Crash & Burn (Tessa Leoni, #3)(114)

“She couldn’t. Not with both of us sitting there. But I can imagine her attempting to return later to ask more questions. Maybe she spotted Nicky meeting with Thomas and decided to follow.”

Tessa shook her head, still not buying it. “But she couldn’t have followed right behind them without them noticing . . .”

“Nope. Which proves my earlier point. If she’s the one driving the second vehicle, Marlene Bilek has definitely been here before.”


* * *



“YOU KILLED MY daughter.” Marlene stands back from the foundation, closer to the circular drive. Her face is illuminated by the beam of Thomas’s flashlight, but the night is too thick to reveal much more. Her car. Where she might have come from. If she’s here alone.

Clearly, she’s been listening to our trip down memory lane.

“It was an accident,” I hear myself say. Is it strange to be apologizing to a woman holding a gun? Or maybe, the most natural response?

“She burned. Here. Where the fancy house used to be.”

I don’t say anything. Vaguely, I’m aware of Thomas trying to ease closer without capturing Marlene’s attention.

No such luck. “Stop. One more step, I’ll shoot her first. Trust me, this gun isn’t for show. First thing Hank taught me was to use a firearm. Good exercise for a woman, he said, who’d already spent too much of her life as a punching bag.”

“Vero loved you.”

I offer the words in comfort, but if anything, Marlene recoils, appears struck.

“What did she tell you?”

“What do you mean?”

“Did she know? Did she ever figure it out? After everything you said, hearing about her life. Sweet Lord. The woman said it was a good home. How was I supposed to know any different? She had fancy clothes, a nice car. I never imagined. I never imagined!”

For the first time, I think I get it. Or maybe it’s simply because the wind has finally picked up again. And it’s cold now. Icy shivers fingering up my spine.

It’s Thomas who does the honors. He’s halted eight feet back, but his grip on the flashlight is now steady. “You sold your daughter.”

The wind whisking more briskly. Rustling our hair.

I stare at Marlene as if seeing her for the first time. She doesn’t deny it. But of course, Madame Sade was a businesswoman. And what kind of woman risked kidnapping children, when buying them was so much easier?

“I needed out! Ronnie, the beatings . . . I just couldn’t take it anymore. You don’t understand what it’s like to be that helpless—”

I laugh bitterly.

Marlene flushes. “I had no money. I couldn’t take care of myself, let alone Vero. Not to mention, the way Ronnie had taken to looking at her. It was for her own good. You don’t have to believe me. But one day, through a friend of a friend, I heard of a woman who sometimes took in young girls. Lived in a fancy house, not enough kids of her own. Would even kick a little money your way. She took pity on single moms; that’s what I heard.”

I can’t help myself. “You mean from other addicts, alcoholics? Women willing to sell their own kids for their next fix?”

“Vero would be better off. I could leave Ronnie, get on my own two feet. Except, that day at the park . . . One of the other women noticed Vero wasn’t with me anymore. I didn’t have any choice. I had to cry kidnapping. Otherwise the police would’ve figured it out.”

“I remember that,” Thomas spoke up abruptly. “My mother was furious that afternoon. Muttering the whole evening if you wanted something done right you just had to do it yourself.”

“It wasn’t my fault! Worked out, though. The police investigated, found no leads; it all went away. She still got Vero, and eventually, when the dust settled, I got my money.”

All of a sudden, it comes to me: “I know you!”

Marlene frowned at me. “I don’t know what you mean.”

“That’s how I recognized you at the liquor store. The second I saw you, I knew you. Memory, I thought. I was half right. Except it wasn’t Vero’s memory, it wasn’t the vision of you hiding your little girl in the closet. It was here. Right here. You came to the house to collect the money in person. Madame Sade yelled at you.”

“I came to get what I was owed!”

The wind, sharper now. Colder.

“Did you see her?” I hear myself whisper. “Back then, she would’ve been standing at the tower window. She could’ve peered straight down the circular drive. Seeing the taxi pull up. Watching her mom step out, walk up the stairs. After all her nights of crying and begging. Finally, you came to rescue her.”

My hair whips around my cheeks. Goose bumps up and down my arms.

As I see things I’ve never seen before. As I know things I have no way of knowing. “She beats the glass with her little fists,” I hear myself whisper. “She calls your name, excited, hopeful. Vero is six years old. Vero is found. Vero will go home again.

“Except no one ever unlocks her door. Eventually, you come out of the house. Down the steps. Back into the waiting cab. You leave without her.

“Vero wants to fly. She wants to open the window and fly right over the sill. Because nothing matters anymore. Her mother has come. Her mother has gone. She loved you with all her heart. And you broke it.”