24. A Lot of Money For

W hen Kellen got out of the shower, Alexei was asleep on the bed. He had gotten under the blanket on the left side, his back turned: plenty of room on the bed to his right.

Kellen started quietly for the microwave where he had left supper. But he stopped short two strides from it. He turned and re-checked the bed.

There was a dog on the bed. It was rolled up comfortably, rounded spine resting directly against Alexei’s back.

Kellen’s arms dropped empty to his sides. “What the fuck, Wolf?” he whispered.

She shifted her head a few degrees to give him a blank look.

“Are you confused? You think that’s me?” He pointed to Alexei’s sleeping shape.

Wolf made no comment.

“You were scared of him two seconds ago,” Kellen murmured, turning back to the microwave. He opened the door, then shut it again as quietly as possible. He hit the one-minute button. “Crazy dog.” Kellen reached for the dog bowl on the counter, then opened the child lock on the cabinet where the dog food was.

Wolf got up and jumped off the bed. Tail wagging, she presented herself for dinner.

“You’re fucking weird,” Kellen told her. He set her food down, then retrieved his own from the microwave just before the timer went off.

* * * *

“ Hide me in the shadow of thy wings. Hide me. Hide me in the shadow of thy wings. In the shadow of thy wings.”

A hundred times. Maybe a thousand. Maybe a million.

The number of times he had repeated that phrase to himself. Whispered, hushed, barely a breath on his lips as he prayed it. Alone in the dark. Hugging his own skeletal body on the floor in that small, dark room with the toilet. The bile in his throat. Saltwater stinging his lips. Briny taste no amount of vomiting could expel.

“Hide me.”

That feeling of it running out of his nose, burning his throat and nostrils, while he was held bent over, standing waist-deep in the water, staring into the briny ripples just inches from his face.

“Hide me.”

Choking, inhaling water, air, gasping, forced under again.

The incessant vomiting hours later. Delirium. Delirium that turned into dreams.

“Hide me in the shadow of thy wings. God, please. Please let me dream. Please.”

Her terrified blue eyes, black baby locks streaking her face. The hand over her mouth, blocking her shrill screams. Her desperately kicking legs, arms restrained by the stranger holding her.

Kellen startled awake. His eyes snapped open to the dim motel unit. The wall he was sitting up against, the floor beneath him, the warmth of his dog lying next to his thigh. The blinking time on the microwave told him he had barely slept for twenty minutes.

“Fuck,” the sound escaped Kellen’s throat in a breath. He swept a hand across his face and shut his eyes again. Let his head tip back against the wall.

Automatic gunfire.

Kellen jolted awake a second time, only to realize in the seconds that followed that he had imagined the sound. Heart pounding erratically in his chest, Kellen got up and checked the window. The parking lot outside was silent.

Alexei was still sleeping peacefully. He had turned over on the bed, his slow rhythmic breaths sinking a small layer of calm into Kellen’s nerves. He checked that the door was locked, then returned to his place on the floor and shut his eyes.

She was gone.

Kellen’s eyes silently opened again, blurring dully on the bathroom doorway across the room from him. It came on slowly. Like the sharpening sensation of pain to a needle gradually pressed beneath the skin.

Memory of the day he had gotten that frantic call from Lila. “ I can’t find her anywhere! She’s not in her room, she’s not in the house—it’s been two hours, and I can’t find her!”

“She was playing in the backyard. I walked away from the kitchen window for thirty seconds to get a new bottle of dish soap. Thirty seconds, I swear, it was just…thirty seconds.”

Nothing caught on neighborhood security cameras.

Nothing on CCTV footage.

No suspicious activity witnessed by the neighbors.

Then, almost a week later: the bloodstained little girls’ clothing the police found in a ripped trash bag outside the dumpster behind the local Exxon.

“Those aren’t hers. That’s not what she was wearing.”

DNA test inconclusive due to bleach damage.

The surveillance camera watching the south side of the Exxon where the dumpster was located had been dead for months.

