“No,” Zachary said firmly. “Not in the near future. You don’t want to be tracked through them. You’re going to have to wait until you’re safe. That’s going to be a while.”
He didn’t want to suggest that it might be years before Madison would be able to see them or talk to them again. He didn’t know how long it would be before the traffickers stopped looking for her and watching her friends.
Mrs. Creedy looked like Zachary had said something impolite. Her lips pressed together and she shook her head slightly. But Zachary had told her. He had explained that Madison was in danger if she tried to reach out to the people in her old life. Mrs. Creedy had to understand that. They both had to get it.
Zachary’s phone rang, making him jump. He had left the ringer on, which he didn’t usually do when he was with clients. He pulled it out and looked at the screen. Kenzie. He tapped the speaker button.
“Kenzie. Hey, how’s it going? How’s Noah?”
There was a pause before Kenzie answered. Long enough for Zachary to look at Madison and meet her eyes, and to see the worry there. Why did Kenzie hesitate? Noah had been doing well. She had said that his injuries were superficial. Teenagers were fast healers; he’d bounce back in no time.
“Zachary, can you take me off speaker?” Kenzie suggested.
Zachary pulled his eyes away from Madison’s anxious gaze to tap off the speaker button on the screen. He put the phone up to his ear.
“Kenzie? What’s going on? Is everything okay?”
“There have been some… unexpected developments.”
Zachary stood up and looked around, trying to decide if he should leave the room. He took a couple of steps toward the door. He lowered his voice slightly.
“Unexpected developments? What does that mean?”
“Well, you know I was worried about brain swelling.”
“Yes. Because of the way the bullet knocked him in the head. But he was doing pretty good when we left.”
“He was… I wasn’t expecting him to go downhill that fast.”
“What happened?”
“I’m sorry, Zachary…”
Zachary looked at Madison, wondering how much she could hear of what Kenzie was saying. She would have to piece the rest together from his side of the conversation.
“Sorry… for what?”
“He turned so fast. He seemed like everything was just fine, and then his vitals went all to hell. I don’t know if it was swelling in his brain or maybe he had an embolism… but it all happened so fast; there was nothing I could do.”
“You had to take him to the hospital?” Zachary suggested.
“No, Zachary. I lost him. I know this makes things more complicated with Madison… I did everything I could. It was just too fast.”
“No.”
“I’m sorry.”
Zachary looked at Madison. She was clearly following the conversation. She had gone completely white and stared at Zachary with wide eyes and a slack jaw.
“Madison,” Zachary said, his voice rough.
“No! No, don’t tell me! Don’t tell me that!” Madison shrieked, going from calm a moment before to nearly hysterical with nothing in between. “Noah is okay! When we left, Kenzie said he would be okay. We just had to wait for him to wake up!”
“It was unexpected…”
“No! No, no, no!”
There were no tears yet. She was too shocked and horrified to work up any tears.
They would come later, when it all started to sink in.
46
“Oh, Madison.” Mrs. Creedy moved over beside Madison on the couch. “It will be okay. I know it doesn’t feel like it now, but you’ll go on with life. It doesn’t seem possible right now, but your life will go on.”
She was speaking about her own life, of course. She had no way of knowing how Madison was going to take the news. She didn’t know what Madison’s choices would be. Maybe she would go back to confront Peggy Ann. Maybe she would have a breakdown. Maybe it was something that she’d never be able to get over and would stick with her for the rest of her life. Mrs. Creedy couldn’t know how it would affect her.
Madison first pushed Mrs. Creedy away, and then fell against her, clutching her tightly and protesting in words that were so fast they were unintelligible.
But the words didn’t matter. The fact that she was grieving and was accepting comfort from Mrs. Creedy mattered. She would bond to Mrs. Creedy, lean on her and depend on her to help her to make decisions. And maybe that meant she would be able to make the right decisions, ones that would lead her back to her family instead of farther away from them.
Zachary said a few more words to Kenzie that no one listened to, and then returned to sit on the chair he had been sitting on. He watched Madison. It hurt to see her so upset. His empathy and compassion for others was one of the things that drove him to do the things he did. Mr. Peterson had suggested to him a long time ago that maybe he could make some money with his photography by becoming a private investigator, but Zachary would never have done it if he hadn’t cared about people and wanted to help them and to ease their pain. It was painful to see how upset Madison was. She had put her whole life into Noah’s hands, and now he was gone. What was she going to do with herself now that he was gone from it?
Eventually, Zachary left the Creedys’. Mrs. Creedy had her hands full with Madison, but she seemed to take to the role eagerly. She’d lost one of her daughters, but here was a child who needed her. A way to exorcise her demons, to spend all of the compassion she had on someone else. She would take good care of Madison until Zachary could get her parents there, hopefully for the beginning of a new life.
He was exhausted and keyed up at the same time. He wanted to go home and go to bed, but he didn’t know whether he would be able to sleep even after a few more hours of driving. He got into the car and started on his way back. He told his phone to call Mr. Peterson and listened to it ring a few times as he headed back onto the highway.
