“More like, what’s a boy like you doing in a nice establishment like this?” she asked, leaning her forearms back against the bar to look at him. She hadn’t been aiming for Ben in particular, but he would do.
They went back a ways. She’d met the reporter in DC when he was writing trash-fire stories for tabloids that favored pun-heavy headlines. It hadn’t taken her long to realize, though, that beneath the requisite scum in his articles, there was good information. She’d made friends with him.
When he shifted to the Washington Post, they’d stayed in touch. It was the kind of symbiotic relationship that was hallmark in DC, and she didn’t mind because it had helped her out on a case or two. All it had cost was a little bit of insider information every once in a while.
“Ah, don’t wound me like that, Alice.” He grinned at her, that golden-boy grin, as he slid his lanky body into the space between her and the pickup station. He already had a tumbler of some amber liquid in his hands, but he held it up toward the bartender and took the last swallow. It was refilled with quick competency.
“Detective Garner,” she corrected absently, even though she knew the tone would piss him off.
“Yeah, well, I don’t call women whom I’ve slept with by their last names,” he countered.
“Such a gentleman . . .” She waved a hand, unimpressed.
“Well, as fun as this has been,” Ben said, shifting as if he was going to leave. He wouldn’t. She was the lead detective on the case he was here for. But there were those games to play.
“You’re not leaving before the main event, are you?”
“When you ask so prettily? Never,” he said, amusement crinkling in the lines around his eyes. “So what do you want from me, Alice?”
“Who says I want anything.”
“Oh, come on now.” Ben nudged at her arm. “As fun as it is, you didn’t come here just to banter, darling. And you certainly didn’t come for the drinks.”
They both glanced at her half-empty glass.
“Unless you’re waiting for someone else,” he said, looking around. He lowered his voice into a conspiratorial whisper. “Should I make myself scarce?”
She considered it. But Ben was as good as the next guy. Better, even. Off the record with him meant off the record. And there was something to be said about the devil you know. Plus, he was here, and reeling in another reporter all of a sudden seemed draining.
“What’s the word on the street?” she finally asked.
Tipping his head, he studied her. Trying to read her as she read him. The games were so tiring. But it was a decision he’d have to make to tell her, one he’d weigh before revealing any of his cards.
“General consensus?”
“Yeah.”
He shrugged, his body relaxed and open, surveying the room. “It’s the mother.”
Just what she’d expected. “What do you think?”
The last time she’d seen him had been two weeks after Lila had died. It had been at a bar just like this one. Dives were like that, the same anywhere in the world.
“They caught him,” she slurred. She’d lost track of the amount of liquor in her system after she’d finished off the handle she stored in her fridge. The woman behind the bar was keeping an eye on her, which meant she’d had more than a few here as well.
“That’s a good thing, yeah?” Ben clinked his glass against the rim of hers. Like a cheer.
“Is it?”
He sipped the whiskey, his eyes sharp. “Why wouldn’t it be?”
Lifting a heavy shoulder, she signaled for another refill. The woman watched Alice’s face, but she poured anyway. Everyone was watching her face. “Can’t kill him if he’s in jail, can I?”
“All right,” Ben drawled, grabbing the glass from her hand. “That’s enough for you, I think.”
Ben had been there during her darkest days. He knew why she was asking about the mother.
“I’m here, aren’t I?” he said, an odd response to her question.
Then it clicked. Ruby’s disappearance had caught the attention of the national media. Pretty white girl kidnapped during a beach day with her pretty, rich mother. It was a compelling story. But the Post wouldn’t have sent Ben to cover it. Not if that’s all they thought there was to it.
“Why are you in St. Pete?” she asked, and maybe that was actually the right question.
He didn’t say anything at first, then glanced around. They were being watched from the corners of eyes and talked about behind shifted hands. The media world was a small one, and they’d all been living in each other’s pockets for the past four days. People knew who Ben was, and they certainly knew who she was.
“Not here,” he said, and then dropped money onto the bar before sliding from the stool. He walked toward the door without waiting to see if she was following.
Ben looked over his shoulder as he slipped into the dark alley running alongside the bar. It was lit by a single bare bulb casting a soft glow against exposed brick. Otherwise, it was dark, the shadows winning the war with the light.
They stopped close enough to the dumpsters so they’d have a few seconds of muffled privacy if someone looking for a smoke or looking for them stumbled out the exit door. The pavement was damp from whatever was leaking from the bottom of the bins, and she was careful to breathe through her mouth.
Ben wasn’t the type to be pushed. There was a certain melodrama to these meetings that he enjoyed, and if she rushed him, she ran the risk of getting nothing. So she waited, arms loose by her sides.
“I have a buddy on the sports desk at the paper down here,” he finally said. She couldn’t see his eyes. She wanted to be able to see his eyes. “He’s been here for . . . I don’t know . . . twenty years. One of those.”
A lifer.
“There’s been some rumblings,” he continued. “Nothing concrete, just talk.”
Just talk. She’d learned that “just talk” was usually more than just nothing.
“About?”
“There’s a kid who’s been hanging around the family for the past month or so,” he said, scratching at his nose.
