by Ruby Laska
With Jade listening attentively, asking for clarification here and there, offering no opinions of her own, Chelsea felt confident enough to place the piece of paper she had prepared on the table between them.
“This is everything I know about him,” she said. She had written down everything she could remember about the cars and motorcycle he drove, the locations of his house and apartment, even—with a twinge of misgiving—the names of the Soloniks and their café. There was a list of the people she’d seen him greet or talk to at the parties they’d attended, the women he was rumored to have dated. “Sorry it’s so low tech. I know you’re into all the gadgets—”
Jade shook her head. “No, no, this is perfect. In this day and age, the only real privacy to be had is when you don’t involve data at all. In fact, you might want to consider getting a second phone, an untraceable one.”
“I’ve got that covered,” Chelsea said, explaining about her purse having been lost. Afterward, she’d picked up a pre-paid phone, mostly because she didn’t have the cash lying around to buy a new smartphone.
“It’s worrisome that your phone was lost—that means someone out there has all the data stored on it,” Jade said. “Let’s just hope it didn’t fall into the wrong hands. Meanwhile, I’ll give you another number to reach me on. If we’re doing this, we’re going to do it right.”
“So do you…” Chelsea wasn’t sure how to ask, or how Jade could know the answers to the questions she most needed answered: just what sort of man was Ricardo? Could he really keep her safe—or was he himself the greatest danger of all? And perhaps most importantly—was she crazy for wanting to see him again?
Jade held up a hand to interrupt her. “Look, I’m not your babysitter. If you tell me you like this guy, I’m just going to assume he’s worth it. And, I know enough about your background to know you’ve been through some shit.”
Chelsea felt her face heat up. She’d kept her past hidden from everyone in her life besides the Fairy Godfathers—and even they knew only a fraction of the horrors she had survived. “What do you—”
“Let’s just say that I don’t take on a client without knowing exactly who I’m dealing with. I’ve always liked you, Chelsea, but that doesn’t mean I didn’t do my homework. I know your stepfather was a pretty shady guy. I know your mom had…problems.”
Chelsea felt her mouth tremble and looked away. Her mother’s problems were a matter of public record—the DUIs, the drug arrests, the failed court-appointed rehabs before she disappeared for good. But much of what her stepfather had done would not be reflected in the few domestic assault and petty theft charges on his record: Jade didn’t know the worst of it.
“And I know how hard you’re working to protect your father’s legacy. For what it’s worth…” Now it was Jade’s turn to look embarrassed. “I’ve always truly loved his work. And I never tried to make a dime off it.”
That broke the mood, and Chelsea laughed. “I don’t know whether that’s a compliment or not. You only copied the best. It was a Klee that finally took you down, right?”
“Yeah, I forged one of his early landscapes and tried to sell it to the wrong person. Turned out to be an undercover FBI agent. But now I’m trying to get them to hire me as a consultant, so I guess all’s well that ends well, right?”
“I guess so,” Chelsea said, trying to keep her face impassive.
“Anyway, I didn’t mean to go off on a whole tangent here.” Jade looked down at the list again before folding it and putting it into her pocket. “Lot of high profile names on that list. I guess I don’t need to tell you that your guy associates with some very wealthy and influential people.”
Chelsea nodded, grateful her friend hadn’t mentioned the beautiful and famous women on the list.
“So I’m not saying he’s doing anything that isn’t above board, but this gives me a place to start. Give me a few days, okay?”
Chelsea’s heart fell. “Um, yes, sure…if it has to take that long.”
“Look, honey, are you safe right now? Is it an issue?”
“I—I’m not sure.” She wasn’t about to tell Jade that she’d run away from the one man who seemed to want to protect her. “I mean, the sooner you can tell me what I’m dealing with, the easier I’ll be able to figure out my next move.”
Jade’s eyes narrowed. She seemed to be battling with herself about what to do next. Finally, she clasped her hands together and took a breath. “Look. If it’s a matter of protection…do you need me to get you something?”
