Taming Cross

by Ella James

  When I find my voice, it's soft. “Do you think that's why I came?”

  “Is it?” He arches one black brow.

  “I came to talk to you.”

  He spreads his hands before him, like he's got nothing to hide. “Let's talk.”

  “Are you sure you don't want to go into your office?”

  Without missing a beat, he motions toward the hall. “Anything to make you comfortable, son.”

  Anything to make me comfortable. For half a heartbeat, I'm going to slam my fist into his phony face. But before I can, he turns and walks into the hallway that runs behind this room. His caviler, unaccountable, uncaring attitude is so stunning that it takes the steam right out of me. I couldn't punch him if I wanted to. Then I almost laugh as I remember I'm a leftie. I'm not even sure I can take a swing with my right hand.

  For a weird moment, as my legs stride after him, the hallway spins and I feel like I might fall down. I can feel the awful burn of gravel in my forehead. I can feel the roar of pain that starts in my neck and runs from the ruined spinal discs down my shoulder, exploding in an inferno through my hand. And, oh God, I can feel my fucking hand.

  My neck's so tight I think it might pop off my shoulders, and as we step into his office I can feel the curtain falling, the curtain of badness that always leads to darkness, fear, and pain.

  I knew this would happen.

  My father steps past me to shut the door. I hear the click through the agony of my pain. I feel his hands on my elbows as he thrusts me down, into one of his leather chairs, and leans over me.

  “I hope you didn’t come here to threaten me.”

  I shove him in the chest and he slowly wraps his hand around my neck, somehow finding just the spot where the vertebrae were crushed and wired together. Just where all my pain begins. Fucking surreal. I blink up at him, breathing so hard I can barely find my voice. “You gonna finish the job?”

  He loosens his grip, steps back. I'm pleased to see his shoulders are heaving just like mine are. “What do you want from me?”

  “Did you know about it?” Ignoring the pain, I stand.

  “Know about what?” He's rocking on his heels.

  I swallow, using all my energy to focus on my words and not the pain that's still lighting up my neck and arm. “Did you know about what they did to me,” I rasp. “To my bike.”

  “No,” he snorts, “I don't know the first thing about your bike.”

  “Jim Gunn—” one of my father’s former body guards and Priscilla Heat’s partner in crime— “loosened the oil filter so oil got all over my back tire and fucked the steering.”

  “The night of your accident? When you were drunk?”

  “The night Jim Gunn fucked up my bike.”

  His hands come up, palms out, like he's flabbergasted. “Do you think I would murder my own son?”

  That’s rich, coming from a man who just had his hand around my throat.

  I had to move, in secret, into Lizzy's childhood home because Jim Gunn had some rough-looking motherfucker follow me. That was before what happened with the bike, at a vineyard party last November, but after my father told Priscilla Heat that I’d found out what had happened to Missy King.

  “I don't know what you would do,” I tell him bluntly, “but I know what I'll do.” I burn him with my gaze, as if my arm isn't roaring with pain, and I tell him, “I'll tell everyone. I'll tell the world what I know.”

  I watch as my father's eyes narrow to slits: a monster cornered. “What do you want from me, Cross?”

  I stand there, just breathing, thinking what do I want? I’m surprised to hear myself say, “I want you to find her.”

  “You’re serious.”

  I nod. “Find Missy King. Whether it was your idea or Priscilla Heat's—” and I know it was Priscilla's— “the girl got sold as a sex slave, Dad.”

  He waves a hand, like it's no big deal, and then he says something that surprises me. Shocks me, really. “Cross, there is no Missy King.”

  I frown, having trouble following; the pain in my head and neck and arm is getting worse. “Don't bullshit me. I want to know where she ended up. I want to find her. Help me or I’ll talk to the press. Unless you really would kill your own son.”

  He regards me for a long moment before reaching behind him and grabbing a small flask. He takes the top off and I want to jump him, steal the liquor, douse my pain.

  “Missy King is just the name she used as an escort. Her real name was Meredith Kinsey,” he says quietly, “and they sold her in Mexico. Same place you were when Priscilla lost her mind and hauled you and Lizzy down there a few months back. Sold her to a tall guy by the name of Cientos. It's all drug-runners down there, Cross. Cartels. There'll be no point. She's probably dead already.”

