The Art of Fear (The Little Things That Kill Series Book 1)

by Pamela Crane

  “If you want me to stop, then answer me. Who attacked you, and why were you fighting? You worked in an office, not the mafia. Since when do white-collar bank managers get their kneecaps busted up for a clerical error, huh?”

  “It’s … complicated.” I could see Dad was caving.

  “Try me.”

  Dad sighed in resignation while my mother daggered him with a silent plea, but he continued, regardless of her wordless threat. “I had a friend. Let’s call him … George. Well, he was a … business associate. I was handling his funds at the bank, but some money went missing. It wasn’t me, I assure you, but he blamed me anyway and lost his mind. It eventually got sorted out after our little scuffle.”

  “Why didn’t you press charges?” His story had more holes than a Krispy Kreme store.

  “We worked it out. That’s all that matters. It’s over, and it had nothing to do with your sister.”

  “What the hell kind of business associate beats up their bank manager, Dad?”

  “A crazy one, I guess. What the hell kind of girl eats peanut butter and pickle sandwiches?” he answered so matter-of-factly that I couldn’t help but snort at the comic relief.

  “It was on a dare, Dad.”

  His dare. Something he had done a lot when I was a kid. We had been sitting at the kitchen table making sandwiches. I must have been no older than five or six at the time, and I whined about not wanting peanut butter and jelly for lunch. So he dared me to try something different. Like what? I had asked. So he double-dog dared me to eat pickles and peanut butter. I did, and I didn’t mind it too much … especially after seeing his face turn a sickly shade of green upon watching me swallow. I got a kick out of eating that in front of him for years afterward.

  “You never did back down from a dare …” I could hear the nostalgia in his voice, and for a sweet moment I think we both relished it.

  Growing up, Dad’s humor was one of my favorite things about him. No matter how spastic Mom was acting, or how intense Carli and I were fighting, Dad’s jokes brought us back from the brink of insanity.

  “I still eat that sometimes,” I said between light laugher.

  “You’re disgusting, honey, but I love you regardless.”

  Did he really, though? Or was this an act to appease me so that I’d leave?

  “About your questions, that’s all I know, honey. I wish I had more to tell you, but I don’t. Are you satisfied?”

  “No, but women never are, right?”

  At Dad’s staccato ha! I grinned faintly, realizing I was never going to win against them. I resigned and stood to leave while on somewhat decent terms with them—whatever that actually meant. They reminded me to let go of the past and just focus on now while bustling me out the door, leaving no room for misinterpretation. There was no relationship to salvage. Little did they know that the past was my now. Until I figured out who was behind it, it would consume my present. And whatever dirt I tilled up, even if it damned them, I would expose it.

  “That wasn’t awkward at all,” Tina said from two paces ahead of me as she nearly jogged to my car.

  “Yeah, you can always count on my hospitable, doting parents to put on a good show.”

  “Your dad—where did you say he works?”

  “He’s a bank manager. Why?”

  “He looks familiar. I can’t place him, but I recognize him.”

  “He’s been in commercials for East Coast Bank. Maybe that’s where you saw him?”

  I watched an uncertain realization dawn across her face. “Yeah, yeah, I think that’s it. Though he was much younger then, huh?”

  “Give or take a decade.”

  The commercials had been filmed back before the accident. Before our family was torn apart. Back when I knew what family felt like.

  I could never go back to before.

  Chapter 31

  Ari

  Four days until dead

  Tina’s snores growled their way down the hallway from my bedroom, like an elk in heat. The poor girl had been put through the ringer. I hoped she at least had some nice dreams to escape to.

  Even I could feel the heat of panic during the quiet moments. First Josef, then Tina. Whoever was behind the attacks relished the taste of blood, and they were clamping down hard. It was only a matter of time until they came back for Tina to finish the job. And then maybe me.

