Beneath These Lies

by Meghan March

  I want that, I thought again as we followed them out of the bar. That easy togetherness with a man who was all man. The kind who took care of his woman and made sure she and her friends would get home safely.

  Stop, Valentina. I forced my thoughts back to the present.

  Hennessy’s bright green gaze fixed on me, and I couldn’t help but wonder what he saw.

  “Am I riding in the back of a cop car?” I asked, hoping to break the intensity of his study. I wasn’t in any shape to be analyzed closely tonight.

  “I don’t drive a squad car. But even if I did, you wouldn’t be riding in the backseat.”

  We rounded a corner, Hennessy’s arm tucked around my back to keep me upright as I stumbled on the uneven sidewalks of the Quarter. Always a protector.

  I focused on staying upright until he slowed and keys jangled. Lights flashed on some kind of SUV a few feet away. Hennessy led me around to the passenger side, opened the door, and helped me up into the seat.

  “I got it,” I said, fumbling for the seat belt.

  He backed away and waited until I clicked the buckle into place before shutting the door.

  I was out before he put the key in the ignition.

  “OH GOD, WHY DID I drink so much?” My scratchy voice filled the room as my head pounded against the soft down pillow. “Never, ever doing that again,” I said with a groan.

  I hadn’t felt this awful since Ash Wednesday my senior year in college. We’d gone to a fancy party, drinking with abandon because it was our last Mardi Gras before we hit the real world, and the booze had been free because of someone’s parents’ friends.

  Last night hadn’t been quite as crazy, but I was years out of practice at drinking like that. My memory was hazy, but I still recalled the highlights. Including . . .

  Detective Hennessy, offering me a ride.

  Detective Hennessy, carrying me to my door.

  Detective Hennessy . . . handing me a washcloth to wipe the vomit from my face.

  Brilliant, Valentina. Just brilliant.

  I groaned again, burying my face in my pillow. Could I smother myself with embarrassment?

  Why did it seem that there was always one person who continually saw you at your worst? In high school, I was as poised and proper as any Catholic prep school girl could be expected to be, except when I saw the captain of the swim team, Kirk Ryan. I hadn’t fallen down the stairs because I was flustered. No, it was the fact that I was staring at him and didn’t see the piece of loose-leaf paper that someone had dropped at the top, and I’d slipped.

  And then there was the giant puddle the janitor hadn’t cleaned up from the leaking door seal and the epic rainstorm we were having. He’d been kind enough not to laugh when I’d fallen on my face. And the cafeteria tray incident? Billy Butcher ran into me and knocked the spaghetti down the front of my white shirt and all over my cardigan.

  But regardless of the reasons for these unfortunate incidents, Kirk Ryan always saw me at my most disastrous. Which was why, when he asked me to the junior-senior prom, I had politely declined in favor of studying. No one likes being vulnerable, especially not in front of someone you’d prefer to impress.

  Did I want to impress Detective Hennessy? That was a matter for another moment, because right now I needed to find my way into the shower and drag myself back to human status in time to get to work. I didn’t want to leave Trinity waiting on the sidewalk like I’d done once before when I’d overslept.

  Forty minutes later, I was slipping a shoe on and rushing out the door. I had three minutes to get to work, which meant I’d be late and she’d indeed be waiting on the sidewalk.

  Except she wasn’t.

  I unlocked the door and turned off the alarm before slipping inside and crossing to my desk to stow my purse in a drawer. Trinity was never late. Never.

  Then again, I wasn’t usually late either, so maybe she was having a rough start to the morning too. But when I hadn’t heard from her by noon, every internal warning bell I had was going off.

  Trinity didn’t pull a no-show without calling. Ever. She’d called in sick exactly twice since she’d started working for me two years ago, and one other time when she needed extra time to study for a test. She was as reliable as any adult employee I’d ever had.

