“Oh nice. He was feeling generous, huh?”
“He was a fucker,” I said.
“Shut up,” he said. I turned and looked out the window. “We’re gonna pick up Nialla and blow this town. Fucking hate it here. Maybe we’ll go to San Francisco again, pick up some high rollers.”
I didn’t give a fuck what we did, so I didn’t answer. It was really starting to rain now.
Rick’s phone rang. He answered it. “Yeah. All right. Meet me where I dropped you, then.” He gunned the engine to race through a yellow light then turned onto another road, this one with fewer lights. I could see a Holiday Inn ahead.
A couple of minutes later, Rick turned into the parking lot of a chain restaurant next to the hotel and drove the car around back. Nialla stepped out of the shelter of an awning.
“Get in the back, Kaylee.”
“What?”
“Nialla rides up front. At least while she’s still my bottom girl. Though she’s a fucking burnout—might not last much longer.”
Kaylee looked put out but got in the back with me. Rain was coming down harder now, and Nialla was dripping wet when she got in the car.
But I could see her face well enough … she’d been crying. Her mascara had run and been wiped away.
“You look like shit,” Rick said. “Why don’t you clean your face.”
Nialla shook her head and opened up her purse, handing over money. It looked like a couple hundred dollars. Then she set the purse down on the floor, next to her right foot.
That was weird. In a strained voice, Nialla said, “Strawberry, you doing any better?”
I shook my head. “Stomach hurts like hell,” I said. Something was wrong. She spoke in a wooden tone, like she was freaking out about something.
“What the fuck is wrong with you?” Rick asked.
Nialla swallowed, glanced back at me, then at Rick. “Asshole was rough. My throat’s scratched.”
Rick chuckled. Because he thought shit like that was funny. He turned right, headed down a busy divided highway with businesses on both sides. “Seriously, though. What the fuck is wrong, Nialla?”
“Nothing,” she replied.
“Are you fucking holding out on me?”
“No, Rick. I just don’t feel well. Maybe I’m coming down with what Strawberry has. I don’t know.”
He pulled to a stop at a red light. Then he said, “You’re holding out on me, aren’t you. How much? You gonna fucking betray me? Run away?”
“Rick, I’m not. Really, I’m not.”
His eyes fell on me in the rearview mirror. “Are you in on this bullshit, Strawberry? I didn’t fucking smell anything when you came out of the bathroom.”
“Gross, Rick!” Nialla shouted.
He stepped on the gas when the light turned green and drove with his left hand. He held his right out. “Give me your purse.”
“There’s nothing in there!” Nialla said. Now she sounded genuinely afraid. What the hell was going on?
To my left, behind Rick, Kaylee had shrunk down into her seat, eyes wide, as if she was just now realizing what kind of trouble she might have gotten herself into.
Rick shouted. “Give me the goddamned purse!”
Lightning outside illuminated everything. Traffic was lightening up, but rain was starting to really come down.
The next words out of Rick’s mouth were quieter, but deadlier in tone. “Don’t make me say it again, you fucking bitch.”
Then I realized Rick was pointing the gun at Nialla.
She shook harder than I’d ever seen her before. I didn’t know what was wrong. But it was serious, whatever it was. She picked the purse up and turned it upside down, dumping everything out.
“There, do you see?” she shouted. Condoms and her phone and cigarettes and other stuff fell out all over her lap.
“Pass it to me,” he said, his voice cold.
She closed her eyes. I didn’t know what was happening here, but it wasn’t good. She passed the bag over.
Rick took a right turn onto a highway ramp. As he did so, he said in a low, dangerous voice, “What the fuck is this?”
He held up an iPhone.
“Rick…” she said. “I—”
“Whose is this?” he shouted. “Did you fucking steal it?”
“It’s … I—”
He pressed the power button. The face of the phone lit up.
