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The next pages were notes on the laws behind sex trafficking and the ways prominent criminals were caught and jailed for it, which further added to the confusion spreading between us like an oil spill.
“Sex trafficking? What the fuck,” Charlie said, grabbing the pages. “I wrote these… but why? What the hell were Hank and I doing?”
“There’s one variable in this equation who would know.”
“Hank.” We said his name at the same time.
“If only anyone knew how to reach him.” Charlie slumped back in his seat. “You’d think the guy’s fled the country or something. Watch him be dead.”
Charlie’s dark comment was followed with an even darker laugh.
“I’ll find him,” I assured Char. “I made a contact at Honey and Wood. His name’s Domino. I’ll see if I can meet with him when we get back. Having eyes at the club could help track him down.”
Charlie nodded and got back to flipping through the pages. “Check this out,” he said, drawing my attention away from the schedule I was looking over. “More names.”
He pointed to a bulleted section on a torn-up paper, the heading of the page having been ripped off, leaving the list without any clear meaning. Sure enough, over fifteen names were written down, but only one of them was circled in bold red with the word ‘Warning’ above it: Evan Martinez. Michelle and Cary’s names were there but left unmarked.
There was a location written down and circled, too, the only one: Hillsman Farm. It was an abandoned cattle farm only a few steps away from the beach. After the Hillsman family realized they couldn’t live out their dreams of owning a farm and having beachfront property at the same time, they left it high and dry. The property turned into a popular ghost-tour destination after dark rumors about what the family was really doing on the farm started to spread, twisting and morphing as it traveled from ear to ear.
Charlie huffed, rubbing his face before saying, “This just keeps getting weirder and weirder.”
The fire crackled, one of the logs breaking in half and sending a rain of embers up toward the starry sky. “Welcome to my job.”
He looked at me, the glow of the fire catching in his blue eyes. “Who would want to kill me?” he asked, the dancing flames shining a spotlight on the fear in Charlie’s face. “Out of everyone named in these papers, Evan I’ve never once spoken to or been told I’ve spoken to. Cary, also someone I never really interacted with from what I know. Michelle… well, she’s the one I have a past with, but murder? I don’t think Michelle is capable of something like that.”
“The ones who seem least capable are usually the ones that are most likely.” I rubbed my chin and put my arm around Charlie’s shoulders.
“Whoever it is, I’m going to figure it out,” I promised him, hoping it would give him a semblance of peace. There weren’t many more pages left to look over, the rest of them having random places written down along with a few sketches of a police van with our town’s name written on the side, so small that I almost missed them. Charlie said he couldn’t draw for shit, so that had to have been Hank’s work, but why draw a Blue Creek police van? Were they close to figuring out something? Possibly sending someone to jail?
And what was with Michelle, Cary, and Evan being mentioned? Was Evan going after the girls? Was he the reason for the warning or did he need to be warned? I couldn’t see a world where Evan and the girls would be working together, which made me think they could potentially be targets…
“This really fucking sucks,” Charlie said, exhaustion and frustration in his tone. “I’m trying to remember something, anything, but I can’t. I just can’t. Even though this is my fucking handwriting, it’s all just blank in my head. I hate it.”
I squeezed my arm around him a little tighter, rubbing his shoulder. It pained me, hearing the hurt in his voice. All I wanted to do was flip a switch and turn the lights on, bringing his memories flooding back. It didn’t matter that some of those memories included the trauma of our split. I just wanted to make it better for Char. I always wanted to make things better for him, even when I kept telling myself I didn’t.
“It’s going to be okay. I promise.” I looked out at the moon-soaked scenery. The mountain peaks around us seemed to glow, as if they wore gleaming crowns of light. “Memory is fragile, even for those who have it. Days shift, people change, conversations morph. As a detective, I’ve been trained to never rely on someone’s memory alone.”
“So even if I could remember, it’d be useless?”