  I called her cell no less than a dozen times before I called her grandmother around three, and learned that Trinity hadn’t come home last night and there was no word from her all day. I thanked her grandmother for the information and immediately started calling hospitals. The woman was used to Trinity coming and going as she pleased, sometimes staying the night with boyfriends, and had basically kept her out of the foster system but hadn’t provided much else in the way of parenting. She’d seen it all and wouldn’t share my fears.

  Every possibility ran through my head while I talked to customers throughout the day and sold artwork. When the clock turned to five and I was locking up the gallery by myself, panic set in. Something was wrong. I felt it in my bones.

  Trinity had graduated weeks ago, so calling the school wouldn’t be any help. I’d exhausted the hospitals, didn’t have any way to contact her friends or her boyfriend, and a second call to her grandmother returned the same conclusion as the first: Trinity was MIA.

  So I was left with only one other option . . . the police.

  Was I overreacting? Maybe. But when it came to Trinity, I wasn’t taking any chances. I knew better than anyone what could happen when a girl went missing, and how quickly it could turn bad.

  “Ms. Noble, I’m going to need you to calm down. Ms. Rodgers is eighteen years old and therefore no longer a minor.”

  Frustrated, I jammed my hand into my hair, and my ring caught. I was trying to free it when Detective Hennessy stepped out of an office and paused. His green eyes were on me, assessing, like always. Seeing my weaknesses, my flaws, my vulnerabilities. Probably remembering the horrific display of last night.

  If this were just about me, I would have turned and walked out rather than face him, but my purpose was too damn important. Trinity was too important. And I was not above exploiting my connections to get help tracking her down.

  I tugged my hand from my hair as discreetly as possible before raising my chin at Detective Hennessy, who was already walking toward me.

  How is it possible I didn’t know his first name? It showed just how little I actually knew about the man. He was taller than my five-foot-four-inch frame and if I stood behind his back, I’d disappear behind his wide shoulders. Every time I saw him, I remembered what it felt like to clutch the scratchy white sheets lining my hospital bed with my broken fingernails and nearly lifeless hands. I shoved the memory back down.

  Detective Hennessy’s long stride carried him toward me and the uncooperative officer within seconds.

  “Is there something we can help you with, Ms. Noble?”

  The officer I was speaking to, the bar on his uniform read L. JENKINS, decided to reply for me.

  “She’s trying to file a missing person’s report, and the missing person in question hasn’t been gone for even twenty-four hours yet. I keep explaining that because the girl is eighteen and Ms. Noble here isn’t a close relative, she really needs to get a family member to report the girl missing, and it’d be best if she waited another day or two to make sure the girl is really missing.”

  “That’s not acceptable,” I said. “Trinity’s only been eighteen for four days. She’s barely an adult. Her grandmother is her only living relative, and she’s not much for getting out of the house these days. I’ve been the closest adult in Trinity’s life for years, and it’s absolutely ridiculous that you won’t file the damn report.”

  My temper was flaring, even though I was trying to keep my cool. This was ridiculous. Trinity was barely out of school, didn’t live on her own, and when something was wrong in her life, she came to me.

  “Jenkins, let me speak to Ms. Noble. You can carry on with your duties,” Hennessy told the fresh-faced officer who wouldn
’t budge off his asinine rules.

  Jenkins smirked at me, clearly pleased to be handing me off to someone else.

  Fabulous. Now I’d have to make my plea directly to Hennessy when what I really wanted to do was have him hypnotized and order him to forget every interaction we’d ever had—especially last night.

  Hennessy led me to a small room and shut the door behind us. He wasted no time before starting with the dreaded small talk.

  “How are you feeling today?”

  I swallowed back the urge to wish for some voodoo incantation that would handle the aforementioned memory wipe, and forced a placid smile to my lips. “I’m fine, thank you. I appreciate your assistance. I apologize for . . . everything.”

  Hennessy shrugged, as if my personal humiliation was really no big deal. And honestly, compared to my concern over Trinity, my personal issues were nothing.

  “You have a missing person to report?” he prompted.

