Page 29 of Sticks and Stones (FBI Romance/Thriller #65)

“Okay, let’s start at the beginning,” he said. “From what Oliver said, Kip Rivet, and Payton Eastcott, the two Vice detectives we ran into last year, needed a cop to help out. The commissioner’s office thought Corbin would be a good choice since he cleared big cases.”

Ethan stared at him.

“We cleared big cases. Corbin tagged along,” he said, taking a bite of his hoagie.

Oh, he was aware.

“I said that, and Oliver didn’t give two shits. They threw Corby to the wolves. The Vice detectives knew this was dangerous, and Oliver knew he wasn’t ready. He actually blamed us for closing the cases and in response that did nothing but inflate his career.”

Ethan sighed.

“Is this our fault?” he asked.

Before Gene could say anything, they heard him.

“I’m a good cop,” Corbin said. “I took this case knowing the risk. It’s not on you guys. It’s on me. I know now that I wasn’t ready.”

They all looked over, and Corbin was standing in the doorjamb in Gene’s robe. It was big on him.

Immediately, Ethan stood up.

“We know you’re a good cop,” he said. “Come sit and eat,” he offered.

Corbin headed their way.

“Nothing was meant of that, Corbin,” Gene said. “Don’t read into it. You’re a very good cop.”

Just green.

Corbin sat down, and was to the point.

“Let me help. You shouldn’t have to clean up after me. I can do it. I need to do it.”

Gene knew that was a bunch of bullshit.

There was no way he was up for this. The man had shadows in his eyes, and big bags under them. His face looked like he’d gone a round with a boxer, and his body was stiff from a beating.

Corbin should be in a hospital, and they had already broken that rule. There was no way he was going to dive in and relive this.

That would be detrimental to his well-being.

Getting up, Gene headed toward his bag and pulled out a bottle of aspirin. He dumped a few into his hand, and then grabbed Corbin’s food.

“Take these,” he said. “Keep taking them until you stop hurting so much. You’re in pain.”

Oh, well, he absolutely was, but he’d told the men that he could handle it.

Corbin took them, as Ethan handed him a bottle of water that came with their food.

“Thank you,” he said. “I feel like shit.”

Yeah, no doubt.

“You should be resting,” Greyson said. “This isn’t your case anymore. We’re going to close it, and figure out who is behind it.”

Corbin dug in.

“No. I want to help. I’m better now. I got to sleep with Ethan,” he said, glancing over at Gene to try to bait him.

But it didn’t work.

“Not happening, Crotch Goblin. That’s low-hanging fruit. You already look like someone beat on you. The day you can fuck anything in this condition, I bow and call you a god.”

He actually laughed.

And it hurt.

BAD.

From his spot beside the man, Ethan unwrapped his food, and placed it in front of him.

“Let’s try and get food into you, if you can chew.”

Corbin was honest.

“I don’t know if I can. My jaw is sore, and so’s my throat.”

And everyone knew why.

At his words, Gene’s eye began twitching.

“Just try,” Ethan said.

The smell of cheesesteak wafted up, and Corbin had to admit that it smelled good.

“If you won’t let me help, at least let me sit here. Pretend I’m not here, and I’ll just eat,” he offered.

That was ridiculous, but they might need Corbin’s brain. His notes were gone, and all they had was the official file with what he put in his report.

As he ate his steak and cheese, Ethan kept an eye on him as Gene talked.

“Anyway, two douchebag cops let the crotch goblin run rampant as he played undercover. They’d been working this case for a while.”

Corbin added what he could.

“There’s someone grabbing young men. They seem to be from a general location—college campuses. The three men I worked on, as victims, were college kids.”

They let him talk since he was the key to this—a key they technically couldn’t use to lock away who hurt him.

Greyson was curious.

“Are you sure you’re up for this?” he asked.

Corbin nodded, and shared what he knew—from memory.

“I’ve got this. Elliot Graves was the first victim who went missing,” he stated. “He was a student at Villanova, just outside of Philly . His roommate said he went out one night, and he never came back.”

Gene was making notes, listening to Corbin. They were going to retrace his steps, so tomorrow, they were going knocking on doors to talk to college kids.

It was a weekend, but they’d find them one way or another.

“How long ago?” Greyson asked.

He didn’t hesitate.

“October.”

Jesus.

That was months ago.

“If you flip pages, you’ll see the autopsy report and the pictures. When the three of them were found before Christmas, they were nothing but bones and some flesh that predators left behind on the one victim. The ME said they’d been out in the weather for at least a month.”

