Pretties in Pink

5. Hallie

5

HALLIE

What the heck had come over me? I’d intended to have a very serious and professional conversation with a man whom I should have disliked on principle. But instead, I’d lost my mind, gotten into a verbal altercation with a nasty-ass woman, and then spent twenty minutes flirting with my sworn enemy.

And I didn’t do flirting, not outside of the office.

Back in my former life, I’d been forced to use seduction as a survival mechanism because if I didn’t keep the men who raped me happy, there was a grave waiting with my name on it. Pouty lips meant fewer bruises. Fluttering eyelashes earned me food. Little touches allowed me alcohol to dull the pain. So when I finally escaped that hellhole after more than a year, even the thought of flirting with a stranger made me feel physically sick.

Except, it appeared, with Detective Prestia.

After the argument, I’d been momentarily at a loss as to how I should open the conversation. But then we’d shaken hands, and I’d felt it. A connection. A connection that shouldn’t have been there, not in a million years, but I saw from the heat that had flared in Prestia’s brown eyes that he’d felt it too. And then it hit me: use reverse psychology. Push him away and wait for him to get closer. He wouldn’t leave, that much I knew, because if I’d been in his position, I couldn’t have gone anywhere either.

And my spontaneous plan had worked. I’d reeled him in, and he’d gifted me a crumb of information.

Plus a whole lot of confusion.

And the headache I’d fibbed about.

“How did it go?” Dan called as I walked past. She had an office on the executive floor upstairs, but she spent half of her time at a hot desk in the Investigations section.

“Better than I hoped, I think.”

“You think? Did you speak to Prestia?”

“Yes, but he didn’t act like a Richmond cop.”

“In what way?”

I told the story from the beginning but left out the whole touchy-feely-lingering-gazes part. That wasn’t important to the case, right? “So he gave me his number, held the door open for me, and then dropped twenty bucks into the homeless guy’s cup. I guess I owe him a tip.”

“So give him a tip.”

“But I don’t have a tip.”

“The bad thing about the Richmond PD is that it’s still tainted, but for the moment, let’s also view that as a good thing. Fifty percent of the staff are still bribable. And one of my pet snitches says that activity’s ramping up around the Mila Carmody disappearance.”

“They think there’s a link?”

“The media thinks there’s a link, so the police can’t afford to ignore it. And I bet our file on Carmody is more comprehensive than theirs.”

“But we never found her.”

“We didn’t, but they fired us while we were actively following leads. I still say there was something off about the whole case.”

“The family?”

I’d read the file from cover to cover half a dozen times, and although there were precious few leads present, there were also clues notable by their absence. Common wisdom said Mila had been taken through her open bedroom window, yet the maid-s***h-nanny swore it had been closed when she put Mila to bed. And there were no footprints among the flowers outside. A tiny speck of blood had been found on the window latch, but the DNA didn’t match any known males.

Mila hadn’t cried out, and in the kidnapper’s silent escape, he’d managed to avoid the security cameras at the back and front of the house. The Carmodys’ spaniel hadn’t made a sound either, and apparently he always barked if a stranger came inside.

Also missing from the crime scene? Mila’s beloved plush rabbit, a toy she’d adored so much it even wore matching pyjamas. Pink, always in pink. It had been Mila’s favourite colour. Dan clicked files on her screen, and there she was. A cute little girl with wavy brown hair, grinning for the camera as she held a bunch of balloons. The picture had been taken at her seventh birthday party, held three weeks before her disappearance.

If the bunny had been on Mila’s bed, then I could have seen her grabbing it and holding on as she was spirited away. But the bunny had its own bed—a four-poster, no less—and that was on the other side of the room. Had the kidnapper paused in whatever he was doing—binding her, gagging her—to let her fetch Biggles? Or had he known how much the bunny meant to her and picked it up himself?

“Yeah, the family.” Dan leaned back in her chair. “Emmy got bad vibes from the grandfather. Said he was a skeevy son of a b***h, and I agreed with her, but he had an alibi.”

And after that, we’d started looking at Mila’s uncle, which was when her father told us our services were no longer required.

“You think I should share our file with Prestia?”

“Not the whole thing, not right away. If he’s going to throttle the information flow, then we need to play that game too. Tit for tat. And you know what else you should do?”

Avoid drooling when the detective was around?

“What?”

“Toss the DNA profile from the Carmody case over to Valerie Jenest. See if she can do anything with it.”

Valerie was a newcomer to the Blackwood team, a genetic genealogist that Emmy had met as part of Bradley’s totally over-the-top Secret Santa project last year. Valerie acted as a consultant now, and Dan was right—we should ask her to go over the file. Advances in DNA technology since the time Mila vanished might shed new light on the sample.

“I’ll call her.”

“And there’s another angle to consider. If the Carmody and Feinstein cases are linked, then what happened in between them? Let’s assume whoever took the girls molested them and then killed them.” My gut clenched at Dan’s words. This was the part of the job I hated. Putting myself in the shoes of a psychopath, something Dan and Emmy were worryingly good at. “Five years is a long time for a man with those tendencies to lie dormant. How did he control those urges? Try speaking to Dr. Beaudin, see if she can help with a profile.”

