22. Memphis

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

memphis

I was almost back to the road before Utah’s hand wrapped around my wrist. I whirled around to face him and ripped my arm back out of his hold just to be ready to fight him.

Like a rabid wolf that he’d backed into a corner.

Well, a grumpy little chihuahua at the very least.

“If you think for even a second that you’re actually going to tie me—” I started to say.

“Memphis,” he interrupted with an infuriating chuckle. “Calm down. You’re fine.”

“Fine?!”

“Okay, you’re alive. You’re not hurt. I’m good too, by the way. Thank you for asking. You didn’t kill me either by jumping out of a truck that was still in gear.”

“I’m not doing that again, Utah.”

He laughed that time. “I won’t make you do it again. You tried something that you hadn’t already mastered going in. Just get back in the truck, angel.”

“We can get back to actual work?”

“Yes.”

“You won’t tell anybody about that?”

“Mmm, I don’t know if I can promise that one,” he laughed.

“You’re aware that I will hate you for all of eternity if you tell anybody about that?”

“I am very well aware, baby.”

God, I needed him to stop calling me that.

I needed him to stop with all the names.

“Back in the truck,” he said again.

After I pouted in embarrassment for the rest of the hour-long drive to the diner where Tennessee’s truck was parked, I watched Utah put the radio in his ear to connect to Indy.

“You ready?” he asked when he looked at me.

“Yeah. I can do this part without the risk of killing anyone.”

He was smart enough to only smile in response to that.

“The flat cap,” Utah whispered when we walked through the door. “The back corner booth by himself.”

It put me a little more at ease that this diner was crowded. Tennessee wouldn’t be swinging a knife at either of us in a busy restaurant like Montana had done to Utah in an empty alley.

I went to the back booth and slid down the bench until I was across from Tennessee. Utah sat next to me a second later. Tennessee paused with his fork midway between his plate and his open mouth to stare at Utah.

“Tennessee,” Utah said.

Tennessee laughed and dropped his fork from right where he’d held it so it clattered against the plate.

“Whatever this is, kids,” he said and took the napkin from his lap to wipe his mouth, “I don’t want any part of it. Excuse me.”

“You’ve been in the organization longer than any other Executioner,” I said quietly. “And I need your input.”

“I don’t have anything to offer,” he said and shoved his hand into his pocket to pull out his phone.

“It’d actually probably help my case if you’re calling Akron,” I said. “She’d be interested in this, too.”

He paused to look at me then, breaking his focus on Utah for the first time.

“And who might you be?” Tennessee asked.

“It’s probably in your best interest if I don’t actually tell you that.”

He turned slightly to look around the diner, and I watched him pause when his eyes landed on a security camera over his shoulder near the entrance. He looked down to his phone next and I squeezed Utah’s leg under the table. His hand dropped down on top of mine immediately after.

I had no doubt that he was texting Akron to get into that camera, to have her figure out who we might be. My fear was that someone with this many years invested for our President would be way more interested in the contracts for the two of us than he would be in what we had to say. That put me under a time constraint for this interaction.

“The President has been having entire families murdered to recruit broken people who have nothing left, turning them into Executioners and Judges. Whatever you believe happened to your brothers and your parents, I can guarantee that it did not happen the way you think it did.”

I watched his face start to turn red.

“I’m not really here for that though,” I said quickly. “I just wanted you to know that I know who you are. You’ve been involved the longest, Tennessee. Did you know there’s a human trafficking element to this organization?”

He sat back in the booth, but his eyes narrowed while I kept talking.

“I’m talking about children. Girls and boys as young as three. Women of any age at all if they’re alone in the wrong place at the wrong time. Kids plucked right out of the safety of their lives, only to be thrown into the lion’s den. They’re groomed. They live in a house together under the care of a group of women and under the protection of a specific set of men. They’re taught how they’re allowed to behave in the presence of the people who would buy them, torture, and abuse them. They’re taught that they don’t matter outside of what their bodies can offer their owners. That unacceptable behavior deserves the vilest forms of punishment.” I stopped when my voice cracked. Utah’s hand shifted so that he could take mine in his where it sat on top of his leg.

Tennessee shifted uncomfortably in his booth.

“That shouldn’t be surprising to you, dear,” he said quietly. “If you’re part of this organization, you already know that none of us are the image of civilized people.”

“Have you heard of it before? Dealt with anyone involved in that side?”

He inhaled a giant breath and looked around the diner another time. “Who is it you’re looking for?” He asked. “Someone pick up your daughter? Son?”

I hesitated for a second on that and wondered if he’d be more open with me if I said yes. Maybe I could convince him that someone sold my child into sex slavery, and I was searching for how to find her.

“If that’s the case, they’re already gone,” he went on when I didn’t answer right away. “Nobody makes it back out, dear. Move on.”

Utah scoffed and I felt his entire arm tense against mine.