“What?” she snapped out, then dug her fingernail into the soft flesh of her palm in penance for the show of emotion.
Those sharp eyes were watching her, and she forced her shoulders to relax.
“I mean, what are you talking about?” Her voice was calm again.
“Seems like it’s been a bit under the radar,” Ben said slowly, as if he were reconsidering his decision to tell her. “Zeke Durand. He’s friends with the girl. Trudy Burke.”
She shook her head, her eyes slipping to the pavement. It wasn’t possible. They’d pored over lists, studied family trees, interrogated every Burke for details of their friends and acquaintances.
Not once had a Zeke Durand come up.
Ben stepped closer when she looked up again. “Apparently she’s been spotted hanging out with him a few times. Wouldn’t even be anything to notice except she’s a Burke in St. Petersburg, and he’s . . .”
Ben paused, and she dug the fingernail in deeper, wanting to draw blood.
“He’s what?”
He pressed his lips together and then sighed. “Black.”
“Oh shit.” She scrubbed her hands over her face. It was one thing to have a missing girl on her hands. It was another if race became involved. A pretty little white girl and a suspicious black man? The facts were tinder poised to explode into a bonfire at the least provocation. And she would have just as much success containing that type of inferno as she would containing the story if the media caught hold of it. The facts didn’t matter. They never did. It was all about the narrative. “That’s why you’re here.”
“Yup,” he said, leaning heavy on the p. “This could turn into a circus. No matter if he did it or not.”
“It’s going to be a witch hunt if this gets out.”
“Just here to document it, darling.” Ben shrugged. “You get the honors of trying to control
it.”
It was a wet dream for any producer who wanted the next made-for-TV-movie script.
“The black kid killing the little white girl, or the mother gone crazy,” Ben continued, a hard edge to his voice. Chasing a twenty-four-hour news cycle had made him a cynic. That was, if he hadn’t been one before. “She did have a wild look in her eye at the press conferences.”
“She just lost her kid, asshole,” Alice said, but her mind had already moved past the conversation. Why hadn’t they known about Zeke Durand?
Trudy. Trudy Burke.
Alice called up an image of the teenager.
The girl was pretty in the way of her grandmother and mother. Where Charlotte and Ruby were red tinted, the other women of the Burke family were frosty blonde. Trudy was a willow reed like her aunt, and Alice guessed she hated it. She’d never spill out of dresses the way her mother did.
Alice didn’t have a strong impression of her otherwise. She tended to fade into the background whenever the family was gathered, easily overpowered by the other women. Often, she was sent from the room when the discussion turned too serious.
But there was a constant whenever she was mentioned: Trudy had adored Ruby. It was to the point that the relationship had created tension between her and Charlotte.
“Are you going to run with this?” she asked Ben.
He considered, then lifted one shoulder carelessly. “Nothing to run with yet.”
“But when there is?”
“I’m not losing my scoop,” he said.
Alice chewed on her lip. It was fair. “Just . . . let me know?”
“Yeah.”
She was surprised by his easy acquiescence until he continued.
“But, Alice? I’m not going to be the only one giving head here.”
Rolling her eyes, she shoved at him, dissolving some of the tension between them. “Why must you be so vulgar?”
He smirked. “Because you like it.”
“Asshole.”
“Seriously, Detective.” Ben sobered. “I’m not telling you this just because you asked so nicely.”
In those games they were playing, reciprocity was the biggest rule. “I know less than nothing.”
“When you do?”
She shrugged. He was a smug bastard who needed a slap every once in a while.
“Apparently, your mama didn’t teach you about not giving the milk away for free, dear Benjamin.”
CHAPTER TWELVE
TRUDY
July 7, 2018
Twenty-two days before the kidnapping
“I wouldn’t have pictured you as a Willie fan,” Trudy said propping her feet on the dash of Zeke’s car.
It was a pristine white Honda that didn’t seem to fit him any more than the music pouring from the speakers. She’d pictured him with an old 1970s muscle car, maybe one that he’d lovingly worked on until it purred just like when it was brand-new. But he’d pulled up in the generic four-door sedan looking far too modern and not nearly mysterious enough.
Zeke Durand was like an idea that drifted through her consciousness but never really materialized. Dangerous and beautiful and enigmatic. Not from St. Petersburg.
This person who drove a Civic and sang along, off-key, to “Red Headed Stranger” was anything but a fantasy.
The sun was coming up, and the sky was losing that deep cobalt color she loved. An old boyfriend had once tried to capture it with a cheap pair of earrings, and they’d turned her lobes green.
The way the rays caressed Zeke’s face created shadows beneath his high cheekbones and turned him back into a riddle she would never solve. She liked it better that way.
They’d kept the windows rolled down because it was early, and the coolness from the morning still lingered in the air. The black leather seats stuck to her thighs a bit, but it wasn’t unbearable yet.
The filmy skirt she’d worn pooled around her hips, exposing the long length of her thigh, but Zeke had spared it only the briefest glance before returning his eyes to the road. So she didn’t bother adjusting it, just tilted her seat back, easing into a half-asleep haze as they crossed the bridge heading into Tampa.
“You never told me why you needed to go into the city,” Zeke said as Willie’s twang melted into a beat of silence before the next song.
