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Somehow, thankfully I remember to carry out my preventative measures. Ensure that everything is saved to the hard drive, then close everything down, removing any trace of evidence that could prove that I was hacking from my office computer just in case the office gets broken into, I can’t leave anything out in the open that would expose what I was doing.
I pack up my personal laptop so that I can transfer the files to that later and I lock everything up with my key, leaving the office, down the corridor, and down the stairs to my car. I sit inside my car and begin to realize that I can’t see anything. My vision is too blurry. My whole internal system is too fucked up for me to function properly, I can’t drive.
In the silence of my car, with the tinted windows rolled up, I put back the sun protector screen so I can be completely hidden and then I start banging on my steering wheel, screaming in emotional agony for those helpless babies. I’m waiting for them inside my car, banging my forehead against the fucking steering wheel as well. I bang my head until I’m dizzy with numbness and I start swaying from side to side as tears pool down my face. And I start to consider driving, after all, envisioning myself crashing into a tree or the concrete wall in front of me, ending it all and leaving this fucking nightmare world behind. The thought comforts and scares me because if I leave, then I can’t do anything to protect those kids at that point and I’m just deciding to run away from it, leaving them in it to suffer because I’m too much of a fucking coward.
But then I think of the fact that there’s not much I can do anyway. Even if we pulled something like we pulled in Vegas again, here, it’ll save some babies, some kids, yes. Sure, it would but it wouldn’t end trafficking. How long can we last, going around to every fucking state, every fucking country on the planet and killing everyone involved? We’re not fucking superheroes. We’re bound to get caught, to get killed and we would fail either way. And I find comfort in the thought of taking the decision away from myself by just ending it here and now.
I close my eyes at the thought, taking in deep, steady breaths and I dream about the peace I could have at last and I feel the exhaustion rest on top of my body, causing me to drift off to deep, fatigued sleep.
I’m awakened by the constant honking of the horn against my ear as my head rests heavily on top of it. I jump awake and realize that what I just discovered wasn’t a nightmare, it’s real fucking life. A life I can’t just abracadabra the fuck away.
I turn on the car, deciding to take the chance to drive thinking about how everything’s going to unfold as I reveal this news to the rest. But instead of just driving straight home, I decide to drive past Delaney’s Home for Abandoned Children. I slow down, tempted to stop before pulling off and continuing home.
Chapter 19
Mikhail
Julissawalksintotheshop with steady movements. She’s not messing around. “Sorry, I’m late. Let’s get started,” she says. Her expression is like stone.
I look at her in concern. “What’s up? You okay?”
She just nods. “Mmhm.” She shuts me out and stares at me impatiently.
I try not to make her coldness toward me about me even though it burns. I didn’t look at the notes or even get started on the car without her. I want us to do it together so she knows I’ve got her back. I retrieve the logbook and get out of sight of my boss. With nervous hands, I flip open the book, skipping the pages to the dreadful day, looking for the license plate number which I wrote down to help me identify the car with the owner. She’s looking from me to the book, her eyes daring me to tell her what I’ve found, knowing the truth already for herself.
My stomach drops and my heartbeat stops for at least a second or two. “Harry Burns.” Written clear as day. I swallow and look up at her confident eyes. “You were right,” I say under my breath, feeling ashamed, angry, and scared for her all at once.
“Of course, I was. Asshole. Feel like an idiot yet?” she asks me.
The words “idiot” and “asshole” don’t even begin to cover it. I turn toward her to hold her. “I’m sorry,” I say but she pulls away with tears in her eyes. I’m at a loss for words at how I’ve treated her and how I’ve hurt her. It’s like that moment when the fog has cleared and you’re left exposed. I am so embarrassed.
“Not now. Don’t touch me, right now. Please. I can’t.” She brushes her tears away, takes a deep breath, and clears her throat. “Let’s just get on with the rest of it.” She moves toward the car and I unlock it. “I want to see the blood,” she says.
