Sarah moved toward the front door of the Renaissance House as Duke looked at her from across the street. All that he had fixated on for the past three decades was still in his grasp, if he played it right. Every nerve of his being told him to get out and not look back, to just get in his car and pick up what was his.
“Good-bye, kid,” Duke said. He took one last look at his eldest child and a strange knot built up in his chest as he realized Sarah looked a lot like him.
“Damn it.” Duke grabbed his burner phone, the one he picked up at the 7-Eleven, and dialed.
“Renaissance House.”
“I need to talk to Sarah Gooden. Now.”
“She’s gone for the day.”
“No, she’s not. She’s in your lobby and she’s expecting my phone call. Put her on.”
Duke could see the receptionist put the phone on hold and motion to Sarah.
Duke had never tried to find out what had happened to his kids. With Ben, he’d likely never know, but his girls, he could have, but he knew all too well that sentimentality made you weak. That was tripping him up now. After being sidelined with Chip, Duke had done some research on his girls over the past few hours. He had discovered Julia had done well for herself, despite the loser assistant D.A. she had married, but Sarah had a record, and Duke knew she liked money. Duke worked his con in his head and waited for Sarah to pick up the phone.
“Who is this?” Sarah asked.
“Your lucky day. Your friend down in Florida sent me up here with some money for you.”
“Bullshit. The only thing my friend down in Florida would hand deliver me is a pipe bomb if he could.”
“I wouldn’t know about that. I have five thousand dollars in cash that I’m supposed to give you. Something about a deal you were working in Tampa,” Duke bluffed, piecing together what he had read about Sarah earlier that morning.
“Where can we meet?” Sarah asked.
“There’s a back alley to your building. Whatever you do, don’t go out the front. Give me five minutes, turn around slowly like nothing’s going on, and meet me out back.”
“Sounds like a setup.”
“It’s your money to lose.”
“All right. Five minutes. You don’t have the money or you try anything, I’m packing.”
Duke put on his dark glasses, hung up the phone, and walked quickly to his own car parked behind the building. He backtracked south, out of sight from the blue sedan, and came around the Spring Street alleyway, where Sarah was waiting for him with her arms folded across her chest.
Duke stopped the car next to Sarah and rolled down the passenger-side window.
“Get in. Now.”
“Like hell I am. Let me see the money. Better yet. Get out of the car. I don’t like what’s going on here.”
“We don’t have much time,” Duke said.
“Really? I’ve got all the time in the world.”
Duke sighed, got out of the car, and moved quickly toward Sarah.
“Nice suit. If your clothes match the money you’re carrying, then we’re good. But explain one thing to me, why did Steve send me the cash? I figured he’d keep it for himself until he got out of jail,” Sarah said.
Duke lowered his sunglasses and grabbed Sarah’s hand.
“You’re in trouble. Get in the car. There’s no money.”
She started to reach into her bag for her gun, when she took a good look at Duke for the first time and her hand froze midair.
“Dad?”
“That’s right,” her father said, and pulled his gun out from behind his waist. “Now get in the car.”
“I don’t care if you shoot me, I’m not going anywhere with you.”
Duke saw the punch coming, but it was remarkably fast and powerful for a woman of Sarah’s size. He moved away from her swing in time, but it still caught him on the side of his cheek.
“You don’t like me, fine. But there’s an evil guy with some torture tools stashed in his coat, and he’s waiting for you by your car to take a ride with him. Come on, Sarah, you’re going to pray that you’re going to die by the time he’s through with you. I’ve seen him work before.”
“How do I know you’re not lying?” Sarah asked.
“You don’t,” Duke answered, and opened the passenger door of his SUV.
“There’s no money?” Sarah asked.
“Not a cent. Not now anyway.”
Sarah stared at Duke, and then climbed inside her father’s car.
“I must be a sucker to believe you,” Sarah said.
“I’m the sucker,” Duke said. “Hand me your purse.”
“Screw you,” Sarah answered.