“Zachary,” Mr. Peterson sounded cheerful, as always. Happy to hear from his former foster son. “How are you?”
“I’m okay. Just wanted to hear your voice.”
“I’m happy to talk to you at any time. You sound tired.”
“Tired… and not. Got a drive ahead of me still.”
“Maybe you should take a break and catch some Z’s. Not a good idea to drive tired.”
“I’m not sleepy. Just… wrung out. It’s been a difficult day.”
“The sun is barely up. How has it been that tiring already?”
“I haven’t slept. I meant… the last twenty-four hours. It was kind of crazy.”
“Oh. You want to talk about it?”
“I don’t know.” Zachary watched the cars ahead of him, thinking about what he would tell Mr. Peterson if he shared the story. He couldn’t tell him everything. And he didn’t want to say anything that might be a breach of Madison’s privacy. “I was helping out some teens who… were in pretty bad circumstances. It’s been tough.”
“Do you think things will turn out all right? It can be hard with kids… sometimes no matter how much energy you put into it and how good your intentions are… you can’t make things better for them.” He might have been speaking of his own experiences with Zachary. He had been an important father figure in Zachary’s life, despite the fact that he had not officially been one of his foster parents for more than a few weeks. He had stayed involved, and there had been plenty of times when he had given Zachary advice or tried to help him to get onto a better path. But Zachary had rarely listened to him. Or been able to follow through on the things that Mr. Peterson had suggested even when he knew the advice was good.
“Yeah. I don’t know what she’s going to decide, or if she’ll be able to get herself onto a better path.”
“It can take years. Sometimes there’s a lot of damage and trauma to get through.”
“Tell me about it,” Zachary agreed.
Mr. Peterson gave a muffled la
ugh. “Longer for some kids than others.”
“Yeah.” Zachary made some quick lane changes and watched behind him for any tails. He was sure that no one had been able to follow him to New Hampshire. But he still needed to keep an eye out. If someone had managed to get a tracker on his car or his phone, it could wreck all of their plans. “How’s Pat doing?”
“He’s… on the way back,” Mr. Peterson said finally. “I think he’s stabilized on the antidepressants, and he likes the therapist that we’ve been working with.”
“So you think…” Zachary wished that he’d had better results for Pat. If only he’d been able to find Jose alive… “You think he’ll be okay.”
“I know he’ll be okay, Zachary. You don’t need to worry about that. It’s just taking him some time to work through the grief… and the guilt.”
And Zachary felt guilty for Pat’s guilt. He had made stupid decisions, and the consequences had been disastrous. As usual. Pat had felt guilty for involving Zachary in the first place. Guilt that he wouldn’t have had to deal with if Zachary had been able to tamp down his impulsivity and act like the professional private investigator was supposed to be. Instead of still acting like the ten-year-old who ran into everything full-bore without considering the consequences.
“Well, say ‘hi’ to him for me.”
“Sure will. How is your family?”
Zachary didn’t answer immediately, trying to sort out an answer for himself. The problems with Jocelyn were not going to be resolved any time soon. She had a lot of trauma to work through herself, and a lot of that was also Zachary’s fault. He didn’t know if she could ever forgive him for the choices he’d made that had impacted the rest of her life. Or if she even should.
“How’s Kenzie?” Mr. Peterson prompted. “Everything going okay there? It was so nice to see the two of you together again, but I understand that things don’t always turn out the way you want them to, even when you’re working on it as hard as you can.”
“No, things with Kenzie are going good.” Zachary was glad to be able to report this. “I think… we’re closer now than ever. We went to our first couples session.”
“Yeah? How did that go?”
“It was… horrible. And good.”
His foster father laughed. “Oh yeah? Horrible and good?”
Zachary couldn’t help chuckling at his own description. “I had… bad anxiety. Thought I was going to die. But… we stuck it out, and I’m glad. And we went for ice cream.”
“Of course. Ice cream makes everything better.”
“Well, if you ask Kenzie. And… I don’t know if I can argue. It did feel pretty good.”
“That’s great. So you’ll keep going?”
“Yeah. She’ll kick my butt if I don’t. So I know I have to. And that… we can get through it, even if it’s hard.”
“Sometimes the most important things are the hardest.”
“If it will help me communicate with Kenzie, and work through… our issues… then it’s worth it.”
“Attaboy. I’m proud of you, Zachary. Good for you.”
47
Despite Mr. Peterson’s encouraging words, Zachary couldn’t face Kenzie when he got back in town. He was just too worn out emotionally to deal with her feelings and his at the same time. He went back to his own building and shot her off a text to let her know that he was home before heading to bed. He sat in his car in the parking lot for some time, looking for any sign of trouble. As far as the traffickers knew, he had been headed for Canada. Even if Noah hadn’t passed that message on to them, they knew he had been traveling north before they lost him. It would take them a long time to thoroughly check border crossings for any sign of the teens. They didn’t have any reason to be surveilling his apartment, but it was still important to be careful. And if they were watching him to figure out where he had stashed Noah and Madison, he wasn’t going to lead them back to Kenzie’s house.
