by Pamela Crane
“So what’s on the agenda for the day? Kickin’ ass and takin’ names?” I asked as I poured us both coffee, Tristan’s black and in the smaller mug, mine more vanilla creamer than coffee in the larger one. If there was one thing I was selfish about, it was my coffee. I slid onto the wobbly bar stool and sipped the hot brew waiting for Tristan to join me. The chair leg tapped against the floor as I shifted in my seat.
“Oh, you know—the usual. Putting killers behind bars.”
Tristan spooned eggs onto each of our plates, then added several pieces of just about perfect bacon. He fetched the pancakes from the stove—a short stack for me, a full stack for himself—and sat down next to me.
“Speaking of killers,” he said, crunching noisily on his bacon, “what’s up with Battan? Any updates on Marla Rivers?”
It was a case I couldn’t shed. Many nights I found myself haunted by Marla’s ghost, begging for me to help her. It wasn’t that I was fascinated with the twelve-year-old girl’s murder, but something compelled me to give her family the closure they deserved. Maybe it was our kindred suffering at such a young age, maybe it was my fear that my father was behind it, maybe it was a hunger for justice, or maybe it was just because I wanted to see George Battan fry. Whatever it was, I wanted Marla to be laid to rest—and that meant finding her killer.
“I was able to get Marla’s case assigned to me, but until Tina’s willing to testify that Marla was held captive with her in George’s house, we don’t have anything else to connect it to George—or anyone, for that matter. I’m guessing George wasn’t holding the murder weapon, but I’m betting he hired whoever was. Until we can get more info from George, everyone’s a suspect and no one’s a suspect.”
Tristan shook his head and forked eggs into his mouth. I suddenly felt too anxious to eat, but I took a bite anyway to show my appreciation for his effort.
“That poor family. I know how they feel—just wishing for closure. I felt the same way about Carli’s death for over a decade, endlessly hoping for answers. No one deserves that kind of torment.”
“Can you talk to Tina about it? Light a fire under her ass to speak up?”
Been there, done that. It was a conversation I’d had with Tina countless times, begging her to tell the police what she knew. She was the last person to see Marla alive as a fellow captive in George’s child-trafficking hideaway. Before escaping, Tina had promised Marla she’d come back and rescue her, but that chance never came. Shortly after Tina fled, Marla’s remains were found. The only reason Tina hadn’t come forward with her information was because she needed leverage in order to get back her baby that George had stolen from her: Giana. Tina’s plan was to use what she knew about Marla as a bargaining chip to force George to talk. Tell her where Giana was and she’d stay quiet about Marla. But George Battan wasn’t known for playing fair, and I had a feeling Tina wouldn’t end up winning at this mental chess match against him.
“I’ve tried talking to her, but she’s determined to find Giana. She thinks keeping what she knows under wraps will get her what she wants.”
Tristan forced a laugh. “Well, you can remind her that until she talks, all we have on George is a child sex trafficking charge—and that’s not enough to keep him in prison for long. He’ll be out with plenty of time to build a new life of crime. Is that what she wants?”
I shrugged, not sure how to answer that.
I pulled the stack of yesterday’s mail on the counter toward me and began leafing through it. A bill. Several advertisements. Then a white envelope with my name handwritten across the front in neat, capitalized letters: Ari Wilburn
Sliding my finger across the top to tear it open, I found a single piece of plain white paper inside. I unfolded it and read the following message written with the same unnaturally clean script as the envelope:
Silence is your only salvation, or your family will pay for what they’ve done. I will be waiting and watching. They may think the past is buried, but I will unearth it all and drag them down to hell with me.
“What the hell ...?” I muttered, reading it a second time. As each word tunneled into my brain, my heart raced and my palms grew clammy. Fear clawed its way through me as worst-case scenarios played out in my mind’s eye. Someone was targeting me ... intimately. Given there was no postage, the sender had physically dropped this letter in my mailbox. They had come to my home carrying a threat against me. They might have watched me through my windows. I might have even passed by them in the lobby. Had I brushed shoulders with this person bent on killing me? I could feel my face drain of warmth and color.
