“Nice to meet you, Kim,” I told her, which earned me a kind smile. “I’m Ethan, and this is Finley Dyer,” I said, touching Finley’s shoulder.
She turned to Finley and they shook hands as well. “Nice to meet you, Kim,” Finley told her.
They began talking to one another but I wasn’t listening. I couldn’t help myself. Instead, I watched Finley’s mouth speak, smile, laugh. She mesmerized me, this new Finley. This Finley not limited to restrictions, to boundaries. This Finley I was in love with. This Finley I would die for, tornado the world for, kill for. This Finley I would do anything for.
I watched how the glittering sun and the aimless shades from the hanging trees surrounding the drive played across her ceramic skin, her plump, crimson lips, her straight nose with just the slightest, charming slope, her defined, tempting cheekbones. Cheekbones I longed in that moment to run my thumbs across. I watched her bright blue eyes dance as she spoke as if they held hidden secrets bursting to divulge. Her hair swung about her shoulders, soft and inviting in its bombshell waves, its titian glow framing her brilliant face.
I shook off her narcotic, shedding it with an affirmation. I am decisively and inescapably in love with Finley Dyer. I felt like a complete fool. Not because of what I felt for Fin but because I had been so convinced that I had ever been in love with Caroline Hunt. Because I hadn’t been. At least not anything like how I felt for Finley Dyer.
The hate I’d held for Spencer that had eventually graduated to an annoying opinion of him vanished. If he’d felt even one tenth for Caroline what I felt for Fin, I’d found him justified. I knew if I ever returned to Bitterroot, I was going to shake that guy’s hand and thank him for freeing me. He’d cured my blindness. He’d made it so I could find her. Her, who stood before me. The elegant, striking, impressive woman who stood beside me.
With a trembling hand, I reached for Finley, grazed my palm against the small of her back and settled it there in that indent that seemed made for my hand. The warmth from her body reminded me of life, that she was real, human, and yet perfect for me. I wondered how in the world I had become so fortunate as to have earned her attention, her affection, her love, and desperately wanted to know what it was I needed to do to keep her. Always.
“Isn’t that right, Ethan?” Finley asked, shocking me back to the present.
I cleared my throat, having no idea what she was asking me but answered anyway, “Yes.”
She continued on, satisfied with my response it seemed, and I, satisfied she even acknowledged me.
Finley
“I’m sorry, Kim, will you excuse me? I just remembered something I wanted to discuss with Ethan.”
“Of course, of course. Go on,” she said with a smile, “I’ll just see if Father needs anything.” Kim turned and walked toward a distracted group of volunteers, deep in lively discussion with Father.
“What’s up?” I asked him.
I brought my palms to his cheeks.
His eyes closed and he swallowed. “Finally,” he breathed, giving me butterflies.
Every time I touched him and gave him that reaction it resulted in my heart dropping and my stomach filling with anticipation of something, though I didn’t know what. I don’t think I ever wanted to find out.
I reached up and kissed his cheek, refraining from kissing his mouth in front of the group, not that they’d care, but it was out of respect for what we were doing that day. Though, to be honest with you, it took incredible self-control.
He smiled at me, apparently calmed down.
“You cool?”
“Yeah, I’m fine,” he hedged. “Just wanted you to touch me.”
My hands fell from his face to find his forearm. My thumbs rubbed the skin there, the soothing contact remedying that part of ourselves that needed constant touch. In this, among so many things, I knew we were made for the other. To so many others, I would have been clingy, irritating, but not in Ethan. Ethan needed my skin just as much as I needed his. We were kismet, a gift from the heavens above left to stumble about all those years until that altogether healing declaration, that single utterance. It was a phrase so many repeated, so many humans expressed, but I knew differently of it. I knew a side of it no one else had seen.
