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“Star?” When she didn’t reply, I repeated, louder this time, “Star!”
She jolted. “What?”
“Why did that ring a bell?”
“N-No reason.”
“Bullshit.”
“It’s really nothing,” she argued, sounding more annoyed this time.
“That clearly triggered some kind of memory.”
“A stupidly minute memory.”
“Stop being pedantic.”
“I’m not being pedantic. It’s impossible. Her father’s name was Bogdan Belyaev.NotKuznetsov.”
“Tell me where your mind’s at. And whose father?” I asked, confused.
She plucked at her bottom lip. Just when I was about to prod her, she demanded, “When I first took Katina in, she used to draw a lot. More than she does now—”
“Traumatic response, I guess. Shay does that to deal with the stuff he’s gone through.”
“Yeah, maybe. I don’t know. I knew her father died in a car crash—” Her mumbled admission had me straightening in my seat. “But her mom…”
“What’s making you think of Kat, Star?”
“When I first got her, she had horrific nightmares. Used to wet the bed a couple times a night. The social worker suggested a therapist, but it didn’t really do anything for her. She just used to draw in the sessions, and she’d draw afterward, then she’d come home and the nightmares would be worse than ever. In the end, I said that it was doing her more harm than good and we stopped seeing the shrink.
“She got better. Hunter Lachlan, you remember him?” At my nod, she continued, “He came to stay for a short while, and he’s great with kids, so that took her out of her thoughts. She started doing normal stuff, and I let her go wild which she loved and, eventually, she stopped wetting the bedbutthe drawing continued until…” She frowned. “…six months or so before I attacked your security system that first time.”
“Okay, but what about the drawings?”
“Hell, it could mean nothing, Conor. Just a tiny, minute, bit of nothing on a kid’s drawing. Trust me, she’s no Picasso either. I love that kid but fuck, she massacres crayons with her art.”
“You’re trying to convince yourself,” was my flat retort.
She glowered at me but carried on, “Kat used to draw the crash scene I assumed her dad died in. You’d see the trunk of the vehicle she sketched, but the front was smashed to fuck. Always,always, on the license plate, she’d write the license number.” She plucked at her bottom lip now. “And it would always have this red strip along the top of it.”
My eyes flared wide. “Diplomatic plates?”
“Yeah,” she whispered. “But it’s not related. He was Bogdan Belyaev.”
“Names can be changed. Lies can be covered up.” I peered at her. “Out of curiosity, can you remember that license plate?”
She shook her head. “No. At least, not without thinking about it. It’s been too long since I saw it.”
“How did you find Katina again?”
“Remember I told you about that shipping manifesto a while back?”
“Yeah.”
“Her mom was one of the women whose journey I followed. By the time I found her, Kat was already in the foster care system.”
“How long had she been in it?”
