Girl Last Seen Read online

  “Lainey’s safety,” Sean finishes without missing a beat.

  “I think,” Shaw says too loudly, as if he’s talking to me without wanting to address me directly, “it’s Lainey’s call at this point. We should ask her what she thinks.”

  I look at my hands—at my fingertips, the only part that can be seen from under my jacket sleeves.

  “It’s absolutely out of the question,” Sean says over my head. “She’s not—” He cuts himself off, starts over with as little success. “In her current state…”

  “If you think I’m not competent enough to make the decision, just say so,” I hear myself say.

  In the momentary silence, I feel rather than see all three of their gazes swivel to me. They practically slice apart the air like steel knives.

  “I’ll do it,” I say. “If you think it’ll help.”

  Sean exhales. It sounds like he’s been holding his breath this whole time.

  “I have to speak to someone about this,” he finally says. “I’m going to make a phone call. Don’t even think of moving from this room until I’m back.”

  Mentally I plead with him not to go, not to leave me alone with these two. Then again, I just agreed to go to the press with them.

  Tom Shaw gets up and goes to the cabinet, retrieves a half-empty bottle, and pours a good three ounces into his cup of coffee, ignoring Jacqueline’s withering glare.

  “Hey.” He holds out the bottle. “Want some?”

  “Tom,” Jacqueline snaps.

  “She’s our guest. And she sure looks like she could use a drink.”

  Grateful, I get up while he pours no more than one finger of liquor into a tumbler. This much won’t even give me a buzz, but I take it anyway and gulp it down.

  “There,” he says. “We’re all under a lot of stress. I know we’re asking you for a lot.” His weary gaze lingers on my face as if trying to puzzle out what’s going on inside my head. “And believe me, I won’t forget it.”

  * * *

  We will be doing the press conference first thing the next morning, at the police station. I make my way after Sean, down the path leading to his car. The pills amplify the gulp of booze tenfold, and I’m still floating when Sean helps me get into the passenger seat. If he can tell I’m high, he doesn’t let on.

  I rest my head on the back of the seat and close my eyes. The car sways like a ship even though it’s not moving yet. Calmly, Sean closes his door and turns the key in the ignition. Then, as the car purrs to life, he punches the steering wheel until the horn gives a pitiful yelp. “Goddammit. I should never have agreed to take you there.”

  “It’s okay,” I say. I’m so cloudy I don’t care right now. Just what I needed.

  “What were you thinking? Letting them corner you like that. You should have said no.”

  “I didn’t want to say no. I want to help.”

  “Who do you think this is helping?”

  Without opening my eyes, I feel the car drive off. Gravity presses me down in the seat. I let my head loll.

  “Laine,” Sean says softly. I can’t tell how much time has passed—the pills, they do that. When I pry one eye open, diffuse orange lights spin like a kaleidoscope outside the car window. “Wake up. We’re here.”

  “How did it happen?”

  The words surprise me as much as they surprise him. Without looking in his direction, I can tell he grows tense. He knows perfectly well what I mean.

  “I can’t share details with you. You know that.”

  “I—” I’m about to say I have a right to know, except I don’t. And nothing, absolutely nothing, obligates him to tell me a thing.

  “She disappeared from school.”

  “I read that.”

  In my peripheral vision, he rubs his eyes. “You can’t repeat this to anyone, okay?”

  “Who do you take me for?” Who indeed.

  “No one is sure how it happened. It’s like she slipped away sometime between her last class and…” He trails off. “Her aunt was supposed to pick her up that day.”

  “I know.”

  “She’s Jacqueline’s half sister, Jacinta. She’s in college. She’s been picking her up from school since last year. But that day she showed up and there was no Olivia. She waited fifteen minutes then went inside.”

  He pauses, letting me figure out the rest. I can only imagine. Their worry collapsing into panic. Into terror. And from there on, the terror just kept growing, and it still is, a little more with every minute and hour and day that passes. Until terror consumes everything.

