“I hate to be the one to break it to you, but it’s not like we are bursting with options,” Nakamura said. “We don’t have anything on the family. Nothing but speculation, at least, and that’s not worth a damn.”
Still watching the street, she nodded to show she was listening.
“Zeke Durand is interesting,” Nakamura mused. “But my gut says he was telling the truth about him and Trudy. The story is just incriminating enough for it to be real.”
“Bridget’s checking out the car. But we should stay on him,” she said, even though she agreed. Durand’s story gave enough details, without being rehearsed, and was vague enough to prove that he was probably being kept in the dark for most of it.
“I think the media will have that covered for us,” Nakamura said. She listened for the bite, but it wasn’t there. Perhaps he was over it. More likely he was better at masking his thoughts than she was giving him credit for, and those little slips in tone had been deliberate.
“So we’re back to the accomplice angle,” Nakamura continued. “And who better to start with?”
There wasn’t anyone else, and they both knew it.
Nakamura was relaxed, one hand easy on the wheel. “We keep thinking about those lost days. What if they were just keeping her at the house?”
“Why dump her right outside it, though?” she asked. “We’d immediately suspect the owner.”
“But we didn’t,” Nakamura pointed out. “It’s been two days, and this is the first we’re really considering it. And even now you’re not exactly raring to interrogate the guy.”
“Because it doesn’t make sense.”
“Not everything has to make sense, you know,” Nakamura said. “You’re a little too attached to that idea, Garner.”
“Yeah, me and my crazy need for logic.” She smiled. The banter that had become a staple in their partnership eased the tension, if only for a few minutes.
They drove in silence through several stop signs before he cleared his throat. “I actually do think it makes sense, though.”
“The owner?” she clarified.
“Yeah.” Nakamura tipped his head to the side, thoughtful. “Access being the biggest thing. We said on the first day that it would be hard to get Ruby to that location. Imagine walking on the beach for any length of time carrying that much weight.”
“It would be difficult,” she murmured. “Especially if it were Charlotte.”
He slid her a look but let it go. “But if the person had access to that house. Imagine how easy it would be. There aren’t any other ones next to it, so it’s that or the public-access road.”
They both paused a beat.
“So we talk to the owner,” she finally said.
Enrique Lopez was an attractive man with dark slicked-back hair and smooth caramel skin that was covered with tattoos.
He poured Alice and Nakamura lemonade out of a plastic pitcher into glasses that had chips on the rims, while they sat on his Ikea two-seater couch. There was one other foldout chair in the room and then the coffee table.
There was an apology in the way he shrugged and the self-deprecating tilt to his mouth as he handed them their drinks. “Sorry. I feel like I’ve just moved in, but I’m not sure that excuse qualifies anymore.”
“How long have you been here?” Nakamura asked while taking a sip of the lemonade, puckering a bit before setting it aside. She put her own on the table.
“About six months, now, wow.” Enrique laughed a little at that, running a hand through his hair. “Feels like yesterday. I just get so busy at the clinic I don’t have that much time for furniture shopping.”
“The clinic?” she asked, feeling the need to contribute something.
He met her eyes, then looked back at Nakamura. “Yeah, I work at a health clinic in South St. Petersburg.”
“Tough gig?” Nakamura asked while reaching inside his suit jacket for his little notepad. He jotted something down.
Enrique watched the smooth glide of pen on paper but smiled easily when Nakamura glanced back up. “Rewarding.”
They all hummed. There was nothing to say to that. A clock ticked away the seconds in the other room, and Alice’s chest tightened with each beat.
After a full minute had passed of them simply staring at each other, she pushed herself to her feet and walked to the sliding glass window that led out to the dunes. She could just see the ocean over the tall stalks of wild grass that acted like wind catchers on the mounds of sand.
“So,” she heard Nakamura start, and she could tell by just the one word that he’d shifted into professional mode. She wondered if they were both looking at her, or if they would ignore her sudden urge to no longer be trapped on that overstuffed couch with the too-sweet lemonade and a lingering scent of a chemical cleaner and the empty house that was too similar to her own and far too close to a particular strip of beach.
“We’d like to ask you a few questions, if you don’t mind,” Nakamura continued. She should turn around, she should watch. Body language was so telling, and Nakamura would ask her about it. But she couldn’t tear her eyes from the thin sliver of blue-green waves and white foam.
“Of course,” Enrique said, his voice smooth like rich coffee, almost as if he were comforting them out of awkwardness. “Anything I can do to help. I assume this is about Ruby Burke.”
At that, she was finally able to move, though she didn’t go far. She leaned up against the wall, crossing one ankle over the other. It wasn’t the best location to read the scene, to interpret the tension in both men’s bodies, or the way their faces twitched or smoothed out or creased at certain questions. But it would do.
“Yes,” Nakamura confirmed, shifting forward so he was on the edge of the cushion. “Can you tell us where you were the night of August first and the morning of August second?”
“Uh, yeah.” Enrique looked around him as if he were searching for something, but there was nothing there. He shook his own head and laughed. “Sorry, I was checking for my calendar just to make sure, but, yeah, I was out of town all day Wednesday.”
