At first, this early work only involved Niall and Joe, with Simon on support. They didn’t waste time on diplomatic platitudes, just rounded up the politician, sent him discreetly home, and started closing down the club. They’d already alerted the police to mop up the remains of the staff and to take the pimp into custody. But then I got a call from Simon, asking me to come and join them there. They’d discovered at least a dozen kids who lodged there full-time, without any other visible means of support. He was worried that they’d need emotional help to trust the Team and accept what we were trying to do for them. I think he was just a little overwhelmed with it all, to tell you the truth.
That was my skill, you see. People. Connecting with them, understanding them, making things work for them. That’s what the Team needed from me.
And yet, I seriously misread the situation. I had some poor, misguided idea that the kids would be grateful for their release. That they’d be innocent and pliable and ready to follow our lead, that they’d be glad to leave behind the life of an abused innocent in their current home. It was just a matter of reassuring them and offering emotional lollipops, or something like that. I’d had plenty of experience with adults; I had a talent for judging many a sticky situation.
But I was frighteningly unprepared for what was there. I’d not worked with kids before, and never in the sex industry. There were all sorts of shocks in store for me. I hadn’t really anticipated there’d be boys as well as girls; I was startled by the youth of some of them. Naïve, eh? Everyone had been rounded up into the main lounge of the club, where the cops took the principals away, the emergency services did their work on any physical injuries, and Niall and Joe went off doing whatever technical things they did.
And me?
I stood like an island in the middle of a sea of scum. Beside one of the low, overstuffed couches, there was a coffee table, scattered with the tools of their trade: sex toys, bondage gear, needles, and packets of designer drugs collected in a heap. The police had been gathering up the evidence. In amongst this mess I saw a brightly colored blanket with the design of a TV cartoon character; a single slipper lying under the table. There were a couple of boxes on the floor, full of stuffed toys and a jumble of tattered old children’s puzzles and books.
My heart went out to the kids, without realizing that they wouldn’t know what to do with it. I had no idea how harsh some of them were, how broken some of their minds were, how hostile they were toward intruders. I swallowed the bile in my throat and tried to acclimatize to the distorted little faces around me, but it was an alien experience.
“Fuck off, mister,” an undersized, rather smelly teenager hissed in my ear. I caught his arm as he swung out at me, and when I released him, he stumbled back in frustration.
“Do you want to feel better? We can go to your room.” A slim boy tugged at my sleeve and smiled at me, the brightness of his voice never reaching his eyes.
A vibrantly red-haired girl ran up to me and spat in my face, shouting that she hoped I got hideous, fatal diseases from it. And then wheeled away, laughing.
“Are we going home?”
“Where’s the boss?”
There were babbling voices and crying all the time, confusing me, cluttering my hearing.
A small, silent girl slipped her hand into mine.
“The money.” A thin, pale young woman in an ill-fitting, short-skirted dress stood pressed against the wall. “He owes me my money. I have to send it home, you know.”
Others just stared at me as I moved slowly around the room. I couldn’t read their expressions. There was blankness there, and little sense of reality. I wondered who would be able to peel those children’s souls back out into a worthwhile life, because it sure as hell wouldn’t be me.
Well, I did my best. I reassured them and explained we were there to help. I sat with them as they were handed over one by one to social workers and aid helpers, I explained things they said they couldn’t understand. A few of them clutched my hand, or hugged me. I felt I was on top of it, though the room was still full of unpleasant body odors and sobbing kids, and I guess I was still a bit shocked. Whatever the reason, I lost my connection with the ones still left for a few critical moments.
And that was long enough for one of them—one of the older boys—to decide we were another version of the common enemy. He started crying, pushing away the helping hands, swearing and yelling. He refused to follow the social workers out of the building, accusing us of threatening him, bullying him. The cops were sick fuckers, he cried, we were taking him to jail, we were kidnapping them all, we were working for another house, another boss, a worse one. All sorts of stuff. Niall was over the far side of the room, signing some legal release forms. I was conscious of him turning around, looking over at us. The boy was thin, blond, and scrawny, and although he was obviously an older teenager, he didn’t look like he could lift his own body weight, let alone take me on. But he was very distracting, very loud, and very aggressive.
“Get the fuck out!” He was close to me by now, the other kids had parted the way to let him through. “You don’t understand. Leave us here, it’s nothing to do with you. It’s okay here, we’re settled here.”
“What’s your name?” I kept my voice calm, my movements non-threatening. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Niall break away from the aid workers and start over toward me, presumably coming to give support. “Everything’s fine. I’m here to help you.”
“I don’t need your fucking help! All my friends are here. Family too. They care for me. They’ll be along soon, I have to stay here.”
“It’s going to be okay.”
“You think we’re trash, don’t you? You want to use us yourself. Or you want us out of the way, all of us in institutions, locked up.”
“No, I don’t. Of course I don’t.” Niall was over on my left, only a foot away. I hoped he knew to keep his distance, so he didn’t spook the kid any further. I needed just a little more time to talk him down. “I’m Tanner. Tell me your name. Let’s talk about all of this. You say you have family and friends. Tell me about them. Who will be along soon for you?”
