by Virna DePaul
He’d been secretive about his work when they were stationed in Eastern Europe, too, sometimes disappearing for a week or more, supposedly at forward operating bases on assignments he refused to discuss.
It was common knowledge that black ops personnel operated under neutral cover identities. He really was a tech wiz. But she’d gotten more than one glimpse of the amazing weaponry he designed and used.
If the evil thing that had attacked her came back, Nick wouldn’t miss a second time. Partly because she wouldn’t be there to fuck up his aim. Least she could do.
Barrett was less tense than she had expected to be. Which might have to do with her and Nick and crazy sex. What a night. It had been intense. As a lover, he was one of a kind.
The only one she’d ever really wanted to keep. Probably just as well she’d been booted out of the service, she thought, even though it had been an honorable discharge. She would have hung around him for too long, wanted more than he seemed to want to give her.
She had other things to think about.
Barrett pulled at her constricting seat belt, not wanting to wrinkle her clothes. The conservative navy blue suit and sky-blue blouse she’d changed into for the trip to see the Prescotts looked kinda FBI.
She wasn’t going to tell them she actually worked for the FBI as an agent, however, nor was she going to explain why she hadn’t given them warning she was coming.
It wasn’t polite to show up unannounced but it had been a deliberate decision. Barrett wanted to catch them off guard.
She was going to get some answers. Especially after reading brief but heartbreaking personal stories on the websites she’d visited while looking for Jane. There were only a handful of happy endings and reunions when it came to abducted girls. Most were the victims of violence. And not all of the missing had loved ones searching for them, or even names.
The unidentified dead were duly recorded and buried after a while. Morgues filled up. New victims arrived.
Barrett changed lanes when a big truck started tailgating her. It zoomed past. She saw her exit and sped toward it.
The Prescott house was a solid brick mansion set in beautifully landscaped grounds. The houses in the new Maryland subdivision had been constructed on two-acre lots to provide maximum privacy for their well-heeled residents, who probably didn’t know their neighbors at all.
Barrett stretched out her hand to press the polished brass doorbell. The door swung open before the sound of the chimes died away, revealing a fiftyish man. Barrett noticed that his graying hair was a shade lighter than the charcoal shirt he wore with a dark tie. Dark pants and black wingtips completed what seemed to be a carefully chosen ensemble, on the conservative side. She would have pegged him for a professor even if she hadn’t researched him online and read a few of his published articles in psychology journals. He specialized in adolescent dysfunction. “Mr. Prescott? I’m Barrett Miles. A friend of Sarah Small’s. I’m sorry to just drop in like this, but I was in town and wanting to see if you’ve gotten any new information about Jane.”
His brow furrowed for several seconds, then cleared. “Of course. Ginny said you’d spoken. Please, you can call me Malcolm. We’re almost like family, after all.” Somehow the words sounded rehearsed, and his face had become expressionless.
Barrett smiled politely.
“Please come in.” He stepped aside to let her enter.
“Thanks.”
His gaze stayed on her, but suddenly Malcolm Prescott smiled back, as if he had just remembered he was supposed to. Barrett tried to think nothing of it. The few shrinks she knew personally—though not well—were all a little nutty.
She walked into a double-height foyer. The arched window above it was covered with drawn curtains that made the entrance rather dim.
A slender woman with cropped brown hair rose from a modern beige sofa as they entered the living room. Barrett’s first impression of the room was of absolute tidiness.
The space had been decorated in neutral tones, none of which stood out or caught the eye. The four throw pillows on the sofa hadn’t been thrown but placed diagonally on their points an equal distance apart. The magazines on the sparkling glass coffee table had been arranged with similar precision and looked unread. Across from the sofa was a glass-doored fireplace stacked with never-to-be-burned birch logs.
The message was Don’t Touch. With a postscript: Don’t Breathe. The vibe was startlingly similar to her mother’s showplace houses. Barrett couldn’t imagine Sarah’s creative, gentle daughter being happy in this environment. She felt a renewed wave of guilt that made her sick at heart.
