Page 72 of The Bright Lands

“No!” She nearly shouted it. “Christ, Joel, that kid’s parents are richer than God. Do you have any idea what his father would do if he heard you came near his boy?”

“It would just be a conversation. Nothing scandalous.”

Clark did not care for Joel’s tone of voice at all. She also doubted she could stop him if he set his mind to something crazy. She made a decision. “Give me a couple hours. Let me settle things here. We’ll figure out a way I can talk to Luke, somewhere private where he won’t feel any pressure.”

“Fine.”

Clark made to hang up, but something in the silence on the line made her stop.

“Is there something else?”

“I wish there wasn’t.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“I found out what the Bison were passing around at halftime.”

Her phone buzzed against her ear. She put Joel on hold, opened the message he’d sent, paused. It was a URL with a name she vaguely recognized. She opened it.

The link led to an escorting website. Across the top of the page was the profile nameREALTXQB99. Beneath the name were all the tedious statistics.

6'1. 185 lbs.

8 inches cut.

$200/hour. Your place.

I’m a fucking horny Texas Teen who loves to FUCK and SERVICE mature men.

Happy to serve the Dallas/Austin/Houston areas.

Available most weekends just give me heads-up.

And there, right in the center, was Dylan Whitley, shirtless, chiseled, smiling with his hand disappearing into a thick darkness at the bottom edge of a bathroom mirror.

JOEL

Milam Municipal Park was a glorified ditch. There was a strip of road to park your car, some rough-hewn steps cut into limestone, but there was nothing at the bottom of those steps but wild holly and poison oak all running tangled through a gully.

At nine o’clock, well past dark, Joel took four steps down the side of the ditch and refused to take another. The night breeze, warm with the last traces of summer, stirred a heap of dead leaves. This was possibly the last place in Bentley he wanted to be. If you walked all the way to the bottom of those steps you could find the exact location he’d been standing when the photos had been taken ten years ago. This gully could be a landmark in Pettis County.

Clark texted him:

I just want you there in case he tries to run. Stay out of sight.

Joel’s mind was not well. He was so strung out after a week of no sleep he believed—really believed—that he could feel a single thought as it dragged itself sluggishly from one synapse to another. He’d spent a long afternoon spinning his wheels about the escorting ad. He had lost count of the Adderall tablets he’d eaten today. Blood beat against the back of his eyes.

$200/hour. Your place.

He considered telling Clark that if Luke tried to escape from her down these steps, the boy would have nowhere to run once he reached the gully, as Joel’s arrest record could attest. Instead he wrote back,I’m covert af.

AF?

Kimbra texted Joel:

Luke says he’s fifteen minutes away. I told him to please hurry I really need to see him etc etc.

Meeting here at the park had been Clark’s idea but it was Kimbra who had made it possible: the girl had devised (with enthusiasm and few questions) some story to lure Luke here. She was remarkably crafty. She’d told Joel that Evers was so desperate for friends he’d show up anywhere someone promised him a secret.