24. Memphis

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

memphis

S pending an entire night digging into my own past, to see if it could provide us with a more solid starting point, left me in such an unpleasant headspace by the time that we were actually on the road to Evansville.

I couldn’t remember any Marshalls.

I was always under the impression that they were just regular cops, which was why I never even considered turning to the police once we were free. Granted, I was fifteen and most definitely not thinking clearly in those days. All my memories of that time were fuzzy now, at best. I never imagined I’d reach a point in my life where I would need to revisit what happened in order to go forward. Upon coming to that conclusion, my brain decided almost instantly that it was all better left in the barely there category. Like maybe it had all happened to somebody else, and I was just told the story after the fact. That would explain how several of the details were missing and giant pieces didn’t make much sense.

I sent Indy the information for several shopping centers throughout Memphis and the surrounding cities and towns and asked if he’d look into more recent reports of missing children from those areas. I couldn’t do that part myself. Then I spent the entire three-hour drive to Evansville looking up everything there was to know about the Marshalls Service and how I might find my way into their networks without being detected. It was by no means impossible to get into government systems, but it was occasionally a little more difficult to remain anonymous while it was being done.

Narrowing it down between the Marshalls who were assigned just a job to work in Tennessee and the Marshalls who were originally from Tennessee felt like an impossible task. But there really weren’t many who handled the trafficking cases, and looking at their employment profiles didn’t help identify the ones who might be problematic. These were all standup humans who’d dedicated their lives to keeping others safe as far as their employer was concerned.

“We’ll be there soon,” Utah said quietly to pull me out of the Marshall pit I’d dug myself into.

The Marshall pit was still a welcome distraction from the wee morning hour encounter with Utah in his room. I simply could not allow myself to think about how that had played out. My brain couldn’t handle all the things it might’ve meant. I’d have to spend the rest of my adult life overthinking every word out of his mouth if I’d allowed myself to think about it for even a second, right down to each the and a .

No part of me could justify why he’d fixated on me.

Convenience?

Physical location?

Easy prey due to inexperience?

None of those things made it feel any better.

The sight of Utah suggested he could have any woman anywhere. He was a male, so he’d probably already had several women in several places. Nothing about me seemed a likely match for someone like him. I came with enough baggage to fill a train. I didn’t know how to behave around men, or humans in general, for the most part. I couldn’t imagine he looked at me—a girl who bolted at the first sign of physical contact almost every time—and saw a woman who could rock his entire world in bed. He used words like cute and adorable when he talked about me and the way that I behaved. Not sexy or attractive or any of the words that one might find applicable for a suitable fuck.

But he knew what he was doing. He had obviously done these things before. He knew exactly what to say last night when I was busy trying to remind myself to just breathe the entire time. Those words came from him so easily it was like they’d been rehearsed.

I slammed my laptop closed with that last thought.

He hadn’t done anything other than be helpful since his first day with us. I had absolutely no justification for questioning his intentions, outside of my own panic and insecurity.

What a nightmare I was.

There was absolutely no way he’d sign up for this if he knew even half the shit that flooded my brain at any given moment.

Looking out the windshield of his truck to see the drop-dead gorgeous human who was Nevada certainly didn’t help my current state of emotions. Even in scrubs that made most women look like walking rectangles, she was stunning. Her hair was every bit as long as mine and landed nearly halfway down her back. But where mine was as black as my heart, hers was perfectly golden and loosely curled into flawless bouncing waves. Her makeup game was every bit as strong as mine too, but her skin was perfectly tanned. Not even the slightest bit ghostly.

We watched her cross the hospital parking lot to her car and Utah gave her a bit of a head start before he followed her car back onto the road. I used the time to get his radio out and ready. Since we planned to surprise this poor woman at her home, we’d need to be ready to move quickly. He pushed it into his ear while he parked the truck a row behind Nevada’s car in the parking lot for her apartment building.

“I think she knows,” he said and went for his door. “Picked up the pace already.”

She absolutely had started power walking her way across the lot.

“Excuse me,” I said quietly when we’d caught up to her just enough.

“Sorry,” she said without bothering to turn around. “I don’t carry cash on me. Ask somebody else.”

