Page 100 of The Evening Wolves

“Cleaning house,” North said.

John-Henry shook his head. “Not just cleaning house. This is someone—this is someone cleaning up a mess.”

“John-Henry,” Tean said, clutching his laptop tighter against him. He seemed to struggle to find the right words, and then he blurted, “Were their names on your computer at work?”

No one said anything for a moment.

“Fuck me, Jesus,” North breathed. “That’s what this was about?”

“Part of it,” Emery corrected automatically, but he sounded only half-aware of what he was saying. “Framing John, getting him out of the picture—God fucking damn it, why didn’t I think of that possibility?”

“But these girls,” Shaw said, “they didn’t know anything, did they? I mean, they’ve been alive for months, and no one came after them. Someone had to break into your computer to get the records. Why go to so much trouble to kill them now?”

“Guys,” Jem said slowly, lowering the paper. Blue-gray eyes crinkled with distress. “Who founded GLAM?”

“This guy named Koby—” John-Henry began.

“No.” Emery’s breathing sounded funny, and his color had dropped. “No, Koby’s just—” He shook his head. “I never asked. It sounded like a non-profit. It sounded like something—” He cut off like he couldn’t finish.

“What’s the big deal who founded it?” North asked.

But Shaw looked bloodless. And Tean’s eyes had gotten huge behind his glasses.

“Well, if I were looking to groom and traffic kids from the most vulnerable group possible,” Jem said, “I might, you know, make a nice, safe space where they’d like to come hang out.”

What came after wasn’t silence. It was the vacuum that came after a thunderclap.

“Colt,” John-Henry said as Emery lurched into a run toward their room.

“But that doesn’t make any sense,” North said. “Setting up something like that, it exposes you to a lot of risk. You’re established in the community. People know who you are. There’s a financial commitment.”

“But it’s a business,” Shaw said. His hazel eyes looked glassy, and he sounded like he was speaking from a long way off. “It’s an investment. And no one’s going to ask questions if it’s one kid who goes missing, or two, or five. LGBTQ kids run away from home all the time.”

“Yeah, well, what if one of those kids escapes or survives and somehow they—”

“Somehow they recognize you,” Tean whispered.

John-Henry felt the pieces falling into place. The victims of a trafficking operation, months old now, weren’t a threat until one of them started volunteering at GLAM. And then something must have happened. Someone must have gotten worried. And then they were worried it wasn’t just this one woman who might recognize them—anyone who had been rescued needed to be silenced. The risks were too high, and so whoever was behind this—Jace Vermilya, or the unnamed man John-Henry had fought in Eric Brey’s house, or maybe someone else entirely—had decided to close up shop. Move somewhere else. Try again. And that meant getting rid of any connections here: your meth supplier, the local politician in your pocket—

The service trip.

One last haul. A vanload of kids who wouldn’t make trouble, who were happy to follow whatever instructions you gave them, would do whatever you told them because they thought they were going on a service trip. He felt like he was reading one of those training packets again. Most victims of trafficking in the United States are U.S. citizens. LGBTQ teens are at a much higher risk—like other marginalized and vulnerable groups. Most victims know their trafficker and go along willingly because they’ve been deceived—fewer than ten percent of cases involve kidnapping or trafficking by force. Missouri has the fourteenth highest number of trafficking cases in the United States, most of those cases happening along I-70, and it was one of the FBI’s top twenty destinations for trafficked victims.

For a moment, the sickening realization threatened to drag John-Henry down. He had put his son in that van. He had driven him to the pride center, and he had put him in the hands of those men. It was horror like nothing he’d ever felt before, knowing that he had delivered Colt to them, that he had done all the work for them. He wanted to close his eyes. He thought, for a moment, he might die from it.

“He’s not answering his phone,” Emery said, his voice rough. “It’s off, and the parental app shows his last location at that fucking pride center.”

John-Henry nodded and said, “They took their phones.”

“Ashley isn’t answering either. Should I call his parents?”

Another nod. “See if they know where they were taking the kids. Or if they have a tracking app. Tell them Colt’s sick, whatever you have to tell them.”

Emery left, floorboards creaking under his steps, a riptide pulling the air out of the room behind him.

Jem whispered, “I’ll call Auggie.”

The words sparked something. For what felt like long moments, John-Henry struggled with the weight of what he had done, of how stupid he’d been, how self-centered (as always), absorbed in his own petty drama (as usual), instead of worrying about his son. Why hadn’t he tried harder to meet Koby? Why hadn’t he ever insisted on accompanying Colt to the pride center? Why hadn’t he done his due diligence? Because it had seemed like such a good cause was part of the answer. Because he’d met other adults there, Marcie—no, Jessica. And Farah. Because he’d been busy, and it had been easier to accept the truth at face value.

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