“What’s wrong, babe?” Tristan glanced over at me, then followed my scared-stiff gaze. Silently reading the letter over my shoulder, he finally broke through my trance. “Put it down, Ari, in case I can get prints off this.”
I felt his hand on my back, restoring me to the present. I carefully placed the paper on the counter. “Do you think George Battan is behind this?” If so, I was as good as dead. The man had ruthless henchmen everywhere.
“That’s my best guess, considering you’re the one who put him in jail. But I’m here, and I’ll protect you. I won’t let him or anyone else touch you, Ari. I promise.” He pulled me into his arms, against his chest, almost suffocating me with his hug. But I didn’t mind.
“You can’t babysit me twenty-four hours a day, Tristan.”
“Sure I can.”
“But you don’t live here. You have your own place.”
“I could move in.”
I shook my head and pulled back just enough to breathe. We hadn’t even had the where-is-our-relationship-heading conversation yet. And now he wanted to move in ... so he could keep an eye on me? As much as I liked the thought of him always being around, I also hated the thought of him always being around. Cleaning up his dishes, washing his dirty underwear, sharing the remote control, wiping the golden droplets of pee off the toilet bowl rim—on those rare occasions when he’d remembered to flip the seat up. No, it was all too much too soon. There had to be another way to figure out what this threat meant, who it was from and why.
“No, that’s not the answer. I need to find out what my father did, how he was connected to George. I don’t think any of this crap will end until the truth all comes out.”
The truth. If I was honest with myself, I feared the truth. I hid from the demon that kept watch over my parents, holding the people who raised me in its clutches. What atrocities had my father done in the name of “business”? What secrets had my mother harbored for him in the name of “family”? I shivered with a horrible feeling that the truth wouldn’t just come back for my parents, but it would drown me with them.
Chapter 3 Ari
A grudge is like a snake in the grass. It slithers toward its target unseen, only the subtle movement of blades of grass tracking its path, until it rises from the earth and strikes, sinking its fangs into the flesh, paralyzing and then coiling around its prey until it’s ready to dine. A grudge had been following me for about two weeks until it struck, and its prey was my best friend, Tina Alvarez.
We sat across from each other in a booth at Philly Steak—a hole-in-the-wall strip mall joint aptly named for having the best cheesesteak subs in the Triangle. With its aged yellow plastic booths and scuffed white ceramic floors it didn’t look like much, but one taste of their tender steak smothered in provolone on a foot-long bun and you felt like you were in heaven. While Tina hungrily devoured her fries slathered in ketchup, I numbly stared at my food, too many angry thoughts in my head to enjoy it.
I never turned down a cheesesteak; Tina knew this about me.
Apparently my mood became obvious when she paused mid-chew to ask me, “What’s going on in that pretty little head of yours?”
I glanced up. “What makes you think something’s going on?”
“Duh. You’re not eating one of your favorite foods on the planet. Normally you wouldn’t come up for breath between bites. So ... what gives?”
I
sighed. As well as Tina knew me, how did my frustration with her go unnoticed for so long? After two days of silent treatment, one-word text replies to her, and a begrudging lunch, I had expected her to catch on already and push for an explanation of my pissyness. Maybe I hadn’t been bitchy enough, but it was time to come clean. “If you really wanna know, I’m pissed at you.”
Her brown eyes rimmed in thick eyeliner widened in shock. “Pissed at me—why? What’d I do?”
“C’mon. Don’t act dumb. We’ve talked about it a million times.”
Leaning back, she crossed her arms and cracked her neck. The sound of popping joints made me wince. “Seriously? Is this about George Battan?”
“Yes!” I pounded the table with my fist, making my plate clatter and water tremble in my glass. “You’re holding out on information that could put George Battan in prison for life. His trial is coming up, and all they have is a sex-trafficking charge, which is flaky at best. That gives him maybe a decade behind bars. He should be doing life, Tina. He ordered Marla’s murder, and he deserves to pay for that. But no thanks to you, he won’t be held accountable and Marla’s family goes on mourning without justice.”
