by Siren, Tia
"What the hell do you want, Peterson?"
I don't really have time to explain to the guy I'd just stolen hundreds of millions of dollars from why I took the money. I just pray that he'll give me a chance. "I really need a favor, Kyle."
"That's fucking hilarious!" Kyle says on the other end of the phone. "You're shitting me, right? Is someone gonna jump out from behind the couch and snap a pic of my confused face and turn it into an internet meme? Because that's the only thing that makes sense right now. Why the hell would I do you a fucking favor?"
"This isn't a joke. Look, I know you don't owe me anything—"
"Damn straight I don't owe you anything. You still owe us the other half of the money you stole from the company."
"Well, technically a third of it was mine."
"Uh, technically you can still go to prison for embezzlement, Professor Brainiac, but I'm not gonna dwell on a little piece of crucial information like that."
"Please, Kyle, will you just hear me out?"
There's a pause on the other end of the phone and I pray he hasn't hung up. "I'm listening."
"No. Not over the phone. I need you to come to where I am."
"Evan, I don't have time for this. I've got better things to do than get jerked around by you again."
"Please. I really need your help. I don't have anywhere else to turn."
I wait for what feels like an eternity while Kyle makes up his mind. "Okay, where?"
I tell him the hotel and room number and ask him to hurry.
"Okay, I'm leaving right now," he says. "I'll be there in a half hour."
"Thank you. And Kyle, bring your gun with you."
"What? What the hell for?"
"I'll explain when you get here."
"Dude, seriously? You're really in that much trouble?"
"Yeah, I am. In fact, I wish I had about ten guns right now."
* * *
"So what's going on? I'm guessing this has something to do with the money you stole from the company."
I'm sitting in the ratty goddamned chair with my head in my hands while Kyle stands in front of me. "Sit down," I say when I look up at him. "You're making me nervous."
Kyle walks over to the unmade bed and sits down. "Okay, what's this about?"
"So, you know Zoe, right?"
"Um, you mean the girl you ordered us to take out of our show a few weeks ago? The one who you say is your goddaughter? Except you never mentioned a thing about a goddaughter in all the years we've known each other. Through college and six years in business together and you never told your partners about this alleged goddaughter? Yeah, I think I know who you're talking about."
"Look, I never told you guys about her because she was part of my old life, from before I ever knew you guys. Griff and I grew up together, but that part of my life … I don't know … it just didn't mesh with my new life—college and the business and everything. I just didn't think any of it was important. But none of that matters right now. What matters is she's in trouble. We both are."
"No, what matters is I don't know if I can trust you at all anymore. I don't know if I can believe a word that comes out of your mouth, Evan. After all these years, I find out you've been stealing from the company, our company. The one the three of us worked our asses off to start from the ground up. I don't think Graham is ever going to speak to you again, man. I don't know if you understand how betrayed he feels."
"I know that. You think I don't know what I did to you guys? Jesus, it killed me to take that money, Kyle. You don't understand. I didn't want to do it. I had to."
Kyle's face softens a little. "Keep talking."
"So Griffin and I—"
"This is Zoe's dad?"
"Yeah, Zoe's dad. We grew up together. And as much as he pissed me off sometimes, I've always had a soft spot for him. As my life changed, I started spending less and less time with him, but then his daughter was born and he asked me to be her godfather, and I couldn't say no.
"But after that, the more time I spent with him, the more I realized what a piece of shit he'd become. His wife was no prize either. They both ran around all over the place and left Zoe alone. I didn't realize it at first, but eventually I saw it clear as day. And it made my skin crawl. He'd gone from being a good-natured kid that got into trouble to someone I didn't want to have anything to do with. And I couldn't stand that Zoe was stuck there with the two of them.
"Griff always liked to gamble, but by this point it had turned into a major problem. We're talking hundreds of thousands lost in a night. And when you're playing games that big, you wind up playing with some pretty scary dudes.
"So one night, not long after she started high school, I get a call from Zoe. She's out walking around on the streets in the middle of the night because her dad left her in a car in a sketchy part of town. She doesn't have any money so she calls me to come get her. I take her back to her house and ask her what was going on, why her dad had taken her with him.
"She says she doesn't know. Just that her dad told her to wait out in the car and that it wouldn't be very long. I don't have a good feeling about it at all. When he gets back to the house, I ask him why he had her with him because I know he'd been at a poker game. That's all he ever did at this point. And I also know that from a really young age, the two of them would leave Zoe all alone at night. Even for a whole weekend. So there was no reason for her to be waiting for him in a dark parking lot."
"What did he take her there for?" Kyle asks like he doesn't actually want to know the answer. I can tell he's catching on. He's not stupid.
"He was going to bid with her when he ran out of money."
"Holy shit, man. No."
"Yeah. After that night I swore I was going to get Zoe the hell out of there, but it's never as easy as you think it's gonna be. Nothing like that ever is. I had him followed and trailed him myself just about every night to see if I could get something solid on him. Something I could take to the cops and have him put away. But he wasn't actually doing anything illegal."
