When she took the exit for Roseland, Donovan felt a little better. But only for a moment because Roseland wasn’t exactly the happiest neighborhood in South Chicago. As they drove down one of the busier streets, he worried that he would stand out. His car didn’t have deep-tinted windows or chrome wheels. He noticed, as well, that the people he passed seemed to stare at him.
Certain that Monica had caught him tailing her, Donovan kept driving straight when she made her right into a residential subdivision. He would circle back at the next street, but when he made his turn, he wasn’t so sure. On both sides of the street, there were apartment buildings like the ones at the end of North Williamson, except these had added security features like chain-link fencing around the second-floor balconies and iron bars and gates over the main-floor windows and doors. A quarter mile in, he came to a duplex with a car like his parked on the front lawn, missing its tires and its windows smashed out, and the words “rats die” spray-painted across the dented driver’s door.
Donovan made a right at the next street and then another right at the street where Monica’s Mustang had gone. The homes in this area weren’t much better than the ones he’d just passed, but at least he could see where Monica had gone. She’d parallel-parked the Mustang on the street in front of a modern-looking three-level apartment building. Although its second- and third-floor balconies weren’t enclosed in chain-link fencing, its main-floor units had bars over their windows and heavy ornamental gates over their doors.
Definitely not the happiest place in South Chicago.
Easing to a stop on the opposite side of the street half a block away, Donovan kept the engine running just in case he needed to make a quick getaway. He watched the front of the apartment building where the Mustang was parked.
On the small patch of grass in front of that building, a couple of topless kids were engaged in a sword fight with flimsy tree branches and then began wrestling after one of them hurt the other. At another building, a bunch of teens appeared to be smoking, watching a friend perform tricks on what would’ve been called a BMX bike in Donovan’s youth; he wasn’t sure if they were still called that.
When a large tattooed man with muscular arms and a big chest exited the building, Donovan slouched down in his seat and watched him walk up to the Mustang’s passenger door. He was bald, his hair shaved clean so that everyone could see the roaring lion permanently inked into the side of his skull. Even at this distance, Donovan could tell the lion wasn’t a docile beast.
The large man took something from inside the car and tucked it into the back waistband of his baggy jogging pants. Donovan didn’t want to let his stereotypes and imagination sway his assumptions, but he figured it was probably a weapon. It certainly looked like it could be, the way the man with the savage lion tattooed on his head had looked around to make sure nobody was watching before tucking it into the back of his pants. And then, confident that he was in the clear, he wandered back toward the building with a gangster’s swagger, his shirt hanging loosely over his waist to conceal whatever he’d tucked there.
When the man disappeared inside the building, Donovan killed the Impala’s engine and jumped out. He kept watching the building, walking with his shoulders back, his chest pushed forward, and a blind, determined purpose in his eyes so as to feel like he fit in among the locals (he didn’t, not even close). As he came closer to the building, Donovan noticed the fancy wooden sign out front that advertised the building’s one-bedroom suites—“Vacancy.”
He also noticed that the top-floor unit on the right side of the building had no curtains. In fairness, the unit next to it also lacked curtains, but its windows were covered by what looked like thin bed sheets. Regardless of the tenants’ fashion sense, Donovan only cared about the unit on the right side, the one without any window coverings at all, because that was where he noticed Mr. Lion standing at the balcony doors. Like his tattoo, he didn’t seem happy, judging by the way he snapped his arms when he spoke and seemed to stomp into whatever he was saying.
And then Donovan saw what he’d been waiting for: a glimpse of Monica as she approached the raging man from behind and slid her arms through his. She hugged him from behind, and that seemed to slow him down, calming whatever emotions had been fueling his rant from a few seconds ago.
Watching their exchange from a safe distance, Donovan thought back to Eric’s warning about Monica. Seeing her in this type of sketchy neighborhood, living in an apartment building that required security bars on its doors and windows, gave Monica some kind of motive. Donovan figured she must want a bigger, better place for herself and her tattooed husband or boyfriend or whatever he was.
