Chapter 20
twenty
LOGAN
Being Emmy’s Daddy has given me what my mum used to call “me old mam hearing.” Small sounds, quiet breathing, light footsteps—before Emily, I’d have ignored them and gone back to sleep. Now, they put me on high alert.
I’m dozing on my cot when me-old-mam hearing jerks me awake. I lay still and listen.
As I do, Max’s voice crackles in my ear. “Lo, Mac, I’ve got a new signal. Lots of distortion. Could be in the vents.”
I roll out of bed. I take my taser out of my bag before grabbing the ladder and setting it up under the vent.
I have no chance of chasing Joker’s B through the vents.
I doubt I could even get both arms into that small square.
I don’t like doing it, particularly if Joker’s B really is a teen but I need to scare the beejeezus out of them and make them come out of the vents.
The tiniest pop of metal and the softest sliding sound gives me a few seconds of warning. I crouch at the top of the ladder, keeping my body to one side, so Joker’s B won’t see me until they look down into the room from the vent.
I glance down at Mac. He’s lying still, one arm behind his head but his eyes are open and he’s got his gun in its holster resting on his chest.
I don’t have to tell him not to fire. Mac’s judgment is sounder than my own.
I also really do not want to tase someone in an enclosed metal space. Here’s hoping the threat is enough.
Another tiny pop and a head of dark, thick hair appears in the open vent. Brown eyes in a black mask widen as they meet mine.
“Move and I’ll tase you,” I warn.
“Eep,” says the masked bandit in the vent.
It is a kid. Long, dark hair hangs around the kid’s face. Hard to tell if it’s a boy or a girl, given the length boys wear their hair these days but the compact face with rounded cheeks and unlined skin below the mask tells the tale.
I hold my free hand up into the vent. “Take my hand. I’m going to pull you out. Fight me and I’ll break your wrist, then tase you.”
“Muh-master Logan?” the kid squeaks.
“Don’t call me master. Take my hand.”
“Cuh-can we talk about this?”
“Yep, we can talk a fucking lot about this. Once you’re out of the vent.”
“You’re scaring me,” the kid whispers.
Fuck.
“Come out of the vent. Nothing bad will happen to you.”
The kid’s eyes narrow. “That’s a lie.”
“No, it’s not. I’m not a liar.”
“Promise,” the kid insists. “Promise nothing bad will happen to me.”
“Lo—” Mac says, his voice low and warning.
I know he’s right. I’m overpromising. But this is a scared kid.
“I promise nothing bad will happen to you,” I say. “Take my hand.”
A small hand slips out of the vent and grasps mine.
With a lot of maneuvering that includes Mac standing under the vent and helping catch the kid as she decants herself—yes, herself: small curves under a sweatshirt that’s a size or two too small for her—out of the HVAC system, we all end up standing, dusty and the worse for wear, in the middle of Sacrum’s kitchen.
The kid wraps skinny arms around herself. Under the dust, she’s tattered. Her hair’s unevenly cut and frizzy. The thin sweatshirt shows too much skin at her wrists and above the waistband of her worn jeans. A faded red sock pokes through a hole in the toe of her sneakers.
“Take off the mask,” Mac commands.
Meekly, she pulls it off. As she does, I realize it’s one of the club’s blindfolds with holes sawed out for the eyes.
She’s . . . cute. And probably all of thirteen.
Mac curses quietly. “How old are you?”
“Almost sixteen.”
Yeah, in like three years.
“Logan promised nothing bad would happen to you but I did not,” Mac says, enunciating each word. “Don’t lie to us.”
She shivers and hugs herself tighter. “I’m not. My birthday’s in May.”
“Your sixteenth birthday’s in May?” Mac presses.
The girl nods.
“What’s your name?” I ask more gently. Guess I’m playing good cop.
“My club name’s Truly. True to my . . . friends.”
I think Mac growls “ironic” under his breath but I ignore him.
“You’re too young to have a club name,” I say. “What’s your real name?”
The girl shakes her head. “Truly’s the name I’ve picked for myself. It’s the name inside me. If I tell you my outside name, you’ll turn me over to child protection. I’m not going back there.”
I glance at Mac. He looks back at me.
I sigh.
“You can’t keep breaking into the club,” I begin.
“Why not?” she flares suddenly. “I haven’t taken anything anyone will really miss. Just what I needed to survive. I’m not hurting anyone. I haven’t damaged anything. I won’t. I’m not like that. I just want a safe place.”
I start to say Sacrum isn’t a safe place but of course, that’s exactly what we want it to be.
Every sign, every flyer posted around the club talks about safety, consent, risk-awareness.
As soon as she stepped through the door, or climbed through the vent, she was surrounded by indications this place would keep her safe.