  “Yes, one of my employees. She’s the most responsible eighteen-year-old I know, and she’s never done anything like this before. Her grandmother said she didn’t come home last night, and she hasn’t heard from her. She didn’t show up at work today, and she’s not answering her cell. This isn’t like her. I’ve called all the hospitals, and Officer Ever-So-Helpful confirmed she wasn’t in jail.”

  Hennessy’s face, handsome in a rough-hewn and stubbled sort of way, didn’t show any indication of his thoughts. “Have you called her friends? Boyfriend? Did she get into an argument with her grandmother or anyone else?”

  “She and her grandmother aren’t exceptionally close, and Trinity basically just comes and goes as she pleases. As far as I know, they don’t argue about anything. She hasn’t been hanging out with her friends ever since she got involved with her boyfriend.”

  Finally, Hennessy’s expression changed. Skepticism was branded all over it now. “Have you checked with the boyfriend?”

  Feeling like a moron, I shook my head. “No. I don’t know how to get in contact with him.”

  “Do you know his name?”

  The moronic feelings compounded. “Derrick. I don’t know his last name.”

  “You know anything about him? How old he is? Where he works? Who he might hang out with?”

  I shook my head as I kicked myself for not getting more details. I’d been listening to Trinity talk about him for months, but she mostly just talked about their dates, how romantic he was, and that she was sure he was the one, but she was still going to start art school in the fall. She certainly wasn’t going to get knocked up—yet.

  I sifted through all the details I could recall. “He worked for a guy. One guy, not a company. Sometimes she called Derrick ‘D-Rock,’ which I assumed was just some kind of pet name. The guy he worked for had an odd name too. Rex or something like that.”

  Squeezing my eyes shut for a beat, I searched my memory for anything else I could think of. Why couldn’t I remember the name? Why hadn’t Trinity ever brought Derrick to the gallery? I’d assumed it was because he wasn’t interested in art, but hadn’t asked too many questions because she told me over and over how supportive he was of her going to college because he hadn’t gotten a chance to.

  “And he’s older than her. Twenty-three or four, I think.” I opened my eyes to see a dark expression settle over Hennessy’s face. “What?”

  “Was the guy’s name Rix? The one Derrick worked for?”

  I felt like I’d hit the jackpot. “Yes! Rix. That’s it. Do you know him? Can you help me track down Derrick, and if Derrick hasn’t seen Trinity, will you file a missing person’s report and start investigating?”

  Hope bubbled up inside me—and then Hennessy crushed it. He clicked his pen shut and flipped the little cop notebook closed. Bad sign.

  “Your girl never mentioned that she hooked up with a gangbanger, did she?”

  I blinked, trying to comprehend his words. “What do you mean?”

  Hennessy crossed his arms and leaned back in the chair. “Rix heads up one of the biggest gangs in the city. I haven’t heard of D-Rock before, but it wouldn’t take me long to track him down, especially if he’s been arrested before.”

  Shock ripped through me. “A gang? Like . . . what?”

  Hennessy pushed his chair back from the table and rose. “Let me go run a search, and I’ll see if I can confirm it. But there’s only one guy I know named Rix in this town, and he and his crew are not people you should be messing with.”

  He was already halfway out of the room when I gathered my wits and shoved out of my chair. Marching after him down the hall, I caught up with Hennessy as he turned a corner and entered a room full of desks and cops. The noise hit me first—everyone was either talking to someone or yelling.

  Hennessy pulled out a chair at a battered metal desk covered in stacks of manila files, and began clicking keys on a keyboard.

  My mind was on Trinity’s boyfriend and what that meant. She’d never once mentioned he was in a gang. It had to be a mistake. There could be more than one guy named Rix in this city. I dropped into the molded plastic and metal chair next to the desk without invitation.

  “You should’ve stayed in the conference room, Valentina,” Hennessy said without looking away from the computer monitor.

  “Well, I wasn’t just going to sit there and look pretty while you figure out if the girl I’ve known for years is caught up with something she probably doesn’t even understand. Trinity is good people. She’s bright, hardworking, and loves art, and she wants to paint and own her own gallery. She’s not the kind of girl who falls for a guy in a gang. She’s smarter than that.”