“What do you mean?”
Jade leaned across the table, her voice little more than an intense whisper. “I mean a gun. Do you know how to use one?”
“No!” Chelsea said, shocked. “I’ve never touched one in my life. Besides, I don’t need it. I can take care of myself.”
“Oh yeah? With what?”
“With—with common sense, and, look, I’ve had some martial arts training. And I’m in good shape, I’m fast. If it came to that.”
Jade sighed, shaking her head. Then all of a sudden, her hand shot out and grabbed Chelsea’s wrist, and the next thing she knew, she was on the floor, in agony, with her arm twisted up behind her. Just as she was opening her mouth to scream, Jade let go, and she crashed against an empty chair.
All around them, other patrons looked over. “Sorry,” Jade said, shrugging. “She dropped her phone.”
Chelsea got to her feet and straightened the chair she’d overturned. When she sat down, she could tell her face was on fire.
“Was that really necessary?” she asked, rubbing her wrist.
Jade shrugged. “Got the point across, didn’t I?”
“That you can take me down with one hand even though I probably have fifteen pounds on you?” Chelsea asked glumly. “Yeah, I guess you did.”
“Look, sorry to be so dramatic. But you can’t fuck around with these guys if they really are Russian mafia. In the last decade, they’ve tripled their business interests in this town. And they don’t hire girl scouts to protect their investments, if you see what I’m saying.”
Chelsea remembered the look of fear on Darya’s face when she implored Chelsea to be careful—and Ricardo’s smoldering anger when he’d led her from the café.
“All right. Look. I’ll be very, very careful,” she promised. And the minute Jade told her that Ricardo checked out—that he wasn’t as bad as the men who’d threatened to kill her—she’d let him protect her again.
“Good.”
“Just one question,” Chelsea said, as they gathered their purses and prepared to leave. “Where did you learn that little trick, anyway?”
Jade wrinkled her nose, making her look more like an adorable member of a girl band than a hand-to-hand fighter.
“You’re asking someone who did time at Pleasant Valley State Prison?”
“I thought you were in the minimum security part.”
Jade shrugged. “Maybe so. But that doesn’t mean I didn’t learn a few things while I was there.” She gave Chelsea an extra hard hug, and when they pulled apart, her smile was soft and concerned. “That’s one thing you and I have in common, Chel. We’ve both been through some rough times—but no one can say we didn’t learn from them.”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
That night, after Chelsea had done the dishes and Rufus had gone to bed, she went out for a run. It was dark enough that she felt invisible, other than the silver reflective tape on her running tights.
She’d enjoyed dinner with Rufus and Donny, but once she was alone again, her thoughts crowded her head with worries. And there was another emotion nagging at her, one that felt a lot like guilt.
She hadn’t told Ricardo where she was going when she left him that morning. At the time, it had seemed prudent. The mixed feelings she had, leaving his arms, seemed to signal caution.
Now the decision felt reckless. She had no way to contact him unless she went back to the little house where they spent the night. But she doubted he would be there
. She could try the apartment where they’d had their first “date,” but something told her that Ricardo would be avoiding any predictable places.
How would he interpret her silence, her disappearance? She tried to justify it to herself, as it was the same thing he had done to her. And it wasn’t like they’d made any commitments to each other unless you counted…she blushed, thinking about the things they’d done, the way he’d made her feel. Her body warmed to the memory, and she ran faster, trying to make the fire in her lungs drown out the fire at her core.
All right. She should have made sure she had a way to reach him before she left. But she couldn’t have told him about the Fairy Godfathers—not until she was sure. Endangering her own life was one thing, but she wasn’t about to jeopardize the lives of her only family.
Behind her, faint footsteps echoed.
Shit.
She’d had years to get over her reckless streak, but she’d done it again, choosing a course of action with nothing but blind trust that it would work out. She hadn’t even given thought to what would be a safe route at nearly one in the morning: if she’d insisted on running, she should have chosen a route where there was pedestrian traffic at every hour of the day. She’d chosen to run on this street because it offered her the chance to think, but now she realized it also made her a stupidly easy target.
