by Elle Keaton
After disconnecting, Beto turned his attention to Soren and Dany. “All right, elaborate. Why are you here, and why do you want to talk to Carsten?”
It was Dany who started talking. Even as a kid, he was the one who could never keep his mouth shut.
“Has, uh, C told you anything?” Dany gave Carsten a look. Dany wouldn’t be the one to divulge Carsten’s given name.
No, Carsten hadn’t, because he’d only just met Beto. Why would he tell Beto his poor-me story? He wanted to move past his history, not relive it. Even though Beto had told Carsten he trusted him, there hadn’t been time.
“What does that have to do with Troy?” Carsten asked. He turned to Beto. “You said they wanted to talk to me about Troy.”
Beto came to sit on the stool next to him, his body heat nearly scorching. The man was a furnace, and Carsten’s body demanded more. “You should probably know that Bakker’s in and out of consciousness; he’s asked for you,” Beto said.
Troy alive and awake? The world shifted for the second time that evening. Carsten thought the stool was wobbling. Beto put an arm around his shoulders to steady him. And left it there, a hot weight helping Carsten stay focused on the present.
“I thought he was … in a coma.” He tried to recall what Beto had actually said. “You implied he might die.”
“For his own protection, and for yours too. And it needs to stay that way. Jorgensen knows because I trust him. I’m not sure how much Dany knows—or what he knows—or what you know. What we’re about to discuss can’t leave this room.”
Carsten and Troy had talked about this scenario. Not one where Carsten was the last man standing, but the ploy. The trust ploy.
“Don’t believe anyone, Car, no one. Not one single person. This town is pure poison. The well water is bad; nobody can rescue Timmy—the only people we can trust are each other.”
Carsten had protested. Not everyone could be involved; the little old ladies and dog walkers weren’t members of a child sex ring, he’d said. A club so deranged and hideous and protected by local law enforcement that it continued to function regardless of years of investigations and arrests. They seemed to be impervious, a snake that could regrow its head numerous times.
“No,” Troy had glanced over his shoulder as if reassuring himself that the little old lady in question was headed in the other direction, “but they could be family.”
It was true; Skagit wasn’t a big city, and a lot of folks were related. Carsten’s hometown was the same way. “Okay, trust no one.”
They’d never made a backup plan for what Carsten would do if Troy ended up in the hospital. Carsten wasn’t the one out gathering evidence, stealing photographs and names he learned; he was the one guarding the information, hiding it in the best place he could think of. He was the one who was going to knock on the FBI’s door when Troy decided they had enough and hand over the bag of evidence.
Dany misunderstood his silence. “Let me tell my side of the story.” He was speaking to Beto. Beto dropped his arm from Carsten’s shoulders. Carsten wanted him to put it back. He felt exposed.
“C and I grew up in Hoquiam, which, I can assure you, is not all that. I think we first met in elementary school, but we didn’t hang out until junior high. There’s a lot of blah blah blah I won’t go into, but the most important thing is, my family are not good people.”
Dany stopped talking and looked up at the ceiling. All eyes in the room were on him. Carsten wasn’t sure if he wanted Dany to keep talking or if he wanted to keep forgetting everything that ever happened.
“Let’s just say that they have ways to support themselves during every economic downturn, every time the fishing season is bad—or if they just want to. I should’ve known to never bring C home. See, I was kind of lucky. My sainted mother had been my grandfather’s favorite, so I was considered hands off. For most of my life I was protected by her and, when she died, by her memory. But C here,” Dany motioned toward him, looking him in the eye, “he was fresh and just what many of their buyers were looking for.”
Carsten felt sick again, ashamed and angry, feelings he was tired of. Those men had literally stolen his life.
“This is all stuff I’ve learned in the past few years, but imagine me, twelve or thirteen, bringing home my new best friend to hang out for the first time, and having one of my uncles start asking me questions about him.
