“Sorry about that.”The detective gave a half-hearted shrug.“I needed to talk to you.”
“Ever heard of a fucking phone?”
Ammon’s half-smile caught the light.“Would you have answered?”
Jem didn’t respond.The wind picked up.A Burger King wrapper skittered across the asphalt, and it sounded like dead leaves.The tips of his ears stung, and the tip of his nose stung, and he was pretty sure he was starting to get snotty.Finally, he said, “What about Daniel?Someone’s following him?”
“I don’t know.”Ammon pulled at his coat.“Yes.I think so.”
It had been a long shift.It had been long and loud.It was always loud in BoomTawk.A million people in a million cubicles, everyone trying to have a conversation, phones ringing and supervisors shouting shit you already knew across the fabric partitions, and that goddamn headset plugged into your ear with people yelling and eating and turning up the TV and more often than not, for some fucking reason, taking a shit, and on top of all that, the white noise machines in the ceiling, like this fucking invisible blanket pressing down on you until sometimes you felt like you couldn’t breathe, until sometimes, near the end of the shift, you had this feeling of pressure high in your nose, and your breaths tasted like pennies.
So, Jem took a deep breath and said, “You’ve got five seconds.”
“There’s two of them,” Ammon said.“A man and a woman.Different vehicles.The man drives an old pickup.The woman drives an SUV.Daniel thinks it’s green, but it was dark, so it could be something else.”
Walk away.Tell him to go find the biggest stick he can and fuck himself with it.
But a couple of months before, Jem and Tean had helped Daniel.Had saved him from a pack of lunatics wearing Halloween wolf masks.Men and women who had never been caught.
The goosebumps that ran up Jem’s arms and across his chest had nothing to do with the cold.
“You believe him?”Jem asked.
Which wasn’t a dig at Daniel; the boy was a hell of a lot more competent than most kids his age, and he’d gotten the drop on Jem and Tean not once but twice.But Daniel had been through a lot.By the end, when Jem and Tean had pulled Daniel out of a dog crate in a dead man’s basement, the boy had been seriously traumatized.Whowouldn’tbe a little jumpy after that?
“I’ve seen the man,” Ammon said.
“What’s he look like?”
“White.Maybe six feet tall.He’s got a scar.”Ammon drew a hand along his cheekbone.
Jem rubbed one eye.“Fuck.”
“Is he one of them?”
“I don’t know.Maybe.”He shook his head.“Yes.”
“Fuck,” Ammon said.
“What happened?Where was he?”
“We—we’ve been taking Daniel to this place.Rainbow House.It’s for LGBTQ kids.”A strange note of defensiveness entered Ammon’s voice.“It’s supposed to be a safe space.”
“Oh yeah?They’re not going to magically turn him straight for you?”
Ammon said quietly, “No.”
For a moment, Jem wanted to lean into it.Get nasty.Twist the knife.He made himself say, “And?”
“It’s in an old house.They get the run of it, and there are a couple of volunteers who supervise, but it’s mostly a space for them to—”
“Be safe,” Jem said dryly.
“Have fun.Enjoy being with other kids.”
“Sounds magical.I bet it makes up for all the years you told him he was fucked up and evil and all that other shit.”
Okay, so maybe he was going to twist the knife alittle.