“We don’t need you.” His eyes narrowed. For a second he was totally still. Then, “Fuck you,” he spat out at me. “All of you!”
Instinctively, I leaned away. Some of the remaining kids had gathered around me, staring between us both with stark, scared faces. I knew I had to protect them, somehow. Protect my colleagues, as well.
That’s what the Team needed from me.
But I never had the chance to calm things down and explain things better to the hysterical boy. Next minute, he pushed past me with an astonishing strength, a knife suddenly appeared in his hand, and he sliced it upward with all his strength into Niall’s side.
Time stopped, just like they say in the movies.
Niall turned to me as he fell. There was a look of pained shock on his face, as if he’d expected me to know it was about to happen. As if I should have anticipated the kids were under the influence of something more pernicious than distress—that they might be armed, as well. As if I should have been watching out for him.
Which I guess I should have been.
Then he sank to his knees, hand clutched to his side. He coughed, and blood seeped out between his fingers. His face went deathly pale.
I thought I’d lost him.
Tuesday 09:00
NIALL STOOD there in the living room of my trailer, clutching the cell phone like an anchor to reality. I knew he was remembering the same things I was. I knew it.
“Tanner.” I hadn’t heard that brittle emotion in his voice for a long time. “Leave it. That was months ago. This is now. And it’s Joe we’re talking about.”
Months ago. Right.
After the stabbing, the kid had been hauled away. Kes, he was called. We were told that he was an orphan, though they were having trouble tracking down his history, but we never found out if he had any other family around, or what the fuck had been going
on in his mind. Judging from the drugs in that place, I thought maybe he’d been hallucinating at the time. He was too young for prison, but the authorities considered him too mentally disturbed to face reality alone. He ended up in a secure facility somewhere, just like Niall reminded me earlier, still working the damage through and out of his young, scrambled brain. Far as I knew, he’d had no visits from those friends and family he clung to. Or anyone.
No one said the stabbing had been my fault.
But it was, of course. It was all due to my carelessness. I was complacent, slapdash. I’d done no research on the job before I blundered in, just assumed it was a social issue, that the danger was nothing more than kids’ tears and bruises. I had an affinity with many people, sure, but I’d never come across the naked aggression of a young, addled mind turned to fear and anger. Never thought to check for weapons or for unbalanced psychosis. And that, of course, was no kind of excuse at all.
They rushed Niall into surgery with me following, shocked and furious, but they stopped me at the door of the operating theatre. I wasn’t thinking too straight then. I had to be taken forcibly from the hospital, yelling that I had to be with him, whatever the fuck Judith said! Didn’t help my case much. Judith did me the courtesy of holding back on actual handcuffs, but two sturdy guys she must have borrowed from the Department Thug Pool stepped either side of me and brought me back to base with a grip that well illustrated the phrase “extreme prejudice.” So I never saw Niall when he came out of the long hours in theatre; I never saw him with the tubes and the mask and the bags of blood and plasma slowly dripping into his body.
I was facing an immediate internal inquiry.
The initial interrogation went on for several days, and my ass got well and truly kicked while they unraveled exactly what had happened. What protocols I’d breached. What standards I’d compromised. What—and who—had gone wrong. During that time, I was only allowed calls to the hospital, to see how things were going. Simon kept me posted on how well the operation went, how Niall would be okay soon. All that encouraging stuff that Simon was so good at—and that passed me by completely.
They let me in to see Niall eventually. He was in a private room by then, still weak from the blood loss and shock, still under the hospital care. And when I got there, ready to sit with him, to care for him, to do all those goddamned things that lovers do for each other—someone was already there.
“Hello, Tanner.”
“Joe.” I nodded to him. I glanced at the bed, met Niall’s pale, wide gaze. My heart ached from a strange mix of fear, relief and… well, it just ached, you know?
“Tanner.” Niall grinned, but it was a poor imitation of past ones. “I’m glad you’re here at last.”
“He’s doing good.” Joe gave one of his own quick, efficient smiles. “I’ve checked in here each night and the steady progress is unmistakable.”
Every night?
I sat on the spare chair by the window and stared at Joe’s obviously familiar seat on the other chair. The one at the bedside. He continued talking to Niall in a low, restful voice. Things about the progress of Mission Dove, about the guys in the Team, about the successful prosecution of the club owner. Of his martial arts training; of the latest weapons intelligence.
I sat silently, just watching.
Well, there we have it. I mentioned Joe Lam before, didn’t I? As far as work went, he’d always been the one to spend the most time with Niall, which was kind of obvious. They both dealt with the militaristic side of things. Not really my forte. They’d both been in the armed services at some stage; they actually knew a couple of mutual acquaintances, even before they’d joined the Team. It was obvious they’d be thrown together.
“I’ll call in again later,” I said. Joe nodded easily. Niall’s eyes narrowed, but he didn’t say anything. He looked kind of tired, really.
