“Nails in the ceiling? Really?” With a hand on the blanket, which was indeed nailed to the ceiling, she gave me a raised eyebrow.
“What are you doing here so early?” I pinched the bridge of my nose as I yawned. She did a double-take on me.
“It’s the middle of the afternoon, Ivy.”
“Well, you didn’t have to pound the door. You could have woken up the dead.”
She was staring at me—one of those “what the hell is wrong with you” stares—and I quickly became self-conscious of my ratty appearance.
“I tried ringing the doorbell five times. I guess it’s broken,” she said, pulling back the blanket, opening the shades.
“Please don’t do that,” I said, squinting like I was staring directly into a full sun.
“You need to get the super up here. He’ll fix the doorbell, maybe even help you hang some real curtains.”
“You don’t like my ingenuity?” I walked toward the window and took a closer look at the nails in the ceiling. The blanket was partially torn, and the white ceiling paint was chipped away near the nail holes. “Can’t trust the super. Milton posed as a cop once, remember? And even a super at my old apartment complex. Don’t you remember when they found the cameras in my apartment?”
I paused until she looked at me. She opened her mouth to respond, but instead gave me a quick nod.
“He was watching me the whole time, Cristina, and I had no clue. Do you know how violated I felt?”
“I get it, Ivy. I would feel the same way.”
“I’m not going to let that happen again.”
She didn’t respond, just sort of tilted her head and squinted, as if looking for something on my person. My defensive hackles went up again.
“What are you doing?” I asked.
“Just making sure you didn’t slip on a gun holster when you went in the bedroom. You could still be packing heat.” She slapped her thigh twice and then pointed her finger like it was a toy gun.
“Funny,” I said as I threw my hands on my hips, my nostrils flaring. “I’ve got my concealed handgun license. Everything is legal.”
“Didn’t say it wasn’t. But it’s obvious you’re still dealing with…stuff.” She walked over to the kitchen, opened the fridge, and held up a can of Izze.
“Help yourself,” I said, then felt compelled to respond to her comment. “I’m no different than anyone else in this world who’s been through what I have.” I could feel the tendons in my neck straining.
“Hey, I didn’t mean to get you upset. But you pointed a gun at my gut, and for a moment there, I wondered if you realized it was me, or maybe—”
“Maybe what?”
“I don’t know. You seemed pretty riled up, as if you were ready for—”
“Milton. Milton Weber. He has a name.” I blew curls of hair out of my face. “Besides, I was fine. Just being safe, that’s all. We single girls need to take the necessary precautions to stay safe. I’m just being smart.”
In the ensuing silence, I replayed my own words in my head, the tone of my voice. I definitely sounded edgy as I made one justification after another for my over-the-top behavior. They were really just excuses. I knew I should apologize, figure out a way to shed my paranoia. But it wasn’t happening, not today.
Crossing my arms against my chest, I said, “Why did you drop by, Cristina?” I was more blunt than usual.
“We have this little business. ECHO, remember? I work, and you pay me.”
When I’d quit my job with Texas Child Protective Services and started ECHO, I knew I wanted to stay focused on helping children, to make a real difference in their worlds. While the business had made a few bucks and changed a few lives the first couple of months, the last month had been sparse. And I was to blame for that—I’d basically been an absentee business owner, or maybe more likely, a really bad one. I’d turned down four cases in a row, until the latest one almost a week ago. An Amber Alert had gone off because a little girl had been kidnapped by her mom. Her dad, as it turned out, was some young, rich guy, who not only had every cop in the state looking for his little girl, but he also pushed for ECHO’s participation, promising to pay us three times our normal fee. We had achieved our goal, but the extra cash had been nothing compared to the feeling of saving that little girl.
“Sorry. I’m just not sleeping well.” Noting the place was a mess, I walked around the living room and picked up some clothes from the floor. “I’m a little grumpy. I need to take some insomnia pills, get some good sleep, and I’ll be fine.”
“Grumpelstiltskin,” she said.