Because we pitched that creed at one another’s feet hoping the other would scrape up the holy words, damaged, bent, and marred by the pasts we carried though they were, and tend to the declaration with a devotion and service only we would have been able to lend them. He safeguarded mine and I safeguarded his. His words were knit inside me then, to evoke them out would have meant my death. And the same could be said for Ethan; I knew it. We, together, were as settled a conclusion as the rising and falling of the sun.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
Ethan
We rode out from Kim’s in three groups with the plan that the second or third bands would ring Father and Kim if any of us had a confirmed lead and location. In turn, they would contact Detective Tran, who was with the first set of volunteers.
Finley and I were in the second group along with Phong and An.
I rang Fin on the cell phone they’d given me and she answered. “I got you,” she said, smiling at me.
“Yeah, ya do,” I told her, kissing her temple and lingering there. I moved my mouth to her ear. “Stay near Phong, Fin.”
“I will,” she whispered back, killing me.
That girl.
I reluctantly withdrew from her and tied my hair back. I’d forgotten the leaf hat so was forced to use my hoodie instead. I tossed the hood over my head, pulling as much of it over my face as possible.
“Can you see me?” I asked her.
“Barely,” Fin answered.
What Finley didn’t know was that I’d brought my knives with me that evening. I didn’t know why I did it. I’d never brought them before, but for some reason I felt like I’d feel safer if I had them near me. They were tucked inside my brown leather chest holster and zipped inside the thick hoodie so it wouldn’t scare Fin.
“Ready?” she asked me.
“As I’ll ever be,” I teased.
She smiled at me but it fell slowly. “You’re a good man,” she told me.
“No, I’m not, but someday I hope I will be. I’m going to earn you,” I told her.
Her brows furrowed. “You can’t earn someone who’s already given themselves to you,” she explained.
“I’m just so grateful for you, Fin. I only meant that I intend to deserve you one day.”
Her mouth fell open and her eyes narrowed at me. “Ethan, that is ridiculous—” she began, but I interrupted her.
“I know. I know, dude. I know, but I’m aware of how much better you are and I only want to give you someone to be proud of too.”
She shook her head the entire time I spoke. “Ethan,” she said, but before she could continue, she noticed that Phong and An were focused on us. “Uh, we’ll talk about it later,” she told me.
I smiled at her and kissed the top of her head.
I turned toward them and An smiled in understanding at me. My face flushed. I couldn’t help the shit-eating grin that shot across my face. I turned my smile away from them to try to hide it, but I wasn’t fooling her. She shook her head at me, and I choked on a laugh then cleared my throat trying to conceal it.
“Okay,” Phong sang out in that way people did when they didn’t fully understand what was happening. “Uh, let’s head west from here.” He turned toward Fin and me. “You guys can hear one another?” We tested the Bluetooth headset and I gave him a thumbs up. “All right, we’ll follow as usual, Ethan. Just let us know if you have any trouble or if you have a lead.”
I nodded, very aware we were on the job, and shed all thoughts except for those that belonged to the task at hand. We walked west toward the Old Quarter.
The Old Quarter was a feast for the eyes, with random cubed stacked modern buildings mixed together with the hundreds of vintage builds from a hundred years prior when the French had o
ccupied. The shops at street level with residences above were an odd mix of Asian with French influence. It was alive with people teeming everywhere. Every direction I turned I was in the thick of a crowd. The little sidewalk restaurants were full to the brim with happy, laughing groups of friends, and the shops with their lights fully bright bustled with patrons.
I took a right on Hàng Dầu, one of the oldest streets in the Old Quarter and meandered around the groups of tourists mixed in with the locals loitering on the sidewalks underneath the shop canopies. The shops there were open front, butting right up against the walks and full to capacity with merchandise.
I took in my surroundings and was flabbergasted at the sheer number of bookstores the Vietnamese had and how packed they all were. Their love for reading was like nothing I’d ever seen and was a testament, I thought, to the people of Vietnam.
