Leave The World Behind

by Martha Carr

  Bianca logged onto her computer, clicked the mouse twice, and typed something, then swiveled the monitor away from her chair and out toward the rest of the study so Cheyenne could see. “You’ll have to come closer than that, Cheyenne. It’s not 4K quality, dear.”

  Sliding the strap off her shoulder, Cheyenne set her backpack against the leg of the closest armchair as she headed to her mom’s desk. Bianca studied the frozen image filling the entire screen, unable to hide the barest hint of a grimace beneath all that willpower. Once Cheyenne reached the desk, she looked at her mom and waited.

  “I know how skilled you are with finding things most people think they’ve hidden.” Bianca blinked at the monitor and dipped her head toward it. “Feel free to stop me if you’ve seen this before.”

  She thinks I tried to hack into her files. I can’t believe that never crossed my mind.

  The halfling studied the slightly blurry image on the screen and shook her head. “I don’t know what that is, Mom.”

  What she wanted to say was, “Get to the punchline already,” but that wasn’t how the Summerlins conducted themselves. Not in polite society, and not with each other. That much, at least, they both understood.

  Bianca took a quick, shallow breath, then nodded. “Okay.”

  She reached over the desk for the mouse, moved the cursor, and clicked the play button. It didn’t have sound, but it didn’t need it. Cheyenne felt her mom come toward her to watch the video at her daughter’s side, but the halfling’s eyes were glued to what she hoped was the last piece of her missing-father puzzle.

  The recording wiggled a little, probably from a brisk wind buffeting the camera. The shot was taken from an elevated angle and showed a tall chain-link fence topped in barbed wire, open gates at its center. For several seconds, there was nothing else. Then a man in a pair of jeans and a sweater stepped into view at the top-right corner of the monitor.

  He was tall and good-looking, for as much as the grainy texture of the camera had captured his features. His dark hair ruffled in the breeze, and the man strolled across the pavement toward the open chain-link gates. He stopped and raised his empty hands beside his head.

  Cheyenne glanced at her mom, but Bianca was still fixated on the monitor. “Keep watching.”

  The halfling did as she was told and waited. Is that him?

  Another man entered the frame from the bottom of the monitor. This one wore a security guard’s uniform and a black baseball cap. A rifle strap was slung over his shoulder, and while he held the rifle in front of him as he approached the tall man in the suit, it was clearly implied that the guard didn’t need to use threats when he had a weapon.

  The man glanced up at the security camera and flashed a wide grin. Cheyenne’s heart fluttered in her chest. Despite the graininess of the shot, there was a glimmer of something mischievous and unmistakably deadly in the man’s eyes.

  And then he changed.

  The light-brown hair lost all its color, taking on the familiar bone-white and lengthening until the short-cropped hair hung in a loose bun at the nape of the man’s neck. The jeans and sweater melted into a white t-shirt and loose gray sweatpants with dark letters Cheyenne couldn’t read printed down the leg, and the man’s skin, so normal-looking that she hadn’t thought twice about it, was now the purple-gray of a drow. She couldn’t see his ears from the camera’s angle and distance, but she had no doubt that they were tipped in the same points as her own when she slipped into the form this man had bequeathed her.

  The guard stiffened, then another guard raced into the frame. Both of them trained their weapons on the drow prisoner, who slowly and without an ounce of fear or alarm lowered himself to his knees. One guard snatched the drow’s wrists out of the air and bent them behind the prisoner’s back. Cheyenne didn’t see the cuffs, but she knew they had to be there. Soundless words were exchanged, then the drow was yanked to his feet and pushed toward the camera.

  He didn’t resist. In fact, he looked like he was getting what he wanted—especially when he glanced at the camera one more time before disappearing from view at the bottom of the monitor. Then there was nothing in the shot but the open chain-link fence and the barbed wire and the empty pavement beyond it.

  Showed up long enough to make an impression, then disappeared. Just like with us.

