“I brought a friend to visit you,” I told her, and her eyes widened when she saw Morgan.
“A hot dog!” she said. “Oh, I love her! Can I have her? Is she mine? Mommy, Mommy, Mommy, can I keep her?”
“She’s a he,” I told Sasha, laughing as she hugged Morgan. “And I’m sorry, but you can’t keep him. He belongs to a friend of mine and he’s just here to visit you. His name is Morgan. He wanted to meet you.”
“Careful, not too tight,” Carmen warned.
“Oh, he’s giving me kisses!” Sasha giggled, because sure enough, Morgan was doing an awesome imitation of a happy little dog, right down to licking the girl’s nose and chin. She caught his face between her hands and gazed into his eyes, proclaiming, “I love you, too, Morgan!”
“Are you okay alone with Skylar and Morgan?” Carmen asked Sasha, who couldn’t hide another burst of fishy fear at the idea of her mom leaving her, even with Morgan and me.
But I could tell that Sasha wanted to keep petting Morgan more than she wanted to go with her mom, so she gathered her courage and bravely nodded her head yes. But then she smiled more genuinely and said, “Morgan says we’ll be fine.”
Carmen smiled. “If you need me, at all…?”
“Push the call button,” Sasha responded obediently, lifting a remote control that contained a single big, red button. She showed it to Morgan and began to explain to him what it was. “See, if anything bad happens, or even if I think anything bad is going to happen, all I have to do is push this button and Mommy will come…”
“Are you okay alone with Sasha?” Carmen pulled me aside to ask me quietly. “If not, it’s okay, I’ll stay with you, but if it is, I have an appointment with the doctor.” She made a face at me and put her hand over her stomach, and I realized she was talking about seeing the obstetrician. Apparently, Sasha was going to be getting a brother or a sister.
“Does Sasha know?” I said soundlessly. Carmen shook her head no and put her finger to her lips.
“So many things upset her,” she whispered. “We’re still waiting for the right time…”
“She seems…good,” I said, but I was lying. The little girl was hyper-vigilant and a jangling mass of anxiety and nerves. And if Morgan didn’t do this right—or maybe if he did do it right—we were going to make her remember the excruciatingly awful details of her abduction, and quite possibly make her even more terrified.
Again, Carmen shook her head. “The nightmares,” she told me. “They’re awful. And they’re not stopping.”
“Morgan’s a great service dog,” I said lamely. “Maybe this visit will help…?”
“Maybe,” she said, but I knew she didn’t believe it. Still, she gave me one more hug and a quick “Thank you so much for coming” before she left the room, closing the door behind her.
Sasha spoke up immediately. “Lock it,” she said. “Please, Sky?”
“I don’t think it locks.” I went over to look.
“Yes it does,” Sasha said. “Up at the top.”
Sure enough, there was a hook-and-eye lock up toward the top of the door. It wouldn’t do much to keep anyone out—at least not anyone who truly wanted to get in. But if it made Sasha feel better…? I locked it. “You have good eyes,” I said.
“Morgan does,” she said. “He told me it was there.”
Sasha had settled back on the sofa, her legs stretched out, with Morgan securely settled on her lap. She was stroking his ears, and she seemed less anxious and brittle. Calmer. Peaceful almost.
“He says to tell you still thoughts,” Sasha added, her voice sounding very drowsy. As I watched, her body relaxed even more. Her eyelids drooped a little, and the smile on her face became one of utter contentment. That expression was one I’d seen before. She looked like the Sasha I used to tuck into bed after a tall glass of chocolate milk and a good-night story. It was my sweet Sasha, getting ready to slowly fade into a peaceful sleep.
Except she didn’t sleep. She kept her eyes open. Calmly, slowly, she looked down at Morgan and nodded. And Morgan nodded his little dog head back.
They must’ve been communicating silently.
For a very strange and brief moment, I wished that I could trade places with the little girl—just long enough so that Morgan could use his magic to take away all of the worries that crowded my thoughts and kept me from feeling like anything would ever be all right again.
————
While we were visiting Sasha, Calvin texted me, letting us know that his dad was coming home for a nap, so we should meet over at the old twenty-plex to debrief.