“Ginny, I’m Barrett.”
“Barrett. Of course. I remember you from the pictures Sarah showed me before she died.” She wrung her hands. “Do you have any information on Jane?”
“I’m afraid not. I was hoping you …”
Closing her eyes briefly, Ginny shook her head. “Nothing.”
Malcolm summoned a housemaid using a bell mounted in the wall and turned to Barrett. “What would you like? A drink? Soda?”
“A cold ginger ale would be very nice. Thanks.”
Once seated, they got through the requisite small talk—and nervous apologies on both sides for not being in touch over the years.
Ginny gave Barrett a mournful look. “My poor little half sister,” she said in a watery voice. “We were so many years apart and we never lived in the same house. But I did care for her and I wanted to do right by her daughter.”
“I’m sure you’ve done your best for Jane,” Barrett said, thinking it was more than she could say about herself.
The older woman composed herself, pulling her navy blue dress down over her knees. “Yes. Of course.” She glanced somewhat nervously at her husband.
“Jane has tremendous potential but she also has multiple issues,” Malcolm said vaguely. “Unresolved grief for her deceased mother is one, of course. It manifests as inappropriate rage and threats of self-harm, that kind of thing.”
He sounded almost bored, as if Jane wasn’t his foster daughter, but more like a subject for an article. He confirmed Barrett’s take on the situation by looking through the magazines on the table and holding up a professional journal with his photo on the cover.
“As you may know, I’m an expert in the field of adolescent psychology. Jane’s case is atypical but her behavior isn’t far from the norm. If you’d like to read it, I wrote up her case.” He handed the journal to Barrett. “Of course I changed her name and other identifying details.”
Big of him. Some expert. More like a pompous ass, Barrett thought. Just listening to him was bringing back unwelcome memories. Her own rebellious streak had been managed, if that was the right word, by her mother’s pet shrink, Dr. Agee. He’d echoed every single one of Mrs. Miles’s negative opinions of her daughter and prescribed pills that Barrett refused to take.
“Mal, she knew you were talking about her,” Ginny said sharply. “That was when she began to withdraw. And she didn’t always come home, though that was nothing new.”
Years ago, Barrett had heard Sarah say the same thing. “What did you do when that happened?”
“I waited here,” Ginny began. “Right by the phone. Waited and waited, just in case—”
Her husband interrupted her. “Jane never called. Simply put, she was developmentally unable to take genuine responsibility for her actions. But I took the time to drive around and look for her—I knew her favorite haunts. She usually would come back with me if I spotted her.”
Between him and a ride to the station in a patrol car, Jane evidently hadn’t had much of a choice.
“I was able to reason with her when no one else could,” Malcolm added. “Her boyfriends didn’t want any trouble with the law. She certainly didn’t want to be remanded to a youthful-offenders facility. Did I mention that I also consult for the county juvenile justice system?”
Malcolm was a fountain of information, very little of which made him look good.
>
“No. How interesting,” Barrett said. “So you must know everyone from the local cops up to the judges.”
“I do, yes.”
“But Jane was never in any real trouble, was she?”
“Actually, no,” he answered thoughtfully. “She had me to thank for that.” Another smug smile. “I kept the boys at bay and I kept her out of jail. Things changed abruptly after she met Dante.” Despite the fact the boy had been violently murdered, Malcolm’s use of his name dripped with disdain.
Barrett mentally added controlling and jealous to his personality description.
“She always confided in me the most when we were in the car,” he rambled on. “Our time together was effective therapy. Sometimes we drove around for hours.”
Like that didn’t sound super creepy, she thought. But Malcolm Prescott didn’t seem aware of how unsavory his boasting sounded. Conscientious therapists didn’t see clients in their cars. And a responsible guardian ought to have better things to do than drive around with his young ward for hours.
