Run Away(25)

Simon could see it, a cruel hand tightening into a fist—tightening just as his was now—and then the fist cocking back, a sneer on the face, and that fist launching straight at his helpless daughter.

Anger, fury, rage consumed him.

If it was Aaron—and if Aaron could somehow be alive and standing in front of him right this very moment—Simon would kill him without a moment’s hesitation or thought. No regret. No guilt.

He’d end him.

Simon felt Ingrid’s hand on his arm, a warm touch, an attempt perhaps to bring him back.

“I get what you’re feeling,” Cornelius said, looking straight at Simon.

“So what did you do?” Simon asked.

“Who says I did anything?”

“Because you get what I’m feeling,” Simon said.

“Doesn’t mean I did anything. I’m not her father.”

“So you just shrugged and went about your day?”

“Could be.”

Simon shook his head. “You wouldn’t just let something like that slide.”

“I didn’t kill him,” Cornelius said.

“If you did,” Simon said, “it would never leave this room.”

Cornelius glanced toward Ingrid. She nodded as if to reassure.

“Please tell us the rest,” Ingrid said.

Cornelius fiddled with the gray-white beard. He took another look around the room, making a face as though he’d just entered the room for the first time and realized the filth.

“Yeah, I came up here.”

“And?”

“And I banged on the door. It was locked. So I took out my key. Just like I did today. I opened the door…”

The music upstairs stopped. The room was completely silent now.

Cornelius looked down to the mattress on the right. “Aaron was right there. Passed out. Stench so bad I could barely breathe. I just wanted to run out of there, forget the whole thing.”

He stopped.

“So what did you do?” Ingrid asked.

“I checked his knuckles.”

“Pardon?”

“The knuckles on Aaron’s right hand, they were scraped up. Fresh scrapes too. So I knew then. No surprise, I guess. It’d been him who beat her. So I stood over him…”

Again he stopped. This time he closed his eyes.

Ingrid stepped toward him. “It’s okay.”

“Like I told you before, I daydreamed about it, Ingrid. Maybe…maybe I would have done more, if I got the chance. I don’t know. If that punk was awake. If he was awake and tried to explain himself. Maybe then I would have just exploded. You know what I’m saying? So I’m standing there and I’m staring down at this piece of garbage. And maybe this time, after what I’d seen, maybe I thought I’d do more than just shake my head and shuffle away.”

Cornelius opened his eyes.

“But I didn’t.”

“You left the room,” Ingrid said.

He nodded. “Enrique and Candy come down the hall, just like today. I closed the door and went back downstairs.”

“And that’s it?”

“That’s it,” Cornelius said.

“You haven’t seen Paige since?”

“Not Paige. Not Aaron either. When you two showed up, I figured maybe I was wrong.”

“Wrong about what?”

“Maybe Paige didn’t go to that empty lot and see Rocco. Maybe she ran home and told her mommy and daddy what happened. Maybe they came out here and…well, they’re her kin. They’re her blood. So maybe they did more than daydream.”

Cornelius studied their faces.

“That’s not what happened,” Simon said.

“Yeah, I get that now.”

“So we need to find her,” Simon said.

“I get that too.”

“We need to follow her steps after she ran out of here.”

Cornelius nodded. “That means you got to go see Rocco.”





Chapter

Nine



Cornelius had told them how to find Rocco: “You duck through the opening in the fence. He’ll be in the abandoned building on the other side of the lot.”

Simon wasn’t sure what to expect.

On TV, he’d seen plenty of drug deals amongst urban blight, men with dark stares and guns and do-rags and low-slung jeans, little kids on bikes doing the deals because they were easier to get out of jail or some such thing, probably just TV nonsense. As he stood with Ingrid by the opening in the fence, there was no one visible. No lookout. No armed guard. He could hear faint voices in the distance, probably coming from the abandoned building, but the expected menace was not yet visible.

Which did not mean that this was a safe situation.

“So,” Simon said to Ingrid, “yet again I ask: What’s our plan?”

“Damned if I know.”

They looked at the opening in the fence.

“Let me go in first,” he said, “just in case it isn’t safe.”

“And leave me out here alone? Oh right, that sounds supersafe.”

Ingrid had a point.

“I could tell you to go home,” he said.

“You could,” Ingrid agreed, as she pulled back the chain link and ducked into the abandoned lot.