I changed the topic. “By the way, all your texting earlier. Was that to—”
“Yes, to Leo, Mom.” I had a feeling. But what I wasn’t sure of was the nature of their relationship. Had they reached the boyfriend-girlfriend status, or was it more of Cristina having a crush and Leo keeping her at arm’s length? It was difficult to imagine anything other than the latter. Not that Cristina didn’t have plenty to offer…at least to a boy who was closer to her age. Leo was twenty-one. In Hollywood terms, that put him almost at middle age.
I couldn’t help myself. “Are you planning on dating guys who are in your generation?”
She froze for a second, then slowly turned to look at me. “You can’t help yourself, can you? Always trying to be my mom.”
“Sorry, I shouldn’t have said it.” At least I was quick to back off.
“Sheesh,” she said, riffling through the dresser drawer. “By the way, just so I don’t get the third degree here in a couple of days, Leo and I are setting up plans for the weekend.”
“Plans,” I repeated. At least she hadn’t used the term “quickie,” like she had when talking about the last time he flew in from LA.
“Yeah, he’s saying he has some big news to share. Something he wants to ask me.”
We turned our heads to look at each other at the same time, but I somehow managed to stay quiet.
“You want to say something, I can tell.”
“What can I say…good luck?”
“Why are you saying that?”
I pretended to lock my lips and toss the key aside.
“And now you clam up.” She paused a second, then giggled. “You don’t think he’s going to ask me to—” She stopped short.
“To take you to a Spurs game? It’s possible.”
“Funny.” She went back to looking through the dresser drawers, and I finally got to the last index card: Big Rules for Boyfriends. Again, there was only one rule, and this one made the hair on the back of my neck go straight. It said, “Boys are punks. Real men are forever.”
“Hey, check this out,” I said, holding up the last card.
“No.” Her eyes were riveted to something in her hand. “Check this shit out.” She held up a piece of paper. “It’s a Bible verse.” I sidled up next to her to have a look as she read, “From Proverbs 12:7. An excellent wife is the crown of her husband, but she who brings shame is like rottenness in his bones.”
We looked at each other. We didn’t say anything or move until I realized I still held the index card in my hand. I showed it to her. We knew we had gold, but weren’t sure how the two pieces of evidence were connected, or exactly how it might lead us to finding Mia.
But I knew one place I wanted to start.
19
I sat in my car, a dinged-up Honda Civic I’d aptly named Black Beauty because she was exactly not that, and tried to keep myself from staring at the front door of Lee High School. For whatever reason, I flashed back to my high school days when a friend and I had waited outside a grocery store for her older sister to bring out our stash—a six-pack of black cherry wine coolers. At the time, it felt like I was living on the edge… What if the cops came out of the grocery store instead of my friend’s sister? And then from there, my imagination had hit the alarm, and I began to envision being handcuffed, put into a squad car, and locked up. All for trying to procure alcohol.
Thankfully, I’d grown up since then.
In this instance of the waiting game, I was looking for a tall redhead—Detective Brook Pressler—to waltz out of the school with vital information on helping us find Mia, or at least a step in that direction.
I redirected my attention to my cell phone and spent more time studying a couple of websites dedicated to Satanic rituals and symbols. Some of the graphics that depicted how sacrifices were carried out sent a chill up my spine. I focused on one particular picture that showed a person who was apparently already dead. The perpetrator was using a knife to carve something into the victim’s chest.
I started to touch my chest, but I stopped myself. A flood of memories was sitting at the precipice of my conscious thoughts, and this recollection was far more disturbing and painful than wine coolers. It involved torture.
I picked up my half-empty can of Diet Coke and took a sip. I tried to block out the images by focusing on happy thoughts—sharing a good laugh with Zahera, jogging with Stan, an intimate moment with Saul. But I couldn’t hold off the power of evil.
Each picture hit me as if I’d been forced to touch a live wire over and over again. Chinese water torture, where I felt like I was drowning one painful drop at a time. Blaring music that made my skin crawl, playing for hours on end. A room of all white, making me believe there was no floor, no walls, only a white expanse of nothingness. A video loop of gruesome acts of torture…watching real people die while the perpetrators laughed about it. Snakes, bamboo torture, a guillotine. On and on it went. Milton Weber would haunt me until I died.
My entire body tensed. I could hear the crackle of the metal can in my hand as I started to put more and more pressure on it, but it couldn’t match the pressure in my mind. I was stuck in this mental replay, and I couldn’t stop it. I was suddenly powerless. And that scared the shit out of me.
I flinched, then realized someone was knocking on my window. I gasped, startled, and the can of Diet Coke was crushed in the grip of my hand, spilling over the side. I set it in the cup holder and used a sticky finger to roll down the window to see Brook’s green eyes wide with astonishment.
“Are you okay, Ivy? I’ve been knocking for a good minute.”
“I’m fine. It’s just…” I wiped my eyes, which, of course, spread the syrupy goo to my face.
“Seriously, did you black out? Do I need to get you to an emergency room?”
“No, no. It’s not that. I just have these episodes where I recall the times I was tortured.”