  After emptying a box of tissues with a long weep, I had sent Tina to my room for the evening and insisted I’d take the sofa. My mind was too restless for television—even episodes of Dexter—and my thoughts too scattered to read. It was too early in the evening to sleep, so I kept replaying my visit with my parents on a loop in my head, each time picking apart their words like a buzzard on a deer carcass.

  Something in the conversation waved a red flag at me, but what? We hardly exchanged any words. And Dad’s “confession” was bare bones, short on details. I remembered my mother’s cutting glare and laughed at how he ignored her and went on.

  Take that, Mom!

  What did he say, though? The man he’d had a fight with was a business associate. He even hypothetically named him—Jeffrey? John? It was a juh sound. It didn’t stick to my brain at the time, but now it was utterly, critically, life-or-death important to me for reasons I couldn’t explain.

  George. That was it.

  So familiar but also foreign.

  I knew I’d heard that name before, but with so many cluttered thoughts in my brain, some were slipping out.

  I tried to shrug it off, but it continued to nip at me. Why was that name so important?

  Did I know a George? No face came to mind. Did I see a George written down somewhere? Yes, that was it. I remember the scribbled word. But where?

  Maybe the police report.

  My unconventional organizational skills came in handy for once, since whoever trashed my house hadn’t looked on top of my fridge. I had put Josef’s file up there for easy access and to keep my dining room table clutter-free—one perk of having OCD—and it turned out to be a good location, since that file was the one thing I didn’t want to lose.

  I pulled the folder out, including Josef’s address book. Rifling through the papers, I found nothing with that name—George. I began to stuff everything back into the file, until my gut prodded me to open up the address book. Flipping through the sparse scribbled entries starting with A, I soon found a George listed under B: George Battan.

  I sharpened my memory, thinking back over the days of conversations with Tina. Wasn’t that message on Tina’s phone from a George as well?

  Yes, Tina’s trafficker—George. How could I forget?

  Clearly I needed more sleep.

  It was an ironic choice of “hypothetical” name for my dad to pick for his business partner.

  Thoughts volleyed back and forth like it was an Olympic sport. Was it possible Dad’s George and Tina’s George were one and the same? Unlikely. It was such a common name, but a damn wild coincidence. There were hundreds of Georges in town. George Battan was probably a cover he used with Tina, but he probably went by something else with his underlings and business associates.

  But still …

  In detective stories they called it a hunch, and that’s exactly what this felt like.

  I didn’t believe in coincidence or serendipity. But then again, Durham wasn’t a big town. People bumped into one another. Maybe it wasn’t big enough for more than one high-ranking criminal named George.

  No, that would mean that my father had something to do with Josef’s death. That was too far beyond the realm of possibility—my father, a crook and a killer. Different Georges, different criminals. That made more sense. I’d find a way to break my father, to get in his head, but the time wasn’t now.

  Right now I had something else to deal with.

  It was too bad Tina had been adamant about me not looking for information on her trafficker, insisting I not go to the police about it, because I hated to go behind her back. But whoever this
was had hit me at home. He came on my turf, messed with my stuff, and hurt my friend. The least I could do was confront him about it. Tina couldn’t blame me for acting out of self-preservation.

  It was only half past eight, early enough for a telemarketer to call, so certainly early enough for me.

  I dialed, and to my heart-stopping astonishment, he answered, his tone alert. My heart ravaged my chest as the anxiety began to swell. I hadn’t expected him to pick up. Perhaps I hadn’t really wanted him to. It was far easier to start something than to finish it.

  “Is this George Battan?”

  “Who’s asking?” he answered. His genteel voice had a girlish lilt, almost a Michael Jackson falsetto, but with a sinister undertone. It reminded me of what a child molester would sound like if I had to give one a voice.

  “I’m a friend of Josef’s.” The simpler, the safer. If he knew who I was talking about, then we would get somewhere.

  “Ah, yes, Tina’s friend Ari, right?”

  How he knew it was me went beyond creepy.

