Hush Little Baby

by Alex Gates

  I needed the name of her father, and I needed it now.

  A nurse called to me, her voice soft. “Detective, the doctor says you can go in now, but you can’t upset her. She’s in a critical condition.”

  “I’ll be quick.”

  “Please don’t touch her. Avoid the machinery.”

  Not a good sign. I followed the nurse, but I didn’t belong in the room. She was in no condition to talk. To breathe. To even exist.

  They’d beaten her in the bathroom. Despite the guards claim that they’d used only fists and feet, her arms bruised with the markings of a weapon. A broom handle? Enough weight to slam against her body and break too many bones. Fingers and wrists. Her tibia had been shattered. Her eye socket and skull. The parts of her yet unbroken swelled into lumps and knots. They’d pulled her hair out. Kicked her until she lost consciousness.

  Then they’d beat her some more.

  The jail said she’d been attacked because most imprisoned populations targeted the ones accused of abusing children. If only they knew she was really trying to save one.

  And of course, the attack had no witnesses. The cameras were out of focus, and the attack partially hidden by a stall door. That, too, had been used as a weapon. The women left her for dead, and it was only by luck the changing of the guard happened to check the bathrooms.

  So the attackers went to solitary.

  Amber to the hospital.

  And I became the latest monster to find her, confront her, torment her.

  My whisper was faint, unheard over the machines beeping and whirling. “I’m so sorry.”

  Amber stirred, but the movement agonized her. Her expression twisted. Even waking from the sedation, the pain was too much.

  I leaned over the bed, careful to avoid the wires and machinery monitoring her vitals. Her eyes opened, but they took a long minute to focus. She stared at me, unblinking.

  “Hi,” I said. “You’re at the hospital.”

  Amber’s lip had been split, and her face bruised black and blue. She opened her mouth, but the words rasped over her tongue. I felt her pained grimace.

  “Take your time,” I said. “I’m right here. I’m not going anywhere. You’re safe now.”

  Her eyebrows rose. The first of many tears welled in her eyes. Happy to be alive? Terrified of what was to come? Me too. The same fears raged through me.

  And I still had one final blow to deliver.

  I hoped she could survive it.

  She licked her lip, forcing the air from her mouth. The sound ached with it. “You…”

  “Yes?”

  “Your…fault.”

  She relaxed, surrendering to the injuries. She turned her head as much as she could, but the pain prevented her from twisting away from me. She closed her eyes instead.

  “Amber—”

  “This is…your fault.” She spoke a little easier now, but a cold and destructive fury grated the words. “If I die, it’s because of you.”

  “You’re not going to die.”

  “I told you to leave me alone.” She recoiled like her sobs broke more bones. “I told you to stop. You wouldn’t stop. I begged and pleaded. You didn’t care.”

  The tears choked me. I deserved it. She never once spoke with such venom about the bastard who’d raped her. She reserved that spite, that anger, for me. As if I was the one who’d hurt her.

  Forced her against her will to answer question after question.

  “They’re gonna kill me…” Amber groaned. “They’ll kill me.”

  I shook my head. “I won’t let them.”

  “What can you do? You led them to me.”

  “I had to investigate it, Amber.”

  “You had no right. You didn’t understand.”

  “I still don’t understand. I need your help. I’m almost there, but you have to tell me exactly what I’m fighting against, because I can’t do it alone and blind. I need your help to end this, for you and all the other girls at Grayson House.”

  “It doesn’t matter now.”

  “It does. More than ever.”

  “The more you push, the more you dig, the more people are going to die. We’ve already been to hell, London. Don’t make us go there again.”

  “I’m so sorry.” I lowered my head, resting against my hands for a long moment. “But things have changed. We’re running out of time.”

  “Leave me alone.”

  “Amber…” I couldn’t speak the words without my voice breaking. “Amber, they have the baby.”

  She said nothing.

  Only wept.