  “You’re sick,” I whisper.

  He looks defensive, then annoyed. “She wanted me to leave your mother. When I refused, she wanted money. She threatened to go to the papers with our relationship. She wanted to ruin me. Priscilla offered to take care of the situation. I didn’t ask how. I ended up finding out, but by then…” He takes another drink, then shrugs. “It was too late.”

  I almost believe him, but I know instinctively there’s more. My father is an excellent liar, but I can see his nostrils flaring; that’s his tell.

  “Mom deserves better than that shit.” I stare at him for a moment, at his regal features. He is handsome. This is the face of a governor, and looking at him that way—as the son of a bitch politician I know he really is—I can't even summon disappointment over what an awful father he is.

  I'm turning to go when suddenly I remember an important question. I'm panting as I turn back around, but I take deep breaths and try to take advantage of the way my mind zones out when the pain gets this bad. When I speak, I sound almost normal. “What did she look like? Mis— Meredith Kinsey.”

  I'm surprised when he opens a mahogany cabinet and scoops up something, holding it out in his closed palm like a butterfly. It’s a picture—wallet-sized. It looks like a mug shot, the kind TV reporters use. It's worn. He snatches it back and uses a Ray Bans sunglasses cloth to wipe it of his fingerprints before handing it to me.

  His face is stern. “Keep this to yourself, Cross. And don’t ask me for anything else—ever.”

  “Whatever,” I mutter as I walk out.

  I make it down the front porch steps and to my bike before the pain is bad enough to bring me to my knees. Sometime later—minutes? hours?—I feel a gentle hand on my back and look up, praying for Renault. Instead it's a Southeast Asian man with kind eyes wearing a butler's suit.

  “Can I help you, Sir?”

  I take the hand he offers and use all my willpower to get back to my feet. I grab onto my bike's seat. “Where's Renault?”

  “Renault DeFritsch?” The man's eyes widen. “He died four months ago.”

  That's the last thing I remember clearly before waking up on my bed a day and a half later. I lie here for a moment, breathing deeply, wondering if there's anyone on this godforsaken planet more miserable than I am.

  One name comes to mind: Meredith Kinsey.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  The Sisters don't think the bombing was for me, but I know it was.

  I know Jesus Cientos, and I know his tactics. The man is a pyromaniac. He has a love affair with hand grenades. He has half a warehouse filled with nothing but grenades, manufactured for the U.S. Military, smuggled into Mexico by Jesus's soldiers. I've seen the explosions before, a few times. I've watched them from behind the bullet-proof windows of Jesus's silver Escalade. I've watched them rip apart half a house, even seen the massive fireball from an exploding gas station.

  Juan and Emanuel are the surprise. That Jesus would his nephews out so young. That they would agree to target me. I should know better, but my heart makes it hard to accept.

  The explosion on the west side of St. Catherine's killed a woman. Her name was Henrietta, and she was walking on the gravel path beside the clinic, toward
the market on Flag Street to buy food for her twelve-year-old son.

  I think about her, about Juan and Emanuel and Jesus, as I lie on my cot at night, in the wide, hot, high-beamed attic where I sleep beside Sister Mary Abalitta. The sounds of Sister Susan snoring, of Sister Daniella turning the pages of a paperback under the covers, of the box fans spinning in the two pushed-open windows...they ought to be familiar, soothing, but after what happened yesterday, nothing can soothe me. I clutch my rosary and pray to Mother Mary for strength. I should talk to Sister Mary Carolina again; she didn't believe me the first time. She is too good to give me up, and I'm too afraid to leave the clinic.

  I wonder, as the sun comes up, what Jesus will do to me if he gets his hands on me. It wouldn't be sex—that much I know for sure—but it could easily be something worse. I hurt his pride and his reputation when I ran, and I guess it's still hurting, even after almost nine months. That's the only reason he would strike now. Here. At the one place in the state of Durango that all of the cartels have promised to protect.

