“Okay.” She kissed his forehead. “Your mom’s napping, but she has one of the baby monitors with her and the other is at Sasha’s. Gideon and Mercy and I will be in Sasha’s place for a while, so yell if you need anything. We’ll check on you before we leave.”
He closed his eyes, nearly asleep already. “I love you, DD, but you’re hovering. Go away, please and thank you.”
She laughed softly, unoffended. It was fair. They’d all hovered over him, shocked by how close they’d come to losing him. “Okay. Going away now.”
She crept from the studio and climbed the stairs to Sasha’s apartment, where Gideon and Mercy sat waiting in front of Gideon’s open laptop. Sasha had gone back to work but had invited Mercy to use her guest bedroom while she was visiting. Gideon had been a bit disappointed by this but had understood Mercy’s need for space.
“He’s asleep,” Daisy told them. “Are we ready?”
Gideon and Mercy both nodded, their expressions identically grim. Sitting side by side, it was easy to see the resemblance. Same dark hair, same green eyes. Mercy didn’t have the silver in her hair, but her eyes seemed much older than his.
“Skype’s set up,” Gideon said. “We’re waiting for Agent Dabney to call.”
Dabney was Gideon’s colleague in the San Diego field office. He was also the one to have made contact with Lawton Malloy, the university swimmer who had the almost-Eden tattoo. Gideon hadn’t been able to travel south and Lawton was in the middle of exams and couldn’t come north, so they’d decided to video chat.
Cuddling Brutus in her lap because she suspected she was going to need her, Daisy sat next to Gideon and took his hand. “Whatever he says, we’ll deal with it.”
“I know.” He pressed a kiss to her temple. “Thanks for being here.”
Daisy squeezed his hand in answer and together the three of them waited in silence.
The call came in at two sharp. Gideon accepted and the screen came to life, revealing a fiftyish man in a black suit, who had to be Agent Dabney, sitting next to the young swimmer Daisy had found during her search for the Eden tattoo. He wore a shirt and tie, his hair neatly combed. And his eyes full of apprehension.
“Gideon,” Agent Dabney said warmly. “I hear you’ve had some excitement up there.”
Gideon huffed a tired chuckle. “You could say that. Thanks for setting this up. This is my sister, Mercy Callahan, and my girlfriend, Daisy Dawson. Daisy ran the original search that led us to you, Mr. Malloy.”
Lawton Malloy’s smile was a bit fractured. “I was surprised to hear from the FBI.”
“I imagine so,” Gideon murmured. “Thank you for talking to us. How much has Agent Dabney told you?”
“Not much. Just that you saw my tattoo and wanted to talk to me about it. Why do you want to know? It’s not a gang thing, if that’s what you’re thinking.”
Gideon and Mercy shared a glance and Mercy gave him a tight nod of permission.
“We know what it means. Because I had a tattoo very similar to yours, Lawton.”
Neither Lawton nor Agent Dabney could hide his shock. Dabney said nothing, but Lawton gasped, “What? Where?”
“Same place as yours, but I had it covered with another tattoo when I was eighteen. It represented very bad memories. It was given to me against my will.”
Lawton’s eyes were still wide. “So you came from . . . from Eden?”
Mercy flinched at the name. Gideon didn’t flinch but his left eye twitched. His tell. “Yes, I did,” Gideon answered, then gestured between himself and Mercy. “We both did.”
Lawton’s eyes unexpectedly filled with tears. “He thought he was the only one.”
“Who did you know who got out?” Mercy asked softly.
“Levi.” Lawton’s throat worked as he tried to swallow. “His name was Levi Hull.”
Mercy sucked in a sharp breath. “Levi?”
Lawton nodded, swiping at his eyes with the heels of his hands. “He . . .” He shuddered out a breath. “Levi killed himself a year ago.”
Oh no. Daisy’s heart squeezed painfully.
Gideon closed his eyes briefly. Mercy paled. Gideon recovered first and cleared his throat. “You were friends?”
Lawton nodded, wiping away new tears. “More than friends. At least we wanted to be. But that place . . . It fucked with his head. Pardon my language. I’m sorry.”
“It’s all right,” Gideon murmured. “Eden, you mean?”
“Eden,” Lawton spat, as if the word left a bitter taste in his mouth. He blinked his tears away, his eyes now burning with unfettered fury. “They preached that homosexuality was a sin, but the men were fucking thirteen-year-old boys.”