  And as much as I wanted to cry with her, I couldn’t waste the energy on pity and worry. The machines beeped as her heartbeat rose. She struggled against the oxygen under her nose, but the motions only hurt her more.

  “She was with a foster family,” I said. “They found her. They burned the house to the ground and left with the baby. No one saw them. No one knows who they are. But you can help me. I know you can.”

  “There’s nothing left.” She coughed, hard. “No, no, no. It’s over.”

  “It’s not. We still have time. We can make this right.” I couldn’t grab her, but I could clutch the railing of the bed. “Tell me what happened. Judge Reissing. I know he’s corrupt. I realize now he took bribes to send girls to the facility, and it was Grayson House who hurt them. I know the girls are being prostituted and raped, but no one will tell me anything.”

  “Because they’ll kill us.”

  “I know it’s frightening. And I know you just want to hide. But they have the baby. And that’s why they took her, Amber. Because she’s the key, isn’t she? She’s the one who can prove what’s happened. Her DNA is too dangerous to them.” I hated pushing, but I’d lost too much time already. “Who is her father?”

  “No.”

  “Amber, who hurt you? I will arrest him. I’ll make sure he can’t hurt her or any other girl ever again.”

  “You can’t stop him.”

  “I will. I’m so close to an arrest, but I need proof. Who were you hiding her from?”

  “Please.”

  Her heart rate jumped, elevated enough to sound an alarm. Not good. It’d only take a minute before the nurses would rush into the room. I couldn’t play this game anymore. She’d give me the answers I needed no matter how terrifying the truth.

  “It was Judge Reissing, wasn’t it?” My voice hardened. “He’s the one who raped you. He hurt you. He got you pregnant. Now you’re afraid to tell me. Just nod. Just one nod, and I swear to you, he won’t hurt you ever again.”

  “No, no, no…” She lurched upwards, fought against the machines, the blankets, her own injuries. “So many people will get hurt. He’ll try to kill you!”

  “He’s already tried and failed. You and me. We’re fighters. We’re the same. Nothing can stop us because we know we’re on the right side of this. They have to pay for their crimes. Just say his name. Say Reissing, and this can be over.”

  “No!”

  Every machine raged in alerting sirens.

  No. Not yet. Not now.

  I kicked the room’s door shut and dragged the chair to barricade us inside. The doctors and nurses shouted from the hall.

  No interruptions. No denials.

  No more injustice.

  I’d get my answers and save that baby before any more blood was shed.

  “I have to protect Hope.” I forced Amber to look at me, my hand gripping her bruised arm. “Your daughter is lost right now. You can pretend like you don’t care, like you don’t want her, but I can see it. You tried so hard to protect her. Don’t stop now. She needs you more than ever.”

  “Let me go!”

  “Your baby is someone’s captive! Your flesh and blood. She’s innocent in this. You were hurt, and it’s no more your fault than it is hers that this is happening. I know you’re scared, but so is your baby. Even if you give her up, even if you think it’s better to be apart from her, you’re still her mother. You can stil
l help her!”

  “I tried! It didn’t work! Please, let me go! I can’t do anything else for her!”

  “You can! You will!”

  The nurses pounded on the door, and a page rang through the hospital for security. I yelled, my voice still hoarse with the ash and smoke from the fire. I raged. I shook. I cried.

  “Amber, you have to tell me his name! You have to do this for your daughter!”

  She screamed, a throaty and terrified shriek. “Don’t you get it yet? Can’t you see? I tried to help them. I tried to get the baby out of the hospital, but it was too late! I couldn’t do anymore. I told Emily I would try to get her out, but I couldn’t do it!”

  “What are you talking about? Who’s Emily?”

  Amber stared at me, eyes wide and feral, utterly terrified and absolutely abandoned.

  “Emily is my girlfriend.” She sobbed. “I couldn’t…I didn’t want to tell anyone…after what happened to her...I had to help Hope.”

  The door crashed open.

  I fought against the nurses struggling to pull me from her bedside. “What are you saying?”

  Amber surrendered, her vitals tanking as she began to wail.

