Find Her (Detective D.D. Warren #8)(65)

There’s no polite way to do this, so I just do it. Finish feeling up the girl in the dark. Cotton shirt, maybe a T-shirt. Chest, neck, face, thick shoulder-length hair. Her arms, which I trace all the way down to her handcuffed wrists. Then, because I know something about these things, I skim around the line of the metal bracelets, where I can feel the roughness of new scabs, interlaced with the smooth ridge lines of old scars.

“You were kidnapped too. A while ago. Long enough for your first wounds to have had time to heal.”

The girl doesn’t move. Nor does she speak.

“Are you Stacey Summers?” I ask.

Nothing.

“I know your parents. I met with your father. They haven’t given up hope. They’re still looking for you.”

A slight hiccup. Surprise? Shock? A twist of hope?

“My name is Flora.”

I wait. My fingers still on her wrists.

And then, just as I’m beginning to give up hope, I feel her hands curl against mine.

“M-m-molly,” she whispers in the dark. “My name is M-m-molly.”

Seven years later, that’s all it takes.

My blood turns to ice.

My hands flinch, recoil protectively to my chest.

And I know . . . and I remember . . . and I feel . . . and I . . . and I . . . and I . . .

“No,” I whisper.

But this poor girl, my pain, my punishment, has finally found her voice.

“My name is Molly. Molly. Molly. Molly. My name is Molly.”

I don’t look at the viewing window. I don’t look to the sealed-up wall where I now know there is a door.

I look down at the carpet. I look deep into myself. And I think, all these years later: Oh my God, what have I done, what have I done, what have I done?





Chapter 27


GO OVER TO HIM. Go on. Do it. Walk right over and tell that drunk-ass cowboy you’re a kidnapped girl. Let’s see if he’ll rescue you. No? Don’t think he’ll believe you? Or afraid that he will?”

Standing beside me at the bar, Everett’s voice held an edge. He’d already tossed back several shots, not that it mattered. He’d been on a streak lately. Angry, surly, demanding. Nothing I did was right, and nothing I gave him made him happy.

I didn’t know what had changed, but . . . something had.

Three days off before the next transport. He’d found us a cheap strip motel. In the beginning, I’d liked the time away from the rig. A floor that didn’t constantly rumble beneath my feet. A view of green trees that didn’t blur as they flew past on the interstate.

But Everett . . . Less driving meant more drinking. More sex. And none of it was ever enough. He just got angrier and angrier and angrier.

Tonight, he’d returned to the room with a bag in his hand. Thrown it at me.

“Clean yourself up. You look like a fucking loser and smell even worse. What’s with the hair anyway?”

Most of the time I wasn’t allowed to shower. Let alone shave my legs. But tonight, I’d cleaned up. Then looked in the bag to discover a dress. Kind of. Not a pink-flowered or yellow flowy sundress, like the kind I might have worn a lifetime ago, heading out on a summer afternoon in Maine or enjoying a spring afternoon in Boston.

No. This dress was red and slinky and very, very tiny.

I’d trembled when I held it in my hand. And for a moment, my gaze drifting up to the reflection of a girl in the steamy mirror . . . pale skin, gaunt cheeks, gray eyes so huge and shadowed in her face.

Ghost girl, I thought. Then my entire body shook.

Everett was waiting for me when I came out of the bathroom, tugging self-consciously on the hem plastered to the top of my thighs. No bra or underwear. Everett didn’t believe in such things.

He didn’t say anything as he eyed me up and down. Just grunted, drained the rest of his beer, then shouldered by me to scrub his face, slick back his hair.

I tried to practice sitting while he was gone. Fiddling with the halter top to cover more of my chest, plucking at the clingy fabric. In the bag, I found a pair of platform sandals, strappy black. Not right for the dress, I thought, before I could help myself. But in another life, with another outfit, I would’ve liked these shoes.

Again, that strange sense of déjà vu.

Ghost girl.

It came to me: the new dress, new shoes, combined with Everett’s fresh rage. This was it. He’d always warned me, the day he grew bored, that would be that.

He’d shoot me. Strangle me. Stab me. I couldn’t even remember anymore. So many methods he’d discussed. But it all ended the same. My body dumped in Gator Alley. My mother never knowing what happened to me.

Bathroom door opened. Everett stalked out, hands fisted at his sides.

“We’re going out,” he announced.

I trailed out the door behind him.

Ghost girls didn’t argue.

Ghost girls never stood a chance.


*

BAR WAS A SMALL HONKY-TONK. Peanut shells on the floor. Alan Jackson on the jukebox. Crowded. Was it a Friday night? Saturday? Days of the week challenged me. As well as cities, states, basic geography.

I saw men in jeans and T-shirts, women in tighter-fitting jeans and T-shirts. Definitely, no one in a clingy red dress.

Patrons stared at me when we first walked in, gazes flickering to Everett. But no flashes of recognition, no twinges of suspicion. After all this time, I didn’t expect anyone to look at us twice. Even now, one by one, they shrugged off the sight of a too-pale, too-skinny girl in a hooker’s dress and resumed their drinking.