“The day murder starts to sound reasonable to me is the day I change jobs,” Daniel said, leaning to the side to remove his buzzing cell from his pocket. He stared at the screen, alarm darkening his face. “Damn, Chief, make it three clients. Ruben Carrasco just called in. He found another dead customer, this time out in the county. The sheriff wanted you to know.”
Well, hell. Sam had joked about putting Mila in jail to keep her safe, but it was looking more appealing by the moment. “Go. Tell Jan I appreciate her letting you look over their shoulders.” Jan Latimer was a good sheriff, and part of that was her willingness to accept help. She would be open to input from Daniel.
Daniel had barely made it out the door before Lois came in. Her graying hair wasn’t yet smashed under her ball cap, but it was standing on end as if she’d been pulling at it, a dead giveaway that she was upset. She neither knocked nor waited for an invitation, circling to Sam’s side of the desk and dropping an open book in front of him.
“I knew that note bothered me, but I couldn’t figure out why until this morning. This is the book I was telling you about, the one that creeped me out so much I had to quit reading. Listen to this.” She cleared her throat, but it was still shaky, still heavy with emotion. After a few words, she pushed the book to Sam and stabbed at the place where she wanted him to start.
He read aloud, haltingly, sickened, the muscles in his body winding tighter with fury. “‘I knew the result would be the same... The next thing I knew, I was on the floor, certain that this time he’d broken my jaw, my cheekbone, a tooth or two. “It’s always your damned fault. But you’d better learn good because...”’”
He stopped for a long, heavy moment before finishing. “‘Next time I won’t go so easy on you.’”
Lois’s gaze locked with his. “The girl in that book, Sam, that’s Mila.” She flipped the book shut and read from the cover, “The girl who survived the ‘harrowing ordeal of being raised by serial killers’ is Mila.”
Ben made the protest Sam wanted to but couldn’t. “It’s slim evidence.”
“That girl is twenty-six now. So is Mila. Her parents were killed in a fiery crash in Arizona fifteen years ago. So were Mila’s. That girl’s gramma—gramma, Sam—searched for her for years, just like Mila’s gramma. Gramma in the book had red hair—so did Jessica. The girl calls her her superhero. Mila says the same about Jessica. Gramma in the book calls her daughter Lin. Jessica’s daughter’s name was Lindy.”
“Maybe Mila knew...” Ben broke off halfway through. Ben and Sam—hell, everyone in the department—had trusted Lois’s instincts way too many times to count. And this time it felt...
God help him, it broke his heart to even think it, but it felt right.
* * *
Mila was sitting on Gramma’s couch, an old quilt spread over her, an ice pack on her wrist as she breathed deeply the savory aroma of chicken broth simmering in the kitchen. Jessica was a big believer in the caring and healing properties of food, and homemade chicken and noodles was at the top of her list. A hen filled the big pot, carrots and onions and celery bubbling along with it. Later she would pull out her rolling pin and the flour and make her own noodles. If they didn’t feel better after the meal, it wouldn’t be for lack of trying.
When the knock sounded at the door, Jessica waved her aside and went to check the peephole. Wearing a smile as bright as her orange capri set, she opened the door to welcome Sam, Ben and Lois inside. Mila’s smile that came automatically at the sight of Sam faded when she saw the rigid set of his face. It curled and dissolved into ash when she recognized the book he carried. The Unlucky Ones.
Oh, God, they knew. She wanted to throw back the quilt, rush into the bedroom and hide in the darkest corner of the closet, or maybe she could make it past them out the door and up to the rooftop garden. There was a rickety old fire escape still clinging to the back side of the building. It would surely hold her weight long enough to reach the ground, and she could run like hell.
But there was nowhere to run. Her whole life was right here in this apartment: Gramma, Sam and Poppy. She couldn’t leave them no matter how desperately the need clawed at her.
