First Girl Gone(104)

And then a dirty hand rose to shield Kara’s eyes from the light. The girl blinked finally. Squinting and scowling. Peering out between her dirty fingers.

Charlie couldn’t move. Couldn’t breathe.

Kara tried to speak. Coughed a little instead. Throat sounding raspy. Harsh. Dry. She tried again. This time her voice came out as a croak.

“Are you… real?”

Charlie’s lips popped, but no words came out.

With greatly delayed reaction, Charlie realized she was shining her light directly in Kara’s eyes. She swung the beam away so it faced a wall away from them.

Charlie took a few steps into the room, her legs utterly numb beneath her. Dead stalks of meat and bone. Holding her up out of habit as much as anything.

The girl opened her eyes. Blinked up at Charlie. Something so tired in her expression. Hopeless even with hope staring her in the face.

And Charlie tried to think of what to say. How to tell Kara she was real. How to tell her that it was over now.

Mind blank. Hollow. Speechless.

And for a second, she stood there in the dark, in the quiet, just beyond arm’s length away from Kara Dawkins. They looked at each other, neither one quite ready to trust reality in this moment, to believe that the other was all the way real.

Finally, Charlie knelt. Took Kara’s free hand in hers. Angled the light between them, pointed it up at the ceiling so they could both see each other again. And she didn’t think about the words anymore. She just let them come out on their own.

“The police will be here soon, OK? Your mom, she’s been looking for you. She hired me to look for you. She’s been worried sick about you, you know? And all your friends, too. Everyone’s been so scared.”

Kara’s face wrinkled as though to cry, but no tears came.

Charlie stroked the girl’s hair. Raked her fingers through the tangles.

In the half-light, Kara looked like a child.

She looked like Allie.

“All the people who love you are going to be so happy to see you, so happy to find that you’re OK. You have no idea how much they love you, how badly they’ve been missing you. No idea.”

They both burst into tears then. The world going into a kind of soft focus for Charlie, as though her mind zoomed out a bit, watched these events from some higher vantage point. Her tears blurred everything, distancing her from the moment some. A kind of mercy, she thought.

And they half-hugged the best they could with Kara still being chained to the wall. The girl pressed herself into Charlie’s side and leaned her head onto her shoulder. Silent sobs shuddered through her body. Little shivers transferred from the girl into Charlie.

Even after they parted, Kara squeezed Charlie’s hand tight. All through Charlie’s phone call to Zoe, the girl clung to her like she thought they might drift apart if she let go.





Chapter Ninety-Two





Police lights spiraled everywhere, the red and blue shining and spinning. Glinting off the snow, off the corrugated steel siding of Todd’s warehouse.

Charlie stood with a blanket over her shoulders, watching the police funnel in and out of the door into the storage building. Some bagged evidence. Others followed with cameras, making sure to document everything. Cameras flashed here and there, bright bursts of white light.

An ambulance had come first and taken Kara away. The paramedics offered to take Charlie along, to get her checked out as well, but she declined. She wanted to stay. To see it through.

Another police cruiser rolled into the lot, pulling up alongside the building. Zoe climbed out a moment later, clad in her deputy’s hat, hands stuffed in her pockets.

“Guess who we just pulled out of Ritter’s trunk, hogtied like a… well, a hog, I guess?”

Charlie squinted. Her brain was too fried to even think about it.

“Will.”

“Oh,” Charlie said, realizing she’d completely lost track of him in all the chaos. “Is he OK?”

“The paramedics are taking him to the hospital. He looks like he went ten rounds with Mike Tyson.”

Charlie went quiet, thinking back to the moment when she had recognized Will in the park. All the dark thoughts that had run through her mind.

“He was pretty shaken up,” Zoe continued. “Confused. Wouldn’t be surprised if he has a concussion. But he was adamant that I tell you that he’s sorry. About the keylogger. It was him that put it on your computer.”

“But why?”

“I guess he figured that, as Gibbs’ attorney, he needed any information about the case that he could get.”

After a few seconds passed, Charlie shrugged and said, “Win at all costs, right? That’s his motto.”

In a certain way, Charlie supposed she shouldn’t have been surprised. And he had won, hadn’t he? With Todd Ritter about to be charged with the crimes, Leroy Gibbs would be set free.

Something bitter rose to the back of Charlie’s throat at that thought. She’d never know the truth about Allie. It could have been Gibbs. It could have been anyone. But now she’d never know.

She swallowed, though, and the bad taste went away. No use in dwelling on something like that. Life was short enough as it was.

“You sure you’re OK?” she asked. “You’ve got quite the goose egg sprouting on your forehead. Not to mention the blood spatter.”