Girls of Glass

by Brianna Labuskes

  Charlotte brought a nail up to her teeth to gnaw at the skin of her finger as her gaze bounced between Nakamura, Alice, and the room. Then her chin dipped once, and she was gone.

  “She’s getting so weird,” Nakamura muttered. It was out of character enough that Alice didn’t react immediately, didn’t punch his arm or shove a finger into his sternum in chastisement. And by the time she processed the words, he’d already pushed by her into Ruby’s room.

  Alice followed quickly.

  It was a little girl’s room in a way that she hadn’t been expecting, not in this household. There were pretty murals painted on the walls and stuffed animals piled into baskets and books scattered on a bright rainbow-colored desk. Where the rest of the house had been devoid of any personality, this room burst with it.

  She walked to the dresser, where little white porcelain figures depicted a scene from a circus, with a delicate lion jumping through a ring of fire, a trapeze walker tipping precariously to the side, an elephant balanced on a ball, and an intricate conga line involving bears in tutus.

  Alice ran her finger over the top of the elephant, her nail coming to rest against the tip of his trunk. They had been Lila’s favorite, elephants.

  The animals had always been able to cheer her up. Even on the worst days when Alice thought the crying and screaming would never end.

  The zoo was mostly empty. It was the middle of the day, and it was cold in the way only February could be—where the wind cut through layers of jackets, and the grayness of the sky sapped any sun warmth from the air.

  But Lila bounced along beside her, happy and eager, her hand in Alice’s, as if impervious to anything that might ruin her adventure.

  That morning’s tantrum was long forgotten for the girl. But the memory of curling up on the cold tile of the bathroom behind a locked door as Lila wailed and pounded on the wood would haunt Alice. Lila had been begging for Alice to open up, let her in, let her spill every desperate emotion that the little girl’s body couldn’t quite contain into Alice, to absorb like all mothers were supposed to do.

  It had been too much, though, the little-girl screams and the thick, vicious tears that turned eyelashes clumpy and dark, and Alice hadn’t been able to make her legs work.

  The storms came so quickly, always had with Lila. One moment’s happiness was so fleeting, so precarious. So unlike Alice. Where she was steady ice, Lila was erratic fire.

  Everyone said that’s just how toddlers were. She’d grow out of it. But Alice knew Lila wouldn’t, and worried. Because sometimes she thought the girl might burn into embers and then into fire dust, to float away in the air.

  “Wanna see the ’phants.” Lila smiled now. She was a few months from turning four, and nothing was permanent. Not even sadness.

  Alice met her own eyes in the mirror and had to look away, had to walk away.

  They searched the room with a smooth efficiency after that, one born from years of being cops. She hadn’t had to serve a warrant since she’d been in St. Pete, but it had occurred with frequency in DC.

  There was nothing to find. She hadn’t expected there would be, but the process was important. The Burkes may have power, but they weren’t above the law. It would have been helpful had they been able to impart the message before the family had time to completely sanitize the entire household to hide or destroy anything they didn’t want found.

  “Well, they at least know how to clean behind themselves,” said a voice from the doorway.

  Alice turned to see Bridget leaning against the wall, her feet crossed, snapping away at the gum in her mouth. The woman was watching her tech team sweep the room for body fluids and DNA samples.

  “Just like the crime scene,” Alice said.

  Bridget glanced over at her, eyes searching. “Not really.”

  “What do you mean?” Nakamura asked, stepping closer to both of them.

  “The crime scene was . . .” Bridget waved a hand, and she still hadn’t taken her eyes off Alice. “Perfect.”

  “And this isn’t?” Alice asked.

  “Different kind of clean,” Bridget said, finally looking away. She still didn’t really acknowledge Nakamura. Instead, her eyes touched on the corners of the room—the bed, the sheets, the opened closet doors where pretty dresses and skirts hung neatly on hangers.

  “Different kind of scene.” Alice shrugged, and it was humor in the lines of Bridget’s face now instead of annoyance.

