by Elle Keaton
After clicking off the call he lay back against the pillows, hands tucked behind his head. Micah must have heard the conversation end, because he dared to venture back into the bedroom. Seeing Adam’s smile, he came and sat on the edge of the bed. Adam tugged him closer.
“Good news?”
“Yeah, the best kind. A case I was on before my dad died. Feels good.”
“The little girl? That’s amazing. I’m so glad.”
“You wanna know what else I’m glad for?” Adam asked, his voice husky.
“Hmmm, what?” Micah leaned into his good side.
“You.”
Fifty-Four
Adam seemed to be feeling decent. He’d started physical therapy and was now cleared for light activity, but no jogging or heavy lifting. The doctor was still slightly concerned about nerve damage. Yes, to non-strenuous sex, whatever the hell that was. Micah had done a mental fist pump at that.
Micah called Seth after the appointment asking him to meet them both at a coffee place on the other side of town. Not nearly as good as the Booking Room but maybe they would be able to talk. Seth sounded wary but agreed to meet. Micah could understand, Adam wasn’t the warmest person. He wanted this for Adam though, to have something like family. Micah wasn’t jealous of Seth; he would be horrified if a lost relative came out of the woodwork—his own family had been amazing. But Adam had never had that. And seemingly, Seth didn’t either. They could use one another.
Adam let himself be dragged to the coffee meet-up. God, he and Seth were so similar it was funny. Even though they hadn’t grown up in the same household, they were both hardheaded. Micah realized Adam wasn’t perfect, that he appeared cold and unemotionally unavailable. Micah also knew those characteristics hid the exact opposite: Adam felt deeply, often having a hard time expressing it. He was possessive and demanding; what he demanded of himself was even more brutal.
Adam and Seth awkwardly circled each other, making what passed for conversation. Each looking for a weakness. Micah didn’t know whether to scream in frustration, or laugh. When he laughed they looked at him like he was losing his marbles.
“Look, you guys. I thought this would be a way to get to know each other. Instead, the two of you are acting like feral cats shut in a cage about to rip each other’s throats out. I’m going outside, and when I come back I expect you”—he pointed at each of them in turn—“to know some personal facts about each other. What are your favorite movies? Something like that. I’ll be back in twenty minutes. No blood.”
Micah spent the time strolling along, kind of window-shopping. It was drizzling again, and not too many people were out on a Wednesday afternoon. He didn’t shop all that much and rarely came to this side of town. As he passed one of those real-estate outlets that had dozens of pictures of area houses for sale in the area plastered to its front window, he stopped in his tracks and stared. Someone following too closely behind stumbled into him. Micah was so caught up he didn’t even apologize for stopping. He heard a muttered curse as the guy moved past him.
He’d forgotten. Or never knew. Micah had thought, with all that had happened, that his eyes were wide open.
Matveev was Russian. Lots of Russians had immigrated to the Skagit area since the 1990s. They were almost surpassing the Dutch, who had been the largest immigrant population in the area for well over a hundred years. Like the Dutch, the Russian newcomers lived in their own insular neighborhoods. Several years ago, when the Oso tragedy struck, a large percentage of victims had been of Eastern European descent. They had all purchased cheap land and built houses together, directly in the path of a wobbly mountainside.
Adam and Seth looked at him with identical bewildered expressions when he rushed back into the coffee shop, nearly knocking over a chair as he sat down. He was damp with rain but didn’t bother taking his coat off.
“Are you trying to reenact how we met?” Adam asked. Micah felt his neck burning. Seth, the fucker, laughed.
***
An hour later, after Adam had tried (and failed) to send Seth home, he called Weir and they all met back at Micah’s house. Adam explained Micah’s theory about the abandoned new-home construction between Skagit and Mt. Baker. Construction that had been halted because it fell within the no-go zone set up by the federal government after half the mountain slid down. These houses had been nearly finished and weren’t touched by the landslide but were deemed too close for safety.
Weir booted up his laptop while more phone calls were made. Seth paced for a while, looking even more like Adam than usual, before finally stomping into the kitchen. When Micah heard pans banging together, he poked his head in to see what Seth was up to.
“I like to bake when I’m feeling stressed out,” Seth muttered. “I promise to clean up.”
