by Amy Faye
"What do I do now?"
"Nothing at all, honey. Come on up, we'll take the equipment back, and we'll all go back to the estate to wait for that call that will let you get your beautiful baby girl back."
Anna likes that thought. For a moment, she almost feels better. When Ava's back, it will be like all of this was just a bad dream.
Waking up to find that empty crib had been a shock, but she was never going to let anything happen to Ava, not ever again. If she had to live inside a fallout shelter to keep her safe, then that was what she'd do.
Part of Anna wishes that Detective Meadows had been there, had been the one talking her through all that. She plays back in her head the memory of his explanation why he couldn't do it, though.
They had to be in several places at once, and she'd love Sherry. The woman had talked people through stuff like this a hundred times. She was easy to talk to, she was a total pro, and she was going to make sure nothing went wrong.
That had made her feel at least a little bit better. Which, in the end, was probably enough. After all, she'd felt almost like she could do this. Almost. She just had to hope that she hadn't made that guy angry when she was asking all those questions.
She was just so stupid. Always thinking too much. Asking too many questions. She should have known better, but her nerves were getting to her, and it was hard to remember how she was supposed to act.
As long as it didn't end up hurting Ava, though, it didn't matter what she screwed up. As long as it didn't hurt Ava.
She finally turns and looks up at the apartment that they've set up their little field office in. If she doesn't miss her guess, it's the fourth window up, around the middle of the building. It looks the same as every other window. The blinds are down, but so are most of them.
Anna makes her way across. Nothing is going to go wrong, she repeats to herself. Everything went fine. Everything went just fine. There's nothing that's going to go wrong, and she's going to have Ava back by the end of the day.
Then, she can go back to her life. She'll have her baby, she'll have her parents right across the hall. She'll have the weekly meetings. She won't have the sexy detective any more, but to call it a 'fair trade' wouldn't be even close to accurate.
If it means she can have Ava back, then she'll give up everything else. She just wants her daughter back. Anything else is a distraction, and if this is how bad things can go, then she'll ignore every one of those distractions.
Sherry's there at the door to greet her when she comes back in. A big, tight hug. Anna feels like she's being suffocated, in a good way.
"You did great. No mistakes."
"He got mad that I was asking questions."
"We heard. Don't worry about that. Nobody's perfect. If he wanted someone who would do it perfectly, then he would've asked for a lawyer. You're just a regular person. Regular people get confused, okay? Don't get down on yourself about any of that."
The words come out of Sherry's mouth sounding nice. She seems like she means them. None of it helps to convince Anna. She probably screwed something up. Now she just has to hope that she didn't screw it up real bad. As long as everything's fine, and she's got everything under control, it doesn't matter.
But if she's just trying to congratulate herself on a job well done after she screwed up bad enough that it's going to come back on Ava…
Anna doesn't know what she'd do with herself. She's not going to think about it. Because that's a situation that she couldn't live with, not in a million years.
She'd rather not imagine it. When Sherry guides her to the car, Anna keeps her head down. There's nothing to worry about, right? Because she did everything that they said. They wouldn't do anything to Ava after she did everything they said.
That was why they'd paid all that money, right? So they wouldn't do anything to Ava. And no matter how many questions she'd asked, it was all going to be fine.
Right?
Chapter Fourteen
Josh Meadows still isn't sure that he made the right call letting this go forward when the call comes through. Nor, when Mitch picks it up like he's screening his calls, is he reassured that he made the right decision by staying with the men.
Still, it's a real question whether or not he would have been able to reassure Anna well enough. Sherry is a pro, and if anyone can make it all work in the end, it's her.
The call came through a while ago: the money was dropped, no problems on their end. Now that the call's come through, fifteen minutes later, it's do-or-die time. They'll be expecting a tap and a trace, of course. They expected it the first time, and they're not suddenly morons.
The same voice comes through. It's too muffled, through the soft sound of the phone against Mitchell Queen's head, for the detective to hear anything. But they'll be hearing it loud and clear at headquarters. Probably louder and clearer than Mitchell's signal, even.
"Are you sure?"
His words sound worried, but his voice doesn't. It's hard to buy Mitch Queen as the worrying type. He seems petty and vain. It's easy to believe that he doesn't worry about much of anything except whether or not girls are noticing him.
He looks at the phone in frustration. Pulls it away from his ear and looks at it. "You're joking, right?"
Josh feels his stomach twist up. Something's gone wrong. What could have possibly gone wrong? The whole plan was simple. There was nothing to go wrong about it. Which means that if something did go wrong, his gut reaction—that this whole thing had been a setup—was spot on.
Mitch pulls the phone away from his ear again and slaps the pad of his thumb down on the hang-up button. He seems like that's calmed him down for a moment. Then, as if he couldn't hold back for an instant longer, he throws the phone hard at the third sofa in the room. Thankfully, it's empty.
The phone bounces off the back and clatters to the floor. He doesn't bother to check and see if it's broken. Josh doesn't move, either. He's got his eyes on Mitch Queen. At the edge of his awareness, so does his father.
"Well, are you going to let us in on what happened?"
