And There He Kept Her (Ben Packard #1)(31)

He imagined himself walking Jarrett on a dirt road surrounded by fall trees, coming home to an empty house, and having no commitments because he knew no one. Whatever it was he’d had with Marcus had cost too much—now he wanted the opposite of that.

Six months later, he saw the job posting for a deputy in Sandy Lake, the same town where he’d spent his summers as a child. The same town where his brother had disappeared.

He jumped at it.

It all felt like a lifetime ago. Marcus was gone. Jarrett was gone. Packard had been living like a monk for two and a half years. It was only a few months ago that he’d gone online and met Michael, a nurse in Minneapolis. Six years younger than him, stocky and hairy as a werewolf. He’d indulged Packard’s unwillingness to send either a photo of his face or his dick, and still didn’t disappear when he found out how far apart they lived. They chatted online, then via text. Packard finally sent a photo of himself. The last time he’d been down to Minneapolis, a month ago for the birthday of one of his brother’s kids, he and Michael met for coffee.

Finally we meet.

Yeah, it’s been a long time coming.

Neither one of them could quit smiling. One cup and they were out of there, back to Michael’s house, naked in no time. Michael was aggressive and submissive simultaneously, and Packard felt the urge to use him up. When they were done, he was reluctant to leave. He felt like he’d walked into a clearing and was feeling the sun on his skin for the first time in years. He spent the night at his brother’s house but met up with Michael again the next day before driving back to Sandy Lake.

It was fun, but Packard didn’t expect to see Michael again. They’d kept in touch via text, mostly in the form of explicit selfies that Michael liked to send without provocation. Bait, he called them, to lure Packard back to Minneapolis again. Packard stayed noncommittal. There was something he was avoiding. Something tangled up in his unresolved feelings for Marcus and what had happened last time he got too close to someone.

On an impulse, Packard put down his sandwich, took out his phone, and texted Michael that he wanted to see him again.

That wasn’t so hard. Why default to going without rather than take the steps to figure out what he wanted? He saw three dots indicating Michael was reading his message. A few seconds later his response arrived.

Funny, I was thinking the same last night.

It was followed immediately by a photo of Michael naked in the bathroom mirror, his dick in the sink like it was looking for water.

Packard heard steps over his shoulder and laid the phone facedown just as a voice behind him said, “A cop should do a better job of watching his back.”

Susan slid into the booth across from him. He still had half a sandwich in front of him. He felt the heat rise in his face at the thought of her seeing the photo Michael had just sent. “That…wasn’t me,” he said.

“Too hairy to be you,” his cousin said, matter-of-factly, looking inside the messenger bag she had flipped open in her lap. “I saw the SUV parked out front. Sorry to interrupt your lunch.”

Was she? Her frankness sometimes made it difficult to parse her intentions. She’d been brutally honest like this since they were kids, doing or saying what she wanted with little regard for how others might take it. Packard had been the opposite. By the time he was a teenager, every word, every action and reaction was carefully considered before being revealed, lest anything give away his big gay secret.

Susan took a stack of bright-yellow paper out of her bag. “I made these on the computer last night and ran off copies this morning. I’m stuffing them in mailboxes and asking businesses to put them up.”

On the front was the word MISSING and two photos of Jenny and Jesse together. Underneath that was a description of both kids and their car, and two phone numbers, one for the nonemergency number at the station and one for Susan’s cell phone.

Her face was blank. He could tell she was tired and doing whatever she could to make something happen. Packard couldn’t help but feel like the stack of yellow paper between them was an accusation. This was what she was doing while he was sitting at Subway looking at dick pics.

“These are great, Susan. Doesn’t hurt to get more people keeping their eyes open.”

Packard told her the story he’d heard from Deputy Callahan about Jesse flushing his stash in the girls’ restroom. He told her about Jesse leaving his phone at home, same as Jenny, and about the second phone Jesse’s sister had given him the number for. “We got his phone records this morning. We also know the second phone pinged a tower north of town in the last two days.”

Susan brightened. “Can’t you get a location from that? Don’t all cell phones have GPS now?” she asked, nodding at his.

“Jesse’s other phone is a burner. It’s likely a cheap prepaid thing not registered in anyone’s name. It’s got no GPS. It’s meant to be disposable.”

Susan stared at the photos on her flyers. “The signal suggests they’re nearby. I was right about that.”

“It tells us the burner is nearby. They could have left it somewhere, or someone else could be carrying it now.”

Packard told Susan about his meeting with Principal Overby and that he was on his way back to the school to meet with the owners of the phones that had been in contact with the burner. He held back the part about the Whatup? text message and his call to that number.