Micah wondered more about Seth’s background. As far as Micah knew, Adam’s mother hadn’t known about Seth, but he would have been born after she returned to California. Gerald Klay certainly seemed to have had a penchant for emotionally unavailable women.
Later that afternoon they were all standing around in the frosty late December air, Weir and a few SkPD officers had agreed to look at the site. Micah’s logic was sound, and it looked like Matveev had ties to the construction company that had been building the houses. Adam, Seth, and Micah were ordered stay away from any possible action.
“I’m not willing to die to appease your curiosity, Klay. M would kill me, and I am sure he’s had special training,” Weir had said. “We will keep you as updated as we can. Do. Not. Move.” He’d left, slamming the flimsy door behind him.
Ten minutes later Adam stood, declaring that he couldn’t wait in the office, so now the three of them and some pimply assistant agent who had been left to babysit were standing around in the growing rain with their hands in their pockets, waiting.
The news was disappointing. Micah hadn’t necessarily been wrong, but he’d been too late.
There was evidence of occupation. Maybe it had been Matveev’s victims; maybe it had been squatters. Adam’s team had called in experts to comb through the detritus left by whoever had been there.
From what Weir said, it didn’t look like they had been gone long, so the team was hopeful it had been the victims and that their captors were trying to hide them elsewhere in the area. The problem was that they would only last as long as they were valuable. They needed to be found.
Micah thought about Jessica, Natalia Verdugo, and the other body—when had they been deemed no longer valuable?
“At this point,” Weir said, “they are still valuable; they must be. We need to look like we’re backing off so whoever is holding them doesn’t panic.” Weir seemed certain that the trafficking victims had been there. He was trying to play it safe, just in case.
“What about Bear? Doesn’t he know anything?” Micah had been wondering about the huge man. How lost he must feel in this land where he understood very little and had lost Perla, maybe the only thing he had known.
“Not talking much. He apparently speaks some little-known dialect of Ukrainian or Russian and very little English. The translator is having trouble understanding when he does speak.”
“Perla didn’t have any trouble. They communicated. I mean, I had no idea what they were saying, but they weren’t talking slowly or anything,” Micah said. Perla was still unconscious from a head injury. Doctors were confounded; she had been in a coma since she arrived at the hospital.
“Also, he’s in a weird limbo because he has no papers, no identity. At this point he is under protection, but we don’t know how long that will last,” Weir added.
“I know I shouldn’t ask, but what about Parks?”
Weir looked over at Adam, who was deep in conversation with Seth. He sighed.
“Parks was very low on the chain of command. He has probably—probably—told us all he knows. He and Natalia Verdugo mostly groomed the kids, using their power in the community to prep the ‘desirable’ ones for Matveev and his sickos. Once they went t
o Matveev it sounds like he didn’t know.”
“Or didn’t want to know,” Micah replied.
“Yeah, that.”
“What a piece of shit.”
“That, too. He won’t last long inside.”
Micah shivered. He’d watched enough TV to know that Nathan Parks was going to be in solitary confinement or dead. Maybe dead regardless.
He felt, more than heard, Adam come up behind him. When Adam’s warm hand fell onto Micah’s neck, Micah leaned back into his chest.
Emotion flashed across Weir’s face. Sadness? Envy? It had been so quick Micah couldn’t be sure.
Whatever Weir was feeling, it didn’t matter, because Adam was Micah’s. Micah was pretty damn sure about that.
Seth and Weir left the parking lot in Weir’s rental car. Adam and Micah drove the opposite direction in Adam’s SUV, Micah at the wheel. Micah wondered if now was the time to bring up their relationship. He felt like such a girl. Which was a misogynistic thing to think. He was sure Sara didn’t spend her days whining about men, wondering what the hell they were thinking. Hell, no. That woman would flat-out ask.
Adam twisted in his seat so he was facing Micah as he drove down the dark, wet street.
“Ready to go home?” he asked.
“Home where?”
“Where do you think?”
“This is home? I thought you only came to put your ghosts to rest?”
“Yeah. It was a ghost town. But now it’s home.”
“Home.” Micah smiled.
“Yeah.” Adam smiled back, the brilliant smile that brought out his dimple. “Better hurry, or you’re going to have to pull over before we get there.”
THE END.