So maybe Eric was right. The way Donovan saw things, he was a target. He was the money man. He was Monica’s sugar daddy, her ticket to a better, safer, and cozier life.
“Over my dead body,” he muttered under his breath as he turned his back on Monica’s building and returned to his parked Impala.
CHAPTER 9
For Tuesday’s visit, Donovan had baked cookies. He was hard at work in the kitchen when Monica arrived and knocked at the front door. It came across as still more timid than even Monday’s knock. Still, Donovan heard it. All the way from the kitchen at the back of the house, when he heard that knock, he hurried to the foyer to answer the door.
Opening it, he saw that Monica had already changed out of her Maple Tree housekeeping pants and pulled on a pair of tight denim shorts and a pair of casual leather boots that accentuated just how long and slim her legs were. When she saw Donovan, she smiled.
“Was that what I think it was, Mr. Glass?” she asked, frowning up at him.
Hitching a thumb over his shoulder, Donovan glanced into the kitchen. “Yes. Premixed cookie batter in the oven.”
She giggled, bit her lower lip, and shook her head. It was a cute gesture that bordered on inappropriate flirtation. “No, I meant the whistling.”
“Oh.” He hadn’t even noticed. But he knew from Amelia that, sometimes, he whistled on the good days. Knowing what he knew about Monica after the previous day’s coffee with Eric, and then seeing her with the unhappy man with the lion tattooed on his scalp, Donovan had been preparing for this good day, even though he knew he couldn’t trust her. “Yeah,” he said, moving aside to let her enter his house, “I was whistling.”
As she stepped past him, Monica glanced up and stared into his eyes. “Any reason in particular, Mr. Glass?”
“For starters, you’re here,” he said, shutting the door and locking it. “And even though it’s just the third time I’ve seen you, I’m enjoying this connection.” He frowned and looked down at his hands. “Does that make sense? A connection?”
After unlacing her boots and kicking them off, Monica placed a gentle hand on his forearm. “Of course it does,” she said. To Donovan, it all felt forced, maybe even a little suggestive, too. “I spent a lot of time with your daughter. It’s normal that you would want to know what she was like . . .” She let her voice trail off and retracted her hand.
Something had shifted in Monica’s demeanor. He watched as she pulled her gaze away and then wandered into the front room, settling in the sofa where she’d sat the day before.
“When I met Elizabeth,” Monica said, her voice quiet enough that Donovan had to step closer and crane his neck forward so he could hear better, “I was obviously a mess. But she came to me and tried to make me feel better, as best as she could, given the circumstances. I remember the way she smiled and tried to convince me I was okay.” She stopped, shook her head, and wrapped her arms around her chest. “She hugged me, and I didn’t realize it at the time, but I really was okay. I was alive, right? I wasn’t even hurt that much. When I met Lizzy that first day, I truly was okay. Because it would get bad, really bad. I simply had no idea just how bad it would get.” She shuddered before turning her attention to Donovan. “Your daughter was like an angel, Mr. Glass. She took care of all the new girls. And I was the luckiest of them, because she allowed m
e to become her friend.”
Sensing the lump growing in his throat, Donovan glanced down the hall toward the kitchen, and that was when he remembered the cookies in the oven. “I’ll be right back,” he told Monica before slipping away and taking a big, deep breath once he was in the hall and out of sight.
In the kitchen, he turned off the oven and pulled the tray of cookies out. He placed them on the counter and inspected them as he removed the plaid oven mitts that had been around since his wedding day. The cookies weren’t burnt, not even a little brown. According to the packaging, they would stay moist for days.
“Smells delicious,” Monica said from the living room at the front of the house. “And you’re whistling ‘Twinkle, Twinkle,’ Mr. Glass.” She chuckled.
“Sorry,” he said, pressing his lips shut out of embarrassment. “Old habit.”
“I like it. It reminds me of Lizzy.”
