Never Tell (Detective D.D. Warren #10)(55)

Longing, she finally decided. Evie Carter looked at those photos like a woman who, sixteen years later, just wanted her father back.

It made D.D. wonder what other regrets the woman had, and how many might involve her husband and his own death just two nights ago.

Knock on the door. Neil poked his head in. He appeared nervous.

“Got something on the fake IDs?” she asked immediately, collecting her notes.

“Ah, no. You got a visitor.”

“I have a visitor?”

“A fed. SSA Kimberly Quincy from the Atlanta office. She’s here with Flora Dane and some other guy. Says she needs to talk.”

“No,” D.D. said.

“Too late,” a female voice drawled from behind Neil.

D.D. sighed. “Shit.”





CHAPTER 18


    FLORA


MEMORY IS A FUNNY THING. There are moments that sear into our minds. If we’re lucky, it’s because we’re happy—first kiss, wedding day, birth of a child. The kind of experience where you both have it and stand outside of it, because your brain recognizes this is something so special that you’re going to want to relive it.

I have some of those memories. Being asked to prom by the cutest boy in high school, practically floating home to share the news with my mom. The first time I got a baby fox to eat a piece of hot dog out of my hand. A particular bedtime ritual my mom used to have when I couldn’t get to sleep. And the nights my brother and I turned it on her, giggling hysterically as we pretended to tuck her into bed, but really ended up in a giant mosh pile of limbs in the middle of her mattress, a tangle of family.

I have other memories, too.

The moment I woke up in a coffin-sized box. The sound the first woman made, when Jacob stuck in the knife, followed by the look in her eyes as she stared right into me, knowing he was killing her, knowing she was dying, knowing I was doing nothing to stop him.

Now I have to face the fact there could be six more of her out there, six more girls who never made it home. Maybe Jacob made good on his promise and fed them to the gators. Maybe they’re buried on his property, if I could just help figure out where that is.

Memory. Such a fickle tool. And for better or worse, the best option I have left.

—

I DON’T SLEEP. After leaving Keith Edgar’s house, I return to Cambridge, then pace my tiny apartment until my elderly landlords politely knock on the door and ask me if I’m all right. After assuring them I’m just dandy, I give up on walking continuous circles and debate calling Sarah. She’s a fellow survivor who once held off a murderer by using the severed arm of her just-butchered roommate. She’s also the closest thing I have to a friend.

She understood bad nights. How the brain could spin for days, weeks, months at a time, an endless cycle of remembered traumas from falling off your bike at seven to being attacked by a knife-wielding maniac at twenty. Trying to sort out the experiences, Samuel had explained to me once. It felt like my brain was racing wildly, but really, it was searching for patterns, matches, order. Something that would give it context, so my mind could go, Aha—that’s what happened. Then, presumably, people like Sarah and me would sleep again. Except some experiences defied definition. So our brains kept spinning long after the horror had ended.

If not Sarah, then I could call Samuel, who most likely was expecting to hear from me after this afternoon’s discussion. Or my mother, who would be simultaneously honored and stricken to have me finally open up about what it’s like to be me.

But I don’t feel like talking. I pick up the clothes in my bedroom. I wipe down kitchen counters. I rearrange the four things I have in the fridge. Then, in a burst of inspiration, I try on my own to recall the original place Jacob had held me. The first coffin-sized box in a dingy basement of some house. Small windows, up high. Shit-brown carpet that I used to comb through with my fingers, marveling at how many shades of brown it took to make carpet the same color as dirt. I jot down notes. Ugly carpet. Moldy sofa. Stairs leading up. Pine trees. When he finally led me out of the house, I remember pine trees.

But my mind keeps ping-ponging, until I can’t be sure anymore if I was remembering the first place, or that second motel, or what about that place in Florida? I grow light-headed, can feel the edges of the panic attack start to build, when it’s been years since I’ve been humbled by such a thing.

Four A.M., sweaty, panting, and borderline feral, I opt for a different memory. The day I was rescued, an image that should be higher on the happiness scale. I force myself to sit calmly on the floor of my apartment, recall exactly the crash of the motel window. The canister of tear gas bouncing into the room, then releasing an ominous hiss. My eyes welling, my nose running. Then the front door blowing open, and a hoard of heavily armored men pouring into the tiny room. They scream at me, yell at Jacob. Scream louder when I pick up the gun. Fall silent when I’ve done what I had to do.

Then, Kimberly Quincy. The fed. She’d been the first to greet me outside the room, her arm around my shoulders, telling me over and over again I’d be all right. Everything was okay now. I was safe.

I remember her voice clearly. Clipped, firm, in control. The kind of voice that inspired confidence.

But what does SSA Kimberly Quincy look like? For some reason, that piece of the puzzle keeps escaping from me. I work on it for an hour. The sound of her voice. The feel of her arm around my shoulders. Me, turning my head, looking straight at her.