by Elle Keaton
“So, why haven’t you seen or called Nate?”
“Christ, Buck, my fucked-up life nearly got the guy killed! Everything I tried to escape when I left Spokane followed me here like a toxic cloud from the Hanford Nuclear Reservation and spewed all over Skagit. Christ, I can’t believe you want anything to do with me.”
Buck sighed. Miguel had heard him doing that a lot since he’d gotten out of the hospital. “Justin is gone forever now, and his choices were not your fault. You are free from him, and Nate is an adult who knew the risks of going to that house alone.”
“I almost got him killed, Buck! And Angel. If it hadn’t been for me, none of this would have happened.”
“Angel wasn’t injured.”
Angel may not have been injured on the outside, but he had been held prisoner for three days before Justin got his hands on Miguel. There was no way the kid wasn’t coming away from that without issues. And he’d already had issues. “Maybe not so we can see. There are a lot of ways to injure people, and Justin was a master at them all.”
“Even Angel says he is fine. In fact, he says he feels stronger; he saw you fight back.”
It had been beyond ironic learning that the person Kevin had been mooning over was Angel. Kevin had learned Angel’s backstory and had been afraid to approach the young man—he didn’t want to scare him. Angel had been bullied and bashed and, much like Miguel, involved in a very unhealthy relationship. When he ended up in the hospital one too many times he, too, had moved to Skagit to start over.
Justin could be charming when he wanted something, and he’d asked Angel to join him for coffee. Angel had been nervous, but Justin promised they would stay at the Booking Room and just talk. When Justin had offered him a ride home, warning bells had not rung. Even at the house, Justin had not hurt Angel, just talked about Miguel and how they would finally be together. It wasn’t until he’d tied him up that Angel feared for his life. Justin had forced a sedative down his throat—not knowing that Angel was one of a small percentage of people who couldn’t metabolize it, so it didn’t have much effect. He’d been faking as much as he could so Justin would leave him alone.
At any rate, when Kevin found out that both Miguel and Angel had been abducted and were at the hospital, he’d freaked out.
The story was still unwinding. About Justin and what he’d done since Miguel left Spokane. Miguel kind of didn’t want to know. He’d learned Justin had murdered a young couple; the knowledge gutted him.
“It wasn’t your fault, you know.”
Buck was a mind reader. But it was his fault. So much his fault.
“Adam told me that Oakes was flooded with steroids. It looks like he had the classic signs of steroid use. He probably had ’roid rage and all the other bad stuff steroids can do.”
“Yeah?” Miguel hadn’t heard that. But he’d been pretending to be asleep when Adam came over.
“Yeah. He also told me Nate is home from the hospital. He took him home yesterday.”
“Huh.” What was he supposed to do?
“Maybe you should go visit? I can drop you off for a while.”
“Maybe.” Maybe not. “I need to sort some stuff out.”
Buck huffed. “Don’t spend too long sorting out ‘stuff.’ Nate will think you’re avoiding him.”
Miguel shut his eyes so Buck would leave him alone. The front door opened and shut. Buck was probably heading to the garage to work on Adam’s GTO. Miguel couldn’t help but think about Nate. The man had come to his rescue, found him when Miguel thought all hope was lost. No one had ever come for him before. His own mother had left him and never come back. Nate had an overinflated sense of duty that no doubt came from being a fed; rescuing Miguel and foolish people like him was what he did.
If Miguel was ashamed of being drawn in by Justin’s lies, what could Nate possibly think of him? What an idiot he was. Nate had a broken arm and a head injury because of him. The pretty announcement that Nate would prove to Miguel that he was serious about being together—that he was even willing to reorganize his house for him—Nate must know better now.
Rolling over onto his good side, Miguel shut his eyes and tried to fall asleep instead of dwelling on something he could never have and couldn’t hope for. It was too hard when dreams turned to ash.
