by Nicole Maggi
Chapter Twenty-Nine
As the cab careened through winding streets, I dug into my bag and pulled out the little card I’d shoved into the front pocket all those days ago. My fingers shook as I dialed. There was a gaping hole in my heart for what I had just lost, and I didn’t know which was worse, the oboe or Nate. I now had nothing to anchor me. I closed my eyes and took a deep breath. That wasn’t true.
I had myself.
The phone on the other end rang and rang. Please be there, I begged silently. At last, on the sixth ring, she answered. “Detective Russell.”
“It’s Georgie Kendrick,” I said. “I have more information for you.” I told her everything I knew and where to meet me.
“We’re on our way. Stay in the car, Georgie,” she warned me. “These people are dangerous.”
“Okay,” I said, knowing as the word left my mouth that it was a lie. There was only one person who could finish this, and that was me. No one else had the stake in this that I did.
I hung up with Detective Russell just as Manny screeched to a halt in front of the graceful brownstone. I rocketed out of the backseat. The cops would be here soon, but it was just me and Annabel now, the way it had started.
At the top of the stoop, I saw that the front door stood wide open, almost like Annabel’s killer was waiting for me. My heart ricocheted off my ribs, and I pushed up the stairs. By the second landing, pain wrapped my chest but I pressed upward one more flight. I slammed to a halt in front of apartment number three and knocked.
The lock clicked. The knob turned. The door swung open. I stared into the last face Annabel had ever seen. “It…was…you,” I gasped.
Michelle’s eyes widened. She tried to slam the door, but I caught it against my palm and forced my way in. “What…are you doing here, Georgie?” she asked, her voice high and forced.
“You killed her. You killed Anna Isabel Leeland.”
Michelle froze. Late-morning light lengthened her shadow across the floor, elongating her figure. “How—how do you know her name?” she whispered.
“You tried to make her a Jane Doe,” I said, “but she didn’t stay dead.”
“She was going to turn my father in.” Michelle’s voice tremored like a million little earthquakes. “She was going to take him away from me.”
“Do you have any idea what your father is doing?” I stepped further into the apartment and Michelle backed up. I saw her glance at a desk behind her. “Do you know how many lives he’s ruined?”
“What about my life?” Michelle edged backward. “My dad is all I have. He’s struggled my whole life to give me anything I wanted. That’s all he was doing. He did it to pay my tuition…so I could go to school and have a future.”
“And all Anna wanted was to help those girls,” I said. We were dancing a strange waltz, me stepping forward and her stepping back. “She didn’t mean for you to get hurt.”
“She didn’t care!” Michelle yelled. “She kept saying that I was collateral damage, that there were thousands of girls who would be saved.” Her face was hard. “What good is that to me? If my dad goes to jail, I’ll have nothing. I’ll have no one.”
And no one understood that better than Annabel. I felt her pain in my heart, a deep ache of understanding. She knew better than anyone what it was to be alone in the world.
“I couldn’t let her,” Michelle said. “I couldn’t let her take him away from me.” She took another step back. “And I can’t let you either.” She was right up against the desk now. Her hands fumbled with the drawer.
My heart registered the black steel in her hands before my eyes did. I stilled, the barrel of the gun the center of my universe. Nothing else existed. “Michelle. The police are on their way here. I’ve already told them everything.” My lips moved but it sounded like someone else’s voice. “If you hurt me, you’ll have a lot more to answer for.”
Michelle’s hands were rock solid, holding the gun steady at my head. “You have no idea what I’m capable of, Georgie.”
I felt Annabel’s memory again, her desperation to live, her struggle to fend Michelle off. But Michelle’s desperation was stronger, her need greater, her hands pushing pushing pushing until Annabel was gone… “I do, actually,” I said. “I know exactly what you’re capable of.”
