Page 56 of Devil's Hour
“You’re going to want to see this for yourself.”
Royce pulled a Call Me Skip and hung up on Kelsey without saying goodbye. His fingers shook while tapping out the website. “Oh!”
“What is it?” Sawyer asked.
“Fuck!”
Sawyer swerved over and pulled into a parking lot of a closed business. “What happened?”
Royce leaned toward him, placing his phone between them, then refreshed the website to restart the video.
The words “We must banish sin with fire,” came up first followed by images of The Alley Cat engulfed in flames before the fire department arrived. “It’s the only true form of purification,” appeared at the bottom of the screen.
“We’re dealing with insane people,” Sawyer mumbled.
“Law enforcement has failed us time and time again. They’ve allowed our daughters to become harlots.” The message was emphasized by a series of photos featuring one of the gilded cages where a man wearing a sash that said “groom” sat in a chair while two women wearing only thongs and stilettos sat on his lap. The man’s hands were handcuffed to the chair, prohibiting him from touching the women, but the ladies weren’t constricted by the same hands-off rules. They rubbed him and each other while kissing and grinding against him. The very last photo showed the man exiting the cage with an obvious wet spot on the front of his khaki pants. He was shrugging and wearing a sheepish grin on his face that said “what could I do?” Royce imagined the other men in his party were clapping and congratulating him.
“This joker better hope his wife doesn’t see this,” Royce said.
“That’s Brenden Stark.”
Royce recognized the last name. “Councilman Stark’s son?”
“Yep,” Sawyer said, nodding. “He’s a lawyer, married to the daughter of a Fortune 500 CEO, and is a youth leader at their church.”
“So, the women are harlots, but he’s not?” Royce asked incredulously. “I can understand people not agreeing with establishments like The Alley Cat, but nothing they did in the video is illegal.”
Royce gasped when the video shifted from footage inside the club to a tutorial where an offscreen person navigated a website, scrolling through a “menu” of escorts under a banner that read: Savage’s Sweethearts. All appetites welcome and guaranteed. Some of the women were labeled as barely legal, which made Royce want to vomit. Beneath the escorts’ photos, The Purists provided their real names, ages, and occupations.
“Goddamn these assholes,” Royce snarled. “How dare they put these women at risk like this?”
“They’ve already killed two people,” Sawyer pointed out.
“Yeah, but so far, they’ve only taken credit for burning the building, which should’ve been empty at three in the morning. Up until now, they haven’t threatened violence, so I’m not convinced the deaths were intentional.”
Sawyer nodded. “True.”
It took a surprisingly long time for the video to cycle through the escorts. “How in the hell could Savage get away with running an illegal escort service?” Royce asked. Then he remembered McGraw’s comment about having powerful friends, and it all clicked in to place. “Savage has high-ranking officers at SPD by the short and curlies.”
Sawyer snorted and pointed at Royce’s phone. “You mean like him?”
The video switched to a ledger detailing Savage’s clientele which was matched up with photos and videos that the son of a bitch had probably taken without their permission. The Purists must’ve hacked his blackmail files. Royce could’ve gone the rest of his life without seeing the police commissioner’s white ass pumping up and down as he had sex with a woman who was young enough to be his granddaughter.
“Gross,” Sawyer said, turning his head. “Is it over yet?”
“I’m sure that’s what the lady was thinking too.” Nothing about the situation was funny, but he felt suffocated by his disgust and needed to let off steam. Humor was his weapon of choice.
One after the other, images of Savannah’s upper echelon—men and women—were outed as Savage’s clients. Since Sawyer’s family was wealthy and connected, he recognized many of them and commented frequently.
“I’m so thankful my dad, brother, and brother-in-law weren’t on the list,” Sawyer said.
Royce was surprised by how genuinely relieved Sawyer sounded. Did he really think his dad would cheat on his mother, who was still one of the most beautiful women in the world? On the other hand, sex wasn’t always about looks, love, or even physical desire. It was about power, and The Purists exposed some of Savannah’s most influential people as liars, cheaters, and hypocrites. Unfortunately, they did so in a way that embarrassed the innocent families and put the escorts’ lives in danger. Bile rose in his throat as he thought about Crystal’s last minutes in the safe.
“How humiliating for their families,” Sawyer said, echoing his thoughts.
At the end of the video, a message from The Purists appeared.
Citizens of Savannah,