To everyone’s relief, no other dead gay youths were found in the Pittsburgh area over the next two months. Another relief was that the renovation on the Sunshine and Rainbows Shelter was right on schedule and they expected to be completely done by the following month. Several of the rooms were already occupied by the residents who were also working on the renovations. Most of the work still to be completed was cosmetic, so a few other rooms had been given out to people who really needed them.

Molly walked into Kinnetik with a male friend one afternoon. The receptionist looked up and nodded as Molly headed toward Brian’s office.

“Is Brian free?” Molly asked Cynthia, who still worked as the gatekeeper for Brian’s office.

“Well, he’s in there, but so is your brother. Let me buzz them first,” she answered with a smile.

Brian opened his door about a minute later and walked over to Molly. “Hey Sweet Girl, what are you doing on this side of town?”

“I need to talk to you and Justin,” Molly answered in a serious tone of voice.

“Come on in. Is everything okay?” Brian asked, noticing that both Molly and her friend looked upset.

Brian instinctively checked the friend out, despite the fact that he was old enough to be the kid’s father. He was quite cute, with sandy blond hair and blue eyes. In fact, he looked a lot like...

“Hey Mollusk,” Justin greeted his sister as they walked in.

A muted “hey” was her only response.

Concerned, Justin walked over and put his arm around his sister. “What’s wrong?”

“This is my friend Tim,” the younger Taylor answered. “His parents threw him out when they caught him with Joey. Tim, this is my brother Justin and his partner Brian.”

Neither man knew who “Joey” was, but they didn’t need to know. They knew very well what had happened to Molly’s friend and why.

“How old are you, Tim?” Justin asked.

“I’ll be eighteen in a couple of months,” he answered, tears now slowly tracking down his cheeks.

Meanwhile, Brian got on the phone with Debbie and told her that they were bringing her another Lost Boy. Brian soon joined the group in the sitting area.

“Okay, Tim. There’s a room for you at the Sunshine and Rainbows Shelter. It’s under renovation, but you can move in right away if you don’t mind the mess and the noise. It has a bed, air conditioning, and running water, which is most important. By the way, what are your interests? We have several businesses and trades that offer apprenticeships, but they’re going fast.”

Tim looked confused. “Wh… why are you doing this? You don’t even know me.”

“I told you that they run a charity,” Molly said quietly.

“We do this because no kid should be thrown out for being gay,” Brian explained. “You’re Molly’s friend and she brought you here because she knew we could help you. Now, what are your interests?”

“Well, I love working in the woodshop at school. I like restoring antiques, too. I also play the violin and read comics occasionally, but that won’t get me a job.”

“Or anything at all from Brian, except a nasty look,” Molly commented with a smirk.

Brian pursed his lips in response, happy that Molly’s sense of humor was still intact.

Justin got up and kissed his partner before saying to his sister, “Let’s get you two over to the shelter. Once Tim is settled in, I can drop you back at Mom’s. I won’t tell her that you took the bus across town, because you know she hates it when you do that.”

“I wouldn’t have to do it if she bought me a car… or if you bought me a car,” Molly complained.

Justin put his hands on his hips. “Excuse me, Madam, I didn’t have my own car until I was twenty-five and I had to buy it on my own.”

Brian interrupted the bickering blonds by pulling Justin toward him. “Just don’t be long, we’re going to The Limelight and dancing tonight.”

He then thoroughly kissed his man goodbye.

Justin looked drunk off of his man’s lips. “Mmmm… can’t wait.”

Tim’s mouth dropped open in shock. He’d never seen two men so openly affectionate.

Molly looked at Tim, then at Brian and Justin and shook her head. “This is nothing. Most of the time they forget there are other people around and dry hump right in front of you. Don’t worry, you’ll get used to it.”

She said goodbye to Brian as she pulled on Tim’s and her brother’s arms to get them moving.

Tim settled into the shelter nicely. Debbie brought him to her house for spaghetti his first night with a few of the other residents, who he quickly made friends with. He got an apprenticeship with a master woodworker who owned a furniture store within a week. The old man and Tim clicked immediately, and he took Tim under his wing and taught him all he knew.

Tim decided to join some of the other boys going to Liberty Avenue one Friday night to see what the nightlife was like. In spite of being warned that no one should go anywhere alone, he wandered off from the group when he saw an old cabinet and hope chest someone had abandoned in an alley.

As he was looking at the furniture, he was approached by a dark-haired man about his size. The stranger smiled at Tim.

“Hey, Beautiful,” the man said to Tim.

“Uh, hi,” Tim said, surprised that a man would find him attractive.

“I’ve never seen you in these parts before,” the man remarked.

“Yeah,” Tim admitted. “I’m… I’m new.”

It was dark in the alley, so Tim couldn’t really get a good look at the man’s face.

The man came closer. Suddenly, Tim heard the click of a switchblade knife open up. He could see the light from a nearby streetlamp reflect off of the metal close to his face.

As Tim was about to scream, the man said, “Shut up and come with me, or you’ll be sorry.”

The man led Tim further back into the alley to a metal staircase. The man forced Tim to walk up the stairs first. Once they were inside of a sparsely furnished apartment, Tim got a good look at the man when a light switch was flicked on.