“We’re not giving up. But given the kind of blood loss these stains suggest…just given the physical size of your daughter…you and your wife need to prepare yourselves.”

And then it simply went cold.

Why haven’t I died yet? Kellen’s head shifted against the wall.

All the times he had been shot at. All the times he had walked straight into the most dangerous situations life could present. No, it was that little girl whose life was taken.

That beautiful, perfect, innocent child. The single brightest spot in Kellen’s world. The only thing that had ever felt so genuinely good, pure, blessed.

And now, she would have been better off had she never existed.

Kellen’s eyes shut again. Closed against the drumming of his own heartbeat.

“Kellen Farrar.”

Kellen startled awake a third time. A flinch darted through him, like he had actually heard the name spoken over his shoulder.

“Farrar, like Prophet Michael Farrar?”

A dream. Some kind of residual thought. Kellen lifted a hand over his eyes and drew a weak breath.

“This report lists you as—deceased. You’re sure your name is Kellen Farrar?”

Marked. Alexei had said she was marked. That she was marked, and because of it, they would’ve hunted her down, found her no matter what. What did it mean to be marked? Had Skyler had a barcode like Alexei’s? Was Alexei “marked”?

Kellen bolted off the floor on a surge of adrenaline.

But there was still a sleeping figure on the bed, form outlined in the dim orangey glow from the window. Safe.

“Fuck,” Kellen whispered to the empty air, a hand pressed to his forehead. He stepped to the window and checked the parking lot again.

“The name ‘Kellen Farrar’ was listed by several of the Lights members at the time of the raid. And all confirmed—deceased, drowned in the bayou behind the church. Six months prior to the raid.”

Wolf had moved back to the bed—probably after the second time Kellen startled awake and disturbed her sleep. She lay curled up at Alexei’s side, the tip of her tail covering her nose. Kellen stepped around the bed and lightly flipped the edge of the blanket up over Alexei’s shoulders. He looked so peaceful lying there.

What kind of hell has he lived through that he can sleep like that after what happened in that house? The thought crossed Kellen’s mind, and for a moment or two, it ushered everything else out.

“I won’t let anything happen to her,” he had told Kellen about June. “I’m not going to let anything happen to you,” he had told Skyler in Kellen’s dream.

5:31 AM, Kellen jerked back from the edge of sleep. His head lifted from against the wall, fingers clamping shut around the open locket in his hand. There was a sound.

Wolf. It sounded like one of her whimpers. But then there was a word in the quiet. Hushed, faint: “Please.”

Kellen’s back straightened against the wall. One second, two. The locket clicked shut and replaced itself around his neck. Kellen stood up.

Alexei’s small form lay illuminated in the low gray of early dawn. He was lying on his stomach, lips parted, fingers curled into the sheet beneath him.

“Alexei?” Kellen whispered. He took a step toward the bed. Then another.

Nothing.

Kellen swept a hand through his loose hair and turned back to his place on the floor.

“ Please… ” Weaker this time.

Kellen turned back, approached silently, then lowered a hand to hover inches from Alexei’s shoulder.

Alexei let out a pained breath. A strange muscle twitch darted down his back. “Please.” Another broken breath. Tension stole all the way down his body. His arm moved—closer to himself, nearer to his face. His fingers gripped into the pillow. Then a cry. It cut through his throat like he was being choked.

Kellen grabbed Alexei’s shoulder. The flinch that shot through Alexei’s body seized every muscle. A terrified gasp broke past his lips.

“Alexei. Alexei.”

Alexei’s arm shifted suddenly, his hand catching Kellen’s wrist in a deathly grip. And suddenly, he was breathing, panting. His head turned against the pillow, blindfolded face lifting toward Kellen.

“Hey, you were dreaming,” Kellen told him firmly. He gradually released his grip on Alexei’s shoulder.

Alexei did not let go of Kellen’s wrist. He lay there as if paralyzed, ribcage lifting and sinking with every quick breath. Sweating. He was sweating. Stone still.

