18. Bane
CHAPTER 18
BANE
U ntil the family has been informed. The sound of my voice ricocheted inside my head like a pinball machine mocking me. If I’d learned anything since those guys were brought in, it was that they had no family. There was no one waiting for them at night. No one was searching for them. They have no one, which made sense when you were running a trafficking operation. You didn’t want people with attachments or dependants. Black Dahlia was smart, and this latest incident proved it beyond doubt.
“You doing okay over there?” The sound of Montoya’s voice was a welcome reprieve from the thoughts spiraling in my mind.
“Yeah.” I scrubbed my hand down my face before settling it onto the steering wheel. “Just…fuck. This case is turning into a shitshow.”
“You said it,” she muttered. “Are you going to let your boy know it was one of his friends?”
“I. Umm…”
“It’s better to come from you than to hear about it on the news. Especially when you’re not there to support him.” Her words landed with the precision of a sniper. The smirk that lifted her lips when I glared at her in the passenger seat said everything.
I expelled a labored breath. “It’s not that easy.” My fingers flexed around the leather, my knuckles bleeding white.
“Sure it is. Unless…” She hummed thoughtfully, finger tapping her bottom lip in the periphery of my vision. “Unless, your bad mood this morning was because you fucked up with him?” My body tensed until the tendons in my neck were strained. “What did you do?” The weight of her accusing gaze made me feel like I was drowning.
“Now is not the time.” I gritted my jaw, teeth clenched so hard they practically ground to dust. “We have to stay focused on the job?—”
“Like you are?” she snarked. “You’re a mess, Benson. I’ve never seen you in such a state in all the years I’ve known you.” I rolled my eyes, then focused on the road as we crossed town back toward the station. “Call him when we get back, then we’ll talk it through tonight when you buy me pizza.”
If only everything in life could be solved by food. “Deal.” Even as the word left my lips, I knew I’d be taking the coward’s way out. There was no way River would answer, even if I called. I might have ruined things between us, but I wasn’t a complete idiot. Are you sure about that?
The rest of the drive passed in strained silence, both of us lost in thought about the atrocity we’d witnessed and what repercussions it would have on the case. The death of River’s friend felt like a warning, one we couldn’t ignore. But we couldn’t allow it to derail everything we were working on. Bringing down this ring and saving thousands outweighed the loss of a few casualties. That wasn’t to say I didn’t value human life, because I did. I lived to serve and protect, but we all knew innocents were a casualty of war. They had drawn the first blood, and I just had to hope we would spill the last.
“Call him now,” Montoya urged, as I turned the ignition off and pushed my head back into the headrest. My eyes shuttered closed as an ache throbbed in my temples. “Take as long as you need. I’m going to check in with Jenkinson and see where we are with the CCTV footage. I just hope Dixon is out, because I can’t deal with that asshole today.”
I grunted in acknowledgement as she squeezed my arm in solidarity.
“It can’t be as bad as you imagine, big guy. Pull up your big boy panties and speak to him.” The car door slammed shut, leaving me alone with myself, which was the worst damn place because it allowed my mind to wander and my heart to take control. I wanted to say fuck it and drive home. Kick the door down, wrap River in my arms, and take him far, far away from here. I wanted to protect him from this cruel, fucked-up world and keep him safe.
Reality was a cold bitch, because I was far too late to do any of that. Releasing a stuttering exhale, I pulled my phone out of my pocket. My thumb hovered over his number, the green phone icon taunting me, goddamned laughing at me for being too weak to risk hearing his voice. “Shit!” I smacked my head against the steering wheel, feeling so messed up and weak. Tremors ran down my arms as indecision warred within me. Do the right thing. Even my conscience knew what I should do.
Ignoring it, I typed out a quick message instead.
Just checking in to make sure you’re ok.
I don’t know how long I sat there staring at the screen, but by the time I’d blinked back to reality, the screen was black and locked. Tapping it to bring it to life, I prayed I’d see a message icon, but there was nothing. Clicking into our chat, nothing. Not even a read receipt. Call him! But I couldn’t. Instead, I checked the tracker app and saw he was still safely tucked away in his room. That would have to be enough for now. I needed to remain focused on my job.
My obsession with my broken angel would have to wait.
“All good?” Montoya asked as I pulled my chair from my desk and sat on it backwards next to her.
“Yup.” I glanced at the grainy CCTV footage on her screen. “Are those the docks?”
“Yeah, from three days ago. I’ve been working backward from today and other than the guy who found our vic, there’s been nothing untoward. I’ve crosschecked the comings and goings of everyone that’s shown up against the shipping logs, and it all matches up. No one else has been near that area.”
I mulled her words over as I signaled Jenkins for a coffee by holding an empty mug in the air. The guy looked wrecked, but nodded as he headed to the kitchen. “What was the guy who found the vic doing there?”
