The Summer Children (The Collector #3)(32)

“Head between your knees, mija, or as close as you can get. Just breathe.” I keep a hand on her back, just there, not rubbing, because I can see more bruises disappearing under the edge of her shirt and don’t want to hurt her any more. “Just keep breathing.” I can feel her muscles quivering under my hand, dry heaves she swallows back with whimpers. “You’re safe here, Emilia, I promise.”

I text Siobhan to tell her to stay inside. If she comes out, it will be to head straight to her car and leave, and ignoring whatever that will cost me personally, I really don’t want Holmes to have to track her down to interview her. That will be traumatic on a number of fronts.

“I was safe at home,” Emilia retorts, voice still thready and thin.

My pinky presses into the green-tinged edge of the bruise over her shoulder blade, and she winces.

“Parents are allowed to discipline their child,” she recites in a mumble.

“They’re not allowed to hurt them.”

“So we just kill them? That’s okay?”

“No. Emilia, no, that is not okay. We are going to catch this person.”

“My mom . . .” She takes in a great, shuddering breath, and immediately loses half of it to an aching keen. “Mom told me not to fight, to do whatever I had to do to stay safe,” she weeps, and I wrap my arms around her in a secure hold to keep her from pitching off the swing. “The lady moved on to my dad, and I was just standing there, like an idiot, holding my mom’s hand as she died. My mom. I didn’t do anything.”

“You couldn’t do anything,” I tell her softly. “Emilia, that woman had a gun, and she’d already hit you. If you’d fought any harder, she probably would have killed you.”

“But she said she was saving me.”

I bite my lip, trying to sort through what I could tell a shocked, grieving child. “Emilia, when someone has a mission like hers, something they need to do, someone disrupting that can be in grave danger. She needs to save you, but if you fight too hard, if you make her think she can’t save you . . . Sweetheart, we’ve seen that kind of thing before. She would have killed you, or at the very least hurt you very badly. You listened to your mom, and that probably saved your life. She must have loved you so much.”

“She’s my mom. She’s my mom. She’s my mom.” Her words trail off into incoherent sobs and I just hold her, letting the motion of the swing rock her gently.

It’s telling, though, even in her shock, that she hasn’t really mentioned her father.

Eddison pulls up with Sterling in the passenger seat, followed by Holmes and the ambulance and the other police car. A few minutes later, Vic drives up as well, and the cul-de-sac is once again full of cars. As I introduce Emilia to Detective Holmes, I can feel Eddison’s hands at my hips.

“Easy, hermana,” he murmurs, and pulls the gun from my waistband, gracias a Dios. He slides a hand along for my other phone, as well, as Sterling picks up the work cell from the board by my knee.

“Siobhan is in the bedroom,” I tell Vic, and from the corner of my eye I can see Eddison’s eyebrows lift in surprise. I shake my head. Vic nods and heads into the house. He’s absolutely the best choice for it; there’s something about him that Siobhan’s a little in awe of, and if there’s any chance of her not going through the fucking roof, it’s with Vic breaking the news.

As soon as Emilia settles into Holmes’s questions and the attention of the paramedic, I ease away from her to the other end of the porch, perching on the railing. Eddison and Sterling follow.

“We’ll make sure Siobhan gets home okay,” Sterling says, hopping up beside me.

“Thanks.”

We sit in silence as Holmes finishes with this round of questions and Emilia gets walked to the ambulance, wrapped in a shiny silver blanket.

“No teddy bear,” Sterling notes.

“She dropped it in the grass a few houses down,” Holmes says, joining our little knot. “Markey’s getting it bagged.”

I twist around on the rail, and sure enough, one of the uniforms is picking up a familiar-looking white bear. I sigh and turn back. “Was she able to add anything?”

“A little. She said when she was fighting, the killer got upset and started sounding more Southern.”

We digest that for a minute before Sterling clears her throat. “Any particular kind of Southern?”

“No. But she said it was only when the woman got upset. Other than that she sounded like she didn’t come from anywhere.” Putting away her notebook, Holmes looks up and does a full double take. “Jesus, Ramirez, who’d you piss off?”

I lift one hand to trace the scars down my cheek, bare of makeup. “It was a long time ago.”

“Looks too wide for a knife.”

“Broken bottle.”

“Jesus,” she says again. She rubs at her eyes, bits of dried blood from when she’d touched Emilia’s hands flaking off. “Mignone just got to the house. He says even at a glance, her story holds up. Signs of struggle in the hallways, and in both rooms.”

“There’ve been complaints about her dad?”

“Did she say that?”

“Not in so many words.”

“You said Agent Ryan is inside?”

“Yes. We heard the knock on the door and Emilia’s cry for help, and I told her to stay put while I came out here.”