“Haven’t heard that one before,” I said, grudgingly cracking a half-smile. I counted fifteen pieces of clothing that were now draped over my shoulder. Zorro had found a nesting spot on top of a sweatshirt. I scooted it out from under him, and he hissed at me, jumped onto the couch, and resumed his sleeping position. Looking up, I saw Cristina staring off into the corner. Panting from exerting myself more than I had in weeks, I took in a full breath. “Everything okay?”
“That’s a phrase my mom would use when I was younger. If I was pouting or upset about things not going right, she’d call me Grumpelstiltskin.” She chuckled, then took a swig of her Izze.
“Do you miss her?” I was pleased to hear my voice had a compassionate tone to it, for a change.
“Not really. Just miss being young and innocent. And I guess I was naïve too.”
“Have you thought about reaching out to her? Maybe she’s in a better place now.”
Cristina turned to me, her face riddled with creases. “Not in a million fucking years. Don’t you recall what she let her boyfriend do to me?”
Her voice was so loud it made my ears hurt, but that was probably more due to me being a shut-in. “Or not. I’m just saying you don’t owe anyone an explanation if you call her up and see how she’s doing.”
Cristina had opened up to me a few months ago when our lives first crossed paths. It had taken a while for her to share everything, but when she finally did, it made my heart ache. Her mom’s friends had gang-raped her. Cristina had walked out of her house that night and never returned, never even called to tell her mom she was okay. She quit school and began living on the streets.
As it turned out, she enjoyed her independence, at least mostly. She felt constricted in tight places. I used to have a similar feeling—enjoying my independence—until recently when I’d let my obsessions change every aspect of how I looked at life.
“She could be very sorry for what she did, Cristina. And she might not have any way of telling you.”
She puffed out a breath, then shook her head. “It’s nothing. I’m sure the memory came to mind because today’s Mother’s Day.”
“It is?” There was an awkward pause. She knew I had no mom, at least none that I knew of. I held up a finger. “I know why you came by. You thought I’d need some cheering up. You want to drag me out of here and go…do what exactly?”
She walked over to the kitchen and dropped the empty Izze can into the trash. I was two steps behind her. Looking pointedly at her, I moved the can into the recycling bag.
“It’s not like that,” she said, checking the time on her phone. “We’ve been hired, and we’ve got an hour to get where we need to be.”
More stress. Just what I didn’t need. “Sorry, Cristina. We should sit this one out. I think we’re okay financially, at least for a while. We’ve got that extra cash from last week to fall back on.”
“We’ve sat out plenty. Besides, you don’t have a choice.”
“Excuse me? I own this business.”
“Damn, you’re feisty.” She pinched her nostrils. “And smelly. Go take a shower. Fifty-seven minutes and counting.”
She took my hand and started pulling me toward the bathroom. Of course, I did my best donkey imitation. “Stop it,” I said, my energy already drained.
She flipped around and got to within a foot of my face. “Now isn’t the time to wade in your pool of t
ears. We’ve all been through our share of shit, Ivy.”
I opened my mouth.
“Not yet. Remember Emma, the cute four-year-old little girl we rescued a week ago?”
I found myself smiling just thinking about her. “How could I forget her? Those adorable curls, her chubby cheeks, and that infectious laugh.” I blinked, realizing I’d been lost in my own thoughts. I grabbed Cristina’s arm. “Tell me she’s okay.”
“She’s fine, at least for now. We need to pick her up from preschool in…” She squinted toward the kitchen. “Fifty-four minutes.”
“Why?”
“Her dad, Dillon…he’s been arrested for sexual assault to a minor.”
I took my first shower in four days and was out the door in record time.
4
Peering through wooden shutters, I could see a satellite dish on the top of a blue van just outside the wrought iron gate at the home of Dillon and Cheryl Burchfield. The gardener had let us into the house.
“Is that a news van?” Cristina asked, standing on her toes to look over my shoulder.
