Furious (7 page)

T
EN

Miranda was almost done braiding Jean’s long, blonde hair.

She stopped for a moment and listened to the pitter-patter of rain on the rooftop. She thought of her room back home, the only room she’d ever known before she and her mom had been kicked out of the apartment, and how the droplets used to sound like the tiny feet scurrying around inside the apartment walls. For the first time in a long while she saw a flash of her mom’s face in her mind’s eye. She squeezed her eyes shut and forced away the memories.

“What’s wrong?” Jean asked.

“Nothing. I thought I heard something—that’s all.”

Cow bells sounded, and she hurriedly finished with Jean’s braid. “Come on,” Miranda said. “Time to go. Mother wants us.”

“I hate her,” Jean said, her voice eerily calm for a ten-year-old.

Miranda’s eyes rounded and her arm jerked outward, ready to slap Jean across the face, knock some sense into the little girl, but she stopped midair. She refused to let these monsters turn her into one of them.

Jean flinched.

“I’m sorry.” Miranda’s heart lurched. “I’ll never hit you—I promise.”

“I want to go home,” Jean said, tearful now. “I want to see my mom and dad.”

“Don’t ever say that.” She grabbed hold of Jean’s small shoulders and then dropped to one knee so they were eye to eye. “Listen to me, Jean, and listen closely. I’m going to find a way to get you out of here. Do you hear me?”

Jean’s body shook. “When can we leave?”

“Soon. But we need to be smart. I know this isn’t easy for you. It’s not easy for any of us. But you need to keep quiet. Don’t ever talk about going home again.”

“I don’t want to stay here anymore.”

Miranda sighed. “If you tell Mother you want to go home, she will beat you, Jean. She won’t just send you to your room. She’ll drag you to the barn and make one of the boys use a whip or a belt to hit you until you stop talking about home. You have to do what she says until I can find a way out of here. Do you understand?”

Finally the girl nodded.

Thank God.
Miranda wiped Jean’s tears away. She wanted to tell Jean that if she was ever taken to a man’s house and asked to do things she didn’t want to do, to fight him with everything she had and then run as fast as she could, but instead she wrapped her arms around her and held her close. “I’m going to get you out of here,” she whispered. “I promise.”

Together they walked into the main room.

As instructed, Jean sat on the couch with the younger girls and Miranda took a seat next to Felicity. She saw Adele across the way, sitting quietly with her hands folded in her lap, her eyes downcast, her shoulders drawn inward. Goose bumps sprouted on Miranda’s arms as she took it all in. Adele’s eyes were shadowed in darkness, her arms covered with bruises. She looked as if she were on the brink of death, and it frightened her.

Miranda pulled her gaze from Adele and looked at Mother, who had taken some time to do her hair and makeup. Her faded brown strands had been swept to the back of her head, then rolled and pinned. Lots of stray flyaway hairs stuck out every which way, but no one dared point that out or look at her for too long. With her hair pulled back away from her face, it was plain to see that Mother might have been considered pretty in her younger days. Nobody knew how old she was. Jasper once guessed her age to be thirty-five, but there was no way—forty-five minimum, Miranda figured. She did have high cheekbones, and every once in a while, like now, there was a brightness to her light-colored eyes that made her look younger. She’d exchanged her tattered blue jeans and faded gray T-shirt for a flowery print dress and a blue sweater with sleeves that stopped just above her elbows. If she’d resisted applying the powder-blue eye shadow and false lashes, she might look less like the street hookers Miranda used to see hanging out on Watt Avenue and more like one of the school moms at the market.

“I’ve got a surprise,” Mother said, her gaze sweeping over each and every one of them. “We have a very important guest today. He’s driven a long way, so I need you all to be on your best behavior. Mr. Smith has only a few minutes to make a decision before he leaves for San Francisco. A week from now, the girl who is chosen will get to spend time with Mr. Smith at a luxury hotel in San Francisco. You will be treated like a princess. Pampered and served whatever your heart desires. But . . . if you misbehave, even so much as frown, there will be consequences. Severe consequences. Do you understand?”

