Page 82 of Carry on Wayward Son

“He looked at you the way I saw him look at your picture years ago,” Jace said.

I turned to stare at him. “What?”

“The night I met him.” His voice was even, but there was something underneath it. “It was months after your disappearance, at a frat function, It was your birthday, and I was thinking about you. I had a photo of you on my phone.” He paused. “He looked at it the same way he looked at you tonight.”

The floor seemed to tilt. Koa pressed closer against my leg, his weight an anchor, and I dropped my hand into his fur and held on. Halston, looking at a photo of fifteen-year-old me on Jace’s phone. Months after I’d left him bleeding on the floor and run.

“Wait.” Sawyer’s voice cut across the spinning in my head. “This asshole was a fraternity brother of yours?”

“You know where I went to school.” Jace’s mouth twisted. “Basically, all my fraternity brothers were assholes. I was only there because my father wanted me to be. But yeah. Halston was the fraternity president.”

“This is feeling like an increasingly small world,” Ford said.

“How did you end up with him?” Bree had been quiet until now, sitting forward with the focused attention of someone assembling a timeline. “Actually, let’s go back further. Why did you go into the woods that night?”

I exhaled. This part I could give them. This part wasn’t the cage or the knife or the long dark after. This was just a teenage girl and a stupid, ordinary mistake. “I got the note from Lauren. It was supposedly from a secret admirer. Said they wanted to meet me in the woods to confess how they felt, away from prying eyes.”

Jace made a noise.

I shot him a look. “Yes, I’m aware it has red flags all over it. I can see that now, as an adult. But I was fifteen and impressionable, and a boy wanted to meet me in secret. It seemed romantic.” I let that sit for a moment. “Still. I wasn’t stupid enough to go alone. Willa came with me. That’s why she was there. That’s why she got attacked. That’s why she almost drowned.”

The room had gone very quiet.

“Because I wanted to meet a boy.”

I turned to Willa, who was still close, her hand still loosely holding mine from the hug that hadn’t fully let go. “So when I told you that none of it was your fault, I meant it. It wasn’t yours. It was mine. You were there because of me.”

“Seems to me,” Daniel said, in the unhurried way that seemed to go along with his bayou heritage, “the only fault belongs to the person who did the kidnappin’. Neither of y’all can be blamed for wantin’ to be normal teenagers for one night.”

It was true. But knowing and feeling down in the gut were two different things. I’d had enough therapy to recognize the shape of the thought and to be certain I couldn’t fully accept it. I’d made my peace with the gap. But I reached out and took Willa’s hand more firmly anyway. “I hope knowing all of it gives you some peace. I know the not knowing hurt you.”

“You’re alive.” Willa’s voice was thick. “Nothing else matters.”

“Can we talk about what we’re going to do to keep her that way?” Gabi was still standing, still running hot, her arms crossed now. “You said we need proof. How do we get proof?”

“If this Ashmore fella took one girl, could be he’s taken others,” Daniel said.

“Purchased,” I corrected. The distinction mattered. It had always mattered to me, in the long work of understanding exactly what had happened and exactly who was responsible for which part of it. “Taken implies he was part of the kidnapping, and he wasn’t. At least not actively. I was always led to believe I was… gifted to him.”

“By whom?” Ford asked.

“I don’t know. Someone older. Higher up. I never saw who. Once I was moved off the freighter, everyone around me was hired help, and I wasn’t kept with the other girls. I was kept separate.” I heard the implication in my own words even as I said them and watched Jace hear it too.

“Which suggests you were special in some way,” he said slowly. The intelligence officer in him was fully online now, working the angles out loud. “Let’s connect the dots. Someone wanted Miles to use the marina to launder money. He refused, and you were taken in retaliation. So the question is—were you taken and dropped into a trafficking pipeline that Halston, or someone connected to him, happened to choose from? Or were you specifically taken because Halston, or someone connected to him, was the one who wanted the marina in the first place?”

“And we’re back to following the money,” I said.

“How are you so calm about all of this?” Bree asked. There was no judgment in it, only a kind of wonder.

“Oh, I’m not calm.” The honesty of it came out before I could decide whether to give it to them. “There’s a part of me that wants to run far and fast and disappear forever. Again. Start over somewhere new and never look back.” The pull of that truth tugged at me, a reliable partner after all this time. Then I let it go. “But this is the closest I have ever come to answers, and if I can get to the bottom of it—if I can find something actionable, something that puts an end to this entire organization instead of just one man—then I’m damn well going to do it.”

Rios nodded slowly. “If we can find a link, a money trail between Ashmore and the marina, that might be enough to take to the SBI to get them properly involved.”

“Except if there’s a connection between the drug operation I’ve been investigating and this trafficking ring,” Daniel said, “they implied they had protection from higher up the food chain. We don’t know who that is or how far up it goes. We start rattling the wrong cage, we don’t know what comes down on us.”

“We find the proof, I have the contacts to pass it to,” Jace said. “People outside the local chain. But right now—” He looked at me, and his voice shifted into something I was coming to recognize, the register he used when he’d moved from analysis into action. “Right now, Gabi’s right. The priority is keeping you safe. First thing: you’re not going back to the cottage. It’s not tactically secure, and we have no idea whether he’s got eyes on it looking for you.”

“Fine.” I didn’t have the energy to argue a point that was correct. “But where am I supposed to go instead?”