Leap of Faith (Iris Boys Book 3)

by Lucy Smoke

  Texas returned with a broom and dustpan. "It's his arm," he offered, bending down to sweep several larger bits into the pan. "Looks like a previous knife wound."

  "Knife wound?" I asked, but Texas was already heading back to the kitchen to dump his load. I sighed and turned to Grayson. "You're going to have to let him out of the handcuffs in order for me to look at him."

  Marv looked to Grayson. "Can we trust him?"

  Grayson continued to stare at his brother before nodding. "Yeah, he knows if he hurts her, I'll break his arm," he said as he drew the keys to the handcuffs from the back pocket of his jeans.

  I rolled my eyes at the same time that Josh said, "Why would I hurt her? She's not a fucking prick like you."

  "Oh, I'm the fucking prick?" Grayson asked, shoving his brother over so that he had to lean over his own legs while Grayson unlocked the cuffs and pulled them off. "You're right I am. I'm the fucking prick that put you in rehab and took care of you when our parents cut you off. I'm the fucking prick that found you in a murder motel on the side of the highway and brought you here."

  "You nearly broke my arm!" Josh yelled.

  "Next time don’t swing at me or fucking run then!"

  "Guys!" I had to shout to be heard. "There are neighbors, can we please lower the testosterone for five minutes?"

  Grayson and Marv continued to glare at Josh, but the only person Josh glared back at was Grayson. I chose to ignore the three-way pissing contest and made my way to the side of the couch where I sat and reached for the front buttons on Josh's dark-colored shirt. He pulled away.

  "I got it," he grumbled, dropping his gaze. Even so, I watched as his fingers shook while he unbuttoned the first few buttons, wincing the entire time. Once he finally got the shirt undone and revealed what was under the fabric, I couldn't hold back my gasp. Dark purple and yellow bruises lined his abdomen—some of them looking fairly recent, some faded and older. They lined the side of his stomach, stretching up towards his chest and around to his back.

  "What happened?" I asked as Josh shrugged out of the sleeves.

  "Got in a fight," was all he said.

  My eyes zeroed in on the long gash across his left bicep. It was raw and slightly open—still bleeding, though not too terribly. When I took the shirt from him my hand came away slightly wet and I glanced down. My eyes first took in the red stain on my palm, then to the open gash on his arm. Because of the dark color of his shirt, I hadn't even recognized that he was hurt. But there was no cut in the fabric—it must have happened before he put it on.

  I leaned forward and examined the wound. I was no expert—less than a novice really since I had never really seen anything like this. I mean, sure, I had seen my fair share of scraped knees and even broken bones back in gymnastics, but it had been a while. Texas came back in and handed off the dustpan to Marv before he held out a bottle of antiseptic spray to me.

  "Put that on the wound," he said, "before you bandage him." I nodded and did as he said. It wasn't until I started wrapping the gauze around his arm before I got the courage to ask.

  "So," I started, "what happened?"

  Josh avoided my gaze. "I told you—got in a fight."

  "Were you naked?" I prompted.

  He swiveled his head to look at me. "No."

  I hummed. "I see." I continued to wind the stretchy material around his arm. "Then why wasn't there a cut in your shirt?"

  "Harlow," Marv said.

  "It's a valid question," I snapped, keeping my gaze on Josh. I tightened the gauze around his bicep and then tied it off. "So, are you gonna answer me and tell me what happened or are you just gonna continue being vague about it?"

  "Why do you care?" he snapped.

  I narrowed my eyes at him, clenching my fist and drawing a deep breath. "Maybe I don't care," I said slowly. "But right now, you're the only lead I have to Erika. So, by all means, we can ignore where you got that cut on your arm and we can jump straight to the good part—where is Erika?"

  He looked away. And that just pissed me off. I stood abruptly, but before I could do something stupid like smack the shit out of him—Grayson, of all people, stopped me with a hand on my arm. "Let it go," he said. "Don't worry, we'll make him talk."

  "What are you planning on doing?"

  Grayson's expression hardened. "Whatever we have to."

  "No," Marv said. “We can ask questions, but we will have to tell Knix about this and he’ll want to call Alex. They decide what else we do.”

