The Girl and the Unlucky 13 (Emma Griffin™ FBI Mystery)

by A J Rivers

  Misty stammers for a second, the question apparently having caught her off guard.

  “Ashley was a young, healthy, smart girl. It wouldn’t be easy to just keep her captive like that. I just assume it had to be more than one person,” she says.

  “She has only talked about one person,” I point out. “This man she calls Wolf.”

  “To you,” Misty says. “But she’s said ‘they’ to me when we were just talking.”

  The words are thin and snipped as she squirms, obviously uncomfortable under my scrutiny. But I’m not going to let her off the hook that easily.

  “So you didn’t assume,” I say.

  “What do you mean?”

  “You just said that you assumed there was more than one person, but then you said that Ashley mentioned it to you. So, did you assume there was more than one person who had her, or did Ashley tell you there was more than one person?” I ask.

  Misty’s mouth opens, then closes, bending down into a scowl.

  “You’re trying to put words in my mouth,” she protests.

  “No, I’m not. I’m actually trying to do the opposite. I’m trying to understand what you’re telling me and to get as much information out of Ashley as possible,” I say.

  “She isn’t a bottle of ketchup you can shake until you get to the last drop,” Misty says. “She already said she told you everything she remembers. What else is it that she needs to do?”

  “Keep trying,” Ashley says.

  Something is different about her voice now. It’s not a dramatic shift. She hasn’t suddenly slipped into a robotic monotone or developed an accent. The change is more subtle, but it’s there. The words seem to have more weight. They’re more anchored inside her when she says them. Misty looks over at her, but I can’t tell if she’s noticed the change or if she just didn’t catch what her daughter said.

  “What, honey?” she asks.

  “We need to keep trying. I might not know every step that happened that night, but I know some things. And I want to help figure out the rest,” she says.

  “Honey, you’ve already done everything you need to do. You got yourself out and you told your story. That’s the most anyone can expect from you. The rest is the responsibility of the police and the FBI. Let them do their jobs.”

  “I’m here because I didn’t just let them do their jobs,” Ashley replies. She scrolls back through the footage on the tablet again and pauses it, turning it to her mother. “You see her? You see that girl? Tell her to just let them do their jobs.”

  “Honey,” Misty says in the slow, quiet tone I notice she uses when she’s trying to calm Ashley. “All I mean is…”

  “I waited for so long. I waited for someone to help, for anyone to come. No one ever did. If I kept waiting, I would still be there. I had to get myself out of there. I did their job then, and if I need to do it now, I will.” She looks at the screen again, her face clouding. “To make it up to that girl back then.”

  “You have my word I am doing everything I can to do just that,” I say. “I know going back to the house isn’t going to be easy, but I’ll be right there with you. The whole time. And if you change your mind while we’re there, we’ll leave.”

  “It’s time for you to leave,” Misty tells me.

  “Mom,” Ashley says.

  “Dinner will be ready soon. We’ve given up enough of our time for today.”

  “I’ll be back,” I tell Ashley. “Thank you for watching that.”

  She nods as she hands me back the tablet. “Do you think Wolf is out there looking for me?”

  Misty’s eyes widen and snap to me, horrified.

  “We’ll find him,” I say. “We just need to keep moving forward.”

  I go right to Dean’s room when I get back to the hotel.

  “What’s going on?” he asks, tugging his shirt on over his freshly showered head as he comes out into the hallway.

  “Come to my room. I need to tell you about what just happened.”

  A few minutes later we’re sitting in my room with the tablet on the table in front of us.

  “Misty didn’t know what happened with Vivian and Allison?” Dean asks.

  “No. I asked the investigators not to disclose that yet. I don’t want it to confuse other aspects of the investigation. Keeping those details confidential is our leverage right now. And Misty looked genuinely surprised when she saw them come into the hospital.”

  “She didn’t want to know what happened,” Xavier points out.

  “She asked who the people were and where they found her,” Ava says. “That’s what Emma said.”

  “Yes,” Xavier nods. “But she didn’t ask what happened to her. She didn’t want to know why they were bringing her to the hospital.”

  “Maybe she knew about Ashley’s drinking,” Dean offers. “It might not have been the first time something like this happened. It wouldn’t be the first time a mother tried to paint a rosy picture of what her child was actually like when something awful happened to that child.”

  “Why would she do that, though?” Ava asks. “What would the point be of pretending Ashley was perfect? If Misty knew Ashley partied, maybe she knew people Ashley could have gotten wrapped up with.”

  “The same reason people tend to forget how horrible their relatives really were once they die. It can be hard to have negative thoughts about somebody you might not see again. For a mother whose child is missing, it can feel that acknowledging anything unpleasant or controversial about that child makes it seem as though she doesn’t actually want the child back. Or as if it will somehow reduce the chances she’ll get the child back,” I say.

  “As if she isn’t showing enough sincerity to the universe,” Xavier says.

  “We’ve got to get her to that house,” I say. “Misty pushed back against it so hard. Ashley is an adult. If she wants to go, she should.”

