by Elle Keaton
Adam tipped his chin down to see him better. Micah knew he looked like shit, no getting around it. It was two thirty a.m., and he’d spent the majority of the last ten hours running his fingers through his hair and feeling sick to his stomach.
“Why are you awake? I saw your call but couldn’t answer. Hard to believe, but that moron Jack Summers may have actually cracked this thing wide open.”
“Yeah. About that.”
Adam leaned back to really see him, eyebrows raised.
“Matveev.”
“Yeah?”
“My dad was building a case against him when he died. From what I gather, it was hush-hush because he believed Matveev had a contact on the police force. Let me show you.”
To describe Adam as a force of nature was a massive understatement. He read the files standing up, with his cell phone pressed to his ear. He’d called both Weir and Mohammad. He then ordered Micah to pack up necessities and be ready in five minutes. Micah spent at least three of those minutes frantically trying to find the cat who, like any respectable cat, managed to disappear when Micah needed him. The fear he had felt all evening had abated somewhat with Adam’s arrival, but now he was on full alert, his body humming with adrenaline. Maybe if he put treats in the cat bowl he could lure him. When he picked up the carrier from where it was lying in the mudroom his parents had built onto the house, he found Jessica’s backpack again.
He stared at it for a lifetime before tossing the carrier aside. Frankie could fend for himself. After dumping some dry food into the cat dish, he grabbed the backpack, stuffing it into the bag he had in his hand. Jessica must have known she was going to die, that day he had seen her in the Booking Room. Had she seen him by chance, and come to say a strange goodbye? She’d only been eleven or twelve when his family had been killed, but she had come to the funeral. He remembered seeing her at the service, small and alone. He’d been struggling against drowning in his own grief, never recognizing that she had lost so much as well.
“Grab what you’ve got; Weir is going to come up the alley. I can’t believe how stupid I’ve been to let you come back here. Don’t stop, don’t look back, just get into the car. I’ll be right behind you. No reason to be subtle; if someone is watching the house now it’s because they know the shit is about to hit the fan from five different directions.”
Micah could hear, but not see, a car of some kind coming up the alley behind his parents’ home. It rumbled to a stop right at the back gate, and Micah saw a figure at the wheel hold up his cell phone and flash it. Adam nudged him, and he was off running across the backyard as fast as he could, his bag bouncing across one shoulder. It was kind of anticlimactic when Adam hopped into the car after him, no gunshots or assailants rushing out of the shrubbery to accost them. Micah laid his head back on the seat, listening to Adam brief his partner about what Micah had discovered.
“The backpack!” Micah said out loud.
“Your bag’s right here.” Adam pointed at it.
“No—yes, I mean, when I was trying to get the damn cat, I found the backpack again.”
“And?”
“I just thought I should bring it.”
Adam unzipped Micah’s bag and rummaged for the battered pack. Pulling it out, he dumped the main compartment and began searching the inner pockets. Micah sifted through the stuff that was now on his lap. A couple of tampons, a battered bestselling novel, a few candy wrappers, and a spare set of clothing—T-shirt and panties. Nothing else. He flipped open the book out of habit. A tiny piece of paper was tucked into the middle, and Micah tugged it out. It was a receipt for a coffee, but there was something written on the back: a phone number and a local address.
Adam took the receipt and read it quickly before tucking it into his pocket. He put his arm around Micah and pulled him close. Micah saw Weir watching them in the rearview mirror, a funny expression on his face.
Forty-Three
FORTY-THREE
They ended up camped out in a lonely cut-rate motel south of Skagit, not close enough to the freeway to be convenient for road-trippers and not nice enough for a romantic weekend getaway. Micah had no idea how they stayed in business. Adam was talking about police protection or even witness protection, but Micah was ignoring him. No way was he hiding. No way. Plus, he didn’t trust the police at the moment.
“You need to have protection,” Adam repeated.
