He’s so confusing, and he fucks with my head without even trying. One minute he’s hot and then next, cold as ice. He flops back and forth. Doesn’t know if he’s gay or straight or bi. Everyone else knows he likes both males and females, but he’s yet to admit the truth to himself. Hell, I thought I liked pussy once, but now I know I was only trying to force myself to be someone I’m not. Doesn’t hurt that cunt did a number on me either. Makes coming to terms with my sexuality that much easier.
Cole is a different story. He thinks he’s supposed to like one or the other. He doesn’t get that it’s okay to want what the heart wants, regardless of gender. If I could get that through his thick skull, maybe we’d actually get somewhere one of these days. Until then, I’m stuck just being a fuck here and there, just like every other random fuck is to him—and I’m getting sick of it.
“Look, I ain’t got time for your shit.” Hell, I’m at work, on the way to check out some vessel that showed up at the harbor that wasn’t on the schedule to dock. That just doesn’t happen. It screams red flags. It screams shady as fuck, which is why the coastguard was notified and they informed us.
“But you got time to fuck me and then take off while I’m asleep,” he deadpans, bringing me out of my thoughts about the ship.
“Isn’t that what you want? I mean, you’re okay with bringing a lay around your band buddies, but not the guy you’re into.”
“That’s not fair.”
“They know, Cole. None of them are stupid. Everyone knows you like dick just as much, hell, maybe even a little more than pussy.”
“That’s not the point. I couldn’t before. Bringing you around would bring up questions. You and Jen are partners. It would have come out, and then what?”
Maybe he has a point. Maybe I’m the one butt-hurt that he keeps dodging this thing between us and not taking it further than just sleeping together. I know he likes me. We’re both into each other, but without spending more than a night or two a week together, we’re never going to be anything more.
And I want more, dammit. Call me a fucking girl, but I want a real relationship. I want someone to come home to. I want a life partner that’s got my back like I got his.
Before I can respond, the sound notifying me of another call beeps through my ear. When I pull the phone away from my ear, seeing who it is, I know I have to wrap this shit with Cole up.
“Danny is calling me,” I say, putting the phone back to my ear. “Stop questioning everything you want. We can talk about our shit tonight, but if you aren’t ready for that, tell me now. I know what I want. I know who I want. It’s time you figure out what it is you want.”
I pull the phone away from my face, answering Danny’s call before Cole has a chance to respond. If he wants to talk, really talk, then he’ll text me later. If not, then we’ll keep walking around the same shit he’s been skirting around for the last seven months.
“What’s this about you walking out of school this morning and scaring the shit out of Maggie?” I ask. I would have called him earlier, but I had to get down to the harbor before that ship leaves. According to harbor patrol, it only has a small load to deliver and wouldn’t be here long.
“You have to get down to the Port of LA now,” he says, his voice sounding desperate.
“Danny, what—”
“Brandon is on a ship called The Montgomery. You gotta find him, Mal. Please.” His voice cracks, alarming me as I put my SUV in park.
“I’m here now. What do you know about that vessel and what the hell is Brandon doing on it?”
“No time to explain,” he tells me as I hear the sound of metal crunching metal. “Just find my brother and find him now,” he pleads, not an ounce of his normal self coming through the line.
“What the fuck, Danny? Explain,” I demand. “And what is that? What’s happening? Where are you?”
I don’t have time to pull up the app Jen gave me access to that tells me his location at all times. He doesn’t sound like himself and I know something is wrong. If my gut wasn’t clenching up, I’d know just by the sound of his voice that something isn’t right.
“Brandon’s mom is planning something. I don’t know what, but she is the reason he’s on that ship and we both know if she is involved, it isn’t good. Mal, you have to get to him, I can’t.”
“Where are you?”
“If I tell you, you’ll come for me instead and you won’t make it in time. Just go get Brandon. Please.”
Tires screech in the background and chills break out all over my skin.
“Danny,” I seethe, his name coming out like a warning. “What is going on?”
“I don’t think I’m coming home. And—” A gunshot goes off, followed by glass breaking and I stop breathing. “Just tell them I love them in case, okay?”
“Fight,” I force out of my mouth. “Fight, Danny, because your fucking life depends on it.”
The line goes dead, but I can’t allow myself any time to think. If I do, he’s right, I’ll come after him instead of saving his brother. Without another thought, I bolt out of the driver’s seat. Seeing Kelly stepping out of her car, I yell, “Get harbor patrol on the phone. That ship doesn’t leave until every square inch is checked.”
Not wasting any more precious time, I take off running, propelling my legs to move as fast as they’ll take me, praying for the second time in my life. God, let Danny survive whatever she does to him.
Eighteen years ago
I like girls. Every guy I know likes girls, so of course, I like them too.
Some of my classmates even have girlfriends and lost their virginity back in middle school, but not me. I’m picky. I’ve always been a picky person. I’ve never made friends easily. I never felt like I fit in with the white kids or the black kids. There weren’t even any Asian kids in my school until last year, but she’s a girl. Being a Native American Indian, I stick out no matter where I go. Until the start of my sophomore year at the beginning of this school year, I had long hair that stopped at the top of my lower back. I figured if I cut and styled it like other white kids it’d be easier to make friends. It wasn’t.