I took a left on Hàng Bè, glancing behind me to make sure Fin was close and still with Phong. All the streets in the Old Quarter began with Hàng, which can be translated to street or shop. Hàng was always followed up by the market that street catered to. So, for instance, Hàng Dầu was the street belonging to the silk merchants because Dầu means silk. This practice altered as the years progressed, but you could still find many ancient silk shops on Hàng Dầu side by side with their modern shop neighbors.
In the evenings, the night markets emerged, popping up their makeshift tents and tables and setting up shop in the middle of the streets, making an already crowded area almost impossible to navigate, especially if you were trying to keep tabs on your girlfriend—Oh my God, Finley is my girlfriend—to keep her safe on your dangerous mission of finding the criminals who sold little girls for money.
We’d noticed that the traffickers in Hanoi followed a specific pattern. They’d start by haunting high tourist areas but changing positions and men frequently so you could never gain a true idea of who was a solicitor. The only way we could combat this was by using singular men as bait to draw them out. Since we didn’t have their resources or the number of people they had, it felt like we could never chip away at the damage they were doing. Not that that would have stopped any of us, but it was discouraging at times. With two million international tourists coming into Hanoi every year, the demand would need their supply, we just needed to figure out how to choke them at the neck.
I coughed twice into my hand, the signal Fin and I had worked out when I wanted her to acknowledge me, to let me know she was okay.
“Gotcha, sailor,” she teased. “You okay? Nod once, I can see you.” I nodded. “Good. There’s a lot of people out tonight, huh? More than we’ve seen before, I think.” She paused. I could hear Phong talking to her. “Oh! Oh, really?” she said to him. “I guess there’s a huge festival going on right now, love,” she explained, distracting me for a moment with her term of endearment. “Ethan,” she called to me low, fervently. “Him,” she whispered, “the one on the corner there. Do you see him?” I searched for him, nodded once. “He’s one of them. I can just tell. There’s something about him, something I don’t trust.”
I stepped from the curb, narrowly missing a motorcyclist rambling through the crowd. I crossed between two street shops and aimed for the walk on the other side. The man on the corner was unusually tall for a local, probably six foot, with broad shoulders, and a cold, blank stare that belonged to every single trafficker I’d come across. I took a deep breath, rolled my shoulders, and stalked his direction.
I knew the second he saw me coming that I was his next target, which sent a thrill and a sadness through me.
“You like girls?” he said, his head cocked to the side.
Up close, I recognized that vacant, almost black expression in his eyes. I’d seen this in another man’s eyes once before. When I was twelve, back in Kalispell, there was a man hooked on meth who beat up his wife regularly and when Dad and I had gone grocery shopping once, he’d just happened to be there at the same time. I was trying to fetch something near the pharmacy and I accidentally ran into him. He’d looked down at me and that’s when I saw his eyes. Something about him elicited the most chilling shiver from my body.
I remember asking my dad what was wrong with the guy’s eyes and my dad explained, “He’s sold his soul, son. Whenever you see that look in another person, you run like hell. You hear me?”
In retrospect, I realized it was a strange thing to tell a kid, but in that moment I understood what he’d meant, why he’d warned me.
The trafficker smiled at me, but it wasn’t at all friendly. He was a man who’d answered a call from the devil himself and he’d relished in it.
“Maybe,” I told him. “What you got?” I asked.
“Do you have money?” he asked me, his English perfect.
“I don’t know,” I played back. “I guess that all depends on what it costs.”
“A hundred,” he said, testing me out. He was trying to figure out how schooled I was.
“No way,” I said, walking away.
I got five steps away before he called out to me.
“Sixty,” he said, done playing games.
I stopped, took another deep, steadying breath and turned around. “Sold,” I told him.
“This way,” he said.
He’d pointed down a busy shopping alley, full of people.
“You first,” I said.
He smiled again, creeping me the hell out, and led me down the hectic alley. My heart pounded in my ears, the adrenaline kicking up to an uncomfortable degree. In response, my muscles grew tight against the constraints of my hoodie. The leather of my knife sheath dug into my ribs.
