by Lis Wiehl
Even before she disappeared back behind the doors, Eli was pulling his keys from his pocket and getting to his feet. He knew Charlie wasn’t going to like what he was about to do, but Eli didn’t care what he thought.
“Where are you going now?” Charlie asked.
“The same place you are. I’m going to see if everything’s okay with Mia. And if it’s not, I’m going to help in any way I can.”
CHAPTER 50
Ever since the man had left him lying on the floor of the garage, handcuffed, trussed, and gagged with duct tape, Gabe had been working on freeing his hands. He had been trying so long that now his hands were wet with either sweat or blood. Because they were behind his back, he didn’t know which and he didn’t much care. All he knew was that whatever it was, it was a lubricant. It might be just what he needed to slide one hand out of a cuff. Just one. And then he would be free.
Only neither hand would go. The metal rings refused to slide down any farther than the meaty part of his thumbs, despite how much he pulled and pushed. Finally he admitted defeat. He was going to have to find another way. If he could just get his cuffs in front, he could at least use his hands to get off the duct tape that bound his legs and sealed his mouth. He could at least open doors. He could walk out of here. Maybe even handle a weapon, like the rake that stood in one corner.
Moving like an inchworm, Gabe rolled and dragged and creeped until he reached the built-in cabinets at the back of the garage. He pressed his back against one and managed to scoot himself up until he could grab a cupboard door handle. He used that to lever himself to his feet. But the duct tape around his calves compromised his balance. For a long, terrifying moment he felt himself beginning to fall right onto his face. He staggered frantically forward in tiny steps until he managed to catch himself. Then he crouched, sliding his hands down behind him until they cleared his butt and were behind his thighs. His shoulders were already screaming before he half sat, half fell onto his back. Then it felt like they were being pulled from their sockets. A shriek was forced out of his lungs. He hoped the duct tape across his mouth had stifled it.
He had imagined that he could roll back and then kick his legs over his cuffs, but it turned out that wasn’t possible. Maybe he could do it if he could step over the cuffs one leg at a time, but his legs were still bound together. He grabbed the back of his pants at the thighs and yanked and pulled, snorting with exertion, his desperation giving him strength. Finally the button at his waist popped off and the pants began to slide down his butt. Inch by inch, Gabe wrangled his pants down, tugging with first one hand and then the other, until he finally managed to get them down his legs and over his stocking feet.
Now he just had to get his feet back over the cuffs one at the time. Gabe rolled himself up as tight as he could. He strained and stretched, trying not to grunt even as his shoulders felt like they were being twisted off as if he were one of Brooke’s Barbies.
If that man came back in the door and saw what Gabe was doing, he would surely shoot him. The one positive thing—if you could even look at it that way—was that Gabe had to be giving himself wounds that could not be explained away as injuries consistent with suicide.
Finally he got his right leg over. Now he was straddling the cuffs. But when he tried to do the same with his left leg, it did not seem able to bend as much. No, no, no. Any second the man was going to walk in and find him, awkward as a pill bug, squirming, the handcuffs still stuck behind his left knee. With a final burst of energy, Gabe pressed his right foot on the cabinet and rolled so far back his weight rested on the bones in the nape of his neck. He managed to get his left leg up and over, painfully scraping the back of his bare calf on the metal chain linking the cuffs.
Gabe was still lying on the floor, breathing hard through his nose and trying not to make any noise doing it, when he heard his mom’s car pull up in the driveway. No, he thought. No, please, God, no, I’m not hearing this. He heard the sound of his mom’s footsteps climbing the stairs to the porch. Fear pierced his chest like a needle.
And then, to his horror, he heard the high, piping sound of Brooke’s voice on the front porch.
“Where’s Gabe, Mommy?”
And Gabe’s heart broke.
