2
“She made me soup,” Cowboy blurted before giving Isabelle a shy glance. “My mom only ever made soup from a can. And got bread from a bag. This was… real,” he whispered, glancing away.
“What kind of soup?” Jackson asked, hoping to ease the boy’s mind.
“Potato and onion,” came the prompt reply. “Which sounds sort of boring, but it wasn’t.”
Jackson grinned, taking in the recently buzzed hair and the freshly scrubbed appearance—as well as the solid grained-in tan and dirt that could only come from being exposed to the elements for too long. “Surprise food,” he said. “Promising.”
He got a smile—and the teeth, too, looked freshly scrubbed. “For me, it was like, ‘Surprise! There’s more food!’”
Jackson chuckled softly. “Did Henry eat with you?” he asked, and before the kid could shrink in on himself, he added, “because I made him soup before he went to sit down with you, but he can pack away a lot of food.”
That earned him a wistful smile. “He said he was keeping us company,” Cowboy confided, “but he had a whole bowl.”
“Good,” Jackson told him soberly. “He’ll have lots of energy. He’ll need it.”
Cowboy’s eyes glossed over. “Is he okay?” he asked, nakedly pleading. “He was so nice to me, helped me cut my hair, helped me wash, and put stuff on my skin so it didn’t hurt.” The boy held out wrists with gauze wrapped loosely around them, and Jackson figured Henry had helped treat the chafing sores that came from wearing grime-stiff clothing for too long.
“He got hurt,” Jackson said carefully, aware Dex was holding on to every word. “Dex and I are going to check on him once we get you two someplace safe. Then I’m going to go out and figure out who hurt him, but first I need your help. I know you ate, and I know everybody changed into their jammies.”
Henry had been wearing flannel PJ’s much like Cowboy’s—Jackson figured Isabelle kept a pair for him from the nights he’d gone over to her place to help keep an eye on a new charge.
Sometimes kids got kicked out on the street because their parents were assholes, but sometimes there just wasn’t enough mental health access out there, particularly for juveniles coming into things like schizophrenia. Henry had brought more than one kid in from the cold to a severe care facility after John and Galen had brought them to Isabelle’s.
“Isabelle went to change too,” Cowboy said softly. “Henry and I sat on the special couch mats… you know, to keep the creepers off.”
Jackson had noted those, too, as he’d run into the snug little apartment. “Red plaid?” he asked, not because it mattered, but because getting a detail right would make Cowboy more confident in his own judgment.
“Yeah,” Cowboy murmured. “Henry said they were just until we knew I was all cleaned up.” He sighed. “I like being clean. You don’t think about that when you’re little. How nice it is to not be dirty.”
“Well, you’re in the right place,” Jackson said. “Because we’re all partial to showers ourselves.”
Cowboy gave him a little smile then, a hopeful one, and Jackson’s stomach roiled. God, he’d been in this position before, but he would always, always be afraid of letting that trust down. He had a terrible need to call his brother then, to check on the kid not too much younger than this one that had become more than a rescue or a victim—had become family.
This kid had a better place waiting for him. It was up to Jackson and his friends to get him there.
“So there you were,” Jackson said, aware that Dex was making good time on the nearly deserted, rainy streets. He reckoned they had about twenty minutes before he was banging down K-Ski’s door, begging for asylum, and it was time to get a move on. “You were clean, you were dry and fed, settling down to watch some tube—”
“And talk to Henry,” Cowboy said. “He said it was important we talk.”
“About what?” Jackson asked casually. But he was fooling nobody, and he knew it when Cowboy shrank into himself, like a marshmallow in hot butter.
“About the bad lady,” Cowboy whispered.
Jackson nodded. “Were you ready to be brave then?” he asked soberly.
Cowboy nodded, and Jackson felt a moment’s vertigo from staying turned around in his seat for so long. He fought it and wondered if he could give Henry’s brother some sort of good-driving award for not killing him like this.
“Good boy. So how about you be brave for me now?”
Cowboy swallowed. “When I escaped from the place—the Clean Living place,” he whispered. “That’s when I saw her. She… she’s fast. Like that soccer lady? Megan?”
“Rapinoe?” Jackson asked. “So she’s fast and fit?”
