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“No shit.”
“I mean, with Willow. Or Clara, for that matter.”
Now, Bambi does a full turn to look at me. “Oh?”
I try to shrug it off. The last thing I need is a therapist prying into the feelings I’m definitely not catching. “Just a hunch. I can’t put my finger on what father doesn’t check in on his daughter, or notice when she’s missing. Is that the kind of grandfather we can trust with his granddaughter?”
“Right. But can she be trusted withyou?”
“Of course she can.” The words fly out of my mouth without hesitation. “I’ve got a bone to pick and a score to settle with her mother, but I’m not a fucking monster. I’m probably?—”
I stop myself before I finish that sentence. The thought accompanying it is far too dangerous for me to say out loud, let alone let it float around in my head.
Bambi doesn’t press for me to say it. She knows better. “So, whatever happens to Clara…”
“The kid stays.”
That’s all I’m going to say on that matter. I don’t exactly know what that means, or just how far things will go, but I’ll be damned if I throw a helpless child to the wolves.
“Run a full background check on Clara.” I’m switching subjects and, if I’m being honest with myself, changing tactics only slightly. Things keep itching in my brain and I need them scratched before I roll the dice on things I can’t undo. “Dig everything up.”
Bambi furrows her brow, clearly confused. “I thought we already did.”
“There’s more.” I polish off the cocktail and debate getting another one, but I decide against it. Work needs to be done. “Run full specs on Greg Everett, too.”
“Again, I?—”
“If we had everything, I wouldn’t be telling you to get more, would I?” I snap.
She closes her mouth and stares at me. Bambi’s a proud bird, and I know I’ve ruffled her feathers, but she’s not about to question my authority.
And I’m not about to apologize, even if I suddenly feel like I should.
A half-assed wave of my hand that might be construed as a silent mea culpa is about the best I can do. “There’s more to the story. Things aren’t adding up. And if I’m going to be striking deals and getting Tolya out, we can’t afford to miss a single detail. We pulled her current information but we didn’t look into her childhood.”
The tablet is out and on. Bambi scribbles notes with her stylus without looking up at me. “Medical records?”
I nod. “All of it. Dig deep. Dig where we wouldn’t normally go. Her father had—and has—the power to erase anything he wants. We need to find whatever traces he missed.”
Bambi chews on her lip for a moment. “We did confirm they’ve lived here their whole lives. At least, Clara has. Never moved, never even changed houses until she graduated from high school.”
“Makes it easy, then.”
“Easy to pull up school records. And reports.”
That makes me pause. “The kind that Everett wouldn’t be able to erase.”
“Not without raising alarms.”
I don’t want to find anything. Finding things like child abuse reports from grade school teachers who paid attention to Clara would mean there’s far more to her history—and to her relationship with her father. Finding shit like evidence that Detective Everett was a dirty cop on and off the clock means I can’t take anything at face value.
But if we don’t find anything, and my hunch about Everett is still correct, it would mean that Clara slipped through the cracks, unnoticed by everyone who should have been paying fucking attention… and has been living in a hell she never escaped from.
Not until she ran into me.
And now, I’m a whole new demon determined to make her suffer.
I dismiss Bambi with a final nod and a flick of my hand, which only irritates her more. She flips her tablet closed and huffs away to go do what I ordered. To be fair, I don’t make it a habit of treating her, or Pavel, like obedient dogs. I do genuinely appreciate their loyalty and intel.