“If you’d like me to hand deliver you back to your car and the guy who’s about to go medieval on you, I’d be pleased to accommodate,” Duke said. He reached down and quickly grabbed Sarah’s bag before she could stop him. He carefully took out a black snub-nose Smith & Wesson, a snakeskin silver wallet, and a bottle of pills.
“Thought you were clean,” Duke said.
“Read the label. They’re prescription. For my anxiety that all started because of you, asshole.”
Duke took a quick look at the label on the bottle: XANAX.
“As if you have the balls to judge me,” Sarah said.
“You have a record.”
“So do you,” Sarah said. She tried to grab the contents of her purse back, but Duke was too fast.
“You and your sister close?” Duke asked.
“Me and Julia? Yeah, I go over to her house every Sunday for dinner.”
“Really?” Duke asked. “I don’t see that somehow.”
“I’m joking. Julia was always better than me, even when she was a kid. You knew it, too.”
“But Julia was here earlier. You two must have some kind of relationship going.”
Sarah tried to snag her pack of cigarettes from her purse, but Duke chucked them far into the recesses of the backseat.
“Not in my car you don’t.”
“You touch my cigarettes again, I won’t hold off on my punch next time,” Sarah said. “Julia just came here to get information. She doesn’t like me. I tried to screw her too many times. You know how that is, right?”
“I don’t hang around long enough to let people’s sentiments about me sink in.”
“Where are you taking me?”
“To a safe place.”
“Why should I believe you?”
“Because you don’t have much of a choice,” Duke said.
“Julia thinks you had something to do with Ben’s kidnapping. Is that true?”
Duke looked into his rearview mirror and at the parking garage disappearing behind him, where Ahote likely was lying in wait for Sarah.
“That’s right. I did.”
CHAPTER 13
A stream of ice-cold water blasted against the gash in Julia’s hand. Julia cursed under her breath over her failure to catch up to Phoenix Pontiac and her subsequent swan dive onto the concrete to avoid slamming into the car door that had opened out of nowhere in her path.
Julia’s entire family was crammed into her bathroom, while Navarro stood in the hallway, barking orders on his cell phone as he demanded to know why no one on patrol had been able to locate the Subaru yet.
Julia sat on a stool in front of the sink as Helen held Julia’s hand under the water to try and clean out the dirt and gravel that had embedded into a nasty cut that ran the length of Julia’s palm.
Will looked away from Julia’s bloody wound, covered his face with his hands, and started to bawl his eyes out in a quiet, but unrelenting, wail.
“Mom’s okay, sweetheart,” Julia promised. She grabbed Will with her uninjured hand and pulled him close, while trying not to wince as Helen turned the faucet off and used a pair of tweezers to extract with a not-so-forgiving touch the leftover debris that the water didn’t remove.
“Don’t cry,” Logan said, and put his arm on his brother’s shoulder. “Mom just hurt her hand
is all, but she’ll be okay.”
“You need stitches,” Helen said. “Sit still and stop wiggling. It wouldn’t kill you to be still for a minute. It’s after hours, so I’m taking you to urgent care.”
“I don’t have time for a doctor. I just need a Band-Aid.”
“If your cut isn’t bad, how come Uncle Ray won’t look at it?” Logan asked.
“He’s on the phone,” Julia said.
“Please. He shoots people, but can’t handle seeing a little blood from his lady friend,” Helen said.
“I’m not scared of blood,” Logan said, and shot a suspicious look in Navarro’s direction. “If you don’t get all the dirt out, you can get an infection.”
Logan reached up in the medicine cabinet and pulled out a tube of Neosporin. He squeezed some out on the palm of his hand and began to dab it on his mother’s wound.
“Thank you, Logan. That’s just what I needed. Since we’re all here, I wanted to tell you, Uncle Ray is going to spend the night.”
“You’re having a sleepover?” Logan asked.
“No, nothing like that. I’m working on a story and Uncle Ray is going to help me. It’s going to take a while, so he’s going to sleep on the sofa,” Julia said, feeling bad that she was lying to her family, but she couldn’t tell them about her earlier encounter in Sparrow and that Navarro was staying at the house to ensure nothing would happen.