  I curl over on my side and listen to the thunder rumbling in the distance.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  I haven't seen Suri since three nights ago, but Lizzy's been here twice. The first time, I guess I was in my pain trance, the one I learned from Akemi, a Zen master in downtown Los Angeles, during my fight with Dilaudid. The second time was a few minutes ago. She left a note on the door and texted me the same thing: Cross, quit hiding from me. I want to talk.

  I feel like an asshole for not calling, but I know I won't—not yet. I don't want to talk about what happened the other night with Suri. I don't want to talk about what happened with my parents, or about Renault. Don't want to talk about Cross Hybrids or Hunter West or the wedding.

  I have enough conscience to feel guilty for neglecting both my longtime friends. Suri deserves an in-person apology, and Lizzy deserves some face time. I just don't know what to say to them. Suri, for all the reasons anyone would guess, and Lizzy because...fuck, I don't know. She's living in some wedding fairy land, while I'm in bike shop purgatory. It's not that I'm not glad for her. I am. I'm glad she's getting the happy ending she deserves. I just don't feel like I have a lot to offer anyone right now, and besides that, it's too much effort.

  I wait around the house another twenty-four hours to see if I get another pain attack. Another neuralgia episode, as they’re really called. When nothing new happens and I don't feel quite as tired, I get back on the Mach and ride over to the local library. I’m glad that I’m at least having an easier time of it today.

  I used to have wireless internet at the shop, but I didn't pay the bills while I was in rehab and since coming home, I haven't felt like getting it turned on. What's the point? I pretty much know I have a pile-up of work orders, people wanting custom jobs, and I also know I'm not open for business at the moment.

  I feel a little tug of guilt as I get off the bike and stride up the stairs of the two-story brick building. It's true, I miss working on bikes—and the money—but I can't do it one-handed. Not without some help. And help would lead to pity.

  I pay one dollar for a temporary library card and sit down at one of the black plastic computer desks on the back row. I pull my little photo out and put it on the table. I haven't looked at it but once or twice, just for a second or two as I loaded and unloaded it from my pockets, but here under the fluorescent lights, something about her face strikes me, like a chime inside my chest. Missy King. Meredith Kinsey. The mistress. The whore.

  Her smile looks genuine. It makes her green eyes tilt up at the edges. Her pinkish mouth looks innocently happy, slightly playful, and very familiar, as if she knows the photographer well; as if they're friends. I scowl down at the image. This girl looks young. Eighteen at most. I wonder, not for the first time, if my father made up the name he gave me. This girl, with her prim white button-up blouse and straight white teeth, is probably the daughter of a California senator.

  Pecking at the keys with the fingers of my right hand, I search the name. Within milliseconds, links appear. The first one grabs my attention: Meredith Kinsey – Managing Editor, The Red & Black.

  I squint. Clearly, that one's not my girl. Missy King was a high-priced prostitute, not a journalism student.

  I click on the second link and find 'Meredith Kinsey' on a list of University of Georgia, Grady College scholarship recipients. She's there not once, but three times: William Dale Tichenor Scholarship for Excellence in Journalistic Writing, Sean Love Scholarship for Dependability and Service, Gloria Stamps Scholarship for Excellence in Academics.

  I snort a little, drawing a glance from the punk ass kid beside me. Yeah, this can't be her.

  Back on the main page, I try a few other links, wondering why the hell I didn't ask my father where the girl was from. Couldn't have been Georgia. I find another Meredith Kinsey: award-winning quilter from Salt Lake City. Her web site features a picture of a gray-haired woman with a bowl cut.

  The next link takes me to Meredith Kinsey, singer/songwriter. I get excited about this, but then I notice she's in Ireland—and just updated her blog with new lyrics today.

  I sift through Meredith Kinsey, freelance writer for an Atlanta home brewery magazine (probably the college kid after college); Meredith Kinsey, high school gymnastics star in Boise, Idaho (photo shows a girl who can't be older than ten); Meredith Kinsey, harpist in Knoxville, Tennessee (tall with a bird-like nose, which my father would hate); Meredith Kinsey, dead at age 86 in Kansas City, Kansas, and another dozen or so Meredith Kinsey’s before I get to almost an entire page of links that direct me to The Red & Black: award-winning college newspaper at the University of Georgia, operating independently without the use of student funds since 1980.

  Woop de freaking hoo.