“The club could be closed down if anyone found out a minor was inside,” I say instead. And then a really awful thought hits me. “You said your friends call you True. Do you have any friends here? In the club? Have you been meeting anyone here?”
If she says “yes” and I find out one of the club members has been grooming this kid, I’m going to puke, and then kill them.
She shakes her head. “I heard about it at school, from some seniors who came. They said they tried things and it was safe and there were monitors and everyone was cool. They said the sandwiches were good afterward. I just wanted a safe place. And the sandwiches are good.”
Thank goodness for small mercies.
“I’m sorry, you can’t keep coming here. We’ll . . . we’ll find you another safe place.”
“Lo,” Mac grumbles, shaking his head.
“Come on, Mac. We can’t leave her here.”
“We can’t take her with us. What are you going to do, let her sleep on our couch tonight? You can’t. She’s a minor and you’re not a foster.”
Damn.
I rub the back of my neck, praying for divine inspiration.
A spark ignites and I pull out my phone. Tapping up my Blunts contact list, I thumb a number that I’ve called more lately than I want to but less than I should have, given our last interaction, which was decidedly unfriendly.
“Someone better have died,” Theo answers with a groan on the third ring.
“Sorry to call in the middle of the night, mate,” I say. “I have a situation at Sacrum. The thief’s a fifteen-year-old girl. She says she has no safe place to go. What do I do?”
“Call Jersey’s Division of Child Protection and Permanency.”
True bristles and opens her mouth. I hold up a hand. “What else do I do?”
“Lo, fucking motherfuck, it’s three in the morning.”
“I know what time it is. I also know I have a fifteen-year-old kid here with no safe place to go. You’re the cop. Tell me what to do.”
“I’ll tell you what you don’t do. You don’t take her home, because I know that’s what you’re thinking. Don’t do it. The kid cries rape or abuse and you’re fucked.”
“I wouldn’t!” True protests.
I hold up my hand again and add a glare.
Theo grumbles. “You need someone who’s an emergency foster or law enforcement to take her for the rest of the night. In Jersey. You can’t bring her to New York tonight.”
“Mac and I figured that already,” I tell Theo.
Mac grunts and takes out his own phone. With both of us occupied, True’s eyes flick toward the door.
I hold up my taser.
She scowls.
“Then you call Franco,” Theo says. “Wake him up at your fucking peril. Tell him you need to file an emergency application for the protection of a minor. The kid will have to give a statement. There will be a hearing. If you haven’t figured out somewhere for the kid to go, I’m warning you, child protection will put her in whatever placement they have.
Jersey’s child welfare department was one of the worst in the nation.
It’s improved but last I heard, they were still under oversight of a federal court monitor because the problems are so severe. Keep your expectations low.”
“Okay. If I needed you to call in a favor over the state line, could you?”
Theo swears colorfully. “Are you serious? You owe me after that bullshit with Brenna and those bikers.”
“Keep your mind off my sub,” Mac grumbles, as he types into his phone.
True’s eyes track away from the door and settle on Mac. Is that . . . hero worship in her big brown eyes?
Theo huffs.
“Theo,” I say, to refocus him. “This is a minor who does not have a safe place to go. A kid who has been breaking into Sacrum because she felt it was safe. Are you hearing me?”
I leave Emmy and Brenna’s belief that she’s a submissive unspoken but strongly implied.
Theo swears some more. “You owe me a hundred goddamn dinners at the Trattoria for this, you emotionally-blackmailing asshole. I know someone in the Jersey DA’s office. I’ll call her when her office opens.”
“Thank you, Theo.”
“Don’t get your hopes up.”
I wink at True. “We won’t.”
She smiles shyly.
“Oh, and call Maude,” Theo says.
I know Maude’s a nurse, well, former nursing administrator but I don’t see how calling her could help. “Okay. Why?”
“Because she’s a member at large for the Communication Workers of America. That’s the union for social workers in Jersey. You want to pull strings for this kid? No one can pull more strings than that woman.”
I chuckle at the image of us all dancing like marionettes at the end of Maude’s strings. On second thought, there might be more truth in that image than is comfortable. “Thanks. I will.”
“Good night. What’s left of it,” Theo grumps. “I’ll set my alarm and make that call first thing. Keep your phone on.”
“Always do. Sincerely, Theo, thanks.”
“You’re welcome. Don’t call me in the middle of the night again unless someone’s dying. Preferably you.”
I chuckle and say goodbye.
Mac continues to type into his phone without looking up. “I think I might have a solution for tonight.”
I don’t question him, because if Mac says he has a solution, he has a solution. But I didn’t know he knew anyone in Jersey.