We spent the next thirty minutes driving back to town with Jaxon hauling ass in his poor car, and then another half-hour scoring through the highway until we were nearing dangerously close to downtown Gallin. I had my arms across my chest as I bit my lip, anxiously tapping my foot against the floor in Jaxon's car. He didn't say anything, although I caught him tensing once or twice when he glanced at me and thought I wasn't paying attention. He had this look on his face, as if he wanted to reach out to me just as he did on the car ride through the woods. I didn't ask him where he was going. 

I couldn't force the words past my lips without wanting to cry or strangle someone at once, so I instead focused on trying to regain a little bit of composure. Finding information about my biological mother was the first useful thing I could do to help Hadi. I didn't let myself think about what those twisted boys could be doing to her while I sat on my ass like a dumbfounded wrench who just got rejected for the first time. I didn't want to imagine her terror, or how Joey must be feeling watching his girlfriend getting handled -

Fuck. I clenched my teeth and dug my fingers into my arm. I hoped that that wasn't what they were doing to her, but this was Gallin, and if they were capable of torturing a small child, what stopped them from having their way with a beautiful young woman?

"The first meeting you had with Frenice," Jaxon suddenly said, snapping me from my thoughts. I blinked, then snapped my attention over to him.

"What?"

He kept his eyes on the road as we rounded a neighborhood that was tucked away behind a series of woods and well-tended community gardens. A wealthier section of Gallin, with a large fountain in the middle of a median and a stone sign that read, 'Welcome to Deamone's Ranch' as we got ready to turn on the wide, four-laned road.

"When you first met Frenice, it was at Dog's Brawl, wasn't it?" Jaxon asked, though he sounded as if he already knew the answer. Still, I nodded.

"Yeah. What about it?"

"You said that you were confronted by Fayette Jator and Rebecca Jorden."

I scowled at the reminder.

"That is where you're taking this case? We're going to interrogate Fayette?"

"Yep."

No. Freaking. Way. Hadi was in trouble, and Jaxon thought Miss Beauty Pageant was the best person to go to for help?

"I stopped by last night to question her," Jaxon explained, as if that would somehow stop me from punching him in the teeth.

"And?" I pressed, clenching my fists at my sides.

"I asked her what she meant by your mother paying a ransom for you."

"You did what?" If he wasn't driving, I definitely would have socked him. "You do realize that if you keep this up, then everyone's going to think that we . . ." I faltered, not wanting to finish the sentence. Keeping his eyes on the road, Jaxon's raised eyebrows was his only reply. I vigorously shook my head. "Fuck, Jaxon, I'm known for not telling people about everyone else. Do you have any idea-"

"Well, I got us someone from the inside."

"-what you're - what?" He'd said it so softly that I almost missed it. I stared at him. "Fayette's really one of them?"

"No. But her boyfriend's brother is."

Holy balls. I must have said this out loud, because a hint of a smile hinted at Jaxon's lips.

"Holy balls, indeed," he said seriously, "This guy likes to talk in bed. She just thought he was living over some sort of fantasy from one of his role-playing games."

I raised a hand to cover my mouth. I wasn't sure if I should be horrified or laugh. I mean, she seriously thought that this dude fantasized about people's mothers having to pay for their childrens' safety - more specifically, my mother?

"And how did you get her to talk?" I breathed, not trusting myself to talk louder without crying or laughing.

"I showed her the video."

"How the hell-"

"Tria, how do you think I got into this whole damn mess?" Jaxon snapped. He turned into yet another unfamiliar street, where the houses could very well pass as mansions. He kept driving until we neared a humongous park . . . Birch Park. We were at one of the entrances to Birch Park.

Of course.

"I am the reason that video got out to begin with," Jaxon said as he pulled into the small, empty parking lot. "I was screwing around downtown. Looking for a fight. The guy with the camera was assaulting some woman in an alley, so I fought him and I found the flashdrive off of him while he was unconscious."

"Oh." was the only intelligible reply I could think of.

Jaxon set the car into park and turned to face me with the car still running. For the first time ever, his emotions were showing loud and proud on his face. His eyes were wide, his jaw tight, and his lips were pressed into a thin, hard line as he warred with terror and frustration.

"The bastard is dead because of me," he stressed, and I couldn't move when he reached to grab my shoulders. His fingers dug into bone, but I couldn't bring myself to snap at him to knock it off. One look at those pain-filled eyes had me frozen in place. "I followed him when he went to meet up with his buddies and watched while they put a bullet through both of his fucking knees-" he gave my shoulders a brief shake at this, "and literally carved out his eyes in the middle of some back-end alley when he said he was mugged for the flashdrive." He paused, as if waiting for a response. I swallowed.

"What did you do?" I finally managed to ask. He lowered his voice, though it was by far no less intense.