  Grayson frowned, but didn’t say anything. I had the feeling that even he knew that Marv was taking the lead on this one. It didn’t matter that Josh was Grayson’s brother. After last night’s meeting, we had a whole lot of new concerns. I let my gaze return to Josh for a brief moment as Texas came back from the kitchen once more with a white bottle. He snagged the water he had left on the side table earlier and handed it to Josh along with a few small blue pills from the bottle.

  “Those will help with the pain,” he said. Josh downed them in no time.

  “Now,” Marv said, squatting down in front of Josh. “Let’s start with our questions.”

  “I don’t know anything,” Josh said.

  “Uh huh.” The way Marv said it made it obvious that he didn’t believe him. I didn’t believe him either.

  “Do you know where Erika is?” I asked.

  Josh stiffened before shaking his head. “No.”

  “Are you lying?” Grayson growled.

  Josh lifted his head and seared his younger brother with a heated glare. If looks could kill… “I said no,” he repeated. “No amount of asking is gonna change the truth even if you do think I’m lying.”

  “Okay, say you’re not lying,” Marv offered.

  “I’m not!” Josh snapped.

  Marv simply nodded. “Alright, you don’t know where Erika is. Did you know where she was?”

  With slow, jerky movements, Josh nodded. He turned his face down and stared at the stains on his knees. He was so vastly different from when I first saw him, dressed up and playing rich suitor in the garden on Sweratt Island. He had been a thief then. He was probably where Erika had picked up her new skills. I wondered if she even realized what this man had done to her—how he had changed her. Eventually, it was Texas who broke through.

  “We can’t help you unless you tell us what happened. What happened to her, Josh? Why were you in that motel?” Texas asked.

  Josh’s shoulders sagged as though a heavy weight had been placed upon them. He brought his hands up and rubbed them down his face roughly, stretching the muscles in his arms and back. He was so pale that the gauze wasn’t as striking against his skin as it likely would have been months before.

  “We were hiding out,” Josh finally admitted. “I couldn’t do it. I-I couldn’t stop the cravings, man. You don’t know what it’s like.” His hands clenched down around his jaw as his muffled words came through the spaces between his fingers. “After the fucking detox they had me go to before I could even get in the center, it was fucking bad. Then there was this guy in the center, one of the nurses or something, I don’t know. He said that if I wanted I could take a little extra to ease the withdrawals, you know? And man, they were bad. I was shaking. I couldn’t sleep. I threw up.” He was shaking now, too, a fine tremble in his limbs and especially his hands.

  I slid my eyes to the side, watching Grayson as Josh spoke. Grayson’s face remained as impassive as ever and I wondered just how much he felt under that thick mask of his.

  “So, I said yeah, and I asked him what he wanted in return,” Josh continued. “He said I didn’t have to do anything right then, I could just have it—on good faith, you know? I didn’t realize until later that they didn’t realize I didn’t have money. By then, though, I was getting a regular supply. I was doing good, real good I thought. They had me in counseling and they said my tremors weren’t showing up anymore.”

  “Shouldn’t they have been able to see you were fucking high?” Grayson snapped.


  “Remember what Knix said,” Texas replied quietly. “They were probably in on it and the contract workers that go in don’t know how to look for it, or they expect that everyone looks like addicts.” Josh was quiet as Texas turned back to him. “It’s okay,” Texas said. “Keep going.”

  Josh raised his face from his hands and stared at his brother as he continued. “The nurse told me that I could pay when I got out and I realized that I wasn’t going to be able to.”

  Grayson scoffed. “Yeah, because you don’t have shit for brains and no money either.”

  “Grayson!” I couldn’t do this anymore. I’d had enough. Turning sharply, I wrapped a hand around his arm and pulled him from the room and into the hallway. He went begrudgingly, but he went. When we were out of earshot, I dropped his arm and spun on my heels, poking a finger in his chest. “You need to lay off,” I snapped. “I know you’re mad—hell, I don’t blame you. But we need the information that he has and if you can’t keep your mouth shut then maybe you should stay back here and let us question him.”

  “I don’t trust him, Harlow.”