“C was never an awkward pimply teen like I was; he had no idea how hot he was. He rocked the androgynous look. And I think that’s what got us in trouble.” Dany quickly looked at Soren. “I was never attracted to Hi-C; I can feel you growling inside.” Soren blushed.
“My uncles and grandfather encouraged me to bring C over, to have him to dinner. It was the first time in my life I was allowed to have a friend—and of course they wanted to know all about him. I had no idea C was being groomed.”
Dinner at Dany’s had been overwhelming and exciting for a quiet boy who sometimes didn’t get enough to eat, whose mom was a waitress at one of the local cafés making barely enough to pay rent on the tiny apartment they shared with her unemployed brother. She’d made so many excuses for him—he’d had a hard life, the army hadn’t been easy, he’d been to war zones. Carsten had hated him.
So, yeah, being invited somewhere new had been the best thing to ever happen to him. Until the sky fell down.
He finally found his voice. If this story was going to be told, he was the one who was going to tell it. Troy had heard it, of course; this wasn’t the first time he’d be saying the words, but it was the first time when it might actually mean something.
“Yeah.” Hernández’s gaze swung back to him, and Carsten cleared his throat. “So, Dany’s place was a relief. I started hanging out there as much as I could. My mom worked all the time, and my uncle was unemployed. Being home meant being around him …” it was still hard to say the words, even though much worse had happened since that time “... meant that he wanted to pretend I was his ‘girlfriend.’ He’d pretend I was a girl; I had to sit on his lap and all that.” Hernández stiffened on the stool next to him, and Carsten couldn’t look at him. No doubt he was thinking of that kiss and regretting it. Trash was cleaner than Carsten.
“But I guess I caught the attention of Dany’s family, and they had plans. I was supposed to stay over one night. My mom and I got into a huge fight before I left, and I told her that Baron had been making me pretend I was his girlfriend for years. She wigged out and accused me of lying because I wanted attention or something.”
Beto muttered something in Spanish.
“I ran to Dany’s.” And right there, age fourteen, was the stepping-stone for Carsten from kid to adult. After that day he had no illusions that the world was a glittery, fun place to be. The situation with his uncle was nothing compared to what the next years brought.
“Yeah,” Dany said. “I’d tried to call him to warn him not to come over, because I found out there was a ‘buyer’ for him. I’d overheard two of my uncles talking. They forgot I could understand Croatian—not speak it fluently, but growing up in a household where knowing secrets was the way to stay alive, I made sure I understood what they were whispering about. Anyway, it was too late. Even if I’d managed to warn him, they had a buyer who wanted him and they would’ve found a way. It was just easier that he came right to the front door.”
More muttering came from next to him. Carsten was still afraid to look.
Soren spoke up. “Tell us what this has to do with Skagit.”
“A lot of their buyers are here,” Dany replied.
“A lot of their buyers are here,” Beto repeated, his tone harsh and unforgiving. Funny how now Carsten could hear the soft burr of Spanish under those words.
So much of what had happened was a blur, a time Carsten didn’t want to remember. He felt like, compared to Troy and others he’d met, he’d been lucky—if such a word could be applied to slavery.
“Explain what you mean by ‘a lot of their buyers are her
e,’” Beto demanded.
Dany shrugged and leaned back against the couch. “There’s family here, and the family on the coast supplies the family here with goods. It’s import-export … get it?”
Carsten’s anger was slow to flare, a molten ember deep in his chest battling the constant uncertainty he lived with. That there were people in the world who believed some human lives were nothing, that his life and the lives of others were lesser and only existed for other people’s pleasure—or pain. That’s what he and Troy were trying to stop, going to stop, at least here in Skagit.
16
Beto
* * *
It took everything he had to maintain a professional, calm appearance. Everything. His body literally shook with the effort of keeping control. Anger simmered under his skin, nearly impossible to restrain. How were humans like those Dany described able to live? The perpetrators weren’t human, they were animals. Worse than animals.
Import-export.
Human import-export.
