by Chris Mooney
“You may be right.”
“All due respect, I don’t want a repeat of what happened at Long Beach and Cudahy. I can’t be effective if I’m out here.”
Sebastian agreed. “Come home,” he said. “But keep your people on Faye and the boyfriend. Paul might make a move on them.”
He finished dressing and headed downstairs. Faye sat at the kitchen table, sipping coffee, ready for the day. She was no longer wearing her sling. The gunshot wound on her shoulder was healing quite well, Maya had told him—a thin pinkish scar that had quickly turned white and would fade in less than a week.
Faye got to her feet. “Coffee?” she asked.
“I’ll get some at the office.” Sebastian had been spending a lot of time at his real estate company, pretending to be busy. His employees were glad to see him, anxious for some face time. A lot of people asked about Frank, where he was vacationing, if he was enjoying himself. Asked when Frank was coming back.
Sebastian followed Faye outside. Across the street, at the corner of Stapleton, he saw a navy blue sedan with tinted windows slide to a stop. The tint was so dark, the windows looked black.
Sebastian thought of the handgun tucked comfortably in the shoulder holster, underneath his suit jacket. He told himself he was being paranoid. Foolish. A hit wasn’t going to go down here at his home, in broad daylight.
The car turned onto his street. Sebastian spotted a pair of hockey puck–sized antennas on the roof. No hubcaps. A government car, definitely.
And it was heading toward him.
The Ford sedan pulled up against the curb at the bottom of the driveway. The engine died. The driver’s-side door opened, and out stepped a tall black guy dressed to the nines. The suit jacket had been tailored to accommodate the nine clipped to his waist, and he wore mirrored sunglasses.
He’s not here for me, Sebastian thought. The guy was opening the passenger’s door. Sebastian saw a flash of dark, shoulder-length hair. The woman walking around the front of the car, dressed in jeans and stylish sunglasses, looked like Ava.
Holy shit.
It was Ava.
What was she doing here?
His thoughts were scrambled. He had a flashback to the night he had pulled up in front of her house, promising himself that he would reach out to her. That promise wasn’t fulfilled because life got in the way, and now here she was. . . . Why?
The answer came to him, and he felt his throat close up and his stomach drop. She knows I’ve been watching her. Somehow, she found out and she came here to put a stop to it.
No. Ava wouldn’t have come all the way here to deliver that message. Or maybe she would. The Ava he had known had no problem with confrontation.
But she wouldn’t have brought a Fed with her.
Faye had come around from the other side of the Jaguar.
“Go inside,” he said to Faye. “I’ll come get you when I’m ready.”
Then he walked away, down the driveway, to meet Ava. The Fed—and Sebastian was sure the guy was a Fed—lingered a few paces behind her.
Sebastian felt an odd collection of feelings flapping around inside his chest, like bats trapped in an attic. He wanted a chance to catch his breath, take a few minutes to process what was happening. Shore up his mental defenses, maybe. He wasn’t quite sure why, other than that seeing her up close felt more real and more intimate than watching her through a pair of binoculars.
Ava came to a stop. Her face went slack, and she seemed unsteady on her feet, maybe a second or two away from crumbling.
“What is it?” he asked, rushing to her. “What’s wrong?”
The last time he had seen Ava cry was the day he got sentenced to life in prison. She was crying now.
Sebastian reached for her. She didn’t flinch or pull away, and when he took her in his arms and rubbed her back and told her whatever was wrong, it was okay, he was here, he would help her fix it, she sobbed hard against his chest and he held her, thinking back to how, once upon a time, it was just the two of them, blessed.
* * *
* * *
Sebastian didn’t want to invite Ava inside—the agent would come in with her, too, and he’d have to introduce Faye, and Ron’s men, which he didn’t want to do—so he took her out back, so they could have some privacy. The agent, who Ava introduced as Trevor Roosevelt, mercifully stayed in the driveway—at least for the moment.
