by James, Ed
The first time they lost her. The first time Carter let her go.
Lori sat back, making something in the chair crunch. “It’s definitely her, though.” She put her cell phone to her ear. “You got a problem with me letting our suspect go?”
“Huh?”
“That poor homeless woman you just about assaulted.”
Something prickled the skin at the back of Carter’s neck. Guilt. Shame. “Did she see Layla?”
“She said some woman tossed her five bucks and that dress. That’s all they’ll get out of her.”
As much as Carter didn’t want to let Layla slip through his grasp, keeping that poor woman in wasn’t doing anyone any favors. “Let her go.” He sat on the edge of the desk and focused on the guard. “Can you work back and find her arriving?”
“Sure thing.”
“Thanks, Dane.” Lori finished her call and joined Carter standing. He ignored her hard look, so she leaned in close to whisper, “Max, I get that you’re pissed, but—”
“She was right here. How can we lose her?”
“This is just what happens sometimes.” Lori folded her arms. “You want to talk about it?”
“Nothing to talk about.”
“Right… That’s how you’re playing it?”
“Got something.” The guard was pointing at the screen again, showing the entrance lobby just next door to their current position. A blonde-haired woman waited in line at a security scanner. “This is her arriving.” He jogged the video onward and she stepped through the metal detector, but the guard made her step to the side. “She was stopped.”
“What does that mean? She was IDed, fingerprinted?”
“Lemme see.” The video rattled forward. “God damn.” Onscreen, Layla was locked in a conversation with the guard sitting right next to them. “I feel bad, man. This is on me.”
“It’s fine.” Carter almost bit his tongue. Nothing was fine. “Did you scan anything?”
“Dude, this isn’t North Korea.”
Carter snapped. “Great.”
“Hold up a second.” The guard’s forehead creased tight. “She showed me her passport. Turkish, I think.”
Carter got a tingle at the back of his neck. “Turkish?”
“Sure.” The guard clicked his fingers. “Either of you follow English soccer?”
Carter let out a groan. “My father’s a Chelsea fan. Why?”
“Well, my sister married this English guy and he got me into it. I’m a Manchester City guy and they have this player, dude called İlkay Gündoğan. Think he’s German but his family’s from Turkey.” He pointed at the screen. “She had the same last name.”
Carter looked at Lori, his tingle deepening, spreading out all across his shoulders now. “Get an APB out on that name, okay?”
“Sure.” Lori already had her cell to her ear. “Though she’s surely too smart to reuse it.” She smiled at him with the distant look of someone listening to a ringtone. “But coming to the courthouse to watch her co-conspirator get sentenced is brazen as hell. Means she might slip up again.”
“Don’t get my hopes up.” Carter took another look at the screen. “I can’t help but think this is the last we’ll see of her.”
“Dane, it’s Lori again.” She left them to it, cell to her ear. “Need you to get a hold of the ferries, the trains, the buses. Find everybody matching—” She shut the door.
Carter took a break from scanning the crowd on the screens to give the guard a nod. “Thanks for this. Could make all the difference.”
“Don’t mention it.”
Carter left the room and got a hard look from Lori. “What’s up?”
“You look tired, Max.”
“I am.”
“Listen, we both work these cases, and child abductions are the worst. Makes you think about what if it happened to your kids. And it happened to you.”
Carter couldn’t look at her. “Oh?”
“You were abducted as a kid, Max. By your own father.” She gave his arm a gentle caress. “I get it, but this is eating you up. You need to let this one go.”
“I can’t.” Carter felt the rage tearing at the back of his neck, making the hair on his arms stand on end. “Layla ruined a family’s life. Two people died because of her; another two are grieving their loss.”
“You don’t have any sympathy for her plight?”
“I have every sympathy, but what happened to her own family doesn’t excuse what she did to them.” Carter yawned into his fist, a fresh wave of exhaustion hitting him. “And I’m not giving up until I have her in custody.”
Lori flashed a grin. “That yawn looks contagious. Get yourself home.”