  I don’t know how it feels, of course. Only what it’s like from the other side. A little bit the same, as time trickles by and you start to realize no one is going to find you, no one is going to help you. And that’s when you stop waiting and time becomes an endless black void that swallows you up.

  Except time flows much, much slower when you’re a kid.

  The car’s blue-lit dashboard pixelates before my eyes, and I remember to blink. A stillness has settled over the car, filled only with the white-noise hum of the engine. Snapping out of it, he finally turns the key in the ignition and even that powers down, leaving us alone.

  “You can still change your mind,” he says. “In fact, I strongly recommend it.”

  “I don’t know. I don’t even know if it’ll make a difference.” When I turn my head, his profile stands out starkly against the window. “But I don’t think I can live with myself if I don’t try. It might be too late for me, but…”

  “Don’t say that.”

  “They must have loved her. I mean, her pictures are all over the house. And I saw her room. She lived like a princess. They gave her everything she could have asked for.”

  I hope not too much bitterness seeps into my words.

  “You’re no less important,” Sean says. “And you never were. A person’s worth isn’t determined by how much money their family has.”

  “Really?” I raise an eyebrow.

  “Really. And I know I sound like a walking cliché, but money isn’t a magic cure-all. It can’t guarantee anything. Not safety—Olivia is living proof of that. Or happiness.”

  “You don’t think she was happy?” A sharp pang in my chest. I feel too much, and the haze of the pills, always so reliable, is of no help. It’s like trying to stop a knife with a sheet of tissue paper. I fidget, twisting the hem of my jacket in my hands.

  “Who can tell? I went to talk to her teachers first thing. The school psychologist said she had a mean streak. She was a bully, almost got suspended for attacking another kid.” He shakes his head. “Sorry, it’s not what you want to hear, but it’s the truth. Trust me, happy children don’t try to stab their classmates in the eye with a pencil.”

  “She did that?”

  “Yeah. And from what I know of public school, you have to screw up pretty damn badly to get suspended.”

  “Trust me, I know,” I say, and instantly regret it. Although I’m sure it’s all on my record anyway, in his neat little file. “I feel bad. I know people tried. I was just beyond helping by then.”

  He says nothing, deep in thought. I glance up at him.

  “What is it?” I ask.

  “She was in public school. Sure, in the richest neighborhood in the city, but still.”

  I jolt upright. “If her parents are so rich…why wasn’t she in a fancy private school somewhere?”

  His frown deepens. “Yeah. My point exactly.”

  Without waiting for me, he gets out of the car. I take my cue and follow. It’s near freezing outside, and my skin, spoiled by the wonderful working heater in his car, prickles with gooseflesh.

  “What are you going to do?” I say, shoving my hands in my pockets for warmth.

  “I’m going to check it out.”

  He walks me to Natalia’s door without another word. The porch light is broken and the window is dark.

  “If there’s anything I should know, you’ll call me,” he says in a tone that doesn’t
bear arguing.

  I nod.

  “Promise me.”

  “Promise,” I echo. And then, out of nowhere, he pulls me close for a hug, lingering as if he, too, is afraid to let go.

  The house is empty, so I use my key to get in through the patio door in the back. It doesn’t look like Natalia’s been home yet. I throw the tank top I borrowed and my own dirty clothes into her washer, happy to be able to walk around the place in nothing but my bra and underwear with no one to see me. She has an old Apple laptop, and luckily for me there’s no password, so I open a browser window and log on to ConspiracyTalk.

  There’s an alarming number of new posts on the Olivia Shaw thread, and the new message icon is blinking in the corner of the screen. Foreboding creeps over me before I even click on the title. The page loads for a small eternity, and when it’s finally done, I find myself staring at my own face.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  The image is so filtered and photoshopped that I can’t tell when or where it could have been taken. But it’s unmistakably me. There’s a frown line between my eyebrows, and I’m squinting. It makes my face look harsh and old.

