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Lux didn’t understand what was happening, but he was happy to listen to her voice through the line for a couple of minutes before he started to fuss. I held him in my lap and brought the phone to my ear, my attention moving over Birdie. She was pale, her eyes shadowed with dark circles, and I’d never seen her so lifeless.
“How are you holding up?” I choked out.
Birdie shrugged a dainty shoulder beneath her prison uniform, which was practically swallowing her whole. “It’s not the Ritz,” she offered dryly. “But I suppose I should get used to it.”
I shook my head in refusal. “Birdie, no. We can help you if you let us. Please. Just tell me what happened.”
Her face remained blank, an expression that often haunted me from our childhood. She’d acquired that same lifeless stare when I was shuttled into juvenile detention, and she was left to fend for herself. During that time, she’d been defiled, her innocence stolen, and this place of despondency was the only one she could escape to. After that, her emotions only broke free when something managed to slip through the cracks of her armor and ignite the rage bottled up inside her like lava.
“You sent me away,” Birdie whispered. “This is where I deserve to be. Everyone is better off this way. You, Lux, Ace…”
Her voice fractured on the last name, and I knew it was killing her inside. She just couldn’t bring herself to admit it.
“We all miss you, B. Ace is going crazy without you. He can’t eat; he can’t sleep. He hasn’t left California since you’ve been here. Sometimes, he just sits outside in his truck for the entire day because it’s the only way he can be close to you.”
Birdie trembled as she drew in a breath and tried to compose herself. It was the most heart-wrenching display of emotion I’d ever witnessed from her.
“Tell him he can’t do that,” she bit out. “He needs to forget me. I don’t want him here.”
I knew my sister well enough to see through her lies. “What aren’t you telling me, B?”
“I saw you.” Her voice was so quiet, I almost wasn’t sure I heard her correctly. “That night with the video at Ace’s house. I saw your face, Gypsy. You were ashamed of me. You were terrified.”
Lux looked up at me with a wide-eyed expression when tears began to leak from my eyes. “No, Birdie. You have it all wrong.”
“I don’t,” she argued. “I know you’re all thinking it. I can’t be controlled, and this is the best place for me.”
“Goddammit,” I hissed. “Stop it. That isn’t true. What happened with Ricky was self-defense. If anything, I regret that I let you do it because it should have been me. I was the oldest. I was the one who failed you. If I had the chance to go back and end him myself, I would.”
Birdie fell silent on the other end of the line, but there wasn’t time to let her slip into her thoughts. I needed something from her. Anything. Even if it was just an assurance she’d let me come back for another visit. But everything changed when she bowed her head, and tears began to spill down her cheeks. My sister wasn’t one to cry. I knew something was terribly wrong when she clutched at her stomach and released a mournful sob. That was when I saw it. The tiny bump that had taken shape there. She was pregnant.
My entire world shifted at that moment, and a pain unlike any other opened up inside my heart as I considered her future. Birdie seemed to understand my thoughts, and she steered the conversation to a place of such hopelessness and despair I couldn’t even consider it.
“Promise me you’ll make sure Ace takes care of her,” she whispered. “Promise me she’ll always be safe from the horrors of this world.”
“Birdie, no,” I cried. “You’re going to make sure of that yourself. We’ll figure something out. We’ll find a way—”
“There is no other way,” she insisted. “This is what he wanted.”
“Who?”
The phone alerted our thirty-second warning, and Birdie looked at me with eyes so haunted, I would never forget them.
“The licorice man.”
KODIAK OFFERED ME THE BLUNT in his fingers, but I shook my head.
“Come on, man,” he prodded. “You need to get some sleep. This hell you’re putting yourself through won’t do either of you any good if you can’t even function.”
Logically, he was right, but it didn’t make any difference. “When she’s home with me, then we can both sleep.”
Kodiak didn’t bother to argue, and even if the conversation was nonexistent, I was grateful to have him by my side. All the guys had been putting in long hours to chase every possible lead we found. Shortly after our arrival in California, we discovered the street Birdie and Gypsy grew up on was still a hotbed of human scum. I’d never forget the look on Gypsy’s face when she took us there and pointed out the decrepit structure with peeling white paint.
