I’m going to need to get myself a car. Especially now with another baby on the way, I can’t keep swapping my bike for Celeste’s car whenever I want to take my kids somewhere. It’s a bitch.
“I need a car.”
“Jesus,” Deuce hisses. “I’m gone a week and you’re talking crazy.”
“She’s pregnant,” I offer, turning to face him. His eyes widen and dart to me.
“No shit?”
“We haven’t told anyone yet. Man, I saw her. I fucking heard her. Beautiful. Just fucking beautiful,” I say with a smile.
“Her? You’re having another girl?”
I shrug my shoulders and glance out the window.
“It’s too soon to tell but I’m going with another girl.”
“Congrats, dude,” he offers, patting me on the back. “If she’s anything like the first one you got, I’d say you’re one lucky bastard.”
I am a lucky bastard but it’s hard to enjoy my good fortune when doom always seems to rip it away from me. It’s hard to allow myself to be happy, to think everything is going to go right for me this time. I think that’s why my mind has been racing the last few days. Yesterday, watching those men die, burying them deep in the earth—it wasn’t enough.
It’s a fucked up thought and one I’m sure as hell not proud to be thinking, but it’s true. That was Stryker’s vengeance, not mine. I’ve never gotten mine and this whole shipment thing is sketchy. Not knowing what’s going to happen next, thinking one thing and being blindsided time and time again—it catches up to a man.
It makes him bitter.
Reckless.
Anxious.
That’s another reason I need a dose of my Skylar. I need to be grounded. I need to be reminded there is more than mayhem. I need soft blonde curls and big blue eyes to know I’m not Satan’s deadliest soldier anymore. I’ve got more than vengeance, I’ve got her.
I’m a father now.
Deuce pulls into the hospital parking lot and parks the van, causing me to knit my eyebrows in confusion.
“You’re coming in?”
“Yeah, man, I think I need a dose of your angel too,” he says. Killing the engine, he turns to me and swipes a hand over his face. “Been dancing with the devil over a week and I’m starting to question my sanity. You mind sharing your sunshine with me?”
“She is sunshine, isn’t she?”
“Don’t tell Jack, the bastard thinks he trademarked that with Reina, but yeah, your little girl is most definitely sunshine.”
Yeah, she is. It’s the innocence of a child, the purity of her soul that drags a man away from the darkness that inebriates him. It’s her laughter, that smile that tugs at your black heart. It’s her love that has no bounds. It’s the trust she gives willingly…innocently.
Deuce follows me up to the day care center where I spot her playing with blocks. I sign her out and make my way inside the play area. For a moment, I just watch her concentrate as she connects the blocks. Placing five or six together, she puts the tower down and claps her hands proudly. I feel my lips quirk as she applauds herself for a job well done then those eyes land on me.
Blue like the sky.
Bright like sunshine.
They melt away all the rancid things I’ve done in the last twenty-four hours. My sins are repented.
Lifting her in my arms, I give her a big kiss and escort her out of the day care center.
“There she is,” Deuce says, pushing off the wall. “How’s my favorite gal?”
Placing her down on her feet, she runs to Deuce and gives him a high five.
“Cards!”
“Sorry, babe, I left my cards back home,” he says as he drops down on his knee so he’s eye level with her. “You think we can still hang out?” Spotting the pink teddy bear in her hand, he points to it. “Who’s this?”
“Teddy,” she says, giving her bear a tight squeeze.
“Oh no, are you trading me in for Teddy?” he asks with a frown, before offering her his hand.
Instead of giving him a high five like she did a moment a go, she tucks her bear under her arm and takes his hand before she tugs him down the corridor.
“She loves me,” he brags.
“Listen, I’m going to run upstairs and tell Celeste I signed her out. There’s an ice cream truck parked out front, get her an ice cream cone and I’ll meet you down there,” I tell him, bending down to kiss Skylar’s head.
“I’m calling godfather to the next one,” he replies, turning back to Skylar. “Come on, girl, Uncle Deuce’s got you.”
“Five minutes,” I call out as they walk hand in hand down the corridor. Forgetting all about me, Skylar looks up at Deuce and grins when he says something to her. Already giving me a run for my money, I realize I’m going to have my hands full when she gets older. It’s no surprise after all, her mother kept me on my toes, seems only right she does too.
When they’re out of sight I make my way to the cardiac unit and find Celeste behind the nurse’s station. Digging into my pocket, I pull out a bag of M&M’s and drop them on the counter in front of her. Smiling, she reaches for the candy and lifts her head to me.
“A man after my heart,” she teases.
“I’m sure I already got that, babe. Just trying to hang onto it,” I say as I lean over the counter and slam my mouth over hers, not giving a damn if her co-workers see. I want the whole fucking world to know she’s mine. She doesn’t seem to mind too much and kisses me back, gripping the worn leather of my vest in her hands.
A night without her is too much, makes me wonder how I survived on my own for so long with just my memories to keep me company at night. Before I’m unable to control myself, I inch back and smile at her.
“Missed you,” she murmurs.
“Clearly,” I reply with a wink. “How you feeling? Everything okay?”