“I don’t need your money. I need your help, Nevada.”

She stopped to look back at me then.

“You must have the wrong person,” she said, shaking her head.

“I can call you Carlie if it’ll make you feel better for the moment,” I said. “But we both know that’s not your name either.”

She glared at me for a second before she looked over my head to Utah. She spent a painful few extra seconds looking his whole body over.

“What is this?” she asked, slipping a perfectly manicured hand into the front pocket of her scrubs to pull out her phone.

“Yeah, I’m just going to jump right into it because we’ve had some really shitty luck at this part so far and no tactic at all has worked yet,” I said. “I know about Dr. Grant.”

She pushed her phone into her purse and zipped it shut before she dropped the whole bag from her shoulder right to the asphalt.

“Say that again,” Nevada hissed.

“I don’t think this tactic is going to work either,” Utah whispered with a chuckle.

“Just hear me out,” I said, raising my hands between us. “I’m not going to fight you. I just need you to understand. I know what happened with Dr. Grant. I probably know even more than you do about it. The President finds people that he believes?—”

“Stop,” she interrupted. “What do you mean you know even more than me?”

“I just mean, I dug into your past before we came here,” I said. “I don’t think you ever had the whole?—”

“Who is this guy?” she interrupted again, nodding over my head. “Who the fuck are you for that matter?” she asked when she looked back at me.

“If you’d let me fucking talk, I might just answer some of these questions,” I snapped.

I felt like a million tiny bugs crawled across every inch of my skin as she smiled at my frustration.

“You must be the Judge,” she said and kept that terribly unpleasant smile on me.

“Yes. The intelligence probably gives that away just like the brazen arrogance gives away that you’re an Executioner.”

She took one whole step toward me before Utah’s arm swung around my chest to shift me behind his body. Nevada stopped instantly, and her smile changed from threatening to flirtatious in a matter of a millisecond.

“That’s a much better view,” she said and fucking winked at Utah. “What are you doing here?”

“Is that a joke?” I mumbled. “Was I not trying to fucking answer exactly that?”

“If I want your attention, I’ll talk to you,” she said and started to step off to the side of Utah again. He shifted right with her to make sure his body stayed squarely between us.

“She’s smarter than you, me, and Salem combined,” Utah said to Nevada. “I’d listen to her, sweetheart.”

Hearing him call this woman sweetheart about set my eardrums on fire.

Nevada looked back at me. “You don’t seem like the type to be friends with Salem.”

“I’m not. We’re here because we need your help. Our organization is ruining lives and I want to stop them. Wouldn’t hurt to have a nurse. Even if it’s one who seems to fail at nursing in its very nature because all her patients end up dead.”

She narrowed her eyes at me before she lunged in my direction. Utah caught her around the waist and hurled her backward. She spun like a fucking cat on acid and managed to stay upright to land on her feet.

“I’m not going to fight you,” he said with a laugh. “But I won’t let you hurt her either.”

“Awe,” Nevada said, cocking her head at Utah. “Sweet girl can’t defend herself?”

“Doesn’t matter if she can ,” Utah said. “I’m doing it for her either way.”

“Then you’re going to have to fight me, honey,” she said and winked at Utah another time. “I promise you’ll have fun.”

“We probably don’t need a nurse,” I said. “Just shoot her.”

“Oh, that’s cute as shit. Somebody have a crush on her big, bad Executioner?” Nevada asked, pointing from me to Utah. “Don’t worry. I’ll kick his ass, and then I’m coming for you,” she said while glaring at me.

“Back to the truck, angel,” Utah said as he shook his head. He dodged Nevada’s first two punches easily enough, but that only seemed to piss her off more. When he tried to spin away from her a third time, she was ready for it and spun the opposite way to elbow him in the ribs. That threw him off enough for her to land a solid blow straight to his nose. He groaned and squeezed the bridge of his nose before he rolled his neck from side to side.

“I’m still not going to fight you,” he said. “But I will put your ass on the ground if you keep it up.”

“Let’s see it,” she said and smiled before moving in to swing at him again. By the time he was done dodging that series of attacks, she’d managed to maneuver Utah away from me. And neither of us realized that had been the goal until she whipped around to face me and sprinted straight at me.