"Your girl didn't fucking pay up."
He says that like it was entirely Josh's idea to have Anna involved. He wouldn't have involved her at all if he'd had his choice. It had seemed like a big risk.
Not because she wouldn't pay, though. There was no way that was going to happen. That was not only unthinkable—it was impossible. He'd taken the call from Sherry herself.
They'd had four separate guys watching the drop. Four different vantage points. All but one of them had watched her pick up the suitcase, seen her slide it onto the front passenger seat of a black Subaru Impreza, and had seen the same Impreza drive away.
The Impreza might be a lead. They'd track it down, regardless. Something told Josh that it wasn't going to lead anywhere, not in the long run. If it did, he'd be surprised. More than surprised. He'd be god damn flabbergasted.
He wasn't going to say anything about it, though, because there were procedures and rules and you followed them when you had to, regardless of what you wanted to do.
Now Anna was getting blamed for something that he knew wasn't true.
"So Anna didn't pay, you're saying?"
They hadn't been privy to that little call. Not so far as Josh knew, anyways. They'd have to have been pretty damn sneaky about it.
"Didn't show at all. We give that girl a million in cold hard cash and she cuts and runs?"
"Okay. What now?"
"What the fuck do you mean, 'what now?' What now, we're toast is what now. Fucking moron."
Josh's fists clench up a little bit. He relaxes them. This isn't the time to lose it. This is the time to maintain your professional attitude real well, because if you don't, then things are going to end real bad for you.
It doesn't matter how bad it ends for him, because that's just one scummy son of a bitch in the end. There are thousands more just like him. Millions in the city alone. You have to keep perspective together, even when it h
urts. Especially when it hurts.
"Mr. Queen, I'm going to ask again. What's next?"
"What's next is, they call us, they ask for more money, and we find someone who will fucking pay it this time. Where the fuck is Anna? Shouldn't you have had someone with her?"
"Calm down, sir. She's on her way here. We'll talk about this when everyone's arrived, when it's all situated. Then we'll figure out what to do next."
Josh's jaw is so tight that it's starting to hurt bad. The headache feels like it's spreading through his whole damn body at this point, and there's not a God damn thing he can do about it but wait.
Wait, and hope that he can figure out how they're going to stop things going sideways again.
It doesn't matter how many people saw her pay. It only matters that Anna will always be ready to admit fault. She'll always say that she might have screwed something up.
Maybe she paid the wrong guys. She's not the sort of person who would just give the money away to some random fucking person, but she doesn't know if she got the right car. Maybe she didn't.
The details were vague in the original call. A black, late-model sedan. They weren't even nice enough to clarify if it would be an import or a domestic. No make or model. Likely the car was stolen.
They'd get a call about it in a couple of days, maybe. Until then, it was going to be Anna's fault that she'd lost her only chance at getting her daughter back.
Why? Because she was a convenient choice. Because she would take the fall, regardless of whether or not it was her fault.
It was a crock of shit. She hadn't done anything wrong, and everyone in that room knew it. Josh Meadows's gut told him that Mitch Queen knew it, too. That every bit of that had been a show. Likely for the benefit of the police department.
Meadows walked to the door and back. His shoulders were tight. His jaw was tight. His entire body felt like a coiled-up spring, and he didn't have to wonder for a second what had him wound up so tight.
It was a little rich son of a bitch sitting on a ten-thousand dollar sofa older than half the buildings in the city, and only a couple years younger than the other half.
It was a couple of bastards who thought they could fool him by putting the blame on a poor girl who didn't do a God damn thing wrong. They'd get away with it, too, in all likelihood.
Because there was plenty that Josh Mitchell could see as a person. As a detective, as someone who had learned to trust his gut when the chips were down, it was all he needed to see the way that Mitch suddenly got invested the minute that it was convenient.
None of that was going to matter in the end, if he couldn't prove it. And that was going to be the hard part, because Mitch Queen had all the time in the world to plan this thing. He'd had almost seven months.
Josh Meadows had been here for four days now, and he was already starting to see the skeleton of the plan that was laying out in front of him.
None of it was going to matter if he couldn't start laying down track ahead of where they were going, because somewhere in the future, there was going to be a point where they had already gotten away with it and no investigation was going to change that.
He had to make sure that Ava Witt was back with her mother before that happened, because that was the point where there wouldn't be any getting her back.
Chapter Fifteen
Anna Witt didn't know what to expect when she walked into the room, but it wasn't what she got.
Detective Meadows sat on the green sofa—the one that he sat on the first day. Anna had always liked that sofa. His hands were balled up into fists, and those fists were jammed under his chin.
He doesn't look like someone who's waiting for a call, and he definitely doesn't look like someone who's just been told where to get Ava.
"What's wrong?"
Nobody responds. In a certain sense, that's good, because when Mitch decides to get a little testy, he can go overboard sometimes. We all make mistakes, and Mitchell is no different. It's not his fault, though. He just… sometimes he loses it a little.
But there's nothing wrong with that. Everyone makes mistakes sometimes, and as long as you try not to make them again, there's nothing wrong with it. It doesn't make you a bad person.