Grabbing a spatula from a nearby drawer, Donovan moved the cookies from the hot tray to a cooling rack. When he finished, he noticed the block of knives, a new set that had replaced the block holding the knife that Amelia had used as her weapon of choice six years ago. His attention lingered on the knives while he felt his heart rate accelerating in his chest. He knew what was coming, could read it on Monica’s face as easily as a Dr. Seuss book. Even Eric had predicted it, and he hadn’t even met this young woman with the purple hair, slim legs, nose piercing, and magical way with details about his daughter.
“Everything okay back there, Mr. Glass?”
Snapping back to reality, Donovan abandoned the block of knives, grabbed two plates instead, and placed a couple of warm cookies on them. He carried the plates back to the living room, noticing how Monica’s smile got brighter when he walked into the room.
“Thank you,” she said, accepting the cookie from him. She took a bite and closed her eyes. “Delicious.”
Donovan sat in his chair, placing his plate on top of the novel he’d been reading. “What else did Elizabeth want me to know?”
Monica swallowed her cookie with a nod. “She wanted you to know that she didn’t suffer.”
Although he could feel his lower lip quivering, Donovan couldn’t help but shake his head. “But . . . How . . . I mean, is that even possible?”
After staring at him for what felt like an eternity, Monica finally shook her head. “No, Mr. Glass, it’s not. But it’s what she wanted you to know or at least believe. I made a promise to her, told her I would tell you that.”
Donovan slipped a hand through his hair, wondering if it was getting any whiter after hearing all these things about Elizabeth in the past three days.
“The reality? She suffered. A lot. A lot more than me, Mr. Glass. There were days when she wouldn’t even open her eyes, and not just because she’d been beaten really badly by some sadistic fuck who liked to take out his self-hatred on innocent prepubescent girls.”
Watching her, Donovan could see hatred boiling to the surface. He knew it was legitimate hatred, too; even a skilled con artist couldn’t ignore those details, couldn’t get away without feeling the right amount of raw anger about pedophilia.
“There were days when all she wanted was to die. A slow death, too, as if the pain and agony of her final escape could cleanse her of the filth that been imposed upon her.” Monica raised a hand to her face and shook her head as the tears rushed to the rims of her eyes. “Mr. Glass, I’m sorry to tell you, but Lizzy wasn’t strong enough to survive. She broke. We all did. She learned to serve our master, just like I did, like we all did. Sadly, that’s as close to survival as she came, and it was ugly and repulsive and self-degrading.”
It was Monica’s turn to break down. She tried to choke the sobs back, but they ended up overtaking her. Covering her face, Monica let it all out the same way Donovan had the day prior, and the day before that.
He watched, wondering if she might be faking it all.
“I’m sorry,” she said from behind her hands. “It’s just so much.”
Donovan ignored his doubts and decided to play along. “It’s okay, Monica. I understand. But that’s in the past. You’ve managed to escape. You’ve managed to bring joy back into my life with your stories of my little angel.” That was the truth, too, regardless of whether Monica was making it all up as part of some massive scheme. “You’re a survivor, and that’s something you should be proud of.”
“It’s not just the survival,” she said, still sobbing but lowering her hands so he could see her eyes. It was as if she needed him to see them, their puffy redness and the raw honesty in that. “I’m having a tough time surviving this.”
Nodding again, Donovan realized that he bought into the sincerity in her eyes. “I’m sorry to hear that. Have you spoken with a therapist?”
“No. Not about my past. That was ugly enough. But my present, my day-to-day life, is ugly, too.”
He frowned. “How?”
Monica lowered her hands into her lap and stared at him. Her attention hopped from one side of his face to the other, as if she might be deliberating whether she could trust him.
“It’s okay, Monica. I want to help,” he said, realizing too late that he’d walked right into her little extortion trap. “I’ll help if I can.”
At last, she nodded and pushed a smile onto one half of her mouth. “I think you can help, Mr. Glass, but that’s not the point. These are my problems, not yours. And they’re embarrassing. Humiliating even. I’m a grown-up; I should be able to manage fine by myself.”
