Atone (Recovered Innocence #2)(42)

She taps Kiersten Paulie’s photo. “I know this girl. She had a different name, though. We were all given new names. Hers was Ariel like in The Little Mermaid. Probably because of her red hair. We worked together a few times.” She stares at the screen as she says this, so I can’t read her expression.

“Tell me about her.”

“There’s not much to tell. It’s not like we sat around chatting and painting each other’s nails. We f*cked guys together.” She rubs her forehead and lets out a sigh. “I’m sorry. That’s not helping.”

“Would you be more comfortable talking to Cora than me?”

“No.” She tears her gaze from the screen. “Why? You don’t want to hear about all the twisted shit I had to do?”

“There’s nothing you could tell me that would change my opinion of you.”

“Nothing?”

I shake my head.

She considers me for a moment, no doubt trying to decide if I’m bullshitting her or not. I’m not. We both had to do some f*cked-up shit to survive.

“Keep going,” she finally says. “Tell me what else you found.”

I show her the info I’ve gathered so far about the other girls and the map with all the pins on it. I tell her my theory about a possibility of a connection to child services. When I’m done, she sits back in her seat. She looks weary, exhausted. I take her hand and run my thumb across her knuckles.

“We’re going to find her,” I vow, hoping I’m right.





Chapter 20


Vera


“Somehow I believe you will,” I tell Beau. If anyone can find Marie, it’s him. “You’re too damned stubborn to allow anything else to happen.”

He laughs and brings my hand to his lips to kiss the back of it. “If only I could’ve stubborned my way out of prison.”

“If anyone could have, it would’ve been you.”

“Thanks.” He stares down at our joined hands, his mood turning serious again. “I need to ask you more questions about your life before and during the time you met Javier.”

I expected this. In an odd way, I want it. I saw a counselor briefly, just after I first escaped. Talking about it helped, but I couldn’t give too many specifics. Even though I was living under a different name at the time, it was still too great a risk. Javier has some very powerful allies.

That’s why when I ran I had to run far and fast, and change everything about me from my looks to my name to my habits.

“What do you want to know?” I ask Beau.

“Everything you can think of. Where you went to school, who you lived with, who your friends were, who your social worker was, that sort of thing.”

“My social worker was Ramón Diaz. Before him I had Cindy Zimmerman. I don’t remember who was before her. I got kicked out of high school for ditching, so I went to a continuation school. I lived in a group home that sucked, but it was better than the one I was in before. I moved around so much I didn’t have any friends except for this guy named Jordan. We got moved to the group home at the same time. He was the first guy I ever kissed. We got caught and they moved him to another home. I had to go to pregnancy-prevention classes because I was suddenly ‘at risk.’

“My mother was a whore, so they were worried I was going to turn out like her. They were right. I turned out just like her.”

“It wasn’t your choice.”

“No. But what’s the difference? The result’s the same. Do you feel less like an ex-con because you didn’t actually commit the crime you went to prison for?”

“No.”

“See? There’s no difference.”

“Wait a minute. You said something about pregnancy-prevention classes.”

“Yeah.”

He grips his mouse and clicks around until he finds what he’s looking for. “Barbara Moore took classes like that.” He points to the screen. “She called them a joke, since she was still a virgin. And here…” He does some more clicking, bringing up a blog. “Kaley Riccio’s boyfriend got caught with his hand up her shirt and she had to go to classes. The same with Rosalyn Bauer and Kiersten Paulie. All of you took pregnancy-prevention classes for at-risk girls. Where did you take your classes?”

“A room in the Family and Youth Center downtown. They even had a van that picked us up and took us there.”

His hands are wizard hands on the computer keys. Screens pop up and down like jackrabbits. I can’t keep up with what he’s doing, so I sit back and watch. Myriad microexpressions flicker across his face. He’s probably not even aware he’s doing it, he’s concentrating so hard.

“Do you remember the names of any of the girls you took the classes with?” he asks, not taking his eyes off the screen.

“A few.”

He pushes a pad of paper toward me, still focused on the computer. “Write down their names for me.”

I flip through pages of notes he’s made on my sister’s case, mesmerized. He’s taken tiny, nothing bits of information and turned them into real leads and threads to follow. How he found those other girls…amazing. And the map on the wall. He’s finding patterns, connecting dots. I only hope we get to Marie in time.