Find Her (Detective D.D. Warren #8)(63)

Now I must move forward. I have to engage. She’s a resource, and a victim must use all resources available to her.

I pitch forward onto my hands and knees. Using my inchworm crawl, weight on my elbows, I wiggle forward in the dark.

She’s fallen where I attacked her, sprawled in front of the suddenly appearing, disappearing door. Pulled shut, locked tight. I can’t make out any sign it was ever there. The wall has gone back to being just a wall, the crying girl the only evidence anything happened at all.

“Stacey?” I whisper as I crawl forward.

She doesn’t answer. Just whimpers.

My bound hands connect with the water bottle, knock it sideways. I pause, feel around more gently, until I can clasp it between my fingers. I wriggle forward, then bump against the girl’s body.

Leg. Clad in denim. Blue jeans. She’s in real clothes, versus my silly nightgown. The realization gives me hope. If she has pants, then maybe she also has a belt. With a metal buckle. That would be perfect. Oh, the locks you can pick, the things you can do, with the tongue of a belt buckle.

“Stacey,” I whisper again.

Still no response.

It doesn’t feel right to simply pat her down, as if she were a suspect at a crime scene. But she won’t talk to me either. I try to think of what I should do.

That last day, when the police found me, pouring through the hotel door and windows like a swarm of black armored ants, what had I been like, what had I wanted?

I’d been crying. I can remember that, but it feels far away and distant, something that happened to another person another lifetime ago. There was a female agent there. She kept saying “Florence Dane” over and over again. The name confused me. Tickled the back of my throat, as if I should know it.

“Flora,” she tried again.

I think I spoke then. I think I said, “My name is Molly.”

They exchanged looks, whispered responses. She placed her hand on my shoulder. “My name is Special Agent in Charge Kimberly Quincy. I’m with the FBI. You’re safe now. Okay? You’re safe.”

I flinched when she touched me. Then felt myself go incredibly still. I wasn’t shocked, I wasn’t elated, I wasn’t relieved.

I was suspicious. I was steeling myself for the blow to come.

She let go of my shoulder. She offered me water. Introduced me to a couple of EMTs who wanted to check me out.

“Would you like me to call your mom?” she asked.

But all I could think of was Jacob. Poor, poor Jacob.

And the blood all over my hands.

I couldn’t respond to the Kimberly agent. I never talked. Or screamed. Or cried. I simply held myself very still. That day, and the next, and the next.

A girl who’d been born and raised in a coffin-shaped box.

I’m not that girl, I remind myself now. If I’m not that girl, then I must be the FBI agent, the Kimberly person. So what did she do? Spoke briskly and moved with authority. She ushered me through a flurry of medical exams and necessary questions, while keeping up a steady flow of conversation, whether I chose to answer or not.

She was normal, I decide. Sounded normal, acted normal. That’s what she was trying to give me. After four hundred and seventy-two days, she offered normalcy.

I take a deep breath. Begin.

“My name is Flora.” Is it just me, or did my voice falter at the sound of my own name? I repeat myself, this time for my own sake. “My name is Flora.” Not Molly.

“I’m sorry I attacked you.” Am I? Maybe. I don’t know who she is yet, or her role in all this. Only a fool rushes to judgment.

“I’m going to try to help you. I’m sorry if it hurts, but I have to feel out the wound. I have some water. Would you like water?”

Her crying has puttered out. She appears to be listening to me. Her breath is still shaky and fluttery. Shock? Fear? Anything is possible.

She doesn’t say yes or no to water, but whimpers again.

“I’m going to touch you,” I say now. “I’m sorry. You probably don’t want to be touched anymore.” I hadn’t wanted to be. “But I can’t see you. This is”—I shrug, feeling a helplessness I already hate—“the only way I can figure out what’s wrong.”

I don’t know what else to do. She’s not talking, but at least is holding still. Is that an implicit yes or a mental hell no? I wonder if this is how the FBI agent felt five years ago. Less like she was saving a terrified girl and more like she was dealing with a feral cat.

Bare feet. That’s my first discovery. The girl is clad in jeans, but no socks and shoes. Evidence she’s not allowed to leave the house? I allow myself a small moment of mourning for the opportunities shoelaces might have presented. Resources, resources, resources. But no sense in mourning what you never had to lose.

Next, I move my bound hands up her leg, fluttering my fingers across the line of soft worn denim. Old jeans. Her personal favorites? I tug experimentally, not sure if that’s appropriate or not. But it’s as I expected. The jeans are loose on her. If these were her original pants, she’s recently lost a lot of weight.

She must be lying on her side because next I come to the faint curve of her hip. She hisses in a breath, and I suspect I’m close to the wound. When the door first opened and I lunged forward, I was aiming for the stomach, a gut job. I’m hoping, for both our sakes, I hit her ribs instead.