by Brook Wilder
The Caracals had been taking girls and selling them right out of the country. She was going to use that tidbit of information to help gain Roarke’s trust, but now it all seemed to blow up completely in all their faces.
She stood up and walked out.
***
She took the most indirect route possible to get to the police station and stopped several times in convenience stores and gas stations along the way. She wasn’t banking on Roarke’s shaky trust in her. In fact, she’d be shocked if he wasn’t having her followed in some way. So she dodged around town, made it look like she was hunting for a specific brand of cigarettes that she magically got at the gas station that had a back exit she used to cross the vacant lot and into the back entrance of the police station.
“Hot plate,” she called out, letting the door slam behind her. It was their code for shut-up-and-pay-attention.
“That much of a wild night at the birthday party?” James asked. She glared at her uncle. “Something serious then?”
There was no one more skilled than this man at flipping from playful to deadly stern in seconds. She’d been on the unfortunate end of that a few times when she’d snuck in late during her teenage years and was caught smoking when she was sixteen. Right now, she was thankful for that level of focus.
“The youngest Withers kid has gone missing,” she said. “Female, twenty-one, essentially matches all the other missing girls the Caracals have been taking.”
“What’s happening down there now?”
“Roarke Withers took half his gang out on a search on their hogs. It almost blew my cover right off the bat,” she said.
“What happened?” James asked, stepping forward and placing his coffee down.
“It was bad timing to be the party crasher the night the guest of honor goes missing. It’s been rectified. As far as I can tell. He’s got bigger fish to fry right now.”
“Put out an all points,” James said, turning to the officers behind him. “Get her picture, her description. But this stays a police matter. If they start seeing missing posters it won’t take a lot of math to figure out how we got tipped. That being said, I want to find this girl before the Pharaohs do, so light a fire under your asses and go.”
All laziness vanished as coffee and donuts were dropped, bodies sprang out of chairs. Hanna dropped into a chair and didn’t give a care for her carefully placed makeup as she rubbed her eyes and forehead. She knew there was very little chance of the night going to plan at all, or at least vaguely pleasant. But she didn’t expect the action this quick, or to be on the defense.
“You doing okay kid?” James asked, sitting on the desk in front of her.
“Yeah, just tired. Putting up with Withers is a real pain in the ass,” she said.
“That’s what I was afraid you’d say. Your personal feelings still concern me--”
“Thinking he’s an asshole is hardly ‘personal feelings.’ You make it sound like we slept together.”
“An image I clearly want to have of my surrogate daughter.”
She blushed and cringed and gave him an apologetic smile. It was his turn to rub his eyes, though his skin was more worn, wiser, and far more in need of the attention.
“Isabelle is a good kid,” she said. “I’ve been watching her for a while. The universe’s choice of family for her is unfortunate, but she doesn’t need to be punished for that.”
“We’ll find her.”
She wanted to believe him. But instead she settled for one of the cigarettes she bought and the flask of Wild Turkey she knew one of the secretaries always hid under the greeter desk. One throw back and it was better than trust and hope any day.
Chapter 3
Roarke had been out all night looking for his little sister, even as the clock passed midnight and her birthday was over. All her usual places: the mall, her friends’ houses, that one coffee house on the corner of Saguaro Street. She was not only nowhere to be found, but not a single person in any of the places they visited had seen her, heard from her, or spotted a passing glimpse of her. They’d been all around town, how was it possible that not a single person remembered seeing her? She couldn’t disappear into thin air.
But if the Caracals took her, she very easily could. He shuddered. It was several days later and he had been sleeping only a few hours at most each night. He was sucking back a cigarette for all it was worth while the sun was cutting a sheer line across the sharp horizon, turning the clouds a dusty orange.
He dragged and dragged until his lungs couldn’t take anymore and he had to let it all out in a plume of smoke that caught the sun’s rays for an instant and was beautiful before it was gone and only the same air remained in its place. He repeated the process several times, watching the sundrenched smoke each time, hoping to make it last longer and longer or catch it in his memory a little more permanently.
They hadn’t gone to the cops, they weren’t going to dare and try that. The last thing he needed was a bunch of righteous badge-wavers taking a partnership as an excellent excuse to get distracted and dig into the wrong things. He never trusted cops and he never would.
His cigarette came to its last inch of life and he flung it into the yard, thinking about how some scorpion and snake might be lucky enough to take the last little drag of it. Rick swore once he got a turtle drunk while camping by feeding it hot dog buns that had been soaked in vodka. Animals were smart enough to steal food from humans, why not let them enjoy the more fun parts of life, too?
He walked back into his apartment and shut the door behind him. He was going to go to the auto shop today. He needed to get out of the house and he needed to avoid wandering around town, looking for his sister’s face in every woman he walked past and every store he ducked into.