  Hennessy finally looked at me. “Are you sure? Some people say you can’t choose who you fall for.”

  When I didn’t address that comment, Hennessy’s attention went back to the monitor as mug shots started to appear. One was of a very handsome young black man, and Hennessy clicked on it.

  “Derrick Rockins, also known as D-Rock, is a low-level member of the New Orleans Down ’n Out, also known as the NODOs, which is the gang currently headed by Rix.”

  I straightened in the chair, disbelief warring with fear. No. Way. This had to be a mistake.

  “Please tell me you’re joking.”

  “Sorry, Valentina. Your girl got hooked up with a guy in the wrong crowd.”

  My concern for Trinity mounted exponentially. “So that’s all the more reason to investigate that she’s missing, right? I mean, who knows what could have happened to her? She’s in danger. Clearly.”

  My voice was rising with every word, and I could only imagine what my face looked like right now as panic zipped through my system, but Hennessy never lost his unflappable calm.

  “She’s eighteen. She’s made her choices. Keep calling her, and if you don’t hear from her by tomorrow, get her grandmother to give us a call to file the report. For adults, it’s usually best if a close family member is the one to report the disappearance.”

  “But—”

  Hennessy stood, cutting off my words. “The girl is probably holed up with her boyfriend somewhere and will more than likely show up today. If she doesn’t, then we can worry.”

  I shot out of my chair, crossed my arms, and stared down Hennessy. “You don’t know her. This isn’t like her at all. And I swear to God, if something happens to her, I’m going to rain down hell on this police department for refusing to take me seriously.”

  Hennessy’s gaze dropped to the floor as he debated what to say in the face of my threat. Capitalizing on his inattention, my eyes shot to the computer screen where Derrick Rockins’s information was listed—including his address. If the police wouldn’t take me seriously, I’d do my own digging.

  Without waiting for a response, I spun and took a step away from Hennessy. When his big hand caught my elbow and pulled me to a stop, I met his bright green gaze with my determined one.

  “Don’t do anything stupid, Valentina. This isn’t something you want to get involved in. Get the grandmot
her to call me tomorrow, and we’ll figure it out.”

  I hoped my face was set into an unreadable mask, because I had absolutely no intention of following his directive. Shaking off Hennessy’s arm, I straightened my shoulders and gripped my handbag.

  “I’ll do whatever the hell I want. I care about her, even if it’s clear that you guys don’t.”

  Whatever Hennessy was going to reply was lost when the doors to the room swung open and a loud group of officers entered.

  I slipped out behind them. I was on a mission.

  I SHOULDN’T BE HERE.

  I knew it the minute I drove into this neighborhood, and so did the men on stoops eying my red Tesla roadster. I had a feeling they weren’t admiring its awesome engineering. But to find Trinity, I was willing to do whatever it took.

  Driving slowly, I searched the fronts of the dilapidated houses for the address I’d memorized from Hennessy’s computer screen. Most of the house numbers were barely hanging on. I checked the slip of paper I’d written the address on. I was in the right place.

  Psyching myself up, I parked and pushed open the door to the car, locked it, and hugged my purse close to my body. I swore I could feel eyes on me from every direction.

  Doesn’t matter. I’ve got this.

  Mental pep talk complete, I glanced back at my car, hoping it would still be there when I got back. Hennessy was right. I had no business being here, but that wasn’t going to stop me.

  Forcing confidence into my stride, I headed for the sidewalk and the gnarled chain-link gate blocking the walk up to the house. Luckily the metal latch was in good working order, which meant I probably wouldn’t need a tetanus shot from touching it.

  After opening the gate partway and sliding inside the yard, I took a deep breath and strode up the cracked concrete to the porch. At least the steps had been recently replaced, so I wasn’t at risk of falling through them as I climbed up. The screen door also looked relatively new, but the doorbell I pressed looked ancient.

  I listened for the telltale chime from inside that would let me know the thing actually worked, but heard nothing. Pressing it a few more times for good measure, I continued to wait. Nothing.