Silenced

by Allison Brennan

  “Get your stuff. We’re leaving.”

  “I don’t wanna go.”

  She sat up, shaking. In a voice much harsher than she intended, she said, “We have to. Nicole is dead!”

  She might as well have slapped Maddie. Her lip quivered and tears dampened her eyes. Ivy pulled herself up off the bathroom floor and rinsed her mouth out with water. “Give me your phone.”

  Maddie reached into her pocket. Ivy added Maddie’s phone to the water in the sink. When the basin was full, she shut the water off.

  She walked past Maddie and back into the hotel room. She hadn’t unpacked. She pulled her backpack from the closet and zipped it up.

  Maddie followed her, but made no attempt to pick up her things. “Why can’t we stay here? It’s safe here.”

  No place was safe. The only way they’d be safe was if Ivy disappeared. But she had no money, no place to go.

  Wendy’s dead.

  There was one other option, but Ivy had no idea if Wendy had changed her hiding place after their falling out. Wendy must have known Ivy turned over the pictures of her and Crowley that ended up all over the news. Except Wendy hadn’t confronted her, and she wouldn’t have kept her mouth shut about it, even though they hadn’t spoken in months.

  “We have to go,” Ivy said, weary and emotionally drained.

  “No!”

  Maddie never defied her. Ivy didn’t know what to say, but stared at her friend.

  “Jocelyn is trying to help,” Maddie pleaded. “You said so yourself. Why would you run away now? Why do you have to do everything yourself?”

  Because there’s no one else.

  “I have to get Mina,” Ivy said. “Nicole left her with Marti. They might be in danger, too. Don’t you get it? Wendy and Nicole are dead. I don’t want anything to happen to you or anyone else.” Or Sara. God, what have I gotten her into?

  “Wendy’s dead, too?” Maddie shook her head, her hands covering her face.

  Dammit, Ivy, you are full of tact!

  She spoke softly. “I just saw it on the news. I’m sorry, Maddie.” Ivy had to be strong for all of them. She had to remember that they’d been through hell, but she’d been the one to get them out.

  She just didn’t know if she could save them all this time. Her conscience weighed so heavy, she wished she could click her heels together and go anywhere else.

  Anywhere but home.

  A card key slid into the slot, a computerized whoosh releasing the latch. The door opened into the hotel room. Heart racing, Ivy reached into her backpack for her gun.

  “It’s me,” Jocelyn said. She put a large bag of takeout on the table next to the door. “I brought my husband, Chris.”

  A man stepped in behind Jocelyn. He was of average build with a baby face and kind eyes.

  Ivy stared at Jocelyn. She’d promised to protect Sara, but Ivy couldn’t expect Chris Taylor to keep the secret.

  “Let’s sit down and discuss the situation,” Jocelyn said. “You’re in danger. Your sister is in danger.”

  “Don’t do that. It’s complex.”

  Chris said, “I can arrange—”

  Ivy cut him off. “Nicole is dead!”

  Jocelyn looked stricken, she walked over to her and took her hands. Ivy shook her off and felt bad about it, but she was in no mood to be coddled. Jocelyn wasn’t wanted for felony kidnapping. Jocelyn didn’t have a killer after her.

  Ivy had been responsible for herself since she was fourteen, she didn’t even know how to accept help. She’d tried, and look where she was? Her makeshift family separated. Two friends dead. Kerry not returning her calls. What if she was dead, too?

  “Ivy, are you sure? I didn’t hear anything about it on the news—”

  “I’m very sure.”

  “Then we really do need to call the police.”

  “No, no, no!” Ivy rubbed her temples. She didn’t know what to do.

  “They’re not going to send Sara back to a man who raped her.”

  “You don’t know my father,” Ivy said through clenched teeth.

  Everyone was looking at her, looking at her to make the decision. Looking at her for answers. She had none. What had she and Wendy started? What had seemed like a brilliant idea to earn money to buy her and Sara new identities and a home in Canada had blown up. Wendy was dead. The money was gone. Ivy was responsible for three needy teenagers and no way to keep them from harm.

  Sara stepped out of the adjoining room and said, “Ha—Ivy? What’s wrong?”