  Roswell82: Hey everybody! New stuff on the Olivia Shaw case! Looks like we have a name for the birth mother: one Lainey Moreno. And this is where it gets really freaky, get ready…it turns out that she’s the same person as Ella Santos. Yup, the missing mystery girl who couldn’t identify her captor after three years.

  Mike6669: Holy shit. This case is starting to seriously give me the heebie-jeebies

  Salem_baby: Someone bump the Ella Santos thread

  Roswell82: that’s like 3 yrs old with no news. Anyone have anything new on Ella Santos? ANYONE?

  Salem_baby: Wasn’t @lostgirl14 really into that case? R u there @lostgirl14?

  Roswell82: @lostgirl14?? Hello?

  I close every single window, wipe the history, and slam the laptop shut. I’m reeling with so many questions that it’s hard to focus on just one. How? Who? How much do they know? Next is the surge of fear that makes me long to call Sean, tell him I won’t be going on TV. Tell him I changed my mind. Tell him to come pick me up and take me somewhere—anywhere—else.

  The phone appears in my hand as if by magic, and I know I have no other options now. I’m too numb and too tired to be afraid of what he’ll say. I don’t even hold my breath while the phone rings.

  A click, and a voice. A woman’s voice. A melodic, purring hello of someone confident enough to answer someone else’s cell phone, and it jabs me under the ribs with a sharp, unexpected pang. I thumb the End Call button and stare at the mute phone, traitor in the palm of my hand, the battery flashing with its alert. Hurt is teeming in the hollow under my ribs and I feel like I’m the one who caught him cheating. I can picture her examining the phone with suspicion, thumbing through contacts, recent calls, texts, voice mails. I hope I didn’t get him into too much trouble. No, I’m lying. I hope I got him into a shit-ton of trouble.

  Deep down, buried under the protective layer that is Laine Moreno, a small, young girl feels betrayed and alone.

  When Natalia comes in, she finds me curled up on the floor at the foot of the couch. I look up to see her locking the door; the clock on the DVD player reads half past midnight. The four-to-midnight shift is never that good, and she looks tired, her makeup cakey under her eyes. “You all right?”

  I make myself nod, and this small lie is enough to make the loneliness overflow, spilling out in ugly sobs.

  “Hey.” She crouches next to me, and a wave of her perfume sweeps over me like a veil. Underneath the synthetic flowers and musk, I pick up all the usual notes: cigarette smoke, a whiff of boozy breath, and that particular strip club smell that clings to you like leeches—yeasty, a touch metallic, with a note of chlorinated stage cleaner. I used to scrub it out of myself every time I came home, even if it meant going to bed with wet hair, but eventually I got used to it. A couple nights off work and I’m starting to notice it again.

  I don’t have the energy to shake off her arm when she puts it around my shoulders.

  “Did something happen? Something you’re not telling me?”

  Where do I even start?

  “Hey, if you want, you can come crash with me. The bed’s big enough.”

  Right now I just don’t want to be alone again, so I follow her to the bedroom and let her sit me down on the edge of the pink bedspread like a doll. She reaches around, unclasps my bra, and takes it off, then tucks me under the red sheets, which turn out to be surprisingly soft. The pillow smells like her hair conditioner. I bury my face in it, listening to her get undressed.

  The bed creaks and tilts as she climbs in, throwing her arm over me. She’s asleep within seconds, her breath a gentle purr on the back of my neck. To avoid waking her, I do my best to lie still, but gradually, the self-consciousness ebbs away as her heat envelops me. She stirs and moves closer; her bare skin brushes against my back, then presses into it. It’s velvet soft but her breasts are rigid—she got her implants done a year ago.

  I dip in and out of sleep, wishing there were a way to get up and go get a pill from the stash I’d rescued from my apartment. But I don’t want to risk waking her, breaking this frail human contact. I can’t remember the last time I felt comfortable with someone—and the few brief moments of closeness between me and Sean hardly count. So I let myself skim the surface, hoping at least my body will rest even if my mind keeps reeling.