Every girl nodded in unison.

Mother forced a grin as she pointed at both sides of her mouth. “See this smile on my face?”

Again they all nodded.

“I want you to smile exactly like this.” She swept a hand toward the twelve and under girls. “You girls go to your room and be quiet until I call you for dinner.”

They all did as she said. Except for Jean. Jean looked at Miranda and waited for her to tell her what to do. Miranda didn’t want Mother to see Jean hesitate, so she flashed her eyes and gestured with her chin for the girl to move on, letting Jean know she needed to do what Mother told her and make it fast.

Jean must have understood because she turned and followed the other girls up the stairs.

Mother lectured those who remained for another five minutes before Mr. Smith was escorted into the room. He wore jeans and cowboy boots, the kinds with pointed spurs. The buckle on his belt was a shiny silver skull. He was tall and broad-shouldered with a slender waist. He looked nothing like the other men who came to visit. He was so much older and scarier-looking. He never blinked. Folds of skin hung beneath his eyes, brought down by gravity and depravity. When he took off his cowboy hat, his greasy thin hair stuck in clumps to one side of his head. His nostrils were permanently flared, and it took everything Miranda had to force herself to smile at him.
Pick me, pick me
ran through her mind when he finally looked at her. She kept the smile plastered on her face and gave a very subtle nod of her head in greeting. His eyes seemed to look right through her. The idea of actually being picked by the hideous man made her sick to her stomach, but she couldn’t allow herself to forget that this monster might be her only chance of escape.

When he finished looking each of the girls over, he exited the room without the slightest glance back. It took all she had not to let her shoulders slump forward in disappointment. She’d wanted this chance to leave this place so badly. The idea of staying here for another minute was too much to bear. Mother followed him out and didn’t return for a full ten minutes. The room remained quiet. Nobody dared say one word while she was gone. They had been trained well—whipped, kicked, and threatened into submission.

When Mother returned she stood in the center of the room, her mouth grim as she rubbed her hands together, something she often did before she grabbed the whip. Miranda’s heart sank. Nobody had been selected. It had happened before, and the punishment had been ongoing—days of starvation, sleep deprivation, threats, and endless beatings.

But then a smile came to Mother’s lips, and she pointed a finger directly at Miranda. It took a full minute for her to realize what Mother was saying.

She
was the chosen one.

The idea that she might soon be allowed to leave the house for more than a few hours was too much to comprehend. Excitement rolled up her spine. For the first time in months she was going to have another chance to get away. The saddest part about what she was feeling, the thing she couldn’t deny, was knowing she’d been picked above all the rest, especially above perfect Trudi, and how it made her feel somehow special.

A painful cramp formed a knot in her gut as she remembered the last time she’d felt this way—special, worthy. It was when Caroline had approached her after school and told her how smart she was and that she was a shoo-in for the job, which was supposed to have been homeschooling young girls. If she wanted the job, Caroline said, there was no time to talk to her mother. Now or never. She should have picked never.

The week after Miranda was chosen passed quickly. Mother kept close by her side at all times, instructing her on how to sit, eat, walk, and what to say—a long list of instructions considering she was supposed to keep to herself during her stay. The best part of being selected so far was getting out of doing chores. And she certainly didn’t mind the long hot soaks in the tub even if that meant listening to more lectures about what she could and could not do while she was away. No giggling. No laughing. No talking or looking any of Mr. Smith’s staff in the eyes. She was to keep her head down. She could say
hello, sir
;
goodbye, sir
;
good morning, sir
; and
good night, sir
. More than once, Miranda had to stop herself from rolling her eyes at the ridiculous list of rules.

Late the night before she was to leave for San Francisco, as she lay in bed staring at the ceiling, Miranda overheard two of the girls talking in hushed voices, confirming what she’d already come to terms with.