As Sebastian waited for her to speak, he reminded himself that he was safe, out here in the open. The house where Bradley Guidry had positioned himself was now occupied by some of Ron Wolff’s men. Still, Sebastian couldn’t shed the feeling that he had a target painted on his back.
Ava cleared her throat.
“It’s my daughter. Grace. She’s a carrier.”
Sebastian felt a hollow core in the pit of his stomach.
“They took her,” she said. “Bloodnappers.”
The hollow core in his stomach expanded, pressing against the soft tissues of his heart and lungs, making it hard to breathe. He felt for her, yes, no question, but he felt some . . . excitement was the wrong word, but it was something close to it. Ava needed him. He didn’t know what for, not yet, but she needed him, and that filled him with hope.
And gratitude. It was as though God, the universe, whatever, was putting them back together.
“When did it happen?”
“Friday night. Late,” Ava said. “She was on her way home from the club. I was on the phone when it happened. I heard everything.” Her bottom lip trembled, but she breathed it back. “The good news is that they’ve reached out. The kidnappers.”
That was good news. People kidnapping carriers from wealthy families were a part of the new blood economy, and while some were, in fact, returned, others were killed, the money gone.
There wasn’t any need to share this with Ava. She had read the same stories.
“How much?”
“Twenty million,” she replied.
“You have that sort of cash on hand?”
“No, not on hand. Not even close.”
But I do, Sebastian thought. A couple of mouse clicks, and within a few minutes he could have the money wired into an account.
He said a silent prayer of thanks to God, his Higher Power. God was giving him this opportunity to do right by her so he could get back the life that had been stolen from him. This was his chance. But for it to happen, he had to find a way to bring Ava’s daughter back alive, because if she died or, God forbid, was already dead, drained, and dumped, Ava would be forever lost to him.
“Whatever you need,” he said, “I’ll help you.”
Ava took off her sunglasses. Her eyes were bloodshot and puffy from crying, but there was a fire in them, and she looked like the woman he had fallen in love with all those years ago—someone ready to do battle. Her voice, too, was clear and strong.
“Sebastian,” she began.
Hearing her say his name turned his blood into gasoline. It surged through his system, making him focus. He went into problem-solving mode. “I know someone who specializes in this area. He does a lot of work with the LAPD Blood Unit.”
“They’re already involved.”
“Who’s in charge there?”
“Alves. I don’t remember his first name.”
Mark. Detective Mark Alves, Ron’s contact in the Blood Unit. Perfect.
“The FBI is really in charge,” Ava said. “Kidnapping, I’m told, is federal territory.”
Sebastian knew that. “And Special Agent Roosevelt is heading up your daughter’s case?”
Ava shook her head. “He just drove me here. He’s driving me to all the people I’m going to ask for money. The lead agent is . . . Parker. Harold Parker. The others, I . . . I’m not sure.” She sighed, frustrated, and rubbed her face. “They’re all blurring together. I haven’t slept sinc
e Friday.”
“How many people know your daughter’s a carrier?”
“Me, my ex, and her primary care doctor, as far as I know.”
“You never told anyone about Grace?”
“No,” Ava replied, her voice firm. “Absolutely not.”
“Grace? She tell anyone?”
“I’d be surprised if she told any of her friends, even the close ones. We taught her from a very early age how important it was to keep that information private, but . . .” Ava swallowed, her face taking on that look he’d seen on so many parents over the years—a mask of denial, and hope that was slowly crumbling. “Charles—he’s my ex—he said he never told anyone, not even people in his family.”
Sebastian thought he detected a note of uncertainty in her voice.
Ava said, “Charles got Grace into this new company that surgically implanted this rice-sized GPS chip in the webbing of her hand. It was broadcasting perfectly. The bloodnappers somehow found out about it, where it was, and . . .” Ava didn’t finish her thought.
Sebastian finished it for her: “They cut it out.”
