39. Mason
39
MASON
“ Y ou have a plan?” Channing asked as we left my house.
“Right now, you’re driving so I don’t do something stupid, like follow him to his house and beat the shit out of him.” I glanced his way. “Did you put the tracker on them?”
Channing raised an eyebrow, looking relaxed as he drove, but I knew he wasn’t. After my confrontation with Phillip Moreaux, I’d left the school knowing I’d find whatever this shed was that he’d mentioned to those kids.
Channing hit the turn signal, pulling up to a new neighborhood, and he paused outside the first gate. He put in the code Broudou had given us, and we pulled through, going on up to his house.
Brett had fallen in step with me when we left. “ I know you’re going to do something ,” he’d said. “ I’m in .”
“Your intel said Moreaux tends to be the driver,” Channing told me. “So I put it under his very sweet vehicle.”
“There’s like twenty vehicles at that house.”
Shortly after we stopped, Brett came out, also wearing all black.
The door opened, and Brett started to get in, but stopped.
There wasn’t enough room.
Channing hid a grin. “In the back, buddy.”
Brett fixed him with a look but grunted before closing the door and jumping into the back.
Channing whistled. “You two. Both fucking athletic freaks.”
Brett knocked on the window with his knuckles.
Channing reached back to slide it open as he pulled out of the driveway. “How is it back there? All comfy?”
Brett glowered. “Don’t tempt me to stomp you into the ground, Monroe.”
Channing laughed. He swung the wheel around, and once the gate lifted, we were out of that neighborhood. “Not my fault you’re a giant motherfucker.”
Brett shook his head.
“Also,” Channing said to me. “I saw all the vehicles, and I put trackers on all of them.” He handed over his phone with his tracking app open. “We’re going to follow the dot that moves.”
“Thanks, genius.”
Brett started laughing.
The sound was shocking, but infectious at the same time.
I hid a grin while Channing quipped, “You have a sense of humor, Broudou? Learn new shit every day, huh?”
The laughing stopped. “Be a smart idea for you not to forget the newest member of my family,” Brett countered. Then he smiled. Widely.
Channing swore under his breath.
I started laughing. That was funny.
One of the dots was on the move, and I relayed the directions to Channing. As we were leaving town, my phone started ringing. Pulling it out, I cursed. My brother. This time of night, he was calling for a reason, but I couldn’t talk. I slid my thumb over the screen, accepting the call and put him on speaker, “It’s not a good time right now. Everything okay with you?”
He was quiet for a beat. “What?”
I sighed. “You’re on speaker. Channing and Brett are here. We’re following those kids that had the party we crashed.”
“ What? ”
Channing shook his head as Brett started chuckling in the back.
“Why are you calling?” I asked. “It’s late—really late where you are.”
“Are you seriously going to not fill me in on whatever the fuck you’re doing?”
“Logan,” I grated. “Why are you calling?”
“But—”
“You first.”
“Fine,” he grumbled. “I’m calling to let you know I got the call. You’re right. Moreaux is making a move, but he’s not waiting for Monday morning. He’s making it tonight.”
“Tonight?” I snarled into the phone.
“Meeting is set for five a.m. your time. I booked a flight.”
A feminine voice spoke in the background. Logan paused to reply to her, then returned to the phone. “Taylor’s taking me to the airport now. It’ll be tight. You’ll need to stall at the meeting. Now, fill me in on your end.”
This fucking guy . After I told Logan about our showdown at the football game, he cursed. “You’re following him now?”
“We’re following his kid.”
“You think he’s still going to do whatever he does to these kids tonight?”
I remembered the burning rage in Moreaux’s eyes before we parted ways. “I think he’s going to need a target for his anger. There’s no way I’m going to let this go. If he’s hurting these kids, I might kill him.”
I felt the attention from the other guys. Channing glanced over, but this wasn’t surprising to him. Brett, though. I was letting him see the real me. Looking in the rearview mirror, I met his gaze and saw the surprise, but there was also a deeper and darker emotion there. Understanding. And if I was reading him correctly, he was right there with me.
“No one let my brother kill this piece of shit,” Logan snarled into the phone. “At least not until I get there. I can set him up better than you would. Or at the least, connect him with someone who does this type of bad shit on a regular basis, you know? Could we direct your new friend whose name rhymes with bye and whose last name rhymes with Senate after him?”
Brett motioned to the phone. “They’re slowing down.”
We were coming up to a gravel road in the country. Channing turned, hitting his lights.
I held my phone closer. “We gotta go. Get your ass here.”
“Will do. I mean that on the murdering front. Don’t. Okay? Other than that, be safe and smart. Love you.”
“Love you.” I ended the call.
“They stopped,” Channing said quietly.
We were rolling up to a giant warehouse, but there were no vehicles parked out front.
“Okay. Phones on silent,” Channing ordered. “Not vibrate. Silent. Keep them in your pockets just in case. Mason.”
“What?”
He motioned to my feet. “There’s a bag of ski-masks. Pull them out. Put them on. Do you both want a gun?”
He thought we’d need them? I shared a look with Broudou but shook my head. “I can’t. I don’t trust myself. If I go after Moreaux, it’ll be with my fists. That way, you’ll have time to pull me off if needed.”
I felt their gazes again, but I couldn’t focus on that. When Maddy told me more about these three boys, I kept track of what she was saying and what she wasn’t saying. I picked up things my little girl wasn’t noticing, like that I’d been right in my first assessment. This kid lived in a giant fucking house by himself. There was no other place they hung out. It was that house and only that house, and the father was never there. It was worse than I thought. I assumed there was contact between the kid and his dad, but there was nothing. There was no check-in. No visits. No phone calls from the mom or the dad. The way she was talking, the only time Beltraine saw his dad was when he “messed up.” That was the wording she used, which meant that was the wording he used. Which meant this kid was only punished when he saw his dad.
The kid was neglected and there was abuse.
She talked about his cousin, the Manning kid, and his sister. She didn’t know where the sister went to school and had been told not to ask, which made me think a whole host of bad things. Axel’s parents were a little more involved with his life. They were shareholders, but I didn’t have any other context to get a read on that couple. They were quiet in the meetings. Moreaux sat next to the wife, and I had no idea if the father had a clue about their affair. Everything I’d told Phillip Moreaux was verified information from my private investigator. But if I didn’t get to them before the meeting, Moreaux could pull it off. No doubt he rescheduled the meeting because of my threat.
Logan and my PI had combed through the video we took of inside that house. The computer files were what Lael had been the most interested in, but she said it wasn’t likely he would keep anything super damning on that computer. The worst we had on him were the drugs at the party. Logan hadn’t wanted to catch the sexual acts on his phone so he pointed it at their feet. That was useless.
The PI suggested a route we could take, considering the ages of the kids in that basement, but that would fuck up their lives. I wasn’t going to do that.
According to Maddy, Beltraine wasn’t that bad of a guy. His friends either.
I was not a father like mine had been. If I knew a kid was being neglected or hurt, I was wading in. I didn’t give a fuck about the blowback. I’d take it all.
Sorry, Dad. You made things okay at the end, but I learned what not to be from you.
Channing rolled the truck to a stop farther down, by a field. It’d be missed at first glance.
“You guys ready?” he asked.
Brett and I both nodded. Ski-masks on.
Let’s do this.