  The monitor went black but for the circular play icon at the bottom of the screen, and the study was utterly silent. Cheyenne swallowed and took an involuntary step back. When she looked at her mom, Bianca had one arm folded across her midriff, propping up the opposite elbow while she pressed her fingers to her lips. The drow halfling read the emotions on her mother’s face—anger, shame, confusion, regret, and the barest hint of amusement.

  All that was swallowed up again in an instant by her mother’s infamous composure, and she lowered her hand before turning to meet her daughter’s gaze. “This is what they gave me, Cheyenne, a month after I met your father. Two days later, I had a positive pregnancy test in my hand.”

  The drow halfling blinked. “Why this?”

  Bianca raised her eyebrows and didn’t need to ask for clarification.

  “Why did they give you this footage?” Cheyenne gestured toward the monitor. “I mean, how did they know to bring it to you?”

  “Hmm. I had to wheedle that out of them when they brought this to me.” Bianca took a deep breath and straightened her posture, rolling her shoulders back. “This is the man you were asking about. Inmate 4872. Apparently, he’d escaped from a facility, as I was led to believe, that was built to make it impossible to escape.”

  “And three days later, he came back. To turn himself in.”

  That was the weird part about that encrypted report I found—after three days, a voluntary return to the prison for Inmate 4872.

  Bianca pursed her lips. “Yes. They wanted to find out where he was and what he’d been doing for those three days. Of course, they wouldn’t tell me, other than how they’d made the connection to me.”

  When her mom paused long enough to make the silence frustrating, Cheyenne muttered, “Mom?”

  Blinking, Bianca offered a small, twitching smile. “In 1999, Cheyenne, I spent New Year’s Eve at a very well-funded party in the event ballroom of D.C.’s St. Regis Hotel. It was not in my character back then to indulge as much as I did, but things were going very well for me in my career, and I’d convinced myself I owed it to myself to ‘loosen up’ if you will.”

  She partied like it was 1999. Cheyenne didn’t know if she wanted to smile at the thought of her own mom getting hammered with the political elite and Washington’s finest.

  “I met a man at that party. He was charming and sophisticated and…” Bianca glanced down at her open hand, then closed it into a fist and dropped it by her side. “And while I despise clichés in all their forms, that man swept me off my feet. We stayed in that ballroom long enough to bring in the new year in public with champagne. Then we spent the night together. Or a few hours, at least. I have no idea what time he left or where he went. The bed was empty the next morning, and I was alone.”

  Part of Cheyenne wanted to hug her mom. The other part of her—the larger, more practical part that had spent twenty-one years learning who her mother was, only to see it unraveling through hindsight, knew a hug was the last thing her mom wanted. Or needed. Instead, the halfling offered the only other thing she had and finished the thought. “They pulled security footage from the hotel. Went through hundreds of faces to find the one that matched the man who became a drow right there on camera.”

  She pointed at the monitor, and Bianca’s shoulders twitched up for a brief second before settling down into their usual position.

  “You know how I feel about that word, Cheyenne.”

  That word. “Drow.” The other half of me. Cheyenne felt her lips trembling as she pressed them together. “And they found him. With you.”

  Bianca stared at the black computer monitor. “Yes.”

  “That man’s my fa
ther.”

  “Yes.”

  Cheyenne pointed at the screen again. “And that came from a security camera at Chateau D’rahl.”

  Bianca finally looked away from the monitor. “Chateau what?”

  “D’rahl. The-the high-security prison for—” The halfling cleared her throat. I only get one warning, and she already gave it. “For people like him, Mom. That’s where they were holding him. And he went back.”

  “It certainly appears that way, yes.”

  “Did they tell you anything else? Did they tell you where the prison is, or if they moved him, or how long he—”

  “Stop.” Bianca’s gaze was as firm and steady as the sharp tone of her voice, although she didn’t raise it a single decibel. “What I’ve told you is everything they told me. Nothing more. Nothing less. I know you have many more questions, Cheyenne. And I know you want answers. I don’t have them. And frankly, I don’t want to know anything else, but it doesn’t matter anymore.”