“Everything’s good, quit worrying,” she orders as she outlines my jaw with her index finger. “I don’t get off for another couple of hours,” she adds with a frown.
“I know but since I’m home, I figured I’d take Skylar across the street to the park until you got out.”
“Oh, she’ll love that. Do you want me to sign her out of day care?”
“I did that already, she’s downstairs with Deuce getting ice cream.”
“All right, well I’ll take my twenty minute break and come down to say goodbye to her before you guys head out,” she says, pushing back her chair. Turning to her co-workers she tells them she’s going for a break.
Wrapping my arm around her waist, I drag her against me and kiss her head. When we get into the elevator, she can’t help but ask about the ride. Stupidly, I throw her a bone and tell her Gina is back in Brooklyn. She fires a hundred different questions at me, none of which I answer as we step outside. The last thing I hear her say is she’s going to call Gina.
Then it happens.
History repeats itself.
“What’s going on?” she asks beside me.
It’s the same exact question she asked me when we rounded the corner of my block after the football game. The hospital security guards rush out of the hospital, quickly pushing us out of the way as they run toward the street.
Standing in the center of it all, I look around. I take in the woman shouting and the man pointing down the street. The flashing lights of the patrol cars temporarily blind me as the blue and whites jump out of the car and head for the ice cream truck.
It’s chaos in its purest form.
Panic.
Dread.
Fear.
Releasing Celeste’s hands, I run into the street. My eyes frantically dart all around, searching for the mess of blonde curls and the big blue eyes, for Deuce’s tall frame and the reaper on his back, but all I see is the flashing lights and the faces of people that mean nothing to me.
The air rushes from my lungs as my heart pounds inside my chest.
Then my worst nightmare becomes my reality and my stomach twists in knots as I spot the pink t
eddy bear in the street. Shaking my head, not willing to believe this is happening, my feet subconsciously move and I drift toward the scene of the crime.
Crouching down on the asphalt I lift the teddy bear and glance around again, praying I’ll see her, that she’ll run to me and all will be right with the world.
It doesn’t happen.
Instead, I find Deuce’s phone shattered into a bunch of pieces two feet away from where the teddy bear was.
I remember my mother’s scream. I remember hearing it long after she released it. I remember feeling it in my bones, how the desperate sound vibrated off the walls of our house the moment it left her throat.
It’s not my mother’s scream this time.
It’s Celeste’s.
And it’s not my sister who has been taken.
Not this time.
This time, it’s my daughter who is gone.
Gone without a trace.
-Thirty-eight-
Celeste
When you’ve suffered through one horrific tragedy you don’t think it’s possible to live through another until you realize the first tragedy, the one you thought broke you is nothing compared to the one you’re living now. You certainly don’t believe your child will be victimized by the same horrendous crime your best friend was or that you will now be the mother of a missing child.
No one ever thinks their child will be one of the 1.3 million children that go missing in a year. So when it happens they’re not prepared. They don’t know what to expect. They don’t know until their whole world falls apart in a single second. There is no handbook when your child goes missing just like there isn’t a handbook on motherhood.
One would think I would have been a little better prepared considering I have experienced a kidnapping before, that I had an advantage over the millions of other parents, but being the friend and the mother are two drastically different things.
Sure, the sirens that flooded the street the night of Alexandria’s disappearance still haunt me and every time I see a patrol car I think of the dozen or so that sat in front of the Richardson house for weeks. It all spirals from there and I relive our last conversation over and over.
“Are you sure you don’t mind working for me?”
“Stop asking. I said I would,” she laughs. “When are you going to learn, we might not be sisters by blood but we’re sisters of the heart and sisters do favors for each other all the time. You’ll get to repay me by marrying my brother so that way we’ll be sisters through marriage.”
“It’s a football game not a marriage proposal.”
“Yeah, well you gotta start somewhere. Did you know that’s how my parents got together? My dad used to play football too and my mother was as crazy for him as you are for Jagger. Maybe history will repeat itself.”
I know she didn’t mean any harm when she said those words. They were the innocent words of a child, a wish a girl makes when she believes in the power of love, but they became the words that would ruin my existence. In another life being Cora and Keith Richardson would have been ideal—they loved one another fiercely and raised a beautiful family on that love.
Until they lost their daughter.
Then their love became a nightmare they couldn’t escape.
And they became a nightmare I couldn’t escape.
Now Alexandria’s wish is finally coming true.
They say the first forty-eight hours are the most critical in finding and returning a missing child safely. As soon as the police arrived on the scene and they began to question the witnesses on the street, they reported Skylar to the National Crime Information Center and activated an Amber Alert.
Feeling helpless, knowing others are searching for my baby while I sit in the boardroom of the hospital answering the dreaded questions no parent ever wants to face, drives me crazy.
“When did you see her last?”
“This morning when I dropped her off at day care,” I answer robotically.
After Jagger left Brooklyn, I went to a support group for victims of missing children. I remember staring at the quilt on the wall, each patch another face of a child all pieced together creating a tribute to the children lost to the world. I stared at every face, wishing I knew their names as I listened to parents, siblings, friends and other relatives speak about their grief. The parents always left an impression on me and I wondered how they found the courage to stand in a room and relive the loss of their child. I wasn’t a parent, didn’t even have babies on the brain at the time, but I thought losing a child meant your life was over. At least that’s what it was like for the Richardsons.