Up ahead a few blocks was an all-night drug store. She could run straight to its entrance, never mind that she’d look like a crazy person bursting through the doors drenched in sweat, with nothing but her key to Rufus’s apartment in her sock. She ran harder, putting everything she had into the rhythm of her feet slapping against the pavement, her fists pumping at her sides.
The steps behind her came faster, too.
Whoever was pursuing her had trained for this. Chelsea didn’t dare waste the precious seconds it would take to turn and see who was following, but whoever it was wasn’t even breathing hard, and his steps had a mechanical consistency to them, an economy of movement that came only through hard training.
Two more blocks. She considered screaming, wondered who in this neighborhood would bother to come to her aid. She knew it was likely that no one would: in this part of town, people were conditioned not to get involved.
She was almost to the intersection of the second to last street before the drugstore when her foot caught on a crack in the sidewalk. She staggered, attempting with every last bit of her energy to stay on both feet, but one ankle twisted and she went down, putting her hands out at the last minute to try to brace her fall. She landed hard on the curb, her hip bone jarring painfully, and rolled onto her knees. She was struggling to stand again when a figure dressed in dark clothes slammed into her, rolling efficiently sideways and standing up into a crouch. A gloved hand was pressed over her mouth and a strong forearm encircled her neck, cutting off her air.
Chelsea clawed at her attacker’s arm, attempting to dislodge it. She tried to scream, but nothing came out other than a choked gasp, the last of her breath leaving her throat as he began to drag her. She kicked and fought, but he was bigger and stronger. What had she been thinking, that a few self-defense classes would teach her to protect herself from someone out to hurt her?
Her feet dragged helplessly on the street. Up ahead, the drug store parking lot was like an oasis disappearing from view. He was taking her into the alley between two shuttered storefronts; glass glittered among the trash accumulated on the broken pavement.
Chelsea had made her last stupid mistake, and now she was going to die, alone and abandoned, in this stinking alley.
CHAPTER TWELVE
But she wasn’t going to die without a fight. She fought as hard as she could, kicking at the pavement and pounding at the man’s thick forearm, but she made no headway on dislodging his grip as they went deeper and deeper into the alley.
He spoke into her ear, keeping his voice low and tight. “Chelsea, please—” No trace of an accent, confusingly, and Chelsea stopped fighting for a moment. “I’m not going to hurt you.”
There was something vaguely familiar about the voice, and it took Chelsea a second to resume fighting him. He could be anyone. A Russian who spoke excellent English—someone working with the Russians—or someone else entirely who had a grudge against Ricardo. She had been right to hire Jade to look into him—just too late.
A black van pulled up on the street, the tires squealing at the abrupt stop. A door opened and a man jumped out, also dressed in black, most of his face obscured under his black cap.
“That’s our ride,” Chelsea’s attacker said and started dragging her back in the other direction.
“No!” she shouted, but his hand was still over her mouth and all that came out was a muffled scream.
“Look, it’s your tax dollars at work here,” the man said, half dragging and half carrying her to the waiting van. “Might as well let us do our job.”
Chelsea suddenly realized why the voice sounded familiar. She quit resisting as the man pushed her into the back of the van and then jumped in after her. She looked around, seeing electronic equipment mounted on the walls, and the man who’d opened the door sitting in the passenger seat. Neither he nor the driver said anything.
“Does this mean…” she asked, swallowing down the painful knot of dread and hope, trying to voice the question she wasn’t sure she wanted the answer to.
“We haven’t found Roy,” the man who’d attacked her said quickly. “I’m sorry, Chelsea. This is about something different.”
Chelsea nodded, then turned away, not wanting him to see the complicated mixture of emotions she wasn’t sure she could conceal.
But if the FBI hadn’t found her stepfather, then why would Stone Everson want to talk to her? And why had he come after her like this, in the middle of the night and in disguise?