  The woman pressed her hands together as if praying and then bowed slightly. “So wise, Socrates.”

  “Screw you.” Alice laughed but kept it quiet. There was a sadness, a reverence, in the air that she didn’t want to disturb. “You’re just pissed you haven’t found anything.”

  “Science will come through for me. She is my lover and has yet to let me down,” Bridget said, but didn’t disagree with the reason for her bad mood.

  Alice shook her head. “It’s all about narrative.” It was an argument they’d had many times in the back booths of dark bars.

  “Why the four days?” Nakamura asked, a non sequitur that stopped whatever bickering was about to erupt between her and Bridget. The woman took the hint and turned, leaving them without a goodbye.

  The abrupt departure amused Alice, and she watched Bridget until she was no longer in sight. Then she turned to Nakamura. “What?”

  Like Bridget, he was monitoring the tech guys. “I keep getting stuck on the four days.”

  Alice thought back to the diner. A plan altered. She didn’t mention it.

  “Because there was no note,” she said instead.

  “Well, that.” Nakamura lifted his shoulder, dismissive. He wasn’t hung up on a note, because he thought Charlotte was their perp. “The logistics of keeping someone against her will for four days are complicated at best.”

  “Maybe it wasn’t against her will.” Alice stepped closer, letting their shoulders touch. A physical reassurance that they were okay again. Even if it was reluctant from his end and manufactured from hers.

  “The family is all accounted for during that stretch of time,” Nakamura said, drawing out the thought. “Which means if it was the family, they had outside help.”

  “So who helped the killer?” Alice asked. “Find them . . .”

  “Find our perp.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  TRUDY

  August 1, 2018

  Three days after the kidnapping

  “They don’t know what the hell they’re doing.” Trudy wanted to break the glass her grandmother held between her slim, elegant fingers. She wanted to break every fragile thing in this house and then move on to the nonfragile things.

  Ruby was missing. And no one was doing a goddamn thing about it.

  “Trudy, language,” Hollis snapped.

  “No,” Trudy shot back. “The police are sitting around with their thumbs up their asses. It’s been three days. And what do they have to show for it? They just keep asking us the same questions over and over again.”

  Anger. It was familiar, so familiar. An old friend. It was better than the guilt that had been trying to devour her from the inside.

  The anger hurt, too—always had. But where guilt was acid, anger was fire. Fire could fuel her. She could use it to help her move limbs that had grown lethargic and numb, she could use it to unleash vocal cords that had gone silent, she could use it to spur action where before there had been only static confusion.

  “You aren’t doing enough,” Trudy said. Anger was also easier to turn outward. This, she was used to. “What good is all that power if you can’t use it?”

  “Trudy, honey.” Mellie laid a gentle hand on her arm, and for the first time in a long time, there was no alcohol lingering on the whispered words.

  That didn’t make it better, though. Maybe it made it worse. It was like Mellie was trying to parent Trudy after sixteen years of forgetting she was a mother.

  “Go back to being worthless, Mellie dear,” Trudy said, pushing her away.
Mellie went with the momentum and fell back into one of the dining room chairs. It was dramatic in the way Mellie was. Over the top, ridiculous, absurd. Her eyes were damp and red rimmed as she watched Trudy with betrayal.

  Trudy ignored her and turned back to Hollis. But just as she was about to go at her again, a quiet voice cut through the manic energy that had settled into the room.

  “Stop.”

  It was Charlotte, and for no one else would Trudy have listened. That one word, though—it took the righteousness from her, drained the rush that had made her head fuzzy and light. All that was left was an emptiness she’d been trying so desperately to ignore.

  Her aunt untucked her legs from the chair, pushed to her feet, and then walked from the room.

  “You will apologize to Charlotte, after you’ve collected yourself, Trudy,” Hollis said.