She nodded slowly. “Milton’s funhouse, when Stan had his arm…” She didn’t want to say it.
“Yes, that.” I swallowed back some tears, trying to keep myself from falling into an abyss of guilt for allowing my friends to be hurt by that monster.
I pushed out a few breaths, let the chilly wind hit my face. “I’m doing better now.”
“What started this latest episode? I mean, you’re just sitting here in the parking lot.”
“The mind is a dangerous place. Well, mine is.”
She gave me a straight smile. “Unfortunately, you don’t own the patent on a mind that dwells on the negative. I’ve been there a lot after my divorce. It’s all relative, though. We feel sorry for ourselves because we think no one has experienced what we have.”
I looked at her without any expression.
“Okay, your situation is a little unique.”
We both chuckled, and I could feel my body relax. “How’d it go with Principal Peterson?” I noticed she was holding a book against her chest.
“Painful, as you might imagine. I’ve been conducting interviews with his staff about the animal sacrifice in the field house.”
“I guess no one has raised their hand to say they did it?”
“Hardly. But plenty of opinions of who could be involved—all the nominees are students. I have a list of about fifty kids to investigate further.”
“Cool, I guess. And the video footage?”
“Nothing.”
I was about to bang my head against the steering wheel. “Why?”
“Wait, I’m sorry. Not the Mia footage. I’m talking about the field house footage. There’s nothing there. So it just makes my job ten times more difficult.” She let out a sigh.
“That sucks. What about Mia?”
“That’s where our favorite principal is dragging his feet.”
“Why would he do that when a student has been missing for over two days?”
“He’s still stuck on the fact that it’s not an official investigation and that he’s seen countless kids walk out of school and end up partyi
ng with a cousin in Louisiana.”
I was about to say that he must not know Mia, but after what Cristina and I had found in her room, I wondered who really knew Mia. “But he did review the video?”
She nodded, then moved a lock of hair away from her face. “He even showed me the clip.”
“And?”
“Not much there, but I did see her. She walked out of the south entrance, near the band hall. Really wasn’t much to it.”
“So no struggle or argument with anyone else?”
“Not many others were in the hallway at the time. I think it was close to the bell going off, from what Peterson said.”
“Was she running out of the school? Did she show any signs of stress? Did you watch the video long enough to see if anyone followed her?”
“It was a non-event, but you can see for yourself.” She pulled a flash drive out of her front pocket and handed it to me through the open window.
“For real? You convinced Peterson to give you this, even though he’s acting like Mia’s disappearance is nothing?”
She smiled so wide I saw nothing but straight, white teeth. She looked like she could be on one of those toothpaste commercials. “Peterson stepped out for a moment, and that’s when a student aide popped in. He seemed a little enamored with this older woman.” She buffed her nails on her sleeve. “I just asked a simple question: what would it take to get this thirty-second video clip onto a flash drive. Apparently, he thought I was asking him to do it. Next thing I know, he’s handing it to me, and then he said he had to run off to his next class.”
“Nice. I’ll send you and Stan a video file, just so I’m not the only one with a copy.”
“Sounds good.” She tapped her hand on the car. “I need to head back to the station and start running checks on these fifty names. Hoping something turns up and I can bring in the punk who did this for questioning.” She stepped away from the car, then flipped around and handed me the book.
“More gifts?”
“It’s the yearbook. Found it in the reception area.”
I fanned through some of the pages. “This is perfect. Thanks. Do I need to pay someone for it?”
“Eh, I doubt anyone will know it’s missing. Hell, they don’t even think Mia is really missing. But if you’re feeling guilty, you can give money to the Quarterback Club.”
I turned my head. “And that is?”
“Some stupid name for their football booster club.” She waved and walked off.
The more I hung around Brook, the more I appreciated her.
I held up the flash drive and yearbook and allowed myself to feel a glimmer of hope. Mia might have walked out of school without anyone thinking much of it, but that didn’t mean she was in control of her own destiny. My firsthand experience as both a child and adult victim told me that we can all be fooled, even if we think we’re level-headed and capable of making wise decisions.
More than anything, my haunted memories reminded me why I’d started ECHO—to help kids with little or no voice. If you’re being held against your will, or even worse, being tortured, every minute that passes is filled with a fear that eats away at your desire to live. And I’d do anything to keep Mia from suffering like I had.
20
Over the next four hours, I received three text messages from Consuela with new tips that had come from the flyers that were all over the city. Cristina’s idea was working like a charm. While sitting in the corner booth at Smoothies & Stuff—our old, unofficial ECHO office before we’d procured real space down near the MACC—I took those three tips plus the original list of twenty-seven that Consuela had on her notepad and started making phone calls. She or Raul had already attempted to contact most from the original list and had concluded there was nothing worthwhile there. A quick verification wouldn’t hurt, I told myself, especially since I had a few hours to burn until my next appointment.
I sipped a healthy smoothie, adding to my pool of energy, and worked my way through the list, starting with the three most recent tips. The first sounded promising, at least initially.
“I saw a girl who looked just like that Mia person on the flyer.” The woman sounded as if she were gargling pebbles, one of those raspy, smokers’ voices. “In the corner drugstore at Laredo and Brazos.”