"Jesus, Evan. How long has this been going on?"
"Years."
"Why didn't you ever tell us about any of it? We could have figured out some way to help you. You're like a brother to me—you and Graham—seriously, you're my family. How did it get so bad that your only option was stealing hundreds of millions of dollars from your best friends?"
"Well, they both died, Zoe's mom and dad. It was a car crash … an accident, but I never bought that."
"You think they were killed? On purpose?"
"I'm pretty sure. Especially after I was visited by one of his big-time poker buddies."
"Oh shit."
"He informed me that Zoe's father's debts had passed on to his successor. I told him that I was her guardian now, even though that wasn't exactly the truth. But as far as I was concerned, it was. He told me that the debt would have to be paid one way or another. Either with cash or with Zoe."
"Get the fuck out of here. They were really going to just take her?"
"Yeah. I started asking around. I knew some of the guys from the old neighborhood. The ones we used to play a friendly game of poker with. One guy told me he would never go to the big games that Griff would. He said getting mixed up with those guys was deadly. Playing even one game with them was like signing your own death warrant. They didn't mess around and when they wanted something, they took it. Those were his exact words."
"Why didn't you say something … anything to us about this?"
"I didn't want to involve you guys. These men … they're not just killers, Kyle. They do really dark shit. That friend of my dad's gave me the name of another guy. Someone who'd been involved with these people before. I met him at a truck stop way the hell out in the desert near Slabtown. He wouldn't even come within L.A. city limits. He said those men train and sell sex slaves. They're part of the mafia, which I pretty much figured, but they're on the outside of it somehow. What they do is lend money to high-level families, or guys
with an expensive habit like Griff, and that's the way they recoup their loans. By selling off their daughters. It's some kind of sex slave racket.
"Apparently they're all over the place, in pretty much every country and every business imaginable. He said you never actually know if a person you're talking to is part of this whole ring. They're everywhere."
"Holy shit."
"Yeah. I mean, I wouldn't believe it if it wasn't actually happening to me right now. I didn't think this sort of thing was real. So they either want Zoe to keep for themselves, or they want to sell her off so some rich mafia sleazeball so they can make their money back and he can use her as his goddamned slave for the rest of her life."
"No way, Evan. That's insane." Kyle's face is completely drained of all color now. "Whatever you need, you got it. I'll help you in any way I can."
"Thanks, Kyle. What I need right now is to find her. She took off a few hours ago. I fell asleep, and when I woke up, she was gone."
"Why?"
"I don't know. She said she wanted to go see some guy named Max."
"Doesn't she know what kind of danger she's in?"
I look down at my hands. As soon as the words come out of my mouth, I feel like an ass. But at the same time, I know how much the truth would hurt her. "I haven't told her."
"What? You're kidding? Why the hell not?"
"I just haven't."
"Okay," Kyle says, like he's talking to a crazy person, which he pretty much is at this point. "So do you have any idea who this Max guy is?"
"No. I haven't been around Zoe too much in the last month. She keeps disappearing on me. I was surprised as hell to see her on that reality show the two of you cooked up. What the hell was that, anyway?"
Kyle laughs. "It was our only way to make back some of the money you stole, dude. Girls stripping on camera and horny guys online paying to watch. It doesn't take a genius to figure it out. When you need money fast, sex is the thing that's gonna bring it to you. Every single time. You know, she was doing really well. I was bummed you had her pulled. She seemed pretty pissed too."
"Yeah, well, I wasn't going to wait around to see if any of those goons saw her on there. Then right after you dropped her off, she disappeared again. She's been texting me, but she wouldn't meet me anywhere. She said I was being mean to her."
"Well, were you?"
"Was I what?"
"Being mean to her? I mean, she didn't look too thrilled to see you after you ruined her chances of winning a half a mil."
"What the hell difference does that make if I was mean to her? I'm trying to protect her. I'm trying to get her away from these lunatics!"
"But does she know that?"
I sit there staring at my hands for another minute before I answer. Kyle was right. If I'd actually said something to her about all this, then maybe she wouldn't be running off after this Max guy right now. But I had no way of knowing that. I had no way of knowing anything when it came to Zoe. "No," I say. "I haven't told her anything."
"Well, then she probably does think you're just being mean and overprotective. Why haven't you told her what kind of danger she's in? Dude, you're freaking me out with how many secrets you're keeping."
"I didn't tell her because I didn't want her to know how big of a piece of shit her dad was. I mean, she doesn't deserve to know how little he valued her; that he would be willing to use her as a bet in a poker game or sell her over to these assholes to pay back his goddamned debt. She doesn't deserve that."
"Yeah, I see what you're saying. So right now she's out gallivanting around town and has no idea that she could be kidnapped at any second and her life would be over?"
"Nope."
"And you have no idea who this Max guy is?"
"Nope."
"Have you checked her bag? Or her pockets?" Kyle says, grabbing Zoe's purse from where it was lying next to him on the bed.
"Yeah, I already looked through there. I didn't find anything."