  Trudy turned to her, her eyes sliding over her grandmother’s slicked-back hair, the flawless lipstick that had not seeped even a little into the groove at the edges of her lips, at her goddamn string of pearls.

  “You wanted this to happen,” she said, meeting the woman’s hard gaze. “You’re just happy your little problem is taken care of.”

  Mellie gasped, but Hollis didn’t flinch. Instead, she stood and walked over to Trudy. Hollis reached out, grasping Trudy’s chin between her thumb and finger to the point of pain. “You will collect yourself,” Hollis said. “Then you will apologize to Charlotte.”

  Hollis squeezed as she said it, the pad of her thumb pressing a bruise into Trudy’s jawbone.

  “And if you ever again question the lengths I would go to in order to keep this family protected, you will no longer be considered a part of it,” Hollis continued. So soft, so deadly. “Do I make myself clear, child?”

  The agreement tasted like rotting meat where it sat on her tongue, but she forced it out. “Yes, Grandmother.”

  Hollis dropped her hand and stepped back, smoothing a palm over her suit. “Very good. Now leave my sight. I am tired of you tonight.”

  Trudy fled.

  Trudy didn’t search out Charlotte. The idea of trying to comfort her aunt was draining to the point of exhaustion.

  And there was something in Charlotte’s eyes these days. As if she was broken beyond repair. Glass shattered, the shards so tiny they were almost dust, never to be put together again.

  That look scared Trudy sometimes in ways she didn’t realize—that she could still feel fear. It made her wonder.

  It made her think of that day on the porch after Trudy had found Ruby on the sidewalk, and those vacant eyes. It made her think of the mall and the way Ruby had slipped so easily out of Charlotte’s attention. As if she were hoping it would happen. It made her think of the way even the love Charlotte had for Ruby was tainted with an edge of hate. Because of where she’d come from.

  It made Trudy wonder.

  If Trudy was wondering, the police had to be as well. Trudy wasn’t blind and she wasn’t stupid. She knew what the questions meant. She knew the look the detectives shared when Charlotte didn’t know the answers. Trudy knew what Garner and Nakamura thought, knew what the public would think.

  Her mind skittered away from the idea and those vacant eyes staring into nothingness. The thought was almost as repulsive as their secret, the one they kept so close, tucked away from all the bloodsuckers who would be giddy at finding out something so damaging to the great Sterling Burke.

  But long ago, Trudy had learned that things that seemed like nightmares were sometimes much more. They were sometimes reality.

  In a flash, she was up off her bed, digging into the back of her closet, beneath shoes and blankets and clothes that had fallen off hangers, until her fingers hit metal.

  The safe. The one that hid her laptop.

  After opening it, she tossed aside the passports, the money from her stripping. It felt so stupid now, and her cheeks burned with the shame of it.

  Her grand plan. The thing that started this all.

  The laptop was slim and silver and sat against the bottom of the safe. She flipped it open and powered it on. Her finger tapped against the casing of it as she waited for the email to load.

  Trust me.

  It was still there, the message, sitting at the top of her in-box.

  Her mouth went dry at the sight of it.

  The safe house N had told her about had been there. N provided her almost everything she’d needed to get Ruby out. So why would someone send her there if they’d been meaning to hurt her, hurt her family?

  It wasn’t like she had trusted it completely. Nothing came easy, not in this world. There had to be strings attached. But she’d thought that maybe she’d be able to use it all and get out of Dodge before they came calling for their favors.

  So she’d taken the help, as foreign a concept as that had been. She’d gone to the club the women at the safe house had told her to go to and picked up the passports they’d told her to pick up. She’d saved the money from her shifts and figured out the bus station she’d have Zeke drive her to on the day they got Ruby out of there.

  She’d planned. She’d planned. She’d planned.

  And then it had gone to shit.

  Haunted, vacant eyes. Charlotte’s tearstained face. The long, elegant fingers that dug into flesh and left bruises there. What had happened that morning? Where had it gone wrong?

  Stop.

