Page 1 of Caged
CHAPTER ONE
Marshall rolled his shoulders as he looked around his new home. The place wasn't huge, but hell, he lived alone. He didn't need a lot of room. It was nice though. It was set up with the best features. He'd never dreamed he'd be able to afford this kind of place, but after a year working for STK, he had saved more than enough money to get the place.
Thank God for his job. He smiled as he sat down on his new deck chair. It was big and cushiony, and perfect for late-night reading in the fresh air. At least until fall when it got too cold. One of the many drawbacks of living in Denver.
Luckily, it was only July, so he had plenty of time to enjoy the summer. For the first time in his life, he felt as if he finally had it together. He wasn't living with anyone, wasn't struggling to pay rent on a rundown apartment, and he had a job he loved that paid well.
Working for STK was a dream come true. Despite the fact that he was breaking the law each time he started to work, he was making a difference. In the year he'd been working with the team of pedophile hunters, he'd helped save so many children. Each child meant something and it didn't matter if he was stopping them from being photographed or raped, he was stopping them from being hurt. He couldn't take all the credit, it was a team effort, but he loved that he could play a part. Each time he found a new download of child porn, his heart raced because he knew he'd be able to track down the person who uploaded it and from there, he could usually track the line of abuse until they found who the kids were or at least where they were being held.
Usually.
The children he'd failed were something else. He tried not to think about them. He never gave up hope, but sometimes, even his skills couldn't track down the source. Those kid's faces haunted him at night.
Jeremy and his boyfriend, D, were his bosses, and they tried to help him talk through things, but it wasn't always easy. Even though the other team members understood what it was like to do the job they did, it wasn't always easy to talk about feelings. D was trying to find a counselor for them to talk with, but it wasn't as if the team could just call someone up and say, "hey, we castrate pedophiles for a living, can you help us keep hold of our shit while we do this."
For now, Marshall found ways to relax and try not to dwell on the children. He loved to be outdoors, and he spent a lot of his free time hiking or fishing. And now, he had a nice, quiet backyard to escape to. Just being able to light the tiki-torch and read beside it was going to take a lot of the stress off him.
He glanced up as a shout came from the house next door. He sat forward, glancing over, trying to see in the neighbor's window, but all the blinds were down. He prayed that he hadn't moved next door to some loud person who yelled all the time. His luck, he picked a home next to some couple who fought a ton. It still couldn't be as bad as where he'd been living. His old apartment had been hell. With a mix of druggies and prostitutes in the area, he had kept to himself and avoided going out much. This was much nicer.
He hadn't met any of his neighbors yet. He'd only been in the house for a few days, and most of those were spent putting furniture in place and unpacking the few boxes he'd had from his apartment. Most of the stuff was new. Another bonus from his new job. It was nice to be able to buy what he wanted and needed.
He reached for the glass of iced tea on the patio table and took a long drink as he thought about the garden he'd plant next spring. Since both of his parents had died when he was young, he'd lived with his aunt most of his life and she'd always had a garden. Marshall wanted to follow her example. She'd died over a year ago, but he still wanted to have fresh vegetables in his home.
The sound of his doorbell interrupted his thoughts of his aunt. He quickly jumped up, wondering who could be at the door. Maybe one of his new neighbors dropping by to welcome him.
He glanced threw the peephole and smiled as he quickly opened the door. "Rani!" He stepped back. "Come on in."
Rani was one of his team members, and probably his best friend. The two of them hit it off the moment they'd met, and despite their differences, the two of them found they had a lot in common. "What are you doing here?"
"I had to see the place. You didn't think I'd let you move into a new home without me inspecting it." Rani stepped inside and looked around the sparsely furnished living room. "I like."
"It's a work in progress. I still have some shopping to do, but it's so much better than that damn apartment." He glanced at the bottle of wine Rani held. "Is that for us?"
"For you."
"Then it's for us. You know I don't drink alone." Marshall shut the door and headed for the kitchen. "You're not working tonight?"
After coming to live in America from Oman, Rani was still learning new customs and enjoying freedoms he didn't have back in his homeland. He was the team's doctor, but since his medical license in Oman wasn't transferable to the United States, he was working with the team while he also worked on becoming a doctor in the states. The team didn't care about a license as long as Rani knew what he was doing, and he more than did. Thankfully, the team hadn't had much need for his services over the year he'd been in the States. Other than Jessica, one of the other team members, getting a bad infection from a cut she'd gotten after breaking a glass, Rani hadn't had to do much. That was good though, considering he'd been hired to fix them up when things went wrong on the job.
"Nah, I have the night off. I could have gone home and sat around, but I wanted to see your new place. Besides, D, Jeremy, and Patrick got Mexican over for dinner at the house, and I just can't stand another night of enchiladas and tacos." Rani took a seat at one of the stools that sat beside Marshall's kitchen counter. "This place is nice. We'll never see you at work now that you have such a nice place to kick back."
"I'll be in. You know I can't stay away from work that long. Besides, I haven't even bothered to set up my computers here yet since I've been so busy at work." Marshall pulled two wine glasses down from the cupboard and filled them.
"You won't work from home, will you?"
"Nope. I won't have anything here that can trace back to the team. I'll use my computers here for gaming and shit. No point in bringing work home. Besides, I couldn't run the setup here that we have at work. I've learned a lot from Jeremy and D, but I'm nowhere close to as knowledgeable as they are. Better to keep all that shit at work and my home a safe place."
"I agree. I get nervous sometimes living at the STK house, but honestly, I'm not home enough to get my own place. I sleep a few hours there and then I'm back at work. It doesn't make sense to rent or buy something right now."
"I do have three bedrooms," Marshall hinted. "One could be yours."
"I know you've offered, and I'll think about it. For now, the team house works. Besides, if something does ever go wrong, I like being close." He took a long sip of the wine. "I might sneak over from time to time to keep you company. You know how it gets if you're at the team house too much. It can be kind of a downer."
"Yeah, I know. It's hard. I have to force myself away from the work, but once I step away for a few hours, I feel it all hit me. There are nights I can't close my eyes without seeing the shit I've been searching all day."
"I don't know how you do it. Just knowing is bad enough, but seeing it, digging for it, playing a role that you desire it, that has to get to you."
"It might if I didn't get to see the other end of things as well. When they come back from a sting and I'm able to hear about the perverts being stopped and the kids saved, that makes all the difference. There's nothing more rewarding than turning on the news and seeing a family reunited or a story of a pedophile getting a long prison sentence." He played with the rim of his glass, causing it to ring softly. "This job has its rewards."