  “Do you really think that’s a good idea?” Ava asks.

  “I’m assuming you don’t,” I say.

  “It’s just that she was held captive at that house for five years. She went through horrible things there. And she escaped. Don’t you think that could create a damaging situation for her?”

  “You sound just like Misty,” I say.

  “Maybe it’s something to consider,” she says.

  “And maybe you should consider I know better than someone who has no investigative experience. I wouldn’t put Ashley in danger. I’m not suggesting she walk up to the front door and ring the doorbell if she sees her captor through the window. The chances of his still being in the place where she was kept are next to nothing. He’s not stupid. And he’s also not disconnected from the world. Ashley said herself that he watches the news and he keeps up with things. He knows her situation is being splashed on every network in existence. He’s not just going to sit around and wait for the mob with the pitchforks and torches.”

  “That’s not actually going to happen, Xavier,” Dean says, quickly adding the disclaimer he and I both know needs to exist.

  “Are you sure?” Xavier asks.

  “Yes,” Dean says out of the corner of his mouth.

  “Can we arrange for it?” Xavier asks quietly.

  “No,” Dean says.

  “The thing is, I sincerely doubt the house she could lead us to is the only place she’s been kept this entire time. But getting there and seeing those surroundings could be a step toward finding where else she’s been,” I say.

  “But couldn’t you look at the house and find out all the same things without her there?” Ava asks.

  “I could look at it,” I say. “And I could research it. But, no, I couldn’t find out the same things without her there. She’s willing to do what needs to be done to find out what happened to her and stop it from happening to anyone else. I would think that if she is, other people would be, too.”

  Forty-Five

  “Hey,” Dean says, coming into my room the next morning. “You slept late.”

  “No
t exactly,” I say.

  “Two hours and fifteen minutes,” Xavier says. “Give or take. Most likely between three and five-thirty.”

  Dean stares at him. “Please tell me you didn’t embed a chip in her. Or bug her room.”

  “Why was ‘embed a chip in her’ the first thing out of your mouth?” I ask.

  “I didn’t do either one,” Xavier protests.

  “Then how could you possibly know that?”

  He points at the table close to the window. “The assortment of food wrappers and room service dishes. Based on observing Emma eat and creating an average of the amount she eats over a set time frame, combined with the imbalance of real food versus vending machine food when considering the posted hours of room service, I’m guessing that is the approximate amount of overnight time spent not snacking.”

  “Some people read tea leaves, Xavier reads snack food wrappers and dirty dishes,” Dean says.

  “Well, now that I’m resigned to eating nothing but raw fruit and vegetables for the next few weeks, let’s talk about what we’re doing today,” I say.

  “I guess that depends on what Ava has to say when she gets back,” Dean shrugs.

  “Where did she go?” I ask.

  “What do you mean where did she go? Didn’t you send her somewhere?” he asks.

  My spine stiffens. “No. I didn’t. How long has she been gone?”

  “About an hour, I guess,” Dean says. “She slipped a note under my room door saying she had to go look into something.”

  “Under your door?” I ask. “Why would she do that?”

  “Who else is she going to tell? You? She probably thought you would slip a note back that just said ‘yay’,” he says.

  I roll my eyes at him. “Alright, I think that might be a little bit of an exaggeration. Things aren’t that bad between us. I just need her to…”

  “What?” Dean cuts me off. “Act like you never would have when you were her age?”

  “By the time I was her age, I had already been an agent for a couple of years and taken down murderers and organized crime rings,” I fire back.

  “Because you didn’t let anybody tell you who you were allowed to be or what you were capable of doing,” he points out. “Because you took it upon yourself to disobey direct orders from your superior officers if you needed to.”

  “I haven’t told her either of those things,” I protest. “I’ve just told her to not interfere.”

  “And if someone had said that to you?” he asks. “If at the beginning of your career someone had tried to put you in a corner that way?”

  “They did. Countless times,” I say.

  “And what did you do? You just sat there and took it?”

  “We’re not talking about me, Dean. We’re talking about Ava.”

  “What are we talking about Ava about?”

  I look up to see Ava standing at the door, gazing in at me.

  Xavier leans slightly toward me to whisper. “Maybe we could talk about her grammar. That might be more constructive.”

  “The door wasn’t all the way closed,” Ava says, gesturing at it as she steps inside. “I heard everybody talking, so I thought I’d come in.”

  “What were you doing this morning?” I ask.

  She smiles, clearly pleased with herself. “I went to talk to Ashley.”

  “You did what?”

  “Oh, shit,” Dean mutters.

  Ava’s smile drops from her face and she looks surprised at our reaction.

  “You’d said Misty didn’t want Ashley to go to the house and I thought…”

  “You thought what? That you could convince her to change her mind? That you could go behind my back and interject yourself, and that would spontaneously make her agree to it?” I ask angrily.

  “No,” she says. “That’s not what I meant. I just thought maybe there was another way that would accomplish all the goals.”

  “What goals?” I ask.