“Mr. Raymond is too big to sleep on the couch,” Helen said.
“He’ll be fine,” Julia answered.
“Maybe I should sleep in your room tonight, to be sure you’re okay,” Logan said.
“Too many worrywarts in this house over a tiny cut. Everyone is going to sleep in their own room tonight, and it’s probably time for little boys to go to bed.”
“It’s summer and it’s only eight thirty,” Logan said. “Could we have a few more minutes?”
“Okay, fifteen minutes, though. That’s it,” Julia said.
“Did you eat?” Helen asked.
“I’ll open a can of soup,” Julia answered.
“A can of soup? Not in this house,” Helen snipped. “You should change. And a shower would help. I don’t think even a cat would drag you in, the way you look right now.”
“Thanks for the compliment,” Julia answered.
“Mom looks beautiful,” Logan said. “Will, do you want to watch something on TV?”
Logan’s attention perked Will up immediately, cementing Julia’s theory that Logan was trying to be the man of the house. Despite the fact Julia didn’t want her eldest son to feel like he had to carry that burden, it was working in everyone’s favor for now. Will stopped crying and looked up at his older brother with rapt admiration.
“Come on then,” Helen said. “Follow me. If everyone is good, there may be ice cream.”
Julia watched as her family left and felt a familiar melancholy settle around her, now that she was left alone with her memories that had intensified since she saw Duke. Julia turned the shower on and allowed herself the luxury of feeling the hot water soothe her. Julia looked at the water circling the drain and thought about the charm bracelet Ben had given her on her seventh birthday. The morning after Ben went missing, Julia had returned from a marathon session at the police station, where she had been questioned all night. Tough work for a seven-year-old. Julia had returned home exhausted, but knew before she could let herself fall asleep, she’d need to find the bracelet that she had discovered missing from its usual place on her wrist when she woke up in the closet that night and couldn’t find Ben.
Back then, Julia had somehow believed if she could just find the charm bracelet, Ben would come home. But Julia had searched the entire house all morning, and her precious gift with the boy-and-girl charm had vanished along with her brother.
Julia put the water on the coldest setting and made herself stand under the freezing spray for a minute, her usual habit, as the cold seemed to awaken her senses until she granted herself a reprieve and got out shivering. Julia towel-dried her dark hair, and as she dressed, she stared vacantly at her reflection in the mirror, wondering what Ben would have looked like as an adult. She had never told anyone, not even Navarro, but she still searched strangers’ faces, hoping—against the most impossible of hopes—that one could belong to her grown-up brother. She knew the improbability of that happening, but she had never been able to stop herself from holding on to a sliver of the fairy-tale ending she knew rarely, if ever, happened in the real world.
Julia opened the top drawer of her bedroom dresser and lifted out a small envelope, where she had tucked the bracelet when she got home. She turned the scenario over in her head, wondering how Phoenix Pontiac could have wound up with something so precious that had once belonged to her and if anything he had told her was the truth.
Julia pulled out the other items in the envelope, the only physical connections that were left between her and Ben, and scattered them across her bed. She ran her fingers gingerly across the New York Yankees pendant Ben had worked so hard to buy after mowing lawns the summer before he vanished. She then lined up four Polaroid pictures that were taken of her and Ben by a man who’d been following them on their last afternoon together on the Sparrow boardwalk. The photos might have been strange things to hold on to, since they had previously been evidence in a criminal investigation, but since they were the only photographs she had of her brother, despite the circumstance of how they were shot, Julia had to keep them.
Julia took in the image of the last Polaroid, one that she had looked at hundreds of times, but each time she looked at it afresh, it stopped her cold. The picture was of her and Ben, their backs to the camera. Julia wore a thin jumper and looked up toward her brother, who was holding her hand, as the two neared the entrance of Funland, a seaside amusement park in their hometown. Julia wondered if the survivors, the “lucky” ones who were left behind, felt like she did, that time was forever frozen back to the moments before their lives blew up into a million stinging pieces that could kill you if you held on to them too tight.
