“Is what happened in the past, on that camping trip, important to what’s happening to our family now?” I ask.
“I don’t know. I honestly don’t know, Brock. I wouldn’t blame Justin Valente—that’s his name, although he goes by Cade Booker now—if he came after our family.”
“So the kid, this Justin kid. What happened?”
“Uncle Bryce’s father found him on the shore of the river where we were camping. He told us that he was dead. That he must’ve gotten up, gone to the river, and drowned.”
“And then was washed up at the shore? That doesn’t make any sense.”
“Uncle Bryce and I weren’t even ten, Brock. We believed what we were told. We found out later that Justin hadn’t died. Tom Simpson had taken him, abused him…”
“To sell him into human trafficking?”
“No. He kept Justin as kind of a…plaything.”
I swallow, but to no avail. I open the door of the pickup, lean my head out, and dry heave a few times. It hurts like hell, but nothing comes up.
“Get it out, Brock,” Dad says. “Just get it out.”
“There’s nothing,” I choke out. “Nothing’s coming out.”
“Dry heaves are the worst.”
Something in Dad’s voice… He knows. He’s been where I am, learning this for the first time.
I get my salivation under control—sort of—and close the door of the truck, turning to Dad.
“So what happened to the guy?”
“Uncle Bryce and I found him twenty-five years ago. He was kind of under our noses the whole time.”
“Wait, are you saying he was living as a free man?”
“Sort of. I think he was a victim of Stockholm syndrome. He had always been under Tom Simpson’s thumb, and then, when Tom died, he was a little bit lost.”
“I can’t even imagine. How the hell does that happen?”
“Hell if I know, Brock, but it does.”
“What happened to him?”
“He left the United States with another one of Tom Simpson’s victims. And again, this all happened twenty-five years ago.”
“Have you heard from them since?”
“I haven’t. And Bryce and I chose not to reach out to them. We had already decided that if either of them came to us, we would give them what they asked for without question. But they never came to us.”
“I don’t see how this could be related to what’s happening now.”
“It may not be.”
“I mean… You parted on good terms, right?”
“As good as can be expected. But I think there was part of Justin that still blamed Bryce and me for what happened to him. I know we were only kids, but we were the ones who invited him on that camping trip. We were the ones who befriended him, tried to help him with the bullies at school, and we inadvertently delivered him into the hands of the biggest bully in Snow Creek.”
My head feels like it’s about to explode. I grab two fistfuls of my hair, yank a little, and then just grab my head, push on it, as if somehow that will keep it from rupturing.
“How the hell did we get on that tangent?” Dad says.