  I shook my head. “I know,” I replied, “but right now, I don’t care. Now, can you keep quiet or are you staying back here?” Grayson and I faced off, one pair of electric blue eyes boring into me while I remained unwavering.

  “Fine. I’ll stay here.”

  “Good. You do that.” I circled around him and made my way back into the living room, my hands shaking in anger. If he wanted to sulk about it, he could do so well away from me.

  I got back to the living room and shook my head when Marv narrowed his eyes on the fact that I was alone. “Leave it,” I said. Marv looked like he wanted to argue but Texas jumped in prodding Josh to keep talking.

  “So, you were going to have to pay but didn’t have money?”

  Josh blew out a breath. “Yeah, so I called Erika, told her I needed to leave. She wanted to know why and I…I couldn’t lie to her. I just told her everything.” Josh thunked his head back on the couch and stared up at the ceiling. “She told me it would be fine and she would take off the next semester and I could go to another rehab center and—” He cut himself off.

  I moved across the room until I stood with my back against the wall.

  “After I got off the phone with her I realized how fucking stupid I was. I shouldn’t have told her shit. They tapped the fucking phones and when they found out I couldn’t fucking pay they beat the fuck out of me. Finally, they told me it would be fine because my girlfriend sounded like a nice, pretty girl and—” Once again, he cut himself off, but this time, an agonized emotion passed over his face. “Fuck!” He threw an arm over his eyes, blocking out the room.

  “Tell us why, Josh,” Texas said. “Why did Erika matter?”

  “Because they can sell her.”

  Time froze, and horror gripped me. My body remained stationary, but it felt as though the entire world had zoomed out so far away from me that if I reached out to touch it, I would fall into the blackest of spaces where nothing existed but fear. Sell Erika? As what? To who? What did he even mean “sell her?” My brain either couldn’t or wouldn’t comprehend what Josh was saying. It was too appalling, too disgusting. Because even though I asked myself what he meant, I knew. I had seen those cold case television shows, documentaries on drug trade, and illegal industries. I knew what bad people could and would do to young girls. And Erika was pretty. Not just pretty, but beautiful. Oh, God. What would they do to her?

  “Shit.” Marv’s low curse dragged me back to reality, but reality was a painful, terrifying existence. With eyes wide open, I watched as Texas jerked his head back in shock.

  “What?” Texas’ voice was raw with disbelief.

  Josh uncovered his eyes, but still, he didn’t meet our gazes. “They could sell her to the porn industry,” he said.

  A gruff voice sounded from the hallway. “Wow,” Grayson said, “I did not see that one coming.”

  Chapter 11

  Hold on, explain this to me," Marv snapped, leaning forward. "So, you what? You knew that they were going to kidnap Erika and sell her or something to pay off your debt?"

  Josh gulped back a breath as I stood on weak knees, using the wall at my back for support. I didn't even know if I wanted to hear the rest, though I knew I needed to. Whether I wanted to hear it or not, I couldn't move on my trembling legs, so I remained in place, a witness to the rest of Josh's story.

  "I left the rehab center and I went straight for her, told her I didn't want her to get caught up in it—I didn't want to scare her, I left what they told me out."

  "How would they even let you out, though?" Marv asked. "I mean, wouldn't they have kept a special eye on you?"

  Josh finally tilted his head down again. I looked at his face and wondered how someone who could have been at one point so attractive could fall this far. "After the detox, it took a little less to get me high, but I told the guy that it still took a lot so that I could get more. He gave me a bunch of different stuff and I saved some of the pills. I crushed it up and slipped it into some of the night staff's coffee so they wouldn't see me leave. I left, grabbed Erika, and then we hid."

  "And you were at the motel the entire time?" Marv prodded.

  Josh shook his head. "No, I had to leave to get food and they must have caught me on a cam somewhere or someone must have seen me—I don't fucking know—but they followed me back, figured out I had Erika with me. They barged in. I tried to stop them, I fucking swear, man." Josh's eyes sought out Texas who remained shocked as he listened. "They took Erika, fucked me up." He gestured down to the bruises on his front and side and back. Now that I looked, there were distinct yellowish blotches around his neck and jaw and eye as well. Maybe it was hard to see before because he wouldn't ever look forward. But now that he was looking, almost pleadingly at Texas, he was facing me too and I could see them.