  As if reading my thoughts, he added, “You have an easy to distinguish voice, my dear. Though, I’m disappointed. I was hoping Tina would come to her senses and contact me herself, but apparently she likes to play games. I can play games too.”

  It took a moment for me to accept that I was speaking to Tina’s captor. If I just found a way to negotiate with him, I could end the madness. But my brain was fumbling through loose strings of words that wouldn’t make sense as they popped in and out of my head. I inhaled a relaxing breath, grounding my crackling brain.

  “I’m not calling to play games.” I forced a steady voice. “I’m calling to finish things. I want to pay off whatever she owes so she can be free and clear.”

  “You think it’s that easy to release Tina from her … obligation?”

  Obligation? Was that the polite phrase for sexual slavery?

  “Isn’t it? You want money, I’ll get it to you. I just want her to be able to move on with her life.”

  He chuckled, not the boisterous guffaw of an evil genius, but a soft snigger.

  “I don’t think you realize what you’re getting into. But if Tina wants her freedom and you can afford it, then I’ll agree to your request. But let me be clear: Just you. No cops. No surprises.”

  “I agree as long as you do the same—I want you, not some hired hand. I want to look you in the eyes when you tell me it’s over—that Tina’s free. I’m not asking for much—just to see you say it. Deal?”

  I needed George, not a loyal lieutenant who would go to jail before snitching on him. I couldn’t afford for him to hide behind protection.

  He paused, as if considering my motives behind the request. “Alright. It’ll be me. But if you can’t keep this simple and clean, then I’ll remind Tina what’s at stake.”

  “What is at stake, exactly?”

  I was betting on another threat of coming after us, of a repeat stabbing, but I would have lost that bet. In two words George shook my world, jackhammered apart everything I thought I knew about Tina.

  “Her daughter.”

  Chapter 32

  Ari

  Three days until dead

  Tina and I hadn’t been on speaking terms since our fight about yet another secret she’d kept hidden from me—a baby. A chubby, crying, shitting, crawling secret. And the reason she hadn’t wanted me to go to the police or to confront the infamous George Battan.

  Her little girl, Giana, would be his next target.

  I didn’t realize a black market for babies actually existed, but Giana was proof of its reality. Underground deals thrived as the highest bidders kidnapped their spoils. Wealth could buy loopholes, bypass red tape, delete a paper trail, and even buy life. All that was needed was cold hard cash to win the prize—a baby adopted illegally, and in Tina’s case, against a mother’s will.

  Giana was missing, and only George had access to her. That was his royal flush. His guarantee. That was what made Tina so afraid that she’d tried to take her own life just to stop the fear.

  George was right—I had no idea what I was getting into. But it had been too late to retract my offer to meet him, bringing along the balance of what Josef owed. I had offered to buy off Tina’s freedom and the offer was accepted—no backing out now. I had emptied my entire savings account, accumulated from seven years of working overtime and frugal living, barely enough to afford his price, but a girl’s freedom was worth it. Tina, on the other hand, wouldn’t agree. She would tell me I was playing with fire with my behind-the-scenes wheeling and dealing.

  Her daughter’s life was George’s golden ticket to keeping Tina under his thumb. I understood that. But we couldn’t just let the sonofabitch get away with it. Especially since I had a wild card they didn’t know about.

  Tristan. My unofficial boyfriend cop.

  I knew he would help me. And I knew he’d keep it our little secret.

  “Do you think it will work?” I asked him over coffee and pancakes at IHOP. We managed to pick the rare hour in the morning when the wait was less than an hour long. North Carolinians sure loved their pancakes.

  “With two days to plan this? His record is clean, I have nothing on him. And you’re telling me I can’t set up the kind of protection I would usually prepare for in this scenario. I’m putting you at a huge risk. If you’d just let me get the department in on this, we could handle it—”

  “Out of the question, Tristan!” I barked. It wasn’t an option—not with Tina and Giana’s lives at stake … again. Cops didn’t care who they got killed, as long as they were in control. I wasn’t about to let them eff up my only chance at helping Tina and saving her life. Wasn’t Josef’s death and Tina’s attack clear enough proof that George wasn’t bluffing? “One man was killed and his daughter stabbed because of this guy.” And an innocent baby’s life could be next. “George told me no cops. That means no cops. You’re lucky I even came to you for help.”