I’d also gotten a series of group texts from Milo—a status report that he sent to all of us.
Morgan and I got into the car where he re-humanized in the backseat. I wanted to give him some time to get dressed before I grilled him on what he’d learned from his mind meld with Sasha, so I read the texts from Milo aloud while Garrett drove us toward the abandoned mall.
“Followed JD. That stands for John Doe,” I interpreted. “Went via bus to Sav’A’Buck, then back to CKPD’s—Coconut Key Police Department’s—impound lot. Believe he’s looking for his car, came up empty. Yeah, because I gave his car to the family of the girl he tried to kidnap. Of course, he was unconscious when I did that, so how would he know?”
I kept reading, “Then went via foot to North St church. Must’ve had a locker there, came out wearing suit & tie & carrying computer bag. Okay, I think we can be pretty certain his amnesia was an act. Then went to 24-hr car rental, drove out of lot in full-size gray SUV.” Milo included the plate number in his text, and I rattled it off, adding, “So gas money’s not a problem for him.” That, too, was good to know. Well, it was good only on one level—that we knew about it. It was, in fact, very bad news that the bounty hunter who was going to start actively looking for me had a credit card that worked.
I kept going: “Followed him into Harrisburg, he did business with man in pickup truck in dive bar parking lot—my guess is JD’s now armed and dangerous. Then back to Coconut Key to all-night CoffeeBoy, where he spent hours on laptop. Tried, but I couldn’t hack in via wireless. Also he sat by window near his SUV—I couldn’t get close enough to place GPS tracker. And that explains what the tracker’s for.”
“Stayed there all night. Looks like he’s just starting to pack up his computer. I gotta be ready to move.” The very last part of his message was to me, so I didn’t read it out loud. Skylar, this man is dangerous, and he’s coming for you. Stay inside if you can, cover your hair if you go out, in case he did catch a glimpse of it at the Sav’A’Buck. And keep your phone on and accessible. I love you.
I love you, too, I typed back. I wish you’d told me about the closet and your stepfather. I feel like you didn’t trust me, and that hurts. Probably feels a lot like me not trusting you with Rochelle, and I’m so, so sorry about that. I hit Send quickly, before I chickened out, and of course, I’d forgotten that any reply I made would go to the entire group. Oh, dear God.
Garrett’s phone pinged, and because we were stopped at a light, he glanced at my text. But instead of smirking and mocking me he said, “You know that went to—”
“Everyone, yeah.” I shook my head. “I’m more tired than I thought.” I glanced into the backseat, expecting some raised eyebrows from Morgan, but the G-T had fallen fast asleep.
The good news was that he’d put his pants on first.
And it occurred to me, if that was today’s good news? We were definitely in trouble.
————
“They must’ve already gone into the ’plex,” Garrett said.
As we pulled up, Calvin’s car was parked outside the chain-link fence that surrounded the mall, but he and Dana were nowhere in sight.
Morgan was already stretching and yawning.
As curious as I was to find out if he’d gotten a lead from Sasha on th
e whereabouts of Dana’s sister, Lacey, it seemed only fitting to wait and let Dana get the news first.
“That was hard—spending all that time in Sasha’s head,” he admitted as we all got out of the car. “Thanks for letting me sleep.”
“Dude.” Garrett’s voice was loaded with admiration. “What you did? Was unbelievably cool.”
“You didn’t even get to see the best part,” I told him. “The way that Sasha responded to him? It was amazing.” When I’d carried Morgan out of the room, she was calmly telling her mother that the hot dog had told her that her mommy was going to have a baby, and she was so excited to be a big sister, and that everything was going to be okay.
But Garrett-the-Douche was back as he frowned and said, “No, I meant being able to turn into a dog. Chicks love dogs, especially the stupid little ones. You give ’em those puppy eyes, and boom, you’re sleeping in their bed.” He delivered his sleazy trademark laugh as punctuation. “Tell me the truth, have you ever used this G-T trick to hook up with, like, a supermodel? Please say yes.”
“Seriously, Garrett,” I started, but Morgan cut me off.
