by Ava Benton
“I thought that was New Jersey,” I laughed. “Isn’t it?”
“Then what’s this? The crotch?”
Even Roan laughed as we left the hotel parking lot.
The night spent on a lumpy mattress hadn’t done my mood much good, and I could tell the rest of them felt the same. I wasn’t looking forward to spending almost four hours driving to Orlando.
“We all got an email from Mary,” I said as I checked my inbox from the front seat. “She found this girl’s address. What do we do? Just show up there?”
“I don’t think that would be a good idea,” Roan decided. “I mean, the girl just got attacked. How will she feel when the four of us show up at her front door? Hell, I know us, and I would still shit myself.”
“But you’re a pussy,” Drew laughed.
“Shut it,” he growled, then chuckled. “Anyway, no. Maybe we could sit outside for a little while, see what’s up, see if she comes out. Follow her at a distance. I don’t want to spook her for no reason—she’ll stop working with us if we scare her too bad.”
“Right. Good thinking.” Great. Sitting in a parking lot with the three of them. So much fun. “What do you think about maybe renting a second car? Splitting up? I mean, Christ, what happens when she sees four guys like us sitting together in a black SUV, following her? Or sitting in her parking lot?”
“Not a bad idea,” he admitted.
I was already halfway there. If I got lucky, I might be able to score a ride on my own. I needed a little time without the three of them up my ass. That was likely another one of my issues, the fact that we spent so much time together.
No matter what we did or how small or easy a case was, Mary assigned the four of us to it. Like she didn’t want one of us to be left out. Like we were kids who couldn’t understand why we had to be left behind. Or I wasn’t giving her enough credit; I didn’t know. Maybe it was just better for us to be together. To protect each other.
At least Roan liked good music, and the rest of us knew better than to try to change the station. It was a good way to lose a hand, reaching out to spin the dial.
I leaned my head back against the seat and tapped my fingers in time with some old school Metallica. It matched my mood.
The ride wasn’t bad, mainly because we had left the hotel way before dawn to beat rush hour traffic. By the time we got to Orlando, it was just starting to pick up.
“Who would live here?” Drew asked as he looked out the window.
“I could stand never having to deal with blizzards again,” I said. “I mean, who can hunt during a blizzard? I bet the swamps are amazing down here.”
“Swamps. Everglades. Vincent… I just got that,” Carter said.
I could almost hear the light bulb go off over his head.
“Wow. It took you that long?” Roan laughed.
“He would’ve been okay if the doctor didn’t drop him on his head when he was born,” Drew laughed before ducking one of Carter’s jabs to his shoulder.
It was a brother thing. God knew Roan and I had enough things between us.
“But like I said, I can’t wait to go on a hunt down here. We should try to make time for that,” I said.
It wasn’t like we needed to hunt to live—we could eat normal food, human food—but when I went too long without a hunt, I just didn’t feel as alive as I normally did. Something sort of drained out of me.
We decided to go straight to Maggie’s apartment building, rather than stop off at yet another hotel.
I wanted to get a look at the place and figure out which apartment was hers.
Maybe we’d get lucky and she would come out while we were waiting.
Not every picture of her featured that princess costume she wore in work. In real life, she had long, chocolate brown hair and eyes that matched.
She was a tiny thing, too, which didn’t give me much hope for how she would’ve come out of a shifter attack.
Not much over five feet tall. And pretty. Very pretty. Even out of the makeup the girls who played princesses had to wear. I wondered if she was still pretty.
Her apartment building was actually a complex with several buildings, all separated by stretches of concrete with little bits of grass I guessed could pass for lawn if a person was feeling generous.
What a bleak place. Cinderblock walls. It was almost funny, somebody who worked in a place like she did but living in a place like that. The full spectrum.
“Apartment 911B,” Roan muttered, rolling through the parking lot, looking up at the windows. “This is Building Nine. I guess, what, the B means it’s on the second floor, and the apartment number is eleven?”
“It makes as much sense as anything else.”
We narrowed it down to a few different windows that could be hers.
I looked around the area close to those windows, wondering which car was hers. I could imagine her driving something small and not very expensive. I understood cast members didn’t make a ton of money—and if she lived in a cinderblock apartment building, she couldn’t be rolling in dough. I wondered if the little Bug was hers. A little pink Bug. I could see a princess driving a car like that.
We sat for one hour, then another.
And nothing happened.
She never came out.
That pink Bug never moved.
And as time passed, the more certain I was that the car belonged to her. Every other car moved at least once, but not that one. It only made sense.
“Gimme a sec,” I said, getting out of the SUV.
“What are you doing?” Roan asked.
“I just need to know something.” I went over to the driver’s side of the car, looking up at the windows as I did. Making sure she wasn’t watching.
What would she think if she saw me lurking around her car? I didn’t know how I could be so sure she was a wreck. I just had a feeling.
I crouched down low, looking hard though I didn’t need to look to know my hunch was right. There was blood on the car, somewhere. I could smell it. Somebody had made the owner of the car bleed, and some of that blood got on the pink paint.