“Which worried me sick,” his wife complained.
“I couldn’t interrupt Jane to check in with you, dear. She had so much on her mind. There were things that she would only tell me.”
His smug reply grated on Barrett. So Malcolm Prescott went out of his way to force a foster daughter who undoubtedly hated him to spend hours in his company, away from his passive wife. Barrett was beginning to understand more and more what Jane’s life had been like. She just hoped she hadn’t suffered anything worse at Malcolm’s hands.
“Since you spent so much time with her, do you know who she talked to online? Because I can’t be sure, but I think I saw her there a few days ago.” Barrett had no plans of telling the Prescotts that she’d spotted Jane in a sex-for-sale lineup. If it turned out that she was wrong, had imagined the resemblance in the fleeting seconds of the girl’s appearance, the consequences could be devastating.
She had to proceed carefully. In no way could she represent herself as investigating in an official capacity. She was here in Maryland as a friend of the family. Nothing more.
“Was it one of those social media sites?” Ginny asked.
“Not exactly. It was more like a—oh, I can’t think of the right term. And it was only for a few seconds. I’d guess you could call it a party site,” she ventured. “But it didn’t seem like the kind of party a young girl should be attending.”
“You mean she was posting photos from one of those raves?”
“Could’ve been.”
“I—I don’t know anything about what she did online,” Ginny said.
Barrett set aside her slippery glass. The condensation from the iced drink made a puddle on the coaster. Ginny took a white cocktail napkin from a square holder and mopped it up, then crumpled the napkin and held it in her fist. She was thin-skinned. Her knuckles seemed nearly as white.
Malcolm deliberately caught Barrett’s eye. She could practically hear what he was thinking. My wife doesn’t have a clue.
What he said was different. “Ginny and Jane just weren’t that close.”
Barrett looked at Mrs. Prescott to confirm her reaction. Without looking back at her, the older woman gave the slightest shake of her head. It was impossible to tell if she agreed or disagreed with her husband’s cold words.
Malcolm got to his feet, seeming impatient. “Barrett, I’d like to show you where Jane hung out, share some very personal things she said to me—would you mind?”
“Do you mean take a drive?”
“Yes. It might help. I’ve already done it, several times, but by myself.” He slid a contemptuous glance at his wife. “I think a fresh eye might pick up something I missed.”
“Maybe.” Barrett didn’t want to go.
“You’re obviously a smart young lady. By the way, I don’t believe you mentioned what it is you do.” He gave a bland smile that was hard to read.
She was on the spot. In her defense, the subject hadn’t come up. But had he deliberately backed her into a corner? There was no way to determine that for certain. So much for not telling them everything. But she could still stall. “I work for the FBI.”
Malcolm’s gaze narrowed.
“Nothing dangerous. Just systems management,” she explained. “You know, data in, data out. Report in triplicate. Someone has to do it.”
“Weren’t you in the army?” The question came from Ginny.
“Yes. I guess Sarah told you that much.”
Ginny’s gaze held hers. Barrett had the strong feeling that Jane hadn’t been the only one trapped in this house.
“I left after a few years,” Barrett said. “Burned out, I guess. And I never had time for my family.”
The Prescotts seemed to buy it. At least they stopped asking questions. Barrett thanked Ginny and followed her husband to a side door that evidently led into a garage.
Malcolm gave her the grand tour of the suburban main drag. The development the Prescotts lived in was one of several around the original small town at their center.
The vehicle was new but crammed with papers and food trash. She pushed aside a crumpled, greasy sack with her foot and he looked down.
“Sorry. Not like the house, is it?”
“I don’t really care.”
“Some of the mess belongs to Jane. I’m not ready to toss it. Not until I know where she is and what’s going on.”
He seemed different in the car, noticeably so. Somewhat less pompous and more real. But Barrett still didn’t trust him.
“Is that the fountain?” There was a boy with a guitar and a girl with a flute, playing together as water jumped behind them in intersecting arcs.