He felt the color climbing up his neck and spreading across his face. “If it’s something Elizabeth would do for you—and I think it is—then I want to help, too.”
Looking away, Monica finally said what was so humiliating for a grown-up like her to have to deal with. “I’m strapped for cash.” As soon as she admitted it, Monica sighed, covered her face, and bit back the tears. She didn’t cry, so she lowered her hands and glanced over at Donovan before snapping her attention back to the bookshelves with the pictures, books, and Amelia’s urn. “Okay, there, I said it.”
“How bad?” He’d decided to play along, see where she might take things. He’d never known a con artist before, so this was a half-interesting experience for him.
Refusing to look at him, Monica shook her head some more. “Pretty bad, Mr. Glass. I’m a week away from a final eviction notice. My mechanic has threatened to take legal action.” At last, she turned her attention to Donovan. She didn’t seem to care that her face had flushed red and her neck was blotchy. “And I have some other personal matters that need to be taken care of.”
As much as Donovan had prepared himself for this moment, he wasn’t entirely disappointed with Monica. Truth was, he was also grateful that this young woman had brought Elizabeth back into his life. None of what she’d said had been particularly good—translation: she’d said Elizabeth had been beaten and degraded in captivity, and now she was dead, which was most likely the truth after fifteen years and no leads—but Monica’s stories had helped him remember the love he’d never known he’d possessed until that day he’d held his newborn daughter in his hands. In many ways, she’d helped bring his daughter back into his life.
“I knew I shouldn’t have said anything.” She looked away again.
“How much?”
Monica shook her head.
“Listen, if you need a place to stay, there’s a guest room upstairs—”
“Ten grand, Mr. Glass.” She’d not only cut him off but she’d snapped her attention to him, and her eyes were large and pleading. She wanted that money, no doubt about it. No more tiptoeing around the china shop. “Ten large, and I need it before Friday, okay?” She stood up, shook her head, and raised a trembling hand to her mouth.
Damn, she was good. “Monica, I don’t know . . .”
She took a step toward him. “I know I shouldn’t have said anything, but now that I have?” That desperation in her eyes seemed to multiply. “Mr. Glass, I really need that money, and I don’
t know what else to do.”
He didn’t know what to say. “I don’t have that kind of money lying around the house, Monica. Really, I don’t even know—”
“I’ll take you to her grave,” Monica blurted out. And, like Donovan a few moments ago, she seemed to regret opening her mouth at all. Groaning, Monica started for the door. “I’m sorry.”
He waited until he heard the laces pulling tighter through the holes in her leather boots. Not wanting to believe it was true, Donovan bit his lip and tried to stay quiet, tried to let her leave without any sign of optimism or consideration from him, but what she’d just promised was big. It was huge, in fact, and whether or not she could deliver was irrelevant. Now that Donovan had tasted the sweet texture of hope, he wanted to see just how far Monica could take him.
“Her grave?” he asked, his voice cracking and high pitched. His daughter’s final resting spot? Rising out of his reading chair, he approached Monica, but he knew not to allow himself to stand within an arm’s reach. If he could get his hands on her, he didn’t know whether he would strangle or hug her.
“Yes,” Monica said, her boots laced up and her face calm and genuine. “It’s quite a few hours away, but I’ll take you to Elizabeth’s grave if you can help me with the money.”
“When?” He had $10,000. It would mean a drive into Lincoln Park for a visit at the bank, but he had the money and a lot more. “When can I see where my daughter’s remains are?”
Monica did the same thing she’d done before. Her focus jumped all over Donovan’s face before finally settling on his eyes. “That depends on how quickly you can get the money, Mr. Glass.”
CHAPTER 10
At some point since his daughter’s abduction, Donovan’s body had rewired itself to allow him to function on minimal sleep. Or that was what he told himself Tuesday night while he stared, wide eyed, at the ceiling. His inability to unwind, even after being in bed for two idle hours, could be attributed to Monica’s earlier promise about taking him to his baby’s grave site.
The Last Friend Page 4