Cowboy nodded vigorously. “Like she trained to catch boys,” he whispered, and part of Jackson wanted to smile, because that sounded like some Roald Dahl villain shit, but part of him was horrified, because the boy was afraid .
“Did she almost catch you?” Jackson asked.
Cowboy swallowed. “I think she caught Caleb,” he whispered. “Caleb went back inside the Clean Living place, to make sure the other boys were okay and maybe see if they could get away. And the lady….” He swallowed.
“Did she have a name?” Jackson asked.
“Retty,” Cowboy said promptly. “They… they called her Retty.” He glanced down. “She put me in the back of the van after my mom gave me to the people.”
Jackson nodded. “Your mom shouldn’t have done that,” he said softly. “Maybe she got scared. Raising a boy is a big job. Sometimes people like this promise they can help.”
Cowboy whispered, “It’s because I was bad.”
Jackson swallowed, and part of him wanted to shove this away and not talk about it, but part of him needed the boy to get it out now so he knew he’d be okay.
“How bad?” he asked. “Like, muddy shoes in the living room bad? Forget to do your chores bad?”
“I kissed a boy,” Cowboy whispered. “I’m a fag.”
Jackson breathed in carefully. “That’s not bad,” he said. “Except the name-calling. That’s bad. But the kissing a boy? Everybody in the car’s done it, kid. You’re in good company.”
Cowboy batted clotted eyelashes at him. “You’ve kissed a boy?” he asked, almost desperate.
“I kissed my fiancé tonight, before I ran into the darkness to find you,” Jackson told him. “Did this Retty person say you were bad?”
Cowboy nodded, his face streaked with tears. “She said we were all bad. It was her job to train us up so we didn’t all go to hell.”
Jackson blew out a breath. “Train you how?” he asked.
A shake of the head. “Don’t know. She scared me. I escaped before I could find out.”
“That’s not bad ,” Jackson told him with feeling. “That’s smart . Good for you, getting away like that.”
Cowboy swallowed. “I met the two men in front of the church,” he said. “And… and at first I thought they were just a trick.”
For a moment Jackson was thrown off, but he found his footing again. “They’re not like that,” he said kindly. “You’re so very young.”
The boy nodded. “But they took me to go get a burger. And I was so happy. They got me a burger and a shake and took me back to the car and….” He caught his breath. “That’s when I saw her. She… she’d been watching us from her car. Like she was there for food too and… and she just saw us. And she was playing on her phone and… and she saw me .” His voice actually squeaked.
Jackson frowned. “Did you tell John and Galen—the two men who brought you burgers—that you saw her?”
“I said we had to go,” Cowboy said. “I… I was so scared. She stared at us and played on her phone and stared some more. And they asked me why I was so scared, and I… I couldn’t tell them about Caleb, how he screamed when he went back. I tried, but I… I cried a lot. And I thought we left her at the hamburger place, but Henry and I were all clean and dry on the couch, and there was a knock at the door, and it was her , and she said her name was….” He frowned, like he was going to try to reason it out, but the words took over his mouth instead. “I don’t remember!” he almost sobbed. “It was something else I don’t remember! And I told Henry it was her , the bad lady , and Henry told me and Isabelle to run, to escape out the window.”
Isabelle released the boy’s hand and wrapped her arm around his shoulders instead. “It’s okay,” she murmured.
“He… he made sure we were gone,” Cowboy said. “And then he let her in, and we were on the ground running, and we heard shots, and….” He tried to catch himself, but he was too far gone. “And I don’t know if Henry’s okay !” he wailed.
Isabelle wrapped her arm around the boy’s head protectively and gave Jackson a speaking glance.
Jackson nodded at her and turned around gratefully, his head spinning from the story and the enforced time staring backward. His stomach, which had spent the evening being gently catered to with the brothy wonton soup and the fresh bread, was suddenly pitching and weaving like a drunken sailor on a stormy deck.
But most of that, he knew, was the kid’s story.
“Okay,” he murmured. “All right, then. We know what we’re dealing with.”
“You know who hurt my brother?” Dex asked.
Jackson shook his head. “Only kind of,” he replied. “But we know how she found them. He said she kept playing with her phone. I’m going to bet that the meetup was random. She was out for a burger. Maybe she was hunting kids like Cowboy— hell, maybe she was even hunting him since he escaped a couple weeks ago, but suddenly he’s delivered into her lap.”