It was smeared on the handle, I finally noticed, and when I looked inside, I saw some on the steering wheel and along the headrest. She had been bleeding out of the back of her head, at least. Maybe she had touched her fingers to it, trying to judge what was wrong with her, and gotten the blood on the wheel.
“What are you looking at?” Carter asked, rolling down the window.
“Just trying out a hunch.” I went back to the SUV and climbed in. “That’s her car. There’s blood.”
“Shit,” Drew muttered.
“Not a ton,” I said, “and it doesn’t look like it’s just left over from when she tried to clean it up, if you know what I mean. It’s just right there on the wheel and the headrest. She didn’t get torn up.”
“That’s a relief, anyway,” Roan murmured as he stared up at the windows.
But he knew as well as I did that a person didn’t have to get physically torn up to feel torn up inside. We had all seen it and been through it.
I would never forget some of the things I had seen, the things my superiors had ordered me to do. And I had done them, too, because it was orders and because I didn’t have a choice.
And they had given me and all the rest of us the shaft, anyway. So it didn’t matter.
“We should get to the hotel and settle in,” he decided. “We can come back later. I don’t think she’s going anywhere.”
“No. She’s not.” I stared up at the window.
“You sound pretty sure of yourself,” he muttered.
“Yeah, well, I wouldn’t want to go anywhere, either. I would bury myself in my apartment and never come back out. If I were her, I mean.”
“That’s nice, but real life doesn’t stop. She has to leave sometime, and we’ll track her when she does.”
“Of course.”
And we would.
I just didn’t think it would be that easy.
Wherever it happened, she was near her car. I wondered if she sat in that car, shaking, wondering what the hell had just happened to her. How long did it take before she started driving? How long had it been since the attack?
She probably hadn’t driven since then—she would’ve seen the blood and at least tried to do something about it. So she had holed up in her apartment. Poor kid.
“Who would do something like that?” Drew asked as we left the parking lot.
“He had to be crazy,” I said. “I mean, if that treaty exists—the one Vincent talked about—he should know better. Maybe he’s from another country, where they don’t know about any treaty.”
“Or maybe he’s just vicious. He wanted her, she didn’t give him what he wanted, and he decided to take it anyway.”
I remembered looking at the seat in the car. “There wasn’t any blood where she sat,” I said. “I don’t know if he got everything he wanted.”
“Do you think she went to the hospital?” Drew asked.
“We can call around, find out,” Roan said. “Once we get to the hotel. I could use an excuse to stretch my legs and stop driving this damn car.”
“Any one of us could’ve driven,” I reminded him.
“Not while I’m in the car,” he reminded me, ever the alpha.
We were all alphas, but he was the only one who rubbed it in our faces. Just one of the many things we had butted heads on over the years.
“So quit your bitching,” Carter said, shoving the back of his seat.
We all laughed, even Roan, and generally fell into a conversation about our rooms and whether we would get a second car to ride around in.
I couldn’t get the image of that blood out of my mind, though, and it lingered there throughout the rest of the trip to the hotel.
The deep brownish red, smeared across the gray upholstery.
5
Maggie
I had to get back to life. Mom needed me.
She didn’t really need me. Not really. But I felt like she did.
The nurses and administrators took better care of her than I ever could. I wasn’t delusional. Still, I felt like I had to check on her and make sure nobody was taking advantage of her.
When she couldn’t speak for herself and couldn’t hold a pencil to write with, it took a lot of vigilance to be sure she was healthy and as happy as she could be. I knew she couldn’t be very happy, not really—who would be, a prisoner in their own body? But I could hope.
Ramona was all right with me taking the rest of my vacation time and didn’t expect me to return for another few days. I knew I was lucky she hadn’t fired me.
I needed to get my butt in gear. A trip out to the nursing home would be a good practice run for leaving the apartment again.
I couldn’t let Mom see me the way I was, though. I started early with the makeup—one of many good things about what I did for a living was knowing how to use coverup and foundation to disguise just about anything.
I applied it under my eyes first, so she wouldn’t see how tired I was. I went to the bruise on my jaw and throat, next—a scarf would cover up the worst of it.
I looked almost human again by the time I finished. A shower helped, too, even though I had to be especially careful when I was washing my hair. The back of my head hurt so much, still. I could barely run a brush through my hair.
Mom didn’t need to know about any of that, and I wasn’t even sure she would understand if I told her. How much did she understand of anything anybody said to her? I had no idea, and the doctors couldn’t tell me. They didn’t know anything.
The brain was a crazy thing—the slightest issue could throw things out of whack, but Mom’s stroke was anything but slight.
It was only a ten minute drive to the home. The length of the drive wasn’t what bothered me. It was getting into the car and using it. I hadn’t been in it since that night. If I kept liquor in the apartment, I would’ve taken a drink just to settle my nerves.
“You can do this,” I whispered to myself as I walked out of the bathroom, down the short hall and through the living room.
I hadn’t done much living in there recently. I hadn’t even watered my plants. I made a mental note to do that when I got home as I picked up my purse. The only thing left to do was walk out the door.