Hell, we all admired Joe; he was a great guy to have on your team, and had always impressed me. He was kind of fierce, though, and he liked to play on that, I’m sure. He wasn’t a guy you warmed to until you knew him better.
I guess, over the months we’d been in the Team, Niall had managed to get to know him a hell of a sight better than me.
THE INQUIRY reported its conclusion a few weeks later. I was cleared of direct blame for Niall’s injury. Yeah, I’d been under-prepared, and I should have allowed Simon to brief me more thoroughly, and I should have remembered that every situation has to be treated with the utmost caution, but I wasn’t held responsible for the unprovoked attack. I stared at my copy of the report as Judith ran through it with me, most of the words blurring to incomprehensibility in the face of my anger and misery. I was scheduled for some juvenile training and some outreach work with local youth groups, and then Judith assured me the matter was concluded.
“I know where I went wrong.”
She’d frowned at me. “You’re the one beating yourself up worst of all, Tanner.”
“You mean I wasn’t responsible for Niall getting a blade in his gut?”
She winced but recovered well. “No, not officially.”
Sure didn’t feel that way.
And that was also when things started to collapse personally for us. Seemed like every time I found time to be with Niall, so did Joe. He arranged for Niall to be taken home, he arranged the proper post-operative care. I discovered that everyone thought this was an excellent idea. Judith praised him, Simon admired his reliability, Brad was impressed with his knowledge of medical matters.
Seemed churlish to complain.
They must all have looked at me and thought, “What the fuck?” I’m sure they did. I know how they’d all seen me up until then: an easy-going guy with plenty of improvisation skills, but nothing more robust than that. And now, wait a second—hadn’t it been my fuck-up that put Niall in the hospital in the first place? Okay, so no one ever said it. But no one denied it, either. And when Niall turned those deep, dark, weary eyes on to Lam and “thanked” him for his help….
It all stuck in my throat like I’d swallowed a fucking grenade.
I knew things were on the downward slope without knowing what the hell to do about it. I felt like I’d lost Niall’s attention and his care. His respect. He never said anything that specific, of course. He never argued with me about it. And hey, I never caught him and Joe doing anything other than hugging, and let’s face it, we were all fond of that, as support and comfort and a gesture of solidarity. But it seemed to me that he withdrew his respect from me and bestowed it elsewhere. That can be a betrayal, even without fucking.
Can’t it?
I WAS still living full-time with Niall. When the heavy nursing stuff faded into general daily care, it was entrusted to me. Obviously they thought I could cope with the occasional change of dressing and some physiotherapy exercises. Hurrah for me. But whatever the reason, it was a relief to push aside the spotlight that had been glaring on us. Niall told me how pleased he was that the inquiry had concluded in my favor; he told me he wanted to put it all behind him. He rarely spoke of it again.
In fact, he was as damned quiet as always. And maybe more so.
Mission Dove was at full strength, but obviously he couldn’t be as involved as he wanted. I was still deployed, and I didn’t find any evidence that they held back on my tasks because I’d fucked up once. In fact, it was often a relief to immerse myself in the day job, because life at home was… well, tense doesn’t begin to describe it.
We still ate and drank and slept together. In fact, we still fucked, though pretty gingerly at first. We were as drawn to each other as always, but wary. He’d lost a lot of blood in the incident, and there was now an impressive scar along his torso, colored an angry red and shining with fresh new skin as it started to heal. One night, lying naked and lightly sweating in bed, I followed the impulse to kiss along it. He winced, and it felt like he flinched away from me. In my heart, I knew it wasn’t from any kind of pain.
Despite the illusion of returning to normal, life f
elt bad. It was as if we couldn’t be closer, physically—but we couldn’t be further apart. He was withdrawn and moved around the apartment as if he were the only one there. I had no idea what to do about it except get angry. I’d thought I’d be okay once the inquiry found me innocent, thinking I had my lover and my friends behind me. But it seemed I was a little more shaken than I thought; I felt more vulnerable than I’d ever been before.
The guys were sympathetic, I’ll give them that. But I needed Niall. Badly. I needed him to forgive me, to understand, to help me—us!—move on. To reaffirm the fact that I was living with him and he was damned happy about it all. Okay, so it wasn’t a conversation I expected to have without some serious prompting. And I had no taste for that.
I lay beside him at night as he slept and felt like we were in separate rooms. His naked body was only inches away from me, and if I touched it, he’d roll over to me with an exhalation of hot breath on my skin that sent goose bumps down to my toes. But even the sex was shadowed with a hint of desperation, as if neither of us were sure what it was all about any more. As if this was only a lull before the storm. As if it was only a matter of time….
Before it turned sour.
That physical break, while he was in the hospital and I was facing a panel of suited and booted Departmental executives—it sundered far more than our domestic routine. Niall bore the scar, and I bore the guilt. It was like he knew it, like he found it a struggle to be with me. He swung between being frustrated by me and being angry with me. We couldn’t get over it. Judith refused to put us on a mission together, even if and when Niall were fully recuperated.
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