“But he’s with two men,” Dex said, like suddenly he understood the significance.
“Exactly. So I’m not great with phones and clones, but if she saw John and Galen in the burger place and then did the phone thing—”
“How do you know she didn’t simply follow them?” Dex asked.
“Because it took her a while,” Jackson said. “It would have been easier to just grab him before they entered Isabelle’s apartment. She was armed. She could have taken them out easily—hell, all three of them. But she had to find them first. I need….” He sighed. “God, I need for your brother to be okay.”
Next to him, he heard Dex swallow. “You know, he served for nine years, and the only times he’s been hurt have been here in Sacramento.”
“That you know of,” Jackson told him gently. “Dex, your brother’s tougher than you might ever know. What he did? Making sure Isabelle and Cowboy were out of the apartment building and stalling before he opened the door for this… this monster ? That was smart. He was keeping that woman engaged for as long as possible. She shot him in Isabelle’s room. He led her down the hall before slamming the door in her face and having a shootout through a wall. And he tagged her. He got her. She was bleeding when she left. It’s the only reason she didn’t go after them. He’s smart and strong and tough enough.” Jackson’s head of steam escaped. “And God…. God , I hope he’s okay.”
To his horror he heard his voice shake, and he glanced down at his hands as he pulled his phone from the pocket of his hooded sweatshirt.
Still stained a mottled, rain-washed pink.
Henry’s blood.
He fought back a hard shudder and dried his cold fingers on the merely-damp T-shirt under the hoodie so he could call Ellery.
“Jackson—”
“Safe,” he said, hoping Ellery would take that to mean him and Isabelle and Cowboy. “Will call in ten.”
There was a pause then, as though Ellery was trying to digest this and figure out why the code-speak, but it didn’t last long. “Thanks for calling. See you where Lance works.”
“ASAP,” Jackson said, letting out a breath, and then before he could hang up, Ellery spoke again.
“Thanks,” he said softly, “for calling.”
Jackson closed his eyes, grateful for Ellery, as he so often was. “Course,” he said. “Later.”
He hung up and took a deep breath.
“That’s all you’re going to say?” Dex asked.
Jackson opened up his phone and started playing with the settings, holding his finger to his lips and letting out a sigh when he saw that nothing—recording, visual surveillance, proximity alerts—had been activated without his knowledge.
“Ellery and I had dinner with John and Galen tonight,” Jackson said when he was satisfied. “So they left their meeting, saw this Retty shitbag without knowing it, then took Cowboy to Isabelle’s house. She saw them—I’m betting it was sheer accident, but she was tracking them. I’ve been to the burger joint John took the kid to. It’s not that big, and the parking lot is even smaller. Cowboy saw her, was too scared to say anything, and she got close enough to clone John or Galen’s phone. That’s how she knew where the kid was. She waited until they left, but she didn’t realize Henry was there too. Maybe she was circling the block trying to find parking when he arrived—Ellery had difficulty doing that. What I do know is that John and Galen left Cowboy in Henry and Isabelle’s care, then came to our place to talk about what Cowboy had seen.”
Dex sucked in a breath. “And Retty-the-shitbag waited until she saw things calming down in Isabelle’s place.” He paused and said something that had been bothering Jackson too. “She knocked on the door first—I heard that. She knocked on the door, asked to see Cowboy, and Henry shined her on until they were clear out the back.”
“Yeah,” Jackson said. “Zero law enforcement experience. Any cop knows to set a watch on the back, but she was there by herself, and it didn’t occur to her. Also instead of running around to find them, she engaged in a gunfight, which is panicky and stupid.”
“Apparently she’s not so tough when she’s not beating the gay out of terrified teenagers,” Dex said bitterly.
“Or stripping schools of their libraries,” Jackson added, but while his mouth was going, he was still thinking. “But there’s more to Shitbag Retty than ignorance and homophobia,” he muttered.
“What?” Dex asked.
Jackson grunted. “Don’t worry about it. Let’s get Isabelle and Cowboy safe, and then we can get to Med Center and check on your brother.” He shuddered. “God… Ellery’s got to tell Lance―”
“I’ll talk to Lance,” Dex said grimly. “You had it right. Henry’s not the kind of guy to sit and do nothing. He was being a hero tonight. Lance will see that.”
