Page 231 of Sticks and Stones
“Hey,” Gene said, knowing why Ethan was asking. When Corbin looked down, he lifted his chin, so he was focused on them. “It’s okay. If you were, it’s not your fault.”
The tears filled his eyes.
“No. I remember all of it,” he whispered. “I begged them to stop, not to give me more.”
Ethan wiped his tears with a paper napkin.
“Okay, good,” Gene said. “We needed to see if they used the drug on you since they branded you to be trafficked. It’s all good. We’re done asking.”
He slowly nodded but held onto Gene’s hand like he was a lifeline back to sanity.
They all saw how rattled he was.
“I wish I saw this coming,” Corbin whispered.
They felt horrible for him.
“Unfortunately for you, Corbin, you got pulled into the mess,” Greyson said. “If the US government is trying to run an operation, you might have hit walls because they didn’t want you behind them. You wouldn’t have seen it coming.”
That helped.
A little.
Greyson was honest.
“Gene and Ethan will have a better chance of seeing what is being hidden. We’re Feds and play this game. You’re a cop, and the rules are different.”
That was accurate.
Now that they knew that Corbin hadn’t been dosed, they continued so they could wrap this in time to go.
“We know that the victims were picked up somehow, and then passed off to a drug supplier. What we don’t know is if thetrafficker and the abductor are the same people, or if there are more,” Gene said.
Ethan agreed.
“Or how the bikers fit into this. Are they getting the drugs and forcing the men to be mules, or is it being done another way?”
Greyson considered it.
“If this person is rich, they won’t want their hands dirty. They might grab the victims, and get the bikers to do the dirty work.”
Corbin was curious.
“How are they being muled?” he asked.
Gene explained.
“They fill balloons with the drug, and then tie them off. They dip them in oil, and make the victims swallow them. That might be how the three men died. Balloons rupture. They don’t have the drug until they ship them out.”
That sounded horrific.
“They never mentioned packing you full of drugs?” Ethan asked.
“I was in a lot of pain. At one point, I passed out,” he admitted.
They let that go.
Gene and Greyson had seen the mattress, and they knew where the blood came from.
