Page 107 of Live for Me

CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR

utah

Ileft Memphis with Jersey and Triss so they could start sorting through the plan with the Marshalls. If she intended to have a conversation with him about the detectives who’d handled the details of the deaths of his family, I wasn’t sure my presence would be welcome, so I wanted to give them the time and the space to let that happen if it was the goal.

Kyle left the main house with me to open up Jersey’s barn so I could use the space to change the oil in the truck before the next trip that the tech twins might send me on. I hadn’t expected his company beyond unlocking the space, but once I had the truck inside and pulled the latch to release the hood, Kyle was standing at the front bumper to raise it for me.

I spent a second being offended that he seemed to think I needed supervision, before I wondered if he was just trying his hand at being around people again. When New Jersey and I weren’t aiming to rip one another apart with words and angry glares, having everyone back in the house was really a pretty good time. I didn’t know anything about this particular man, but I wasn’t about to deprive him of human interaction if that was what he wanted. I was at least certain that I was easier to be around than Jersey was, even if we didn’t know one another. We didn’t say anything to each other while I got to work. He quietly provided me with a pan to catch the oil that drained from my truck. He offered me the shop towels to clean my hands.

Indy showed up somewhere in the middle of waiting for the oil to finish draining from the truck.

“New Jersey already run you off for the day?” I asked once he was inside the barn with us.

“I think you should maybe see this, hoss.”

His tone upset me before anything else did. He took a folded piece of paper from his pocket to pass it off to me.

“I didn’t tell her that I found it. I’m not sure that it should be me to ask her about it, either,” Indy said quietly.

I wasn’t sure how it was possible to feel like I might pass out and vomit at the same time. I couldn’t hear anything, but something sounded very much like a deafening blast of white noise between my eardrums. An endless number of unpleasant contradictions happened to my body all at the same time to be looking at a piece of paper with a picture of a much younger Memphis on it. She was pictured next to an even younger girl who looked like she could’ve been Memphis’ twin if they’d been the same age.

They looked like school portraits.

Aside from the fact that their faces were printed just beneath giant block letters.

Missing

My brain shorted out before I ever made it to dates, contact information, names, or anything else that might’ve been included on that flyer. I didn’t even realize I was on a warpath back toward the house until Indy grabbed my wrist just inside the kitchen.

“Utah, wait,” he insisted. “You might want to think this through a little more before —.”

I ripped my arm away from him and continued my rage-filled march right toward the girl sitting next to New Jersey at the kitchen island.

“You didn’t think this was the kind of thing worth sharing with me?” I asked and slammed that missing persons flyer down right beside her computer on the countertop. “At any point in the last couple weeks that we shifted gears into hunting traffickers? It’s personal to you becauseyouwere trafficked?”

My tone brought Trista back into the kitchen while Memphis grabbed that piece of paper to stare at it in panic.

“Where did you find this?” she asked, her voice barely above a whisper.

“Thisis your fucked up connection to this organization?” I asked again, not realizing I was getting louder with every sentence. “How does that even happen without you realizing it? How long have you known that we were after the people who putyouinto sex slavery, Memphis? Were you just never going to mention it to me?”

New Jersey stood up at about the time that the worst little strangled noise I’d ever heard came out of Memphis.

“Memphis,” Triss said quietly and pushed her way by me to wrap Memphis in a hug.

The hug that I probably should have started this conversation with, rather than the strange rage that was coursing through me and aimed directly at her.

I decided to use my brain about a minute too late.

She was already crying. She was in Trista’s arms, holding a fucking piece of paper against her chest like it was a lifeline.

“Memphis, I —.”

“Get him out of here before I do it,” New Jersey interrupted. Kyle was in front of me a second later, but before it even crossed my mind to drop a big ass Marine straight to the ground, Indy materialized between us.

“Come back outside with me, Utah,” he said quietly. “You’re better than this. Give her a minute.”

She still hadn’t looked back at me, but Trista was still wrapped around her. New Jersey hadn’t moved from the other side of her. They wouldn’t leave her alone.

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