Julia tucked the items back inside the envelope as the sound of laughing little boys made its way down the hallway from the living room. Julia followed in the direction of the noise to find Navarro now off the phone and with Will sitting high up on his shoulders.
“Be careful,” Julia warned.
“There’s no way I’m letting this kid fall,” Navarro answered.
“It doesn’t matter, Mr. Navarro,” Logan said. “Will could still hit his head on the ceiling.”
“Sorry, I guess the ride’s over,” Navarro told Will. He gently lowered Will to the floor and turned to Logan. “What’s with this ‘Mr. Navarro’ stuff? I thought I was ‘Uncle Ray’?”
“You’re not really my uncle.”
“That’s true, but I’ve known you since birth, so I think I’ve earned uncle status, but you can call me whatever you want.”
Helen put down two plates of pierogies on the kitchen counter, along with her stuffed cabbage rolls, for Julia and Navarro, and a bowl of ice cream each for Logan and Will.
Logan took a stool next to his mother and studied Navarro like a cop trying to figure out the true motive of a perp. “How come you don’t have kids?” Logan asked.
“I never got married,” Navarro answered.
“Why is that?” Logan asked.
“The girl I loved married someone else.”
“Do you have a girlfriend now?” Logan asked.
“I do.”
Logan’s eyes seemed to relax from inquisitor mode, the answer apparently satisfying him, and he dug into his bowl of vanilla ice cream.
“Your parents like her?” Logan asked.
“My mom died when I was eleven,” Navarro said.
“Enough with the questions, Logan,” Julia said, trying to keep the conversation far away from Navarro’s childhood, which was as turbulent as her own. Navarro’s dad had strangled Navarro’s mother to death as an eleven-year-old Navarro watched on as
he hid under the kitchen table.
“Is your dad still alive?” Logan asked, ignoring his mother’s request.
“He’s in prison,” Navarro answered. “I haven’t seen him since I was a kid. My nana, my grandmother, she raised me.”
“Your dad is in prison?” Logan asked.
“This isn’t a good conversation for children,” Helen said. “Prisons, dead mothers. Next you’ll be showing the boy your gun.”
“Your dad must’ve done something pretty bad to go to prison. Are you ashamed of him?” Logan asked.
“I don’t spend much time thinking about my father.”
Julia shot Navarro a silent, pleading look, and he seemed to get the message.
“So you’re in camp?” Navarro asked.
“Yeah, it’s okay. I have to go because my mom works. Do you really have a gun on you?” Logan asked. “Why do you need a gun in our house, unless something bad is going on?”
“Nothing bad is going on,” Julia said.
“No one tells me what’s really happening, because I’m a kid, but I’ve seen bad things, and I’m not afraid.”
“I know,” Navarro answered. “What you did to try and save your mother and brother back at your old lake house a couple of years ago, that was brave. People always think they’d know what to do in a dangerous situation, even cops. But when they’re really in it, most people run away from the danger, instead of running right toward it.”
“That’s it. Time for bed,” Julia said.
“Can Uncle Ray take me?” Logan asked. “I want to ask him something.”
“It’s Uncle Ray again. That was quick,” Helen said. “Nice way to butter up the child. I must learn your techniques, I think.”
Julia looked over to Navarro and he nodded his consent.
“Fine by me, as long as it’s a Mom-approved question. Got it, little man?” Julia asked.
“Sure,” Logan answered.
“Okay, my friends, pajamas, toothbrushing, and bed. Mom has a lot of work to do tonight,” Julia said.
Julia shoveled down three bites from her plate of pierogi and stuffed cabbage, kissed Logan on his forehead, and scooped up Will, carrying him in her arms until they reached his bedroom. She changed him into his Superman pajamas and brushed his white-blond hair with her fingers as she thought about her childhood home in Sparrow and the first seven years of her life spent with Duke and Marjorie Gooden. Julia squeezed her little boy’s hand in hers, and prayed that despite the fact she was not always the perfect mother, at least her sons felt safe and loved.
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