Weir was sitting at the cheap desk, snickering and pretending to do something on his laptop. They’d been over this at least five times just in the last hour. When they had arrived at the motel, Adam had called Mohammad and filled him in on what they had found in Jessica’s bag and in his dad’s files, as well as what Jack Summers had discovered. Neither Adam nor Weir could bring himself to admit that Jack had found something important, but he had. They were sure it was pure luck.
Jack had not been wrong when he suspected Jennifer Verdugo of harboring criminals. Apparently the same kids he thought were behind some recent mini-mart robberies were the ones who had vandalized, and later set fire to, Micah’s house, as well as doing the break-in at the Booking Room. They’d been told to look for a blue backpack.
Jack had only wanted to question the baby hoodlums about the robberies; instead, the kids had confessed to much worse and implicated a local officer. Not entirely stupid, Jack stashed them in a holding cell and called Adam.
It hadn’t taken the teens long to admit they had been paid to do the damage by none other than the recently deceased Ms. Verdugo. She had threatened to turn them in for theft and whatever else she could come up with if they didn’t, and since they had, in fact, been out robbing convenience stores, they did what she wanted them to. When she had turned up dead, they freaked out and turned themselves in anyway, demanding to talk to anyone but Officer Parks.
Micah breathed a little easier when he found out the teens had been tucked away somewhere safe. He was more worried about their well-being than any kind of charges for damages to his home. He didn’t recognize their names; neither one was Kevin.
Micah rolled over, the cheap sheets scratchy under the weight of his body. Adam was solid and warm next to him, apparently still asleep while Micah overthought everything he had ever known. Weir was in the other bed, also traitorously asleep. Micah grumbled and burrowed closer to Adam’s heat, trying to get some rest.
It had to be late/early, because there was actual light seeping around the edges of the motel’s blackout curtains. Adam rolled onto his side, plastering himself against Micah, one hand sliding down and under Micah’s sleep pants. Micah groaned.
“Knock it off over there. It’s bad enough I’ve been assigned as Klay’s partner, again; no way am I going to listen to you guys have sex,” Weir growled into the semi-darkness.
Adam laughed and squeezed Micah’s hard length, whispering in his ear, “Later, then.”
Over breakfast, Adam explained that between Micah’s information, which he had gotten to Mohammad by carrier pigeon or something, and the teen witnesses/arrestees, Officer Nathan Parks had been taken into custody. At first he’d claimed ignorance, saying the kids were trying to set him up. When he’d been confronted with the kids’ testimony and evidence, he collapsed like a house of cards. When they brought up the name Matveev, he demanded witness protection before he said any more.
Mitya Matveev was nowhere to be found. The auto-repair shop he owned was locked tight, leaving nothing but a couple of confused grease monkeys standing around scratching their heads, wondering what the boss was up to. He owned several houses across town and did not appear to be at any of them.
Adam was waiting on a search warrant for a property near Oyster Bay. Matveev’s name wasn’t on the county records, which was why the judge was taking so long to decide, but they had discovered that his business taxes went to that address, and Matveev’s silver BMW was registered to the same address. It was also the address scribbled on the receipt from Jessica’s backpack. Adam seemed confident that the judge would come through.
Until they had Matveev, Micah was to stay out of sight. The guy was running scared, and scared animals did anything they could to escape. Unfortunately, this animal was armed with guns and knives and not afraid to use them. Matveev had long been a source of criminal activity in the county. There wasn’t a lot he didn’t have his fingers in one way or the other, but they hadn’t been able to catch him at it. His minions were too loyal, or too terrified, to turn evidence against him. The few that had tried had ended up dead or disappeared.
“I don’t know anything; why am I in danger? You’re just as much in danger,” Micah argued.
Weir cut across the heated exchange they had been having over stale bagels and watery orange juice. “Pretty sure the guy thinks you brought the feds here.”
“What?” How was that even possible?
Weir had a kind of slow way of talking, almost a drawl, although Micah had not yet heard a “y’all” or “howdy.”
“Here’s how I see it. From what Adam has told me, you and Adam meet at the Booking Room, and then the girl shows up. They must have been following her—”
“Her name was Jessica. And she showed up before I met Adam.”