“You’re awake now, yes?” Kellen spoke after a moment.

The sweaty fingers gripping his wrist slowly loosened.

Kellen silently lifted his wrist free. He hesitated. Then he lightly touched two fingers to Alexei’s shoulder. Another flinch. “You okay?”

Alexei moved finally. He sat up slowly. Wolf stirred beside him, and he flinched again. He jerked away from her and froze a second time, leaning on one arm.

“Alexei?”

“I’m fine,” he whispered. Silently, he pushed back the blanket and dropped his feet to the floor. He stood up and started slowly for the bathroom. He wavered at the doorway.

Kellen jolted forward, body firing with adrenaline. But he stopped just as fast when he saw Alexei catch himself against the doorframe. Then moved quickly forward again when Alexei wavered a second time.

Alexei collapsed to the floor in front of the toilet. His hands found the seat, gripped it. Then he was leaning over and vomiting.

Kellen caught the free-hanging fabric of Alexei’s blindfold before it slipped forward over his shoulder. He watched the full-body shuddering across Alexei’s frame as he gagged. Lightly, Kellen lowered his hand to steady Alexei’s side.

Alexei spat twice and shut the toilet lid. He reached for the flush lever, missed it by a few inches, then found it and pulled it. He sat back against the wall.

Kellen watched him in silence for a moment. “Are you sick?”

Alexei’s hand lifted to his lips and brushed lightly across them. “It’s not contagious.”

“That doesn’t answer my question.”

Silence for five seconds. “I may be sick.”

Kellen’s arms drew slowly across his chest. He stepped backward to the sink and leaned against it. “Do you need medical attention?”

Several more seconds of quiet. Alexei smiled faintly. “No, I don’t need ‘medical attention.’” More quiet. “I have…I have medication at the apartment. I just didn’t bring it with me.”

“Is it an STD? STI?”

Silence. Alexei’s tongue passed softly across his lips. He turned away. “I just said it’s not contagious.”

“What is it, then?”

The back of Alexei’s head hit the wall with a soft thud. He said nothing.

“You’re not going to tell me?” Kellen wet his lips and glanced at the wall. “Is it taking your appetite, too? You haven’t eaten anything. You were vomiting straight bile.”

“Did you want it to be chunky?” A faintly amused smile touched Alexei’s lips. Then a small laugh. He lifted his face toward Kellen.

A long moment passed, Kellen silently staring down at Alexei. The borrowed T-shirt, bare legs, pale lips. He looked away. “That house yesterday.”

Alexei’s smile faded.

“Who were those people locked up in the basement?”

Quiet for several seconds.

“More kidnapped Filipinos?”

“They’re not always kidnapped,” Alexei responded finally. His voice was quiet. “Sometimes, they want to come. They’re lied to and convinced to come.”

“That’s kidnapping. What is XI doing with them?”

Silence.

“Alexei, what is XI doing with them? Labor trafficking? Sex trafficking?”

Alexei’s hand shifted silently a few inches across his thigh. His lips parted, but for a long time, he didn’t answer. “I go there to find ones I can turn into dancers. Worse things happen to the ones I can’t turn into dancers.”

“Worse things? What worse things?”

More quiet. “I don’t fully know.”

“Tell me the part you do know.”

“What do you think they’re doing with them?” Alexei’s jaw set for several seconds. “I showed you the fucking place for a reason. Do I still need to tell you what’s going on there?”

No, he didn’t. He didn’t really. Kellen had seen the operating room. The equipment. The way the captives were dressed, how they were kept in cages like livestock. “How does it work?” he whispered.

Alexei passed his tongue lightly between his lips. “There are people in the Philippines that the Filipino government does not care about. There’s a network connecting the U.S., Mexico, and the Philippines. The same network is used for everything. Fent into the Philippines, raw materials out of it. Raw materials into Mexico, fent into the U.S. and Philippines.” His voice dropped in volume. “People out of the Philippines, to Mexico by boat, over the U.S. border by land.”