“I keep my G-T tricks separate from my dating life,” he said. “But I have dated a supermodel.”
Garrett’s jaw dropped. “For realzies?”
The corner of Morgan’s mouth lifted a bit, but other than that, he managed to answer with a straight face. “For realzies,” he verified.
“Oh, please tell me everything,” Garrett begged as he followed Morgan through the hole in the fence. “Her bust size, height, favorite position…”
It was then that I noticed that Calvin’s car was unlocked. He’d just left his wheelchair there behind the steering wheel, like a discarded thought. He needed it to drive—it doubled as the driver’s seat—but once he’d arrived, he’d apparently just walked away from it. I opened the door and hit the button that would lock the car manually, and then closed the door tightly.
It made me feel uneasy—the idea that Calvin, who was usually so careful about everything, would make such a big mistake. An unlocked car was a stolen car. How often had that been drilled into us, starting back in nursery school? And a car like his, tricked out for his physical challenge, wouldn’t be easily replaced.
Of course, Cal probably didn’t think he’d need it for much longer, on account of his impending death.
I hurried after Garrett and Morgan just in time to hear the G-T say, “He wore a size forty-regular jacket, was a little taller than me, and his favorite position was shortstop. You do mean baseball, right? He played in the minor leagues before he signed with the Moss Agency.”
“Wait, dude,” Garrett said. “No, I meant… What?”
“His name was Billy,” Morgan said, “and he had the nicest ass I’ve ever seen in my entire life. Washboard abs. And those cheekbones. To. Die. For. He was hot, the sex was molten, but sadly he didn’t have all that much to say and had terrible taste in music, so we broke up. End of story. Roll credits.”
I glanced back at the parked cars and it occurred to me that Dana might’ve distracted Cal, and they’d hurried inside to…
I got out my burner phone and texted both Cal and Dana. We’re here!!!
Meanwhile, Garrett had gone silent as he did the math. “So, you’re, like…?”
“Gay?” Morgan finished for him. “Yes, darling, I’m a dude who likes dudes. Are you cool with that, dude?”
Cal’s texted reply came back quickly: Waiting for you in theater 6.
Garrett took a little longer, and I cringed, waiting for the inevitably douche-tastic homophobic remark as we went inside the dimly lit mall and headed toward the former cinema.
But instead, Garrett shrugged. “Yeah, man. I mean, whatever floats your boat is cool, I guess.” He laughed. Heh-heh. “Leaves more hot G-T chicks available for me, right?”
“Absolutely,” Morgan said, even as he looked at me and widened his eyes in an unspoken Did you know you were in that hot G-T chicks subset?
I responded with an eye roll—there was no time for more than that, because Dana came out of the theater to meet us with her flashlight and with a barrage of questions. “Did you have any trouble? Did you get to see Sasha? Did you find out anything? Is Sasha okay? Does she remember seeing Lacey?”
“No, yes, yes, yes, and maybe,” Morgan told her.
It didn’t surprise me that Dana had followed all that. “She maybe saw Lacey?” she pushed. “Did you find out where Sasha was when she maybe saw my sister?”
Morgan hesitated. “It’s tricky,” he replied. “You see, when I went into Sasha’s head, I saw her memories of her abduction—even some of the ones that she’s since tried to block. But memories are based on perception, and perceptions are different from facts. For example, she has a very clear memory of a monster in that barn in Alabama—a very big man who carried a club that literally dripped with blood.”
Cal had come out of the theater, too, and he now put his arms around Dana.
“There was a guard in the barn where she was being held. He used a baseball bat that was bloodstained, and he was definitely monstrous,” I said. He’d nearly killed Dana.
“Was he half-bear, half-Bigfoot, with a hairy face and sharp, pointed teeth?” Morgan asked.
“No, he was human,” Dana said grimly.
“But evil,” I chimed in, shuddering as I remembered his telltale stench. “He had scruff on his chin, but it wasn’t even really that much of a beard.”
Morgan said, “Unless there was more than one guard who was also a giant and carried a club—”
“There wasn’t,” Dana said.
