by Jamie Craig
She rang the bell, waited a few beats, and then knocked lightly on the door. Just when she was beginning to think she really had wasted a trip, Ruth was there, smiling and pulling her into the house.
“Detective Wright. It’s so good to see you.”
“It is? I mean, it’s good to see you too, Mrs. Montenegro.”
“Call me Ruth, please. Mrs. Montenegro is so…formal. And you’re practically family now.”
“Family?”
“You brought our girl home, so that makes you family now.”
Ruth always looked like a slightly older version of her daughter, but seeing the two women together drove the point home. They could be twins. Except for the gray in Ruth’s hair and the deep worry lines around her mouth and eyes. Losing her daughter had aged her prematurely, but a new light shone from her eyes. Vitality that had only appeared after her reunion with Stacy.
“Thank you. How is she?”
“She’s good.” Ruth stepped into the narrow hallway. “Stacy? Stacy, Detective Wright is here. She should be out in a minute.”
“Has she been adjusting well?”
“Yes. Everything around here is almost back to normal.” Ruth sounded sincere, but there was a frown on her lips where Olivia expected a smile. “But the counselor said it might take some time. She’s…been through a lot.”
“She has. But she’s strong.” Maybe stronger than her parents knew. Maybe stronger than any of them knew.
The bedroom door clicked, then Olivia heard Stacy’s approaching steps and her tentative, “Mom? What’s going on?”
A full week hadn’t passed since Stacy was released from the hospital, but she already looked better. Her face had a slight roundness and her hair a luster it lacked before. She was clearly being fed properly and often, and the bags under her eyes were completely gone, which meant she’d been sleeping, too. The bandage on her throat, courtesy of her successful escape attempt from Gabriel, was all the more startling for the other healthy signs. If she got over the emotional trauma, she’d still have that physical scar for the rest of her life. Reminding her every time she looked in the mirror. Olivia wished she could magic it away, wished she didn’t have to be standing in her home as another reminder.
“Hi, Stacy.” She tried to sound a little less like a cop. “How are you doing?”
Stacy looked to her mother. “What is she doing here?”
“I need to ask you a few questions.” A small smile of reassurance that probably didn’t reassure anybody. “I promise, I won’t take up too much of your time.”
“Is it Gabriel?” She should have sounded terrified. Olivia had heard grown men say Gabriel’s name with a tremor in their voice, but she seemed more wary than anything. “Did you come here because of him?”
“He’s still in jail where he belongs.”
She nodded, accepting the news, and glanced away. Olivia was in danger of losing her attention completely. “I don’t know anything else. I told you everything.”
“Can we sit down?”
Stacy looked to Ruth again, who nodded encouragingly before saying, “I’ll get you something to drink.”
“No. Stay.” Stacy sat on the couch, back straight, knees together primly. Her mother hesitated but joined her on the couch, her spine equally rigid. They also wore identical frowns. Olivia sat on the other side of Stacy, dismissing another twinge of unease as she slid the picture of Sophe from the file on her lap.
“Do you know who this is?”
Stacy didn’t hesitate. “Yes. It’s Sophe.”
“Was she with you?”
“Yes. She was the first one they sent away.” Stacy looked up, brown eyes swimming. “What happened to her?”
Now came the part she’d truly been dreading. Securing a positive ID was always a small victory for the investigator, but it was often the worst moment in the other person’s life. Stacy had already had enough terrible moments for ten lifetimes, but Olivia had to add one more to the pile.
“I’m sorry, Stacy, but she was found…”
Olivia didn’t have the chance to finish her sentence, but she didn’t need to. Stacy gave a small cry and turned toward Ruth, burying her face in the older woman’s shoulder. Ruth’s arms went around her in an automatic embrace, and though there wasn’t any anger in Ruth’s face, Olivia saw a hint of disappointment. Like she couldn’t believe Olivia could be so coldhearted.
“Is my daughter in danger?” Ruth asked stiffly.
“Given the circumstances, I don’t believe so. Believe me, if I had any reason at all to think she might be, I would tell you immediately. I’d send armed patrols over here to protect her.” When Olivia couldn’t be patrolling the house herself. “I’m not going to let anything happen to her. If I could ask…”
Ruth shook her head, her hand moving down Stacy’s hair in soothing strokes. “Not today. She’s had enough for one day.”
“Right. Of course.” Under better circumstances, she would have been able to leave it at that and get out of their hair. But these weren’t even in the same country as normal circumstances. “Can I visit again tomorrow? I hate to impose but I need your help. Stacy?”
“Yes.” The word was muffled, but unmistakable.
“Thank you.” Olivia stood. “I’ll show myself out.”
She wasn’t going to let Marisol get away with this. And the key to stopping her was in the coins. Isaac wouldn’t agree with her. He might not even forgive her. But she had an obligation to do everything she reasonably could to track down Sophe’s killer, including the impossible.