  Jocelyn said quietly, “Let’s talk about this tonight. Chris knows people who can fix this. We can protect you all.”

  Except they’d call her father. Sara, the one person who needed protection the most, would be sent back into the lion’s den.

  Ivy had only one idea, and she prayed to the Lord to give her this one request. For Sara.

  “On one condition,” Ivy said. “I have a place where Sara will be safe. I’ll take her there. We keep her completely out of this, pretend she doesn’t exist, then I’ll talk to the police.”

  Jocelyn glanced at her husband and they shared something unspoken.

  “Please,” Ivy begged. “They can’t protect Sara.”

  “If Sara testifies against him—”

  “Those are my terms. I want this all to stop. I’m so tired, Jocelyn.” Her voice cracked.

  Sara started to cry. Ivy took a deep breath. She couldn’t be weak now. “It’s not just Nicole,” she said. “Wendy is dead, too.”

  “Wendy?” Jocelyn questioned. “Who’s that?”

  “Wendy James. It’s all over the news.”

  Chris’s eyes widened. “Congressman Crowley’s mistress?”

  “Mistress? Hardly. You asked a long time ago how I got into this business,” Ivy said to Jocelyn. “It was through Wendy. We used to be partners.”

  Chris frowned and sat on the couch. Ivy ignored him and turned to Jocelyn. “I’m going to take Sara to the only person I can trust, then I’ll talk to the police. I need a couple of hours.”

  Jocelyn handed Ivy her car keys. “Call me for anything. We’ll wait here.”

  “I destroyed my phone—I was afraid whoever killed Nicole might have some way of finding me.”

  Chris asked, “How do you know Nicole is dead?”

  “A man answered her phone when I called. He told me she was dead.”

  Maddie stifled a cry and ran from the room. Ivy wished she could talk to her, but she had no time.

  “Take mine.” Jocelyn handed her the cell phone. “I’ll call you from Chris’s phone.”

  “Thank you.” She hugged her. Suddenly, she didn’t want to go. She wanted Jocelyn and Chris Taylor to make all the decisions. For once, she wanted someone else to tell her the right thing to do.

  For once, she wanted someone else to protect her.

  Over Jocelyn’s shoulder Ivy saw her sister, so sheltered and vulnerable and not deserving any of this.

  She stepped away from Jocelyn and cleared her throat. “I won’t be long.”

  * * *

  Maddie didn’t like hearing Jocelyn and Chris arguing. Chris didn’t want to wait to call the police; Jocelyn wanted to give Ivy until morning.

  She interrupted, “I’m going to take a bath, is that okay?”

  Jocelyn nodded. “Of course, Maddie. Are you hungry?” She gestured toward the bags of food.

  She shook her head and tried to smile, but it felt like a crooked frown.

  She picked up her backpack and took it into the bathroom and closed the door. The suite had a large, oval-shaped bathtub that she could easily sink into. She turned on the water and stripped. Steam rose and began to fog the mirror. Good. She didn’t want to look at herself, knowing what she was going to do.

  From the very bottom of her backpack, with her tampons and birth control bills and condoms, she pulled out a small tin. Ivy had searched her room many times for drugs, and Maddie had gotten better about hiding them.

  It wasn’t like she was
taking them all the time. She really wanted to make Ivy proud of her, to stay off the stuff, to help.

  But what could she do? Ivy was the strong one. She kept them in the pretty house, made sure they had clients who didn’t hurt them, had found ways to make more money than Maddie could have imagined when she first started hooking to support her drug habit.

  She didn’t want to be that desperate girl again, selling her body for drugs. But Ivy’s priority was her sister. Maddie wouldn’t be surprised if Ivy never came back. If she just disappeared with Sara.

  Tears rolled down her cheeks.

  She opened the tin. Six little blue pills left. She took two, swallowed them with water from the sink. The phones sat dead at the bottom, reminding her that Nicole was also dead.

  The tub filled quickly, and Maddie turned off the water. It was too hot; she waited a minute for the water to cool and the happy pills to work.

  She leaned against the bathroom door.

  Jocelyn and Chris were still talking.

  “You can’t trust her,” Chris said.

  “She’s just like me.”