Jessica had seen the book, too, and her face went blank. She stood awkwardly, as if everything in her world had suddenly tilted askew and she didn’t know how to right it. She gestured toward the sofa and chairs but couldn’t come up with the words to invite their guests to sit.
Ben and Lois sat down, and Gramma joined Mila on the couch, but Sam remained standing. Though he didn’t move a muscle from his spot between his two officers’ chairs, there was an air of tension about him, as if he were moving so hard and so fast that not even a blur betrayed him.
He looked as if he might break if he eased his control one whit. She knew the feeling, and she was so very sorry for bringing it into his life.
After a moment, he stepped forward and set the book on the coffee table. She imagined, if she lifted the dust jacket, she would find the impressions of his fingertips on the cover from being squeezed so tightly. “Is that—” His voice was hard, as tightly controlled as his emotions. She almost didn’t recognize it.
Gramma scooted closer to Mila, grasping her right hand tightly. With a whine, Poppy got up from her spot across the room and came to sit in front of them.
“Yes.” The air rushed out of her lungs on a sigh. She’d never thought she would admit that, not ever, and it felt...freeing. As if muscles she hadn’t been aware of had released their tension, as if worry centers in her brain had taken a great sigh of relief. Her biggest, ugliest secret was out, and she hadn’t dropped dead. She hadn’t freaked out, she wasn’t trying to escape, her heart wasn’t exploding.
It might break later, but right now it was beating steady and strong.
“Jane Gama? Is that—”
“Gama is Spanish for a type of deer. A doe. Jane Doe.”
He nodded once. She was surprised he could do that much without shattering. His emotion was that intense. She couldn’t tell if it was good or bad or a combination of both. If he pitied her, was repulsed by her, feared she might be as crazy and evil as her parents, if he was horrified he’d kissed her, made love to her and even wanted to introduce her to his family.
She couldn’t tell if he blamed her. Surely his police training would temper that, but in a case like hers, didn’t it always creep into the shadowy edges of people’s thoughts: What was so horribly wrong with her that made her parents do what they did?
He opened his mouth, couldn’t find words and closed it again. Pivoting on his heel, he went to stand in front of her favorite window, staring out, his hands clenched tightly. And then he said the last words she’d ever expected to hear. “Your mother’s not dead.”
Lois gasped. So did Gramma, but hers turned into a sorrowful prayer. “Oh, dear God, no.”
Mila stared at Sam’s back, willing him to look at her. “That can’t be,” she whispered. “We saw them recover two bodies. The newspaper the next day said they both died on impact.”
After a long moment, Ben looked Sam’s way, then took over. “Your... Joshua did die. But the dead woman was the one he’d kidnapped. Lindy jumped out of the car at the last instant and was very badly injured. It was years before she could leave the hospital.”
Tears slid from Gramma’s face as she keened, low and mournful. Mila tugged her hand free and wrapped her arm around her. They had thanked God for fifteen years that Lindy was dead, and all that time she’d been out there, recovering, regaining her strength so she could punish them.
“She’s the one who tried to kill me,” Mila said flatly. It was a shock that her mother was alive, but not this part of it. Lindy had always hated her, always wanted her destroyed. She must blame Mila for Joshua’s death, for her own injuries. Blaming others was what Lindy did.
Lois came to sit on the other side of Jessica, hugging her, too. Did any of the officer
s understand that it wasn’t just the shock of finding out that Lindy had survived, but also of learning after years of freedom that she and Gramma had failed in their grand escape? They’d just had a fifteen-year-break from the terror that was her mother.
As if reading her mind, Sam finally turned, finally locked gazes with her. She couldn’t read anything in his but that taut control. His words, though the tone was harsh and stiff, were encouraging. “You’re not a child anymore, Mila, and you’re not alone.”
She would have felt less alone if he’d embraced her or touched her shoulder or held her hand. But first he’d have to unknot those fists that whitened his fingers.
Papers rustled as Ben opened a folder. He leaned forward to show her a photograph. “Is that your father?”
