jade felt the cessation of air on her face. Almost immediately her sleep went from dreamless to a flashback of a hellish incident from her childhood.
     
    It was almost midnight in the San Fernando Valley, where the People of Joy were now living. The old ranch house belonged to a distant relative of one of the People, but he would never know. The stroke that had robbed him of his senses would keep him hospitalized in the sanatorium where he now resided until death took him to a better place.
    The rooms where the children slept were at the far end of the sprawling building, supposedly for their well-being. But some of the children would have argued the excuse. Isolated from the other rooms, it was simple for Solomon to pick and choose the child of the moment for the “customers” who, from time to time, came calling.
    Tonight, Jade slept curled up against a little girl they called Sunshine. Sunshine was blond and chubby and on occasion still wet the bed. Jade liked her well enough but always slept on the edge of the bed for fear she would wake up in Sunshine’s pee, and tonight was no exception.
    The ceiling fan squeaked with every rotation, but the repetitive sound and the flow of air on seven-year-old Jade’s face was oddly soothing. They were familiar things that proved no threat.
    She was dreaming about the sweetness of the blackberries that they’d picked earlier in the day when something about the dream began to change. The breeze she’d been feeling on her face was no longer blowing. It had happened before and meant bad things would happen. She started to squirm. There was something that she needed to remember—what happened when the wind stopped blowing. But she was so deep into sleep she couldn’t make herself wake up.
    Then the mattress beneath her started to shift. Mental warning bells went off so loudly that she sat straight up in bed with a gasp.
    “Shh,” a voice whispered. “It’s okay, my beautiful darling, it’s okay. Sunshine wet this bed, so you’re going to a clean one.”
    Jade knew the voice—Solomon’s voice. She also knew he didn’t care if she slept in Sunshine’s pee. He was why the wind quit blowing. Every time he leaned over to pick her up out of bed, he blocked the air from the fan. He was going to take her to the purple room again, and she didn’t want to go to the purple room. That was where the uncles were.
    “No!” she cried, and started pushing him away. “Don’t take me to the purple room. Please, Solomon, please. I don’t want to go there.”
    “Easy, Jade darling. You know it’s going to be all right. Solomon always takes care of his baby girl.”
    “No!” Jade begged, now struggling to get out of Solomon’s arms, but he was unwilling to give back the hundred dollars in his pocket.
    “Be quiet,” he said sharply. “You’ll wake up the other children.”
    “I don’t care!” Jade screamed, and started to sob. “Take one of them and not me.”
    Within seconds, one of the doors up ahead opened. A young boy walked out into the hallway. He was tall for a ten-year-old and wise beyond his years. Solomon saw him and frowned.
    “Raphael! Go back to bed.”
    But the boy stood his ground.
    “Please, Solomon, she doesn’t want to go.”
    “It doesn’t matter what she wants,” Solomon said.
    Raphael grabbed Solomon’s sleeve as he passed by.
    “Take me. I’ll go