  “How long ago?” Marv demanded.

  I held my breath, waiting for an answer. Josh exhaled heavily. “Couple of days ago.”

  “Why didn’t you stop them?” I finally blurted.

  “Me?” Josh turned his gaze on me. “What the fuck do you think I could do?”

  “Yell. Scream. Call the cops. Something!” I snapped.

  "I didn't know what to do,” he replied shakily. “It just happened so fast. I didn’t even realize what was going on until it was too late. They took her and if she fucking gives in, then..."

  "Then what?" I demanded when he trailed off.

  Josh jerked as if he had forgotten I was there. But I had to know. I had to know what he knew, what they'd do to her. Even as my stomach churned with dread and worry, I waited for him to answer with baited breath.

  He lowered his gaze. "All she has to do is sign. They'll keep her until she signs and once she does, she's fucking locked in and gone. They can do what they want. They've got the money. She'll sign their fucking contract and they'll have her on a fucking set somewhere the next day sucking some porn star’s joystick for the camera."

  Bile rushed up my throat. I couldn't wait a moment longer. I dashed from the room, cutting around Grayson as he stood in the entrance to the hallway. Even though he had promised to stay back, of course he had broken it. I didn't care in that moment. The second the bathroom door was flung open, my knees hit the cool tile and I vomited what little I had in my stomach from a breakfast of granola and yogurt. My back bowed, and my abdomen clenched as I threw up. Images flickered through my mind and I didn't even realize I was crying until little drops hit the rim of the toilet bowl as I hung over the edge. Reaching up, I gripped the handle and flushed the remains of my only meal that day down the toilet.

  A shadow in the doorway let me know that someone had joined me. I didn't know if it was out of some sort of misplaced embarrassment or what, but I couldn't seem to turn and see who had followed me to witness my brief moment of illness. Instead, I carefully reached for the roll of toilet paper, tore some off, and used it to wipe my mouth before dropping th
at, too, into the bowl before flushing once more. Getting off the cold floor, I moved slowly to the sink where I washed my hands and, after a brief moment of shaky unease, reached for the bottle of mouthwash to gargle the sour, acrid taste from my mouth.

  "Harlow." Texas' voice was gentle as he stepped into the already small bathroom. I flinched at the way it ricocheted off the walls. I bit my lip and shook my head. I couldn’t speak for several moments.

  "We can't let this happen." Though I was sure my voice was quiet, it sounded loud—like it, too, was echoing in the tiny bathroom interior.

  "We won't," Texas assured me. When I finally raised my gaze to meet his in the reflection of the vanity mirror, the hardness in his dark brown eyes startled me. His hand closed over my shoulder and he gently prodded me to turn around and face him. I did, looking up at his jaw, and then my gaze couldn't help but flicker down to his mouth—his lips were straight, neither fuller than the other—before I peered up into his eyes. "We won't let that happen to Erika," he said.

  I nodded. I believed him, but the fear was still there. The shock of Josh's crude words made shivers chase up and down my spine. I curled inward, forward, resting my brow on Texas' chest and his arms came up to surround me.

  And it was there, in that small outdated bathroom—with the broken floor tiles hidden behind the toilet, and the dirty mirror, and the tiny fissure in the upper corner of the back wall—that I let Texas hold me as I cried. And it was then that I realized that I loved him. I loved him for holding me. I loved him for protecting me.

  But I didn't just love him. If I was truly being honest with myself, I loved Marv just as much as I loved Texas. Because Marv was out there with Josh. Marv hadn't turned me away when he found out what I had done with Bellamy. I loved Texas and I loved Marv. And Knix and Bellamy? I cared about them. I wasn't quite sure yet if it was love, but it was a deep trust that I hadn't felt before. And Grayson...Grayson was a wild card that I didn't know what to do with. I could have left him out of my thoughts. We hadn't kissed. We hadn't touched. We hadn't done anything. And yet when I asked myself the question: If I had to choose, who would it be? Grayson was there in the lineup, standing alongside the others. I wondered if they would hate me for his presence there in the list of my heart.