This is not the time for me to be telling her that it could still be deer’s blood, only because I feel helpless in a situation like this especially since I’m not a cop anymore and I don’t have any connections because I never let the team that helped us know where we were going when we left. If I had any connections, I would send this to the lab for sure. If I knew for certain that I still had cops that were on our side and could protect us, I would feel a lot better going after this piece of shit. But we’re on our own here and I feel useless. So it’s probably stupid but I’m still hoping it’s deer blood so that we don’t have to do anything about it or live with the guilt of letting it slide.
Julissa doesn’t give a fuck about whether we have connections or not. She’s staring at the dried blood, soaked into the interior fabric of the trunk like she’ll be able to detect what kind of blood it is with some kind of hidden x-ray vision. She seems to realize that she’s not getting anywhere by just looking at it so she opens the door to the backseat and shudders a little before climbing in while I keep watching to ensure that my boss won’t find us messing around with a customer’s car.
I stand next to the car so I can keep an eye on her and my surroundings at the same time. She starts pushing her hand in the creases of the seat, shoving it down both sides of the seat before feeling around on the floor beneath it. I hear her gasp and I turn around to see her holding a kid’s hair clip. “I found something. Do you think it could belong to any of his potential victims?” she asks in a breath.
I feel a bit timid reminding her that he came here with two kids and it could easily belong to one of them. She frowns and sighs as she starts feeling along the headboard that lies between the backseat and the trunk to find out if there’s anything that was difficult to see with her eyes at first glance. Her hand runs across a little stud earring. She grimaces at it as if she’s about to be sick. “Do you remember if the girl or her mother wore earrings?” she asks in a pressing tone and I search the corners of my mind for the image of them when they came here, coming up short on an answer for her. She groans in frustration and does a second sweep of the backseat before moving to the front seat.
As she’s about to sit in the driver’s seat, she shudders again and I can only imagine what it feels like for her body to touch the seat that frequently held the body of her childhood monster, the man who sold her into hell. I feel the sudden urge to ruin his car then lure him and lay in wait for him to come and pick it up before bashing his skull in with a tire iron. I fight the urge to formulate a plan with Julissa that would allow her to get first dibs at cracking his skull open after he shows up. I focus on steadying breaths and reclaiming self-control. I can’t let my mind go there.
She runs her hand around the steering wheel as if touching something icky before noticing the dried blood there as well. Her body shakes again and I’m imagining it’s because she’s having the same thought I have; who could the blood possibly belong to? My coward ass is still trying to hold on to the silly idea that he may have had some blood on his hands after putting the deer in the trunk. She starts pushing her hands in the corners of the driver’s seat and as she rests her arm briefly against the armrest, her elbow comes in contact with an empty cup that sits in the cupholder. She removes the cup and feels around the little space when her finger touches metal. She leans over to peer into the place where the cup was a while ago to find a bullet shell.
She makes eye contact with me and both of our eyes widen at each other.
“Look!” she says.
“Wait, your fingerprints!” I exclaim.
She wipes the bullet off then I realize that her fingerprints are all around this car. Instead of panicking, I begin to rationalize it as she asks, “Concerned yet?” with building anger.
“I hate to say this and trust me, there’s no doubt in my mind that he’s your father and I wish I could kill him so that’s not what this is about but we live in a small town where there are many hunting enthusiasts. Maybe he went out hunting,” I try to reason aware of sounding stupid.
She rolls her eyes. “Coupled with blood in his trunk? What do you need a body?”
“I’m just saying. I know it looks bad but let’s not jump to conclusions since we have no resources to actually confirm anything. Plus, I’m hoping even more that it’s just something that can be easily explained away because with his car in the shop I work at and my prints on the outside and now overwhelming evidence of you on the inside, who knows what they could pin on us, plus with our fingerprints, they’d find out who we really are and then it’s over for us. And I could care less for us. But remember why we came here? It was so that we could be alive because we can’t do much good if we’re dead, can we? And if they catch us, we’re dead,” I say with rising paranoia.
