He moans and shudders with each progressive stroke after his orgasm, like he’s emptying the rest of his dick before stopping.
“You okay?” I ask.
Miles nods.
“Then you should get me a towel.”
Always ready to comply, he jumps off and stumbles on unsteady legs. Once he’s recovered, Miles walks to our dresser and pulls out a clean towel. He tosses it over, and I miss catching the thing. After some floundering in the dark, I get it and wipe my body clean of sweat and semen.
Miles crawls back into the bed. “What do you want?”
“Nothing,” I state as I throw the towel to the floor. I’m already cold and back to my flaccid state. I’m sure I’ll wake with a stiffy or have weird dreams, but I’m not in the mood.
“Pierce, you never have to be the bottom if that’s not what you’re into. I’m not going to force it.”
“I know.”
“Then forget I ever asked, all right?”
“How about this,” I say as I roll onto my side and settle into the bed. “I’ll play bitch for your birthday, and if I hate it, we’ll go back to our old arrangement. Besides, I wouldn’t want Jeremy to be the last man to have me, anyway.”
Miles laughs. “You’re gonna let me have sex with you as a birthday gift?”
“What? You don’t want that?”
“No. No, I do.”
“Good. Then what the hell are you complaining for?”
“THIS IS it?” the attorney asks, his nostrils flaring. “This is everything?”
I give the guy a sideways glance. “Yeah. It’s everything. Why? What’s wrong with it? You want it typed out neater?”
“I want it to be complete! Have you not seen a witness statement? Ever?”
This guy’s voice could deafen infants. It’s piercing, and he yells like he needs the whole damn neighborhood to hear our conversation. When I don’t answer, the attorney opens up his shiny black briefcase and hands over a sheet of paper. I take it and grit my teeth.
My witness statement is two short paragraphs explaining what Ms. Timo told me when I asked about her son’s homicide. And that’s about it. This other guy’s witness statement is a novel unto itself, complete with the time the statement was taken and the signature of the individual in question. It also has a fancy PI firm letterhead at the top, making it look extra official.
Miles glances at the statement and then to mine, a neutral look on his face that betrays nothing. I stop myself from crumpling the paper as I hand it back.
“Your statement has zero value,” the attorney continues. “I can’t use this in court! This is completely unprofessional. I need you to go out and talk to the witness again. Do I make myself clear?”
“You’ll get your statement,” I state. “Keep your britches on.”
The man flounces out of the lobby, slamming the glass door on his way out. I’m surprised it doesn’t shatter, but it’s not like the attorney has any muscle to him.
“Have you never taken a witness statement before?” Miles asks with a lifted eyebrow.
“No.”
“Did Shelby leave you any examples?”
“I have a handbook and legal thing with all the local codes, laws, ordinances, and regulations.”
I should probably read those.
Miles nods once. “Maybe you should take a look at that before you try to take another statement.”
“Oh, ya think? Have any other insightful pieces of advice I already thought of?”
Miles chortles. “I wouldn’t mind helping you study up on this subject.”
“I don’t need help studying up on anything,” I say as I walk back to Shelby’s office.
“There’s no need to be ashamed of it.”
I don’t answer. What does he want me to say? I already feel like the dunce cap kid after getting yelled at by some asshole in a suit. I get it. I’m not very good at paperwork. I’ve never done it in my life—not once. And I certainly don’t want to flail around like an inept lump of jelly in front of Miles. I’ll handle my own shit if it kills me.
We enter Shelby’s office, and Miles lets out a long sigh. “Don’t get like this.”
“Like what?”
“Let me help you.”
“I told you—I don’t need your help.”
“Okay…. As a favor to me, then. Let me help you.”
I turn on my heel and find him staring at me with a level of determination he normally reserves for the extreme. His dark eyes are unambiguous. He wants to do this. I like the look, and it takes me a moment to remember what we’re even fighting about.
“Fine,” I mutter.
“Thank you.”
“But no one else can know,” I continue, curt.
Miles offers me a half smile. “Of course not.”
I actively mocked Jayden for being incompetent—it’s a little hypocritical, considering I have no education, and I’m much older, and I don’t even have a grip on my own profession. It’s starting to hit pathetic.
Shelby’s bottom drawer still has some files I haven’t examined, so I shake my head and walk over, intent on gathering them up. Before I stoop down, I spot a clean line through a patch of dust on a stack of files. I stop and glance around. There are hand marks on most of the files. And things have been moved around.
Davis is dead, and Shelby is in the hospital. Miles and I should be the only ones with access to this office.
“Hey,” Miles whispers. “I think someone might have been here.”
“Yeah,” I reply. “I was thinkin’ the same damn thing.”
CHAPTER NINE
“WHY?” MILES asks.
“I don’t know.”
“Did Shelby have something important in here?”
“I don’t know.”
“How well do you know Shelby?”
I give Miles a hard stare that says everything. I don’t know Shelby at all. I worked with him because he didn’t ask a lot of questions about my past. That’s all I wanted. Now look what it’s gotten me into….