That was a sad thing, and they all knew it.

They’d been someone’s loved ones.

“So the first victim went missing in October, and by December, he was dead?”

He nodded.

Ethan noticed that Corbin was struggling with his cheesesteak, so he got up, grabbed a plate, and some silverware.

The only good thing for Corbin was his right arm wasn’t the broken one.

When he sat, he cut up his cheesesteak into little pieces and handed the man a fork to make it easier on his jaw and broken teeth.

“Thank you,” Corbin said, feeding himself.

“It’s not a problem,” he admitted.

Slowly, Corbin chewed, and they could tell that he was struggling with it even being small pieces.

Gene made a mental note to bring home something softer when he went out next.

Like soup.

“The next victim was Wesley Thorton,” Corbin admitted. “He was also a college student. He went to Temple,” he stated. “He was also the only victim of color out of the three.”

It told them that the person who was trafficking people didn’t have a single ethnicity preference. That made it more difficult for Ethan to profile any more victims.

“He left for classes one day, and that night he never came back to his dorm room. His roommate said he was supposed to be there for dinner since they always went to dinner together, but he was a no-show.”

Greyson wiped his mouth and shared what he was thinking.

“That tells us that the person taking them had contact with them during the day, and that he doesn’t hunt at a specific time.”

Corbin spoke up.

“That’s what I thought, but when I dug deeper into it, I found out that Wesley had texted his roommate at some point, saying he was meeting other friends for dinner. He didn’t get the text until much later.”

Ethan was curious.

“Why did he get it later?” he asked.

Corbin filled them in.

“He thinks that his cell service in the dorm was shitty, and later, when he took his phone outside, to meet another group of friends, the message came in. I don’t have the victims’ phone records. Warrants are in, but you know how slow phone companies are. I’m looking at a good month to get them.”

That they did.

Gene was still making notes as Corbin talked so he’d know what he needed to do to pick up where Corbin left off. So far, the baby detective was doing the job correctly. He’d done everything right.

“And was the next victim also a student there?” he asked, wanting confirmation and more information.

Corbin explained.

“Yes, but he was more. He was a grad student who taught a class at Temple. So he was also a TA, a teaching assistant, of sorts, along with a student.”

To them, that still put them in the same hunting location. Honestly, taking a drunken college kid, or an oblivious one, would be easy.

Predators liked easy prey.

“What day did they all go missing?” Gene asked, covering all of his bases to get an idea of what they were looking at.

Corbin swallowed the food he’d been trying to chew with his incredibly sore jaw.

“All three went missing on a Friday or a Saturday night. So weekends.”

Well, that worked with what Ethan was thinking. They were out having fun, and…gone. They maybe got a little tipsy, or were roofied at a bar. A person looking to pick up some easy victim would do the minimum in work to get the maximum result.

Gene glanced over at his partner.

“I know it’s early for a profile, but tell me what you’re thinking.”

Ethan did.

“Well, it’s low probability that we have a woman doing the abducting. There might be a woman running the show, but if that’s the case, we have a male helper. Someone who can do the heavy lifting.”

Gene let him talk.

“The second victim, Wesley Thorton, played college ball. He wasn’t one hundred pounds. Whoever took him had to be able to move him once he was ‘contained’ .”

Oh, well, Gene needed to know how they were taken. So, he went there.

“Give me a probability that they were drugged,” he said, using what Corbin had found out, and what he knew from chasing predator killers.

Ethan considered it.

“Without seeing toxicology, and knowing what I know about how a predator hunts, I’m going to go high on this one.

Eighty percent versus twenty percent that the tox will come back with drugs onboard, or so much alcohol that they were incapacitated.

Since it’s college kids, I lean more toward stoned or drunk. ”

Greyson hated to be the bearer of bad news.

“ IF they were killed shortly after drugging them, then they might have something in their tox reports,” he stated. “If not, they might be clean. That won’t give us anything.”

He wasn’t wrong.

Gene knew what they’d need to do.

“Toxicology isn’t in the file, so we’re going to have to visit the person who submitted it,” he stated.

They knew Reed Peterson was getting a visit from them. He might be able to fill in the blanks.

“We’ll talk to him,” Gene said, meaning him and Greyson.

Only, now, Ethan was curious about something else. They talked about how the students might have been taken, but he needed more to continue profiling this for Gene.

“Corbin, how did you tie the three college students to Bull’s Biker Bar ?” he asked.