Chapter Seven
The knife wound on the back of Remy’s calf wasn’t deep, but it tore free of the butterfly bandages with nearly every step. Blood trickled down her ankle as she walked out the door, forcing her to spend another fifteen minutes cleaning the blood and rebinding the slash. Now she was running late for her meeting with Isaac, and the bus stopped two blocks away from Smokey’s. He’d wait for her. He had to wait for her. Her heart hammered with anxious anticipation. Would he bring Nathan with him? Would she finally get to see him again? How in hell was she going to keep from crawling up Nathan’s body if he was there?
The final question was both the least likely and the most distracting. Isaac wanted her and that may have been the only reason he was interested in her sob story. He wasn’t going to bring his partner on what he hoped would become a date, and that proved true when she rounded the corner and saw a single set of broad shoulders walking away from the bar.
“Shit.” She walked faster, ignoring the way the bandages pulled at her leg. “Isaac!”
He stopped and turned, his face in shadows until she was within a few feet. She fully expected a disapproving scowl.
But he wasn’t frowning. Far from it. She’d never seen him smile like that, and the unfamiliar expression slowed her to a walk. He was actually handsome. What would happen if she returned his smile? What would it be like if she could? She didn’t really want to, but was she curious? Hell, yeah.
“Hey.” He moved like he wanted to put his arm around her in a warm greeting, but she sidestepped him. Isaac was a physical guy, and she didn’t want to actually encourage contact between them. It was enough for him to think he had the chance. He settled for squeezing her shoulder. “I thought I’d missed you.”
“I know. Sorry about that.” If her short response didn’t clue him in, her tone certainly did. She didn’t want to talk about where she’d been and that was the most apology he’d get.
“Feet like Greenland, huh?”
She cocked a brow. “That a crack about their size?”
His laughter reminded her of home, of sitting around Nathan’s apartment and listening to the two of them go at each other. She was always fond of Isaac in those moments, like she might be sorry if he disappeared from their lives. She liked it when he laughed, warm and quiet, even when she didn’t always get the joke. The regularly scheduled pang of homesickness pricked her gut, but what could she do about it?
“I’ve been looking forward to this since you bailed on me.”
He took a step closer, perhaps misinterpreting the feeling behind the words. “Really?”
Remy held her ground, allowing him to invade her personal comfort zone. She had to. He’d get the right idea if she kept jumping away from him. “It’s been a real shitty couple of days.”
His concern pulled at the corners of his mouth, his eyes narrowing. “Do you have any other kind of day?”
“Since I got here? No, I really haven’t.”
“Do you want to talk about it?”
Yes, she wanted to shout. She’d like nothing more than to talk about it. Lay all of this shit at Isaac’s feet and let him deal with it for a few minutes. Explain who she was and how much she needed to see Nathan and how much she needed Isaac’s help. Yes, yes, she wanted to talk about it, but she couldn’t even begin. “I don’t know. I don’t know how to explain.”
“Try. I’m smarter than I look, I’ll probably catch on.”
Remy smiled and ignored the easy barb on her tongue. Insulting Isaac in 2010? Just a way of life. Insulting him in 2000? Probably not a good idea. Considering how close she was to spilling her guts, talking might not be a good idea either.
“I could show you. I know where he…I know where I was.”
“Where you were when you what?”
She’d been purposefully vague, and Isaac had seen too many things to avoid the worst scenario. The worst scenario happened every single day, probably dozens of times, and the horrors he witnessed were only a fraction of all possibilities. “Woke up. Made a break for it.”
“He kidnapped you? Did he drug you? Remy, this is a serious crime. We should be down at the station…”
“No.”
“So you didn’t report it at all?”
“Because I wanted even more trouble? I don’t think so.”
“Cops aren’t trouble. We’re here to help when you get kidnapped. That’s our job. If somebody hurt you, you need to file charges.”
“I never said the cops were trouble. But he’s got money and he’s got connections, and I’m not stupid. You might be Mr. Nobility, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t leaks and slick palms.” Only a few days before they confronted Gabriel, Isaac had found a bug in his phone and an indication of a leak in the department. Gabriel had ears everywhere. That was true in 2010 and she wasn’t going to risk it being true in 2000, as well. “Besides, this guy is big-time. Nobody would believe me.”
His big hand rested on her shoulder, giving it a small squeeze. “I would.”
He meant it. He always meant it, and that was why Nathan loved him so much. It must have been the reason he managed to snag a woman like Olivia. Nothing else made sense. His smile was gone, his eyes compassionate. He didn’t know her from Adam, but he believed her. The Isaac she knew would have poked and prodded her story until he found every hole, examining each word suspiciously. Her stomach twisted with guilt that didn’t belong to her. Yes, she was keeping the truth from him, but it wasn’t her fault the next ten years—Susanna? Something else?—had destroyed this trusting young man.
“Then trust me now.”
Pulling away from his grip, she angled sideways and gestured back in the direction from which she came. “I can find the place again, no problem. And we don’t have to stop.” Though she’d do everything in her power along the way to convince him it was in their best interest to do so. “I’ll tell you everything.”
He still seemed doubtful. “I can’t examine the scene of a crime. Not without a warrant.”
“We won’t even get out of your car.” She tossed her hair over her shoulder with a smirk. “You do have a regular car, don’t you?”