"Whoa, wait a minute," Kyle says as he pulls a piece of paper out of Zoe's wallet. "She's seeing Max Devereaux?"
"Max Devereaux? I looked through her wallet; I didn't see the name Max!"
"Well, it just says Dr. Devereaux on this piece of paper," Kyle says, reading off the paper in his hand. "But if this is who I'm thinking of, his name is Max. And if she's with him, she's no better off than if those sleazy mobsters caught up with her."
"What the hell? How do you know him?"
"I had a few sessions with this guy a couple years ago." Kyle looks up at me. "I'm telling you, man, he is no good."
"Let's see if I can find out where he lives." I grab my laptop and start doing some searches.
"I doubt you'll find this guy, Evan. He's pretty secretive. And he's got plenty of reasons to be."
"Does this address look familiar?" I ask.
Kyle looks at what I brought up online. "Yeah, I remember he had a house out in the country somewhere, but how the hell did you do that?"
"I'm the computer guy, remember?" I slam the laptop shut and stand up. "Let's go."
4
Zoe
I didn't have time to grab my purse when I left, and I have no money on me. I walk around for a while because I don't want to show up at Max's at the crack of dawn. After killing a few hours in a coffee shop that allows me to pay with an app on my phone, I Uber out to Max's house. I've actually been out to his country house one other time, so I kind of know where it is. I'm not sure about the exact address, but I know I can give the guy directions once we're on our way.
Usually, whenever I saw Max for my appointments, we met in his office downtown. I started seeing him when they threatened to expel me from school after I set off the fire alarm. Five weeks in a row. That, plus some other issues I'd had with teachers at school, led them to believe I was troubled and needed professional help. I was pissed at first. I couldn't believe they were making me see a psychiatrist, but after the first visit, I was more than fine with going back every week.
The sessions with him would always start out pretty normal, but the conversation would always wind up turning to sex about fifteen minutes in; what I had done with boys, what I fantasized about.
Once he even asked me to tell him what I wanted a man to do to me, word for word, and he wrote it all down. I actually glanced over a few times and watched him, and he didn't seem to care. When I would stop talking, he would look up and stare at me until I continued. It was a little weird, but it also turned me on big time. He always made me feel like an adult, when all any other man ever did was treat me like a kid.
This one time, Max invited me to his house out in the country. He told me it was for a special weekend session, a way we could really get at all my problems. I knew what he really wanted, and I was ready for it. But after we'd been there for about an hour, he got a call about an emergency and the entire weekend was canceled.
He drove me home that day and I haven't been back to his house since. I saw him at his office one more time, but when my parents died, the insurance was canceled, so I couldn't make appointments to see him anymore.
But I figure now's my chance. I'll go out there and see if he wants me to stay this time. And I'll finally get to have an experience with an older man. I've dreamt about Evan for so long. I've always thought he would know exactly how to touch me. I've wanted to know what it would feel like to come with a man for as long as I can remember.
None of the boys I've been with have had a clue what to do. They're all idiots. I know what I need is a real man. And if Evan doesn't want me, I'm pretty sure Max will.
"Zoe," Max says when he opens the front door to his massive country estate. "What are you doing here?"
"I didn't know where else to go," I say to him while I look down and twist my foot into the ground. "I really need someone to talk to, and I was kind of hoping we could do that weekend session like we planned." I move my eyes up to meet his without moving my head. I know that kind of thing makes men crazy. My plan is to drive him to
the brink of insanity with lust for me. I need to feel a man's arms around me. Right now. "But if you're busy …"
"No … no, Zoe," he says. He looks a bit startled, but his eyes say he's interested. "I happen to be free this weekend. This is quite a surprise, but I'd love to have you stay. Please, come in." Max steps back and gestures for me to enter.
"Is everything okay, Zoe?" Max asks as I drift past him into a vast entryway with hints of the antique décor that fills the rest of the house.
I turn and look at him. "Yes, why?"
He looks me up and down with a crooked smile on his face. "Well, you look like you're wearing your pajamas and you're not carrying a bag or a purse. Did you escape from somewhere?"
I can feel my face getting hot as I look down at my t-shirt and yoga pants and laugh nervously. "Oh, yeah, well, I guess I was in a little bit of a hurry. I was with a … friend … or whatever he is." At first I almost say his name. I've mentioned Evan to Max many times, so he knows how I feel about him. But right now I want Max's full attention. I want his mind to be on me alone.
"What friend is that?" he asks.
I guess I'm not getting out of it that easy. I should have known I couldn't get anything past Max.
"Well, actually … I was with Evan. I didn't feel like being around him, though, so I took off."
"In a hurry, it looks like," he says with another crooked smile.
"Yeah, I guess."
Max closes the door and ushers me into a large sitting room. This is as far as I made it into his house the last time I was here, but this time around I'm going to do everything I can to make sure I wind up in his bed.
"And how was that? Seeing Evan again?"
I watch him pour two drinks out of some fancy glass bottles. I love the way Max is around me. I don't have to say a thing and he treats me like I'm any other adult. Evan, on the other hand …