  “No she’s not!” Chris said something else, quietly, that Maddie couldn’t hear. Then she caught, “… never have done that.”

  “I would have done anything to survive,” Jocelyn said. “If Cathy hadn’t found me when she did—I understand Ivy. I’m not giving up on her.”

  “If she doesn’t go to the police first thing in the morning and tell them everything she knows, you have to walk away. You’re hurting, I see it every night. I can’t stand to see you suffer like this.”

  “You’ve been my rock, Chris. But—don’t tell Ivy you knew from the beginning. I told her once that we didn’t have secrets, but I don’t think she processed that I shared everything with you.”

  “She doesn’t have to know when I knew.”

  Jocelyn mumbled something, then Chris said, “If Sara makes a statement about her father, no court would place her with him. I don’t want you getting in trouble for being an accessory after the fact.”

  “Stop sounding like a lawyer. Kirk Edmonds is a powerful, wealthy man with people who will support him. Powerful people get away with unspeakable crimes. You know that, Chris.”

  “And you don’t think that Ivy has been lying about him?”

  “No, I don’t.”

  “You have more faith in that girl than I do.”

  Maddie bit her hand to keep from crying. Men with pretty faces were just as mean as ugly men.

  Her head felt light, but she was so sad. She took one more pill, wanting to bury the sorrow.

  She slid into the water. It was still hot, but tolerable. She didn’t want to listen to any more talk, she didn’t want to hear any doubts.

  Ivy had saved her over and over again. Without her, Maddie would have been dead long ago.

  She put her earbuds in and listened to Evanescence, the soulful, heart-wrenching sounds soothing and comforting.

  Slowly, she relaxed, forgot the Taylors, forgot her pain, forgot that someone wanted her dead.

  * * *

  When Ivy walked Sara into the church, peace touched her heart and she knew immediately she’d done the right thing. Why hadn’t she come to Father Paul right after the fire?

  She found it ironic that the only person she truly trusted with Sara was a man of God. Father Paul had given her hope when she had none, and for that, she owed him her life.

  Sara walked through the small, old church with a sense of awe. Ivy watched her sister relax, comfortable and safe.

  Father Paul stood next to Ivy. He was a diminutive man of seventy whose presence belied his stature. The first time she saw him, six years ago, she thought she’d seen a halo over his head. She’d dismissed that as a hallucination from anger and fear, but an she looked at him now, his serene expression gave her a rare glimpse of true peace.

  “I’ll watch over her,” he said.

  “Thank you,” she whispered, her voice cracking. “I don’t—”

  “Shh, child.”

  Ivy walked down the empty aisle to where Sara stood in front of a statue of a saint. “Listen to Father Paul,” she told Sara.

  Sara hugged her tightly. “It’s going to be okay, Ivy. God’s going to protect us. He answered my prayers and brought me to you, and I’m going to pray every minute that you’re safe.”

  Ivy didn’t have the heart to tell Sara that God didn’t care about them. If he did, he would have thrown a lightning bolt through the heart of Kirk Edmonds the first time he raped his oldest daughter. But if her beliefs calmed Sara, that gave Ivy some relief.

  Father Paul caught her eye. He didn’t say anything else; he didn’t need to. She left without looking back.

  St. Anne’s wasn’t far from where Ivy had lived, but the two neighborhoods were vastly different. Father Paul’s church was in a depressed area northwest of the Capitol center while Ivy’s house on Hawthorne was in a pocket of well-kept homes surrounded by businesses that still managed to keep their doors open.

  Marti North was the pastor of His Grace Church, a small church and preschool wedged between two larger buildings. Growing up, Ivy had never known there were female ministers, and maybe that’s why she was drawn to the small, struggling church. His Grace was the opposite in every way to her father’s opulent worship center, from the gender of the pastor to the size and quality of the structure to the color of the parishioners.

  Ivy didn’t like to dwell on the fact that the people she trusted the most were in the same profession as her father. As Marti would say, it is what it is. That simple, clichéd sentence had helped Ivy many times when she wanted to scream that life wasn’t fair.