“If one media outlet knows about Dillon’s arrest, the rest will soon follow,” I said, watching as a man set up a tripod near the van. I cursed silently to myself. Vultures.
I felt a tug on my wrist. “Ivy Nash, can you come play with me?”
I turned to see little Emma with a missing front tooth holding four horses against her torso, including a white horse tucked under her chin. Her curly hair matched her chestnut eyes. Ever since we met a week earlier, she’d called me by my full name. I went with it. Thankfully, she seemed oblivious to the drama that was going on around her. We hoped to keep it that way as long as possible.
“Sure, Emma. You want to pretend that you’re in a circus?” I recalled her talking about going to the circus during our car ride when we’d brought her home. She was quite the talker.
“No,” she said, pulling me up the stairs toward her playroom. Cristina followed. “I’m not into circuses anymore. Besides, those clowns can be pretty scary.” She nodded in affirmation of her clown fear, and I did too. “But I have so many horses I don’t know where to put them all.”
“How about you pretend you’re on a cattle drive? Do you have any cows we can add to the scene?” I asked as we walked into a playroom the size of my apartment.
“I have lots of cows. Good idea.” She raced over to a toy bin and pulled out four stuffed cows, each a different color. Just as I sat down for playtime, her eyes landed on a remote control on the carpeted floor. She picked it up and punched a couple of buttons. On the far wall, a TV—no less than fifty-five inches—came to life. Music suddenly blared through surround-sound speakers built into the ceiling.
Emma start to twirl around and hum. “This is my favorite movie of all time,” she said, puffing out her cheeks.
“I think she’s trying to be a fish,” Cristina said in my ear as I pushed myself up from the floor.
“It must be great to be a kid.”
Cristina looked around. “Especially this kid.”
Keeping my voice low, I said, “You’re saying that now, even after everything this little girl has been exposed to? And now, look at her dad; he’s been arrested. Believe me, this is when we know more than ever that money doesn’t always protect you from life’s dangers.”
“How much is daddy worth?”
Ignoring the dollar signs spinning in Cristina’s eyes, I motioned with my head for her to follow me out to the hallway. We kept one eye on Emma, who was still dancing around, moving her arms as if she were swimming, as we talked out of earshot of the child. “Tell me more about what you found out,” I said.
Cristina pulled out her phone, thumbing through text messages. “Your old boyfriend, Saul, sent me—”
“Hold on. Saul? I never heard you say Saul.”
She put a hand on her hip. “Not surprising, given the state I found you in.”
“What state?”
“Please don’t go there again.”
I glanced at Emma, envious of her ability to shut out drama. “I hear you. So Saul is the one who told you about Dillon being arrested?”
“He said he’d been trying to reach you for the last three weeks, but you never replied, so he figured I was his best bet.”
“Nice. Okay, go on,” I said, gesturing with a roll of my arm for her to continue.
“Herbert Ross, Saul’s boss, is Dillon’s personal attorney, so—”
I coughed on my own spit. Ross had represented another family a few months back who’d sued CPS and me personally for the loss of their little boy. While the father turned out to be a vicious predator and the sister a killer, Ross had only seen the money. Plus, he’d been a complete asshat to me. Saul, my pseudo-friend—so called because he had tried to woo me as he wooed another woman as well—worked as a legal assistant at Wilson, Mendoza, and Ross while he went to law school. Even though I hadn’t been thrilled about Saul’s seeming to “have his cake and eat it too”—and he denied that was the case—he was nothing like his slimy snake of a boss.
Cristina gave me a couple of whacks on my back. “Do I need to give you the Heimlich?”
“I’m fine. You’re telling me that Saul knew to call us because he’d gotten word from Dillon through Ross?”
She nodded, then pocketed her phone. “Something like that.”
On the way to pick up Emma, we’d already discussed the shock of hearing Dillon’s name associated with a speeding ticket, let alone a violent sex crime—of a minor, no less.
“Is it strange working for a felon, especially someone who might have harmed a kid?” Cristina asked.
