The Bitter Season (Kovac and Liska, #5)(49)
She missed him already, which seemed kind of silly. They weren’t lovesick teenagers. They had been married for six years and had dated for two years before that. They should have been slightly bored with each other by now. But she still loved him so much it hurt when he was apart from her. She had never dreamed she could have a love like that. For most of her life she believed she didn’t deserve it, and for part of her life she didn’t deserve it. But she had learned that life is all about growth and change, rebirth and resurrection. And she deserved a chance at happiness as much as anyone.
Having gone through her own metamorphosis with the help of the caring staff at Chrysalis, she had taken her second chance and had returned to the center to give back. She found her job as a social worker for at-risk girls and young women completely rewarding. She didn’t think she could ever give back to Chrysalis as much as the center had given her, but she loved trying.
One of her current cases was a sixteen-year-old runaway named Hope Anders, who had been rescued from a sex trafficking ring. She had escaped life with her family in a strict fundamentalist cult, where she had been abused by her older brother, only to be snatched off the street by a pimp; raped, beaten, and tortured for days; and then added to his string of underage prostitutes. Hope had been through a hell Evi knew too well. The staff at Chrysalis would help her make it to the other side of that trauma, offering health care, psychological therapy, social services, and legal aid.
The meeting that had been canceled that afternoon regarded Hope testifying against her brother for molesting her. The girl was terrified at the prospect of her parents’ wrath. Even though they had abused her psychologically as surely as her brother had physically, there were still threads left from the ties that bind a child to the people who brought her into the world. As terrible as they were, the Anderses were the only family she had, and there was a part of her that didn’t want to let go. If she went forward with testifying against her brother, she would likely never see any of them again, except across a courtroom.
Evi knew firsthand what a terrible thing it was to be that young and feel utterly alone in the world, knowing the people who were supposed to care about you most cared the least.
Hope Anders was terrified. She was afraid of her parents, afraid of the religious cult, afraid of her brother, and she still had every reason to be afraid of the man who had imprisoned and profited off her on the streets.
The pimp, known as Drago, had escaped capture. Rumors were that he could still be in the Twin Cities area. Hope would be a key witness against him when he was finally caught and brought to trial. Her continued existence was not in his best interest.
Evi looked over her notes for the meeting, which had been rescheduled for the following afternoon, while the television kept her company. Mia, worn out from their big family play day, was tucked in bed, sound asleep. Evi planned to follow suit soon. She was already in her pajamas.
Setting her notes aside, she turned up the volume on the TV to catch the day’s news, expecting the morning’s weather to be the biggest story of the day. Instead, the news crawl splashed across the screen with the station logo read: BRUTAL SLAYING HOME INVASION ROBBERY.
A history professor from the University of Minnesota and his wife had been killed in their home. Evi listened to the details with shock and horror at the sheer brutality of the attack, making a mental note to triple-check the locks tonight. The neighborhood where the crime had taken place, considered a very safe and desirable area to live, wasn’t that far away.
Evi found herself instantly wishing Eric hadn’t volunteered to work for his friend. Their cozy little house in their quiet neighborhood suddenly felt like a fishbowl. She realized anyone could be outside, staring in through the windows.
What was the world coming to when someone would do something like this: beating and slashing a middle-aged couple to death in their own home? For what? For whatever the perpetrator could carry away? A few hundred or a few thousand dollars’ worth of stuff?
Evi got up before the story was over and went around the house, checking the locks on every door and window, flinching at every shadow as she went. When she came back to the living room, she changed the channel to a cooking show and sat down to sort through the mail, thinking the mundane task would calm her.
Sale flyer, sale flyer, coupon, coupon. NEED A PLUMBER? CALL PETE! Bill, bill, bill. A small envelope addressed to her in block print: EVANGELINE BURKE.
It looked the size of an invitation or a thank-you note. She tried to think if she had been expecting either. There was no return address. No one she knew called her by her full name. She didn’t use it. She never had. She didn’t use it professionally. She didn’t even use it on her checks. She had only kept the shortest version of it possible to save the expense of legally changing it. Who would send an envelope hand-lettered to someone she had never really been?
She opened the envelope slowly, a strange sense of apprehension filling her chest as she extracted the note. She stared at it, a terrible chill spreading through her.
An otherwise blank piece of ivory paper with two lines in black ink.
I KNOW WHO YOU ARE
I KNOW WHERE YOU LIVE
Evi’s hands began to tremble. She felt like she couldn’t breathe.
Why would anyone send her such a thing? She was no one special, just a social worker, a wife, a mom living a normal life.
The chill went through her again like a shard of ice. She was a social worker for Hope Anders, who had been threatened by a cult and by her own family. Hope Anders, who was potentially the target of a vicious criminal being hunted by law enforcement.