“How can you possibly?” Down the endless barrel of the gun, Michelle’s eyes were pointed and sharp. “You’ve never had to fight for anything in your whole life, Georgie. You’ve always had everything handed to you. I’ve had to claw my way to where I am, over the trust fund babies at Hillcoate—”
“And that gives you an excuse to kill?” Anger bubbled over my fear. “God, you knew, didn’t you? You knew what your dad was doing and you let it go because you think you’re better than those girls. Who cares if some fourteen-year-old gets raped, as long as you get your tuition paid, right?”
“Shut up!” The gun wavered, just a fraction. I stepped back but she followed, the gun still level with my face. “I didn’t know. Not until she made the report. I was at the station, dropping something off for my dad. We overheard her…and I could tell from his face that she was telling the truth…”
“And he went off to warn Jules,” I murmured. “And you went after her, to Emiline Way.”
“I didn’t go there to kill her.” Michelle swallowed hard. I shifted oh-so-slowly so that my back was to the front door. Where the hell were the cops? How long ago had I called them? Ten minutes? An hour? Time had ceased to exist.
“I just went there to talk to her,” Michelle went on. “To stop her. But she wouldn’t give in… I pushed her and she fought back and…and…she went over the balcony.” Her eyes slid between sharp and soft. “It happened so fast. I didn’t know what to do so I called my dad and he told me to leave her, to take her identification and make her a Jane Doe…” She snapped her gaze back to me. “If she’d just given in…if she hadn’t fought back…”
“She was fighting for her life.” The Catch flowed through me, and every emotion that Annabel had felt in those last moments flooded my veins. “She had just as much right to live as you did.” I breathed short and shallow. “You treated her exactly the way you think you’ve been treated by me. You treated her as less-than.”
“She was less-than!” Michelle’s face contorted into an ugly mask. She tilted her head and leveled the gun at my nose. “Why do you—”
She broke off. We heard it in the same moment, footsteps in the hall, pounding up the stairs. Michelle narrowed her eyes at me. I leaped backward and collided with the door frame at the same moment that she lunged forward. The gun fired, a deafening, ear-splitting blast that made us both shriek. The bullet ricocheted off the opposite wall. I flung my arms over my head and crouched down. Michelle stood over me, her eyes wild, the gun still clutched in her white-knuckled grasp.
The footsteps came closer. I peeked through my arms. My heart knew who it was before he appeared. “It’s over,” Nate said when he reached the landing. Michelle whirled around to face him. “I saw the cops coming down the street when I got here.”
I pushed myself up the wall to my feet. “Michelle, don’t make it worse for yourself. Just give me the gun. I know it was an accident, that you didn’t mean to kill Anna.” Nate’s intake of breath was audible from where I stood. I’d forgotten that he didn’t have the whole story. Michelle and I were the only ones who knew what had happened on the balcony that night. I stretched my hand out to Michelle. “Give yourself up now and it will be easier.”
She looked back and forth between me and Nate, the gun moving with her body as she turned. It was so close to my face that the acrid smoke from the shot singed my nostrils.
“What about my dad?” Michelle found my eyes with hers, and the fire in them almost burned me. “Do you really think they’ll go easy on him?” I couldn’t see anything but her forefinger, resting against the trigger. “He did it
all for me.” Her voice rose into a keen. “I won’t betray him.”
“He’s already betrayed you by making you a part of this,” Nate said.
“No.” She shook her head. Her cheeks were splotchy with tears and sweat. “No. I won’t let this happen. Not because of some fucking whore that no one gives a shit about.”
The Catch slowed my heartbeat. In one instant, I thought of all the people who did care about Annabel, all the people whose lives she had touched. Tommy. Kitty. The homeless woman around the corner from All Saints. Nate. Me. “I do. I give a shit about her.”
She turned and faced me fully. The hallway, Nate, the world all dropped away. “Why? Why the hell do you care about some dead hooker?”
I reached out and grasped the gun, my hand over hers. I pulled her to me so that the barrel pressed right into my chest, right against my heart. “Because she saved my life,” I said. “Because if you hadn’t killed her, I would’ve died.”