CHAPTER 51
When Mia turned onto their block, the house was completely dark. Not even the porch light on. Her heart contracted. She turned off the car and pinched the house key between her fingers before she unbuckled Brooke from her booster seat. Should she have raced out of the hospital, let the charges pile up at Rocking Horse, and hurried home? What if her son was lying dead somewhere inside the house and these last few minutes could have made all the difference?
Brooke must have picked up on her anxiety. “Where’s Gabe, Mommy?” she asked as Mia carried her up the front porch.
“I’m not quite sure,” she said, hoping the answer wasn’t going to prove to be too awful to bear.
Unlocking the door, she went inside. “Gabe?” she called out, then held her breath. Did she hear a faint thumping noise? Or was it just the beating of her own heart? Before she turned on the light, she bent over to set Brooke down. Just as a shot split the darkness and sang just overhead.
Charlie followed Eli out. There was no point in trying to argue him out of going. The man was stubborn. Stubborn as a mule.
He had to admit that maybe they had that in common. That and their affection for Mia. Once in the hospital’s parking structure, he lost sight of Eli when the other man kept climbing the stairs to a different level. Charlie hurried to his car, dialing Mia’s cell phone as he went. No answer.
It was against department policy, but that didn’t stop him from putting on lights and sirens as soon as he pulled out of the lot. Charlie flew down the highway, past all the other cars, which were forced to pull over to the shoulder. But then he picked up another vehicle, drafting in his wake.
He squinted at his rearview mirror. Eli Hall. Doing what he wasn’t supposed to be doing either.
Maybe they had more in common than Charlie thought.
Once he hit Mia’s neighborhood, he cut the sirens. Sometimes if a person was on the verge, the sound of sirens could make a bad situation infinitely worse.
Mia’s house was dark, without even the porch light on. But the front door gaped open, as wrong as a missing tooth in a mouth.
Charlie got out of his car and hurried to Eli’s. “I need you to stay back,” he whispered. His hand was on the butt of his gun. “You can’t just go running in there. You don’t know what you’ll find. And you’re not armed.”
From the house came the sound of a gunshot.
And then they both went running.
Moving faster than thought, Mia put her mouth close to her daughter’s tiny ear. “Stay right here, baby. Don’t move. And don’t make a sound.” Then she half opened the hall closet door and shoved Brooke inside.
Her ears still roaring from the sound of the gun, Mia was reacting on pure instinct. On hands and knees, she scuttled toward the kitchen. She needed a weapon. Something to fight back with. She mentally rehearsed how she would lunge for the knife block while praying that the knives were actually in the block and not, say, scattered all over the counter.
She had just put one knee on the tiled floor when Eli, shouting her name, ran in the still-open front door. Mia turned to call out a warning.
A thousand things happened at once. The lights flared on overhead. Charlie was standing in the doorway in a half crouch, his gun drawn and held out before him in both hands. Kenny Zhong had one hand fisted in Eli’s dress shirt, yanking the taller man down to his level. And he was holding a gun to Eli’s head, pressing hard enough that Eli’s forehead had turned white where the barrel pressed against his skin.
Eli himself was standing very, very still.
Into the sudden silence, Brooke’s small voice came from the closet. “Can I come out now, Mama?”
And at that moment Gabe, pantless and silent in his stocking feet, slipped up behind Ke
nny Zhong, looped his handcuffed arms around the man’s neck, and jerked backward.
CHAPTER 52
TWO WEEKS LATER
Mia lit the cinnamon-scented candle in the holly centerpiece on the dining room’s sideboard. Shaking out the match, she stepped back, feeling satisfied. Everything looked perfect.
Well, maybe not perfect in the traditional sense of the word. There was a stain on the carpet in front of the TV where Brooke had once tipped over a glass of milk, and the furniture showed signs of being well used. She had gathered up all the unopened mail and shoved it into the junk drawer. But the house was still hers, and it was going to be filled with her friends and family, and that was all that mattered.
The Saturday before Christmas she always had an open house. But this was her first one without Scott.
So many things had changed in the past year. She had lost her husband. Gone back to work. Learned truths she would have said would be too hard to bear, would bring her to her knees and then smear her face in the dirt. But here she was, still standing.
