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“Every single year for seventeen years, a new little girl has been taken. Raina Sims,” she snarls. “Alana Lyons.”
“Minka!”
“I examined Alana myself. She was five years old, Archer. Nearly six. And by then, I was an adult and fresh to my job. Do you wanna know what I found?”
“These girls are not your resp—”
“Pregnant.” She spits the word out, then takes a step back when I come closer. “She was five, Archer, and her dead body told me she’d already had a baby. How is that…” She slaps my hand away when I try to reach out. “How doesn’t that make you angry?”
My stomach swirls with dread and heartache. “Babe, it’s not—”
“And if it doesn’t make you angry, then what the hell are we doing here? Why are we even arguing?”
“Uncle Archer?” Mia’s sweet voice tinkles along the hallway. “Can you help me?”
Closing her eyes, Minka shakes her head and breathes, breathes through the rage bubbling in her blood. Through the helplessness she feels whenever she thinks of those girls.
“Mia is not a lot younger than Diane.” Slowly, she allows her eyes to fan open and stop on mine. “She’s not a hell of a lot younger than Alana.”
“Uncle Archer?”
“If you can’t get angry about this…” Stepping away from the hall and back into my living room, Minka snags her bag. Her coat. Her phone, and whatever else she’s left lying around. Slipping her feet into her shoes and shrugging her coat on, she looks up to me with eyes that spill over. “If you won’t fight for them, then there’s nothing left to say.”
She moves through my apartment, but stopping halfway across my kitchen, she turns back and faces me for a moment. Her laces are untied, and her coat is unzipped. Her hat—the ugly, blue, knitted beanie her landlord gave her for the cold—sits in her pocket so the fabric puffs out at her hip, and the briefcase she bought for work so recently already shows signs of love and wear.
Minka’s lips are thick and full. Her dimples pop, but she’s not smiling. Instead, her brown eyes glisten with heartache.
Breaking her stare and slowly crossing to stop in front of me, she places her hands on my chest—not in anger this time, but in something much, much worse. Stepping up to her toes, she presses quivering lips to mine, and whimpers when they touch.
She tastes like tears, salty and sad. And when her hands shake on my chest, I can do nothing but place mine on her hips and hold her close.
“I love you, Archer.” Breaking our kiss, she drops back to flat feet and refuses me the view of her beautiful eyes. She robs me of the chance to look through the window into her heart. “It’s crazy, and impulsive, and insane. We’re too different, and we’re definitely too new. But I do. I love you.”
“Then don’t leave.”
“Uncle Archer?”
Ignoring Mia for a moment longer, I slide my hand over Minka’s shoulder and tuck her hair back, then I cup her cheek and draw her eyes up. “Stop running away from me. Stay here, and love me enough to stay safe.”
“I can’t.” Her jaw wobbles. Reaching up to swipe a falling tear from her cheek, she turns her face, as though allowing me to see her vulnerability is a crime. Unfathomable. “I can’t, because choosing you, and comfort, and safety, while Alana Lyons was treated the way she was…” She shakes her head. “I just… can’t.”
“You’re the cleanup crew, Minka. You come in after the crime has already been committed, so no matter how much you wish it was different, there’s nothing you can do to save them. Despite you and me and whatever we make of us, the Alanas were never going to be saved.”
“Maybe not.” She chokes on her tears and slips out of my arms. Crossing the kitchen and fixing her hand around the strap of her bag, she stops at my apartment door and glances back. “But I’ll have saved the victims who would come after. And if I’m really lucky,” she swallows, and studies my eyes, “if it works out how I want it to, word of the vigilante killer will get out, and those who might have thought to hurt an innocent may think twice.”
I drop my hands to the same beat of my falling heart. “Minka—”
“Uncle Archer!”
“Go.” She looks past me to the hall. “If she gets water in her eyes, she’ll destroy you. Could you just…” She pauses and clears her throat. “Tell her I said I’ll see her soon. I’m not running away from her. Make sure she…” Opening my door with a gentle shake of her head. “Don’t let her think I’m another flaky woman in her life. Tell her I’ll see her soon.”
Stepping across the threshold and into the hall, Minka keeps her head down and her movements slow.
Her expression says not to chase her. But every fiber of my being demands I don’t let her go.
“Goodbye, Archer.”
“I saidUncle Archer!”