It was hard to look at the demon from her past, but she forced herself, a little voice in her head chanting, He’s dead dead dead. And you’re not alone. “Yes.”
Another photo. “Is that your mother?”
This time it was hard not to look. The woman who had brought her into the world. The woman who had fully intended to take her out of it. The woman who wasn’t dead dead dead. Pressing her hand to her mouth, she nodded.
One more picture. “This is what she looked like three months after the accident.”
Scars, lone wisps of hair, a face that didn’t fit together right, bandages, raw places that hadn’t yet healed... In an impersonal only-human way, it saddened Mila that the woman in the photo, who’d once been pretty, friendly, high energy—manic, Dr. Fleischer said—now elicited only shock, fear, pity or morbid curiosity.
One last picture. “That’s just before she let Poppy out of the car Saturday.”
“Oh.” Mila’s gasp was more vehement than she’d intended, and it made both Sam and Ben look at her expectantly. “I—I, uh, saw this woman. Just down the street. A week ago. The night we—” Sam hadn’t tried to hide anything from his officers, but she wasn’t sure if he wanted that to change. “The night Poppy and I ran into you and we went to Braum’s.”
She recounted the meeting for them, shuddering to remember how empty the street had been. The woman—her mother—had even commented on it. She also recalled how unnatural her hair had looked. A wig to hide the fact that much of it had never grown back? Even then, Mila had been torn whether the stranger was a man or a woman. Fast-forward to Saturday at the creek, no wig, convincing her the attacker was a man.
Her mother. She had been that close to her mother. How could she not have sensed something?
Because Lindy had always hated her, and she had always feared Lindy. And because last week she’d still believed Lindy was dead.
Sam dragged his hand through his hair, then pinched the bridge of his nose. “You two don’t leave this apartment for any reason. Lois, you’re staying here. If Poppy needs to go out, you have the officer downstairs take her. Okay?” He took a few steps, then turned back, his gaze connecting with Mila’s again. “You should know... Ruben and the crew discovered another body this morning. Mrs. Baker, out off Pickett Prairie Road. Lindy’s going to be angry that you weren’t there to see it.”
Sadness welled inside Mila for Mrs. Baker, who babysat her great-grandkids every weekend and relied on Mila every Monday to undo the damage they’d done to her garden. And emotion welled for herself, too, and Gramma, Sam, Lois and everyone else.
Mila had survived this awful nightmare once, but her relationship with Sam might not. Lindy was out for vengeance, and if Sam was right, Mila’s absence this morning would have infuriated her. Normal Lindy was a formidable force. Furious Lindy was a tragedy waiting to happen.
Mila prayed that this time she was her own victim.
* * *
Monday was officially a horrible day that should never be remembered again. Jessica had tried to make things as normal as possible, but tears kept coming, and Lois kept wiping them away. They were close in age and seemed as if they’d known each other forever instead of a few days. Watching them made Mila, for quite possibly the first time ever, fully yearn for a best girlfriend, not an idealized, read-about-it version, but the sort of deep connection she watched with Gramma and Lois.
Mila was missing a lot of things this evening. Sam was chief among them, but there was more. Her fledgling sense of normalcy had flown right out the window and wasn’t coming back. The guilt she’d largely managed to avoid for the Carlyle, Greeley and Baker families’ losses. The pride that she and Gramma had salvaged wonderful lives out of the destruction of their own.
The confidence that her mother could never hurt her again. Just the fact that Lindy had survived took some of the shine and accomplishment out of their lives. The idea that she would kill people she’d never even met just to get at Mila...
What was so horribly wrong with her that her parents had become monsters? They’d been okay before her birth, and killers after. Was she somehow responsible for that?
It was nearly nine o’clock when Ben Little Bear arrived, a duffel slung over his shoulder. Lois had left when her shift ended, replaced by another officer. Mila had hoped Sam would at least come for dinner. She’d hoped he would call and say, “It’s okay,” even if it might not be true. Even if he’d just come by, squeezed her fingers and given her the sorriest excuse for a smile he could summon, she would have felt stronger.