“Well, he was hanging out there, and I bet she was followed. Even if they didn’t know about that memory card, they probably figured she was going to try to report them. Parks figures out Adam is a fed, and they all panic. They think Klay here”—he gestured at Adam with his bagel—“is undercover, his father’s death was a ruse or something, and they’ve been figured out.” Now he looked at Micah. “I bet they’ve had their eye on you since your dad and rest of your family were in that, um, accident. After all, your dad was working up a pretty big case against him. Then Adam shows up and the girl talks to you out of the blue. Matveev thinks you know something. Hence he tried to scare you—well, kill, but he had Parks take care of it with . . . bumbling kids.” As he got to the end, his eyes widened, and soon he was laughing so hard he could barely talk. Micah thought he was going to need the Heimlich when Weir breathed in a chunk of bagel.
“Care to share, Weir?” Adam asked dryly.
“I never … heh, never thought I’d get to use the phrase ‘bumbling kids.’” He wiped his eyes, still chuckling. “You’ve got to find humor where you can in this job, Micah. Right, so, where was I? Bumbling kids. Heh. They messed it up. From what they’ve said so far, they didn’t try very hard. They thought they’d break in and toss the place a bit, and you’d run for the hills. When that didn’t work, they tried arson. But neither one of them is a killer. So they just lit up the porch and ran. Matveev must be incendiary with fury.” Weir almost snorted his coffee up his nose. “Jesus Christ, I am on a roll today! The Russians are nobody to mess with, but he went cheap instead of doing it himself, and now he’s on the run. Anyway, that’s what I think. Not sure where the victims fit in. The girls, women. I have an idea, but I want to think about it.”
The room was silent for a few moments. Micah thought about Jessica and the backpack and how out of pure desperation she had set off a chain of events that the entire Skagit Valley was feeling. He also hadn’t forgotten two words, human trafficking, from his dad’s paperwork. He looked over at Adam, who appeared to be deep in thought, his bland coffee forgotten.
Adam’s boss informed him that Lieutenant Nguyen was clean—she didn’t appear to be involved in any shady stuff, had only been in Skagit a few years. Soon-to-be-former Officer Parks confessed to many things. Coercion, endangering minors, and so on. At one point he had been a community-relations officer, which had given him a great deal of exposure to vulnerable populations. Adam said it wasn’t clear if anyone else on the force was involved, and Parks wasn’t pointing fingers at any of his fellow blues. It sounded like much of the federal team had descended on Skagit overnight. Adam swore Micah would be safe and surrounded by capable agents while he was serving the warrant for the address scribbled on the back of the receipt they had found in Jessica’s backpack.
“You’ll be fine. Ashley should just be minutes away.”
Forty-Four
FORTY- FOUR
Best-laid plans. As soon as the words left Adam’s lips, his phone buzzed. His face was grim, and when he clicked off, the first thing he did was apologize to Micah.
“Another agent is on her way from Seattle. For some reason she drove instead of flying and is now stuck in construction traffic on I-5. She’ll be here as soon as she can. Call if you need anything?”
A nod from Micah, and Adam and the rest of the agents left the room. He heard the knob rattle and knew Adam had checked to make certain the door was shut and locked. The action sent a little zing through Micah. Adam demonstrated in tiny little ways how much he cared. And big ones too.
Regardless of reassurances, Micah was bored, a little frightened, and a lot angry. Not necessarily in that order. Pulling out his laptop, he got to work. He was very good with computers; maybe not black-hat good, but he knew what he was doing. His dad had always said, “Stick with what you do best.”
Several hours later he was searching for local car-rental shops. He needed to see for himself if what he had found was even a remote possibility. Because it probably wasn’t, he had no compunction against going to check it out. Ever since he had heard “human trafficking,” his brain had been working overtime. It was a welcome distraction from worrying about Adam. From worrying if he should worry because Adam was probably going to leave Skagit anyway. And from stressing out because he was worrying about worrying. So messed up. The other agent had still not arrived, and Micah was itching to move. How ironic for someone who had happily spent the last few years in his house, only leaving for necessities.
