Chapter 29 - Maeve
MAEVE
“Did you know the police think the resort guy, Piers Cantwell, was going to use his hotel to traffic girls?” I said as I skimmed the article on my laptop in the living room.
Remy looked up from the book he was reading. “I heard something about that. They didn’t have proof though.”
I’d spent the three days since we’d gone to visit Rafe, Nolan, Jude, and Lilah digging into the alleged trafficking ring around Blackwell Falls and had been shocked by how far-reaching it might have been.
Tons of girls had gone missing going back decades, some of them tied to the alumni at Aventine that had been busted a couple years before, other disappearances still unsolved.
The police still wouldn’t say much about it, although there were rumors in true-crime communities that the FBI was involved now too. I was obsessed with the details and had spent the last few days combing the internet for everything I could find.
Now I was hanging out in the living room with the Butchers, an unexpected show of domesticity that had been happening more often lately, like we were roommates or friends or something, which added a whole other level of weird to the existing weirdness that was my life.
“It’s strange though right?” I stared at the article on my screen.
Ethan Todd had to leave Hungary because of trafficking allegations and now he was back in Blackwell Falls, which had a history of missing girls and rumors of sex trafficking.
“Yeah, but you said Ethan left after high school,” Poe pointed out without looking away from his video game.
“I said there was no trace of him after high school,” I said. “I actually don’t know what happened to him.”
Bram tapped at his computer. “Aloha’s on his way over.”
I looked up from my laptop. “Does he have the info on Ethan?”
“Yep.”
I tried not to show that his coldness hurt me but it wasn’t easy. I still wanted him in spite of the way he’d treated me. I was no psychology major, but I knew enough to know that it was fucked up, and I had no excuse: no daddy issues, no lack of inherent self-worth.
I didn’t even want to fix him. I just wanted him.
I closed my computer and a few minutes later, Poe was buzzing Aloha into the loft.
He emerged at the top of the stairs carrying a laptop and for the second time since I’d been back at the loft I was forced to acknowledge I had a tendency to judge a book by its cover.
First Marv, with his delicious cinnamon-filled maple bars. Now Aloha, a bald, bearded biker — this one a Blade from the patches on his cut — who was apparently also a world-class hacker.
Southside had been hiding some seriously strange expertise.
Remy introduced us and got Aloha a beer. Then we all sat around the dining room table.
“Sorry for the house call,” Aloha said, opening his laptop. “You said this was important. Thought you might not want to wait until morning.”
“You were right,” Bram said. “Tell us what you got.”
“Ethan Borkowski, born at the hospital in Greenvale thirty-eight years ago. Raised in Blackwell Falls, went to public schools, including the high school,” Aloha said. “I’ll send all this to your encrypted email, but there’s a reason I wanted to talk to you in person. I’ll get to that in a sec.”
“So far, so good,” Poe said.
“Young Ethan was smart. Captain of the debate team, member of the student senate and the chess club. Doesn’t seem like he was popular per se, more like…”
“A nerd,” Remy said.
Aloha nodded. “Right. A nerd. He appears in yearbook photos taken of the groups he was part of but not in any of the candid photos from dances and pep rallies and shit. And you were right, he disappears after high school.”
“Damn,” Poe said.
I sensed there was more. A house call from Aloha was apparently not normal. He wouldn’t have made it unless he had something new.
“But it got me thinking,” Aloha continued. “About his face.”
Bram’s expression was stony. “His face.”
Aloha nodded. “I’ve got some new tech, a facial recognition spider.”
“What the fuck is a facial recognition spider?” Bram asked.
“It’s… well, think of it as a piece of software that crawls the internet looking for a match.”
“A match to someone’s face?” I was starting to see where he was going and I got the first lift of hope in my chest.
He nodded. “I haven’t had much cause to use it. Figured this might be the perfect time.”
“Did it work?” Remy asked.
“You’ll have to tell me.” Aloha turned his laptop around. A grainy image of a young clean-shaven guy had been expanded on the screen. “This look like your guy?”
I understood why the Butchers looked at me. I’d been studying Ethan Todd for almost two years. If any of us would know his face, it would be me.
The guy on the computer was young, with a smooth baby face and a kind of nerdy haircut that made him look even younger than he probably was.
I pulled out my phone and searched for a recent picture of Ethan Todd, then held it up to the picture on Aloha’s screen. I tried to focus on the details: the guy’s forehead, the slight downturn of his eyes, the line of his nose.
My heart beat faster. “I think… I think it’s him.”
“Can I see?” Remy asked.
I handed him my phone and he held it up to Aloha’s screen. “Close enough for me. Who is this fucker really?”
I wasn’t a hundred percent sure, but it was the only lead I’d had on Ethan Todd’s background after he’d graduated from Blackwell High. I was willing to chase it.
“You’re not going to believe this.” Aloha turned his computer around, tapped at the keyboard, then turned it back to face us.
A newspaper article appeared on the screen, a group of young men and women in business-casual attire clustered around a guy in a suit holding a plaque.
“What the fuck am I looking at?” Bram asked.
“An old Blackwell Tribune article about a bunch of rich college kids who raised money for charity,” Aloha said. “And you want to hear the real kicker?”
“We do,” Poe said.
“The college? It’s Aventine.”
The name landed like a lead weight in the middle of the room.
“Aventine?” My brain felt like it was moving through sludge, trying to figure out what he was saying. “But that… that doesn’t make sense.”
Aventine was a private college. Rumor was they made a show of recruiting random students, but the only kids who were actually accepted, the only kids who actually went there, were the rich kids whose parents were engaged in questionable business practices.
Primarily organized crime.
“Ethan Todd was connected?” Bram asked.
Aloha shook his head. “Not that I can see. In fact, he was raised mostly by a foster parent after his mom OD’ed.”
I sat back in my chair, my gaze glued to the newspaper article on screen. “I don’t get it.”
“Maybe it’s a mistake,” Remy suggested. “Maybe it’s not him.”
“Maybe, but if it’s not, it’s one hell of a coincidence,” Aloha said.
“What kind of coincidence?” Poe asked.
“The guy in the newspaper article? His name is Ethan,” Aloha said.
Poe shook his head. “What the fuck…?”
“Different last name,” Aloha continued. “Not Borkowski and not Todd.”
“Who the fuck is this guy?” Remy asked.
Poe stared at Ethan’s “And how the fuck did he end up at Aventine?”