Montoya snorted. “He went for a piss.” She scrolled through the footage to show him walking down there, unbuttoning his pants. “Only advantage to being a guy as I see it.” I arched my brow at her in question. “The ability to piss wherever you want.”
“Mmm.”
“You all have an advantage on a stakeout. You can just whip it out and go in a bottle, whereas I need to get cover in, so I can go to the local store.” She rolled her eyes at me. I’d never thought about it like that, the disadvantages women faced.
Brushing it off, I asked, “Has he been contacted for an interview?”
“Yeah, James Michaels will be in once his boat comes back in. Jenkins took preliminary notes from him first thing.”
It struck me as odd how the guy could go about his day as if he hadn’t witnessed something horrific. Maybe he hadn’t gotten a good look at what was in there, or perhaps the stale scent of blood was enough to send him packing. We didn’t know now, but we would. Soon.
“Alright, let’s do a full background search on him to see if there’s any way he could be linked to Black Dahlia. Something?—”
“Smells fishy?” She grinned. “I know. It’s all a little too convenient, isn’t it? We finally get the identity of the real Dahlia, and then one of the guys we brought in turns up dead. Doesn’t take a genius to put it all together.”
The day passed slower than molasses, and every minute made the ache in my splintered heart grow larger until it was all I could think about. River was at the forefront of my every thought, no matter how hard I tried to push it down. It turned out James Michaels was a twenty-year-old who’d been working part time for his uncle while attending a university, where he was studying computer science. His mother’s health insurance didn’t cover the full treatment she needed for her quickly advancing multiple sclerosis, so he took on an extra job to help pay for it. The kid was badly shaken up, even though he admitted to only glancing in the container before he called us. The station kept a list of therapists for situations like these, so Montoya referred him to one. Mental health still held a lot of stigma, but Montoya and I were leading the force by providing it for witnesses.
Once we’d concluded his interview, which only served to waste an hour and a half of our time, Daniel called to officially confirm our vic was Max Woolf. My heart sank at the confirmation, even though I already knew it was one of River’s friends. We then spent the rest of the day trawling through reams of CCTV footage of the docks and surrounding areas from the last ten days to see if there were any unusual patterns or individuals that cropped up, but nothing changed. The ebb and flow of people stayed the same until James stumbled into the container this morning.
My eyes felt like they were bleeding. Everything seemed to be made of little black and white blocks. No matter how many times I blinked, my vision didn’t clear, and it only served to aggravate the pounding in my head. “Have you submitted that report to Bower?” I asked Montoya as I leaned back in my chair and stretched my arms over my head, trying to alleviate some of the tension in my shoulders.
“Yup, all done. I could use a stiff drink after today,” she said, signing out of her computer and spinning around to look over my shoulder. “I thought doctors were meant to have the worst handwriting?”
I snorted as I stared at the dockmaster’s shipping logs. “Whoever they are clearly haven’t met fishermen.”
“Come on, up.”
“Ow! What the hell?” I rubbed the back of my head where she’d slapped me. “What was that for?”
“You owe me a drink and pizza.” She pushed up from her chair and kicked it under her desk with a bang.
I pointed at my screen. “Got too much to do, Montoya. Raincheck?”
“Hell no, big guy. You can’t get out of this. Don’t promise a girl food, then take it away. That’s when you get the teeth. Meet you out back in ten.”
“Fine. Fine.” I sighed and rolled my neck as she stomped off with our dirty mugs. The tightness building in my muscles all day hadn’t abated. If anything, it had only increased with every hour that had passed that I hadn’t heard from River. I picked up my phone and swallowed my pride to call him, but the damn thing went straight to voicemail.
A little hole in the wall on the west side served the best pizza in Holme Oaks, run by a small Italian family that had been here for three generations. They also made the cheesiest Alfredo pizza, and Montoya was a slave to her taste buds. Apparently, as her pseudo big brother, it was my responsibility to feed her. I was working on the assumption that as long as her mouth was full of the cheesy goodness, she couldn’t fire questions at me.
“So…” My stomach dropped at the weight of that one word. “What happened this morning?” She pinned me with her dark eyes and crossed her arms over her chest. The don’t fuck with me attitude radiating off her even had the servers taking a different route to get to customers.
I tipped my head back and swallowed down a few mouthfuls of beer, trying to come up with anything but the truth. Unfortunately for me, my mind was blank. “I fucked up,” I said simply.
“Well, duh! But how?”
“That’s not a simple question.” I spun the now empty bottle between my fingers.
“Jacob Benson.” I jolted at being full named, my back ramrod straight as I sat to attention. “You can’t stew like this.” She waved her hand at me. “Whatever happened is eating you up inside, and it’s going to affect your ability to do your job. If it isn’t already.” She muttered the last part around another oozing slice. “If we were paper pushers, I’d leave you to figure it out by yourself, but we’re not. Our job is life or death. One wrong decision…one wrong call…” She dragged her finger over her neck.