  “It doesn’t matter?” Cheyenne’s lashes fluttered as her stomach dropped. “How can you say that?”

  “You’re my daughter.” Bianca took another deep breath, and the only indication of any other emotion beneath her pure strength of will was a brief and almost imperceptible flare of her nostrils. But her daughter heard the woman’s heartbeat quicken within her breast, and Cheyenne knew this was the most she’d ever get. “Mine, Cheyenne. I raised you in the best way I knew how, with no knowledge of what you needed. I raised you alone in this house, despite all the speculation and the prying and the questions. One night of throwing caution to the wind, and as a result, I put my entire life on hold, brought it out here to the middle of nowhere, and did what I had to do. For you. For me. For us. There has never been and will never be a day when I lay any of the responsibility for my decisions on your shoulders, but when I say it doesn’t matter, that’s the end of it. That man gave me you, and beyond that, he might as well not exist.”

  But he does.

  Every fiber of Cheyenne’s being wanted to scream at her mom, but there was no possibility of changing Bianca’s stance. Force and volume and passion were not the way to get through to her. The woman had delivered the longest monologue Cheyenne had received on the subject of her father in twenty-one years, and that was the most Cheyenne would ever get.

  They stared at each other, each woman in seemingly complete control of her emotions while each of them raged inside in her own way.

  A gentle knock came from the study threshold, and mother and daughter turned to see Eleanor standing with a silver tray in her hand. “I had to pull the chicken out of the oven, so it took a bit longer with the drinks. Would you still like—”

  “Yes, Eleanor. Thank you.” Bianca moved away from her daughter and gestured toward the coffee table centered between the armchairs in front of the fireplace. “Set them down there, if you will. Will dinner still be ready at six?”

  “It will.” The housekeeper averted her gaze and stepped through the thick tension filling the study. She set the silver tray on the coffee table—the mineral water already poured into two delicate crystal drinking glasses, fresh lemon wedges placed on the rims in the same position. The ice clinked when Eleanor removed her hands and wiped them on her skirt. “Six o’clock. Is there anything else before then?”

  “No. We’ll see you at dinner.” Bianca’s smile was in rare form this time, meaning it was tight and strained and didn’t come anywhere close to delivering her usual quality of self-assurance.

  “Thanks, Eleanor,” Cheyenne muttered.

  The housekeeper dipped her head, looking like she was about to meet their gazes, then decided to go the safer route. She left the study, her footsteps clicking softly on the tile floors until she disappeared within the vast estate.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Cheyenne had to do something. She went to the coffee table and fetched both glasses of mineral water on ice. She handed one to her mom, and Bianca stared at the lemon wedge on the glass. She took the crystal drinkware, muttered, “Thank you,” and took a delicate sip.

  “He didn’t leave you alone.” Cheyenne glanced at her mom, willing to take the chance.

  Bianca swiveled the monitor to its original position. “I know that, Cheyenne. I have you, and I am grateful every day for that.”

  “No, I meant in the hotel room.”

  “I’m sorry?”

  Cheyenne set her glass down on the silver tray before squatting beside the armchair. She unzipped her backpack and moved her laptop aside to find what she wanted. When she reached inside, her fingers closed around the copper box. It felt warmer and heavier than she remembered.

  Bianca inhaled through her nose when her daughter stood and displayed the copper puzzle box cradled in both hands. “That’s a trinket, Cheyenne. A very hollow and meaningless gesture from a man like the one who left it in that hotel room.”

  “But you kept it.”

  “I…” Bianca’s mouth hung open for two seconds before she shut it again. “I did. And for the life of me, I don’t know why.”

  “Because you knew it was for me.” The drow halfling stepped toward her mother, sparing a glance at the copper box that had sat on the bookshelf in her room as a child, and more recently, on the dresser in her apartment—until the day she took it to Mattie Bergmann with more questions than the university professor could answer. “Didn’t you?”

  “I certainly had no use for it.” Bianca lifted the glass of mineral water to her lips for another drink, but her eyes lingered on the puzzle box. “I did think, at one point, that it might have given you some comfort.”