  “Detective…I’m not Hope’s mother!”

  18

  “It’s so easy to lie to you, London.

  One day you’ll learn to be more careful.”

  -Him

  Prior to her incarceration, Amber Reynold shared a dirty, one bed motel room with Hope’s real mother, a young girl named Emily Casco.

  And they were in love.

  Whether by necessity or connecting after a shared tragedy, the girls had depended on each other for support through the abuses they’d endured at Grayson House. Then, the pregnancy complicated everything.

  They ran. But the drugs and pain, horrors, and consequences followed.

  With no job, no money, and a criminal record to follow them through adulthood, they had nothing. No means to survive. No future. No way out.

  And if Amber had been attacked…

  Either her blood had saved Emily, or her frantic screams in the jail revealed the damning truth to the wrong people.

  I rushed from the hospital, counting the minutes it’d take to travel just outside the city to McKees Rocks—not a great neighborhood for anyone, least of all two young girls hiding from the world.

  Worst of all, Amber still refused to reveal the truth about their past.

  She just cried. Begged me to find Emily before the men dead-set on protecting the conspiracy hunted her down like a wounded animal.

  Or before the addiction finished the job.

  I pulled into the motel, my stomach already churning. The wind had picked clean parts of the fading, yellowed siding. The roof was one bad thunderstorm from an emergency repair. Most of the shingles had blown into the dead grass out back, and more collected in the stagnate retention pond just behind the motel. Dirty windows and dirtier screens blotted out the rooms. Couldn’t tell if the curtains were open or if the motel hung any at all. The hum of an obnoxious, nearly broken air compressor echoed a shrill buzz over the parking lot.

  Most of the lot was empty. Got the feeling the business didn’t see much traffic until later in the evening, an hour or two at a time. I wasn’t sure how Amber and Emily afforded the room every night, but I could guess. It wasn’t working as maids for the motel.

  I slipped from my car. The air stilled. Something felt wrong.

  The cold metal gun on my hip was not a comfort. Just the opposite. The uneasy pit in my gut felt too familiar, almost necessary for me to pull the weapon and defend myself from…

  What?

  I stared into the windshields and back windows of junker cars and rusted out trucks that probably couldn’t hit the highway speeds needed to escape such a depressed and dangerous area.

  But one car didn’t belong in the lot. A black SUV. Subtle, but new and sleek.

  And occupied.

  The SUV idled, rumbling in the far corner of the lot. Waiting for someone? Picking up the girls who had worked through the night?

  An aching breath squeezed into my tightening lungs. It shredded my last bit of optimism. Every instinct pleaded with me to hurry—to run, find the girl, and get the hell out of the motel before anyone saw me there. If I was being watched or tailed, did my presence at the hotel endanger Emily? Had I just revealed her last safe hiding place?

  The main office was dark, door closed and blinds drawn. I tried the door, hesitant to touch the flaking white paint unsuccessfully coating a rust-covered knob. Locked. Not the best business practice, but the people desperate enough to rent one of the motels’ twenty or so rooms would wait on the stained cement for their cheap rate, kneeling between patches of year old gum, chew, and the butts of a hundred nervously puffed cigarettes.

  A door slammed from the second floor, the shuddering frame rattling under the patchwork roof and bent railings. A pair of heavy footsteps thundered down the hall. Boots. Working boots.

  I hated the instinct that flooded by blood with ice. The chill raged over me, and I forced my exhausted body into the nearest stairwell. The instant my shoes hit the first three stairs, the men ran.

  “No, you don’t!”

  I sucked in a breath and raced up the stairs. I lost speed on the landing and had to propel myself with the railing up the last eight steps to the second story. The exposed walkway bordered the motel, and I rounded the corner to a washed-out landing overlooking the scrub and dumpsters framing the building. Gravel, dirt, and the starchy residue of spilled beer soiled the walkway. My shoes crunched over ripped plastic and the discarded remains of a burnt spoon.