But he hadn’t.
Jessica reheated the chicken and noodles for Ben, served him a huge slice of fruit cocktail cake, and offered him the third bedroom. He opted for pillows and blankets on the sofa instead.
Mila dithered for a moment, knowing the polite thing to do was go to her room and leave him to rest in peace. She just needed to know...
Finally, standing on one foot in the hallway, her other foot poised to head to her room, she glanced back. “Is...is Sam...”
Something crossed Ben’s face. She didn’t know him well enough, didn’t know people well enough, to make a guess at it, but it made her want to run to the guest room and hide in the shadows.
“It’s been a long day,” Ben said cautiously, but then he seemed to be a man who always spoke cautiously. “He’s known the Baker family a long time, and he’s still got all the chief things to do, and now we’re coordinating with the sheriff’s department, too, and... He was still at his desk when I left.”
She swallowed hard. “Is he...reading that book?” She couldn’t say my book, not yet. It was odd, how writing it could have lifted such a burden from her, but having someone she loved read it created an unbearable burden of its own.
Ben’s nod was quick, making her heart sink.
“Well...good night.”
She was six feet down the hall when he spoke. “It’ll be all right.”
She smiled tightly but didn’t speak until she was inside her room, the door closed at her back. “I wish I could believe you,” she whispered.
* * *
Sam closed the book and set it on his desk, but he was half-afraid to shut his eyes, even though exhaustion dragged at him. He would have found the story unsettling under the best of circumstances, but this...
How did someone do those things to another human being? To a child? How did they lose the capacity to recognize right from wrong? Mila’s parents had had so many chances along the way, but at every turn they chose the bad thing, the mean thing, the unforgivable thing. Even now, after the miracle recovery she’d been through, Lindy’s only apparent goal was to punish her daughter for Joshua’s death. She was a sick individual who shouldn’t be walking around free.
But they had to find her before they could lock her up.
The numbers on the wall clock showed it was only midnight, but his body felt as if he’d been battered in combat for thirty hours straight. He needed to go home. To get some sleep. Or run ten or twenty miles to exhaust his anger. He needed to scrub away every image conjured by the book—every insult, every hurt, every slap, every mom
ent of terror those monsters had put Mila through.
He needed to see her, touch her, tell her how incredibly proud he was of her, of her strength and resilience and courage. To apologize for the shock and impotence that had kept him at a distance today, until his brain had processed some of the outrage, heartache, the helplessness.
He left his office, calling goodbye, and walked out into the hot, still night. His truck sat under a streetlamp in its usual spot, but he walked past it. He continued west until he came to the intersection where a right turn would take him to Mila, a left would take him home. He could see her bedroom from there, looking mostly dark until his eyes adjusted and caught the faint glow of the night-light. It was a wonder she could bear the dark at all.
His heart hurting, he turned left. If she’d managed to find sleep tonight, he wouldn’t disturb it. He would send her a text to await her in the morning.
It was funny that he was only a block off Main Street but his neighborhood was as quiet as if it sat on the fringes of town. Lights burned at every house—porch lamps mostly, or a living room light softened by blinds. His house was dark inside, but a single green light shone next to the door. Green-light a vet. While he was out of the army, he still offered support where he could.
He pulled the keys from his pocket as he climbed the steps and was half an inch from inserting the house key in the lock when the glider at the far end of the porch creaked and a figure stood. For half an instant, he hoped it was Mila, needing to see him as much as he needed her, but the feel of his muscles going rigid, his hand automatically going to his gun, told him it wasn’t.
“Hello, Chief.”
Sam had never heard the harsh, raspy voice before, but his gut identified it. His first thought was Thank God she’s here and not after Mila. Then he turned to face the stout figure. In the glow of the light, it was hard to determine gender. So much damage to the body, the voice, the mind...though the mind had been damaged beyond repair long before the rest of her.
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