  I sigh and click on one of the links, because it's dated two years before my Meredith Kinsey disappeared, and it looks to be a rant about the horror of beauty pageants. I skim the piece, finding that this particular Meredith Kinsey objects to pageants on the grounds that they objectify women; she compares the women in their swim suits to cattle at an auction. Another snort, followed by a rub of my eyes. Definitely not my Meredith.

  Except…there's a small square picture in the middle of two columns of text, and the face is identical to the one in my picture.

  Meredith Kinsey, college feminist.

  Holy shit.

  I spend the next hour looking for more information, trying to figure out how a college student with strawberry-blonde hair, twinkling green eyes, and a wide smile turned into Missy King, governor's mistress and small time extortionist-turned-sex slave.

  I click on every link I find, reading through a couple of her news stories and one more opinion piece (“Holiday Celebrations Can Be Inclusive And Traditional”) before the timer on my screen flashes, and I'm forced to give my computer to a woman who's wearing a skirt suit and typing on her Blackberry. I pay three dollars for a permanent card, which will buy me unlimited time tomorrow, and head out into a drizzling rain.

  The photo my father gave me is tucked into a little pocket on the inside of my beat-up jeans, but I can see her face as I roll down the streets of downtown Napa. The bike's tires make a shhh sound, tossing up a spray of rainwater that makes my ankles cold and chills my feet through my boots.

  I don't get it. Is this some ruse my father cooked up? Why would a girl with a college degree—and no student loans—turn to a life of prostitution?

  I know what they say. People like Lizzy. “The girls choose to be escorts. It's their choice, Cross. Smarter than giving yourself away for free, huh?” Marchant fed me even more cliché lines: They're stakeholders, some of them have stock portfolios, working on college degrees through the University of Phoenix, la da da.

  I bet most of them don't have college degrees. I bet they didn't get into the whoring business just for giggles.

  As I fumble for the garage button with my elbow, pressing into the pants pocket where I keep my keys, I feel the familiar stin
g of guilt. Whoever she is, Missy King deserved better than what she got. And as far as bullshit goes, I'd have it coming out my ears if I didn't admit that it's my fault nobody went after her. I could have told somebody. I should have.

  Instead, I tried to forget about her. I told myself it wasn't my business. That she was already out of reach.

  It might have stuck, if I hadn’t been taken to Mexico myself and watched as my best friend was on the auction block. Ever since that day, it's been under my skin like a bad rash. Missy King was just as helpless as we were.

  And for all my lofty thoughts about desperation and how escorts have no other options, I want to believe that Missy King is not Meredith Kinsey. I want to believe that Missy was a slutty girl who wanted to drive a shiny red Porsche and wear expensive jewelry. A girl who, just like me, was giving it away to anyone who asked and figured, why not charge?

  If I let myself believe that this girl—the one inside my pocket, with the happy eyes—is somewhere down in Mexico, I'll go fucking crazy.

  The next morning, I wake up early, take my time shaving, and ride back to the library. I take the third-to-last seat in the computer lab, and by the time I'm ears-deep in a story Meredith Kinsey wrote about date rape, a pair of teenage lovebirds come in and take the seats on either side of me. As I lean in to the computer, they lean around me, laughing about something they saw on Facebook. For some reason, their whispers piss me off. I glance at the dude, giving him more of an evil eye than I intended. He looks like a kid: seventeen, eighteen? If Meredith started college at eighteen and that was almost eight years ago, that means she’s twenty-five or twenty-six now. That means the year that she was twenty-three—my age, Suri’s age, Lizzy’s age—she was on her way to becoming a sex slave.

  My desire to know what happened to her amps up a notch, so much so that my hands feel sweaty and my temples throb. How did she get to Vegas? After another hour of searching, plus some credit card fees paid to various databases, I find a missing person’s report filed a little over four years ago—or rather, I find her on a list of missing people. I can’t get any information about her specific report unless I travel to Georgia, and that would waste too much time. A few minutes later, I’m surprised when I come across a news brief in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. It mentions that police are looking for twenty-two year old Meredith Kinsey of Albany, Georgia, for questioning in relation to the arrest of Sean Tacoma. This makes me feel almost sick with curiosity.