Page 44 of Bleed the Shadows

Rafe leveled a gaze at Bram that said he wasn’t about to say anything else and Bram gave him a tight nod.

I filed it all away to think about later.

“Can you do it?” Remy asked them. “With the drone?”

Rafe stood. “Send us the address.”

29

MAEVE

“Didyou know the police think the resort guy, Piers Cantwell, was going to use his hotel to traffic girls?” I said as I skimmed the article on my laptop in the living room.

Remy looked up from the book he was reading. “I heard something about that. They didn’t have proof though.”

I’d spent the three days since we’d gone to visit Rafe, Nolan, Jude, and Lilah digging into the alleged trafficking ring around Blackwell Falls and had been shocked by how far-reaching it might have been. Tons of girls had gone missing going back decades, some of them tied to the alumni at Aventine that had been busted a couple years before, other disappearances still unsolved.

The police still wouldn’t say much about it, although there were rumors in true-crime communities that the FBI was involved now too. I was obsessed with the details and had spent the last few days combing the internet for everything I could find.

Now I was hanging out in the living room with the Butchers, an unexpected show of domesticity that had been happening more often lately, like we were roommates or friends orsomething, which added a whole other level of weird to the existing weirdness that was my life.

“It’s strange though right?” I stared at the article on my screen.

Ethan Todd had to leave Hungary because of trafficking allegations and now he was back in Blackwell Falls, which had a history of missing girls and rumors of sex trafficking.

“Yeah, but you said Ethan left after high school,” Poe pointed out without looking away from his video game.

“I said there was no trace of him after high school,” I said. “I actually don’t know what happened to him.”

Bram tapped at his computer. “Aloha’s on his way over.”

I looked up from my laptop. “Does he have the info on Ethan?”

“Yep.”

I tried not to show that his coldness hurt me but it wasn’t easy. I still wanted him in spite of the way he’d treated me. I was no psychology major, but I knew enough to know that it was fucked up, and I had no excuse: no daddy issues, no lack of inherent self-worth.

I didn’t even want to fix him. I just wanted him.

I closed my computer and a few minutes later, Poe was buzzing Aloha into the loft.

He emerged at the top of the stairs carrying a laptop and for the second time since I’d been back at the loft I was forced to acknowledge I had a tendency to judge a book by its cover.

First Marv, with his delicious cinnamon-filled maple bars. Now Aloha, a bald, bearded biker — this one a Blade from the patches on his cut — who was apparently also a world-class hacker.

Southside had been hiding some seriously strange expertise.

Remy introduced us and got Aloha a beer. Then we all sat around the dining room table.

“Sorry for the house call,” Aloha said, opening his laptop. “You said this was important. Thought you might not want to wait until morning.”

“You were right,” Bram said. “Tell us what you got.”

“Ethan Borkowski, born at the hospital in Greenvale thirty-eight years ago. Raised in Blackwell Falls, went to public schools, including the high school,” Aloha said. “I’ll send all this to your encrypted email, but there’s a reason I wanted to talk to you in person. I’ll get to that in a sec.”

“So far, so good,” Poe said.

“Young Ethan was smart. Captain of the debate team, member of the student senate and the chess club. Doesn’t seem like he was popular per se, more like…”