“Damn.” He’d left his wallet at home. No matter how small the town, you still could not rent a car without a credit card.
Ed would do it for him, but he wasn’t answering his phone. This felt urgent to Micah; he needed to check this nascent theory out right away. If he was by chance on to something, Matveev would likely be gone like the wind before law enforcement knew where to turn. He rooted around in the desk drawer, and underneath the Gideon Bible resided an actual paper phone book. Micah grabbed all three-quarters hefty inches of it and began flipping through the pages. Ten minutes later Buck Swanfeldt pulled to a stop in the motel’s parking lot.
“I told you to drive something low-key!” Micah complained. “No one is going to forget a car like this!”
“The only other drivable, meaning street legal, thing I have at the shop is a cherry-red ’71 Camaro. You want me to turn around and get that one?” Buck drawled. Why Buck drawled was beyond Micah; the man and his family had lived longer in the Skagit Valley than almost anyone else Micah knew of. He sighed. Buck was a couple years younger than he was, so they’d never been friends, but they knew each other through random community events. Buck was a solid guy, and much of the town had been grateful when instead of closing his daddy’s auto shop he had made it his own.
The dark-brown paint job wouldn’t raise eyebrows, but the eight-cylinder ’70s-era Mercury Marquis would not slide through town unnoticed. Micah peeked over at the gas gauge; it was full. At least they wouldn’t run out on the way there, and the way back was all downhill. The thing could only be getting about 9 mpg. An environmental disgrace.
“The Duke here is a mean machine. Don’t go counting him out.” Buck caressed the steering wheel possessively. “Where we headed?”
Micah had to agree with Buck on one thing: Compared to his recent drives up the Mt. Baker Highway in Adam’s SUV, the Duke took the inclines and curves like a dream. Holy cow, the thing had full leather seats, power windows, and a push-button AM/FM radio. Even a nerd like Micah could appreciate the glory of the 1970s. Love was free (and could be had comfortably in the back seat), and the oil embargo meant nothing to Detroit just yet. The Mercury caressed the road like a lover, the hum of its powerful engine a siren song.
“This it?” Buck interrupted Micah’s inappropriate thoughts about the Duke.
He saw the sign for Glacier Creek coming up quickly.
“Yeah, turn in here and pull over—well, at least leave some room for other cars, okay? I want to check something out.”
He’d seen on the county records that a bunch of these little A-frames lined up next to the National Forest boundary were all owned by the same LLC. An LLC with a Russian name. He’d noticed because—well, chance, really. They were uncomfortably close to his parents’ old cabin. No way was he keeping that. He’d sell it and donate the profits, if there were any. For that matter, he was considering selling the Elizabeth house as well. It was time he put those memories in the past where they belonged. Nothing was going to bring his family back, and living in a mausoleum wasn’t healthy. He didn’t even have to stay in Skagit, although he did love it: a small town, but the interstate went both north and south, and there were major cities within two hours both ways.
When he’d called Buck, he thought they would just drive up and see if the little cabins looked inhabited. That was his entire plan. Many of these places had been foreclosed or abandoned during the last recession, and the area was only just bouncing back. The 99 percent could not generally afford the luxury of a winter retreat.
Now that he was walking down the gravel road toward the group of cabins, he felt stupidly exposed. He hadn’t wanted Buck to drive by, because that damn car was huge and stood out like a sore thumb, but walking alone now seemed monumentally stupid.
What if Matveev was here? What was he going to do? Knock him over with his amazing wit? Was he going to tap on cabin doors and pretend to be selling magazine subscriptions or overpriced candy bars? Some people had said he was effeminate, but no one had ever mistaken him for a Girl Scout.
He stopped walking. His toes were cold. He could hear the low grumble of the Duke behind him, reassuring him of his … escape? It was a bit like being stuck between two worlds, or maybe in a choose-your-own-adventure book. The next move would either take him back to page 8 or to the end.