For a split second, I wished I’d had any experience at all in physical altercations. But when the back of my head bounced off the asphalt after she’d tackled me, it pretty well wiped out any coherent thought I was in the middle of processing. Nevada had landed on top of me, but she was gone again by the time I opened my eyes. She was rolling away from me with Utah wrapped all the way around her. He continued to wrap himself around her further until he’d successfully pinned her beneath him. He was essentially sitting on her stomach. He had one of her arms trapped at her side by his leg and he held her other wrist above her head against the asphalt. When he was convinced that she wasn’t going anywhere, he looked back at me. I forced myself to get back up so Nevada wouldn’t have the satisfaction of seeing me just lying there on the ground.

“Get. In. The. Truck,” he snapped at me. “Now, Memphis.”

“I’m not going anywhere,” I snapped right back.

The laugh that came out of him that time was a fear-inducing one.

“After I’ve had my nose busted on your behalf is not the fucking time to test the limits on my patience, sugar. Give me one of the cards and take your little ass back to my truck.”

Nevada started laughing while I marched toward them. I pulled one of the cards with the chat room information on it from my back pocket and threw it on the ground beside the two of them.

“I’m going to let go of this hand to reach for that card, Nevada,” he said. “And you’re not going to move a fucking muscle. Got it?”

She smiled so sweetly at him that I suddenly wanted to just step on her face. Utah held the card between their faces for a second.

“You will talk to Salem about this,” he said. “Once you tell her that Memphis and Utah came looking for you because they know what really happened to your doctor friend—because they know the President was involved from the very start—you tell her what this card says. And if you learn how to fucking behave, we’ll still take you both in.”

I wanted to step on his fucking face, too, as I watched him put the card in between her teeth. Her free hand went right to his arm, but not to scratch at him or throw a punch. Her fingers just dragged their way down the muscle that was packed in there under his skin.

“Don’t you fucking move until I’m gone,” he said, pointing a finger right in her face. He was off Nevada and stomping his way toward me the next second. He bent at the waist, shoved his shoulder right into my stomach, wrapped an arm around the backs of my thighs, and stood upright so that I was dangling over his shoulder like a tantrum-throwing toddler for the duration of his angry march the rest of the way back toward his truck.

“When I tell you to get in the truck,” he said, “it’s because I mean. Get. In. The. Fucking. Truck.”

“And when I tell you to shoot somebody, it’s because I want you to fucking shoot somebody,” I hissed.

He opened the passenger door of his truck and dropped my feet straight to the ground. He glanced back to make sure Nevada hadn’t moved, and then his hand wrapped around the underside of my jaw. I grabbed his wrist with both hands and tried to back away from him at the same time, only to realize I was trapped by the truck.

“You’re still safe,” he said when I lost all control of my ability to breathe. His voice was a level of calm and controlled that did not at all match the fiery rage burning in his eyes though.

I realized pretty instantly that he was right. He was holding me in place by my actual jaw and his palm just barely rested against my neck. I could breathe just fine if I really thought about it. Utah was just forcing me to look at him.

“If you’re going to keep coming on these little outings with me, Memphis, I need to know that you’re going to learn how to listen to me when I tell you to do something. I’m not a bossy prick just for the fun of it. If I tell you to do something, it’s because your actual life probably depends on it.”

I still hadn’t figured out how to speak. So, he used his hold on my face to pull me closer to him.

“Are we clear, angel?”

I forced myself to nod my head. The way that he smiled after that sent my blood pressure to the fucking clouds. His eyes dropped down to my own white knuckled grip on his wrist, like he was somehow amused by it. He shook his head and ran the fingers of his other hand across my knuckles.

“Calm down,” he whispered. “If I’m going to strangle you, Memphis, you’re going to enjoy it.”

He smiled again at the disastrously embarrassing sound that came out of me.

A gasp? A moan? Some crazy breathless whimper?

Somehow all of the above at the same fucking time?

Fuck .

Utah let go of my face, put both his hands under my arms, and lifted me right up into the truck after that. He was apparently already completely aware that I wouldn’t have any control at all over my own body in that moment.