44. Utah

CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR

utah

I left Memphis with Jersey and Triss so they could start sorting through the plan with the Marshalls. If she intended to have a conversation with him about the detectives who’d handled the details of the deaths of his family, I wasn’t sure my presence would be welcome, so I wanted to give them the time and the space to let that happen if it was the goal.

Kyle left the main house with me to open up Jersey’s barn so I could use the space to change the oil in the truck before the next trip that the tech twins might send me on. I hadn’t expected his company beyond unlocking the space, but once I had the truck inside and pulled the latch to release the hood, Kyle was standing at the front bumper to raise it for me.

I spent a second being offended that he seemed to think I needed supervision, before I wondered if he was just trying his hand at being around people again. When New Jersey and I weren’t aiming to rip one another apart with words and angry glares, having everyone back in the house was really a pretty good time. I didn’t know anything about this particular man, but I wasn’t about to deprive him of human interaction if that was what he wanted. I was at least certain that I was easier to be around than Jersey was, even if we didn’t know one another. We didn’t say anything to each other while I got to work. He quietly provided me with a pan to catch the oil that drained from my truck. He offered me the shop towels to clean my hands.

Indy showed up somewhere in the middle of waiting for the oil to finish draining from the truck.

“New Jersey already run you off for the day?” I asked once he was inside the barn with us.

“I think you should maybe see this, hoss.”

His tone upset me before anything else did. He took a folded piece of paper from his pocket to pass it off to me.

“I didn’t tell her that I found it. I’m not sure that it should be me to ask her about it, either,” Indy said quietly.

I wasn’t sure how it was possible to feel like I might pass out and vomit at the same time. I couldn’t hear anything, but something sounded very much like a deafening blast of white noise between my eardrums. An endless number of unpleasant contradictions happened to my body all at the same time to be looking at a piece of paper with a picture of a much younger Memphis on it. She was pictured next to an even younger girl who looked like she could’ve been Memphis’ twin if they’d been the same age.

They looked like school portraits.

Aside from the fact that their faces were printed just beneath giant block letters.

Missing

My brain shorted out before I ever made it to dates, contact information, names, or anything else that might’ve been included on that flyer. I didn’t even realize I was on a warpath back toward the house until Indy grabbed my wrist just inside the kitchen.

“Utah, wait,” he insisted. “You might want to think this through a little more before —.”

I ripped my arm away from him and continued my rage-filled march right toward the girl sitting next to New Jersey at the kitchen island.

“You didn’t think this was the kind of thing worth sharing with me?” I asked and slammed that missing persons flyer down right beside her computer on the countertop. “At any point in the last couple weeks that we shifted gears into hunting traffickers? It’s personal to you because you were trafficked?”

My tone brought Trista back into the kitchen while Memphis grabbed that piece of paper to stare at it in panic.

“Where did you find this?” she asked, her voice barely above a whisper.

“ This is your fucked up connection to this organization?” I asked again, not realizing I was getting louder with every sentence. “How does that even happen without you realizing it? How long have you known that we were after the people who put you into sex slavery, Memphis? Were you just never going to mention it to me?”

New Jersey stood up at about the time that the worst little strangled noise I’d ever heard came out of Memphis.

“Memphis,” Triss said quietly and pushed her way by me to wrap Memphis in a hug.

The hug that I probably should have started this conversation with, rather than the strange rage that was coursing through me and aimed directly at her.

I decided to use my brain about a minute too late.

She was already crying. She was in Trista’s arms, holding a fucking piece of paper against her chest like it was a lifeline.

“Memphis, I —.”

“Get him out of here before I do it,” New Jersey interrupted. Kyle was in front of me a second later, but before it even crossed my mind to drop a big ass Marine straight to the ground, Indy materialized between us.

“Come back outside with me, Utah,” he said quietly. “You’re better than this. Give her a minute.”

She still hadn’t looked back at me, but Trista was still wrapped around her. New Jersey hadn’t moved from the other side of her. They wouldn’t leave her alone.

I stormed right back out of that house just as quickly as I’d stormed in.

All the fucking rage in the world followed right along with me. I still couldn’t breathe, couldn’t think, couldn’t see.

The signs had been there to tell me what had happened if I’d just been paying closer attention. She was certain that we all had these terrible behind the scenes connections to our employer. She said her parents had decided at some point that they didn’t want her or her sister. She hadn’t been intimate with anyone of her own choosing. She felt like she couldn’t leave the country because she was afraid her sister might need her again. I’d already decided I disliked our President, and anyone left inside that organization, but this made her desire to personally ruin the man very clear to me. I suddenly wasn’t interested in ruining his work, though. I was interested in removing his head from his body.

“What the fuuuuuck,” I mumbled while I stomped around on the porch.

“That really wasn’t how I imagined you’d handle that,” Indy said quietly. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen you react like that. To anything .”

“My bad,” I hissed. “I didn’t realize I was a disappointment to you. Of all the fucking times, Indy, this isn’t the one to mess with me.”

New Jersey appeared on the porch behind him right after that.

“And I am really not in the fucking mood for your shit right now, old man,” I warned, pointing at Jersey. He chuckled and came the rest of the way around the house to lean against the porch railing, despite my warning.

“I’m never in the mood to wake up and find you punks still in my house, yet here we are.”

“Alright, so when I walk away this time, New Jersey, I’m going to need you to stay right the fuck here, so I don’t hurt you the next time you open your mouth. I won’t have a good explanation for Memphis, and I don’t want to have to lie to her. Just fucking stay here,” I said and shook my head at this jackass and all of his nerve.

“Calm down, kid,” he said and grabbed my shoulder to prevent me from actually walking away. “There was a time when I was pissed that you showed up to keep me from drinking.”

“And what? You’re here to settle a debt? Because I don’t have an alcohol problem.”

New Jersey looked back at Indy that time. “Beat it.”

Indy looked at me before he went anywhere.

“I won’t kill him,” I said.

Jersey waited for Indy to actually walk away before he spoke again.

“I’m here because something in Memphis clings to something in you. She looks at you and somehow sees a lifeline. She looks at you and feels what I felt when she was given to me as a Judge. A reason to just keep going. I’m here because I don’t want her reason to fall apart. If that happens, she falls apart with it.”

I tried to breathe in all the air in Indiana. “For the record, Memphis made me follow you back then.”

“For the record, Memphis made me go back for Trista when I tried to pawn her ass off on somebody else back in the day too,” he chuckled.

“I think she probably did that because she knew it was what you wanted, whether you were able to admit it or not, old man.”

“Exactly, pipsqueak.”

I closed my eyes and sighed.

Kicking the shit out of him right now wouldn’t solve anything.

He was trying to be helpful, despite his DNA -deep inability to know how to be helpful.

He was trying.

“Did you know we were in an organization that had a whole fucking human trafficking ring within it?” I asked.

“No,” he said and shook his head. “Doesn’t really surprise me, given everything else we’ve learned about them. I never thought too hard about any of it back then, though. They gave me jobs and I did them.”

I shook my head to keep from laughing.

Soldier mentality was fucking wild.

“Don’t try talking to her again until your head is in the place to make it right, slick.”

“I don’t need advice about women from the man who kept his girlfriend in the trunk of his car for the first half of their relationship.”

“It was a warning. Not advice.”

“Man, this really isn’t the fucking time for your —.”

“Your Judge says you’re in love with her,” he interrupted. “Remember that. And act like it.”

That motherfucker smacked me on the shoulder and just walked away.