Zachary knew he couldn’t sleep without help, and that sleep was the thing he needed most. So despite his resolution after the incident at Mr. Peterson’s that he wouldn’t take any more sleep aids, he went straight for the medicine cabinet. It was okay for him to take something, as long as he was careful not to mix his meds and to take the proper dosage. The mistake he had made then would not be repeated. He would stick to that part of his resolution.
He took the recommended dose and lay down in bed, closing his eyes and waiting for the pill to take effect.
Usually, while he was waiting for it to kick in, he would check his email or his social networks, or just play with his phone browsing popular videos until he started to feel drowsy. But he didn’t even want that distraction. He wanted to think of nothing until he woke up again.
Thinking of nothing wasn’t an option. The hamster that was his brain was running full-tilt on the hamster wheel, turning as fast as it could and getting nowhere. He second-guessed everything he had done in the past twenty-four hours. If he’d made better decisions, things might have turned out differently. But better, or worse? And which decisions would he have changed?
He pressed his fingers to his temples, trying to slow the hamster down and get rid of all of the worries pinging around in his brain.
It seemed like he would lie there awake forever.
He was feeling a lot better when he awoke a few hours later. He was still groggy from the meds and still short on sleep, but the deep emotional exhaustion had lifted, and the hamster-thoughts pinging around his brain had slowed down, back to a normal pace.
Time to move on to the next step of the plan. Zachary had a drink of water and wondered when he had last eaten. He munched a granola bar over the sink, then sat down at the table with his phone and dialed the number he knew by heart.
“Campbell here. Zachary?”
“Yeah. How is it going?”
“About usual. How about with you, Zach? Don’t tell me you already have another case you need my input on.”
“No, not exactly.”
“What’s up, then?”
“I’m wondering about getting a rumor started.”
There was a long pause as Campbell considered this. Then he heard Campbell’s chair squeak as he leaned far back at his desk. “Exactly what are you talking about?”
“I have a young lady who could be in some danger, and others who could be collateral damage. Unless we can convince some bad guys that she is out of the picture.”
“Out of the picture how?”
Campbell would know who he was talking about, of course. Zachary had only talked to him about one young lady recently. “I’ve moved her out of state and she should disappear without a trace, if I’ve done my job. And if she doesn’t rebel and decide to go back to the old life. But… I don’t want certain people putting pressure on her family and friends to find out where she disappeared to.”
“I’m not sure how I can help you with that.”
“Let’s say… there may be someone in your department who has a line of communication into certain quarters.”
“An undercover agent?” Campbell jumped to the wrong conclusion.
Zachary considered it. What was the difference if Campbell thought that an undercover fed might be in position, rather than there being a dirty cop in his precinct? If the rumor were convincing enough, then it wouldn’t matter which was true. Everyone involved would get the message, either way.
“Could be.”
“Hmm. And what exactly is the rumor that you want spread around?”
“There were some reports of gunfire on the highway last night.”
“Uh… yes, there were.”
“After that incident, two teens that the police department was aware of dropped out of sight. There were reports that one or both teens were hit.”
“Madison Miller and…?”
“A kid known as Noah. He probably has a number of different names on the street. He was involved in prostitution and in turning out new young girls and boys.”
“Her pi
mp?”
“Yeah. Her boyfriend, as far as she was concerned. A Romeo, in the business.”
“So Madison and this Noah might have been hit in this shooting last night,” Campbell said, sounding concerned.
“Yeah. The police can’t get confirmation of this, but word on the streets is, that’s who was involved in the shootout, and both of them might have been hit.”
“Might have been?”
“The rumor is that they were both killed. Again, the police are unable to verify any details. No bodies have turned up in the morgue. No injuries treated in emergency centers. But Vermont has a lot of wild, wooded areas, and the ground is soft enough to dig now.”
Campbell snorted. “Can I just say that if you were ever discovered to be digging graves in the woods, I’m not going to be standing behind you?”
“You won’t need to. So… do you think that rumor might get around?”
“I know a couple of people who like to share gossip around the water cooler. One would only need to plant a couple of details. Not even rumors, just… speculation.”
Zachary nodded. “Exactly.”
“And these rumors or speculations are not going to come back to bite us?”
“I’ve looked at it from all angles… I don’t see how it could be a problem. But if the word leaks out to these bad actors, it might save the lives of anyone remotely connected with the former prostitute. They aren’t going to be looking for someone who is dead. They’ll just move on.”
“No retaliation?”
“I don’t see it. She was an asset, that’s all. If she’s gone, there is no point in wasting resources on retaliation. That won’t bring in more money.”
“No, that’s true.”
“I appreciate it. I don’t want her family and friends to be harmed.”
“I’ll plant a little speculation, and we’ll see what happens. I can’t promise the results you’re looking for, but it sounds like a reasonable plan.”
“You’re a lifesaver. Thanks again.”
She Told a Lie Page 24