  Two men lingered at the end of the hallway. Never did trust a man who covered his face, and these guys donned black all over. Gloves, pants, masks. Crimson footprints trailed behind them.

  The blood wasn’t their own.

  “Fuck!” One of the men leapt for the staircase. “Let’s go!”

  The other acted braver. He reached behind his back.

  I didn’t give him the chance. Ducking behind the corner, I fell flat. The ugly blast of the gun aimed above me. The bullet slammed into the wall, showering me with flecks of paint and bits of wood.

  “Stay down, bitch!”

  I unsheathed my gun, peeking over the corner, heart thrashing in my chest.

  Nothing.

  Both men had bolted, sprinting down the opposite stairwell. I grunted, hauling my ass up and racing after them.

  Halfway down the hall, my steps slowed.

  A puddle of blood separated me from the men. They tore out of the stairwell and dove into the black SUV. I didn’t chase. My gaze lingered on the scarlet puddle, dripping down the single cement step leading into the motel room. A teenager’s shoe prevented the door from closing.

  “No, no, no…”

  I held the gun close. My eyes pinched shut for the longest split second of my life.

  I knew exactly what I’d find behind the door.

  Broken hearts and bloodied bodies, bruises and mysteries and an endless parade of misery and misfortune that shadowed every one of the girls I tried to help.

  This violence stalked me, seeping into my skin. Almost like I had pulled the trigger. Like I was the one who’d hurt them. Like it was my will that they’d suffer such a devastating and terrible death.

  But downstairs?

  Two armed men and driver stood between me and my answers. Men who, with the threat of a gun, would tell me everything I needed to know.

  Who’d hired them. Why they wanted these girls.

  And where the fuck they had taken Baby Hope.

  What was I supposed to do? Chase and stop the insanity? Or stay and face the consequences of being too slow, too naïve, too helpless?

  The sucking gasp of collapsing lungs muffled what might have been a scream or cry. I had my answer. I swore, tucking the gun in my holster as I dove for the door.

  Blood.

  It coated Emily in a thick sludge. Some dried, but
most still poured from the wound in her belly. The bastards had left her naked. At least she had a layer of crimson to protect her from the nightmare of what they’d done.

  She didn’t have much time.

  I hurried into the room, stepping over the upturned chair and crumpled garbage can. The bedspread was covered in more blood. I ripped it from the mattress. Needles launched and plinked against the wall.

  The blanket was stained with ash and it wasn’t clean, but it’d help put pressure on the bleeding and cover her nudity. Emily coughed, blood trickling from her mouth as she stared at me. The pressure didn’t hurt her, and her glazed, unblinking stare was more than just trauma and horror reflected in powder blue eyes. At least she’d been high for the attack.

  Not that that mattered now.

  “Emily?” I pushed hard against her belly. The off-white blanket bled crimson too. “I’m with the police. I’m here to help you!”

  She might have been a beautiful girl. Her blonde hair betrayed dark roots. A dirty brown. Same color as her eyebrows. I imagined her gaunt cheeks as pink and lively in the past. Now her face was ashen and drawn, her teeth crooked, two on the bottom missing. She motioned to hold her belly. Her skeletal arms hardly had the strength to apply pressure to a tummy still puffy with baby weight—the only weight on her.

  “This…” Her breathy voice cracked, but a melodic tone lingered. A soprano’s grace in another time, in another world. “This wasn’t supposed to happen…”

  An understatement so profound it should have been a crime. “Emily, my name is London. Amber sent me.”

  “Amber…”

  “She’s okay. She’s in the hospital.”

  “They hurt her?”

  “Yes.” I nodded even though I doubted she could see me. “Don’t worry. Amber is going to be fine. And so are you. I need you to lie still, okay? I’m going to call an ambulance.”

  I raised up, using my knee to keep pressure on the wound as I reached for my phone. Emily took my wrist, seizing it tight.

  “No. Don’t call. They’ll find…”

  “You need to go to the hospital.”

  “They’ll find me…”