It took everything he had not to snatch up his cell phone and demand Gómez get her ass over to his house that very minute. They finally had a connection, a lead, a reason why they weren’t able to shut the human trafficking down, why they constantly hit a wall when it came to getting rid of the trafficking ring completely: There was a silent partner. Nguyen suspected as much; that’s why she’d asked the FBI to investigate. That was why Beto was here, and yet in the year he’d been masquerading as an SkPD detective, this was the first solid lead they had.
Whoever was here in Skagit had, until this moment, been like smoke. Easy to see from far away, but once you got close it faded into the air. Two years ago almost exactly, Mitya Matveev had been taken down, but it quickly became apparent that he was not the only one; there were others who had even more secret places to hide their victims. It sickened Beto.
“How did Mitya Matveev fit in?” Beto tossed the name out. Matveev had, until a few years ago, been behind much of the crime in Skagit—one way or another.
“One of my cousins. Distant, but a relation. We like to keep the creeps in the family.”
He had so many questions, so many details he needed to confirm and track down. The case, which had been on simmer, waiting for him to find something, for someone to reveal themselves, had reached a hard boil.
Carsten shifted on the stool next to him. Beto wondered if he would ever have learned Carsten’s history if Dany and Soren hadn’t shown up at the door.
Which raised a question. “Why did you come here, Jorgensen?”
Gómez and the rest of the Skagit team had thoroughly researched the entire SkPD. There were those, Dickson for example, who were on the radar, but during the time Beto had been in Skagit, Dickson had done nothing worse than live up to his name. That they could find, anyway. Beto distrusted himself because he wanted so badly to lay this at the feet of his ex-partner.
Soren’d made detective during the time Beto’d been in Skagit. That didn’t rule him out from being a part of the problem instead of the solution, but Beto trusted Gómez’s team would’ve found something on him if it was there to be found. Dickson they had minor stuff on, and it all added up to suspicion he was dirty, but they had no hard evidence—yet. However, Beto’s gut told him Soren was a clean cop.
Before Soren could reply, Danylo spoke up. “I’m afraid that’s my fault.” He had the grace to look a little embarrassed.
“I thought I saw C a few weeks ago, but when I called his name he ignored me—or so I thought. This was down by the pier where I’m working. The next time, I was certain it was him, so I waited until he was close and I confronted him. I wanted to—I wanted to see if he was okay, to apologize for his life.”
“It wasn’t your fault,” Carsten interrupted.
Dany shook his head. “It was. But back to my story, I got right up in Hi-C’s face so he would have to see me and—but it wasn’t him. If you look, Hi-C has a scar across one eyebrow. I know, because I was there when he fell off the skateboard and hit his head. This guy didn’t have a scar. It was creepy how much he looked like him, though. But he knew something about Hi-C. I could tell—he’d half turned the first time I’d called his name.
“He flipped out and told me to fuck off and then took off with his dog. I’ve been around liars all my life. He wasn’t C, but he knew him and … I wondered. I wondered why he looked so scared.”
“How did you find Carsten—Hi-C?” Beto tucked the nickname away for later, private questioning.
“That was me,” Jorgensen piped up.
“Excuse me?”
“He didn’t find him, I did. Dany asked me to help him find a friend he lost touch with, and when he described him, it sure sounded like Carsten. Since I’d seen him at the Booking Room the other day, but Sara wouldn’t tell me anything, I thought we’d ask you—that maybe you’d have a way to find him. I didn’t expect to find him here.” Soren’s blond eyebrows rose, in question or judgment, Beto wasn’t sure.
“How did you meet Dany?” Damn if Beto was going to have a punk-ass kid with ties to a human trafficking ring in his house.
Soren blushed, not just a slight pink but a full-on bright-red blush. Beto thought back to the conversation they’d had last week.
“He saw me jaywalking. I offered him a blowjob if he wouldn’t give me a ticket.”
Beto’s eyes widened.
“He turned me down,” Dany quickly added.