Ava wrapped her arms around herself and looked at the pool—at the same spot, coincidentally, where Sebastian had stood when he was shot.
“The police aren’t telling us much,” Ava said. “Same with the FBI.”
“And focusing their attention on you, I imagine.”
She turned her head to him, startled. “They are,” she said flatly. “How did you know?”
“Standard procedure, from what I’ve heard. They have to rule you out. Some families of carriers—not a lot, but some—they stage these fake kidnappings, hoping to make a big score.”
“We are not one of those families.”
“Wasn’t suggesting you were. I just wanted to—”
“They’re just going through the motions, collecting information, doing paperwork. To them, Grace is just another case, another statistic, and they can’t— These cases—there’s too many of them, these kids being snatched—”
“Slow down, Ava. I’m going to—”
“They took her by force. At gunpoint. Dragged her out of the car by her hair.”
The day the judge sentenced him, Sebastian felt as though his entire midsection had disappeared. Then he was floating, no longer in his body. He was free, running away from his nightmare, and then cruelly he was snapped back inside his skin, the reality of what had happened crashing down on him like every awful thing, making him feel trapped. Powerless. He felt that way now as he watched Ava break into fresh tears.
Sebastian placed a hand on her shoulder and gently tried to move her closer to him. She resisted, so he slid his hand to her back, felt the muscle constricting in fear.
“Listen to me,” he said gently, but with some force, too.
Her gaze skittered around the ground, the pool, looking for a soft place to land.
“Ava, look at me.” Then, when she did: “You’re not alone in this. I’ll help you. I’m here to help, okay? I’m glad you came to me.”
She searched his eyes, as though his choice of words contained some hidden meaning. And maybe they did, with all the stupid and crazy things he’d done for love. For her.
“We,” Sebastian said, “are going to find your daughter.”
Sebastian saw something in her eyes that for some reason brought to mind an image of a speeding train heading his way.
“Our,” she said. “Grace is our daughter.”
CHAPTER 34
SEBASTIAN’S THROAT CLOSED up, and his insides . . . he didn’t know what was happening inside. His body had left but his mind was still active, and for some reason it was playing a clip from an old Bugs Bunny cartoon he’d seen as a kid—Bugs needing to make a quick escape and, when he did, speeding away like a bullet, a ghost version of himself remaining behind, hovering, before starting to waver, then drifting away, like smoke. That was exactly how he felt right now, this ghost version of himself sitting in his chair while his real self—his soul—had already departed.
Ava had turned in her chair, giving him her full attention.
“I’m sorry,” she said, “to hit you with this.”
Hearing her voice brought him back to the present. He was aware of his racing heart and the tightness in his chest and throat.
“I’m sorry,” she said again. Her tone was consolatory but also hesitant and cautious, and it made him think of a bomb squad guy he’d seen in a movie. Ava had seen him explode, knew how quick he was to anger.
But the anger didn’t come, even when he begged for it. He was in the right here, no question—she deserved to feel his full wrath for keeping something like this from him for so long—but he couldn’t summon his rage, or any other feeling for that matter, and it made him wonder if he had gone into shock. He probably had.
He opened his mouth, swallowed. Opened his mouth again and tried to speak but didn’t know where to start, what to ask first.
Ava wiped at her face. “Let me tell you when it happened,” she said gently. “How everything happened. Okay?”
Sebastian looked down at his hands, wishing he had a drink there, because this was a time when he should be able to drink. He listened to her explain how, on the night he ended up accidentally killing an undercover cop playing gangbanger, her period had been over a week late.
“I planned on telling you earlier in the day, when we went to the Jack in the Box,” Ava said, Sebastian remembering how they’d gone there to fill up on three-for-one tacos before hitting the house party. “I thought I might be pregnant, and I wanted to tell you, but I also wasn’t sure, and I was terrified of, you know, taking a test. When we sat down to eat, though, I couldn’t get the words out, so I decided I’d wait till later, at the party, after I’d had a few glasses of wine.”
