Lost Girls(75)

“Don’t be sorry,” he said with a crooked grin. “We won.”

“Is Lauren—is she—”

“Lauren’s fine. Some injuries from her fight, but she’s—” He paused. “I was going to say she’s at home, but she’s actually been staying at your house. During our investigation we found out what has been going on with her father. Your mother’s been working with child protection services to get her set up with one of Lauren’s aunts in Riverside.”

I glanced down at the blanket that covered me, wondering if Lauren had been sleeping in my bed, beneath that afghan Grams made me. A sliver of jealousy trembled from my shoulders down to my fingers. Obviously Lauren and I still had issues. Maybe we always would. But at least she was safe.

“Did you find Madison?” I asked.

He nodded, then grimaced in pain and closed his eyes. “We found most of the girls. Madison, Haley, Emily, Hannah, Sammy, and Brooke, plus some others we didn’t even know were missing—”

Sammy. Komodo. The girl from my history class with the dragon tattoo. I sighed, and leaned back against my pillow.

“We found documents on a laptop that led us to most of the missing girls, all the way to a network of underground fight clubs that had been set up in Seattle, Detroit, Miami, and Houston. We’re in the process of shutting those down, just like we did with the ones here in Los Angeles.”

That was good news. No, it was great news. Still, there was something in his expression, something he didn’t want to tell me and there had been one name he hadn’t mentioned.

Janie Deluca. Cyclone.

I saw her again, blue hair spinning around her as those European-looking thugs had dragged her off the stage.

“What about Janie?” I asked, my mouth dry.

He stared past me, like he was looking for another answer, a better answer. But there wasn’t one. He shook his head. “All evidence pointed toward the club in Detroit. That was where she was supposed to go. But that’s not where they took her.” His voice cracked and his eyes glistened and once more I wondered if he had lost someone once, some younger sister or niece. “I’m sorry. We’ll keep looking, but I don’t know—”

I saw her on her front porch with that bat, and in the club lifting her chin when I smiled at her, as if some measure of self-confidence had been restored. But I realized that I might never see her again. She’d gone into the midnight deep, just like Nicole. She was lost and she might never find her way home again.

“We wouldn’t have rescued any of those girls if it hadn’t been for you.” Green eyes searched mine, probably hoping that this would be enough—shutting down clubs in five cities, putting the men responsible behind bars, and saving twenty-four girls. I found out later that was how many kidnapped girls had been rescued in total, plus almost as many boys.

Almost fifty lost girls and boys. It should have been enough.

But for me, it was a hollow victory.

I hadn’t wanted to bring some girls back. I’d wanted them all.

“You were brave to do what you did,” Bennet said as he stood up. “I know how it feels...to not bring everyone home. And I know you still have to finish high school and college, but if you’re interested, you might want to consider a career with the FBI.” A boyish grin revealed dimples I hadn’t even realized he had. “We’d be honored to have someone like you working on our cases.” He put his business card on the table beside my bed. “If you decide you ever want to work with us, or if you just want to talk, call me, okay?”

I nodded.

And then he was a shadow again, walking away from the light that poured in the window, heading out the door and into the hallway. Disappearing, as if he’d never been here, as if he had never risked his own life to save these girls. Or to save me.

...

It was another day before I was ready to go home from the hospital. I kept slipping in and out of a thick, suffocating sleep, waking up only occasionally. Sometimes my room was empty, nurses shuffling papers in the hall, carts rattling over linoleum floors. Those were the good times. I could be myself. I could cry and struggle to focus my thoughts; I could look forward to the day when I would be back in my own room, curled on my side, cocooned in my afghan, blocking out the world that tried to smother me with all its smells and sounds and bright lights. It was all too much right now.

The bad times were when I woke up and someone was in my room, staring at me, waiting for me to say something brilliant or profound.

My therapist appeared beside my bed once, looking like Cruella De Vil with her red lipstick and designer sunglasses. All she needed was a coat made from Dalmatian puppies to complete the picture. We didn’t talk long. I didn’t want her to see the darkness seething inside me. That was my secret. I’d already realized that I couldn’t blame anyone else for what had happened to me. I’d gone to those clubs willingly, excited to find someplace new to fit in, to be a star. I just needed to find another way to feel special now, although I wasn’t sure whether that would ever happen.

Another time I woke up and Lauren was here. Sitting in the chair, wearing a pink dress, her hair in long braids, like she was Heidi or something. Like she was completely innocent and all was forgiven.

We didn’t talk long, either. I gave her a grin, asked a few vague questions, then acted like I couldn’t hear her when she kept apologizing.