  Next time I wake up, it’s because of a touch, butterfly-soft fingertips crawling across my side, counting their way up my xylophone ribs—one-two-three. I hold my breath halfway through an exhale. She must not realize I’ve woken, because the fingertips continue down the curve of my waist. A soft but assured palm cups my breast then slips down the hollow where the two parts of my rib cage meet. I don’t know what to do, how to react—or if she expects me to react at all. I never had the slightest inkling she was into girls—not if her ’roided-out boyfriend was any indication.

  The hand continues its downward journey, inching down to my belly button, and my muscles tense as she nears the line of my scar. This time she feels it.

  “Shh.” Her whisper tickles the hairs on the back of my neck, followed by the touch of lips as her hand dives between my clenched thighs.

  “Natalia,” I say, rolling over. In the near darkness, I can see her face, the hurt look in her eyes. “I’m just tired. I want to sleep, okay?”

  “Sure.” Sheets rustle as she sits up. She sleeps naked, and I glimpse the curve of her back as she gets up and walks to her dresser. She looks for something for a few moments then tiptoes back to bed.

  When she holds out her open palm, a pill sits nestled in its center. I can’t tell what kind.

  “Open.” She taps my cheek with her fingertips, and I obey so she can put the pill on my tongue. She gently closes my jaw, gripping my chin. Her acrylic nails are done in long, sharp points, as always.

  My hospital-honed instinct kicks in, and I gulp the pill before I realize it. Back at the children’s psychiatric, it was better not to argue or ask questions.

  “Good.” She holds me close and pats my head, the gesture weirdly caring—it would be motherly if my face weren’t pressed to her bare chest. She stays there until my head grows heavy and my chin starts to dip. Wrapped in warm silk and perfume scent, I sink into sleep.

  The last thing I remember is her gently lowering my head onto the pillow.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  I’m slathered in cheap foundation that makes my face itch, ready for my close-up.

  I woke up late, way late. Natalia was gone, and Sean was pounding on the door—must have been for quite a while before I woke. Light poured into the room through half-open curtains, pitilessly exposing the cracks and dust all over everything. When I sat up, I was naked except for my socks, my underwear hanging on the bedpost.

  Whatever that pill was, it sure as hell kicked my little prescription meds’ ass. I’d have to ask Natalia to get me more.
r />   If Sean was mad, he didn’t let on. He was oddly quiet all the way to the station, lost in his own thoughts.

  And now here I am. Ready to do what I agreed to, and my resolve is fading with every passing moment.

  It’ll make it harder for him to dehumanize her—at least that’s what I was told, and that’s what I read in my many hours of late-night research, squinting at the computer screen in the dead of night after work. We’re supposed to call her by name, all the time, and talk about her likes and dislikes, how smart and sweet she is, and so on. Then she’ll become a person to him instead of an object.

  That’s what the textbooks say. My personal theory, however, is that sick fucks like him actually enjoy it. They get off on it, and I don’t doubt that seeing my face on a TV screen is going to be the cherry on the damn sundae.

  Jacqueline brought clothes for me. There’s something touching in the way she lays out the sweaters and skirts for me to choose from, three of each, and even a pair of shoes. Everything is very proper, pastels, expensive fabrics, and they all kind of look exactly the same to me. I barely glance at the selection, picking up a sweater and skirt at random before heading to the tiny restroom to change.

  There’s one of those UV lights overhead so you can’t shoot up. They turn everything a Twilight Zone shade of purple, and your skin looks like a corpse made of wax so you can’t find your veins. This is the last place I’d be shooting up anyway, if I were into that sort of thing, if only because the door has no lock and anyone can come in whenever.

  Jacqueline’s sweater is only a little too big for me, and the sleeves, paradoxically, are too short. I keep pulling them down nervously, digging into the cuffs with my fingernails. You still can’t see my wrists, but some habits are hard to let go.

  Just as I start to struggle out of my jeans, there’s a delicate knock on the door. Nonetheless, it makes me jump like I was caught doing something dirty.

  “Lainey?” Jacqueline’s voice. “You all right in there?”