And every day I feel more and more alone.
I work harder than any other kid I know. School is another thing that doesn’t come easy to me. I’ve struggled for as long as I can remember, having to repeat third grade. That was the worst year of my life. Not only was I older than the rest of the kids, but I was much taller and bigger than any of them too. Other kids always seemed more scared of me than not, but I don’t understand why. I’m nice. I do what I’m told when I’m told to do it. I don’t cause trouble; I certainly don’t go looking for it either.
I didn’t know how to talk to girls any better than I knew how to approach other guys—at least not until recently. I met a girl in my computer science class at the start of our second semester. She didn’t pay me any mind the first half of the year, but now, she won’t leave me alone, and the strange thing is, I don’t want her to. She’s pretty, and like me, she often feels like an outcast herself. She moved to our small town almost three years ago, but I didn’t meet her until this year.
Turns out she’s friends with one of the band member’s girlfriend of this local band I started following a few months ago. From what Julia says, the girlfriend, Elise Thomas, gets jealous a lot, so she isn’t able to hang with the band while they’re practicing. That’s why I’m at her house now.
She has the biggest house I’ve ever seen. Her parents must be really rich. She told me last week her dad is a businessman and her mom is always vacationing. She said that’s going to be her life one day soon too. Married to a successful man so that she could explore the world and have the best of the best of everything.
Her idea of a good life and mine differ, but I don’t dare tell her that. I like that we spend so much time together. If she knew that I wanted to go into law enforcement one day, well, I don’t think she’d want to be my friend anymore. I may be sixteen, and I may struggle with
school work sometimes, but one thing I know for sure is I want to do something meaningful when I become an adult. I want to be proud of myself, and I want my parents to be proud of me.
I liked how my mom’s eyes lit up when I told her about Julia. Mom thinks I should ask her to be my girlfriend, but something about that idea doesn’t excite me. It’s the opposite really, but I like having her as a friend. So far, she’s a good friend, like right now. She’s here about to help me get over a hurdle—even if the thought makes me want to vomit.
“Are you sure you’re okay with doing this? If you’re not, you can—”
“I’m not the virgin, Malachi. You are.” She bites her lip as she crawls from the head of her bed to the foot, stopping in front of me. Pushing up, she looks me in the eyes. “And I want to help you with that problem. I do this for you and then you can repay me with a favor later. That’s fair, isn’t it?”
“I guess . . . Are you sure though?” I ask. I don’t want her to think I’m taking advantage of her.
“Jeez. Would you just fuck me already?” She falls onto her back, landing on her bed dramatically.
“Get on your knees.”
“No. I want to be on top.” She smiles up at me, her diamond blue eyes playing coy. “I’m more experienced than you. I can make it good. I promise.”
“It’s my first time. Shouldn’t it be the way I want it?” An image of a boy, sweaty and shirtless, holding a guitar pops into my head.
“Don’t you want to look at me while you fuck me?”
No. But I do know who I want to picture. With her facing away from me, that’d be much easier to imagine. He has blond hair too, though it is much shorter and he’s a lot bigger than her petite frame.
My parents would think it’s wrong, me liking other boys rather than girls. That’s why I have to do this. I have to lose my virginity to a girl. Julia is the only one I can hold a conversation with, so it’s gotta be her, and she’s willing. She wouldn’t have suggested this if she wasn’t into me, so I can make myself be into her too.
“Rather look at that hot ass you have back there,” I tell her to cover up the real reason.
“Fine. You just remember a deal is a deal.”
Yeah, okay, whatever that means. I don’t know why she’s so hung up on a favor for a favor. She was talking about the same thing when I was complaining about still being a virgin two days ago. But hell, if she remedies my little problem, then I’ll do whatever it is she wants.
39
— Jamie —
How did I not know?
How did I never see it?
Were there signs and I missed them, or did I gloss over them because I was too messed up over the belief that the only woman I ever loved betrayed me? Was my head really that fucked?
I’ve questioned the words out of her mouth twice since learning she was taken against her will. I can’t keep doing that, but I also don’t know how to make myself stop. Nothing I hear makes sense.
How was I that blind?
Jenna never gave me a reason to doubt her or not trust her. So why did I fall for Julia’s lies so easily?
If I hadn’t heard Julia’s voice on that recording, I’m not sure I would have believed anyone’s claim that my ex-wife was capable of such atrocities. I actually thought she was a good mother. Sure, I never loved her, but I also never gave her false hope. She knew from the day she told me she was pregnant that I’d marry her, take care of her and the kid, but I didn’t love her, and I’d never grow to love her.
Is Brandon even mine?
That thought makes me sick to my stomach. But if she’s capable of doing what she did to Jenna, then it isn’t so farfetched that she would have gotten knocked up by someone else and then told me he was mine. It’s not like she needed my money. At the time, I didn’t have any. I wasn’t famous. I wasn’t poor thanks to my parents’ support and all of the band living together that first year. Was it just me she wanted?