“I know, I know.” I huffed a breath and shook out my hands, not knowing what to do with them as my palms slickened. I rubbed them against my thighs and chewed on my lip as my heart thundered in my ears.
“Hey.” Montoya flagged down a server. “Can we grab a couple more bottles, please?” She flashed the young guy a beatific smile, and he all but melted under her gaze before scurrying away to get our drinks.
“You’re evil,” I joked.
Her lips curved in a smirk. “I know.” She waved me off. “Stop trying to distract me. Talk!”
“I crossed a line…” When my voice trailed off as images of my dream/reality flitted through my mind, she cleared her throat and rolled her hand to get me to continue. “We kissed?—”
“Oh, fuck me.” Montoya slammed her hand down on the table and belted a laugh. “Is that all? I thought you were going to say you fucked him.”
I sat there silently and felt the color drain from my face. Her eyes widened as my expression registered with her.
“You didn’t fuck him, did you?” Her voice dropped to a fractured whisper. “Benson, what the hell?!” Disbelief washed over her features.
“No. No, I didn’t. I…it’s…” The heels of my hands dug into my eyes. “It’s complicated.”
“Well, uncomplicate it for me, because I’m struggling to understand how it’s anything other than black and white here. You know right and wrong? You have a vulnerable adult who’s suffered abuse for years and you… fucked him?”
“No. I didn’t.”
“But you said!”
“No.” I shook my head vehemently. “I said I crossed a line. He did… he was the one… God, why is this so damn hard?” I threw up my hands as frustration riddled through me.
“Let’s simplify it, yeah? Start at the beginning.”
I mulled over her words but didn’t break eye contact with her as hers bored into my soul. I was just lost, trapped between right and wrong. My life was quickly becoming a car crash, drawn to the one guy I really shouldn’t be, but felt this irrefutable connection to. It was tenuous at best. It thickened the air between us and made it alive with electricity that covered my skin and sunk its claws into me.
River was an amalgamation of every one of my deepest fantasies plucked right out of my head. Maybe they’d been molded by the time we spent together when we were younger and I was discovering my sexuality. Dark hair, deep hypnotic green eyes, and the face of an angel. Even though he’d survived atrocities that had stripped him of his humanity, he still shone brighter than the sun.
My fingers itched with the need to feel his soft skin under mine. To map out every scar that he wore like a warrior. I’d never known someone as strong as River. His suffering was an intrinsic part of him, but I would lavish him with my love for the rest of his life if it meant he granted me a second of his time. A moment in his life.
I cleared my throat and sat back in my chair, splaying my legs under the table. Montoya raised her brow at me, eyes dipping down to her watch, then back to me. “I knew him when I was younger, as you know.” She nodded. “The two years I spent with him in foster care were not great because I was reeling from the loss of my family and being an orphan. But River became the foundation that held me up. He became my home, I guess you could say. He was nonverbal when I arrived, but he shadowed me, kind of like he was seeking shelter being around me because I was big enough to protect him when no one else would. And from there, we formed a bond that has stayed with me all these years.”
“I see, but that doesn’t explain… this.”
Cool beer slipped down my throat, washing away the tightness I felt as my words started to flow. “When I saw him in the interview room, it was like I’d been struck with a wrecking ball. Every memory from that time came flooding back until I felt like I was drowning. I couldn’t understand how the broken boy I’d known was sitting before me like a ruin. The spark I’d nurtured in him over those two years was extinguished. And do you know what my first instinct was?”
Montoya blinked at me through her lashes. “No?”
I shook my head, a rueful smile curling my lips. “I wanted to run to him and wrap him in my arms. I wanted to kill anyone who had dared to hurt him. I wanted to burn the world down and remake it into one worthy of him.” I sucked in a shuddering breath, tears pricked the back of my eyes like razor blades. “I felt like a failure, and it made me hate myself. Do you know why I signed up to the academy?”
“Because you wanted to make the world a better place? You’ve always been an idealist.”
“Yeah, I guess that’s it, in a sense. I wanted to get justice for people who were killed like my family, but I also wanted to make sure innocent children like River were not subjected to the type of life he’d led?—”
“And when you saw him, you took it as a personal failure?” She reached forward and took my hand in hers. “But you didn’t know, big guy,” Montoya said softly.
“You’re right, I didn’t. But I could have found him. I could have tried harder after I’d spoken to Mrs. Wilkinson, the lady who fostered us, but I didn’t. My arrogance left me secure enough to believe a system I knew failed kids every day was enough for him.”
“That wasn’t your fault. Neither is it that you guys kissed. There’s history between you, and you’re a caretaker, a bleeding heart. Whatever happened can’t have been that bad.”