“Trudi told me we should be glad we weren’t chosen and that it’s not a vacation at all.”

“What is it then?” Felicity questioned.

“Miranda will be forced to do the same thing we all do week after week, but instead of cockroaches, bedbugs, and the smell of body odor, she might get a feel for silk sheets and a taste of champagne.”

“Why does Trudi keep changing her story?” Felicity asked. “When she returned from Las Vegas she told us she got to sit by the pool and eat steak and rich chocolates, but now suddenly when Miranda gets chosen, it’s all doom and gloom.”

“We all know how she likes to exaggerate.”

“Maybe Trudi is jealous because she wasn’t picked by the ugly man.”

“She probably had visions of that ogre proposing to her like in that movie
Pretty Woman
.”

They both giggled, and Miranda spent the rest of the night planning her escape.

E
LEVEN

Across the pond near the rose garden, a bride and groom, surrounded by family, were saying their vows. Faith, Craig, Lara, and Hudson were sitting on a blanket and eating fruit and turkey sandwiches from a cooler.

“Will you marry me?” Hudson asked Faith out of the blue.

Craig jumped to his feet and said, “Who wants to play Frisbee?” He and Lara ran off, leaving Faith to answer Hudson’s question.

The look in her three-year-old son’s eyes was sincere and heartfelt just like his proposal.

“I met your daddy first,” she began.

“Daddy won’t mind.”

“I’m much too old for you, Hudson. Someday you’ll meet a beautiful girl who will be just the right age for you.”

“But I want to marry you, Mommy.”

“Mommies and sons cannot marry each other, Hudson, but I want you to know that my love for you is forever and ever and that will never end.”

He pondered that for a moment before he said, “Will you push me on the swings?”

She hurried to pack the food away. “You betcha!”

The memories faded as Faith looked away from the park across the street, the old-school kind with animals on steel springs, tetherball, and monkey bars, and headed for the entrance to police headquarters. Hope and a touch of excitement ping-ponged against Faith’s ribs. She held a manila file close to her chest. She had spent the rest of the holiday weekend looking through every nook and cranny in her house, searching for clues of what those men might have been looking for. She’d also started gathering information about some of the people Craig had done business with. She’d sifted through files and taken names from his Rolodex, listened to old recorded phone messages and examined texts, then made a list of possibilities.

She was eating better, too, and Dad had already gone over firearm basics with her, including terminology—the difference between a handgun and a pistol, assault rifle versus assault weapon, clip versus magazine.

Walking at a hurried pace, she made her way to Detective Yuhasz’s office. The door was open. The expression on his face when he saw her didn’t appear to be one of annoyance, more a look of subtle defeat that took some of the wind out of her. Despite his odd behavior, she set her file on his desk in front of him. “I made a list of people I think you and your men might want to interview.”

“Wonderful.”

“And it might interest you to know there have been a few new developments in the case.”

He sighed.

“Go ahead,” she said. “Open it.”

He opened the file and proceeded to skim over the list she’d made. When he was finished, he looked at her with pity in his eyes. She didn’t understand his apathy, but she figured he must be tired. “Look at this.” She pulled up the pictures she’d taken on her cell phone of the grass where Craig had parked his car and passed her phone to him. “Craig would never have parked in the grass, let alone ruin a sprinkler head, unless he was under duress. He always went out of his way to make sure UPS trucks didn’t damage the lawn lining our driveway.” She raised her eyebrows and asked, “Do you know what this means?”

He merely sighed.

“The fact that my husband drove onto the lawn and broke a sprinkler head could very well be an indication that someone was in the car with him,” Faith continued. “Maybe Craig had a gun pointed at his head.”

He glanced at the images and then handed her cell phone back to her.

“And that’s not all,” she said, excitement lining her voice. “I’ve been talking with my brother, and I was wondering if you and your men have considered that my children might have been sold to human traffickers.”

“We’re looking at that as a possibility.”

Her eyes lit up. “Well, that’s good news because it’s come to my attention that Sacramento is a hub for sex trafficking. Did you know that?”