“Sasha’s monster had hair covering his face,” Morgan countered. “Even on his cheeks and forehead. That’s what I saw when I was in Sasha’s mind. That’s how she remembers him.”
I wondered if the man had put on some kind of mask to scare the girls he was guarding, but then I realized it didn’t matter. Morgan’s point was clear. Sasha’s memory of the guard with the bloody club was of a hairy beast-man. Which meant her other memories could be equally creatively altered or enhanced.
Cal spoke up. “Why don’t we bring this inside?” he suggested, pointing over his shoulder to theater six. “You all can sit down and…let Morgan start at the beginning, okay?” His last words were aimed at Dana, who nodded.
“Yeah,” she said. “Let’s sit. We’re all tired.”
She and Cal led the way and I was right behind them. There was another flashlight already in there, on the slanted floor, and Cal turned back to grin at me. “Look what I can do,” he said and pointed at the flashlight.
A tiny bolt of electricity left his hand and raced toward the flashlight, and the bulb glowed brightly.
“Whoa,” I said, taking a step back.
The light didn’t stay lit for long. “It’s nothing much,” Cal said, but all I could think was, Look what I can do! Look what I can do!
Our very first encounter with Destiny, just a few short months ago, had been when an addict jokered in front of us at the Sav’A’Buck. It had been awful and violent, and the entire time she’d done hideosities like pull out her own teeth and throw them in bloody globs onto the floor, while gleefully proclaiming, Look what I can do!
But Cal had either forgotten, or maybe he just no longer cared.
“Yeah, we have to talk about that, too,” Dana muttered to me as we sat down on the floor. Garrett and Morgan sat beside us, forming an impromptu circle—like we were getting ready to play duck-duck-goose. Meanwhile, Cal chose to stand rather than sit, leaning against the wall outside our circle, half of his face masked by shadows.
“So do you think Sasha actually saw my sister?” Dana asked Morgan. “Or did she just dream her or maybe see a photo or…?”
“I know that Sasha met someone named Lacey,” Morgan replied. “Lacey spoke to her—they had a conversation, but Sash
a was confused. And terrified. It’s possible she was drugged at the time. Or maybe just low on blood.”
“Was this up in Alabama?” Dana asked. She was shaking. I could see her hands.
“I don’t know for sure,” Morgan said, adding gently, “I’m sorry, darling. I hate guessing, but if I had to, gun to my head? I would say that it wasn’t. My guess is that this happened close to immediately after Sasha was kidnapped, but her memories of that time are…a jumble at best. Wherever this conversation with Lacey happened, it wasn’t anywhere near the barn where you found her. That she remembers very clearly.
“In the mysterious place where she met Lacey, there were dogs barking. Lots of dogs,” Morgan continued. “Big dogs—Sasha was scared of them, but she was more scared of the bad people. Her internalized words, not mine. And then Lacey was there and she told Sasha to run. Run. So she ran, and she remembers that Lacey was holding her hand, with those dogs barking and barking. It was night—everything was dark, and again, Sasha’s memories are disjointed and blurred. They might’ve been using dogs to track down girls who’d somehow escaped, but I’m guessing here.”
“Or it happened while they were being held at one of the Doggy Doo Good warehouses,” Dana said. “We know that Doggy Doo Good trucks are sometimes used to transport girls to Destiny farms.”
Morgan nodded. “I’ve heard that rumor, too.”
“It’s not a rumor.”
“Okay,” Morgan said. “I heard a shred of a memory of voices both calling and whispering Sasha’s name—that might’ve been a nightmare, but then there was a bigger shard of Sasha trying to hide behind a palm tree before being grabbed by an angry woman who probably knocked her unconscious. It went from sheer terror to pain to black. I dug at it as best as I could, but I don’t think Lacey was with Sasha when that happened—if it even really happened.”
“What did she look like?” Dana asked suddenly. “Lacey.” I could see how difficult this was for her.
Still, to have confirmation that Lacey was still alive! After so many years, the girl was still out there, at least as of a few months ago. And that meant that we could find her. We’d brought Sasha safely home—we could do the same for Dana’s sister. I knew we could.
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