River cleared his throat. “Who gets to make the decision whatbest of Lake’s abilityis?”
McMillan smiled slightly. “That’ll be decided between myself and Theo.”
I groaned. “All right. So…” I trailed off, not sure what I was going to say.
McMillan took a sip from his mug and looked pleasantly surprised. River was the one who picked the beans for our coffee, because in his job, he needed to start the day right and that meant good quality caffeine.
“You need to give your notice at the bookstore.” River put up one finger and made a circling motion with it. “We need to figure out when we move and what we do with all this stuff.”
“Wait,we?” My eyes widened.
“I was going to wait until I’ve fed you two pizza and you were happily in a food coma, but here goes: I gave my notice today.” River winced, as if waiting for a negative response to his news.
“Well fuckingfinally!” Rey commented from the kitchen where he was rinsing the rag. “You hated that place!”
I grinned. “He’s not wrong.”
River’s eyes shined with excitement. “So we can do this thing, right? I won’t let you go alone, and I know Rey won’t either, even though—”
I winced, turned to McMillan, and asked, “Can I ask your professional opinion on something?”
McMillan frowned, but seemed curious. “Sure.”
“And it’s confidential, right?”
“Unless you’re an active threat to yourself or others, yes.”
I thought for a few beats. “Say…if I had a friend who was barely seventeen years old and a runaway, but they wanted to come with me to a whole other state, is that…okay?”
Rey tensed, gripping the kitchen counter hard enough that I could tell his knuckles were white even from this distance.
McMillan glanced at Rey and cleared his throat. “Well, if you’re not forcing him to work or…you know—” he waved a hand and made a face “—then it’s not human trafficking. If you know someone is searching for him though—”
“Lake and I don’t even know Rey’s real name, and we scooped him up like the icicle he was the day of that surprise freeze at the end of November.” River held out a hand toward Rey, who took it and came to sit on the armrest of the couch next to him.
“Rey is like our baby brother. We can’t leave him behind,” I added.
Rey took in a deep breath, obviously mustering all his courage, as he considered McMillan. “I don’t know if anyone’s looking for me, and I don’t care. This is my family, not…notthem.”
McMillan seemed to try to read him, and finally nodded. “All right. I don’t think anyone’s going to ask and if they do, we’ll deal with it then. If you feel like you need to be sure, though, you could give me your name and I could have a cop friend look into—”
“No. Absolutely not.” The snap in Rey’s voice was more forceful than I’d ever heard from him before. “If someone looks me up, they’ll know. I…” He licked his lips, his nervous tick, and said, “They’re not good people. They have connections. I…” He slid off the armrest and into River’s arms, sobbing like he hadn’t in months.
McMillan nodded. “We won’t do that, then.” He gathered some of the papers and handed them to me. “Look these through. If you want to hire representation, you can, but…” He shrugged.
I made an educated guess. “You’re saying that the only horse in this race you have is the fact that you were friends with Ruth and want to see her wishes carried out?”
“Right.” He smiled. “I don’t see any point in paying for someone else when the rescue is already paying for my services anyway. I’m not going to screw you over, because I’m not that kind of guy and I would never do anything to jeopardize Ruth’s life’s work.”
We made tentative plans to meet up in Illinois in a few weeks, and McMillan left with his briefcase.
“Well, this was unexpected,” I managed to say as I put the folder of papers on the tiny end table next to my chair. I weighed the folder down with my to be read pile.
“Can we eat now?” Rey asked, his stomach making an unholy sound that made him giggle.
“Yes, bottomless pit, we can. Go get us drinks and napkins, will ya,” River said and pushed the boy onto his feet.
I straightened the pile of books, then burst into hysterical laughter. “I c-can’t…”