He started by getting dressed. He threw on one of his tee shirts, stained over the years with oil spills and grease. He threw on jeans with equal amounts of grime covering the fabric, this time with tears and broken seams on patches. He loved the residual smell of gas and oil on the clothes. Isabelle would tell him it was because smell was the strongest sensory memory. She’d always been smart about things like that, far smarter than he ever could be. He remembered summers with his grandfather, taking apart bikes and cars and putting them back together just to learn how they worked.
He walked back out into the kitchen and took a painful swallow of what was left of his cold coffee. He followed it down with a swig of Jack from the bottle. He felt a little more prepared for the day. He’d eat some microwave-warmed gas station breakfast sandwich and a bag of chips and pretend it was summer with his grandfather and everything was as it should be.
***
She was there. The mysterious visitor from the party. She was dressed a little more casually now. Her clothes were still tight, showing off the tone of her limbs, but the neckline sat at an acceptable distance from the base of her neck and there was no chance for the fabric at her waist to ride up and show off the cut muscles of her tight stomach.
Roarke immediately felt himself go a little bit red, thinking about how things had gone last time.
“I just can’t keep you away,” he said, walking over to her and dropping his duffel bag on the table, taking off his leather jacket.
“I meant what I said at the party,” she said. “I want out of the Caracals. I always get what I want.”
Oh, I bet.
He sighed and crossed his arms. He dropped his gaze to stare at his worn leather shoes.
“I think--and I don’t do this often, or ever, so take it and never talk about it again--but, I owe you an apology,” he said, forcing himself to lift his eyes to find her sparkling blue ones. His grandfather always taught him to look people in the eye, even when you were wrong, especially then.
“Apology?”
“I shouldn’t have accused you. Or at least shouldn’t have--manhandled you, the way I did,” he said.
“I understand. It’s scary. I wouldn't trust me either.”
Roarke fel
t the air between them relax and he let out a breath he didn’t realize he’d been holding onto. He didn’t crave vindication. He made a point to never apologize to anyone unless they were family. But he wanted her to trust him, to like him, maybe even smile at him. He wanted her to know that he knew he was wrong, that it wouldn’t happen again. He wasn’t sure to what end these hopes stretched.
That was a lie. He knew exactly what he wanted, it was waiting below the tight button of her pants and the thin fabric of her shirt. He wasn’t going to pretend he didn’t want to completely distract himself with thoughts of what glorious skin was hiding underneath her clothes. It made his palms itch and he had to concentrate to keep other parts of him from reacting too.
But he couldn’t pursue that. Not now. He couldn’t be distracted again. And being distracted by her twice while God knew what happened to his sister would only make things as bad as possible in the long run. Still, his skin seemed to kind of sing toward her when their hands came close to brushing as he walked past her to grab a wrench from the tool wall. He more than kind of liked it.
“Is there anything in particular you needed?” he asked, keeping his focus on the wall of tools, despite locating the one he needed. She didn’t know that.
“I just wanted to make sure you were okay.”
Roarke wanted so hard not to give into that, not to believe it was real. But her voice was turning into silk in his ears without her even trying. Or maybe she was. That was the scary part. He didn’t know why he was so keen on being paranoid when it came to her. It was probably a way to push her away. He didn’t truly believe she had anything to do with his sister’s disappearance, and didn’t that night, despite his ravings. It was easier to blame the newcomer and easier to keep her away if he thought she was somehow dangerous.
So he’d keep trying.
***
Hannah had been waiting outside the auto shop for several hours a day, waiting to see if Roarke would show. The Greasy Sphinx wasn’t exactly renowned for its abilities to help you pass inspection on your car or renew your registration. But they’d tracked several hit and runs to this auto shop for body work on the implicated vehicles. They hadn’t done anything to bust them yet because it was always a wealth of information and a quick way to find someone. Besides, shutting the shop wouldn’t stop the auto accidents, her uncle had reasoned.
She stayed as inconspicuous as she could, sitting in the Australian coffee shop across the street, at a stool at the front window counter. She kept her sunglasses on and wore an oversized Texans hoodie. She sipped on bitter Americanos and watched for hours, occasionally pretending to read a book to appease any nosey workers, but always keeping one eye on the shop, looking up to check whenever something moved in her periphery in front of the store.
It took several days for Roarke to finally show up. His infuriating strut wasn’t hampered by his sister’s vanishing but when she sprang to enter the shop, she saw the paleness around his face and the shadows around his eyes like battle scars of insomnia. He looked almost like a person she could pity. Pity, but not truly empathize with. She wanted the girl found for her own sake, and not because her meathead brother needed someone to coddle him.
