On the Way Home (15 page)

“Ten,” I said, looking away. “I was ten when I first went to stay there.”

“Jesus, Della.”

“And the plants died. That’s what I thought about at the beginning. I had three plants, and all of them must have died without anyone to water them. I had worried over having to pick one to live and one to die, but in the end, they all died.”

He stared at me like he had no fucking clue what I was talking about, but that was all right. None of this really mattered. This wasn’t why I’d followed him off the plane.

“Grew up,” I said, forcing myself to continue. “Got my GED by mail. Left Dmitri. I told him I was never coming back to him. I thought he might put up a fight, but he didn’t really.”

“You and Dmitri, were you ever…” He didn’t finish. The distasteful expression on his face told me what he thought of the idea.

I feel the same way.

“For a little while. First he was with Caro. She’s older than me. She filled out faster. Then, I don’t know. I guess he got bored or just wanted to start trouble. He came to me and…” I laughed, the sound hollow. My insides were all hollow. Numbness had spread from the inside out, leaving only a shell, the story of my life like the faint ocean sounds you hear inside. “He said I was saving her.”

“What the hell’s that mean?”

That was one choice in my life that had been easy. Her or me. “I knew he hit her sometimes. Hurt her. He said if I let him touch me, he’d leave her alone. I thought it would make her life easier.”

Clint’s eyes narrowed, and in the slits, I saw fires burning. Rage directed at Dmitri, and those flames were enough to warm me. Even if I’d probably get consumed by them in the end.

“But she didn’t see it that way. She thought I wanted Dmitri to pay attention to me because he’d give me money and jewelry. I didn’t want his money.” It suddenly seemed important that Clint understand that. That he believe me about this. “I never wanted him.”

“Okay,” he said softly.

All the indignation drained out of me, about as quickly as it had come. “All I’ve ever wanted is to get away from him. Caro too.”

“But you left without her,” he said, almost proudly, like he was happy I’d gotten myself out at any cost. Even sacrificing my sister. I didn’t want to make that choice a second time.

“I couldn’t make her go. I thought it would be okay, maybe. Since he let me leave. Figured he might hit her one too many times and she’d get fed up and leave too. I even got this house as soon as I could afford to, so there’d be room enough for both of us.”

“She never came.” He stated it as a fact.

“No. Not even when Dmitri left town to do his business shit. She found some other guy to live with. Other parties and drugs and whatever else. I don’t even know. I barely saw her anymore. I tried to tell myself she was happy that way.”

“And now Dmitri is back.” Another fact.

“He called me up. I didn’t even know he was living here again or that Caro had hooked up with him.” I shook my head, embarrassed to admit I hadn’t talked to Caro. Hadn’t wanted to hear her coked out or drunk off her ass.

Clint’s gaze locked on mine. “What did Dmitri ask you to do?”

Fucking tell him the truth. He deserved to know. “He wants me to get him something. Some…drugs. Like a shipment thing at the airport.”

Sometimes you had to make a choice, and you picked the cowardly one.

“Why didn’t you want to?” Clint asked.

“Because it’s illegal. And it’s wrong. Really, really wrong, okay?”

“So you offered to give him eight thousand dollars instead?”

I made a face at Clint just so he’d know I wasn’t thrilled about the whole hiding-in-my-truck thing. So that was who Katie had seen. But I couldn’t exactly claim any moral high ground here, so I moved on. “He didn’t take it. It was a long shot, but…I don’t know what else to do.”

In all honesty, I was hoping Clint would have some kind of magic solution. That was a long shot too, like the eight thousand dollars.

“Have you tried talking to the police?” he asked, and that was when I knew that no magic solution would be happening. The police was dead last on my list of things to try. I’d be dead before I got that far down the list. Caro would be dead.

“No, and I’d appreciate it if you wouldn’t tell them,” I said stiffly. “Dmitri won’t react well to that, and he has my sister. He’ll kill her.”

A little groove appeared between Clint’s eyebrows, and I knew he was thinking hard about how to say what he wanted to say. He leaned forward. “I don’t deny that he’s a dangerous person, but you said your sister was with him for a while. He hurt her, but he didn’t kill her then. What makes you think he’s going to do it now?”

I stood up and found my phone in my purse. Pulled up the first text message and set the phone on the coffee table in front of him. On the screen was a picture of my sister, eyes swollen. Her skin wasn’t skin colored anymore. It was black and blue and purple and red. She barely even looked human.

He picked it up and swore softly. “He did this?”

I shrugged. “Who else? Dmitri has never had a problem getting his hands dirty.”

Clint’s gaze sharpened. “He did that to you?”

“Not like that. Not on my face. He knew our bodies would heal and you would barely be able to tell anything had ever happened. But faces, they never heal right with something like that. He wouldn’t have beaten me like that and lost whatever money I could make on the pole.”

“Fuck.” He stared at the photograph. “This is unbelievable.”

“I figured you would have seen worse things where you went. War zones and all that.”

“Not much worse than a woman’s face bashed in. But yeah, I’ve seen some bad shit, but I thought it was mostly over there. We have domestic abuse and crimes in the US, I know that. But what you’re talking… that’s slavery. That’s human trafficking. That is the kind of shit that happens over there every fucking day. And here too, I guess.”

“Assholes everywhere,” I said, like I was some kind of criminal-world Buddha.

He quirked his lips. “Yeah. Assholes everywhere.”