“Strange isn’t the right word. But he’s not a felon. He’s only been accused. Two different things.”
“Innocent until proven guilty. I get it.” She started tapping her shoe on the hardwood floor—probably some type of imported wood, I guessed. It had a rich, exotic look to it.
I snapped out of my flooring reverie and said, “You’re thinking about something.”
“You know me. Given my history, I can sniff out a child predator a mile away,” she said. “Those creeps emit a certain odor or something. But I’ve never gotten that vibe from Dillon.”
“Me either. But we haven’t been around him all that much.”
“True dat.”
“Always a teenager.” I gave her an eye roll. She smiled, showing off her crooked teeth.
A door shut, and then someone shouted from downstairs. “Hellooo! Is my little girl Emma ready to play with her Easy-Bake Oven?”
It sounded like an older woman. I looked at Cristina. “Any idea who this is?”
“Can’t be her mom, right?”
Her mother, Cheryl, who’d been estranged from Dillon for the last six months, had recently been arrested for kidnapping Emma. She was charged and booked, and then taken to a mental health institution where she was put on suicide watch. “Maybe it’s an aunt,” I said.
We met the woman as she climbed up the last few stairs. Her features were soft, framed by wisps of gray hair. Her skirt hugged her hips far too tightly and limited her movement substantially. Two sizes bigger would have been my suggestion. “You must be Ivy and Cristina,” she said, clasping her hands.
I extended my hand, but she didn’t reciprocate.
“I’m here to pick up Emma and take her back to my place.” She took a step to get around me.
I moved right with her, blocking her path. “Can you fill us in on who you are? Given everything that Emma has experienced over the last week, I just want to ensure she’s safe and we make the best decision for her.”
“Very well.” She took a step backward. “I’m Kelly McDougal, her nanny. Emma calls me Miss Mac. She’s just a doll. I need to grab a bag from her closet—”
“Dillon never told us that Emma had a nanny,” Cristina said.
“Mr. Burchfield is…” The nanny pursed her lips. “I don’t want to get in the middle of all the drama. He’s been arrested, and
these are serious charges. Emma needs to be away from this. The media is going to treat this as the spectacle that it is, and it will only harm her further to stay in this…heartless mansion.”
An odd choice of words, I thought.
“So Dillon didn’t actually give you permission to pick up Emma, did he?” Cristina asked.
She narrowed her eyes and lifted her chin a little higher. “Emma’s mother is very concerned about her well-being.”
I could see Cristina’s jaw open, but I responded first. “Cheryl, who kidnapped her own daughter a week ago and then tried to sell her to a perverted truck driver so she could score some meth, is acting like she has her daughter’s best interests at heart?”
“Cheryl has her demons, just like the rest of us.” The woman paused, casting a superior gaze at me and Cristina. “There’s so much I could tell you, but we don’t have time. I want to…no, I’ve been told by Cheryl to take Emma to my home, where she can live peacefully until her mother completes her drug rehabilitation and is exonerated of her charges.”
“Are you on dope, lady?”
“Cristina,” I warned, then I looked at Kelly McDougal. “I’m sorry, but we’ve been hired to watch over Emma, and that’s what we’re going to do until we receive further instructions.”
She brought a hand to her chest. “I hope you’re not implying that I would harm that adorable little girl.” Her eyes became glassy. “Emma is the only good thing to come out of this horrific marriage. I’d do anything for her.”
“Miss Mac!” Emma barreled into the nanny, trying to wrap her arms around her thick thighs. “Want to come watch Finding Dory with me?”
“Sure, sweetie. Then, after that, how about we go back to my house, and we’ll bake cookies and feed the ducks in the pond behind my place?”
“That would be fun. Come on,” Emma said, racing back into the playroom.
“You shouldn’t have told her something that can’t happen,” I hissed at the nanny, turning my head to ensure Emma couldn’t hear me.
The Ivy Nash Thrillers: Books 1-3: Redemption Thriller Series 7-9 (Redemption Thriller Series Box Set) Page 50