Dr. Rosalind Beaudin was another new hire, a psychologist and former profiler brought in to help staff with any mental health issues they wanted to work through, as well as assist with investigations when necessary. Now I had a to-do list that ran into double figures, but Dan wasn’t done yet.

“And Nick uploaded the footage from his own cameras. He’s a couple of blocks away from the Feinstein residence, but you never know. Plus Lara called around her friends, which must be half the people in Rybridge, and she’s gathering up recordings as we speak. Nick promised to add them to the server this evening.”

“I’ll take a look when I get home.”

Who needed sleep anyway?

“Shut your mouth, shut your mouth, shut your mouth. Stupid bird.” Pinchy flew from the perch on top of his cage and landed on Mercy’s shoulder, pirate-style. “Snack, snack, snack!”

He bobbed his head until she handed him an almond, and then we had a few moments of blessed peace while he ate it.

“How was your day?” I asked. “Is the pile of cash getting any smaller?”

She shook her head. “We issued two new grants, but… Well, I never realised this would be such a problem. The money grows faster than we can spend it.”

Mercy and I had been roommates for six months now, although our initial meeting had been a little unconventional. How many roomies shared a history of s*x slavery? Not in the same location—our captor had run quite the empire—but we’d experienced the same despair until a Blackwood team rescued us. They’d given us our lives back, and that wasn’t all. The apartment belonged to Emmy and her husband, a man everyone just called Black, and they were letting us live there rent-free for two years so we could get back on our feet.

Not content with closing down the network of s*x mansions, they’d gone after the main man and taken all his money and, I suspected, his life too. Forgive me if I struggled to shed a tear. Then, rather than hand the loot over to the government so they could spend it on new office furniture for the FBI or whatever, Emmy and Black had funnelled the cash into their charity foundation, where Mercy worked as an administrator along with our friend Cora, doing her very best to give the whole damn lot away.

“Maybe you should start a homeless shelter?” I suggested.

“We already did that.”

“Yes, but it’s in Colombia.” That was where Mercy came from. “I’m thinking of a place near Blackwood HQ.”

“Why there?”

I told her about this morning’s meeting, and with Mercy, I didn’t hold back. More than anybody, she understood what I’d been through in the house of horrors and why the way I’d behaved with Prestia was so out of character. The more I thought about it, the uneasier I felt.

“My therapist thinks that in time, I’ll begin to feel comfortable around men again,” she said. “For me, that won’t happen anytime soon, but perhaps you’re healing? It’s a good sign that you weren’t creeped out.”

“I’m creeped out now.”

“Buyer’s remorse?”

“No, not that. More like… I don’t understand why I acted that way. And if I don’t understand it, then how do I stop it from happening again?”

“You said you’d been drinking coffee and eating muffins all morning? Maybe it was the caffeine? Or the sugar? How much sleep did you get last night? I make poor decisions when I’m tired.”

Hmm… Perhaps Mercy was onto something? I’d been restless from thinking about the Ganaway case, and the first two coffees I’d ordered had been red eyes. Wasn’t caffeine basically a drug? And drugs were bad, m’kay.

“Oh, hell. I’ll have to give up regular coffee.”

“Are you sure? That’s a big step. Why don’t you try cutting down to start with?”

“You weren’t there. You didn’t see what I was like. And I should quit eating so much sugar too.”

“Does that mean you don’t want the cocadas blancas I made for dessert?”

Uh, I definitely wanted the cocadas blancas. “I’ll start my new diet tomorrow. Did you make dinner too?”

“Cora’s grandma made empanadas and rice salad.”

“I love her.”

The best part about moving to Richmond was the new family I’d found here. Not only the team from Blackwood but Mercy and Cora and Cora’s fiancé, Lee, and her brother, Rafael. Cora and Rafael’s grandma, Marisol, and her boyfriend, Vicente. Bradley. Georgia and Xav. Izzy and her mom. Izzy had gotten rescued soon after us, but not before she’d been sold to a private buyer like a piece of meat. Mercy and I, we’d had others to lean on during our time in captivity, but Izzy had been all alone. Terrified. Six months on, she still couldn’t leave the house on her own.

“Want to watch a movie afterward?” Mercy asked.

“As long as the movie consists of vehicles driving around Rybridge the night Vonnie Feinstein was abducted.”

Mercy made a face. “Surveillance videos?”

“I have to.”

“Good thing I’m not giving up caffeine. Here, take Pinchy while I get dinner.”

“Hey, Pinchy. C’mere.”

“f**k you.” He bobbed his head again, then flew across the room to my outstretched hand. “f**k you, f**k you. Shit.”

I didn’t teach him to say that, I swear, and neither did Mercy. A beautiful African Grey, he’d come to us with most of the vocabulary, hardly any feathers, and a serious attitude problem. But he was smart. Potty training had been a breeze. The feathers had mostly grown back, and we were trying to teach him to be more polite, but the attitude still needed adjustment.

“Wanna watch TV, Pinchy?”

“Beep-beep-beep.” His imitation of the microwave was uncanny.

“That’s what I thought.”

“Snack?”

“You’ve had enough snacks already today.”

“Asshole.”

Tell me again why I adopted a parrot?