Chapter Twenty-Two: Nate
Nate eyed the leftover pizza sitting on his kitchen counter. He would give anything for something other than pizza. He’d been home from the hospital for almost four days, and the only thing he’d had to eat was takeout. His coworkers had no idea the kitchen was a foreign country to him. Even if he knew how to cook, it probably wasn’t a good idea with one arm.
The only thing his grandmother had done when she came to live with them was cook. She’d had archaic views about men and boys in the kitchen. She’d also disliked Mel; only Cathryn and Kelsie were allowed in her domain. Which was not helping Nate’s stomach at the moment. He supposed he could sign up for one of those services that deliver groceries, but then he would have to cook, and the only time he’d tried that on his own, he’d managed to set off the fire alarm for his apartment complex.
His cell phone rang, vibrating against the countertop. Adam was on the other end of the line. “Get dressed. Ferreira is going to be knocking on your door in less than five. We’re raiding the farm. I thought you might want to watch, but please for fuck’s sake stay in the car.”
He was still in his bedroom struggling to pull on something other than sweatpants when the doorbell rang.
“Just a second!” he called.
The front door opened and closed, then Sammy poked his head around the bedroom door. “Adam gave me a key.” He shot Nate a boyish grin. “Let me help. We don’t want you breaking something else because you’re in a hurry.”
A few minutes later, Nate was dressed and buckled into the front seat of the official vehicle Sammy was driving. “Klay figured it was better to let you ride along than have to do a play-by-play when the dust settles.”
The raid went down textbook perfectly. No one was hurt.
It was beyond satisfying to know they had brought down a group of human traffickers. The cockroaches hadn’t even scattered when Klay’s team plus the Seattle team arrived to shut them down. Nate watched with satisfaction as the men and women involved were brought out in handcuffs and put into the waiting cars. All in all there were ten arrests on site and another ten or so in California and Arizona.
Sammy left him in the front seat after extracting another promise not to move. Like he would; he’d forgotten sunglasses, and his head was starting to hurt. He watched the parade of evil for a while before leaning his head back and shutting his eyes.
The driver’s door opened. Nate opened his eyes, then wished he hadn’t. A furious Gomez hiked herself up into the front seat. Her filthy jeans and hoodie were covered by an oversized FBI jacket. Nate groaned and shut his eyes again.
“You are lucky that asshole already broke your arm, or I would be doing it for you.”
“Natalia,” Nate whined. Jeez, he’d already had to listen to Klay for over an hour. He got it, he did. No more running into burning buildings to save the baby.
“Do not ‘Natalia’ me, not after what you put the team through. Cristo, what were you thinking going in alone?”
He’d already gone through all of this with Klay and, unfortunately, Mohammad Azaya. He chose to nod in agreement, figuring that Gomez just needed her turn raking him over the coals. He hadn’t been thinking, was the only answer he had. He was lucky Weir had known where he was headed.
“You could have died out there! Then what would have happened?”
As he opened his mouth to make a smart remark, Natalia pointed a threatening finger at him. “Don’t. Don’t joke about dying or whatever else you were going to do. I can’t believe what a selfish asshole you were, going in by yourself. Not only could you have been killed, but the two men who’d been abducted as well. Jerk.”
She turned, huffing back ag
ainst the seat and snapping the seatbelt across herself before quickly leaning forward to start the car. “Don’t speak until I’m ready.” The Suburban surged across the dusty parking area when Gomez hit the gas.
That lasted about two minutes. Gomez had this ability to switch gears like no one Nate had ever met before. “So tell me about Ramirez.”
“Uh, what?” Ooops. Not who. He would make a terrible criminal.
She waved a dismissive hand. “This guy you rushed in to save, on your pretend stallion. Tell me about him.”
The choice was simple, spill the beans or very likely die a slow death along the side of the road. His stomach chose that moment to rumble, loud enough to be heard over the engine.