Isaac rolled his eyes. Aha. There was the Isaac she knew. “Yes, I have my own car. A very nice one, actually.” He pulled a thick key ring out of his jeans pocket and jingled it in front of her face to prove his point, before cupping them in his hand. “Come on. I’m parked around the corner.”
She fell into step beside him as he led her away from Smokey’s. Something about walking at his side was comforting. Maybe some of Nathan’s faith in Isaac had rubbed off onto her. No matter what he needed or where they were, Isaac was only a phone call away. It was more than a little annoying to share her man with somebody else, but at times like this, she understood.
“Do you usually get into cars with strange men?”
The night masked his face, but she recognized the smile in his voice. “You’re not a strange man.”
“Some people might disagree. And you don’t really know me, do you? Thus, I’m a stranger.”
“I know you,” Remy countered softly. “I know you’re a cop, and so by your logic, trustworthy. I know you’re a…gentleman.”
That brought the expected smirk. “Gentleman? There, see? You don’t really know me.”
“If you weren’t a gentleman, you’d be too distracted getting into my pants instead of helping me.”
“Maybe I’m just biding my time until I break out my state-of-the-art, top-of-the-line seduction technique.”
She shrugged. “That just means you’re smart enough to be patient. So that’s another thing I know about you.”
He chuckled. “Fair enough. Did you have a good Christmas?”
“Just another day in Los Angeles.”
“Oh. I guess you don’t have any family or friends around here?”
“Haven’t had a family in a long time. And you’re the closest thing to a friend I got.”
He didn’t ask any more questions after that. She was grateful for the reprieve. Every word exchanged called forth new emotions she didn’t understand and couldn’t deal with right now. She barely noticed the stairwell he led her up on the way through the parking structure, but when he unlocked a silver BMW, she thought she was being punked. “This is yours?”
“My baby,” Isaac said proudly. It was the same tone of voice Nathan used when he talked about his Mustang. The vehicle shone from a recent wash, and there weren’t even dead bugs stuck to the headlights. A far cry from his beater back home.
“Being a cop in L.A. must pay pretty good.”
He shrugged. “I like nice things.”
He held the door open for her with a mock bow. Remy’s leg protested her new position, but when she ran her hand down the back of her thigh, there was no blood. Good. The last thing she needed was Isaac to bitch her out for getting blood on his seat. He was always so touchy about that.
“So which way?” When she rattled off the address she’d memorized, his gaze snapped toward her instead of at the busy road in front of them. “Are you serious?”
“Yeah. Why?”
He jerked the wheel a fraction too hard, slipping into the flow of traffic. Passing headlights revealed the tension in his white knuckles. “What happened, Maggie?” His voice had an edge now, like they’d dispensed with the flirting and were moving on to serious business. She’d flipped a switch inside of him. Too bad it hadn’t been a bit sooner. “And I want the whole story, not the song and dance you think you’re going to pull on me.”
“The story is…I trusted someone who said he could help me get settled here. A friend of a friend. Only he wasn’t so interested in getting me settled as he was in getting me. And a lot of what I’d brought with me.”
“Tell me.”
“I don’t really want to talk about it.”
He looked over, his eyes hard, any hint of the friendly guy she met at the bar completely gone. If she really had been a victim of misplaced trust, that look might have terrified her. “You need to tell me. I can help you. Fuck, me and my partner might be the only people who can, but only if you let us.”
“I was stupid. I was asking for it.”
“No. Nobody asks for it.”
“I’m the one who trusted some dude I barely knew. I’m the one who handed over all my stuff.” She swallowed, studying him from the co
rner of her eye. “Look, if you’re thinking…nothing happened to me. I locked myself in the bathroom until I could make a run for it.”
“Make a run for it from the warehouse? Is that where you woke up?”
Remy bit her lip, almost forgetting that detail. It’d been a long, long time since she’d had to tell a lie this elaborate. Back in D.C., she always had a few personas lined up for trouble with their own IDs and stories. Maggie didn’t really exist, though, and she didn’t have time to consider every word coming out of her mouth.
“Yes. I went to the address where I was supposed to meet him. He seemed really nice at first. I thought I could trust him.”
“Do you know why he took you there?”
“He…he wanted me to be one of his prostitutes. He also said something about videotapes.”
“Were there any other girls there? Were you alone?”
“I didn’t see any other girls, but I heard his guys talking about them.”
“Guys? How many?”
“At least two. There could be more, but I didn’t see anybody.” Gabriel probably had more at the warehouse, but Remy couldn’t risk fingering anybody she hadn’t actually seen. Better to stick with the pair she’d encountered. “The thing of it is…he didn’t even leave a bruise. And his goons did most of the dirty work. Only reason I was lucky enough to get away is they’re even dumber than I am.”
Isaac took a small tape recorder from his shirt pocket. “Can you describe the guys?”
“Wait. You’re going to use that?”
“Yes. It’ll help me remember everything you told me. I always record my interviews.”
“This isn’t an interview.”
“It became one when you told me where we were going.”
“Who’s going to hear this?”
“Just me. Maybe Nathan. This isn’t a formal statement, Maggie. Don’t worry. Consider everything you say to me off the record, okay?”