The thing that hurts Anna's position is that she's never getting any better. She's always just an idiot, and always screwing something up. Just like she must have this time, the way that things look in the room.
"Will someone tell me what's wrong?" Anna tries to take a step back in her mind. She's at a nine right now. If she's at a nine… she should leave the room. She should leave, she should do some breathing, and then come back.
But leaving isn't going to help right now. It's only going to create more problems. So she takes a breath. In, one two three, out, two three four. In, two two three… out, two three four.
She's got to stay calm, because no matter what happens next, she's going to be the one who has to deal with it. It's her screw-up, and she's going to be the one who has to deal with it.
Nothing else matters. She takes a breath. Counts. Lets it out. Detective Meadows stands up and walks over. He leans in close to Sherry—Officer Ross.
Then, in spite of all the panic building up in her, the two of them step out into the hall. The door closes, and now Anna's in the lion's den and nobody is there to stop any of it.
She hopes that Mitch won't be too upset with his father there. Mitch's father was always nice. Mitchell looked up to him. There was a lot of pressure to follow in his father's footsteps, and that was what always had him so on-edge.
But he wouldn't want to show that nervousness in front of his father. He wouldn't want to let his frustration out now. Because his father was there.
Mitchell stands up anyways. Maybe she's misjudged the situation. Maybe he's angrier than she thought. Maybe she's misunderstood something. Maybe they all already know it's her fault, and Mitch is just doing what they told him to do.
He turns towards her. She can see in the way he stands, in the set of his shoulders, how angry he is. She can't see his anger on his face, but that only makes it worse.
He's not afraid to show annoyance, or a little frustration. He's not afraid to show when he's only a little upset. The only time he hides his emotions are when he thinks that they might upset someone.
But Anna's used to it. She knows what it looks like. She knows it looks just like this. She's seen him this angry before, but she's never been this upset by it. Because right now, when she's worried about Ava, she doesn't know what to do.
"Anna, what did you do this time?"
"I didn't do anything wrong, I promise. I did exactly like I was supposed to."
"You didn't give them the money."
"No, I did. I gave it to them. You can ask Miss Sherry. She was watching, she saw the whole thing. She said I did okay. You'd have been real proud of me."
"They just called, Anna. They said you didn't pay."
An involuntary shudder shoots down Anna's spine. "No, I did. I paid. They were in a black car. They called my name. I put the money—"
She's started crying again. Anna hates it when she cries. Mitch hates it when she cries, too. He always used to say it made him feel bad. She never wanted him to feel bad. It wasn't on purpose, she wasn't trying to make him feel bad on purpose.
"Don't lie to me, Anna. They say you didn't pay. You screwed it up again, didn't you?"
Anna can feel the tears flowing. She tries to make herself small. Tries to be beneath his notice. It works as well as it ever has. She looks over at his father, but Al Queen doesn't seem to be watching this.
She steps back. Into the corner. Her shoulders press first, and then her back rounds into the corner until she can't get any deeper and she can't get any smaller than she already is.
"No, I promise, Mitch, I did it just like I was supposed to. They even said—"
"Who said? That woman out there? Why isn't she here now, huh? Where'd she go?"
"I don't know, they just, they—" t
he words weren't coming out of her mouth. She could tell she was being incoherent, but she couldn't make it stop. She couldn't fix it, no matter how hard she was trying. She just wanted it to be alright.
"Admit it, Anna. This was too much for you. You screwed it up."
"I'm sorry I messed up, Mitch. I didn't—" A sob escapes her throat, even though she's trying her best not to cry. "I didn't mean to. I did my best."
He takes a deep breath. "I should have just found someone else to take care of this." He slumps his shoulders a little. "Aw, come on. Don't cry."
Where is Detective Meadows? Where is Miss Sherry? Why aren't they here?
"I'm sorry, I'm trying, Mitch. I promise, I'm trying my best."
"You're making me feel bad," Mitch says. Real quiet. He sounds upset. Anna didn't mean to upset him. She knew that was going to happen, if she let herself cry. She should have stopped herself. She shouldn't have been so selfish.
He settles down onto the couch and leans down to pick something up off the ground. Anna rubs at her eyes. She can't keep crying. It's upsetting everyone. It's making Mitch upset. And worse, it's not getting Ava back.
How are they going to, though? How could they get her back, now that she screwed everything up? She was always such a fuck-up. Everything was a big mistake.
She should've known that she couldn't be trusted with something this important. Something this big should be handled by smart people. People who know what they're doing. People with experience fixing problems like this. Not idiots like her.
The door opens. It hits her feet so she moves them. Detective Meadows and Sherry step back through the door. They look tired and unsure. They're probably pretty upset that she screwed things up, too.
The detective sees her first. He kneels down beside her.
"Are you okay? What happened?"
"I'm sorry I screwed everything up. I didn't—" The panic and self-hate that the doctor says she shouldn't let herself wallow in overwhelms her again, and a sob escapes her throat. She catches herself before she starts crying again. "I didn't mean to, I did my best, I'm sorry."