  Charlotte hadn’t killed Ruby, she hadn’t. Trudy wasn’t quite sure why this was the thread she was holding on to, but she knew, somehow, deep down, that if it started to unravel, it would take her with it.

  Whatever had screwed up their plan, it hadn’t been her aunt. She wouldn’t believe—couldn’t believe—it had been Charlotte.

  Survival had never been a choice—it was just something that was. She would get up every day, her heart would beat, her lungs would expand, her muscles would stretch, and she would survive. This, though, would take her down; it would peel the layers back until there was nothing but the emptiness that lived at the center of herself.

  She wished she could press her fingers in her ear and scream like she did when she was little and didn’t want to hear what someone was saying. She wanted to be young again so that she could.

  It wasn’t Charlotte. It couldn’t be.

  Trust me.

  Why had she come up with the plan in the first place? She’d known she’d wanted to act but hadn’t known what to do. Then, like a miracle, the email had arrived. Why hadn’t she questioned it? Why hadn’t she remembered that prayers like hers weren’t answered?

  This had to be something. Or it had to be ruled out, at the very least. Every other lead, the police were investigating—the family, an old grudge, a random psycho. Even Sterling.

  But they didn’t know about this email.

  It had been nagging at her. In the dark, when she couldn’t sleep and all she could think about was Ruby’s soft body snuggled up against hers, it nagged at her. When the detectives stood in doorways and watched her with eyes that were too searching, it nagged at her. When Charlotte blinked too fast under the blinding bulbs of the news cameras, it nagged at her.

  Would they have been at the beach if it weren’t for that email? What would have happened if she’d ignored the advice, if she’d simply deleted and removed it from the trash like she did with every other message that came in?

  Was she grasping into the void, hoping her fingers would connect with anything even remotely solid?

  But Ruby had disappeared on the day they had been trying to get her out of this hell. If that was a coincidence, it was a big one.

  The email.

  Trudy kept an IP address tracker running on her blog.

  Sometimes, when she received strange messages, she checked the timing of the emails against the tracker. It wasn’t refined enough to differentiate into neighborhoods, but she could tell which cities and states her visitors were from, if there weren’t too many people on her website all at once.

  She’d gotten
lucky with N. The messages had mostly come in during weird hours, so there hadn’t been many other people on her blog. There were a few other cities, including Tampa, that popped up once or twice.

  But only one that came up routinely.

  Jacksonville, Florida.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  ALICE

  August 4, 2018

  Six days after the kidnapping

  “You missed the turn,” Alice said, in retrospect perhaps nonsensically. Nakamura knew these streets better than anyone. He didn’t get lost.

  But they should have been headed to the police station instead of driving along the coastline.

  “I think we should check out the owner,” Nakamura said, turning onto the road that she now realized would take them back to the beach where they’d found Ruby. She flashed hot, then cold. Goose bumps danced along her arms, and it had nothing to do with the air conditioner that was on blast. When she was prepared, when she was braced for it, it didn’t bother her. But the surprise of it threw her.

  Especially after just coming from the girl’s room.

  She wondered if that was part of the plan, if he was watching her from his peripheral vision to see if she’d react, to see if there were any cracks in her armor. Any excuse to call her unstable, erratic, emotional. It would help him undermine her case if he got fed up with her defense of Charlotte. Can’t be trusted, he would say.

  They would believe him, too. Why wouldn’t they?

  Her mouth was dry, and her tongue scraped along the roof of it.

  “We already talked to him,” she said, looking out the window so he couldn’t see her face. The houses blurred into a pastel of colors as she unfocused her eyes.

  “For about five minutes,” Nakamura countered. “The team did a sweep of the house, but we didn’t properly interview him. Not really.”

  “They did a sweep of the house and didn’t find anything,” she reminded him.

  “Do you want to sit it out?” Nakamura asked, and she could hear the frustration in his voice.

  “No,” she said. That was unacceptable. “I just don’t want to waste our time on a dead end.”