“How?” Kellen whispered. “I’ve never heard of it working like that. That market isn’t supposed to exist in the U.S.—places like that aren’t supposed to exist here. Who are they selling to, and how?”

“They sell to everyone.” Alexei’s shoulders lifted in a faint shrug. “Exey finds a customer for everything they sell. Some of it’s regular trafficking. Most of the pretty ones are auctioned off to high rollers right after crossing the border. Because I have come to understand the volume of everything Exey deals in, I think it’s only a small portion that’s brought here to Arkansas. I take who I can for the club. Then the rest are moved to the basement of that house.”

“And from there?”

Alexei shook his head. “There is no ‘from there.’ They don’t get out of that house. Only parts of them do.”

Kellen’s throat went dry. He passed his tongue across his lips and glanced at the shower curtain. “They’re just human scrap at that point?”

Alexei said nothing.

“Who the fuck are they selling to, and how the hell are they getting away with it?”

“I don’t have a list of customer names if that’s what you’re asking for,” Alexei said quietly.

“Fucking hell, Alexei, what hospital? Who is the surgeon? How do they fucking launder organs? Are you going to tell me American citizens are paying to be operated on in that shitty basement?”

“People do crazy things to stay alive,” Alexei whispered.

Silence. All Kellen could hear in the seconds that followed was the pounding of his own heartbeat. The faces that had stared back at him from behind those wire bars. “Kagaway.” The sound of the young woman’s hand striking the cage she was locked inside echoed back through Kellen’s mind.

“No.” Alexei’s face lifted a little. “The harvesting takes place in the house. I think I know where the transplants are done, but I need more time to be sure.”

“Fine. There must be some kind of ledger tracking cashflow. Where’s that?”

Alexei’s brow lifted faintly under the blindfold. “You’re asking me for the master ledger?”

“There’s a master ledger?” Kellen’s frown deepened. “Yes, in that case. Why haven’t you mentioned a master ledger before?”

“Do you think I wouldn’t have, if I had access to it?”

“Okay.” Kellen shifted. “Why ship them all the way here alive? Why not scrap them for their organs in the Philippines and ship the organs?”

“I’m not sure what border control would do if they caught someone with a cooler full of organs trying to get into the country. But I do know what they do when they catch a cargo load of brown-skinned, dark-eyed people. They send them back across the border to Mexico, because they’re surely Mexican. And the driver gets bailed out a day or two later to try again next week. And do you know how long an organ lasts in a cooler? What kind of money are you expecting them to spend, airlift money? It’s dirt-fucking-cheap to ship them by boat. And there’s no better way to preserve organs for as long as necessary than keeping them in the bodies they come in.”

Kellen’s hand lifted slowly to his face. Unsteadily, his fingers contacted his own skin. One breath. Weak, shallow. “What the fuck did my daughter have to do with this business?”

The question seemed to catch Alexei off-guard. His lips parted, hesitated, soundless.

“Why the fuck would―” Kellen’s breath cut short, and he tried to swallow. His jaw set. Released. Set again. “They clearly have a low-cost supply chain leading out of the Philippines. Fucking—unlimited girls they can do whatever the hell they want with, because no one’s out looking for them. Why the fuck kidnap an American girl with a legal American identity, her mom in the police force and her dad with career experience locating missing people—why the fucking hell did it need to be her? ”

The silence that claimed the bathroom lasted almost an entire minute. Alexei’s lips slowly parted again. “They had a high-paying buyer lined up for her.”

“Who?” Kellen’s voice snapped. “You?” That uncontrollable feeling reared in his chest again. Anger, rage. A hot, burning, molten feeling—threatening to consume his core from the inside out. Burn all the way through.

Alexei shook his head. There was something careful about the way his lips moved as he said the next words. “She was given to me after the buyer fell through.”

“What buyer? Who was the buyer?”

