“Whatever. No fucking in the bathrooms,” Hedy snarks as she makes her way up front.
Soon, we’ve all settled in, and the flight takes off smoothly. Ant looks out the window over the changing Texas landscape.
I touch his arm. “You okay?”
He lifts a shoulder. “This is the first time I’ve flown as a free man,” he says, looking up at me, his nerves evident in his bright eyes. “And it’s weird, but I think I’ve seen this view before.”
“Like you were flown over Texas before?”
“More like I’ve taken off from a similar place. Not Wimberley specifically, but this is definitely not the first time I’ve seen this exact landscape.” He taps his chin. “It was a stop-off, maybe? I don’t remember leaving the plane, so we may have just been picking up someone else before taking off.”
“Another kid?”
“Probably. The way it worked was that I’d be sold off, and then when they wanted something different or someone younger, I was sold back to the same people and shuffled to a different spot. They had a few small planes and always tried to move multiple people to make it worth it.”
I stitch my brows, trying to focus on the logistics and not the way my nephew was dehumanized in every possible way or the fact the gang I’d been running with was associated with something much larger and far more evil than running weed in Central Mexico.
“I didn’t realize it worked that way. I thought you were just sold from one place to the next. I didn’t know you circled back to the same people to be sold again.”
Erik and Charlie exchange a look. Erik looks especially disturbed as he says, “We didn’t know that either.”
“Why not?” I ask, my temper flaring. “Why wouldn’t you ask how the fuck he was sold?”
Ant’s hand lands on my arm. “Tío, I didn’t remember until just now. There’s lots of things I’m still remembering.”
I take a deep breath and then a few more. “My apologies, gentlemen.”
Erik’s eyes are sad and red-rimmed. Charlie takes the lead. “That’s big, Ant. Really big, and I’m so glad you remembered. Do you think other gangs do it that way too?”
“I don’t know. I do know they don’t like being called a gang.”
“What do they want to be called?” asks Charlie.
“A syndicate. Because they have people everywhere. Once one place was done with me, they would call their friends in Minneapolis and ask if anyone needed a thirteen-year-old.”
I dip my chin, rubbing my forehead.
“Sorry,” Ant says. “I didn’t mean to make you sad.”
“It’s not that, nephew. I’ll just never understand how you survived that.”
“I didn’t,” he says simply. “But a version of me did, and I’m glad.”
Erik’s eyes redden further, and he clears his throat. “It was smart, what they did. We’re often able to track back because the current ‘owner,’” he says with a snarl, “isn’t particularly careful with their own paper trail. If they have a network of vetted ‘owners,’ and you keep going back to them, they have better control.”
Charlie rubs his jaw. “If you remember this area, that means there’s an offshoot of that syndicate in Central Texas. Right under our fucking noses.”
Ant looks stricken. “I’m sorry. I wish I would have remembered…”
Charlie holds up his hands. “No. You didn’t do anything wrong. I’m just thinking about the fact I’ve traveled the world looking to help people, and there’s been a major operation in my backyard, and I had no idea.”
Levy clears his throat. “Just my two cents—Ant, up until now, there’s no way for your brain to know what’s important to remember and what isn’t. My guess is that the more you do this, the more you’ll put together what’s important for us to know. In the meantime, let’s celebrate the fact this is your first op.”
Taking Levy’s lead, I say, “This is my first op with my nephew, who I am very proud of.”
He squeezes my arm and takes a deep breath, then goes back to looking out the window. Erik and Levy are sitting across from us. Erik keeps shifting his gaze to Ant who’s watching the clouds go by. Levy, who’s figured out how to read my mind, smiles at me, reaching for my hand.
“This is a good thing,” he reminds me.