Nakamura’s spine arched as he leaned forward. “Where did you go?”
“Just over to Tampa. A buddy of mine was passing through. We rented a boat, did some fishing, got some grub. I left Tuesday afternoon and got home really early on Thursday morning. Maybe sixish,” he said. “Next thing I knew, that guy was banging on my door. The jogger who found the girl.”
“You went out of town in the middle of the week?”
The other man shrugged. “Doctor’s schedule.”
“We’ll need his number to verify that,” Alice spoke up.
Enrique was already on his feet, walking over to the desk in the corner. After checking his phone, he jotted something down on a piece of paper. He crossed the room, and his fingers brushed against hers as he handed it to her. His eyes were dark, but his mouth was tipped down in that concerned Good Samaritan frown. She’d seen it a million times in her career. “Of course. Here. His name’s Lou. I wrote it on there.”
She slipped it into the back pocket of her jeans as he sat down again.
“When you got back, was there anything suspicious you noticed?” Nakamura asked.
Enrique scratched at the spot behind his ear. “I can’t say I did, no. I was pretty tired from being up so early, though.”
Nakamura wasn’t deterred. “And the days before that, did you notice anyone coming by? Even someone you’re used to seeing?”
“Man, there’s that jogger guy,” Enrique said. “And a few other usuals. I get kids, teenagers, every once in a while, sneaking out on the beach. There’s a path just over there that leads out to the public road.”
Both she and Nakamura nodded.
Enrique shrugged, looking between them. “They’re pretty harmless, though. I’ve only had to chase them off once, and that was because they tried to throw a school-wide party down there.”
Nakamura slid his eyes to her, then looked back at Enrique. “Do yo
u ever recall Trudy Burke hanging around? Was she part of this group?”
There was no spark of recognition on his face, and Alice let the breath she hadn’t realized she was holding slip out between her lips.
“Trudy Burke?” Enrique shook his head. “I don’t know who that is. Other than she must be related to that little girl, right?”
Nakamura’s shoulders relaxed a bit at that, and he hummed neither an agreement nor a denial. “So nothing strange or out of place, even in the past couple weeks?”
Enrique slicked his tongue along his lower lip, looking lost in contemplation. When he looked back at them, he was again shaking his head. “No, I can’t think of anything. I’ll be happy to keep trying to remember, though. Terrible thing about the girl.”
That was a clear dismissal, but Alice waited for Nakamura to accept it or not. This was his ball game. When he braced his hands against his thighs and pushed himself to his feet, she straightened off the wall.
Enrique led them through the darkened hallway to the front door, stepping back to let them through onto the porch. Alice slipped her sunglasses over her eyes as she stopped and turned back to him.
“One more question, Mr. Lopez,” she said, and she could feel Nakamura pause, one foot already on the stairs leading down to the driveway.
“Sure,” Enrique said, his face open and eager.
“Do you know Charlotte Burke, in any capacity?”
His eyes remained blank at the mention of the name.
“No,” he said. “Not at all.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
CHARLOTTE
August 1, 2018
Three days after the kidnapping
It was harder to escape these days. There wasn’t just Hollis and Sterling to avoid, but with Ruby missing, there was the media now, too. They camped out in front of the house, just far enough away to maintain a semblance of privacy, but it was a smoke screen. The journalists lounged on camping chairs or squatted down to sit on the burning asphalt and ate stale ham sandwiches and had pizza delivered right to their vans. Restless hours filled with boredom and card games, broken up with only tiny stretches of excitement when one of the Burkes moved behind drawn curtains.
If she left the house, they scrambled up like a flock of disgruntled pigeons, all ruffled feathers, until they settled again. Then they would start the yelling. It hadn’t been awful things at first. During the press conference, they may have zoomed in too close on her tear-streaked face, but the tone of the questions had been sympathetic.
It had changed, though. Subtle at first. By evening there had been an edge to the voices that hadn’t been there before, an accusation only thinly veiled. Maybe they believed she did it, but probably not. Most likely, they were looking for a sound bite that she’d yet to give them. A grieving mother was good for ratings, but a diabolical one was even better.
The one she could portray, the one she’d been groomed into for years, was composed. She knew it didn’t play well for public sympathy, but there was nothing she could do about it. Even as her muscles trembled beneath designer silk in their effort to keep her from crumbling to the floor, even as her heart’s rhythm blurred so that she could feel it as a constant reminder in her neck, even as snot and unshed tears ran down the back of her throat, she held it together for the cameras. There was no other acceptable option. Not as a Burke.
She’d walked by a television earlier in the day and heard one of the hosts say her name as if it was a rancid thing, unpleasant and disturbing at once. The woman had decided Charlotte had not cried enough at the press conference, but her cohost had chimed in that Charlotte had cried too much. Clearly, she was faking the grief. By the end of the program, they still hadn’t agreed on just how many tears were appropriate when your child had been kidnapped.
That, she could turn off, though, power down. She hadn’t, but she could have. It was more difficult to ignore the questions as they were hurled in her direction each time she stepped foot outside the house.