“The one and only. Drowns out the so-called music they play, thank God. Jane went there often. It’s kind of a haven for the arty kids.”
Barrett had been one herself as a teenager. She never went anywhere without drawing paper and about a thousand colored markers, creating complicated abstract drawings that tied together every sad and funny and wonderful and miserable thing in her life.
She saw other kids that didn’t look so arty in the near distance. “Who are they?”
“The punks. They pretty much stick to the other side of the park.”
“Do you have any gangs out here?”
“Not that I know of. But these days they’re everywhere, or so I hear.”
Barrett acknowledged that unfortunate fact with a nod. “Did you ask any of the kids whether they’d seen her?”
“Yes. All of them. She’s well known and well liked.” Prescott’s jaw tightened. “No one’s laid eyes on her for three days. I don’t know what else to do but believe them.”
He pulled the SUV over and parked it, resting his hands on the wheel.
“Look, I’ll be honest with you, Barrett,” he said after several moments of silence. “Ginny and I really aren’t getting along. I guess you could say we’ve been drifting apart. Slowly. Excruciatingly slowly. We probably would’ve filed for divorce if not for Jane. A few months ago Jane found another article, an unpublished one I’d written about a patient she thought was Ginny and confronted me. I tried to explain myself. Big mistake.”
Barrett wasn’t buying Malcolm Prescott’s new, improved story or his sudden honesty. She didn’t trust anyone who could switch personalities so easily. Although it wasn’t that big of a leap from pompous fuck to self-righteous bastard who thought he owned the rights to other people’s lives.
“Anyway, she started acting up awhile ago. It got worse and worse.”
“That’s unfortunate.” Barrett wanted nothing more than to get out of his car and into hers. But she had to hear him out. There was a chance he might give her some useful information. She forced herself to listen to him.
“I did spend a lot of time with her just driving around. But don’t get the wrong idea. I just wish I hadn’t gotten high with her. Seemed like the thing to do at the time.” He slammed his hand punishingly hard against the steering wheel, then wi
nced.
Barrett felt no sympathy whatsoever. She remembered when she was young enough and needy enough to think certain adults were cool because they were willing to share with kids. Their lives, their dope, their need for attention. Impressing a naive teenager wasn’t difficult. Even the smart ones got suckered into mind games like that.
Prescott rubbed his knuckles. “Anyway, you get the idea,” he was saying. “Nothing in Merrytown for teenagers to do but hang out and think of new ways to get in trouble. There’s the Shop-N-Bell.”
Barrett looked out her rolled-down window at a cracked, white plastic sign that showed a shopping cart inside a stylized bell.
“Popularly known as the Cop-N-Hell,” he continued. “The police come here for snacks and scatter the kids on their way out. They drift back when the cruisers leave. Jane used to meet her best friend here to split one of those giant slushy drinks.”
Barrett had noticed the cup from one crushed into the side compartment with a lot of other paper junk.
“Want anything?” he asked her, pulling into a slot.
“No. Nothing for me.”
“I’m going to get a burrito. If that doesn’t kill me, nothing will.”
“Are you suicidal?” she inquired, not all that politely.
“I wouldn’t give Ginny the satisfaction,” he replied, back to being himself again. He opened his door and stepped out, going through the doors of the Shop-N-Bell.
Barrett waited until she saw him give the clerk his order and wait for it to be microwaved. She looked down at the clutter in the side pocket, realizing that much of it was probably Jane’s. The handwriting on some of the papers was girlish and round, with a lot of curlicues and doodles in the margins. There was probably a unicorn in there somewhere, unless Jane had finally outgrown the damn things.
It bothered her incredibly that she hadn’t even written the girl in all this time, thinking that they would connect on Facebook and then never making it happen. Of course, she hadn’t exactly wanted to share what she was doing. Jane Small had had enough trouble in her life without looking at the ugly reality of insurgent warfare overseas.