* * *
19:38
Carter tossed his keys in the bowl and dumped his briefcase on the floor. He eased his coat off and hung it on the rack. Bill’s leather cowboy jacket took up one of his pegs, his hiking jacket yet another. Carter kicked off his shoes and opened the door.
“WHEEEEEEEEE!” Kirsty was flying around the hallway, a scream of mid-brown pigtails and Disney princess dress. Acting like she’d been mainlining candy. Carter knew exactly who’d let her do that. “Daddy!”
Still up. At this time.
She hugged his leg tight, bunching his pant leg in her fingers. “Daddy! The big monster’s coming for me!”
A deep-throated growl came from the lounge, followed by slow foot stomps. “I’M COMING FOR YOU, LITTLE GIRL!” Bill stepped through the doorway, stomping slow and hard like he was a zombie in that old Michael Jackson video, fingers raised up like claws. “I’M COMING FOR—” He stopped dead. “Oh. Max.” He ran a hand over his bald skull, his dull pupils hiding behind puffy bags, shrunk to dots by his glasses. “Didn’t know you were home.” His London accent was still there despite years in the Pacific Northwest. Still jarred Carter every time he heard it.
“I think your prey’s hiding behind my leg, O big monster.”
Bill’s claws went back up. “IS SHE?”
Kirsty squealed and ran off through the house. “No, Grandpa!”
Carter watched her go, then glared at his father. “She should be in bed.”
“This is the first time I’ve felt like a human being in weeks.” Bill was playing the chemo card again. Great.
Carter felt that familiar tug at his heart. “Well, five minutes, then she needs to have her head on her pillow.” He gestured for Bill to continue his hunt. “Go on, you can play.” He walked through to the kitchen, unclipping his tie and cursing his decision to let his father stay with them.
Emma over by the stove, stirring a giant pot. Long hair tied back in a ponytail, her dark roots growing through the blonde. Track pants and T-shirt. Her face lit up when she saw him. “Hey.”
“Hey.” Carter leaned in to kiss her on the cheek, the sweet smell of her perfume mixing with the sharp tang of the pasta sauce. “That smells good.”
“Me or dinner?”
“Both.” Carter held her tight and pecked her cheek. “How was your day?”
She kissed him back, then went back to stirring the sauce. “Long and tedious. You?”
“Same.” Carter hung his tie from the door handle. “Layla al-Yasin was at the arraignment. We lost her.”
Emma shut her eyes. “Oh, Max.”
“I lost her again. After what she did, she should’ve been up there today. She should be rotting inside a maximum-security penitentiary.”
“You’ll get her, Max. I know you will.”
He thanked her with a smile. “What’s our little monster doing still up?”
“You let that big monster stay with us, Max. Told you this would happen.”
“I couldn’t let him be on his own.”
A rush of squeals came into the kitchen and Kirsty clamped herself around his leg again. “DADDY!”
Carter brushed her hair out of her face. “Time for your bed, little girl.”
“But Grandpa said I could—”
“You can stay up late t
omorrow night. It’s been a long day for Grandpa.”
Bill was now in the room, but he seemed to have been cured of the zombie plague. “It’s fine, Max. Really.”
“It’s her bed time. She’ll be grumpy as—”
“Grandpa said I could get a doggy…”
“Bill.” Emma’s mouth hung open wide, her shock just as great as Carter’s. Felt like every second of every day was spent fending off Kirsty acquiring a pet. They were barely holding it together as it was. And now he just went and agreed? Without asking them?
“Now that’s not quite right.” Bill held up a finger to Kirsty. “I said if your mummy and daddy let you get one, then I’d help you look after it.”
“Can I get one, Daddy? It’s my birthday soon and—”
“We’ll think about it.” Carter shot Emma the kind of look he’d pass to a fellow agent during a tough interrogation to show he was taking over. “Now, if you’re a good girl, that’ll make it more likely we cave in and let you. Okay?”