Gideon went still. He opened his mouth, then closed it again.
Mercy turned to stare at his profile, dawning realization and horror on her face. “Gideon?” she whispered.
She hadn’t known. Daisy didn’t know what to say. What to do. Mercy hadn’t known why Gideon ran away.
Gideon shook his head tightly, his gaze locked on the screen. “I got away. But it was close. I guess Levi wasn’t so lucky.”
Lawton’s head shake was slow and incredibly sad. “No. He wasn’t.”
“How did you meet him?” Daisy asked when Gideon and Mercy fell silent.
“In high school. I’m from L.A. Levi came to live with his uncle when we were fifteen. My mom and his uncle’s wife were friends and thought I’d be good for Levi. You know, to introduce him around and hang out. We got along and then we were inseparable. Lawton and Levi.” The tears were flowing down his face. “Friends forever.”
Daisy smiled gently at him. “And then more than friends.”
“Yeah,” Lawton said hoarsely. “But Levi had so many demons. He wanted a life with me, but all that Eden shit kept coming back and back and back. He was two steps forward and three steps back, y’know?”
Daisy nodded sadly. “I know.”
“And then I got a swimming scholarship,” he said miserably. “Levi had been on the team with me until senior year. I didn’t know why he dropped out, but then one day I surprised him in his room when he was changing his shirt. He had scars from cutting and fresh track marks. He hadn’t wanted anyone to know. That’s why he quit swimming. Well, that and he would have failed drug tests in competition. I tried to get him help. Tried to get him therapy. His uncle did, too. But Levi wouldn’t go. He was afraid the therapist would get him to tell his secrets and then he’d spill about Eden. It was the first I heard of it and he made me promise to never tell.” He looked away. “So I didn’t.”
Daisy knew that feeling. She hadn’t been able to fully open up in therapy during rehab, either. She’d feared divulging their family’s secret—that they were in hiding and feared Taylor’s biological father. So she’d said very, very little.
She glanced at Gideon, who wore the same far-gone expression that he had the night they’d first met, when he’d blurted out that the man in Eileen’s wedding photo was dead.
“Gideon?” she murmured.
He nodded, acknowledging that he’d heard her, but said nothing. Neither did Mercy.
All right then. “Whatever happened or didn’t happen wasn’t your fault, Lawton,” Daisy said, not expecting her words to make a difference, but Lawton surprised her.
“I know. It’s the fault of the bastards who hurt him and all the others who looked the other way. But Levi was the one who suffered. And so did we.”
“Did his uncle know?” Daisy asked.
“No. His uncle was told that Levi had been abandoned into the system and Levi didn’t set the story straight. He told me later, when it all came out, that he couldn’t tell his uncle because his uncle would go hunting for Eden and that his mother would be punished, because ‘they’d’ know. So he never told anyone. Only me.”
Gideon abruptly straightened in his seat. “How did he get away?”
“His mother smuggled him out on some kind of supply truck. He finally told her what was going on and she cried. She gave him her brother’s name, then paid the driver to get him out and drop him off at a bus station.”
She paid the driver, Daisy thought bitterly. Gideon’s mother had paid with her body. It was likely that Levi’s had done the same.
“Which station?” Gideon asked.
“The one in Medford, Oregon,” Lawton said.
“It’s about the same driving time from Macdoel as is the Redding bus station,” Daisy murmured.
Gideon nodded that he’d heard her, but his eyes were locked on the young man on-screen. “And his mother?”
Lawton shook his head. “She had other kids. She couldn’t leave them.”
Gideon and Mercy shared a long glance. Mercy let out a slow breath. “We know that story,” she said in that still way she had. “I was the child my mother had to stay for.”
Gideon’s shoulders slumped sorrowfully. “Mercy,” he whispered.
“But it’s true,” Mercy said.
Daisy’s heart hurt for Mercy. What a burden that has to be.
Lawton looked equally affected. “God, I’m sorry.”
“Thank you,” Mercy said. “I remember Levi. He was eight or nine when I left, a really sweet little boy.” One side of her mouth lifted. “I used to watch him and some of the other kids when the mothers did sewing circle or Bible study. He loved flowers.”
Lawton smiled tremulously. “He wanted to be a botanist. He never got the chance.”