by McLean, Jay
Tiny nudges me, and I fill my lungs with air. “Yeah, I do.”
She points to the chair Perceval had just vacated, and I sit down, cover my knees with my hands to stop them from bouncing. Tiny stands next to me, his arms crossed, mask in place.
“Perceval’s teaching me,” she says, and her voice… her voice ignites a fire deep inside me. “I get confused sometimes,” she adds, moving a pawn two squares forward. “It’s hard to remember what moves each piece can make.”
I lick my lips, make the same move as she just did. I say, my voice so strained I barely recognize it, “My dad taught me how to play when I was little.”
Her eyes meet mine.
One second.
Two.
They drop again, and her bottom lip pushes forward, a slight frown.
Shit.
She makes another move.
I stare at the board. “One night, I woke up to the sound of their laughter—my parents—and I snuck out of my bedroom to see what was so funny. They were at the kitchen table playing. My mom was…” I blow out a breath, the memory all-consuming.
“Your mom was what?” Bailey asks, reaching across the board to move one of my pawns.
I lean back in my chair. “Mom was yelling at Dad, accusing him of stealing a couple of her pieces while she was in the bathroom. He kept denying it, laughing at her and calling her names, and—” I crack a smile. “And I must’ve laughed at something he said because they both turned to me, and I thought I was going to get in trouble for being out of bed, but my dad—he asked me if I wanted to learn how to play.” I still remember the sound his chair made when he pushed back from the table to give me room to sit on his lap. I remember the smell of whiskey on his breath as he went through each piece, showing me what they could do. I remember Mom’s hands on both our shoulders as she leaned down to kiss him, and I remember the taste of Dad’s coffee when he offered me some for the first time. I remember watching the sun start to rise and thinking how I should keep it to myself because if they realized just how long we’d been up, they might send me to bed, and the moment would be over. I didn’t want it to end.
Bailey clears her throat, and I get lost in her eyes again. “I like the pawn,” she says, moving another piece.
“The pawn?” I ask. “But it’s the weakest of them all.”
She shrugs. “Maybe.”
I can do this—talk to her like this—even if it holds no real meaning. Especially because it holds no meaning. “What do you like about it?”
“It’s different…” she states, moving another one of my pieces. “See?” she asks, picking up one of her pawns. “It can only move no more than two steps forward, one step back.” She knocks over one of my pawns with hers. “But when it captures—when it takes out the enemy—it goes a completely different direction than you’d expect.” Her eyes lock on mine, unwavering.
H.P Lovecraft has never made more sense than he does right at this moment because that fear of the unknown? It’s fucking terrifying.
Focusing on the board again, she picks up the king, squeezes it tightly in her grasp. “There’s a guy,” she almost sings, and I ball my fists, clench my jaw. “Two, actually.”
An indescribable sound emits from deep in my gut.
She adds, “Kyler Parker and Jackson Davis.”
“What is going on?” Tiny mumbles. He runs both hands down his face. Then he eyes me, skeptical. “What the fuck web are we caught in?”
Bailey answers for me, “That’s not important right now.”
“Come on, Bailey,” Tiny pleads. “You have to give us something here.”
Bailey moves the board to the side but picks up a few pawns. As she does, I keep my eyes on hers, but there’s no telling in her actions. No truth in her lies. She’s a robot, misleading us toward somebody’s perfect agenda.
I just don’t know whose.
Yet.
“Detective Jackson Davis,” she says, placing a pawn on the glass top, “has hired Kyler Parker…” She adds another pawn. “To get intel on Nathaniel DeLuca.” Another pawn.
“We know all this,” Tiny grinds out. His patience is waning.
I’m setting the timer.
“You do?” Bailey asks, lifting an eyebrow to him.
Tiny grunts.
“The feds,” Bailey continues, ignoring his response, “have hired me”—she sets a pawn next to Parker—“to distract Kyler Parker from doing just that.”
Tick.
Tock.
“I thought I wasn’t the focus here,” I mumble.
“You’re not.”
“So, why do you need to distract him?”
“Because…” She sighs, moving all the pawns to a perfect square. “If he digs too deep, if he goes down the rabbit hole, all the way to the end, he’s going to ruin everything.”
I recall Perceval’s words: “What we’re doing here—it’s bigger than you.”
“The detective…” Bailey continues, “he’s so set on you and the drugs you’re running that he can’t see the bigger picture… but Parker…” She taps on the pawn. “He’s street smart. He’s a threat.”
My mind races, and I search her eyes, what little I can see of them. I need answers, but more… I need truths.
“You see, Nathaniel,” she says, her gaze finally meeting mine. “We’re all pawns.” Then she swipes her hand across the pieces, knocking them over in one swift move. “Every single one of us.”
Silence descends, the air turning thick around us.
“What the hell did they do to you, Bailey?” Tiny mumbles, moving to her side. He squats down next to her while I keep my eyes on hers, watch them slowly, so fucking slowly, fill with tears. Tears she refuses to let fall. Tiny settles a hand over hers. “Where the fuck have you been?”
Bailey’s throat bobs with her swallow, and she lifts her chin, a sign of her strength. She doesn’t speak.