  “Fine, Ari, I get it. I’m going against my gut here and obliging you. But I still think you’re being a ’tard.”

  “Aw, how sweet of you to say.” I grinned at the coarse way he worried about me … he genuinely cared. It was nice in a warm-sunlight-on-a-cool-day kind of way. But it wasn’t going to stop me from doing what I needed to do.

  He frowned at me.

  “Oh, relax. You’re being a pansy. I’m just handing over a pile of money to a perv who preys on kids. I could probably kick his ass with my hands tied behind my back.”

  “First of all, it’s not that simple. He could be carrying a gun or a knife. If he gets spooked he could hurt you—or worse. But no biggie, right?”

  “You’re being dramatic.” This was a guy who stole little kids, who snuck up on Tina while she was sleeping—he couldn’t even face her awake when he attacked her. He was a sniveling, whimpering coward.

  “No matter what I say, there’s no stopping you, is there?” His eyes pleaded with me, so I turned away. I couldn’t deny those eyes.

  “Nope. The ball is rolling downhill fast. Probably at warp speed by now, so there’s no slowing it down.”

  Tristan shook his head with a what-are-you-getting-yourself-into smirk. “You know what else rolls downhill? Shit. And that’s just what you’re getting into. Deep. It’s more than just handing cash over. Right now we have no case against him. We need to build a firm one. If he cleared out all the girls in his house and has no computer records linking us to his trafficking, we have nothing. Plus we have no testimonies other than Tina’s. His defense could say she fabricated this and clear him. We have nothing showing any tie between them other than his word against hers … and one voice message from a burner phone that may or may not sound like him.”

  It was sounding more hopeless by the minute. “So he’s going to walk.”

  “No, not necessarily. Your exchange will go as planned, but I will have eyes on you the entire time. I’ll put a wire on you, and you’ll need to get him to agree that the money is in exchang
e for Tina’s freedom, free and clear. Then once I catch him accepting the money, I’ll step in. His confession on tape plus accepting the cash should be enough to put him behind bars, along with Tina’s testimony, that is. She is willing to testify, right?”

  I hoped so. I hadn’t mentioned Giana to Tristan after being sworn to secrecy, but catching George was the only way to track down Tina’s daughter.

  “I will make sure she testifies.” Even if I had to bind and drag her skinny ass to the courthouse.

  **

  We stopped by the Durham Police Department on the way home so that Tristan could sign out a wire for me to wear. I nervously chattered the whole way there, drilling him with true or false questions about what real police work was like compared to what I’d seen on television. Most of my questions he laughed off, but the more he shared, the more interested I became. Damned if I wasn’t ironically drawn to the thing I hated most.

  I sat across from him as he puttered around with some paperwork at his desk. Here before me was unlimited access to all kinds of databases and files and confidential information. I wondered just how much Tristan would let me tap into.

  At what point in a relationship was it okay to ask for favors?

  “Any chance you can look up something for me?” I asked coyly. Maybe I could flirt my way into access. Certainly there had to be perks to dating a cop.

  “Depends. What are you looking for?”

  “A name.”

  “Don’t you already have one of those?”

  I chuckled at his lameness.

  “What kind of name?”

  “The name of someone who might own a certain type of car.”

  “Oh, like a guy driving a Porsche? You looking to trade up, huh?”

  “Always. Though I’m thinking something a little more lavish, like a late-1970s orange Ford Pinto.” I had already spent hours searching online through pictures of orange hatchbacks from the 1970s, and surprisingly there were a lot to choose from. Who knew hatchbacks were so popular—and hideous—once upon a time? Thank God they fell out of fashion.