My hand closed over the knob, and I froze.
“You can do this,” I whispered again. Louder than before. “Just leave. Just go. You’ll be fine.”
I leaned against the door, touching my forehead to the wood with my eyes closed. I could’ve sworn my heart was about to burst out of my chest. There was a funny roaring noise in my ears. I felt dizzy all of a sudden.
That was when I forced myself to stand up straight and take a deep breath. I was having a panic attack—I remembered them from the early days after Mom had her stroke.
I used to break down outside her room sometimes. Never inside—I didn’t want her to hear me that way, if she could hear when she was in a coma.
But outside? I would sit in the closest chair just to get off my feet, afraid I would end up collapsing, and the shaking and breathlessness and chest pains would start.
It always happened when I asked myself what was going to happen to her. How would I take care of her? I would look ahead to the years and years in front of me, so many years of expensive care when I was only twenty-three years old and didn’t even know what I wanted to do with the rest of my life. And I would fall apart.
One of the nurses, a kind, older lady with a sweet smile and gentle voice, had given me a coping mechanism. Whenever I started becoming overwhelmed by the thought of what might happen, I needed to stop thinking about the future. One day at a time was the only way to do it.
I would be fine leaving the apartment.
There was no way a random sicko knew where I lived—he had run off a long time before I got into the car. It was just one of those things. He wasn’t a stalker.
For all he knew, I had gone to the police over what he did. Why would he take a chance like that?
I turned the knob and opened the door.
The squeak of the hinges was like something out of a horror movie.
I looked out into the hall, back and forth.
Not a soul.
I breathed a little easier, even as I hurried down the hall and ran down the stairs to the parking lot.
My car was just where I left it, just the way I had left it. I flinched at the sight, and my heart started going again.
Thumpthumpthumpthump.
He's not here. That was the past. It’s not happening right now. You’ll be okay. You are okay, and you’ll continue to be okay.
I repeated that to myself again and again as I opened the door and slid inside. I even believed it until I noticed the blood on the steering wheel.
I kept my eyes off it as I started the engine. At least it was daytime—going out to the car at night might have been too much for me just then.
Nothing seemed as scary in the daytime. It was something Mom used to tell me all the time when I was little and afraid of the dark: what was there in the dark was the same as what I saw in the daylight. Nothing had changed. It helped me get through many an otherwise sleepless night.
I wished I could rest my head on her shoulder and let her wrap her arms around me and tell me everything would be okay. I wished I could cry it out until there were no more tears left. I wished I could tell her how scared I was. I sat behind the wheel of a car, wrapped in metal, and I still jumped when a guy walked too close to me as he crossed the street while I sat at a light. How long would it take until that feeling went away? Would it ever? I wanted to tell her about it and let her comfort me. I could never do that again. It was my turn to comfort her.
I kept that in mind as I pulled up near the entrance to the home.
It was a pretty place with fountains and flowers. Nurses wheeled some of the patients around in chairs so they could enjoy the gardens.
I liked the
feeling of community there. The staff did everything they could to make the patients feel comfortable with their surroundings.
The front desk nurse recognized me right away. “We wondered if we would see you this week,” she said with a warm smile.
“I haven’t been feeling well—I figured it wouldn’t do her any favors if I got her sick,” I lied.
“Of course, good thinking.” She handed me a pass and went back to her work.
I wondered how many daughters she saw in an average week. How many sons and spouses and siblings. How many of them felt guilty for not being around more? How many of them knew the staff by first name, the way I did? Not that I was looking for a gold star—one thing I had learned was there were no gold stars—but there was still a satisfaction in knowing I was there for Mom.
Guilt did that to a girl. It made her want to prove herself to the people who worked at the nursing home. It made her want to spread the word that she was only doing her best, that she didn’t throw her mother in a home just to get rid of her.
Mom was in bed, as always. She looked beautiful, as always. She had developed a sort of serenity she never had when she was healthy—always scraping and scrambling to keep our heads above water.
“Hey, Mama.” I sat at her bedside and slid out of my jacket. “I’m sorry it’s been almost a week since I was here last. I don’t know if you can keep track or what, but I’m here now. I didn’t forget about you.”
Her eyes were closed.
Sometimes, I wished they would snap open, and she would toss out some sarcastic remark or ask why the hell I was sitting around like she was on her deathbed and I was waiting to inherit the family jewels.
That was a laugh. Like I would get anything after she passed on—it was all gone, every cent. That was the only way the state would pick up the tab. I didn’t care, honestly. It wasn’t like we were wealthy people.
“Your hair is getting so long again,” I mused as I unwound the braid which hung down over one shoulder. I combed it out with my fingers as I continued. “I remember when you first taught me how to braid hair, and I practiced on all my dolls for hours. I felt like I had just learned something magical. And when you would do my hair, remember? I would sit between your knees, and you would tell me stories about when you grew up on the farm. I used to love listening to those stories. I didn’t care what you did to my hair, so long as I got to sit on the floor between your knees and listen to more stories. You always had such a beautiful voice.”