I only had time to see Michelle’s eyes spill over, and then she was on the floor, crumpled in a heap. The gun dropped from her fingers. I kicked it away and knelt beside her. “So in a way,” I said, low so that only she could hear, “I owe you my life too.”
Michelle stared at me, her face a question. I wanted to tell her that part of me understood, that what she’d done had been out of love for her father, that there were no winners here. But I couldn’t make myself say the words, because in the end what she had done was unforgivable.
From three floors below, doors banged open and voices filled the hall. Police officers swarmed up the stairs, led by Detective Russell. She walked over to Michelle and squatted down beside us. “Your dad’s in custody,” she said, gentle and low like she was comforting a scared kitten. “He tried to protect you, but we knew what had really happened.” She put her hand on Michelle’s shoulder. Michelle flinched and curled into herself. “You need to come with us now.”
One of the officers came over and helped Michelle to her feet before handcuffing her. He walked her downstairs, reading her rights as they descended. I watched them go, the air thick around me. When Russell touched my arm, I jumped.
“I thought I told you to stay in the car,” she said, her deep brown eyes flashing at me. “You could’ve gotten hurt.”
“I’m sorry,” I said. “But I had to—see it through myself.”
She pressed her lips together and nodded. “I get that,” she said. “I’d been tracking Detective Lowell ever since that girl—Anna—made that report,” she said. “But I’d been doing it on the sly because I knew I wouldn’t get approval from the force. It wasn’t until you called me this morning that I had solid evidence—and a witness—against him.” She glanced at Nate and back at me. “We went to the place you called the Warehouse. We found Jules there, along with enough evidence to bring down his whole operation.”
“The girls,” I said. “What about the girls?”
She smiled. “They’re safe. Thanks to you.”
Something inside me broke open. I bent over, shaking with sobs, tears streaming down my face. I would have collapsed, but I felt strong arms come around me and hold me up. Nate. I twisted into him and buried my face in his neck. His hands stroked my hair, my back, my arms, his breath soft on my cheek.
“It’s over now,” he whispered. “She can rest in peace.”
And I knew he was right, and that the thing I’d felt breaking inside me was Annabel, finally letting go of my heart. I’d done what she needed me to do, finished what she had started. I clung to Nate, my raft, my lifeboat, my anchor in this storm…my lifeline.
Russell led me to the living room couch. Another detective took Nate into Michelle’s bedroom, and they wrote down our separate statements of what had happened. As I talked, I felt my body settle into itself, everything in its proper place. I hadn’t been this comfortable in my own skin since before my surgery. When at last Russell had enough, I was breathing calmly.
Nate emerged from the other room and I stood up. “I’ll be in touch,” Russell said to me.
“Anything you need,” I told her.
“Next time you leave this to the professionals,” she added.
“I hope there won’t be a next time,” I said, and she smiled warmly at me. I followed Nate out of the apartment and down the stairs. More officers swept in with boxes and bags and other evidence-gathering equipment. When we reached the front stoop, a forensic team was on their way in. I watched them disappear into the building and dropped to the top step. The stone was cold beneath me but somehow it felt good. Real. Alive.
Nate sat down next to me. I knocked his knee with my own. “How did you know where I went?”
“Please. Like I trusted you to actually go home,” he said, knocking me back. “I got in a cab a minute after you left and followed you.” He swallowed. “I never even thought of Michelle.”
“Neither did I.” I hunched my shoulders. “But I guess people are capable of anything when they’re backed into a corner.”
Another squad car pulled up to the curb. The passenger door popped open and an officer got out, waving over her shoulder at the driver. As the car rolled away, I saw a familiar figure in the backseat.
It was Jules.
He looked out the window at the same moment I recognized him. Our eyes met. He stared at me and I could almost see the wheels turning in his brain, a furious understanding that I was responsible for him being handcuffed in the backseat of a cop car. I lifted my chin and smiled at him. He turned away and slid down the seat, out of sight, a silent acknowledgment that Nate had been right, and his empire had crumbled. I exhaled long and slow. The girls were safe.