Arranged on the sideboard, the kitchen counters, and the living room coffee table were trays of crackers and cheese, just as she always had. But this year there were also trays of cut vegetables. And some of the crackers were made of nutty whole grain. Some. But not all. Mia had realized it was impossible to eat perfectly, or for that matter to do anything perfectly. But it was possible to do better.
Better didn’t mean that Mia wouldn’t sample Kali’s contribution to the party: traditional Samoan panipopo—sweet coconut buns. The doctor had said Kali’s tumor was shrinking dramatically. Soon she would be done with chemo and have her mastectomy behind her. She would be able to start working again. Once Kali had more money, maybe she would want to move out. But for now she and Eldon were here, and part of Mia’s improvised family.
A hand reached past Mia and snatched a piece of Swiss cheese before she could swat it away. “Gabe!”
“It’s only one piece, Mom.” He stuffed it into his mouth. “And Coach says I need to eat a lot of protein.”
After stopping steroids, Gabe had gone to his old football coach and asked him for help designing a strength regimen. Coach Harper’s plan included a diet of real foods only, no supplements, no weight-gainer shakes. Gabe hadn’t told the coach what had happened, but Mia was sure he must have guessed. After all, how many kids would get smaller even as they lifted weights every day?
Smaller, but somehow happier. And Gabe had managed to hold on to some of his muscles. Yesterday he had told her, “Now if I get results, I’ll know it’s natural, that I did it myself. I don’t have to be one of those guys who need drugs to get big. Now it will really be me.”
Kenny Zhong’s empire—the smuggled steroids and Viagra, the restaurants and massage parlors staffed by illegal immigrants who were really slaves—had started to crumble the night he tried to kill everyone Mia loved and had been foiled by a fifteen-year-old boy. Now Kenny was facing dozens of felony charges, including the murder of his former hired gun, the man who had shot Abigail Endicott.
On the day Kenny was arraigned, a dozen television cameras had been waiting for him outside the courthouse. As soon as he spotted them, he lifted his head and straightened his shoulders. Even so, he barely reached the chins of the federal agents escorting him. His expression was proud and unapologetic, despite the fact that his hands were cuffed behind his back, despite the two agents who had their hands hooked in his elbows and were dragging him forward. In fact, if it were possible for a man to strut in such circumstances, Kenny had strutted.
Kenny was also facing charges for the assault and torture of Chun, the waitress who had talked to Charlie and Mia. Cops had discovered her, handcuffed to a pipe, in the basement of the house the workers from the Jade Kitchen shared. Beaten badly, but alive. Just.
The one thing Kenny hadn’t been guilty of was killing Sindy. He had tried to lure her through Atkinson, but she had gotten leery and then spent a few weeks hiding from everyone until news of Kenny’s arrest made it clear she was safe.
Facing retrial for Dandan’s murder, David Leacham had accepted a plea bargain. But for twenty years, not two, thanks to the information Jiao and Warren had provided. Kwong was also facing charges for threatening Jiao.
When Jiao was discharged from the hospital, Bo Yee had offered to take her in. When Mia last saw them, Bo had seemed to have found some measure of peace.
For his cooperation, Warren had gotten probation. With his bribe money confiscated, he had gone back to his job as an electrician. Mia had heard that he had also started attending Bo’s church, but she didn’t know if that stemmed from a real conversion or was simply the most twisted crush ever.
The one question Mia had not been able to answer, not even for herself, was whether Frank had been pressured not to re-try Leacham. Either way, there was a distinct chill between them, and she wasn’t sure it would ever lift.
But she wouldn’t think about that tonight. Tonight was for celebrating. She had invited everyone she knew, and most were coming. People from work. Her dad and Luciana. Bo and Jiao. Eli and Charlie. Eli was bringing his daughter, and even though Rachel was two years older than Gabe and emotionally light years ahead, Mia had caught him hanging a sprig of mistletoe over a doorway.