It had already been her cage. Now it was her prison.
Only when she got to the hotel did the specter of them chasing her dissolve into the nothingness that was actually behind her.
Enrique already had a room, like always, so she ducked past the front office, pulling her baseball cap low to cover her face. She had never worn one before, but she was quickly finding out how useful it could be in helping her hide in plain sight. People knew her as a body draped in expensive clothes, as long, wild hair that was a contradiction to her personality, as a face painted to perfection. Jeans and T-shirts, snagged from the back of Trudy’s closet, had become her camouflage.
But it still wouldn’t do to be caught outside a third-rate motel with Ruby missing, so she knocked, quick and quiet, on the flimsy door.
It swung open four seconds later, and she skirted in past Enrique, making sure not to touch him on the way in. He would try to hug her, offer her comfort, and she didn’t want that.
She shucked off her canvas shoes and dropped the hat to the floor, then turned to find him sliding the little gold chain into place even though they both knew it would do nothing to stop someone who really wanted into the room.
They locked eyes as she crossed her arms, gripping the hem of her T-shirt, and their gazes broke only when she pulled it over her head so that she was left in a plain white cotton bra and jeans.
“Char,” Enrique whispered, hesitant and careful as if she were fine china balancing on a table’s edge. This wasn’t what she wanted. He wasn’t supposed to be like the rest of them. He wasn’t supposed to think she was going to shatter. It wouldn’t do.
Her thumbs stumbled over the button at her waistband, but eventually she got the metal unhooked from the thick fabric, which she then pushed off her hips. She kicked her feet free.
His eyes swept down her body, over the sharp juts of her hips and the outline of her ribs, both more pronounced than they had been months ago. She wondered if he still found her attractive, and she wondered if she cared.
“Char, I don’t think . . .” He backed up against the wall as she took a step closer. “This isn’t . . . Should we talk? Are you okay?”
No. Of course she wasn’t okay. She would never be okay again. Why was he asking her that? Why would he think for even one second that she would want to talk to him about it? That wasn’t what this was.
She moved closer, and then closer still, until her body was flush up against his fully clothed one, her hips canting into his. Then she pushed up onto her toes and slid her mouth over his.
“Come on, baby, no,” he mumbled against her lips. “Let’s just . . . Here.” And then the worst happened. His arms came around her back, and one hand rested on her head, nudging her face into the crook of his neck. It was an embrace that had nothing to do with sex, and her skin crawled in the places he touched her.
“I’m so sorry, baby,” he was saying into her hair. Whispers of condolence and reassurance and nonsense that meant nothing and could mean nothing. Each word pressed against her scalp, searing the already-dry skin there.
In desperation, she opened her mouth against his neck and sank her teeth into the tendons that ran along the thick column. His hands fluttered against her back like he was going to push her off, but then she tasted copper against her tongue, and he broke. Instead of stopping her, he swore in Spanish and then hauled her even closer against him.
Everything was hard and fast. The pleasure of it was tinged with darkness, but it was what she was used to, and she let herself sink into it, an old friend welcoming her home.
When it was over, he pushed to his feet. She just stared at the cracked ceiling as the toilet flushed and then the sink ran. By the time he came back out, she’d shifted enough so that she was lying on sheets that she could pretend were clean, instead of the blanket, which she knew wasn’t.
“You know who I am,” Charlotte said, not looking at him.
He slid in beside her, and though she could feel the heat from his body, he didn’
t touch her. “Of course.”
“Have you known this whole time?”
There was a pause. “Babe. You told me your full name.”
That wasn’t the same as knowing who she was. “You know what I mean.”
“I don’t know what you want me to say,” he said.
“My daughter was kidnapped,” she said. It was surreal, forming the sentence, telling someone that. Maybe it was the only reason she could, because it didn’t feel like reality.
“I know,” he murmured, and his pinkie shifted so that it brushed against hers. She moved her hand.
“My daughter was kidnapped,” she said again, and this time the words were shards of glass in her mouth, and it was too much. Too hot, too sticky, too empty, too tight. Everything at once crashed into her, slamming into her weakened body until she broke, like everyone thought she would.
The sobs came even before the tears—ugly, panting, desperate heaves that ripped through her, tearing the delicate fibers that held her together.
Pain. There was so much pain, everywhere, and she was in his arms again, with no strength left to push him away. She pressed the palms of her hands to her eyes, wanting to escape into the black velvet behind her lids, but there was only more pain there.
It was only when he rolled her, his body coming over hers, his hands pinning her wrist above her head, that she realized she’d been screaming and clawing at her own skin. She could see the angry red marks decorating the white flesh of her arm, but she couldn’t feel them, and so she thought maybe she hadn’t dug in deep enough.
Now it was impossible, with him holding her down as he was.
“Shhh,” he murmured, his thumb rubbing gently against the inside of her wrist. “Breathe.”
The weight of him made it impossible to move, impossible to do something wrong or bad, and it was freeing in that she could let go of the part of her that always worried she would mess it all up. She couldn’t right now, and there was nothing she could do about it. The knowledge of that let her regain control of her lungs and her eyes and her brain.
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