Since I have no clue what someone was looking for, I go back to my own work. I pull out the rest of Shelby’s files from the bottom file drawer and motion to the door. “Let’s get out of here.”
“You don’t want to try to figure out what happened?”
“There aren’t any cameras in here, and it’s not like I knew what was here before someone snooped around. If something is missing, it’s all a surprise to me. Do you have a better plan?”
“Maybe you should call Shelby. Tell him what happened.”
That’s a valid starting point. I pull out my phone and call the man.
No answer.
With a long sigh, I type out a text message telling him I thought someone was in his office. I finish it up with: This news to you? I hope there’s a logical explanation, because I’d hate to have to deal with yet another problem. I’m already trying to solve a human trafficking scheme, essentially—I don’t have time for the Mystery of the Dusty Office Caper. I’m not a goddamn dime novel detective.
“All right,” I say. “Let’s go.”
Miles and I leave the building after locking up, and head over to our junker. It creaks as we throw open the doors, but I ignore it as I take my seat in the front passenger position. Miles takes driver so that I can read through the files. As he pulls out of the parking lot, I kick open the glove compartment and pull out a spare cigarette and lighter.
After lighting myself a smoke, I lean back and start reading.
“Have you gone to the doctor’s yet?” Miles asks.
“No.”
“I think you should set up an appointment.”
“I think you should stop bringing this up.”
“You smoked for a really long time.”
“And I drink a lot,” I say, exhaling a line of smoke. “And my back hurts from time to time. We’ve all got problems. I’m nothing special.”
Miles gets silent. I prefer it this way. I don’t want to see
a doctor. I can already hear his diagnosis. Too much smoking. Too many fights. Too much alcohol. You’re set for an early grave.
I already know. Why bother wasting what little time I have with the process?
I engross myself in my reading in order to drown out reality. The macabre stories of kids going missing, teens found dead in basements, and boats filled with corpses are all distractions that remind me life is nothing but an unrelenting holocaust of dreams. So many stories of grisly death and heartache—it looks like Noimore has had a problem for three decades—but only recently has it hit epidemic levels.
But one file catches my eye.
Michael Shelby.
I flip through the pages and narrow my gaze. The file is old, the oldest one I have, and it has notes written all over it. Justin Shelby, age ten, no doubt Shelby’s son, went missing. His body, found two years later, indicated he had been sexually abused before being dumped in the river. Injuries on the autopsy report reveal he’d been harmed for an extended period of time. Experts suspect longer than thirteen months.
I take a long drag on my cigarette.
Fuck me.
No wonder Shelby is obsessed with catching these guys.
“Pierce?” Miles asks, breaking my concentration. “Are you okay?”
“Yeah,” I mutter as I exhale a line of smoke. “Why?”
“You look upset.”
“Shelby’s kid was kidnapped a long time ago.”
Miles glances over at me with a frown before returning his attention to the road. “What happened?”
“He got tossed around between some guys and then thrown off a bridge into the Noimore River. He’s been dead for about twenty years now.”
Right around the same time Shelby said he got divorced. A perfect recipe for some old kook to go off the deep end.
I finish the file and realize that I’ve read everything Shelby gave me. But there’s still no explanation as to why he knows where the kidnappers are or what their tentative schedule is. I flip over the paperwork and take another long drag on my cigarette.
“We’re here,” Miles announces.
The car comes to a stop, and I glance up. We’re at some industrial district in Noimore—how long had I been reading?—but the early afternoon sun gives me reassurances. I doubt any guys will be wandering around at this time of the day. Thugs and shadows go together like peanut butter and jelly.
A trucker warehouse sits before us. The sign out front reads Under Construction. But there’s no date for the estimated finish. There’s a chain-link fence and a few pole-mounted cameras, but the rail yard had all of that and more. If these kidnappers are going to use this site for drop-off or pickup, they’ll need to prep the area first.
“You think they’ll use this spot?” Miles asks, keeping his voice low, for whatever reason.
“Yeah,” I reply. “They used the trains to ship bodies when I first saw them. It doesn’t surprise me that they’d use trucks too. They must be pickin’ up people here in Noimore or the nearby area, maybe even Chicago, and takin’ them elsewhere.”
Miles leans back in his seat and sighs. “Why would anybody do this?”
“People love spendin’ money,” I mutter. “It’s too bad injustice comes so cheap.”
“So, do you think we should stake this place out until they show up?”
“We’ll be waiting forever if we do that.”
“I thought Shelby said they would be here any day? That’s why he had you go instead of waiting until he was out of the hospital.”
I open my mouth to offer a retort, but Miles holds up a hand to quiet me. I glare at him, confused by his gesture. His gaze is glued to something in the distance, and he grabs my shoulder in an attempt to get me to look in that direction. I squint and spot a car on the far side of the construction zone—a plain-looking white four-door car with tinted back windows.
“So?” I say. “They’re likely construction workers.”
Miles settles back down. “Maybe. But no one is here. No one is working.”
I stare at all the cold equipment locked down by the portable office. There aren’t any men in hard hats, nor does there seem to be any open gates around the fence, at least not on our side. But the white car must have gotten in somehow.