I ignore the tightening in my chest, the intolerable pain building there, and try to wrap my head around everything she’d said. “So… how do they want you to distract Parker?”
She blinks once. Twice. “I make him fall for me.”
I lick my lips. “And you can do that?”
She shrugs, lowers her gaze to her lap. “It won’t be the first time I have to fake feelings for someone.”
Every piece on the board topples over when I stand, when the pain in my heart becomes too unbearable to keep sitting still, opposite the girl who’d infiltrated my life. “I’m done here.”
BAILEY
“Bailey,” Tiny chides. “What the fuck was that?”
I watch Nate walk toward the house. “It’s strange…” I mutter, my eyes wide to stop the tears from falling, “seeing his back to me like this… watching him walk away.” I look down at Tiny, who’s watching me with his eyebrows drawn. It’s clear he’s confused. He doesn’t recognize the woman he’s looking at, doesn’t understand how she could’ve changed so much. “It could’ve been that easy,” I tell him. “He could’ve just walked away from me. It didn’t have to end like this.”
Tiny shakes his head as he comes to full height. I expect him to leave, to follow his leader, but instead, he sits down where Nate had just been. “You have no idea what he was like after you left.”
I scoff. “I didn’t leave,” I all but shout. “He threw me away. Discarded me as if I was a piece of garbage.”
“He set you free, Bailey.”
“Free?” I repeat. “How was that free?”
“You chose not to leave that house. You chose—”
“I didn’t choose anything!”
Tiny’s nostrils flare with his anger as he pushes his hand against his chin, moving his head from side to side. The cracks in his neck are audible. When he’s done, he stares me down and takes a few calming breaths.
I do the same.
This interaction isn’t why we’re here, and I need to remind myself of that before I go off course.
“He lost his way without
you,” Tiny says, his voice low, meant only for me. “He tried, and for a while, he succeeded, but whatever demons he was fighting, they became too strong for him to…” he trails off, his gaze turning distant as if lost in those memories. He sucks in a breath, adding, “It started with alcohol. He’d get black-out drunk every night, and then occasionally those nights would turn to days, but then those days became never-ending. And when that wasn’t enough to take away the memories of you, he started using drugs. Do you know how fuckin’ easy it is for a drug dealer to get consumed by everything he can get his hands on? He became a shell. Skin and bones, but nothing inside him.” He points to his chest, his eyes red with the emotions of his recollection. “One day, I couldn’t get a hold of him, and so I drove to his house… He was standing there with a gas can in his hand, watching the house turn to ash, and the flames sparking the trees around it. For over ten years, he lived in that fuckin’ house amidst the nightmares of what happened there—killing his own mother—and he had the strength of a thousand men to be able to handle that, but you—the memories of you… he couldn’t deal with being surrounded by you, so he burnt that motherfucker down, and you know what he said? He said 2,582.”
My breath catches. “The tiles…” I whisper.
“The fuckin’ tiles, Bailey.”
I wring my hands together.
“That was it. That was the tipping point for me. I couldn’t ignore it anymore, so I locked us in a hotel room for a week and helped him through detox. I had to sit there and watch my best friend go through the worst fucking withdrawals you could ever imagine. The first three days were the worst; the shakes, the sweat, the tears, the fucking verbal and physical abuse I had to—” He stops there, his emotions becoming too much, even for him. “But you know what that’s like, don’t you? Caring for a drug addict who can’t see past his next hit? You lived it, right? With your dad?”
I nod and wipe the tears from my cheeks with the back of my hand.
“Bailey,” he says, his voice strained. “Nate put himself through hell for what he did to you—what we did to you. It took every ounce of strength for him to climb out of it. Don’t you think he’s punished himself enough already?”
I sniff back my cries and push back my anguish. But I don’t know what to say, how to answer that. Instead, I give a short nod.
Tiny sucks in a breath, as if relieved by my response. Then he reaches into his pocket, pulls out a single photograph and places it face down on the table between us.
My exhale is shaky.
So are my hands.
I lick my lips, my mouth dry with anticipated terror.
“Don’t you want to see what it is?” he asks, motioning to the picture.
I shake my head, rear back to create distance. I don’t need to flip it over to know what it is. “Where did you find it?”
“At the house he bought for you.”
I let out a shuddering breath. “Does he know?”
“Not yet,” Tiny replies. “But you need to start talkin’, Bai.”
17
NATE
“What the hell happened?” Perceval snaps as I walk past him toward the house. Of course, he follows after me, biting at my goddamn heels like a rabid dog. “What did you say to her?”
I spin to him, almost knocking him off his feet. “What the hell did you do to her?”
“We didn’t do anything!”
“Bullshit!”
“Gentlemen,” Neilson says, stepping between us. “At some point, this shit between you two has to end.”
“Are you fuckin’ her?” There. I said what’s been weighing on my mind since the moment I saw him outside that apartment. And now it’s off my chest and in the open, and still, it doesn’t help the anxious energy flowing through my veins.
“Are you fucking her?” he retorts.
I flex my fingers, ready for round two.
“No one’s fucking her,” Neilson says, shaking his head. He’s as sick of these games as I am.
