Page 120 of Bits & Pieces (Benny Imura 5)

Mama Rat shook her head.

“Where is she?” asked Tom.

It clearly cost Mama Rat to answer that. “Back . . . back at our camp.”

Tom made a sick sound.

Ledger asked, “She’s safe there, isn’t she?”

Mama Rat nodded.

“Are there other kids there too?” Ledger demanded.

A nod.

“Kids who you people keep safe?” the big man growled.

Nod.

“And you bring kids like me back there?” asked Rags. “Not to keep us safe?”

No nod this time, but Rags could read the truth in the woman’s eyes.

“Why?” asked Rags. “I mean . . . how can you be someone’s mom and do that stuff to other kids? How can you be someone’s mom and a monster at the same time?”

Mama Rat’s knees buckled, and she sank slowly to the ground.

In that moment, Rags wanted to kill this woman herself. She could feel the need to destroy bursting like fireworks in her chest, behind her eyes. Her fists contracted into tight balls of bone and gristle and she wanted, needed, ached to kill. To slaughter. To destroy. Mama Rat and anyone like her. She could understand what made a person into a cold killer like Captain Ledger. She could understand what turned a gentle man like Tom Imura into the kind of person who could do the things he’d clearly done. She told herself that it wouldn’t be murder. It would be no different from killing a scorpion that got into the house. Or a rattlesnake.

Bones and Baskerville seemed to feel her rage, and they both threw back their heads and let loose with howls as grim and loud as any wolf had ever thrown at a hunter’s moon.

; Rags held out her hand to Tom, and he gave her the locket. This tore a small cry from Mama Rat, and the woman made a half movement forward as if she wanted to grab it and take it back. But Rags stared her down, and the woman seemed to collapse back into herself.

The little girl in the picture was smiling.

No one else was.

“What’s her name?” asked Rags.

“Caitlyn.”

“It’s a pretty name.”

Mama Rat nodded.

“Did you have any other kids?”

“No.”

“Where’s Caitlyn’s dad?”

“He left,” said Mama Rat. “Long ago. Before.”

“So it’s you and her?”

A nod.