"I freaked out and ran." He relaxed his grip on my shoulders, but he didn't let go. "Not long after, Quil approached me and asked what the hell I was up to. Said some man in a mask approached him and claimed that he could help me if I gave him the flashdrive. I wouldn't have gone through with it if Quil didn't give me a typed list of potential targets." The poor guy lowered his eyes, and I would have snapped at him if I hadn't noticed that he was staring at my neck rather than my chest - at the faint bruises that still lingered after Landon's assault. 

"Up until that point, I hadn't watched the flashdrive. So I bought a laptop off of some pawnshop and watched it in an abandoned house that I found in the slums. I managed to make a copy before I ran, and sure enough, I returned to the area to see the house and the four surrounding lots up in flames. I gave the original to Quil to give to his friend - which was the one you saw." His right hand fell from my shoulder, reaching back into his jean's back pocket to retrieve a very familiar object. "This one isn't tracked. This was what I showed Fayette."

Finally, he turned to take the key out of the ignition, and for a few unnerving moments, we were wrapped up in silence and darkness.

Almost like that night where I had met him behind the parking lots, when he wanted me to confirm a deal that resulted in me going on a date with him.

"You made a deal with him," I finally whispered - because I was scared that if I spoke any louder, I would break something that couldn't be fixed. "With Ven. You told Quil that Ven had to help me if you gave him the flashdrive."

Through the dim darkness, Jaxon nodded.

And if he hadn't . . . if he hadn't intervened, then I would be sharing rooms with that boy who had his eyes taken from him by this point.

"But if they were willing to kill for the flashdrive, why didn't they immediately sack me when they thought I had it?"

Jaxon shook his head.

"That's what I'm hoping we can get out of Fayette."

I looked over the parking lot through the window, then at the series of trees and hilly terrain that made up the largest park in Gallin - and ranked high up there in all of Morsu, too.

"She's meeting us here?"

"I have to get her."

"Get her?"

Jaxon didn't reply. Instead, he reached behind himself to retrieve his phone before handing it to me. It was a touchscreen, a crude reminder that mine was still dated back about twenty years or so. I realized that my own phone had been dead the entire time, and wondered as I took Jaxon's if Gunboy had tried initially contacting me through that, first. If he only took Hadi because I didn't respond.

"I don't have her number," he stated. "Her house is about a block away from here. The phone is locked," he gestured to the device I now held in my hand, "but you can still call emergency numbers if anything happens. Also," he reached over me to pull a latch at the glove box. At first, all I saw was a stack of papers, but then he reached in further, twisted his arm so that he could touch the ceiling, and- Click!

The guy pulled what could have been a latch, and he had to lean forward as he struggled to grab whatever it was he was looking for. To avoid being in his way, I sat back in my seat, wondering what the hell Jaxon was going to retrieve this time.

Jaxon pulled out a gun.

"What the hell!" I exclaimed. "You just keep secret compartments for guns around here?"

He eased himself back into his own seat and gestured for me to take the small pistol. I hesitated, remembering the last time I'd been forced to hold a gun. Fuck, I hated them. All it took was being in the presence of one and everyone would freak out. By law, Buation citizens were allowed to own a gun, but the process of obtaining, selling, and buying one was so immensely difficult - not to mention, you had to pay a yearly sum to continue owning one - so only the wealthy legally owned them. This didn't stop the odd smuggler here and there, though.

"What even is the use of that?" I continued. "You wouldn't be able to quickly grab it if you needed it."

"Cars get stolen all the time," Jaxon countered. "Wouldn't want someone to easily discover this. Besides," he added when I was about to call him a few choice words, "if I need to defend myself quickly, I have other means to do it. That," he pointed to the gun, "is for if I have time to plan things out."

I released a heavy intake of breath and, biting my lip, took the weapon in my other hand. I was so, so glad I had decided to stay away from him all these years. He was proving to be just as dangerous and calculating as my over-active brain had initially believed. I stared down at the phone and gun now resting in my lap.

"I assume this means I'm not coming with you," I said bitterly. Jaxon's pause made me look up at him.

"I don't think she would answer the door if she saw you," he agreed. I glared at him.

"And yet you think you can coax her to follow you down the street to your car in the middle of the night?" I didn't need to elaborate what I thought about that. There were only so many things one could do to lure someone else out to their car.

"With the right amount of pressure, yes," he replied simply, and without further ado, he moved to get out of the car. Something about the way he said that told me that he wasn't going to suggest to her that he wanted some sort of make-out session, and it made my blood run cold. Blackmail. He was going to get her out here through blackmail, or some other threat.

"Fuck," I breathed, after he already shut the door and was beginning his walk out of the parking lot. I buried my face in my hands, wanting to throw the gun that was resting heavily on my lap somewhere very far, far away, but I couldn't make myself move to do it. "Oh, fuck, what am I going to do?"