“Routing it now,” he said, and all I could hear was continuous clicking in the background. He hadn’t stopped typing since he answered the phone.
“Thanks,” I barely got out.
After a beat of silence, he asked, “How bad?”
“Extortion bad. Death-threat worse,” I whispered, because my voice deserted me.
He cleared his throat. “Call me if you think of anything else,” he said before he hung up.
Walking back inside, I went to the kitchen and poured myself a glass of ice water. Checking on Nick and my mother, I saw that they were down at the edge of the creek, sitting on some rocks with their feet in the water.
I watched them, sitting there together, and after a bit, she took his hand, lifted it to her lips, kissed his knuckles, and then lowered their now clasped hands to her lap.
A text came in from Owen to call him.
It was kind of great that he didn’t just call me, that he was smart enough not to want to alert Nick or my mother to the fact that he wanted to speak to me.
He picked up on the first ring. “Loc,” he said flatly. “He’s in Calexico, which is in California. It’s near the Mexico border. Apparently, he has a home there.”
“That’s where he went after Mr. Cox sold the house he was staying in, in Santa Monica?”
“That’s what his phone tracking would indicate, yes.”
“All right.”
“Hold on.”
I knew what was happening and was not surprised at all at the next voice I heard.
“Loc?”
“Sir,” I said, greeting Jared Colter.
“Tell me.”
I took a breath. “Walker Evans is blackmailing Nick with videos of him having sex when he was a minor, and of him being beaten or something—I’m not sure—and something about his dad abusing horses.”
Silence on the other end.
“That’s why the dummy corporation, so Evans can get paid through that.”
“I see,” Jared Colter replied flatly.
“I don’t know what Nick’s father did to him, or allowed to be done to him, but he’s hurting the horses he breeds for insurance money, and Nick’s trying to stop him,” I explained. “I don’t know how you break a horse’s leg so it looks like an accident, but apparently there’s more than one video, so it would follow that he’s got that shit down to a science.”
I could have said it all better, maybe reminded my boss that Mr. Cox had told us that Nick’s father owned a horse farm, but instead it all just poured out.
“You’re telling me that Nick Madison has been paying the devil while trying to make a deal with him to try to save horses,” Jared summarized.
“Yes.”
“Okay,” he said tightly, and I could hear the flat, no-nonsense tone in his voice. “I chartered a plane for you, and Nash is actually tied up, but Croy will be there shortly.”
“Croy?”
“He still works for Torus, Loc.”
“But not as a fixer.”
“He can certainly guard your mother and Nick Madison for the few hours this will take.”
“I’m not doubting his ability, I just don’t––”
“He’s in Vegas; you can leave that much quicker.”
That was true. “Yessir.”
“I’ll see you on the ground in Calexico,” he said quickly.
I felt the air leave my body. “Sir?”
“While I doubt that Walker Evans resides in any kind of fortress that requires us all there, it would be remiss of me not to be in attendance on a raid where there may be fatalities.”
I couldn’t argue with that. “Yessir. Thank you, sir.”
“You don’t need to thank me, Loc, this is a given,” he said, and hung up.
For him it was, but not for everyone.
I was in the kitchen deleting all the messages from Evans from Nick’s phone, whispering a little chant to myself that I was doing this one unquestionably wrong thing for what I believed were the right reasons, when my mother called for me.
“Sweetheart?”
Looking up, I saw her rushing in from the patio, biting her bottom lip.
“What’s wrong?” I asked.
She cleared her throat. “Well, it seems that Jamie isn’t here to visit. He came over on horseback and has offered to take Nick up to one of the vortex sites.”
I squinted at her.
“It’s a—do you ever listen to me?”
“Yes, Mother,” I indulged her, thankful that this was at least taking a bit of my attention from the horror that my mind kept running back to.
“A vortex is a site that contains energy from the earth that you can feel.”
“Okay,” I said.
“It’s real,” she assured me. “All of Sedona is a vortex, but there are specific places where you can actually feel it crackling over your skin.”
“Uh-huh,” I agreed.
She scowled at me.
“And Jamie is here to take Nick on a moonlit horseback ride.”
“Yes,” she snapped at me. “So what are you going to do about it?”
“Do about it?” I was confused.
Before she could scold me, Nick called my name.
When I turned from her, he was standing in the doorway.