“I don’t know.” Alexei’s voice fell almost to a whisper. “Someone in Europe.”

“Someone in Europe? ” Kellen pushed off the sink counter. “Someone in Europe wanted an American girl captive, and your all-powerful gang just happened to pick my daughter? ”

“No.”

Sound through the wall from another unit became audible in the silent air. “No?”

Alexei shook his head very slightly. He softly wet his lips. “She was supposed to have something the buyer was willing to pay a lot of money for.” Several seconds of quiet. The repetitive throbbing of Kellen’s pulse in his neck. “She didn’t have it, so the deal fell through.”

“Have what? ”

“Kellen―”

Silence. It was only the second time he had used Kellen’s first name.

Alexei shifted his hands uncertainly.

“What did she have that she suddenly didn’t have?” Kellen spoke, deadpan.

“It wouldn’t make sense to you even if I explained it.” Alexei’s voice was a whisper.

“Explain it.”

For almost thirty seconds, Alexei’s lips moved soundlessly, struggling for words that seemed to escape him. “It was something they thought she got from you.” His voice was as thin as thread. Alexei turned slowly and lifted his face sightlessly to Kellen. “Something Exey probably still thinks you have.”

Kellen’s hands shot out empty at his sides. “What the hell do they think I have? What—What the fuck are you even insinuating? I’ve never worked an op on XI, they don’t even know I exist —they’d better fucking not . And what the hell do they think I have that I would’ve handed to my seven-year-old child? ”

Alexei said nothing. His lips pressed to a thin line. Quietly relaxed. He leaned forward a little and stood up off the floor.

“You’re lying to me.”

Alexei stopped, poised to step past Kellen to the doorway.

“There was no ransom request. No call to me, Lila, the police, anyone. If there was something they wanted, I would’ve given it to them. They never even asked.”

Alexei started again for the door.

“Are you fucking serious? ” Kellen snapped. “Fucking tell me! ”

Alexei said nothing and merely took another two steps for the door.

“Goddamn, just please tell me one thing.” Kellen caught Alexei’s arm. Tightly, unintentionally roughly. Very close to the raw scars on Alexei’s wrist. “Was it intel?” He swallowed. Glanced away. “Fuck, was it anything to do with my job? Was it something to do with my job?”

Alexei’s hand slowly closed over Kellen’s grip. Then forcibly pried it off. “No, Jay. It was nothing you could’ve controlled.” He walked out of the bathroom, then turned slowly back, his slender figure framed by the doorway. “You were seen last night,” he said gravely. “Was the vest you were wearing labeled?”

Kellen’s brow furrowed, mind still buried far too deeply in the last topic to process the new one. “Labeled?” he echoed.

Alexei drew a line across his chest. “Police? SWAT?”

“N-No.” Kellen’s frown tightened for a moment.

“Next time you find me at the club, we will have to do things differently. Follow my lead. Like you’re good at.” Alexei started to turn away.

“How much do you know about the guy you spent the night with the night before last, at the Joanna Capris?” The question escaped Kellen’s throat sharply. He watched Alexei’s reaction: immediate, stiff. The way that boy went subtly rigid. How his lips parted, shifted silently.

“Were you stalking me?” Alexei’s voice was cold.

“Botox, white hair. ‘Swan.’”

“You fucking follow me again, this deal is over.”

“He’s a risk to both of us. He has his hands in too many pots,” Kellen responded levelly.

“Stay the fuck out of my business.” Hushed, forceful, a quiet warning in his voice no less subtle than the rattle at the end of a viper’s tail.

Kellen crossed his arms. “Fine. I don’t want to run into him. Does he go to the club?”

“No.”

“No?”

“No.”

“You’re sure about that? You would know if he went to the club sometimes, even though you’re fucking blind?”

“He doesn’t go to the club.” Another warning in his voice.

Kellen’s arms shifted across his chest. “How did you meet him, then?”

Alexei walked out of the doorway.