"The third time," I say, "the kid overhears the man offering him to a friend. They've both been drinking. Like lending someone a tool. The kid takes the man's motorcycle and runs. Rides south. Ends up at a bar on a beach during a hurricane. Hypothetically, of course."
Silence. The deli noise fills the space around us. Forks on plates, the TV above the counter, someone laughing at the register.
"So, hypothetically," Mickey says carefully, "this kid. How old was he when he met this man?"
"Twenty-one."
Mickey blows out a long breath. He rubs his hand over his face. "That matters," he says. "It sucks, but it matters. If he was a minor when it started with this man, we're talking about clear-cut criminal charges. Statutory rape. No gray area. But twenty-one is a legal adult."
"He was a homeless kid with nothing. No options, no family, no support system. The man targeted him specifically because of that."
"I hear you. And morally, you're right. But legally, an adult who stays in a living situation, even a terrible one, even an abusive one, that gets classified differently. It's domestic abuse. It's assault. It's potentially sexual assault if it can be proven that consent was coerced. But proving coercion in a situation where two adults lived together for four years is..." He shakes his head. "It's hard, Tex. It's really hard. Is there evidence? Hospital records? Police records? Anything?"
"No, there's no evidence," I say. "Nobody saw the bruises. Nobody saw anything. The kid never went to a hospital because the man told him nobody would believe him."
"And this man has good standing in the community?"
"Apparently so. He's a deacon at the First Baptist Church. Business owner. Little league sponsor. Firm handshake. The whole package."
"It's the kid's word against his."
"Yeah."
"And hypothetically, if charges were filed, this man's attorney would argue that it was a consensual domestic relationship between two adult men that ended badly. One partner left and took property on his way out. The attorney might even try to flip it and paint the kid as the offender. Theft of a motor vehicle is a felony."
The fury rises fast. I feel it pushing against the walls I've built around it, pressing outward, looking for a way out. This man hurt Stormy for four years. Beat him. Used him. Sexually assaulted him. Starved him. Kept him like a dog on a leash. Terrified him to the point that it took his voice away. And the system that's supposed to protect people is going to look at it and shrug because Stormy was twenty-one instead of seventeen and never went to a hospital and lived in the man's house for years.
"So, he gets away with it," I say.
Mickey shakes his head. "I didn't say that. I said the legal path is difficult. Not impossible, but difficult. Especially without physical evidence, without medical records, without witnesses."
"He's probably doing it to someone else right now," I say. "Or he will be soon. That's what men like this do. Theydon't stop. They find the next one. The streets are full of young people needing help."
"Believe me, I know all about it."
"And you're telling me there's nothing that can be done to this man."
Mickey leans forward. "Tex. Look at me."
I look at him.
"I'm talking to you as your best friend right now. Whatever you're thinking about doing to this man, don't. I know what's in your head. I can see it on your face. You want to drive to Alabama and put your hands on him and I understand that impulse more than you know. But if you do that, you go to prison. And if you go to prison, who takes care of the kid? If you're locked up, who protects him then if this man comes for him?"
That wakes me up fast. He's right. If I kill Ron Jackson, which I could do, which I am physically and emotionally capable of doing, Stormy loses me. Stormy loses the bar, the home, the life we're building. Everything I've worked to give him gets taken away because I'm sitting in a cell in Alabama.
I can't do that to him. He's lost enough. I need to be smarter about this.
I nod at Mickey. "Don't worry, I understand. There's another thing." I pull out my phone. I open the photos and find the one I took last week of the motorcycle upstairs. The tag is visible in the shot, clear enough to read. I slide the phone across the table. "Hypothetically, this bike might be sitting in a building in Bay County. And this man in Alabama found the kid twice before in less than a day. Once when the kid walked fifteen miles down a highway. Once when the kid took a busto Tallahassee and told no one where he was going. What's the chance of this man knowing where this bike is right now?"
Mickey looks at the photo and the tag number. Then he looks at me and I can see the thought land in his head at the exact same moment it lands in mine.
"A tracker," we both say.
"He's got a tracker on the bike," Mickey says. "GPS. They're cheap, easy to install, hard to find if you don't know what you're looking for. Stick one under the frame or inside the fairing and you can follow that bike from a phone app anywhere in the country."
"Which means if there's a tracker on that bike, this man knows exactly where it is right now."
"Right, and the kid."