“You can do that by keeping to yourself for a while,” he said after she told him she wanted to help.
“What?”
“It’s not like it’s really your problem.”
He was keeping his back to her. She wasn’t stupid. She took plenty of body language courses in the academy. She knew a dismissal, even one as malformed and poorly executed as his. For a gang leader, he lacked any real couth. Not that she expected any of them to have it, using guns and motorcycles to do their talking for them. Especially not this particular gang leader.
“It doesn’t need to be ‘my problem’,” she said. “Believe it or not I can just want to make sure a young woman gets home safe and sound.”
“We don’t need help. My best guys are on it.”
“Yeah, riding around half drunk on motorcycles stopping anyone with black hair right?”
She finally got him to turn around. He looked angry, annoyed, but there was no real venom in his stare. No intelligent gaze to pry away her secrets. It only enticed her to stare back, to dare him to reject help finding his little sister.
“You’re allowed to admit what you don’t know,” she said, crossing her arms.
“And you do know?”
“I was in the Caracals. You seem to keep forgetting that.”
“Alright then, since you’re such a goddamn expert, tell me: where’s my sister? Where’d they take her? Who’s the kidnapper and who’s the point man in the whole thing?”
“Accepting help doesn’t make you weak, but your sleep deprived ranting and glares certainly do.”
“Do me a favor and get out of my shop before I break a carburetor or have you thrown out.”
“Big, tough man.”
“Don’t think I won’t throw you out myself.”
He stepped in close to her. Very close. She could feel the heat coming off of every exposed part of him. Heat from work, sweat from the muscles in his arms going taut as he worked with cars. And heat from the unsettling anger that continued to boil a little bit more vicious on his face every second.
“Put a hand on me, lose the hand,” she said seriously.
Then she turned to walk out, throwing every curse word she could think of around in her head. She didn’t give him the chance so say a word back as she let the door, affixed with a sign that read “don’t slam, hinges broken,” slam hard against the wood of the door frame. She let the crack play her out of the building and walked onto the street without a break in stride. A few people watched her as walked and she waited to listen for Roarke yelling after her, but his chase never came. So she kept walking.
Chapter 4
Hanna did several days of work on her own, and with a little help from James.
“It’s impressive, for sure,” he said with a sigh.
“Impressive?”
“Don’t take that to mean I’m impressed. To disappear completely in a bar full of people all focused on buying you as many drinks as possible and then to be seen nowhere in town for days after? It’s unsettling, downright frightening for some moms out there, but impressive.”
“I find it horrifying.”
“I don’t disagree.”
She’d been going to the police station late at night. She doubted Roarke was still having her followed since his main concern now seemed to be keeping her as far away from the entire ordeal as possible. But she wasn’t about to blow it all on a cheap mistake like walking in broad daylight into a police station without a care in the world.
“So what resources are you putting on this?” she asked, turning her spinning chair to face him and crossing a leg over the other.
“A few,” he said matter-of-factly. “For a number of reasons, before you get huffy in the face. It’s vital to your cover that they have no idea we know. So I can’t risk blowing a larger operation but getting too gung ho about a missing girl. Terrible as it is, sacrifices have to be made where they have to be made. We have to keep our energy obviously focused on official investigations.”
She wanted to think that it sounded political, bureaucratic. But she knew he was right. If Roarke even suspected that the police knew something about the disappearance, then she’d be in deep shit. He was pig headed and incredibly infuriating. But he wasn’t dumb. He’d know exactly who to come for if something went a way he didn’t like. So instead of focusing her irritation of all that on her uncle, she focused on Roarke’s smug face.
“So you know your next question,” her uncle said, taking a sip of coffee and raising an eyebrow at her.
“My next question?”
“This is the part where you ask me ‘what can I do’ and I tell you that you need to just be patient,” he said. “The last thing we need is you getting unnecessarily hurt in all this.”
“The last thing ‘we’ need or you n
eed?” she asked.
He lifted up his hands in surrender. “Guilty as charged, but I won’t apologize for it, Laura.”
She shook her head and sighed, turning her chair back to the computer screen that continued to hold no answers. She loved her uncle, he was all she knew, she’d die for him. But, God, did she hate working for him. They’d had plenty of fights about it over the years. No matter what he said, she was his niece first and cop second. And before either of those things, she was the small girl he raised on his own.
She poured over the documents detailing everything they knew about Isabelle Withers. She had lived in Los Indios all her life. She worked as a bartender at the Pharaohs bar and a secretary at the auto shop. Based on her tax records, both jobs had been cash only, under the table deals. That was something she was willing to overlook in the face of all of this. Let the feds deal with getting their money. She’d been working there since she was a teenager. As far as profile went, Hannah would say that this girl was brainwashed from birth.