“I don’t want any more details.” But he was damn well getting Jorgensen alone later and having a talk with him about life choices.
“Now that you’ve found me, what do you want? No offense, but a lot has happened since the last time we saw each other.” Carsten eyed Dany closely, a mix of hope and despair written on his face.
Dany leaned forward before changing his mind and getting up from the couch to approach Carsten. He had a similar build to Carsten, but where Carsten was light and cool ice, Dany was dark and simmering heat. His hair was a natural jet black and stick straight; his eyes an exotic green-brown that seemed to change with his mood.
“Honestly, the first time I saw you I wanted to run the other way, but I forced myself to call out your name. I wanted to apologize, make it all better, change history … I don’t know, but seeing you was—it gave me hope. Then when you—not you, the other guy—reacted that way, I decided I had to find you. I still don’t have a plan.”
“It’s not your fault. None of what happened was your fault.” Carsten turned to Beto. “Do you mind if we talk in private for a few minutes?”
Yes, he minded. He wanted Carsten out where he could keep an eye on him, keep him safe. He didn’t trust Dany Petyr. On the other hand, it would give him a chance to grill Soren.
He nodded. “Go ahead.”
“This way.”
Carsten slipped off the stool and led Dany down through the kitchen to Beto’s bedroom. Beto heard the door shut behind them.
* * *
Beto turned back to face his partner.
“I think you have some explaining to do.”
Soren reddened again but stood his ground. “I will, if you want to tell me why Carsten is cooking you dinner.”
“He walked the dog,” Beto answered weakly.
“Okaaay.” Soren sat forward, and just as he opened his mouth to ask something else, the doorbell rang. The dog, which all of them had forgotten about, went ballistic, barking and snarling at the shut door.
“That’s the pizza.”
Beto grabbed Freya by the collar while trying to pull his wallet out of his pocket, but she was making it impossible.
“Get the door, will you?”
Soren crossed the short distance to the front door and opened it wide, ready to take the pizzas. Instead there was a flash and the muffled bang of a silenced firearm, and Soren was down on the ground, a stream of blood flowing from the wound in his chest. Freya tore from Beto’s grip and went after the gunman, snapping and snarling. A few more shots were fired, but she had t
aken the man by surprise. He fled with her snapping at his heels. Beto wanted to give chase, but his partner was fighting for his life.
“Carsten! Dany! Call 911!” Beto yelled as he fell to his knees by Soren. Neither man answered him. He didn’t have time to check the bedroom; he couldn’t afford to release the pressure he had on Soren’s chest. “Stay with me. I can’t have another partner die on me,” Beto whispered, blood oozing around his fingers.
Soren’s eyes didn’t open, but he whispered back, “’s that wha happened? Partner died?”
“Yeah. Cancer. He ignored the signs and boom, he was gone weeks after the diagnosis. The docs might not have been able to save him anyway. It was rough. I wasn’t prepared. We weren’t prepared.”
“Was he more … partner?”
A question no one had ever asked him before, but here this guy was, his new partner, bleeding out on his floor after taking a bullet meant for him, so he answered honestly.
“Yeah, Jerry and I were more than partners. For nearly ten years.” Beto pressed harder, hearing sirens in the distance, but they weren’t coming fast enough—the rain, the water, who knew what was keeping them. “He was never out. The whole thing was a secret. When he passed, his family descended and cleaned out his apartment. There was no trace of me there, as far as I know—at least, none of them ever said anything about it to me. We quasi lived together at my place, but he never let his lease go. I’d thought the place must be mostly empty, just storage, but it seems like all his belongings—everything that really mattered, I guess—were over there, like he’d just gone out for the day.”
“That’s … rough.”
“I guess I’m just not the kind of person people commit to. You want to know something else weird?” He’d keep talking if spilling his personal secrets kept his partner with the living.
“Yeah.”
“Me and my mamá were the second family.”
Soren twitched. Beto wasn’t sure if he could hear him anymore, but he continued talking.