She rolled her eyes at me, and the gesture reminded me that she was only eighteen years old. Still a kid. She had no clue how the real world worked, or that her choices had major consequences. I couldn’t blame her for being so naïve. Despite this, I felt entitled to be mad about it because I wasn’t that much older or wiser, and yet I still knew better.
“You know why I’m not talking. I need George to tell me where Giana is. He won’t talk unless I give him something—and that something is my silence about Marla and all the other girls.”
“So that asshole promised to tell you where your baby is? He said those exact words?” I already knew the answer to my question. Tina hadn’t even visited him in prison yet, and for good reason. The man had imprisoned her for years, tortured her, enslaved her to perform like a circus animal for sickos and perverts day after day. I knew why she couldn’t face him yet, but to assume he’d cave to her demands was, well, just idiotic.
“Not exactly, but he will. Or else he’ll be looking at death row when I tell everyone he killed Marla. I’ve got a royal flush, Ari. Relax. Marla’s family will get closure ... after I get what I need. Unless you want me to drag your dad into it instead?”
“What did you just say?”
I couldn’t believe she pulled the dad card on me. She knew I was trying to reconnect with my family, protect my parents, since I wasn’t sure just how deep their involvement with George went. All I knew was that my good ol’ daddy Burt Wilburn had ignited George’s wrath fourteen years ago when George ordered a hit on my little sister Carli. What Burt had done to cause it, I’d never been able to pry out of him or my mom. The more I dug, the more they pushed me away. I had one clue that tied Dad to George, and it relied solely on Tina’s memory. Three years ago my father took Tina’s newborn baby away from her, and the only reason Tina hadn’t turned him in yet was for my benefit.
“You know what, never mind,” I grumbled. “I’ll find a way to get in to talk to George and hopefully get something useful. I promised you I would help you find Giana and I’ll follow through. Just don’t bring my dad into it yet. Please?”
Her eyes passed over me, scrutinizing me like she was searching for the answer on my Nirvana T-shirt. “Deal ... as long as you’re buying dessert after this. Italian crème cake at Pomodoro’s?” Her eyes twinkled.
I chuckled at how easy it was to sway Tina. The child in her could be bought with a Forever 21 outfit or Chinese takeout, but it made me wonder just how capable she was of being the parent in the scenario. Lots of mothers could feed a family on a waitress’s wage, as long as they weren’t blowing their slim earnings on shopping sprees and makeup. Tina couldn’t stick to a budget if her life depended on it, yet she was going to keep a roof over Giana’s head? I had my doubts.
“How can I say no to Italian crème cake? But you’re in for a rude awakening once I find Giana. You’ll be wearing Walmart mom jeans and eating generic mac ’n’ cheese soon, girl.”
“Uh, mom jeans are the new trend, Ari. Catch up. Besides, who says you can’t be fashionable and a mom at the same time?”
Shaking my head, I realized Tina had no clue what she was in for as a parent. It wasn’t like I knew much more, but at least I wasn’t trying to become an instant parent of a three-year-old. The sacrifices, the hard work, the unconditional love—all values neither of us had been raised on.
The reality was, I didn’t know what I was in for either, because finding Giana meant putting my father in jail, but no matter how much he hurt me as a child, he was still my dad. The same man I remembered carrying me on his shoulders at Durham Bulls baseball games, whose deep laughter shook a room, who acted out my bedtime stories using my stuffed animals, who joined me for tea parties. Once upon a time he was my hero. No matter what a man’s done, a part of that hero lives on forever.
Save Giana or save my own father? It was a choice I could never make, but I might have to.
“So about finding Giana,” I said, “tell me everything you remember about the day she was taken. Hopefully there’s enough details that can lead me in the right direction for where to begin.”
Tina’s eyes misted as she turned away, as if facing the memory was too ugly. Looking somewhere beyond me, beyond the room, I watched as time took her back to the moment it happened three years ago.