  “You used to say he left it for me. That he wanted me to have it, remember?”

  “Of course, I do. Cheyenne, you have to realize that man had no regard for the consequences of his actions. Whoever he was, whoever he is, he seemed to think leaving behind a metal box would serve as enough of a gesture to garner…something from me. Sure, it might have been left as an apology or a symbol of appreciation, however vulgar that sounds. In all honesty, I think he didn’t want me to forget him. I couldn’t say all that to a child, Cheyenne. To you. Your father, the man you want so badly to find, wasn’t thinking of you when he left that box. He was only thinking about himself.”

  Cheyenne steadied her breath and waited for Bianca to meet her gaze again. “I think I know what it is.”

  Bianca froze. She glanced at the copper puzzle box, and one eye twitched in hesitation and suspicion. “Well. That’s your business. If you can find meaning in it, I’m happy for you. But I don’t want—”

  The landline filled the study with a loud electric ring. Bianca blinked and glanced across her large desk at the cordless phone in its cradle. Neither of the Summerlin women moved until the phone rang a second time.

  “Excuse me.”

  Cheyenne gritted her teeth, clamping both hands down around the copper puzzle box. Whoever’s calling better have something important to say. Which they would, because Mom doesn’t give that number out to everyone.

  Her mom stepped around the front of the desk and lifted the wireless phone from its cradle. “Bianca Summerlin.”

  The woman’s voice had taken on its usual calm, confident demeanor as if the last twenty minutes had never happened. She licked her lips, then the color drained from her face.

  Cheyenne frowned.

  “One moment, please.” Bianca lowered the phone from her ear, stepped toward her daughter, and offered her the phone. “It’s for you.”

  “What?” The word came out in a whisper. Cheyenne’s eyes widened. Her mom extended the phone a little farther, and the drow halfling took it in reluctant surprise.

  I don’t get phone calls here.

  The minute the phone left Bianca’s hand, the woman reached out to steady herself on the long, sturdy desk. She stared with wide eyes at the floor while Cheyenne set the copper puzzle box on her mom’s desk and lifted the phone to her ear.

  “Hello?”

  “Neat littl
e trick you pulled with that phone we gave you, halfling. How’s the shoulder?”

  Cheyenne jerked the phone away from her ear when she recognized Sir’s voice. Then she pulled up the sleeve of her t-shirt to glare at the two wounds on her right shoulder, and everything clicked into place. Sha’gron’s fingers pushing into the open wounds. The Troll healer telling Cheyenne to look away. The instruction not to wash the wound, which was strange, coming from a magical doctor. Rhynehart asking Cheyenne where he should pick her up instead of showing up at the VCU campus and ordering her into the Jeep—because he couldn’t pin her location by tracking the burner phone. So he’d asked for Sha’gron by name at Rez 38, and the healer had done her job and then some.

  Rage and indignation seared through Cheyenne’s veins. The heat of her drow blood flared at the base of her spine, but with her mom standing right there, she pushed it back down. She lifted the phone back to her ear. “You put a goddamn tracker in my shoulder? We had a deal!”

  Bianca’s head whipped up, and the woman stared at her daughter with wide eyes, still unbelievably pale. Cheyenne barely registered any of it.

  “And you changed the terms, halfling.” Sir sounded like his usual smug self. “I won’t say I’m not impressed because that would be lying. I don’t appreciate lying, Blakely, and I don’t have a lot of tolerance for it, either.”

  Despite the man’s voice worming its way into her head, Cheyenne picked up on a different sound, and it wasn’t coming through the phone—tires rolling to a stop outside the front of the house. Doors opening and closing. Multiple pairs of footsteps crunching across the gravel and making their way toward the wide stone steps up to the front door.

  “That’s not how this works,” Cheyenne screamed into the phone. Then she dropped the receiver and stormed across her mom’s study before the handset bounced a second time on the finely woven area rug.

  She charged through her mom’s house, down the hall, back through the clean, finely decorated living room used for entertaining a certain level of guest.