I speak to him and only him. “I can’t keep going around in circles like this. Either tell me what the fuck I’m doing here, or I walk.”
“Okay,” he says, hands up in surrender. “That’s fair.”
I let my shoulders relax.
“Come with me.” He walks toward a closed door, and I follow after him. “I hope you’re ready for this.”
I wasn’t ready. Not even a little bit. I don’t think anyone can really, truly prepare for what I just walked into.
One wall’s covered with missing persons’ posters—all of girls.
My heart stills.
My stomach turns.
Another wall has surveillance photos taken from security cameras at places like convenience stores, gas stations, and ATMs. “These are their last known locations,” Neilson offers, and I push down the bile rising inside me. I take a step forward and then another so that I can scan the images of the missing girls, one after the other. I look for Bailey’s, but it isn’t here. Then my eyes catch on one in particular: a blonde with bright blue eyes and an innocent smile.
“She was sixteen when she went missing.” I turn to Perceval standing in the doorway, his hands in his pockets. “That was seven years ago.” The pain in his words matches his eyes.
I look back at the picture of Lauren Sara Perceval, her eyes haunting now—just like her father’s words. “It’s every father’s job to take care of their little girl, and I—I failed her.” He rubs the back of his neck. “She was classified as a runaway at first. We’d had a fight,” he says, his words laced with sorrow and regret—something I’m more than familiar with. “She had a dance recital, and my wife—her stepmother—had a doctor’s appointment. An ultrasound. She was pregnant with our first child…”
The drawing on his office wall.
“I chose to go with my wife.”
“It’s not your fault,” Neilson soothes, placing a hand on his shoulder.
“It wasn’t the first time I put her needs second to—to everything else.” He chokes on his words and sniffs back his heartache. “She was sixteen, you know. I thought she was grown enough to understand, to be out there on her own, and I… I never thought that she would become another statistic. How could she? She was the daughter of an FBI agent who spent her entire life listening to me talk about the dangers of the world, of the evil that lurked behind the shadows…”
“I’m sorry,” is all I can come up with to say, but it’s not enough. Nowhere near.
“I shrugged it off for a few days. I thought she was just ignoring my calls, staying at a friend’s house, you know? I figured she just needed time to cool off.” He steps farther into the room and stands right in front of her poster; his sad, sad eyes consumed by her every feature. “The first forty-eight hours are crucial in any investigation…”
And it all makes sense now, why he’s so closed off about this. Any decent human being would find it hard to come up with the words to explain such a thing, but when it involves your own daughter…
“I spent those forty-eight hours doting on a picture of a child who wasn’t even born yet when my only living one was…” He wipes at his eyes before turning to me. “I don’t know if I want to know what she went through during that time.”
I nod. It’s all I can do.
“I’m showing you my hand, DeLuca,” he says, his hands splayed out in front of him. “I have nothing left to hide; nothing left to lose. And I’m close to finding her; I can feel it in here.” He taps at his chest, at the place that connects his bloodline to hers. “But I can’t have some punk detective and his informant getting in the way.”
I keep my tone gentle, my eyes on his. “I’m sorry, but I’m still confused about how this involves me. I would never—”
“It doesn’t involve you,” Neilson cuts in.
I face him.
“But it involves the people you work with.”
Blood drains from my face.
“Benny Bianchi and the Franco family.”
I blow out a long, unsteady breath while my mind spins. So does the room.
“Are you okay, DeLuca?” Neilson asks. “You don’t look so good.”
“I’m fine,” I lie. My vision blurs while my chest constricts, and I struggle to give my lungs their life source. “So all of this…” I don’t even know what I’m saying, what I’m thinking.
“We call it Project Sara,” Perceval informs.
“So, um…” I close my eyes, my thoughts too frantic to manage. “It’s what? A kidnapping ring?” I almost plead, pray, because as bad as that is, the alternative is so, so much worse.
“No, DeLuca,” Perceval sighs, his shoulders slumped with the weight of the world. “It’s human trafficking.”
It’s two simple words.
That form one simple thought.
“Bailey?” I choke out.
His mouth parts, but nothing comes. It’s Neilson who answers. “She says she was spared.”
“Spared?”
Neilson moves to a box of files on the floor in the corner of the room and, over his shoulder, he says, “She says they told her she was collateral.” He finds the one he’s looking for and pulls it out, then turns to me. “She wouldn’t say what or whom for, so we didn’t know.” He smacks the file against my chest, his eyes narrowed and on mine. It’s the first sign resembling anything other than calm and composed I’ve seen from him. “But, I figure you might.”
“It’s all there,” Perceval says, pointing to the yellow folder in my hand. “Everything we know about her.” He starts for the door and motions for Neilson to follow him. “We’ll give you some time, but just a warning… it’s not good, DeLuca. And it’s not right.”
18
NATE
I was brought up Catholic, raised to believe in the Holy Trinity. One God, three persons: the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. I started questioning my faith the moment I pulled the trigger and the bullet went through the wrong fucking person. I stopped believing in my faith about three minutes ago, when I opened Bailey’s file and started going through the pictures and reading the report.