“What?” he had said when she raised an eyebrow at him. “A guy can dream, can’t he?”
Yes, she concurred silently, as she looked at the food and thought about her friends, we all can dream.
READING GROUP GUIDES
From A Matter of Trust
1. On her eHeartMatch profile, Colleen lies about her weight and age. Vincent lies about his appearance and occupation. Do you feel that you have a different level of trust for what you read on the Internet as opposed to what someone tells you or what you see in the newspaper or on TV? Do you think that the truth has become more malleable in your lifetime? Or is it perhaps easier to discover?
2. Her husband’s death made it necessary for Mia to go back to work. Many women juggle duties both at home and at a job. Is it really possible to have it all? How can we find balance? Have you ever felt torn between competing needs?
3. Nate says about his son Darin, “A long time ago, I realized I could spend all my time wishing for the son I never had or I could love the son who was standing right in front of me.” Have you ever struggled with loving someone just the way they are? Do you think in some cases it’s not possible?
4. Teens these days interact with so many different kinds of social media: Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, Pinterest. They can access social media on their phones, computers, tablet computers, or netbooks. If you have kids, how have you tried to manage or oversee this? Have you put the computer in a common area? Do you look at their texts, their Facebook posts, their e-mails—or is that any different than eavesdropping or reading their diaries? Is it even possible to successfully monitor their interactions? Would you ever consider putting spyware on your child’s phone or computer?
5. Darin was bullied. Were you ever bullied as a kid—or perhaps even on the other side? Do you think that bullying is more prevalent today or is it something we are simply more aware of? What do you think are the best ways to help prevent bullying?
6. Gina’s and Martin’s adopted child might be autistic. Doctors say he needs thousands of dollars worth of therapy. Have you known anyone who has struggled with autism?
7. Gabe’s coach keeps him on the bench instead of putting him in to play. Do you think high school sports should focus on winning or on letting more kids on the team play? Does that change if you’re talking about a JV team?
8. Mia discovers that Scott has left their family in debt. Do you think she should have pursued bankruptcy? Do you know someone who has been affected by foreclosure or overwhelming debts?
9. Brooke has night terrors. Have you ever known a child with night terrors? Have you dealt with a child who had a mysterious illness?
10. One of the main themes of A Matter of Trust is that appeara
nces can be deceiving. Ronni is homeless yet determined to finish school. One of the boys who tormented Darin turns out to have also been his friend. Do you think as you have gained more experience in life that you have gotten better at seeing below the surface? Or are we all so busy that we are often forced to rely on the surface and to make snap judgments?
From A Deadly Business
1. Mia’s work as a public prosecutor is extremely important and demanding, as is her work as a single mother of two. Have you ever struggled with work-life balance? Discuss the difficulty of doing well at work while also maintaining personal relationships.
2. When Charlie approaches Mia about the inconsistencies of her husband Scott’s death, Mia says, “Let the dead bury the dead.” Have you ever wanted to move on so badly that you didn’t care to know the truth? Is knowing the truth about an event essential to coming to grips with it?
3. The justice system is the arena for Mia’s work, yet she is often asking what justice is supposed to look like. How do you define justice? Is the point of justice punishment for wrongdoing? Rehabilitation for criminals? Preventing future crimes? All of these things?
4. Mia’s discoveries in the basement make her believe that her whole life with Scott had been a lie. Have you ever experienced or discovered something that made you question the most foundational aspects of your life?
5. When handling the shopping cart case, Mia can’t help but compare her own son to the teenagers involved. How does her role as a mother affect her viewpoint and her actions? How would you have handled the case?
6. At many points during Mia’s investigations, she feels that she is finding more questions than answers—and that truth itself is “as slippery as a silver bead of mercury.” Have you ever searched for the truth, only to come up empty-handed?
7. While Mia works to prosecute criminals, her friend Eli works to defend them. In your opinion, which position would be more difficult, and why?