“I remember it so well, yet I feel like I was a different person back then,” she whispered.
In a way, she was. Three years ago she was still Sophia Alvarez, the abused victim. When she escaped she changed her name to Tina Alvarez, the survivor.
Her eyes glassy with tears, she continued, “All the perfect joy of meeting my daughter, and all the horrible pain of when she was stolen from me—every detail burned like a brand on my heart. It was the best thing and the worst thing that ever happened to me, all rolled into one sweet baby girl.”
Chapter 4 Tina/Sophia Alvarez
Three years ago ...
It defied logic, the magic of childbirth. For eight hours fifteen-year-old Sophia Alvarez labored in agony, clutching her Hello Kitty bedsheets from when she had first arrived at the house nine years earlier, and screaming bloody murder as her body felt like it was ripping apart. The midwife George had hired with hush money coached Sophia through the birthing process, reminding her that pain meant progress, and to just keep breathing.
“Breathe through the contraction. Breathe through the pain.”
But nothing helped take her mind off the tearing sensation as her muscles spasmed and abdomen cramped over and over in an endless cycle of torment. No breathing, no grunting, no groaning, no bath, no massage ... nothing eased the anguish as her body pooled with sweat and exhaustion sapped her endurance.
“Please take me to the hospital,” Sophia cried.
“I’m sorry, honey, but I can’t.”
“I’m gonna die ... please help me.”
But the answer remained a firm no.
During those eight excruciating hours Sophia begged to go to the hospital, begged for medicine, but her requests were denied. As the hours passed and her resolve weakened, she yearned for death, until that final push—the one that split her body in half—and then a head. A tiny body. Wriggling feet. And at last a baby’s cries. Her baby’s cries.
“It’s a girl!” the midwife announced.
The miracle of birth was truly a miracle. One minute earlier Tina screamed for her life; the next minute she bathed in a warmth that stole all memory of it. Instantly the pain stopped and the enchantment took over as she watched her daughter enter her world. She’d never felt so alive and in love and at peace and overwhelmed with such joy in all of her short fifteen years of life. As the midwife handed the pink-faced baby to her, Sophia cradled the tiny, writhing creature in her arms, watching her delicate fingers wiggle and her bony toes curl. Everything about her daughter
was perfect, from the cleft in her chin to the shock of black hair on her head. The baby’s lips pursed in a suckling motion, then a moment later widened as she belted out a scream Sophia hadn’t expected from something so small.
“I think she’s hungry,” Sophia said, appealing to the midwife for help.
The midwife nodded. “I think you’re right, honey.”
The midwife turned to leave, and as the baby continued to wail, Sophia began to grow frantic. But then the magic returned, and somehow, even without her mama there to teach her the ways of motherhood, Sophia’s maternal instinct took over and she pressed the baby to her breast and helped her latch. The cries immediately ended as the baby nursed, until the midwife stepped into the room. Pulling the baby away, she shook her head.
“No, dear, no nursing. Here, give her a bottle.”
The midwife handed Sophia a warm bottle of formula, and Sophia placed the nipple on the baby’s tongue. She squirmed and pushed the plastic out of her mouth with her tongue, scrunching her face in disgust.
“She doesn’t want it. What should I do?”
“It takes getting used to. Just keep trying.”
The midwife watched on as Sophia offered the bottle, and after several minutes of back-and-forth negotiations, the baby finally accepted the drink and quieted down.
“I love her so much. I want to name her Giana. It means ‘God is gracious.’ Isn’t that a perfect name for her?”
The midwife rested her hand on Sophia’s shoulder. “It’s beautiful. You did so great, Sophia.” A moment later she hustled out of the room, leaving Sophia alone with Giana in fairy-tale bliss.
But the happily-ever-afterglow didn’t last long. It wasn’t meant to last, but no one had told Sophia. For a month Sophia bonded with Giana, eagerly tending to her midnight feedings, singing silly songs while she changed dirty diapers. She floated through life like in a dream, and it wasn’t so bad. Until it took a drastic turn for the worse.
