14. Utah

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

utah

W e’d been back in Indiana for almost a week.

And I hated every second of it.

Some part of me already decided to believe that I’d gained ground on the Memphis front, but we went right back to simply co-existing once we were back in the house with Indy. I was starting to wonder if maybe I’d imagined all of those little moments that felt like they were adding up to something. She hadn’t sought me out even once since we’d made it back. She was back to spending all her time with Indy or staring at her computer.

The trafficking side of the Evans organization consumed every piece of her. I listened in on some of their conversations, but I didn’t possess even half the knowledge that those two had when it came to hacking, or code writing, or Internet creeping in general. I paid way closer attention when they talked about the other teams that they’d planned to send me out after soon.

I couldn’t imagine any of it going over well. Executioners were paranoid in nature because of their nature. They were used to being difficult to find because regular people weren’t supposed to be able to find them. They operated under the pretense that they wouldn’t have to encounter other Executioners. So, realizing that another Executioner had gone out of his way to locate them, meet them, and then try to sway them to turn against the organization that paid them beautifully was a shitty situation just waiting to implode. We hadn’t even started on that part of this undertaking, and I was nearly certain that it was going to fail. I was decent enough at interacting with people and it took quite a bit to get me worked up, but these encounters were going to be a battle from the very moment that the other Executioners realized that I was also an Executioner.

“Is there a backup plan in the event that none of these other teams will want anything to do with this?” I asked the tech twins, who were busy going over the list of who I might try to recruit first. Both of them stopped to glare at me.

“These are all people who’ve had their regular lives taken from them against their will,” Memphis said shortly. “They’re going to join us. It probably won’t happen right away. The Executioners won’t listen, won’t want any part of it. But they will eventually bring it up to their Judges and the Judges won’t be able to resist looking into it. They’ll start digging into their own pasts just like I did. They’ll find things that really can’t be ignored, then they’ll come back to us.”

“What about the ones who don’t, angel?” I asked. “The ones who lean harder into the organization. The ones who go tattle about what we’re trying to do.”

“I don’t think it’ll go that way. This is an entire organization of people who operate on paranoia. All you have to do is plant that tiny seed of doubt. It’ll work.”

The alarm on her phone went off to effectively end that conversation. Keeping New Jersey at bay was always the top priority in her world, and it was time for her to text him to say that she was still alive.

“Ask him for a tit pic from Triss,” Indy said.

“Gross. And no.”

“I just want to rile him up,” Indy said. “It’s been a minute.”

I dropped my elbows down to the countertop to plant my face in my hands.

I was supposed to be starting this shit tomorrow, and none of it felt like it was going to go very smoothly. All while one Judge didn’t understand the first thing about boundaries, and the other had so many walls erected that there was barely a human visible from this side of them.

“You guys are going to get me killed,” I mumbled.

“You can’t be killed,” Indy laughed. “Believe me on this. If you could’ve been, it would’ve happened by now with some of the shit we’ve had to do.”

“And we’ll both be here to tell you what to do every step of the way,” Memphis added without bothering to look up from her phone.

“That’s actually exactly what I’m worried about.”

“We can always send Memphis with you again,” Indy giggled. “Triss is still mad that she doesn’t have the story about those few days. Come to think of it, so am I.”

“These trips won’t be safe,” I said and rubbed my hands over my face.

“You’re ignoring the other part of that,” Indy insisted.

“Yep.”

“There’s nothing to tell,” Memphis said when she laid her phone back down on the counter. The way that she couldn’t even force herself to look in my direction with those words brought my smirk right to the surface while Indy looked back and forth between us.

“Okay, so, that’s a lie,” he laughed. “Are you guys sneaking into each other’s rooms every night here too?” He paused to look at me. “Maybe you’re not doing something right if she’s able to be so quiet that I haven’t heard anything yet.”

I watched Memphis turn pink while my smirk turned into a shit-eating grin. She shook her head and pulled the neck of her hoodie right up over her nose to hide part of her face.