Miles and I watch in silence as two guys get out of the car and start walking around. It’s hard to see them properly—especially when they walk behind stacks of wood or pipes—but they both head off in different directions, a purpose to their gait. One guy, large and sloppy about his weight, stops at the nearest camera pole and cuts the wire. The other guy does the same to a different camera.
“I don’t think they’re construction workers,” Miles whispers.
One man turns in our direction. Miles and I both duck down into the car, and I feel my body get numb with adrenaline. I exhale a line of smoke and snuff the cigarette out in the car’s ashtray.
“Do you have a pair of binoculars?” I ask.
Miles nods. He slithers back in his seat and reaches into the back, pulling up his academy school bag and withdrawing a handful of useful objects, including five pairs of zip-tie handcuffs. He hands over the binoculars, and I risk peeking over the dashboard.
The big guy with the gut, I don’t recognize. The other guy—a gaunt motherfucker with a spray tan—I do remember seeing at the rail yard. He was the guy giving the orders, the one in charge of the situation when it got out of hand. He must be the one who handles shit. An enforcer, so to speak. The guy I used to be.
“These are the guys,” I say, handing Miles back his binoculars. “The same ones. They’re here to prep the place.”
“So what’re we going to do about it?”
“We’ll get out of the car, skulk our way over to theirs, and then jump their asses.”
Miles turns to me with a furrowed brow. “Why not call the cops?”
“They’ll run when they hear the sirens. That’s what they did last time. And even if the cops came quiet, it’s not like these guys are gonna be here long. If we catch ’em, the cops can interrogate them.”
“We can’t go in and attack them,” Miles states. “That’s against the law. It would be trespassing, assault, and battery.”
“Can’t citizens arrest criminals? Ya know. Citizen’s arrest?”
“They would’ve had to commit a felony—”
“Which they did,” I interject. “Human trafficking.”
“—and citizens making the arrest can only use reasonable force—”
“So we won’t shoot them.”
“—and the arresting citizen is liable for tortious injuries, like false imprisonment or wrongful death—”
“What’re you trying to say?” I snap.
Miles exhales. “I’m trying to say that we can get in a shit ton of trouble if you’re wrong about this. Plus, we don’t have the kind of protection cops do. Again, we could both lose our careers before they even start if we get in trouble.”
Goddamn. He really has been studying, hasn’t he? He knows all those legal elements like the back of his hand.
“I’m certain that’s the guy,” I state. “And if we don’t act fast, they’re going to get away.”
Miles meets my gaze with a hint of uncertainty.
“I got your back,” I say with a smirk.
That’s all he needed to hear, apparently—his determination overrides everything else. “Let’s do this.”
I open the car door as slowly as possible to avoid the creak. Miles does the same, and we keep ourselves low to the ground as we hustle over to the fence. Before I find a place to climb over, Miles hands me a set of the zip-tie handcuffs. I nod to him.
Once I’m out of sight of the kidnappers, I grab the fence and haul myself over. It’s more difficult than it should be, and I end up gulping down air at an unsteady rate. When I land on the other side, I hold back coughs.
“You should see a doctor,” Miles whispers to me after he effortlessly leaps the chain-link obstacle.
/> I wave away his comment and motion for us to continue.
The construction site is organized in a neat fashion, with all the lumber stacked together and separated out for the machines. It makes it easy to duck behind one stack and jump to the next without getting caught. The two thugs cutting cameras only have a handful to deal with. I see them finish their task by the time I reach the half-constructed building near their car.
“What’re we going to do?” Miles asks as we kneel down behind a fabricated wall.
“You go for one guy, and I’ll go for the other.”
“Which one?”
“I got the thin one,” I say. “You take the dude with the gut.”
I assume the enforcer will be more difficult to deal with than the other one. I know I can handle myself, but I always worry with Miles. He’s in good shape, but it’s not like he’s been in as many fights as I have.
To my surprise, both men head to different buildings rather than back to their car. The buildings are half-constructed office complexes—big, two stories, high ceilings—and it makes it easier for me and Miles to run up without them seeing. Miles heads to his building, and I head to mine. The moment I get close, the raspy voice of the enforcer draws my attention.
“Everything is set,” he says.
I poke my head around the corner and stare inward. The floors aren’t done. They’re nothing but a cement foundation with steel beams stuck in as support. The enforcer wanders around, a cell phone pressed to his ear, and he stares at his feet while he walks.
“No,” he says, curt. “Things are going to plan.”
While he’s distracted, I hustle into the building and duck behind a set of stairs that lead to the mezzanine floor. Now that I’m closer, I can hear the voice from the other side of the man’s phone. His volume is set to the max, and I wonder if he has hearing problems. Guys who shoot a lot of guns sometimes get that.
“We’ve got another shipment’s worth,” he continues. “It’s good stuff. Real good stuff.”
“How many more shipments are we going to make, Castor?”
The enforcer, Castor, shrugs. “At the rate we’re going, we’ll have a few more within the month. Like I said, things are running smoothly. We got our drop-offs. We got our shipping. All we need now is—”
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