  Ivy stared at the dark building and realized she didn’t know where Marti lived. It was in the area, but it wasn’t at the church. It was after midnight, she didn’t want to wake her up. Nicole had trusted Marti with Mina, and so did Ivy. Maybe it was better this way, to let her sleep and Ivy would handle the police on her own.

  Ivy turned the car around and drove the four blocks to the burned remains of her house on Hawthorne Street.

  She parked down the street and walked half a block. Even though the fire had been extinguished forty-eight hours ago, the scent of charred wood hung in the still, hot air. As she neared, she thought the house looked particularly dark because of the shadows; when she stood across the street she realized that the house was simply gone.

  It had burned almost completely to the ground, only the shell remaining.

  Everything she owned, everything she’d saved, thousands of dollars in cash, passports, identification, and the video that would have yielded her another ten thousand to give them a jumpstart in Canada … gone.

  By the time she returned to Jocelyn’s car, the tears were falling.

  * * *

  Ivy smelled death the moment she stepped into the hotel room.

  Bile rose in her throat, the sickening scent of blood mixed making her gag.

  Blood sprayed everywhere. Jocelyn’s husband was on the floor closest to the door, his throat slit. Arcs of blood slashed the puke green walls and sickly gold carpets. His eyes didn’t look real anymore, clouded and lifeless. How long had he been dead?

  It’s my fault.

  Jocelyn’s body was curled into a ball at the foot of the bed. Ivy went over to her, squatted, tears burning her eyes when she saw what the killer had done to the person who’d tried to help her.

  She was unrecognizable.

  “Joce—” Ivy closed her eyes, breathed through her mouth so she wouldn’t throw up.

  How had the killer gotten in? The hotel was supposed to be secure! Wouldn’t he be on tape? Why didn’t they scream? Why didn’t anyone stop this insanity?

  She should never have brought Jocelyn into this mess.

  You’re next. He’s going to find you and kill you.

  Who, dammit? Who was killing everyone who helped her?

  Ivy rose to her feet and realized that she was standing in blood. Her plastic flip
-flops made the damp blood pool around the edges. Her hand went to her stomach and she turned and ran to the bathroom, but didn’t make it. She threw up in the garbage can next to the desk and realized at the same time that she didn’t see Maddie.

  Ivy spun around the room, didn’t see Maddie.

  The bathroom door was closed.

  Ivy pulled her gun from her backpack. With shaking hands, she reached for the doorknob. Slowly turned the knob and pushed the door in with one movement. She jumped back, both hands on her gun, ready to fire at the first threat.

  No one hid in the bathroom. But it wasn’t empty.

  Maddie lay in the tub, filled close to the top with water so red it looked fake. But it wasn’t fake, it was Maddie’s blood, leached from her arms that floated just beneath the surface. Her eyes were closed, thank God her eyes were closed. Ivy didn’t know if she could handle the accusation had Maddie stared at her. Her head was slumped to the side, as if she’d fallen asleep.

  Ivy turned around and saw the mirror.

  In blood, someone had painstakingly written

  Run, run, as fast as you can

  Ivy ran.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Thursday

  What disturbed Lucy the most about the ornate suite in the historic Hotel Potomac wasn’t the blood soaking into the plush gold carpet; it wasn’t the familiar, coppery scent of blood, decomposing flesh, and fresh latex; it wasn’t even the bodies that had yet to be removed.

  What caught Lucy’s eye and would continue to haunt her was the blood spatter arcing over the avocado green walls, dried drops sprinkled over a painting of a famous American Revolutionary battle, giving a vivid depth to the tragic scene. The spatter covered the heavy, patterned damask drapery, and sliced across the window. Except for one overturned chair and a two-liter bottle of soda spilled on the carpet—adding a stale, sweet scent to the closed room—nothing else appeared disturbed, at least on the surface. Odd and disconcerting, considering the violence that had been done inside.

  Two bodies lay dead in the main hotel room and one in the bathroom. The suite was an oversized hotel room, with the “living” area consisting of a couch, chairs, desk, and meeting table for six. The sleeping area was up a step and included a dresser and king-sized bed. Jane Doe had bled out in the adjoining bathroom. The difference between yesterday’s crime scene and this was stark: the cheapest hotel in DC versus one of the most expensive.