I sat a little taller. “When was this? Who was she with?”
“Late last night. About three, maybe four customers, one of whom was very rude to her.”
“Customers?”
“Yeah. Looks like she was working the morning shift.”
My excitement quickly waned. “Did she look like she was being held against her will?”
“Would you work retail in this day and age? It’s frickin’ brutal out there. This one asshole was jumping all over her because the donuts were stale. Like it’s her fault.”
“Are you sure the person you saw matches the picture? If so, then I’ll need you to meet me at the police station so we can get the cops involved.” I was lying, but it was necessary to root out the fiction-tellers.
“Eh. Now that I think about it, this girl at the drugstore was a little hippy.”
“As in…?”
“You know, she had those wide, birthing hips.”
The opposite of Mia. I thanked her for the call and moved on to the next person on my list. It didn’t last long. He was vague about what he’d witnessed, supposedly seeing Mia at a bus stop by the Alamo. When I continued peppering him with questions, he said, “Listen, sweetie. In this day and age, information is worth something. Dinero, if you know what I mean. So, I’ll turn over everything I know—and believe me, it’s some juicy stuff—for five thousand bucks.” In the background, I heard a bell ringing and dogs barking.
“Are you at the track?” He hung up before I could ask another question, which would have been, “Are you trying to extort money to pay off your gambling debt?” I tried not to waste any more emotional energy, and I forged ahead.
The third call was a 1-888 number. I was a sucker and called the number and instantly regretted it. The solicitor tried to convince me that the world would stop spinning if I didn’t purchase life insurance. I hung up in the middle of his sales pitch.
I plowed through the other twenty-seven calls. Many of the tipsters seemed to have good intentions, but their stories were a stretch. Still, I made notes of four possible locations where Mia had been seen, all in different parts of the city. I opened up the map app on my laptop and plotted out the locations. In doing so, I recognized something that I should have realized about thirty-six hours earlier—she could be anywhere in the state of Texas, which, from my history class back in the day, I knew was over a quarter million square miles. Whoever had her—and yes, that was where my mind was going—could have easily gotten lost in a neighboring state. And who was to say she hadn’t been smuggled across the Mexican border? I’d read stories of girls being traded to drug cartel leaders in exchange for paying off debt.
I could feel my gut tighten into a knot. I wasn’t naïve. Finding a missing girl wasn’t easy, even when law enforcement was fully engaged. The Romeros had done an admirable job of circulating Mia’s picture in the San Antonio area, but that didn’t come close to matching the resources of spreading the word across all police departments in the state. I’d seen multiple reports about Amber Alerts, where the kid and their abductor were found within a few hours.
But to make our odds even worse, we had no specific clues as to her whereabouts. And certainly nothing as solid as a make and model of a car.
I plugged the flash drive that Brook had given me into the USB port of my laptop. I located the .mov file and opened it up. It was thirty-two seconds long. I clicked play. The video was in color, but not the highest quality. Every couple of seconds, the picture would flicker, but I could follow it. As Brook had pointed out, it was rather uneventful. Just a handful of kids loitering in the hall. Then a few started moving toward the right part of the screen, away from the exit door I could see on the far left.
>
“There she is,” I murmured. Mia moved in from the right part of the screen. She had on black jeans with holes near the knees—the kind that were made that way—and a burgundy shirt and gray sweater. She was holding a binder, very typical for a high school kid. Her hair was similar to the picture her mother had given me, shoulder length, some natural curl, with two locks pulled to the back of her head.
Her pace was even, nothing rushed. By the time she made it to the left side of the screen, no other kids were visible. She put a hand on the exit door, turned to look over her shoulder, and then disappeared.
I leaned back, put a hand to my chin, and pondered if there was any significance in what I’d just seen. I clicked replay and watched it all the way through again. This time, I clicked pause just before she reached the door.
“Her hand is moving to the top of her shirt,” I whispered to myself. I clicked play again and closely watched her hand movement as she turned to look over her shoulder.
“That could be something.” My eyes, anyone’s eyes, would normally be drawn to her head turning to look back into the school. It seemed obvious that she didn’t want anyone to see her leave. But I focused on her hand. I replayed the clip another three times to verify what I thought I saw. She was pulling a necklace out from under her shirt.
No big deal, right? But my mind didn’t think that way. Why was it under her shirt? She could have simply forgotten to pull it out from her shirt when she dressed earlier that morning. Possible. But I doubted that notion. She seemed to be the type of girl who was very conscientious about the clothes she wore, how everything had to be just so to give off the right vibe. Of course, that didn’t exactly set her apart from most girls her age.
Think about all of those index cards with the Big Rules, Ivy.
Mia might come across to her parents, and even all of her classmates, as easygoing, cheerful and pleasant, but something told me that she was actually a high-strung person. The index cards, to me, didn’t come across as reminders to complete certain tasks, but more as a reminder on how to stay in character. Her life was all a fabrication. A performance of sorts. But to achieve what goal? To simply be accepted?
The Ivy Nash Thrillers: Books 4-6: Redemption Thriller Series 10-12 (Redemption Thriller Series Box Set) Page 60