He knew immediately who the man was. He also knew he needed to keep his wits about him if he had any hope of getting out of this alive. Not knowing what the man wanted and praying that his first time would not be by rape, he tried to stay calm.

“I don’t know why I brought you up here, except that you remind me of someone… Even more than the others, for some reason,” the man slurred. He sounded drunk, but also very nervous. “Someone who needs to pay for the hell he’s put me through for all these years.”

Tim stayed quiet and let the man talk. He figured his best way out would be to cooperate and not fight him until he figured out what to do.

“My life was going just fine until those two got back together, then everything went wrong.”

The man then dragged Tim to an old wooden armchair and roughly pushed him to sit. He pulled out a zip tie and attached Tim’s right wrist to the right arm of the chair with it, so tight he thought the plastic tie was cutting through his skin. Next went the left wrist.

When the man was finished securing him, he stood in front of the blond and slapped him repeatedly across the face. Tim couldn’t help but scream from the stinging pain.

“Too bad, but if I can’t get him, at least I can get someone who looks like him.”

The man continued slapping him, causing Tim’s head to whip from side to side. Tim was about to pass out from the pain when the man grabbed his hair and threw a glass of water in his face.

“Don’t pass out on me, you blond whore,” the man snarled at him.

Just then, the man’s cell phone rang.

“You better not make a fucking peep,” the man said, walking to the other end of the room before answering the call.

“Hello?... Yeah, I can be there. Thanks... Don’t worry, I’ll be on time. See you then.”

He looked back at Tim after ending the call. “Well, lucky you. I need to get some sleep. I have to see about a job in the morning, so you can just sit there. To be sure you stay quiet…”

Looking around, he saw a dirty t-shirt on the floor.

“Open up, Blondie,” he said, pulling the shirt around Tim’s mouth and tying it in the back.

The shirt was very smelly and hurt being tied so tight. Tim’s hands were now numb from the zip ties around his wrists, but he didn’t dare try to complain.

Tim watched as the man climbed into his bed. A little while later, the man fell asleep and was snoring quite loudly. Tim figured that his hands had been tense when the man tied him to the chair because once he’d relaxed a bit, he found that the zip ties weren’t as tight as they were before but not loose enough to pull his hands free.

Tim quickly got rid of the t-shirt around his face by rubbing his cheek against his shoulder. He was able to slide his right wrist over to the outside of the armrest, so he could lift his right leg up and reach his sneaker. It took some time doing it one-handed, but he was able to untie his right shoe and then his left. Using his teeth to help, he slid the right shoelace through the zip tie then tied the laces of both shoes together. The man had left a lamp on, so he was able to see what he was doing.

He never realized that watching YouTube videos when he was bored would one day save his life. He probably could have broken the joints on the old chair to free himself but didn’t want to take a chance on making noise and waking the sick fuck. He would have been screwed if the man had thought to tie his ankles to the chair, but luckily for Tim, the man didn’t seem to be very smart.

He freed himself after sawing through both of the zip ties with his shoelaces by rapidly pedaling his feet. He hoped to find more zip ties in the man’s discarded pants pocket, which he luckily did. He took one of them and tied his captor’s right wrist to his headboard.

Once he was finished, Tim ran out the door and straight to the police station he recalled seeing before on Liberty and Grant. Running in, he quickly told them what had happened. They asked him the address of his kidnapper and realized he had been in so much of a hurry to get out that he hadn’t even looked.

He led the officers back the way he had come. Once they got to the building, they heard screaming from the upstairs. It was then that Tim told them he had managed to tie the man to the bed.

An officer stayed downstairs with Tim for his safety. Walking in with their guns drawn, the other officers found the screaming man struggling against the headboard. The man was cut away and taken into custody wearing nothing but tighty whities. He said he wanted a lawyer before they’d even had the chance to read him his rights, so they couldn’t ask him anything.

The officers looked around the apartment and saw pieces of rope on the small kitchen table, the same type of rope that had been found around the necks of all of the Liberty Avenue strangler’s victims. A judge granted a warrant within the hour, so the officers were able to thoroughly search the place.

Opening up the bathroom door, they found pictures of Brian Kinney and Justin Taylor taped to the wall, with ropes drawn around their necks. They also found pictures of all the victims that the man had taken with his cell phone and printed out, and the pictures were still on the phone lying on the nightstand. He’d even kept the victims’ wallets, complete with their ID’s and other cards.

This man’s apartment was a prosecutor’s wet dream, with all the incriminating evidence laid out before them. That, combined with Tim’s testimony, would put him away for at least four lifetimes, one for each young man he’d savagely killed with extra time for kidnapping Tim.  

When the police had asked for the man’s name, he refused to tell them. The man had no identification in the pockets of the clothes he’d left beside the bed, except for Tim’s that he’d stolen when he abducted him.

A full squad of detectives, one who introduced himself to Tim as Detective Lieutenant Mackey, were now on the scene. Mackey turned to Tim and asked, “He didn’t happen to tell you his name, did he?”

“No, but he didn’t have to. His name is Ethan Gold, he’s a professional violinist. I play the violin and I wanted to be just like him, at least until tonight.”