“Yay!” Kirsty skidded off out of the room.
“Max…” Emma had a hand to her forehead. “You just made it ten times worse. She’s just heard that she’s getting a dog.”
“I’ll go and put her to bed.” Bill set off after his granddaughter. “Give you two some—”
Carter grabbed his arm. “Seriously, Bill. You need to be ultra-hard on her about the dog. You can’t give her an inch.”
“Right.” Bill blew air up his face. “Always the bad guy, eh?” He shrugged off Carter’s grip and sauntered off.
Emma tipped the pasta into the sink in a wall of steam soon whisked away by the exhaust fan. She took another sip of wine. “This is going real swell.”
“I knew it’d be a disaster, but what choice do I have? He’s my father and…”
She took his hand and squeezed it. “You’re doing the right thing, okay? But no matter how badly you’re struggling with Bill, no matter how angry you are with what he did, you can’t take it out on Kirsty.”
“I’m not taking it—”
“No, but we might need to just let her get that dog.”
“Oh, come on. What if Bill dies next week? We’ll be stuck paying a dog walker. Kirsty will be fed up with Bonzo by—”
“Bonzo?” Emma was smirking. “You’ve already named her?”
“Bonzo’s a boy’s name.” Carter laughed and felt the tension slacken off a bit. He dug his palms into his eye sockets. “If we let her get a dog, she’ll get bored in five minutes and you or I will be the ones taking it out first thing and last thing.”
“You never know, this could be a good chance to teach her some responsibility.”
“I think it’d be better building up from a guinea pig or a hamster. Don’t you?”
“Maybe.”
“Thing is…” Carter stared out of the window into the backyard. Next door’s cat stalked across the pristine lawn like she owned the place. “Bill’s sick. You can see what the chemo’s doing to him.”
“But the cancer isn’t killing him anymore. The doctor thinks he’ll pull through, right?”
“As far as I’m aware. As far as he tells me.”
“He’s Kirsty’s only surviving grandparent. She loves having him around. I worried about her being an only child, and Bill’s like having another kid around, and…”
Carter was a long way from the small kid standing in a private airfield in England while Bill took him to his new life in Seattle. But not so far from the night Bill told him about the car crash that killed his mother. “He’s responsible for my mom’s death, Em. His selfish bullshit killed her.”
Emma stood there, mouth twisted up. For once, she didn’t have anything to say, any crumbs of hope to offer him. She’d helped him process it all, but it was clearly taking a toll on her. Not to mention having Bill under their roof, adding to the cost of raising Kirsty.
“I’ll dish out, okay?” Carter reached into the cupboard and took out three pasta bowls.
“Okay.” Emma took her seat at the table, staring out of the window.
Bill strolled into the kitchen, rubbing his gold-framed glasses on his shirt. “Out like a light.”
Carter dumped some pasta into the third bowl. “How much candy did she have?”
“None.” Bill sat at the table. “I took her to that ice cream place in Ballard.”
“That explains it.” Carter slopped some sauce onto the first pasta. His cell thrummed in his pocket. “Ah hell.” He took it out and checked the screen. SAC Karen Nguyen. “It’s the boss. Better take this.” Ignoring Emma’s glare, he left the kitchen and answered the call. “Carter.”
“Max, need you to come in. There’s been an abduction.”
Carter ran his fingers across his forehead. “Isn’t Lori on call tonight?”
“She is but she’s busy with another abduction out in Aberdeen. Need you to take this. It’s real big, and it’ll likely explode when the news channels get hold of it. Need you there, now.”
Nine
KAITLYN
19:45
The bus idles at the corner, signaling right. Even at night, the sky is a chaotic grid-work of power cables running over the intersection. Some pedestrians walk over the crosswalk, battling against the countdown timer from the white man to the red hand. This district is getting real built-up now, big new buildings springing up everywhere.
Across the road, some guys are installing a sign over a new building. The Landon Bartlett Sr. Cancer Center.
Oh god.
