I knew I had to leave Mason to his own life, now, but at least I was confident that he had someone to care for him, someone to watch over him. I had a strange certainty in my gut that he was going to be okay.
After that, of course, I’d never answered another one of those ads. No matter how willing they might seem, there would always be the specter of someone like Dreyven or Ricky in their lives.
I was still haunted by the thought of the other men I’d paid for sex. I wondered if they were all right, or if they, too, had someone hurting them. I worried that I'd missed the signs before, or simply not wanted to see that I was putting their lives at risk for a few moments of sexual satisfaction.
For a while, the guilt had consumed me. I’d resolved to find some way to make it up to them and to help other victims, but I didn’t know exactly how. So I started to do some research.
I found out that victims of human trafficking were often held captive by more than just visible chains. They generally had no money, no means of transportation, no way to escape the life, even if they found the courage to try. They might be addicted to drugs or alcohol or have their own mental health issues that could be keeping them from seeking help.
Slowly, over the weeks and months that followed, I began developing a loose network of friends and acquaintances—Uber and Lyft drivers, private drivers, chauffeurs, truckers, anyone who was willing and able to work together to get victims of human trafficking to safety.
I finally found a good use for the money Mack had left me. I was actually considering creating a non-profit foundation to support victims of human trafficking, but I didn’t know shit about public relations, marketing or anything like that, so I was limited in my scale and reach.
My contributions to date were small, a couple of hundred bucks here or there to buy gas, a hotel room, clothes, whatever someoneneeded to help escape the life. Occasionally, I got taken advantage of, and only found out after the fact, but the way I figured, if even one of the people I thought I was helping made it out of the life, then it was worth every penny.
It may not have changed the world for everyone, but it changed the world for the ones I was able to help.
I’d kept track of Mason for a while via the internet. I tracked him for a few months, long enough to know that he was recovering and safe. Once he turned eighteen, though, all record of him vanished.
I figured he had moved, changed his name, or gone into some kind of witness protection program. I could have investigated further, hired a private detective, something like that, but I decided he didn’t owe me anything. Hell, I actually owed him.
So I left Mason Malone to his own life, until he had waltzed back into mine as “Mason Cameron”, and turned it upside down.
Shit. I needed to figure out what I was doing.
I got Mason into the house and tucked into bed. It had been a bit of a struggle to get him out of the Jeep and inside, but I’d managed it with only a few choice words. One heart-stopping moment had made me freeze. I’d been supporting most of his weight as I struggled to get my house key in the door lock, when he’d stumbled and accidentally brushed up against me, and my traitorous dick had responded. I bit back a groan at the heavy weight of him against my body, but forced myself to focus on getting him into my bed. Intothebed, I corrected myself.Fuck.
When I got him to the bedroom, he’d collapsed onto the bed and was out almost immediately. I shut the bedroom door behind me, and brought the rest of the luggage in.
I puttered around in my game room for a while, keeping a cautious ear out in case Mason woke in the middle of the night. I tried sleeping on the couch – which was actually as comfortable as my bed, but no dice. Sometime around 3 a.m. I gave up the fight and wandered into the living room. Outside, the night was inky black, the light on the front porch the only illumination.
I grabbed some books from the coffee table and stepped outside,quietly shutting the door behind me. I really didn’t want to frighten Mason by waking him in the middle of the night in a strange place. The thought of him being frightened sent my heart racing. I reasoned to myself that he had dealt with enough fear in his life, I didn’t want to add to it.
I took a seat in one of the old wooden rocking chairs on the front porch, and just listened for a while. The sound of crickets and locusts hummed through the night. I could hear the occasional owl and the flap of bat wings.
The state frowned on broad usage of insecticides this close to the park, so I'd built a couple of bat houses for the side of the cabin. I didn’t know that they really made a measurable difference in the mosquito population, but I liked seeing them fly across the moon when it was full.
This far away from city lights, the stars were like handfuls of glitter scattered against black velvet. I decided to try reading in the vague hope of growing tired. I looked at the books I'd grabbed and either the universe was fucking with me yet again, or my subconscious was working overtime, because I’d grabbed a copy of Mason’s most recent graphic novel. The twins had lent it to me when they’d signed him for the event, but I’d never gotten around to reading it.
I figured this gave me the perfect chance to get to know a little bit more about the man Mason had become, so I settled in to read by the porch light. I’d assumed it would be a fast read: most comics were entertaining, but not necessarily thought provoking. I couldn’t have been more wrong.
This book was not light reading. The storyline dealt with some pretty dark events affecting the main characters, and I couldn’t help but see Mason had included some autobiographical moments in the story.
The last few pages of his novel made my throat constrict. It was fairly accurate to what I knew of Mason’s life, with a touch of fantasy added. Instead of being attacked by his pimp, the main character had been attacked by a vicious group of mercenaries looking for treasure. Instead of recovering for weeks in a hospital, wounds were healed bymagic potions. I read and re-read pages, trying to figure out just how much of the other parts of each was autobiographical and how much was fiction.
But it was the final pages of the last book that threw me for a loop. The eponymous “Dark Angel” showed up, with a cane in one hand, and a mystic gun in the other.
6
Mason
I woketo the sound of someone’s phone going off. I scrambled at the side of the bed wondering what the hell Lizzie had done to my ringtone this time. She loved sneaking off with my phone and resetting my ringtones. This time it was making a tapping noise and chirping at me like some damn bird. It took my foggy brain a few seconds of stabbing stupidly at my phone to realize the noise reallywasa bird.
It cocked its head at me through the bedroom window. As I watched in confusion, it reached over and tapped on the window a few times with its beak. The first time it did it I jumped – damn, that thing was loud!
Having lived in urban areas my entire life, I wasn’t very familiar with wildlife. Except pigeons, of course. Pigeons were everywhere. Everett called them rats with wings. This little guy was no rat - in fact, he didn’t look anything like the pigeons I was familiar with. He was so tiny and delicate! He cocked his head at me and tapped on the window a few more times, before flying off.
I sat up in the unfamiliar room and rubbed the sleep from my eyes. The room itself was… interesting, to say the least. If I had to label it, I might use words like “conservative geek”.