The officer jogged up the stairs. Nate and I squished into each other to let her pass. I stayed pressed into Nate even after the officer was out of sight. Nate took my hand and traced his thumb across my palm. “What did you lose to get the memory of her death?” he asked softly.
I looked at our entwined fingers. “I don’t know how to play the oboe anymore.”
Nate shifted so that he faced me fully. “Oh, Georgie.” He squeezed my hand into both of his. “You’ll get it back. We solved her murder. Everything should reset, right?”
I had to believe that. I didn’t know what my world without the oboe looked like. “I thought it would, but I don’t remember anything that I’ve…forgotten.”
“Maybe it’s not like a dam,” Nate said. “Maybe it’s like a small trickle, and you’ll remember things little by little.”
I leaned into him and rested my head on his shoulder. “I think, maybe, memories become imprinted in our DNA. Like how Annabel’s were in her heart. And if that’s true, then maybe my memories will come back when they’re provoked, like how Annabel’s came to me.”
Nate raised my hand to his lips and kissed each knuckle. I breathed in the deep, woodsy scent of him. “Besides,” I said, “I have a whole lifetime to make new memories.”
We stared at each other for a long moment, just drinking each other in. An officer ran down the stairs to grab something from the squad car at the curb but we barely noticed him. Nate took my face in his hands. “I love you, Georgie. I swear I will spend the rest of my life making sure you know that.” His breath was sweet and warm on my skin. “Just please don’t do anything stupid like eating strawberries ever again.”
I laughed and leaned in until our foreheads touched. “I am so sorry about that.” His lips met mine for a moment, but I pulled away a fraction of a breath. “And I swear I will spend the rest of my life helping you find Sarah.”
A choked sound escaped his throat before he dragged me to him and covered my mouth and face and neck with kisses. For a moment, the world fell away; the cops jogging up and down the steps and the cars whizzing by on the streets all disappeared, and it was just us.
Finally, we broke apart and sat in comfortable silence. Nate reached into his pocket and pulled o
ut a brightly colored square something. He handed it to me. “I saw this in Michelle’s room,” he said. “The detective said I could show it to you before they took it for evidence.” It was a coin purse, made of woven cloth in every different color. I looked up at him, my brow creased. “It’s Annabel’s,” he said.
I turned it around and around in my hands. No memory came to me, no flash of insight. I breathed out slowly. I had finished her work, and she had left me to live my life. The heart was well and truly mine now.
I unzipped the purse. Inside were a handful of coins, a five-dollar bill…and an ID card. I drew the card out. It was a state identification card.
People usually looked like zombies in their DMV pictures, but Anna was radiant. She was a completely different person in this picture than the one who haunted her foster-care file. She was laughing, as though someone off-camera had told a joke and snapped the picture the moment she understood the punch line. Her blond hair tumbled over her shoulders, and a rebellious streak of blue decorated a thick swath near her face.
My eyes moved over her name and address and fixed on the little red circle just beneath it. I knew that Nate had seen the red circle too, because his hand tightened on mine and his breath caught.
I gazed up into his face. We smiled at each other through our tears.
Anna Isabel Leeland was an organ donor.
Author’s Note
Trafficked children are hiding in plain sight.
That was the message on the billboard I passed every day while I was writing this novel. Many people think that sex trafficking is something that happens overseas, but sadly it is just as common here in the United States.
The organizations mentioned in this novel are real and making huge strides to help trafficked women get off the streets and get their lives back. FAIR Girls—which stands for Free, Aware, Inspired, Restored—has a chapter in nearly every major metropolitan area. You can get involved at any level, from becoming a sponsor to buying jewelry made by recovering girls. Visit them online at www.fairgirls.org. They also have a crisis hotline at 1-855-900-3247.