  “Misty feeling that her daughter is safe and secure, but us getting the information we need to move the investigation forward,” she explains.

  “No,” I say. “There is only one goal. And that’s to find who did this to Ashley so we can get them out of society. ‘We’ don’t need anything. I need Ashley to show us the house.”

  “I found out how to get there. That’s why I went. I thought if she could describe to me how she got to the school and we were able to trace it back, we could find the house. She even drew a diagram of the house and as much of a map as she could,” Ava says.

  “If I’d wanted her to do that, I would have asked her to do it,” I say through a stiff jaw and tightly held teeth. “The point was for her to retrace her steps and come to the house with me.”

  “Why?” Ava asks. “Why does she need to be there?”

  “So we can see it through her eyes,” Xavier says. “Emma needs to see what Ashley saw. And how she reacts to the surroundings. That would have told her more than a description and a piece of paper could.”

  “Xavier,” Dean pipes up, backing up toward the door, “let’s go downstairs and get some breakfast.”

  “We already had breakfast,” Xavier says.

  “Brunch.”

  “It’s not late enough.”

  “Second breakfast,” Dean says.

  “Oooh, Hobbit style,” Xavier says, moving toward the door. As he passes Ava, he pauses and looks at her. “The shovel, Ava. That’s all I said. The shovel. Not the whole sandbox.”

  She watches him leave, stuck in those familiar few seconds of wonder before turning her attention back to me.

  “I’m sorry, Emma,” she says. “I was just trying to help.”

  “You were trying to get your point across and take over part of the investigation because you didn’t like the way I want it handled,” I say.

  “I thought there could be a better way,” she says. “I didn’t think it was necessary for a traumatized victim to return to the place she was held and probably tortured for five years, especially when the perpetrator is still unidentified and at large.”

  She’s forcing her voice to sound strong as she holds her ground, but I’m not impressed.

  “She wasn’t held there for five years,” I say. “She was probably only there for a few days at the most.”

  “I thought she said that was where she was. Where she woke up and where she escaped from,” Ava says.

  “She said she woke up in a house. And yes, she escaped from that particular house,” I say. “But that wasn’t the house where she was kept for five years.”

  “How do you know that?” Ava asks. “She knew how to get out and get into town, but that could be as simple as sometimes they took her to the store. You know as well as I do there are kidnap victims who aren’t always locked down. They get taken out and driven around.”

  “Because there’s no electricity there,” I say.

  Ava looks slightly taken aback. “What?”

  “No electricity. The area she described when she was first telling the story of how she escaped narrowed down the possible area of where the house could be located. Based on her description, it was clearly a farmhouse set on a good piece of land. The man who gave her a ride to the vigil the day she reappeared gave a clear account of where exactly he picked her up and what she said.

  “Those details combine to roughly outline a general area where she realistically could have been. And in that area are several farms. Most of them are well-maintained and functional to this day. Three other houses in the general vicinity match her explanation of going across the field and out into the woods. Every one of them has been abandoned for more than a decade and a half. None of them has electricity.

  “Ashley has mentioned on multiple occasions that Wolf watched the news. She knew to get to the school at the time of the vigil because she watched it with him. He couldn’t have done that in a house that doesn’t have any power. Ashley was moved. She doesn’t want to admit it right now, but there was another place. />
  “But maybe even more important than all of that, you’ve damaged the relationship with Ashley.”

  “How did I do that?” she asks.

  “I told her I want her to be involved. She’s the only one who’s going to be able to give us the information and insight we need to find this guy and bring the case to a close. Seeing what happened the night she went missing, and hearing me say that, was making her feel strong. It was empowering her. But your going over there to talk to her without me and asking her to tell you about the house rather than having her show us, you told her that we don’t trust her. That she isn’t important or capable.

  “You isolated her further and took away her power again. This is a girl who was treated as someone else’s property with no choices of her own. She was offered the chance to reclaim some of what was taken from her and turn the tables on Wolf and whoever else might have hurt her during that time. I asked her to trust me. Then you stuck yourself into it and took that away.”

  Ava stammers for a few seconds.

  “I’m sorry,” she finally says.

  Forty-Six

  The door opens and Xavier’s head appears.

  “Everything alright now?” he asks. “Did our diversionary tactic of dismissing ourselves under the guise of going for second breakfast give the two of you enough time to talk things out?”

  “Thanks, Xavier,” Dean says, gently pushing him the rest of the way into the room and looking at me. “They stopped serving breakfast. So, first breakfast is going to have to be enough.”

  “I wanted pancakes,” Xavier pouts.

  Dean looks between Ava and me, trying to measure the tension and figure out what to do next.

  “Where do we go from here?” he asks.

  “I’m going to get some coffee,” I say. “Then we’re going to go to the house.”

  “We are?” Ava asks, sounding almost hopeful.

  “At this point, you’ve diminished their faith in me and potentially compromised Ashley’s willingness to cooperate, and to stand up to her mother, who doesn’t want her to have anything to do with the investigation. We do what we can and then we fix the rest later,” I say.