Impossibly, the picture on the phone lock screen—it was a picture of me and Sam. No. No. No. This couldn’t be. What the hell was happening? I sank my head into my hands. Was I going crazy?
Rick opened his window. I glanced up to see him throwing the phone, hard, away from the car. He was silent now, brooding, as he drove, fast, way too fast, down the highway, weaving in and out of traffic, around the other cars. Horns honked at us, but then he braked suddenly and got off the highway.
At the bottom of the ramp he jerked the car to the left, drove under the bridge, then got back on the highway going in the opposite direction.
He kept a few miles over the speed limit and said in a low, dangerous voice, “Everybody shut up.”
None of us had spoken in minutes. And I wasn’t going to start now.
Where did the phone come from? How could it have that picture? I didn’t understand it, and the implications were scaring the crap out of me.
Had Nialla somehow encountered my parents?
Not possible.
Cole
“Okay,” Wilcox said, standing near the conference table. He sipped a cup of coffee. “We got a charger for Cole’s phone, right? We don’t need it running out of battery now.” He took a deep breath. The entire team was gathering in the conference room.
I put my arms around Erin. “I’m proud of you. That was tough.”
“She was so lost,” Erin whispered. “But she still went back for Brenna.”
Sam stayed close. She hadn’t moved from my side in a long time now.
I turned toward Wilcox and kept an arm around each of them.
“All right. James, did you get the make and model of the car?”
“White car … I think it was a Mercedes. Not sure what year. They were mostly blocked by the building next door.”
Melody said, “We’ve got two unmarked cars headed that way. Linley’s giving them directions. Right now they’re headed down Sandy Boulevard, I think they’re going to get on I-84.”
Wilcox nodded. “Soon as we can, we need to get trail cars in sight of them, in case the battery on that phone fails. Melody?”
“Working on it.”
“All right.” Wilcox took out his own cell phone and dialed a number and began to speak with someone.
I said to Sam, “You hanging in there?”
Sam nodded. “I’m just … I-I wish it had been Brenna.”
“Me too,” Erin said. “But that girl … she cares about Brenna a lot. She’s going to look out for her.”
“I hate waiting,” Sam said. Then she leaned back in her chair and took out her phone.
“Well,” Erin said to me. “That was a lot of words all at once for a teenager.”
“Yeah. Yeah it was.”
“I meant to ask you, have you talked with Jeremiah?”
“Not since last night. I’ll text him— oh, I can’t, can I?” My phone was sitting with the three computers, as Officer Linley watched the map as it updated and relayed instructions over the radio.
I watched, puzzled. Linley was looking at the phone, consternation on his face. “Detective Michelson?”
“What is it?” she asked.
“The position hasn’t moved in like three or four minutes. It’s just sitting on the on-ramp to 84.”
Everybody in the room froze except Wilcox, who strode across the room. “What did you say?” he asked.
“The position hasn’t updated at all. They’re not moving.”
“Shit! Get all the units you can and move in on that spot. Tell them there are potentially three captives in the car! M
elody, get that SWAT team moving! And get the highway patrol. They were headed onto 84 West, maybe they ditched the phone.”
Around us, the police and FBI agents boiled into action.
Thirty-Six
Brenna
The silence in the car was suffocating. At least an hour had passed since Rick had last spoken, and as that time stretched by I became more and more afraid.
After Rick had turned around on the highway, he drove three exits, then got off again. I quickly lost track of where we were, as he took seemingly random turns onto more and more isolated roads.
I was barely conscious of my surroundings anyway. All I could see was the picture on that phone. Me and Sam.
Where had the picture come from? Where had the phone come from? It wasn’t possible, unless somehow Nialla had encountered my mother. She must have, but why did she have Mom’s phone? Was she planning on using it to call from the rest stop later? Why take that kind of risk?
Then it hit me. The phone had a GPS. Somehow after two years my mom or dad or both had found where I was, and had called to make an appointment to try to rescue me. That’s the only thing it could be. And because that other asshole had offered more money for me, Nialla was sent instead.