Unfairly comforted by her words, I continued, “You know how I’ve only had a few relationships in all the time we’ve known each other?” Montoya made a noise of affirmation in the back of her throat. “After doing some research, I discovered I was demi. They never worked out, because I didn’t have a connection with them.”
“Right, that I can totally understand. You could have told me, you know. I wouldn’t have pressured you into letting off steam and hooking up like I have.”
“I didn’t say that to make you feel bad.” I rolled my bottom lip between my teeth. “I just wanted to help you understand that being around River has been like nothing I’ve ever felt. Initially, I thought it was our childhood friendship reestablishing itself into something stronger. But over the weeks, it’s like he’s become my sun, and I’m orbiting around him, drawn to him on a cellular level but never able to get close enough. To be honest, it’s been a total mindfuck, because I know he’s vulnerable physically and emotionally. That he’s been taken advantage of and used like a disposable toy.”
Tears built along my lash line, and I blinked furiously to keep them at bay, but it was a losing battle.
“The need to protect and care for him has become a necessity. A need. He is the air I need to function. Over time, he’s started to let me in, allowing me to see behind his walls. With each glimpse, I feel like I’ve become Icarus. I don’t care if I get burned; I want him.” I licked my dry lips, tasting the salt of my tears, and swiping them away with the back of my hand as my emotions poured out of me. “I took him for a ride on my bike, because I could see it in his eyes that the walls were closing in on him and his mind was splintering. I told him he was free, but I was keeping him caged under lock and key. He needed to breathe, to feel alive and…and that’s when we kissed. I’m not sure who initiated it, but I freaked out after that. It was like the barriers in my mind were crushed under every pass of his tips. His taste lives rent free on my tongue, and it’s ignited insatiable dreams?—”
“Oh, no.” Montoya hid her face behind her hands. “I think I can guess where this is going.”
“Last night, I dreamed we came back from the lake. His clothes were drenched, and I pushed him against the garage door and stripped him?—”
“Ahh. La la la la. I don’t need all the details.” She peeked through her fingers. “Even though I kind of do.”
I smirked. “The dream felt so real. The silkiness of his hair, the intensity of his mouth.” I cleared my throat, my eyes darting around to make sure no one was paying us any attention. “It was unlike anything I’d ever experienced. The goddamn intensity of it… I could feel my orgasm barreling through me, and then I opened my eyes, and fuck.” My fist crashed onto the table, making our empty bottles topple over. “And there he was, working me over. Before I could say anything, I shot my load down his throat.”
“Oh shit. Then what did you do?” It was like she was sitting there eating popcorn, listening to the best story of her life.
“You’re enjoying this, aren’t you?”
Montoya nodded readily, her lips lifted in a taunting smile. “It’s nice to watch Mr. Perfect fall off his saintly pedestal.”
“When I came too, I freaked out. I told him it was a fucking mistake, and then you called. He was kneeling on my b-bed with tears staining his face, and I couldn’t look at him. I felt like a monster. I was abhorred with myself. It still feels like I somehow manipulated him into doing it.” I shrugged and buried my face in my hands as shame and guilt washed over me. A chair scraped loudly against the floor nearby, and I jolted when a hand landed on the back of my neck, Montoya’s coffee caramel scent washing over me. She squeezed until her nails bit into my skin, and I raised my head to look at her, feeling like I was in the burning tundras of hell.
Sorrow lined her face, deep lines at the corners of her eyes. “I can’t say why he was there, but if he felt safe with you, Benson, your words and actions would have cut him deeply. You can’t take back what you did, even though I’m certain you wish you could.”
“I do.” The whispered words were wrenched from the depths of my soul. “I never meant to hurt him.”
“Shh. I know. I know.” Her soft words were a comfort I didn’t deserve. “But you have to make this right. When you get home, explain it all to him. That you weren’t disgusted with him, but yourself. That you felt like you took advantage of him even if you didn’t initiate anything.”
“What if he won’t open his door to me?” I asked brokenly.
“Then you write him a letter, not a text. You tell him everything.” I blinked at her through hazy eyes. “Don’t just explain your actions, but tell him how you feel, like you did with me. If he’s the guy you think he is, he’ll listen, even if it takes time.”
“Should I tell Bower?” My heart stuttered in my chest, constricted by fear that I might lose River before I even got a chance to make things right. “Honestly, as your partner, I would say yes.”
My head thunked on the table as reality smacked into me. “But as my friend?”
Montoya snorted. “I’d tell you to go get your guy. But just know that a real relationship between you might not be possible. That boy is psychologically damaged, so you need to be very careful. If, and this is a big if… anything happened between you, he has to be the one to initiate it. He has to want it. Understand?”
“Yeah,” I breathed. “I understand. I-I just want to show him how special he really is. I… I think I…” Love him. I didn’t need to say the words, my feelings were etched into every line of my face.
“Yeah, big guy, I think you do.”