“When was the last time you ate?” Natalia demanded. “Am I the only one who knows you can solve a Rubik’s Cube in under a minute but you can’t cook? Dios.” The last was muttered under her breath, but Nate could read lips. The car lurched as she took a corner too fast, changing lanes in the middle of the curve.
She pulled into the fancy organic grocery store located only a few blocks from Nate’s house. “You have your wallet?” Nate nodded. “Good, come on.”
At his house she unloaded several bags of “basics.” Dried pasta, canned tomatoes, pasta sauce. Canned refried beans— “I cannot tell my mother” —and tortillas. A huge block of cheddar cheese, apples, lettuce, onions, garlic; things just kept coming out of the bags, half the stuff he hadn’t seen her grab off the shelf.
“I’m taking a shower and changing into clean clothes.” She eyed him. “Don’t move.”
As directed, he waited while she showered and changed into the spare set of clothes she kept stashed at the office. He owed Sammy a drink for remembering to bring her go-bag in anticipation of her extraction. Nate had teased her, once, about the fact that instead of jeans or something else casual she kept a suit in her bag.
“Listen, if I can help it I never present as less than professional. I have fought tooth and nail to get where I am, and I won’t have my reputation ruined by a pair of blue jeans. I already have Latino and woman checked in the Con column.”
In just a few minutes, she was back in the kitchen heating water on the stove and pouring a jar of pasta sauce into a pan.
“Don’t think I’ve forgotten,” she said sweetly as she stirred the pasta sauce. “Tell me about Miguel Ramirez.”
So he did.
“Porn?” Natalia’s eyebrows about shot up to her hairline.
“I tell you everything, and you focus on the porn?”
“You’re right. Sorry.” She pulled a piece of pasta out of the boiling water, cut it with her fingernail, looked at it, and tossed it back in the pan. “A few more minutes.”
She leaned against the counter with her arms crossed. “So, basically, you are chicken.”
“What?” Nate blinked at her.
“Well, he is too, but I’m cutting him some slack because of his experience with Oakes.”
“Excuse me? How am I chicken? You sound like a first-grader.”
“You’ve decided, without talking to him, that he blames you for the incident. For him ending up injured.”
“Well, yeah. Duh. If I hadn’t gone out there—”
“If you hadn’t gone out there, he and the other victim could be dead! Yes, you should have waited for backup, but you can’t know what would or wouldn’t have happened. And the only way you will know what he thinks is by pulling your head out of your ass and talking to him.” Natalia turned the burner off and took the pan off the stove. Carefully, she dumped out the water and then plopped the noodles into a bowl. She poured the sauce over the noodles and sprinkled some cheese on them. “Serve yourself… Dios, one-armed. This is ridiculous.” She grabbed a plate and served him a healthy portion. “Here. The way I see it, you can wallow in your pathetic sadness, or you can go talk to the man. It’s up to you.”
“Aren’t you supposed to be comforting and possibly sympathetic?”
Natalia snorted. “I did not get this far being comforting and sympathetic. And there’s probably a good reason why you haven’t heard from him. Don’t let yourself forget he is a victim.”
“I’ll talk to him tomorrow. Promise.”
They sat at his dining room table, where Natalia watched him eat and they filled each other in on different parts of the story. He had questions, but often it was best just to let Natalia talk.
“Rafael Possos. What a nightmare.” She sighed, deep and long. “There’s no way to know how he finally ended up with those scum. They aren’t kidnappers; they like to make ‘investments.’ Human trafficking, the gift that keeps on giving.” Her tone was mocking, but Nate knew she had a tender heart hidden under her tailored silk blouse. “I had to get him out before the raid. He’s tough, or he wouldn’t have survived as long as he had, but being part of sweeping arrests by the FBI—that would not turn out well for any of us. I had no idea who he was when I got there, but his use of complicated English struck me. He didn’t remember everything, but he knew some offbeat idioms. Things like that. When he shared with me what he remembered about his life, I knew I had to help, even if it meant compromising the operation.”
“Which it didn’t.”