But why in God’s name did she come back? She was already planning on trying to escape.
Unless it was to come back for me.
Oh, Nialla.
We were deep in the woods in the middle of nowhere when Rick finally came to a stop. He parked the car next to a boarded-up convenience store on an isolated stretch of a two-lane highway. Knee-high grass grew up through some of the cracks in the parking lot, and the pavement was so broken up it looked like gravel in some places.
Rick turned off the engine. I heard no sound but ticking from the engine.
He kept his hands on the wheel and spoke in a deceptively mild tone. I knew the tone was a lie—the veins on his forearms had popped out, prominent against his skin from rage.
“Where did that phone come from?”
“Rick, I—”
“Answer me. How did you get a fucking iPhone, why was it hidden in your purse, and why the fuck did it have a picture of Strawberry?”
In a pleading tone, Nialla said, “Please … I didn’t … I just—”
“You just what?”
Nialla sobbed and struggled to put together a coherent sentence. “Rick, I didn’t mean to lie to you. It was Strawberry’s mom … at my last appointment. She begged me to bring the phone. Just so she could talk to her. That was all. I swear to God. She just wanted to know that she was alive.”
I gasped. I didn’t mean to, I couldn’t help it.
“What about the cops? How many of them were there?” His voice was urgent.
“I swear, there were no cops. It was just her. Rick, you gotta believe me. I didn’t—”
“Get out of the car.”
Rick’s command was spoken in a low, deadly tone. My stomach began to twist. What was he going to do to her? In the past two years I’d seen him commit unspeakable cruelties against me, against Nialla, against others. But I’d almost never heard this deliberate tone. My heart was beating rapidly in my chest.
“Rick, please…”
Without a word he opened the driver’s side door and stepped out into the darkness. He strode around to the passenger side of the car, so confident in his evil that he left the keys in the ignition and knew that we would do nothing. He yanked open the passenger side door and stuck the gun in Nialla’s face. With his left hand he grabbed her hair and started to tug her out of the car.
Terror gripped me. He was going to kill her. I screamed right along with Nialla as she fought with all of her strength to stay in the car. He hit her across the face with the butt of the pistol, cutting her scream short. And then he threw her onto the ground.
I didn’t think before I acted. I opened the door of the car and ran out at him screaming. There were no words, no meaning outside the visceral cry for him to stop, to stop before he took away the only thing I had left in my world, before he—
He spun around and hit me in the face with the pistol. The heavy metal knocked me back and he followed that with a kick to my stomach, knocking me to the ground.
“No!” I screamed as he grabbed her by the hair and slammed her face into the ground.
Incredibly, his face was actually twisted in tears as he shouted at Nialla. “You betrayed me? You?”
I struggled to my feet and ran for him again, screaming, “Stop!”
My scream merged with the sound of the gunshot. My momentum carried me into his back and knocked him forward across her body.
I grabbed for his hand and the pistol, and all rational thought had left me as I screamed, “Please kill me! Do it! Kill me! Kill me now!” My words morphed into agonized howls.
He hit me in the face. Then again. I fell back but didn’t stop screaming. I scrambled toward him again and he kicked me.
My eyes fell on Kaylee, sitting open-mouthed in the backseat, staring in horror, as she realized the hell she had walked into. Then I jumped up and ran at Rick again. “Kill me! Do it!”
He knocked me to the ground and wrapped his left arm around my neck and began to drag me toward the car. I fought, but then he squeezed harder and I couldn’t breathe. I struggled against his arm but couldn’t move. My vision began to go hazy and black, everything going dark, but I could see, through the darkness, Nialla’s body on the ground, not moving, blood soaking the concrete. I felt myself lifted into the air and thrown into the trunk of the car. I screamed again but it was too late—as I lurched for the opening he slammed it shut, leaving me in the darkness.
Brenna
Something I remember: On my seventeenth birthday, I fell apart.