“Can we just get back to this, please?” she asked through the fabric and shifted so that she was looking squarely at her computer screen again. “What if we start with Virginia and Austin?”

“Virginia?” I asked and laughed. “Wasn’t that the guy in the Mercedes?”

“What?” Memphis asked.

Indy laughed like a lunatic. “Yeah, I didn’t bother bringing that up.”

“I already kicked his ass once. He was the one after Trista’s bounty up by Michigan. We can’t start with him.”

Memphis ran her hands over her face that time. “Alright then. Montana and Richmond?”

“They’re still new,” Indy said. “It’d probably be a little easier to start with someone who isn’t set deep into this organization yet. Maybe a little less loyalty involved.”

“What brought Montana in?” I asked.

“He’s only twenty-three,” Memphis said. “Parents killed in a car accident. Hit and run. Kind of a rough kid before that anyway. In and out of juvenile detention centers through childhood. Got into fights all the time. The last straw seemed to be when he attacked the principal of his high school. Principal said he had drugs in his locker. Montana said the principal was the dealer and planted them there to remove the competition.”

“Hit and run deaths for the parents,” I said. “Nobody knows anything about the runaway driver?”

“I’ve got a pretty decent guess,” Memphis said. “It wasn’t just a car accident on the road. That would never guarantee the deaths of both parents. Someone ran them down while they were on a sidewalk, leaving dinner and headed back to their car. Big black SUV. Suburban or an Escalade. Emblems removed, no license plates.”

“Were the parents involved in sketchy shit, too?” I asked.

“Hard to say,” Indy chimed in. “I’m tempted to say yes, just because of how rough Montana seemed to be in his younger days anyway, but they were smart about it if they were involved in anything criminal. Nothing obvious from the regular searches.”

“But Jersey’s parents were good people. The honest kind who just had regular jobs their entire lives,” Memphis argued. “So, maybe not. The President just decides he wants somebody, and he makes it happen. Not much thought about what it costs to get it.”

“And the Judge?” I asked.

“Way harder to find information on them,” Indy said. “We all know what we’re doing. Even against each other. It’s why we get paid the big money.”

“The big money?” I asked. “You guys got paid more than we did?”

The way those two assholes looked at each other.

I watched Memphis’ bottom lip disappear between her teeth.

“Somebody better answer me.”

“It’s a percentage thing,” Memphis giggled. “Executioners were told about the contract price. Not the overall job price.”

“Alright. Let’s go end this asshole of a President.”

Indy laughed and Memphis smacked him in the arm.

Memphis had it on good authority that Montana was somewhere in South Carolina. Neither of my Judges believed this team was involved in the human trafficking side of our President’s organization. The plan was to start with the regular teams who had jobs like mine or New Jersey’s. Having a handful of those Executioners on our side seemed like an easier place to start. It put us all into a massively shitty mood to have to wonder if the teams involved in the trafficking side knew what their jobs truly entailed. Convincing those Executioners to jump ship if they’d boarded it already aware of the end result for the people they picked up seemed daunting, whether their start with this organization was buried beneath lies or not. That felt like they would have to be a set of people even more dangerous than me. Even my ability to shift in and out of feeling my own humanity had its limits. A job in trafficking didn’t seem like it could come with a conscience on any level.

I was only three hours into the twelve hour trip to South Carolina before my phone was vibrating with a text from Memphis.

Memphis

Be safe.

I felt like an asshole for laughing at it.

She wasn’t even with me, and I still felt like an asshole. The girl had barely said goodbye to me before I left the house, and I was starting to wonder if she’d changed her mind about me entirely.

Now, I couldn’t stop myself from picturing her staring at her phone for the last three hours trying to work up the nerve to send me a two-word text message just because she could do that without the pressure of Indy being there to watch us interact.

The tech twins had sent me out on countless errands since we all landed in that house in Indiana, but this was the first time she’d bothered telling me to be safe on one of them.

Progress.

Progress made at the pace of a motherfucking turtle.

But progress, nonetheless.