As if they were sharing confidences. She didn’t answer him; he couldn’t have expected her to.
Trust me. N.
If she told Zeke she was going to check out an address an anonymous stranger on the internet had sent her, he wouldn’t let her go. Or he’d try to come with her. She couldn’t explain even to herself why she was trusting N. Maybe desperation had turned her careless, stupid. But she couldn’t risk not taking the chance. Too much was at stake.
She gathered her long, wind-tangled hair into a bun and then shifted so she was facing him entirely. The seat belt cut into her shoulder, so she pushed it behind her.
“Come on,” she poked. “Why’d you move to St. Petersburg? There had to be better places.”
“Less racist, less bigoted places, you mean?”
“Uh, yeah, that’s exactly what I mean, dude.”
He puffed out a breath of air, somewhat amused. “I didn’t have a choice.”
“You always have a choice,” she argued, despite knowing how deeply her own feet were buried in the cement that built the city.
He glanced at her as if he knew, too. “It’s that easy, huh?” Not really calling her on it. But sort of calling her on it.
She tilted her head so that her temple touched the leather of the seat. “If you feel like you don’t have a choice, you’re just ignoring the options that you don’t want to consider.”
“That’s naive,” he shot back, fire in his voice for the first time since she’d met him. Maybe, maybe, she was finally getting under his skin.
“It’s not. Take me.” She waved a hand down her front. “You’d think I have the life, right? Rich, privileged girl, the world at her feet.”
Zeke shrugged in agreement.
“My grandparents track every move I make,” she said. “My money, my schedule. Who I talk to. Who I associate with. If it’s not the right people, it’s corrected immediately. If I don’t give in, I’m punished.”
There was more she could add but knew she never would. Secrets like those were meant to be kept locked away, deep in the darkness.
“My aunt and my mother are both idiots, so neither of them are any help. Mellie, I get. She’s not exactly playing with a full deck. But Charlotte. God, she’s just let herself be locked into this life she hates. She likes the velvet handcuffs.”
It was something Trudy had never been able to understand. Why Charlotte hadn’t just left. Why she hadn’t snuck out at night or when Hollis was on a trip—anything. There were so many opportunities, and instead, Charlotte just stayed. A lot of things made Trudy angry, but that had to top the list, because now Ruby was involved.
“I say I’m stuck, but that’s not true,” she said, her voice stronger now. She wasn’t stuck, Charlotte wasn’t stuck. “I have other options. I could hitchhike out of town, change my name, get away from them. Maybe I’d need to steal to do it, maybe I’d need to sell myself. Live in a homeless shelter, even. There are plenty of choices if I really wanted to get out. It’s just all about the ones you can live with.”
And as circumstances changed, those ones that had seemed so impossible before became the only ones that made any sense. She didn’t say that, though, but just let the words hang in the silence between them.
“Moving to St. Pete was the only choice I could live with,” he finally murmured, easing the tautness that had stretched for far too long. “My mother asked me to.”
A small piece of this puzzle that was Zeke Durand snapped into place. It was like she’d just won a prize, and she didn’t know why getting the information out of him felt that way. “Why would she do that?”
He breathed in deeply, possibly weighing how much he wanted to tell.
<
br /> The morning was clear and quiet, and the vaguest hint of friendship snaked between them and tugged at secrets as the highway stretched out before them. It was alluring and dangerous, this desire to let all her hidden truths tumble out to be devoured by a stranger.
Perhaps he felt the same. Perhaps that’s why he spoke.
“She’s dying.”
“Well.” That was all Trudy could manage. She licked at her dry lips.
“Yeah,” he said, an almost silent exhale.
“The choice you could live with,” she said. “Where were you guys before?”
He’d pushed his sunglasses up on top of his head a while back, so when he turned to her, she could see the crinkles around his eyes. “New Orleans.”
“Was it better?” She’d never been, and the name alone conjured images of voodoo practitioners and little-girl ghosts who haunted plantations.
“In what way?”
“In the not-being-assholes way.”
“There are assholes there, too,” he said. “But there are assholes everywhere.”
“Ain’t that the truth,” she said, finally shifting back around so she was sitting normally, her eyes on the shiny skyscrapers that were coming ever closer. Sharing time was over.
Zeke dropped off Trudy five blocks away from the address N had sent. It was a quiet little neighborhood a bit of a ways from downtown, so there wasn’t anyone else on the sidewalk with her.
Before he’d driven off with a promise to meet her back there in a few hours, Zeke had given her a look like he knew she was about to do something stupid. She’d pulled back her shoulders, bracing for a fight if needed, but he’d simply shaken his head and pulled away from the curb. Maybe he thought he’d never see her again.
Maybe that wasn’t an unfounded fear.
Trust me.
Her flip-flops slapped at the ground, loud against the hush that enveloped the street. Earlier she’d looked up how to get to the place, so she moved on autopilot now, her fingers playing with the strap of her purse, adjusting her hair, tugging at her clothes. She was anxious.
But like she’d told herself every five minutes last night, she didn’t actually have to do anything once she found the place. She could just keep walking if something seemed weird or off about it.
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