He took me to a shop full of women’s clothing and hats. I hesitated at the store’s entrance.
When he’d noticed I wasn’t going any farther he said, “It’s through the back here.”
If I’d really thought it through, I’d have told him no and walked away in search of another opportunity, but there was something about him that told me whatever girls he’d held were desperate for me to find them, so I followed him.
“Ethan,” I heard on the Bluetooth, making my heart race. “Don’t do it,” Finley said, a desperate tinge to her voice. “Gosh damn it, Ethan! Don’t—” I heard before I cut the signal.
It’s too late, I thought. Keep going.
He led me up a winding staircase behind the storefront and as we ascended, I nonchalantly unzipped my jacket but kept the hood up. At the top sat a small hall with a door at the end. He opened it and I shakily let out a breath as I took in what was behind the door.
There was a long hallway with deep red carpet and commercial-looking sconces with very sheer light peppering the length of it. It looked and felt like a carnival haunted house. I nervously followed him as he led me down the hall, stopping at a door in the center.
“The money,” he said, holding out his palm. With jittery hands, I pulled my wallet out and handed him sixty dollars. “First time?” he asked, gesturing to my hands.
“Yes,” I told him.
“Don’t worry. It’ll be fun,” he explained, making my blood run cold at his careless, horrifying comment.
“How-how old is she?” I stuttered.
“Eleven, I think,” he said flippantly and walked off toward the end of the hall. “Someone will be here when you’re through to guide you back out,” he explained, his back still toward me.
I fought the urge to throw one of my knives at his neck. Instead, I turned toward the door, my hands trembling, and turned the knob. I opened the door.
Inside was an eleven-year-old girl, her face and hair dirty, her clothes too big for her tiny body. I pulled down my hood.
She stood up and silently walked toward me, reaching her hands out toward my zipper.
“Stop,” I whispered to her, pushing her hands away. “No,” I said, when her hands grasped for me again. I grabbed them and held them away, pushing her back toward a chair at the side of the room. “Sit,” I told her, trying to think. “Okay, okay, okay,” I spok
e aloud. “How the fuck do I get you out of here?” I said. “Think, Ethan, think!”
“I cannot leave,” she said with a thick Vietnamese accent.
My head whipped her direction. “You speak English?”
She nodded.
“Sorry for cursing,” I told her like an idiot, but her face remained blank, despondent. I paced the floor, adrenaline pouring out in droves. Stop, I ordered myself. Efficient, safe, covert, I told myself, remembering everything my Uncle Akule had taught me.
I turned toward the girl. “I’m going to help you escape here. I’m going to take you to a place called Slánaigh. Do you know it?”
Her mouth dropped and her eyes began to water.
“No,” I told her, my gut aching for, her but I didn’t have time for that. “No tears. I need you quiet. I need you to obey me. Do you understand?”
“Yes,” she answered desperately.
“Stand behind this door. Do not move from behind this door until I tell you to. When I give you the order, you close it as quietly as you can.”
She nodded and ran behind the door. Her tiny hands wrung themselves.
I popped my hood back into place and took a deep, steadying breath. Mom, I thought. Mom, please, please help me. I opened the door and popped my head out. As if on cue, another man opened the door at the end of the hall.
Breathe.
“Done?” he asked me, looking out.
“Uh, yeah,” I said, but immediately sank back into the confines of the room.
I heard the man walking down the hall and I spared a glance at the eleven-year-old behind the door. Her eyes were wide with fear. I shook my head at her, reminding her to be brave. She nodded at me, her lips tensing in preparation for an order from me.
Breathe.
The man came through, looked around, and appeared confused that there was no girl within view. He opened his mouth, but I didn’t give him an opportunity to speak. I grabbed for him. “Now,” I whispered, and the girl closed the door softly. I spun the surprised man around, his back to my chest, before stepping out then swinging my elbow toward the back of the head just above the neck, hitting him on the occipital bone.