See, by that time I thought I’d gotten used to it. I thought I was hard, that it didn’t matter anymore. We were in Cleveland at the time, and for a full year I’d seen an average of six clients a day, every single day. One time I tried to do the math, but the numbers I came up with were so horrible that I had to stop. Rick hadn’t allowed me to take days off, even when I was sick, even when I was so badly hurt that I could barely move.
That night, after our last appointments, I was lying on my side on the bed, with my head in Nialla’s lap.
Out of nowhere, a special report came on the news, and there was my face. A special report. Missing for one year. They interviewed Mom and Dad, who were utterly devastated as they looked into the camera and pleaded for anyone who knew anything to come forward.
Then Sam came on the screen. That’s when I started to cry, because Sam looked as lonely as anyone as I had ever seen. I wanted to reach out and pull her to me. I wanted to go home.
I wanted my mother.
Rick came in to the room in the middle of the show. He stared at it in disbelief then shouted, “Turn that shit off.”
I couldn’t move, I was crying so hard. But Nialla launched off the bed and started to shove him out of the room. “Leave her alone, goddammit!” she screamed.
For once, Rick actually listened.
That’s when I knew I loved Nialla, and that I would do anything for her.
Because she had risked a brutal beating just so I could cry in peace.
But now … now she’d risked her life for me … now she’d lost her life for me, and there was nothing I could do to ever pay her back.
Thirty-Seven
Sam
I sat in a chair, eyes half closed, drifting. Across the room from me, Dad lay on one of the two couches in the room. Mom sprawled on the same couch as him, her hand and head resting on his chest.
Twice, Agent Wilcox had pushed Mom and Dad for all of us to go back to our room and sleep. Dad insisted on staying and listening for updates. But then he turned around and wanted to send me out. I made it clear that there was no way in hell I was going back to the room by myself.
And so we waited. Wilcox and Michelson stayed next to the radios, talking with their teams who were spread out aro
und Portland searching for Brenna.
I drifted in and out of sleep, and finally moved to the other couch. I was half awake when Detective Michelson took a call shortly after sunrise, the sky still a deep blue.
“Yeah? Christ, are you sure? Where?”
Her voice dropped, quieter, and she murmured something else. Then clearly she said, “Okay.”
I watched through half-lidded eyes as she stood up and stretched. She walked over to my parents and touched my dad on the shoulder. I sat up.
Dad moved first, groggy, then Mom did. Finally, both of them were sitting up.
“Is there news?” Mom asked.
Detective Michelson nodded but then glanced toward me and said, “Maybe Sam should—”
“No way,” I said. “You’re not sending me away like a baby. Do you think there’s anything you can say that’s worse than my fears?”
I was wide awake and angry.
Still groggy, Dad said, “Let her stay.”
Michelson said, “Around two a.m., a retiree living in Lewisville, Washington, called the police after hearing a gunshot. This is about an hour north of Portland. By the time police got there, the retiree who reported it had found a young woman shot next to an abandoned gas station. It was Laura Felker. She was shot in the chest.”
I thought about the young woman who I’d seen weeping on Mom’s shoulder. She knew Brenna and cared about her. I didn’t know what their relationship was, but I knew she’d gone back to help my sister. That’s all I ever needed to know.
“Is she dead?” I asked.
Michelson shook her head. “No … she was flown into the Legacy Emanuel Medical Center here in Portland. She’s in critical condition. Right now they don’t know if she’s going to make it. But we’ve lost the trail.”
Mom shook her head, dazed. “What do you mean?”
“I’m sorry, Erin. We don’t know where they went from there.”
We don’t know where they went from there. They’d lost her. They could be in Washington or Idaho or even Canada by now. We’d been so close, so incredibly close to finding her. I fought to keep my breathing under control as I watched the news sink in on Mom and Dad’s faces.
“You lost her.” Dad’s voice was bitter.
Winter Flower Page 44