“Which it didn’t.” She smiled, but it wasn’t pleasant. “We didn’t get them all, but we cut a big hole in their operation.” Natalia’s instincts had been right; the two Marias were the linchpins of the trafficking ring in Skagit. Investigators were still unsure why Rosales had been executed, but maybe now that the Marias were in federal custody things would become clearer.
“Don’t you get frustrated? Knowing that an operation like this one will just pop up somewhere else?” Nate knew he did; that’s one of the reasons he liked straight-up homicide better. Ugh, that sounded terrible, and he hadn’t even said it out loud.
“I can’t think about the big picture. I would lose all hope. Each operation I’m a part of, each time we’re successful shutting some of these scum down, I feel stronger. One more shit-bag off the street is how I have to look at it. You should too. In this case it looks like between here and Arizona we nabbed a couple dozen roaches who will be spending the rest of their lives in a federal penitentiary. I call that a win.”
“How did it go with Rafael’s mother? Do you know?” he asked around a mouthful of pasta. “This is really good, by the way.” Much better than leftover pizza or Chinese.
She rolled her eyes. “Only you would think a meal entirely from cans was good. From what Klay told me, it was tough. Ms. Possos wasn’t prepared for what her son would be like after ten years in captivity. Maybe she thought he’d still look like her little boy? I don’t know. He’s still in the hospital, you know? She wanted to transfer him out of state, and Rafael went into hysterics. He is eighteen, almost nineteen.” She pursed her lips. “It’s going to be a long road for the both of them. I’m going to see him tomorrow; Klay said he’s been asking about me.”
They were both quiet for a few minutes. Nate finished the pasta, and Natalia rinsed off the plate and fork he’d used before putting them into the dishwasher. He was reminded of Mel doing the same thing when he was young, and he realized he hadn’t told Natalia the bomb Mel had dropped while he was in the hospital.
“Mel was here.”
“Hmmm?” She sniffed her disdain. He knew she was curious about his sisters, Mel in particular. Natalia had very strong feelings about loyalty and family.
“I was a little groggy, so the details aren’t clear, but I’m pretty sure she told me that both of us are not our father’s children. I mean,” Nate shook his head, “we have the same mom but different fathers.”
“She just flew in, made sure you were alive, blurted this out, and left town?”
“Basically. She also told me she’s a lesbian. So there’s that.”
“I do not know what to do with your family.”
“You’re telling me.”
“I mean, my mother has been planning my wedding for years, and I’m not
even dating—but at least I know where I stand. They love me. Are you okay with all this?”
When he hadn’t been sleeping, Nate had spent the last three days trying to decide how he felt, if he felt anything at all. He’d been his own island in the family for so long that it kind of didn’t matter. He made his own decisions without consulting them; he’d moved as far away as he could without leaving the lower 48. Maybe subconsciously he’d always known he didn’t fit in. Maybe he felt relief? Immediately followed by guilt for being relieved. Nate needed to get back to work soon; he had too much time to think. He’d never been a brooder. He decided and then acted, boom. The upside was, now he could ignore phone calls from Clint Richardson without guilt.
“I think I’m fine.”
The declaration that he would approach Miguel the next day had sounded much better, braver and possible, the night before when Gomez was in Nate’s kitchen egging him on. Now, in the harsh light of day with dirty dishes to prove she had been there, talking to Miguel seemed like a bad idea.
Nate recognized he was inexperienced in the relationship department. He would come off sounding demanding or needy or worse. He’d almost made it out the door when Mel called.
“Hi.”
“Hi, Nate, you’re home?”
“Yep. Out of the hospital and at home all by myself.” He flopped back onto the couch to look out his back window. A Steller’s jay swooped down from the evergreen hedge, chasing a smaller bird off the birdbath. They really were the assholes of the bird world.
Mel took a deep breath. “I want to apologize.”
“For what?”
“For seeing you and then leaving like that.”
“I get it. Work.”
“Yes, but also I was scared.”
“Why?”