I’m at the back, hugging Ky close. Trying to act normal, like this bus trip is something I do every day. Like I do actually clean some rich asshole’s house and had to take my newborn baby there because my douchebag boyfriend let me down. Again. I catch my reflection in the window, my face all bitter and twisted up.
Keep it like that.
The bus turns the corner and starts down the hill. With a jerk, it pulls up at the stop hanging over the freeway, just a blur of red and white lights below.
A black lady gets on, well-to-do and with the most gorgeous hair. Tight curls, but hanging low. My hair’s so straight it could never sit like that in a million years. The bus rumbles on down the hill and she struggles toward me, then sits in the seat opposite, facing the back of the bus, smiling like she knows me. She focuses on Ky. “What a cute little munchkin.”
“Thanks.” But there’s ice in my voice. Don’t talk to me, lady.
She reaches out her finger and starts cooing at the baby. “He’s a sweet boy.”
“Uh, she’s a girl?”
“Oh, okay.” She’s frowning like she thinks she knows better about my kid’s gender. “Well, she’s a stunn—”
And right on cue, Ky starts screaming. Worse than ever. The sound digs into my ears and scratches at my brain. For such a small thing, he can sure make such a loud noise.
The woman smiles again, but there’s impatience in it. “You know, a young child shouldn’t be out so late.”
I jog him on my knee, but nothing seems to make him settle. Some people put kids in cars to get them to fall asleep. Fat chance of that happening on this bus. “Like I have a choice.” I give her a laugh, the kind where you don’t make eye contact. My left leg is dancing up and down, trying to find a rhythm that suits Ky, but nothing’s working and he’s still screaming.
Other passengers are looking back now, their thoughts the same as this woman’s.
“Had to take her to work, because her deadbeat father left us just after she was born. Then I just missed the last bus and I just need to feed her and…” I trail off, feeling the prickle of tears in my nostrils and sinuses, like it’s the truth.
She reaches over and touches my forearm. “I hear you.” She gives me a warm smile. She’s on my side, thank god. “What’s her name?”
“Jennifer.”
Ky screams again, getting louder.
The woman smiles. “That’s my mother’s name.”
“Mine too.”
“Well,
how about that?” She sits there like that, maybe expecting us to connect over the stupid coincidence like in that lame superhero movie, but she takes out a Kindle and starts reading.
Ky’s not screaming now, not asleep but looking up at me with deep love and affection.
I need to get away from the city and head south, cross the state line into Oregon. Portland’s a big city. Easy to blend in there. I’ll be able to find somewhere to stay pretty cheap. Get some stuff for Ky. Pick up some easy work there. Live a new life.
The towers of downtown are lit up, some pinpricks of light over the Sound toward Bremerton… Maybe I should head out into the countryside?
No. Stick to the plan.
I let out a slow breath, shut my eyes briefly, try to calm myself down in case he’s feeding off my fear.
When I reopen my eyes, we’re deep in downtown, passing through a street I barely know. Corporate or federal buildings, nowhere I have any business. A left and we’re into Chinatown, moving away from the Amazon glitz and into old Seattle grime. Power suits become the rags of the homeless guys hanging out on the street corner. The Greyhound station’s nearby, over toward the football stadium.
I get up and hit the bell. The driver glances back, gives a little nod as I stumble up toward the front of the bus. “Cute kid there.”
“Real tough looking after her, though.”
The bus pulls over, but the woman keeps glancing at me. Is she going to do something? Call the cops? Maybe just talk to me enough that she can prick holes in my story.
I hug Ky tight, but he doesn’t stop crying. “Ky, shut up…” I hop off into the drizzle, pulling his shawl up to keep the spray off his face, but he just keeps on screaming. Need to get something better for him. A stroller, something fancy like he deserves.
I pull up my own hood and set off toward the Greyhound station.
The bus passes, the turn light already pointing right, and the woman smiles at me through the window. I smile back at her and the bus slips off around the corner. I swear she gets out her cell phone.