But she realized she couldn’t drink if she was pregnant, and while she was at the party, sipping a Coke, the constant “Am I or am I not?” ate at her to the point where she thought she was going to scream. She ducked out, walked five blocks to a convenience store, and bought a test and took it with her into the store bathroom, the tiny space reeking of urine because someone, maybe more than one person, had pissed all over the floor and toilet seat. Squatting over the toilet, she peed on the stick as instructed, and then she paced inside the tight space, her heart pounding with dread and her gaze bouncing back and forth from her reflection in the scratched-out mirror to the crude drawings of genitals and names and numbers for blow jobs and hand jobs, Ava praying to God to please let it not be true—it couldn’t be true, because she had been careful.
Ava said, “I took the test with me outside and walked around the corner. I was so scared, I couldn’t breathe.”
Standing next to a dumpster that stank even worse than the bathroom, she looked at the plastic stick and discovered God’s answer. She couldn’t remember walking back to the party, but suddenly she was there, looking around, and when she saw him, she—
“Crying,” Sebastian said. His mouth was dry, his voice hoarse, hollow sounding. “I found you, and you were crying, and you said that you wanted to go home. That you weren’t feeling well.”
Ava nodded, her eyes down, Sebastian thinking how maybe their lives would have turned out differently if she’d told him at the party. How maybe he wouldn’t have walked her back home and that car wouldn’t have pulled up in front of her house.
“I knew something was wrong that night,” Sebastian said, still feeling separated from his feelings, a wall there. “You were upset, and you wouldn’t tell me.”
“I was trying to—I wanted to. Saying it out loud . . . it would make it real. Force me to acknowledge that every breath I took, cells were dividing and multiplying, forming limbs and a head. A heart.” She swallowed, eyes still downcast. “And then the car came and, well, we know the rest.”
“No,” he said. “Not really.”
>
“What do you mean?”
“You could have told me.”
“When? After the fight?” Her voice was sad now. “Cops were there in minutes, and they separated us, remember? They took you to the side and they—”
“You had plenty of opportunities to tell me afterwards.”
Ava took in a deep breath and held it for a moment. Then she said, “You’re right. I realized that later. I’m not making excuses, but at the time I was nineteen and scared out of my mind—terrified because I was pregnant, and terrified because they arrested you and the judge refused bail.”
“You tell my mother? That you were pregnant?”
“Of course not. Why would I do that to her?”
It was a valid question. But he wondered if knowing she’d be a grandmother would have kept his mother around for a while. Maybe if she’d known about her grandchild, she would have fought harder, instead of so willingly surrendering her fate to God.
The pieces from that time of his life—the things that troubled him, the ones he had no explanation for—were coming together. “That’s why you stopped visiting my mother, why you stopped visiting me in prison. Because you were showing.”
Ava nodded. “I didn’t want you to . . . Seeing me pregnant, me telling you it was yours—I couldn’t do that to you, what you were facing. Having you go away for life and knowing I was pregnant—”
“I would have found a way to help you.”
“You were nineteen.”
“So you kept it all to yourself. Shut me out, my mother—and Frank.”
“I thought that was for the best.”
“A clean slate.” Then he added, bitterly: “For you.”
“At the time, telling you . . . it seemed wrong. Cruel.”
No, Sebastian thought. It would have given me hope. A purpose.
“And,” Ava said, “the pregnancy was difficult, very touch and go. The doctor said I might lose it. If I came there and told you I was pregnant, and then I lost it? I kept thinking about how that would affect you.” She sighed, rubbed her face. “I thought breaking it off, it would hurt, yes—God knows I knew it would hurt you, because it destroyed me. I don’t expect you to believe that, given what I did, but my thinking was, if I broke it off, then you could hate me, and I thought hating me would make things easier for you.”