Some parents recalled the day their child went missing and spoke on how the questions they were asked resonated with them. One particularly blamed herself because she couldn’t remember what color sneakers her daughter was wearing. That woman stuck with me and when I became a mother, I always took notice of the shoes I put on Skylar and cataloged the spare outfit I kept in her diaper bag. It was always in the back of mind…just in case.
“What was she wearing?”
“A pink dress with little black bows on the shoulders. She had on her black and white converse sneakers, pink shoelaces and a big pink bow in her hair.”
“The bow wasn’t in her hair when I picked her up from day care,” Cobra interrupts hoarsely.
“Do either of you have a recent picture of her?”
“I do in my locker,” I say as the tears spill from my eyes. I think of my baby girl’s smiling face and the way she says ‘cheese’ every time I take a picture of her.
“Can you describe her mannerisms to me? Is she shy? Does she take to strangers?”
As a mother, you want to think you know your child better than anyone, yet when a detective is asking you all the questions you were once sure you knew like the back of your hand you second guess all your answers, knowing her life may depend on them.
“She is shy sometimes, like when she first meets someone, but she warms up to them quickly. If you’re nice to her and show her attention she’ll come to you.”
Out of the corner of my eye I spot my daughter’s pink teddy bear. I watch in horror as it’s cataloged as evidence and carefully placed in a Ziploc bag. A sob wretches from me and I bury my face in my hands. I scrub my hands vigorously over my face, trying to wake up from this nightmare but I can’t.
I’m stuck in this hell.
Then I realize I don’t know what hell is. Hell is different for everyone. My heart might feel as though it’s being ripped from my chest, but my daughter, my little baby girl, she might be in a different hell. The hell I feared Alexandria burned in.
Cobra’s arms come around my shoulders and I feel his breath against my ear.
He doesn’t say anything.
He doesn’t try to make it better.
He knows he can’t.
Handing me a box of tissues, the detective calls me.
“Ms. Spinelli, I know this is a very difficult time but we need to ask you and Mr. Richardson these questions. Mr. Richardson, walk me through what happened,” another detective says to Cobra. “You said you signed her out of day care and went to tell Ms. Spinelli you were taking Skylar out for the day.”
“Right,” he mutters, standing behind me. He moves to sit beside me and I watch as his jaw clenches tightly.
“You also said she was with your friend.”
“Deuce.”
“Is that his legal name?”
“Caleb West,” Cobra supplies.
The detective questioning us turns to glance at the one sitting beside him. They seem to exchange words with their eyes and the other detective stands up and turns to the blue and whites standing behind them. One of them radios in Deuce’s real name and I turn to Cobra. He stares at the detective cataloging the evidence found in the street and watches as he uses a tweezer to drop the pieces of Deuce’s phone into a Ziploc bag.
“Does Skylar know Mr. West well?”
“Well enough,” Cobra seethes. “Where
are you going with this? I told you already, he’s my friend. He took her for ice cream.”
“Is Mr. West overly nice to your daughter? Does he try to give her special attention or buy her presents?”
It’s bizarre to think law enforcement has to rule out the people closest to your child, but facts are facts and sometimes it’s not the bad guy. Sometimes it’s not the stranger looking to harm your child. Sometimes it’s the person you trust your child with. The nanny whose credentials you check, the neighbor you carpooled with, the nice old man who has twelve grandchildren of his own.
“Are you fucking kidding me?” Cobra roars, pushing off his chair. “Deuce wouldn’t harm a hair on my daughter’s head.”
He turns to me.
“You know that, Celeste, tell me you know Deuce would never take her.”
“I know,” I say.
He turns abruptly back to the detective.
“That’s all you fucking people are good for.” He explodes, “You sit there and ask ridiculous fucking questions and chase leads you concoct in your fucking head all the while wasting valuable time finding out who is truly responsible for taking my daughter.”
“Mr. Richardson, sit down,” the detective orders.
“Fuck you.”
“We’re trying to do our jobs.”
“Bullshit,” he bellows. “This isn’t my first fucking rodeo with you people. Your department spent four fucking years chasing theories and ignoring facts when my sister was abducted. Now my daughter’s gone and you think I’m going to sit here and let you cast the blame on my brother? You think I’m going to sit here and let you waste time. She’s just a baby,” he rasps.
It was different when Alexandria went missing. She was fourteen. She had a voice. She knew the difference between good and evil. She could spot the bad guy. She knew what was happening and could fight, although it may not have gotten her far and worse than that, fighting may have gotten her killed. But he’s right, Skylar is a baby. I am her voice and right now that voice is silent. She’s too innocent to know ugly. She believes in good and knows no evil.
The part that is Alexandria’s friend understands where Cobra is coming from and shares his frustration. The part that is Skylar’s mother doesn’t care. That part just wants everyone working together to find her.
The Nomad Series-Collectors Edition Page 57
