“First person Xander blackmailed. That’s one of the first things we ever did together when we met.” He flushed and glanced to his right, toward a window. We all stared, and I could almost see the questions flitting through Slater’s mind as his shoulders squared.
“Is Xander his real name?” Slater asked, and that was a reasonable first question. I knew he was trying to be good at leading the witness to answer, by providing known information, but it was such a stupidly obvious one that I wanted to smack him. We had so many bigger questions. Slater took a small notebook and pen out of his coat pocket.
Seb laughed. “No. His name is Jason. I think his last name is Bolton, but I’m not entirely sure. That could be fake, but I don’t think so.”
“Solid information,” I muttered at Jayce, who elbowed me.
Jayce cleared his throat and Seb’s attention snagged on him. “How many times did you pull the same scam you ran on River?”
Seb opened his mouth but then hesitated.
“We’re not here to get you in trouble,” I grumbled, “even if you deserve it.”
Much like his sister, his chin began to wobble. I took a step back from him because crying wasn’t something I enjoyed, not even from babies, who were supposed to do it.
“He said he loved me, and that the people we were hurting weren’t good people to begin with.” He glanced at me again from under tearstained eyelashes, another sopping-wet apology clear in his misty eyes, but I wasn’t going to give him the satisfaction of telling him it was all okay. It really wasn’t.
Jayce frowned my way, obviously wanting me to keep this ball rolling.
“Well, there are people who would agree with your friend Xander about me.” It wasn’t a lie. “Here’s a tip—men who love you don’t usually shoot you up and toss your ass in bed with a stranger. He wanted meto fuck you.” I didn’t care that Jayce looked like he wanted to spank me for saying those words so directly, because they were true. “Xander wanted a pic of me balls deep in you. He wanted your cum on me. He wanted you used.”
Seb flushed.
Jayce hissed, “River!”
Seb mumbled, “I know.”
Slater waved a hand at me, passing the baton of this interview. I took a deep breath and tried to get around my frustration and anger. “Is there anything you can tell us about your dear friend Xander?”
He chewed on the corner of his thumbnail and stared at a ficus someone had arranged very close to him on an end table. “Xander likes this brand of coffee called Emo Isn’t Dead, and he likes burgers. He tells people he has an eleven-inch dick, but it’s really only nine, and he almost always fucks in the dark.”
I tilted my head back and stared at the ceiling until the urge to scream passed. “How about where he grew up? Where does he live? Not that his eating-and-fucking habits may not prove useful.” I tried to keep my sarcasm to a minimum, but he only put on his thinking face in response, so maybe he didn’t hear it anyway.
Seb’s brain seemed to be taking a slow turn around the block as he blinked rapidly, and for a second I wondered if he was having a seizure related to detox because it took him so long to answer, but he finally glanced up at us again. “Here! He lives in New Gothenburg. He has an apartment. It’s small. One bedroom. Sometimes we stayed there, and there was a house by the lake we stayed in sometimes, but it didn’t belong to him. It was big. Nice.”
“Nicer than this?”
“Yes.”
I blinked at that, glancing around this single room that was probably large enough to fit my entire apartment inside, and Jayce and Slater shared looks.
Slater cleared his throat and tapped a finger to the notes he’d been taking. “What about the other men who were there that night?”
Seb frowned and again took too long to answer, but I didn’t feel like he was making up lies, more searching for the energy to speak with us. Finally he sighed and shrugged. “I was really messed up. I don’t have names for anyone except Dima. The other guys were new. Dima was around a lot. One of the other men was Ukrainian—like, from there—who was visiting. He didn’t speak much English, but Dima could kind of talk to him.”
“Who is Dima?” Jayce asked the question that had been bugging me off and on. His haunted brown eyes kept coming back to me at the worst times, and I felt terrible for him.
Seb cupped a hand over his mouth and stared at the floor, dragging his blankets a little closer to himself. He seemed to be running out of steam fast.
“Dima didn’t want to be there,” I prompted.
“No, he didn’t.” Seb shook his head. “He belongs to some guy here in the city, and sometimes he sends him to do things with Xander.”
“You’re still calling him that?” I couldn’t help but ask. “Thought his name was Jason?”
Seb sighed. “It’s how I met him. I met him online as Xander.” His cheeks tinted a neon pink. “On an app. I shouldn’t have been on there.”
“When you say Dima belongs to someone,” Slater interrupted, his pen ready to write again, “do you mean like… like my Ford belongs to me? That type of belong? Or was he dating someone?”