“How do you know that?” I asked. “Common knowledge from the news and the understanding that humanity as a whole fucking sucks? Or is that specific to this organization?”

“They have a whole set of U.S. Marshalls working on both sides of it,” Tennessee whispered. “No one gets back out. No one gets turned in. No one gets in trouble.”

“How do I find them? The Marshalls?” I asked. “Just give me a city. Give me a fucking state and I’ll figure out how to narrow it down from there. Give me a starting point, please.”

“They move,” he said. “They don’t stay in any one place for more than a year to make sure they can’t be found.”

“The Marshalls?” I asked.

“The whole operation, dear. It’s on a rotation from state to state. They spend way too much time in Tennessee way too often. That’s why I know about them,” he whispered, leaning froward across the table a little more. He glanced down at his phone when it vibrated, then his eyes darted back to me. He laughed and looked at Utah after that.

“Is that a fucking joke?” he asked amidst all of his laughter. “ You are Memphis? The Judge causing all the problems? Does that make you New Jersey then?” he asked and nodded at Utah, at which Utah promptly scoffed again.

“Which one of you really killed the President’s wife? His son? You kids have some outrageous stories being told between the Judges out here,” he said and laughed again. “Some outrageous money being offered for you too.”

Tennessee looked down to his phone again before he sighed and put it in his pocket. He pulled his wallet out and tossed several bills down on the table. Utah stood instantly.

“To the truck,” Utah said and grabbed my arm to pull me out of the booth.

Tennessee chuckled, but stayed right where he was and watched while Utah tried to push me toward the door.

“But why aren’t?—”

“Now, angel,” Utah hissed in a tone that I’d never heard come out of him. “Go to the truck.”

He handed me the keys and his hand was on my lower back a moment later to push me toward the door again.

“Don’t pick this fight here. You have rules to follow. I don’t. One of us will die before I let anyone take her from me,” Utah warned quietly while I started to back away from the table.

“I don’t plan on taking her from you. I’ll get you both. See you on the road, kid.”

“For your own safety, I’m going to suggest that you never see me again,” Utah said before he looked at me and nodded toward the door again. “Go.”

I turned around and picked up the pace for the door after that. I wasn’t sure I understood why Utah would have me leave ahead of him when the man was obviously very aware that I wouldn’t be driving myself out of this parking lot anytime soon, but I got to the truck and locked myself in it anyway.

I pulled out my laptop as quickly as I could move and ran the license plate on Tennessee’s truck. My fingers moved so quickly that my keyboard nearly caught fire while I drafted a stolen vehicle report for it. I reached for my phone as soon as that was finished and caught the sight of Utah walking across the lot toward the truck while I dialed the anonymous tip line for the local police department. Utah paused about halfway to the truck and turned to look back toward the diner entrance, where Tennessee was standing in the open doorway.

I explained very quickly that I was sitting in a parking lot, staring at a stolen vehicle, described the make, model, and color, and provided the license plate number before I hung up the phone.

I unlocked the truck doors and stepped out just on the running board.

“Let’s go,” I whisper-shouted at him. He glanced back at me, but I watched his hand shift to the waistband of the back of his jeans.

Because that was exactly what we needed with the police on their way—Utah shooting a man right here in public.

I jumped down and hustled my way back to him to grab his arm. I stood up on my toes to get closer to his ear.

“We need to leave. Cops are on the way.”

His eyebrows pinched together when he looked back at me that time.

I shook my head. “It’s okay. I called them. But we can’t be here for however that plays out.”

I tried pulling on his arm to get him to move with me. When that didn’t work, I forced his truck keys in between the gun in the waistband of his jeans and his hand then went back to the truck myself. He’d follow me. Utah took another few backward steps before he turned to walk the rest of the way to the truck.

“How long before they get here?” Utah asked.

I shook my head.

“Indy, police scanners for this area,” he said while he started the truck. “Anybody on the way here yet? I don’t want him following us down the road. Sending another set of cops after us once he gets pulled over. Rather leave him here with them from the start.”

When Tennessee stepped out of the diner entrance and onto the sidewalk, Utah opened his door again and opted to stand on the running board. Tennessee paused right where he was, too.

“How long?” Utah asked. His annoyed sigh suggested that he was not at all impressed with how long they were taking.

“What am I supposed to do to keep him here, but away from us, for the next ten fucking minutes?” Utah asked. “I can’t kick his ass just for the police to show up and find a half-dead guy.”

It was interesting to get to see an Executioner behave this way while working. He wasn’t yelling at Indy about finding an answer. He was annoyed and uncertain about what he was supposed to be doing, but he was completely calm. Like it didn’t faze him in the slightest that he might have to actually almost kill a man in a minute or two. He was just as unconcerned about that as he was about the prospect of us just driving away once the police were here. He didn’t seem to be struggling with the possibility that this could go a hundred different ways or the knowledge that more than half of them could result in one of us dying.

What it must be like to be able to look at a situation in front of you and just see it for what it was in that moment.