Page 176 of Outlaws of Tulsa

He sucks in a ragged breath. “I…I was so hungry. There was this restaurant I liked.” His eyes meet mine. “I was homeless after I ran away from my foster home. This one particular restaurant in Memphis tossed out hot, perfectly good food. I always wondered if they knew I ate from their dumpster.” He swallows, shuddering at the memory. “One night, I heard crying as I was climbing out of the dumpster. In the alleyway, under some boxes, someone was there.”

Dark, sad eyes pin me, making my heart race. “Go on,” I urge.

“It was him…Dragon. He was…dirty and bruised and bloody. His body shook so hard.” Katana makes a strangled sound. “I didn’t know what to do. For a split second, I considered leaving him.”

“But?”

“He begged me to hide.”

“Hide him?”

“Hide with him. As though whatever hurt him was going to hurt me too.”

“Did you hide with him?”

“I was still contemplating his words when I heard voices. They were calling out for him. Men. Big and older. I helped him to his feet and then into the dumpster.” He shudders again. “He was shaking so hard that all the trash was making sounds. So I held him close and told him to stay still.”

“They didn’t catch you because you’re here. What happened next?”

“We waited hours after their voices disappeared. It was chilly and he was so cold. I kept him warm and when the sun nearly rose, I got him out of that dumpster. There were unfamiliar SUVs creeping down the streets and my gut told me it was the bad men. Since I knew the city, I took him down alleyways until we were at the train tracks.” His eyes fall to his hands and he picks at his fingers for a second. “I’d never tried to leave the city before, but I knew if he was going to remain safe, we had to go. The next train that rolled through, we hopped it. It spit us out in Arkansas.”

So far, nothing about this story helps me.

“Did he say anything about where he came from?” I ask, trying not to push Katana too much considering all he’s gone through today.

“When we got to Arkansas, we stopped to dumpster dive for food before we hopped a different train. This one took us to Little Rock. We walked and walked until we found an abandoned trailer. It was hidden in the woods and it felt like a safe place to land. I was able to scavenge for food in a nearby town, getting in and out without being seen. The trailer had running water still and the previous owners had left all kinds of useful stuff. We stayed there for a few weeks before I had the nerve to ask him about those people.”

“And?”

“He said he was there for two years. They’d taken him from a party where he’d been drinking. Filled his head with shit about making him famous. When he woke up, he was in a shipping container.” He shudders. “He didn’t say what they did to him, but they filmed him. Said he has hundreds and hundreds of movies.”

“Is this why he never reached out to his parents?”

Katana nods. “He said they killed the boy he was and his parents wouldn’t recognize him. He was someone new.”

“What kind of movies?” I probe.

“People paid to see him hurt others or others hurt him.”

“How did he manage to escape?”

“He said this guy was supposed to be watching him, but he got greedy and tried to fuck him. Dragon let the guy think he had the upper hand and then he used his training on this guy. Killed him with his bare hands. He slipped out of the place—”

“What place?” I interrupt. “Did he say?”

“The warehouse.”

“Downtown?”

“By the river,” Katana says. “It’s how they shipped in new stars or shipped out the deceased.”

I text Dan immediately with the new information. He responds back that he’s on it.

“They won’t be there,” Katana grumbles. “We went back once and it was abandoned.”

“Maybe, but we can find out who owned the building back then. This is a good lead. Anything else?”

“He promised me never to breathe a word about it again,” Katana chokes out. “We’d finally gotten on our feet a bit and he’d come out of his shell when we’d run into Koyn. The guy was intimidating, but he had something we wanted.”

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