Without giving him a chance to answer, she tapped her finger on the file she’d set in front of him. “You need to take another look at my notes. Not only have I been researching human trafficking, I got a call from Corrie Perelman. Remember her? Her daughter, Samantha Perelman, was taken from the grocery store while her mom shopped in the next aisle.” Faith kept talking, couldn’t stop herself if she wanted to. For the first time in weeks, she had something to go on. Maybe they could find a connection between one of these cases and hers. “Upon searching the Internet,” she went on, “I noticed another case that happened only a few short months ago in Stockton. A young girl was taken from the parking lot as her mother loaded the trunk of her car with groceries.”

The detective raised a hand to stop her and said, “I need you to calm down.”

“Calm down?” Flummoxed, she looked over her shoulder and noticed a couple of officers looking her way. “I’ve never been calmer, Detective. For the first time in weeks, my mind is clear. This is enthusiasm you’re hearing in my tone.” She pointed at the folder in front of him. “These men were at our house for a reason. They were looking for something. And when they didn’t find anything, they took my kids instead.”

Yuhasz leaned back in his chair. “And what were they looking for exactly?”

Ignoring the flippancy in his voice, she took a seat in one of two chairs in front of his desk, then leaned close and said, “The man who killed Craig asked me where ‘it’ was, but he never said what exactly he was looking for.”

“And you’re only now thinking to tell me this bit of news?”

“It didn’t come to me until I was having dinner at my parent’s house. As my mom mentioned to you once before, the doctor said this could happen . . . trauma to the head can cause memories to come and go when you least expect them.” She raised a brow. “The good news is that I remembered.”

He ran all ten fingers over his short spiky hair.

“The fact that they were looking for something,” Faith continued, “could very well crack the case wide open.”

“Watching a few too many detective shows, I see.”

She angled her head to one side. “What?”

“
Crack the case wide open?
Do you have any idea how you sound?”

Insulted, she pushed herself to her feet. “I don’t know . . . maybe like a mother desperate to find her children?”

“Sit down, Mrs. McMann. Otherwise I’m going to have to escort you out of here. You need to turn it down a notch.”

She stared at the man as he shook his head in disappointment, and that’s when she realized he’d shut her out from the start. He wasn’t interested in what she had to say.

He’d merely been placating her.

In the time it takes to flick a switch, excitement turned to anger. “You’re not the least bit interested to hear what I have to say, are you?”

Someone across the way called Yuhasz’s name, said he had a call on line two, said it was important. She looked out the door toward the men at their desks. A couple of them caught her gaze and quickly turned their attention on something else. Every time she came to the station, she suddenly realized, Detective Yuhasz was conveniently called away.

“I’m going to take this call.” He gestured toward the front of the building. “I want you to go have a seat in the lobby or walk outside and get some air. I’ll come get you when I’m finished. And then we’ll talk about finding Lisa and Hudson.”

Lisa?
Heat rose from her toes and clawed its way upward to her chest and neck. Anger and indignation turned to outrage, crackling like electricity in her veins. “You don’t even know my daughter’s name.”

He looked confused, as if he had no idea what he’d done to cause such wrath.

Her hands shook. Her nostrils flared.

The fury she’d been trying to tamp down for days now rose within, churning and gurgling, threatening to erupt. Stepping around his desk, she reached for his computer keyboard and swung it at his head.

She hit hard.

Plastic cracked and keys flew off.

She struck again from the other direction. An explosion of plastic rained down upon them, but all she saw was red. Blood spurted from his nose.

People were shouting. Footsteps sounded. A sharp pain shot through her shoulder as both arms were yanked back behind her. She kicked as hard she could, turned her head, and bit into flesh. Curse words she’d never uttered in her life flew from her mouth.

Metal cuffs clanked shut over her wrists, biting into her skin as she was dragged across the room, through a metal door, and down a long, narrow hallway, where she was thrown into a holding cell.