As much as I never wanted to create a life with her, it’s the one thing I’m praying isn’t a lie. Brandon is mine whether we share DNA or not, and I’ll be damned if I let anyone take him from me.
Either of them.
Both of my sons are missing and Jenna isn’t answering her cell. Josh assures me she’s fine and we’ll find the boys, though, his eyes don’t seem as sure as the words that came out of his mouth a little while ago.
I try Jenna’s cell once more. She didn’t give me her phone number and I didn’t exactly ask. I sent myself a text from her phone last night after she crawled out of the bed to go into the bathroom. She’d just answered a text, so her phone wasn’t locked. I didn’t want to chance her refusing, so I took it upon myself to do it without her permission.
I was shocked, hurt even, when I learned she already had my cell phone number pre-programmed into hers. She could have called me any time—but she didn’t.
I press end when she doesn’t answer.
I can’t blame her for being angry with me. Not about me stealing her number. If I were in her shoes and it was her not believing the words out of my mouth, I’d be mad too. I’d be more than mad; I’d be hurt. I’m never going to win her back at this rate; not if I keep listening to my head versus my heart.
I locked it up so tight all those years ago, I don’t know how to unlock it. It’s fused shut, it won’t budge. But if I don’t figure out a way, and figure it out soon . . .
“Malachi has Brandon.”
“Is he okay?” I ask from the passenger side of Josh’s Tahoe. “Where are they?”
We left the scene where Danny’s truck sat in a parking lot of a gas station down the road from the exit to the interstate. His Raptor had some damage at the front and rear. Josh told me it was likely that he was boxed in and that’s how they got his truck stopped.
“Don’t know. Jen said for me to meet her at her house, so that’s where we’re headed now.”
If Malachi has him, then he’s got to be okay. Surely his mother wouldn’t have harmed her own child. Even with what she did to Jenna and to Danny before he was born, I have to hold out hope that she couldn’t do that to her own son.
That thought is my head talking and not my heart, not my gut. If Julia was willing to harm someone like she did eighteen years ago, then maybe she is capable of doing harm to the boy she gave birth to.
I glance out the window, watching businesses blur as Josh drives faster than the posted speed limit. Had I known all of this a couple of hours ago, I’d have strangled Julia myself.
“Did she say anything about Danny?”
“No.”
Why did I let him leave? Had I not, or had I followed him instead, maybe I could have prevented him from getting taken who knows where by God knows who.
I pray he’s okay.
40
— Jenna —
The feeling like I can’t breathe is starting to be too much to handle. My throat has closed, making the ability to speak impossible. It’s why I had to send Josh a text letting him know that Malachi was en route here with Brandon.
When my partner called me letting me know Brandon was physically okay, I had a brief moment of relief. Then everything fell apart when he told me Danny called him. My gut told me something awful happened, I had just refused to face it. I didn’t want him or anyone to tell me Danny was gone; someone had taken him.
Not that I didn’t already know. My fist tightens around the platinum jewelry in the palm of my hand.
I was leaving Julia’s house when I got the call, having spent a good half hour searching for clues but coming up empty-handed. I tossed her bedroom, not considering the fact I could be destroying evidence that could aid local police in finding my son. The thing is, when it comes to your family, your kid, everything you’re taught as an FBI agent, as a member of law enforcement, goes straight out the window.
I know I’m too close to this. I know I should step aside to allow those that can be objective lead the way in locating him. But that’s the other thing. Because
I’m so close, because I know what I went through, I can’t physically remove myself from this mission.
Josh won’t agree with me and he shouldn’t. I know if it were his daughter in this situation, nothing short of a bullet stopping his heart would get him out of the way. Josh didn’t change his name when he applied for the academy. He couldn’t. Had he done so there would have been too many red flags that would have led to a deep background check into this history. Had the agency known of his former life, he never would have been accepted. It’s the same as me really. Had I divulged our true connection or what I’d gone through, I wouldn’t be in the FBI. Being as a missing person’s report was never completed by my parents, there was never a record.
We both skated through. Had we not, I likely wouldn’t have any of the knowledge I do today. I wouldn’t know statistics, or well, except for the forty-eight-hour rule of thumb. Then again, that’s what civilians know. The reality is the first couple of hours are crucial. The longer someone goes missing, the lower the chance of finding them unscathed, or at all is more likely.
I will find my son. One way or another, I’ll find him—and I’ll find her too.
“Jen, sweetheart, why don’t you sit down,” Anne says, her voice making me flinch.
I’m a walking time bomb if I don’t get my shit under control. I’ve been pacing back and forth, working on wearing a path through my carpet in front of the mantel. Mal should have been here by now. When he called, I was leaving Julia’s house. Being as she lives three blocks over, it only took minutes to get home.
That was nearly half an hour ago. Where the hell are they?
I can’t think straight. I don’t even remember the last thing I said to Danny before he left for school this morning. What if I never see my baby again?
Have Mercy Page 25