“This is going to hurt tomorrow.” Stone rubbed his forearm ruefully. His chin was beginning to swell where she must have landed a blow.
“I’d say I’m sorry,” Chelsea sighed. “But it isn’t my fault you blindsided me in a bad neighborhood and failed to identify yourself and probably took a decade off my life. Is there any reason why you didn’t just call?”
Stone rubbed the back of his neck and winced. “Tell you the truth, we didn’t feel like inviting anyone else to the party.”
Chelsea looked at the other occupants of the van again. The front-seat passenger was talking in a low voice on the radio; the driver was navigating traffic in the direction of downtown. So they were taking her to the FBI headquarters. It wouldn’t be the first time.
“Um, well, how about just telling me to come in alone?” she asked. “It’s not like I ever stood you up before.”
“No,” Stone said, his expression finally relaxing into a fond, if rueful, grin. “That’s true. Not since the first time, anyway.”
“I was just a kid!” Chelsea protested. “And the only men in my life I trusted were Donny and Rufus. Plus you have to admit you came on pretty strong.”
Stone shrugged. “I was a newbie. Speaking of which, let me introduce Baxter and Ling. Two and four years on the force respectively, so they’re still a little green.”
“Nice to meet you, ma’am,” Baxter said, twisting in his seat while Ling drove.
“Yeah…you too.”
“Cheer up,” Stone said. “We’ve got better vending machine snacks since the last time you visited.”
#
After her father had died, when Chelsea was only six, her mother got involved with Roy Huber and moved him into the tiny bungalow in a degenerating part of town where they lived.
What followed were seven years of hell. Roy was a photographer, and he dabbled in portraiture and event photography from time to time. But most of his income came from the photographs he took in the studio he rigged in the back room of the little house.
Photos of children, posed for roles no child should ever be forced to play. Before long, Chelsea was his primary model. While she guessed she should count hers
elf lucky that Roy never laid a hand on her and limited his abuse to the sexually explicit poses, she would never be able to forget the nightmarish hours, and she would never be able to get the photos off the Internet.
At fourteen, she ran away. Four years later, after she’d been living with Rufus and Donny for a while, she got the courage to contact the FBI. Stone Everson, only three years on the job, caught the case.
And put his heart into solving it, especially after his investigation showed that photos of Chelsea were among the most widely-circulated and downloaded on the Internet. He didn’t let the daunting challenge of tracking down the photos stop him, and he kept it up even after Chelsea got spooked and tried to back out. He picked her up off the street ever few months and brought her to his office for an update and made sure she was still getting by.
But Roy had grown more elusive in the intervening years. Stone speculated that he had joined forces with other pornographers to sell and distribute his work, while hiding behind a variety of online aliases. Despite a few near misses, Stone was never able to hunt down the man who had destroyed Chelsea’s childhood, and eventually, the case was shelved as his unit pursued other, hotter cases.
But Stone never forgot about Chelsea. He married and had a daughter, then another. Once or twice a year he called to tell her that he would never stop pursuing Roy, that he would dedicate his life to making sure that the things that had happened to Chelsea would never happen to other little girls.
Now, sitting in his office, it was bittersweet to see the family photos on his desk, the crayon drawings made by little hands displayed proudly on the walls.
“They’re growing up so fast,” Chelsea said, looking at a snapshot of Stone and his wife and kids at a theme park. “How is Jenny?”
“Fantastic,” Stone said without hesitation. “She’s taken a few students on now that Alyssa is in preschool, but she loves being able to be home when the girls are home from school.”
Stone’s wife had been a promising violinist with the Los Angeles Symphony before she quit to stay home with their children. She was as pretty as she was talented, and the tug at Chelsea’s heart whenever she saw photos of the happy family wasn’t envy so much as recognition that the perfect life her friend enjoyed would never happen for her. But she was genuinely happy to see that the man who’d tried to avenge her was doing well.
