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He seemed taken aback by her words, his eyes narrowing for a second. “Well, then we’ll have a serious problem.”
The alarm bells got louder. “What is this regarding, Detective?”
“Ms. Dixon, we have reason to believe you were the last person to see Thomas Highsmith before he was reported missing.”
CHAPTER 5
ECHO
2009
Echo went into a bathroom stall and counted the cash she had left. Just under $200. Not even close to being enough for food and a bus ticket back to Oklahoma.
She moved her hand in a slow circle over her abdomen.
She had wanted to avoid hitchhiking, but it looked like her only choice now. The bus ride from Santa Monica to the Los Angeles Greyhound station had taken a big chunk of the money she’d stolen from Clint. If she’d had more time when she’d left the house, she could’ve searched for his big stash. But she knew they’d be coming for her. The men who scared her worse than Clint. So, she’d taken what she could find, which was still more money than she had ever held in her life.
Echo left the bathroom and sat on one of the benches. She glanced around at the crowded bus station, examined the faces of other people who looked just as desperate to get out of there. She noticed the people waiting for their bus departures tended to ignore her the same way theypretended the homeless people asking them for food or money didn’t exist.
An elderly homeless man sat down next to Echo, and his entire body was shaking so much it felt like an earthquake rumbling under her thighs. She tried not to move away from him because she didn’t want to be rude, but his body odor was overwhelming. For all she knew, she smelled just as bad after two days without a shower. She’d tried her best to wash up in the bus station bathroom, though.
The homeless man was mumbling to himself. He was so thin and didn’t have many teeth left, and she could tell he was itching for something, maybe drugs or alcohol. He had the same tremor and wild-eyed look her dad used to get whenever he’d run out of pills.
Echo dug into her duffel bag. She had never done drugs willingly, but she knew the painful need of them, the horrible twisting in her stomach and being drenched in sweat for nights on end until Clint would give her another hit. And she’d welcomed it, the one thing that offered comfort, a way to drift off into oblivion and escape her body for a time. She couldn’t help the homeless man with that problem, but she could offer him food. She picked out a package of mini blueberry muffins, something soft he could hopefully eat.
When she offered it to the man, he seemed to notice her for the first time. He grabbed the muffins without a word and shuffled off toward the back of the bus station.
All she could think about was how her dad could’ve ended up like the homeless man if he hadn’t shot up heroin laced with something even worse—she never knew what for sure. She tried to push the image of finding her dad on the bed from her mind, the syringe still dangling from his arm, which was already bluish and cold.
“Excuse me,” a woman’s voice said.
Echo looked up from her lap. A curvy, raven-haired woman dressed like a 1940s pinup stood in front of her. She was the kind of womanEcho used to see in some of the old movies her dad had loved to watch, and she guessed she was probably in her thirties.
“I don’t mean to bother you, but I noticed you’ve been here for a long time by yourself.” The woman smiled, her red lipstick bright against her straight, white teeth. “This isn’t a safe place for a young woman to hang out.”
Echo wasn’t sure what to say. She didn’t have money for a bus ticket, but she also didn’t know how to approach someone for a free ride.
“Do you have someplace to go?”
Echo nodded, too nervous to speak.
When the woman leaned in closer, Echo jerked away from her. “Hon,” the woman said in a quieter tone, “do you need help?”
Echo looked at the woman’s face. She was beautiful, even more beautiful than Echo’s mother.Her mother.Her mother, who’d abandoned her not once but twice.
She dropped her head into her hands, the tears bursting from her in heavy waves, her body quaking the bench beneath them. Strong arms pulled her into a sweet floral scent, a smell that reminded Echo of the wild honeysuckle she and her dad used to pick off their neighbor’s fence when she was young. Pluck and suck, they’d call it, and she’d grab as many as she could, sucking the nectar from each tiny tube until the sun’s heat wore her down.
“It’s okay, hon,” the woman said, stroking Echo’s hair as she cried. “I promise I only want to help.”
Echo pulled back, wiping her eyes. She paused, listening for some internal warning to go off. People don’t simply help others without wanting something in return. But then she knew that wasn’t exactly true since she’d tried to help the homeless man, knowing he had nothing to give her.
“My name is Vivien, but my friends call me Viv.” She paused. “And you are?”
“Rae.” Echo wasn’t sure why she gave Viv her dad’s middle name, but she didn’t feel safe using her real name now. She pushed her hair behind her ears. “Why do you want to help me?”
Viv’s dark eyes turned thoughtful for a moment as if she were somewhere else, far away from the bus station. She took Echo’s hand in hers and smiled again. “Let’s just say we gals have to watch out for each other. So, what do you say, Rae? Do you want to get out of here?”
“Where are you going?”