Jackson didn’t want to correct him, but he was pretty sure Henry’s boyfriend was going to be much more upset that Henry got wounded on Jackson and Ellery’s watch than that.
“Sure,” he murmured, still thinking about Shitbag Retty’s motives. “Isabelle?” he asked, pitching his voice just over the quiet engine and the sound of tires on rainy streets.
“Yes, Mr. Rivers?”
“Is he asleep yet?”
“No,” came a rusty young voice. Fourteen—had his voice changed yet? Jackson didn’t think so. “What do you need, sir?”
“Sh… uhm, Retty. She worked for the, uhm, Clean Living people, right?”
“Yessir.”
“Did she have a boss? Did you see one? I mean, yeah, she gave you a ride, and she chased after you and your friends, but that’s sort of flunky work. Did she ever talk about somebody? Give you the impression that she answered to someone? She’s bad and she’s scary, Cowboy, but we need to find out who she works for.”
“So you can get her fired?” Cowboy asked uncertainly.
“So I can get them arrested ,” Jackson said firmly. Inside he was thinking violent, bloody thoughts. He knew people. Oh boy, did he and Ellery know people. There was a tiny corner of the desert that was hip deep in disappeared bodies and mysterious deaths, and nobody would ever need to be the wiser. These women could just… disappear. He took a deep breath and shook away that idea. No. No . It went against everything that Ellery stood for, and while Jackson had no qualms with moral ambiguity, he couldn’t, wouldn’t betray Ellery’s convictions that way.
Besides….
“If they’re arrested, what they stand for will be rendered… tainted. Evil. People might think twice before they hurt people like you or Henry or me or Dex because they don’t like who we are. So yeah. Arrested. Not fired. Put in prison. Where they belong.”
He could say that now because Henry was going to be okay. Henry had to be okay.
God help them all if Henry wasn’t okay.
“So,” Jackson asked on a shaky breath, as Dex followed what was now Fair Oaks Boulevard down into Carmichael. “Can you remember any names?”
“Someone…,” Cowboy whispered. “Someone called Mrs. Twitty?”
Jackson’s eyebrows went up. “Mrs. Tweety?”
“No… that’s what Retty called her. Twitty. But it wasn’t her real name. She… she welcomed us. Was dressed real pretty. In pink and cream with a necklace.”
“Classy,” Jackson said, and he wasn’t being sarcastic—he got how sometimes a woman who was put together could frighten a kid who was dressed in hand-me-downs and needed a bath.
“Yeah,” Cowboy said, nodding. “She gave directions. Said, ‘Put him upstairs in the room with the four. We’ll have our first meeting tonight.’ And Retty sort of laughed.” His voice fell. “It was a mean laugh,” he murmured. “I didn’t like that laugh.”
And hence, Jackson thought, that organized escape. “You got good instincts, kid,” he said, and at that moment, Dex took a left, which gave Jackson a block to finish this interrogation. “One more thing,” he said. “You ran away a couple of weeks ago, right?”
“Yessir,” the kid said, and it was the “sir” that tugged at Jackson’s heart.
“Have you met any other escapees, any other kids that started out at the Clean Living place?”
Cowboy’s voice dropped. “We don’t talk about it,” he whispered. “Nobody talks about it. You talk about your tricks or who’s giving away food or where you can get a bath. Nobody talks about that place. Nobody.”
“Okay, then,” Jackson said, his voice going soft. “No more of that tonight. We’re going to find you a place to sleep and some folks to keep an eye out for you—and maybe to take you on a trip or something, somewhere you don’t have to worry about these people, and you and Isabelle can get some rest. How’s that sound?”
“Okay….” The boy’s voice wobbled. “You don’t suppose… my mom? Would she want me back?”
Jackson wanted to claw at his chest and rip his heart out so it didn’t have to feel like this. “I don’t know,” he said at last. “But we can’t find out until this mess is over, okay? If she does want you back, this will put her in danger. If… well, if she doesn’t….”
“She’s the one who gave me to Retty in the first place,” Cowboy said, sounding destroyed and proving once again that kids were smart and illusions were a luxury someone like Cowboy had never been able to afford.