“I don’t know if he’ll really kill her,” I said honestly. “But I know that if he doesn’t, it’s not out of kindness. He’s not that kind. It’s just because he wants to keep her around, or maybe he’s too cheap to pay off the cops again. I don’t know, but I can’t take the chance.”

Clint nodded slowly, his expression thoughtful. “So what’s your plan? You gonna give him what he wants?”

Maybe. Are you willing to die for me? “I don’t know yet. Just stalling, I guess.”

Sometimes you had to make a choice, but I would put this one off for as long as I could.

* * *

We made it through the rest of the afternoon as if nothing horrible had happened. Clint even flirted with me with a tenderness I was shocked to see. He kissed me on the tip of my nose, and tears welled in my eyes. I looked away so he wouldn’t see them. How could he even look at me after what he knew?

Because you didn’t tell him the whole truth, coward.

Yeah, but I’d told him a lot of bad shit in my past and he hadn’t run screaming. Wouldn’t have blamed him if he had, but he didn’t. Went out for drinks with his friend James, but left his stuff here. He was coming back, he assured me. He also asked to make sure I’d be okay.

“Stay inside the house,” he said. “Don’t go anywhere.”

Don’t go back to Dmitri’s house, he meant.

“I’ll stay here,” I promised, pretending like everything was fine even though it wasn’t. A current of expectation ran through the air. By tonight, Dmitri had said. I had to deliver him by tonight. Which meant I would have to decide soon.

The rap on the door made me jump. I peered out the kitchen window in time to see a van head down the street. It didn’t have its lights on, but I could make out the shape of it—large, looming—and wondered if this was how Katie felt.

As the van passed, a car parked on the street pulled away from the curb and followed. The car had its lights off too. Strange. Strange enough to make this feel dreamlike, unreal. I imagined all the cars on the roads with their lights off, gliding through the pitch-black night like fish in the sea. No lights flashing or blinking. Peaceful.

I opened the front door to see, half expecting a pipe bomb to go off in my face. As long as Clint wasn’t here to get caught in the blast, I didn’t even care.

Instead there was a box.

Not a velvet box like Clint’s had been. This one was a similar size but wrapped in brown paper. I knew better than to expect anything good inside, but I felt curiously numb as I carried it to my dining room. The thick brown paper tore to reveal a brown cardboard box, like the kind used for moving, but tiny. I opened it and stared inside.

Horror planted itself in my gut and grew a thick base all the way up to my throat. It branched into cold tendrils that wrapped around my arms and held me in place. It rooted me to the spot, and all I could do was stare inside at the ten fingernails, painted purple. Glittery purple the way Caro had done sometimes.

Oh God. Caro.

I didn’t know how much time had passed. I thought I might have blacked out for a few minutes. Or a few hours. When I came to again, my mouth tasted of vomit.

They weren’t even that bloody. That was what I thought about. There was some blood, on the ones that had flipped over. And some black stuff that I thought might be flesh. But not puddles of blood like I would have thought.

Calmly, my hands steady, I closed the box and threw it in the trash. Then I took the trash out to the big trash container in the garage. Then I went back inside my house and threw up again.

I heard gravel crunch as a car pulled into the driveway. Another van? Another package?

Then the door slammed and I heard Clint’s voice call my name. Relief filled me, because he’d come back. He’d come back, and now I could save my sister.

Chapter Twelve

Clint

James and I actually went to a bar, the way I told Della we would. But instead of drinking beer and playing darts, we went over the intel James had gathered. The information about Dmitri might help me protect Della. Or I could use it as leverage with the FBI agent. I’d have to play it by ear.

Everything he’d found backed up what Della had told me. Which was good, except that I got the feeling she was hiding something from me. Something important.

“What’s next?” James said as we left the bar and headed back toward Della’s place.

“That depends. You up for a little field trip?”

“Christ, yes. Get me out of the van.” There wasn’t an actual van, but since vans were so often used for surveillance, James used the phrase. He was great at providing support, but I knew sometimes he wanted to stretch his legs.

“Not tonight. Tomorrow. I want to find out if the sister is at the same location or if he’s keeping her somewhere else. The picture of her…” I shook my head. “He messed her up pretty bad.”

James’s gaze sharpened. “You think she’s still alive.”

“Hard to say. Some proof of life would be nice.”

“If your girl starts asking for that, odds are Dmitri will get suspicious. He’ll think she’s called in the FBI.”

“She may not have called them, but they are here.” I glanced at the neighboring house. The windows were dark, but I had no doubt a telescope pointed from one of those windows. Someone was watching. “Anyway, I don’t really want to suggest that to her. She’s freaked out enough as it is without thinking her sister may already be dead.”

I glanced back at James, whose expression was smug.

“You like her,” he said.

“No shit, Sherlock.”

“You
really
like her.”

“Yeah, and we’re sitting in a tree, K-I-S-S-I-N-G. Can we be done with this bullshit and focus?”

James sobered. “You had to fall for a girl with major underworld connections, didn’t you? I’m just saying, push comes to shove, you can’t be sure which way she’ll go.”

Actually, I was pretty damn sure she would choose her sister over me. I couldn’t even blame her. James had dug up some background information. A father serving a life sentence, no hope for parole. Mother gone. Her oldest sibling had been murdered, her body found off the pier with a bullet in her brain. The middle sister was the only family Della had left. If I’d had any family, I would have guarded them with my life too.

“I always fall for girls,” I said, trying to make light of it. “Doesn’t mean it’s a real thing.”