Forgive Me(26)

Ricardo says that I’m amazing in bed. Amazing. He’s used those exact words. That’s something, right? I’m not grossed out that he has so much more experience than me. I mean he is like seven years older or something. But I’m flattered he thinks I’m getting good. And I really need the confidence boost because none of the pictures are working. We’ve tried everything. Makeup. Hair. We used all the money from my jewelry to buy me new clothes and new makeup. None of that worked. I asked if I could have a new phone and Ricardo said no. I can’t talk to anybody again. To make this work I have to forget about Nadine and become Jessica. But it’s NOT working. We even took some pictures outside and those came out the worst. I look like I belong back in Potomac. I have no edge! A real actress can belong anywhere and can look like anything. I look like a scared little girl from the suburbs hanging in . . . in . . . in wherever I am. I don’t talk to people, so I don’t ask them. Ricardo doesn’t want me to.

One time I started a conversation with a guy in line at the pizza place down the street from the apartment and when we got home Ricardo got really mad. Smashing walls with his fists kind of mad. Like the day he cut up my pictures mad. I asked him what was wrong and he said I had made him jealous. He said if I ever talked to another guy in front of him again, he’d hit that guy so hard he’d kill him.

And then he’d hit me.





CHAPTER 13



Angie lived in a one-bedroom apartment at Seminary Towers on Kenmore and Van Dorn. It was an older complex but nice, with good light and easy access to I-395. Plus it was affordable and in a safe neighborhood, easing her father’s worry. The Papa Bear thing was a little endearing, but it also wore thin and quick. She was no longer his little girl to protect. She could handle herself just fine. Just ask any instructor at the gun range, from her self-defense class, or her gym.

The weekend had passed in a blur and still no sign of Nadine. It was almost eight when Angie got home. She had been at the office doing paperwork and would have arrived sooner had Mike Webb not called to offer a recap of his time with MCD, the missing children division of NCMEC. He would meet regularly with the team from MCD until they found Nadine or the missing girl’s parents pulled them from the case.

MCD had two units of case management. The Critical and Runaway Unit (CRU) took point on the Nadine Jessup case. The information CRU gathered would have been confidential, but Carolyn Jessup had authorized access for Angie and any of her associates. Mike and the assigned case manager worked the phones all afternoon and made contact with police in the targeted cities. They also reviewed all the tips—there were plenty—and made sure the police knew which ones they thought were most promising. They hoped for a break in the case soon.

Tomorrow, Nadine will be six weeks gone. She could be anywhere. Alive or dead. Hooked on drugs. Hooked on survival, which could mean any number of things, none of them very good. Making money under the table on the streets often meant under the sheets as well.

Angie had farmed out three new cases to other trusted & Associates members. Two of them involved runaways and one was a transport job. It was a busy time for the DeRose agency, but she was fine with taking her cut of the referrals instead of a much larger payday. She wanted to focus on Nadine.

Focus meant the job and little else, which was why she’d arrived home carrying a plastic bag with takeout Thai food from Rice and Spice on Duke Street, five minutes from her apartment. Cooking required time, and time was something in perpetually short supply. She enjoyed cooking, and collected cookbooks like paperback novels, but she couldn’t remember a time the oven got used for anything other than reheating. The veggie Pad Thai would probably be tomorrow’s dinner, as well.

Most nights, she preferred to eat lighter meals. Stakeouts had a way of packing on the pounds, and her mother’s healthy eating habits (doctor-recommended on account of the lupus) had become Angie’s as well. But the day had worn her out, and the strange photograph continued to weigh heavy. She craved carbs.

Hanging on the kitchen wall was a large framed poster of Tuscany. The poster represented a dream she and her mother had shared, to travel together to Italy. They’d talked at length about lazy afternoons drinking wine, sampling varieties of cuisine both would normally shun, and seeing the sights tourists were supposed to see. Angie didn’t care about taking the road less traveled. She and her mother were perfectly fine with trodding a well-worn path. There was a reason people went to Venice and Florence, and visited the Vatican in Rome.

Angie had a second Italian-themed poster, this one of David, the only nude male to occupy her bathroom in quite some time. How a block of marble could become something so magnificent astounded Angie and fired her imagination. Seeing the sculpture in person had been an item on both Angie and her mom’s bucket lists. Angie would have to check that item off for both of them.

Angie’s dad was more a homebody than a world traveler, a polite way of calling him a workaholic. For him, a plane ride was a grand ordeal. Angie often wondered about her father’s ancestry, his heritage—more than her father did, she thought. He seemed content with not knowing, resigned to the mystery. Perhaps that was why he didn’t care to venture too far in this world. Everything he wanted, all he needed, existed within a fifteen-mile radius of his home.

She did the wondering for him. DeRose was a French name, and perhaps Angie’s paternal grandfather was French, or maybe her father’s mother kept her maiden name. Included in the basket with the baby left at the orphanage door was a card with her father’s first and last name written on it, nothing more. Gabriel DeRose’s past was like a block of marble that would never be carved.