“Jackson,” Isabelle said, “I have some money. I could take him—”
“John and I will pay,” Dex said. “And we’ll discuss particulars later. I’ve got an idea, but I gotta run it by Kane first. But yeah, we’re calling this a company team-building exercise, Isabelle, and you’re not worrying about a penny.” He sighed. “And you let us know if you need out,” he finished, but Jackson got a look at Mrs. Bobby’s Mom, her arms around Cowboy, holding him to her chest and rocking him back and forth.
She wiped her face with the back of her hand and shook her head. “Not going anywhere,” she whispered. “Don’t worry, sweetheart. I’ll want you. I’m not going anywhere.”
Next to him, Dex took an uneven breath, and Jackson did the same.
“Here we are,” Dex muttered. “A block from K-Ski’s house. It’s still pissing down rain. Jackson, there’s an umbrella under the seat.”
Jackson stared at him, soaking wet from his run down J Street. “Sure, Dad,” he said, some of his natural sarcasm slipping through.
Dex gave him a flat look. “Shut up and take the umbrella,” he snapped. “I can control very little about this situation, but you can take the goddamned umbrella.”
And Jackson remembered that Dex was , for all intents and purposes, a dad. He and his husband had been caring for Kane’s niece, Frances, for the last four years. They’d been doing teachers’ meetings and school presentations and juggling schedules to make sure that kid was the most beloved child in the state. And no, watching this kid, who had been so much like all of them at one point or another, be terrified for his life was not okay.
“Fine,” Jackson said, taking it, and then glaring at Henry’s brother. “It’s pink. It’s got pink fucking flamingos all over it. I’ll take it, but by God, I will find a way to make you pay for this.”
“I can live with that,” Dex muttered, and then Jackson took the umbrella and went trotting down the sidewalk.
Both Detective Sean Kryzynski and his boyfriend, Billy, answered the door in sweats and T-shirts, hair askew, eyes squinted against the light, after being awakened out of what Jackson hoped was a sound sleep. He assumed so—Billy was going to school and working as a manager at one of the retail places John and Dex owned, where they could funnel kids who’d made their movies and were ready to move on, and Sean was a police officer who, by definition, worked fifty or so hour workweeks.
At their feet, a small dachshund yipped until Billy bent down and scooped him up with an “Enough,” and then a spate of what might have been fearsome Spanish, but the dog kept staring at him with adoring eyes.
“Sorry,” Billy mumbled, smoothing the little dog’s fur. “Rivers, the fuck you doing here?”
Jackson swallowed, and Kryzynski’s cop sense kicked in. “What’s wrong?”
Jackson kept the explanation quick and to the point and watched as both men grew sober and attentive.
“I’ll call in for the week,” Sean said. “Can I tell Andre?”
Andre was Sean’s partner on the force, and Jackson nodded. “Yeah, that’s fine. But….” He paused and hoped Sean would fill in the rest.
“Nobody else on the force,” Sean said, understanding. “These women—they’ve got an ungodly amount of pull.”
“Nobody wants to piss off the big Papi ,” Billy said sourly. “I’m pretty sure he doesn’t give a shit if people are gay—enough of them buy John’s porn.”
Well, yes, sexual repression did breed hypocrisy, but they had to get past that tonight.
“Here’s the thing,” Jackson said softly. “If law enforcement gets their hands on this boy, the DA is going to need him to testify, and they’re going to keep him in custody, and guys… he’s terrified. I want to get to the bottom of this, and I really want to get the fucker who got Henry, but….” He swallowed. Kryzynski used to be a law-and-order man, down to his toes. But a year and a half in Jackson and Ellery’s circle had made him an ally—and the kind of man who could fall in love with Billy with his eyes wide open about Billy’s time as a sex worker. He’d grown a lot—and he had law enforcement ties and knew how to handle a weapon and defend people.
Had he grown enough?
“You want him to be safe first,” Sean said slowly. “I hear you. You’re right, Jackson—he probably will have to testify at some point, but until the police know who they’re looking for and what they’ll find, it will be best to keep him hidden.”
“I’ll do anything,” Billy said unhappily, “but are we just going to shove them in the house and tell them not to stick their faces out?”
Then Jackson gave them both a ragged grin and suggested what he’d been thinking ever since Dex said he and John would pay the tab.