Return (Coming Home #1) (18 page)

Dead or alive?
I want to ask. I keep my mouth shut.

“You might as well have this now. You’re a grown up,” she says with a wry half-smile I would resent on anyone else.

“
I’m twenty-two,” I say. Why did I say that?
 

She snorts. “I have replacement hips older than you, kid.”

That makes us both laugh. It feels good to laugh. Then I feel guilty.

Effie shakes her head, clearly disgusted by something. “People call us old administrative assistants a bunch of dinosaurs. We’re supposed to know how to use that email thing and edit web pages and do all the fancy technical stuff, but when push comes to shove, you know what really works? Good old-fashioned paper.”

She slides a thick manila folder across my desk. It’s brown, with two circle coffee
stains on it. “Facilities” is written on the tab.

I give her a questioning look.

“Adele Mariega. She was the department secretary for chemistry for more than thirty-five years. She took retirement right as your dad was arrested.”

My eyebrows go up like someone shot them from a gun.

Effie gives me a hard look. “Interesting, isn’t it? Adele was a nasty bitch, but she was devoted to old Iggy.”

“Iggy?” I open the folder to find email printouts. The top ones are dated from about four years ago.

Effie sn
iff
s.
It’s clear from that single sniff that she doesn’t like the dean.
“Ignatio. Dean Landau. She called him Iggy for all the years she worked for him.” Her voice drops to a raspy whisper. “I think Adele thought he was in love with her.”

“Was he?”

She purses her mouth. It looks like
a cat’s butthole. “If he was, you wouldn’t know it. That man was obsessed with his d
e
ad wife, Nora.”

I file that piece of information away for the future. I begin to rifle through the folder, my eyes searching without any pattern. “His wife?”

“Claudia’s mother. She died
when you were kids
.”

A faint memory jangles inside me. Cards we had to write for Claudia after her mom died. Fifth grade? S
even
th? I don’t remember.

Suddenly, I stop listening. There’s an email, about ten pieces of paper down, between Joseph Myerson and Ignatio Landau.

My heart speeds to double time.

“Effie,” I say, my breath caught in my throat, “where did you say you got this?” My eyes greedily scan the words. I’ve pored over every piece of evidence in my father’s trial. It feels like I’ve done nothing but work
and read pieces of evidence for these years.

I have never, ever seen this particular email.

It’s an order request from then-chemistry chairman Landau for a chemical I know is used to make meth. And the request asks my father to buy it.
This says exactly what Dad insisted during his trial. This is the evidence he claimed was buried. Erased.
 

Eradicated.

People called my dad crazy for saying
Landau doctored the evidence. Oh, my God.

Here it
i
s.

“I told you,” Effie said, a bit irritable suddenly. “Adele is one of the department secretaries who saves everything. Like me. We don’t trust these stupid computers. They crash and die and go bad all the time. So we print all our emails. Every day. Print them and file them in case the fancy-schmancy computers go down and everyone acts all
in a tizzy.”

I can’t speak. My eyes rush over the stack of emails. My fingers rifle through them.

Effie looks around the room nervously. “I don’t think Iggy knows about these. Adele stored so much in the old storage room. We all squirrel our files away since the university started that stupid ‘paperless’ initiative. When the police came, they never went back into the old stuff from the 1970s.”

I stare dumbly at her.

She gives me a triumphant look. “We’re the ones who really keep this place going. The faculty and administrators think they do, but we’re the ones who know where the bodies are buried.”

Bodies.

“Er, wrong choice of words,” she says. “Go take those home. Put them in your backpack now. Don’t let anyone know you have them until it’s time to take them to the authorities.”

“Effie—”

She presses her finger to her lips. “You didn’t talk to me. Those don’t exist.”

And with that, she leaves. I grab the folder, my heart racing, and shove the papers in my backpack, zipping it up like it’s a vault at Gringot’s.
Might as well be, right now.
 

“What don’t exist?” says a familiar male voice. As Effie passes Eric, who is entering my office, she gives him a tart look. Oooo,
she’s not a fan. I’ll have to ask her about that later.

“Faculty who understand how to use a photocopier,” I say, smoothly changing the subject. I hear Effie’s stifled laugh from afar and give myself a mental
attagirl
.

“Ha ha. We have to learn it while we’re teaching assistants and then it all gets crowded out once we finish our Ph.D.s,” Eric answers. “Besides, who has time for that? It’s what
clerical staff are for.”

I bristle at that. Dad once told me to look at two things in a guy: how he tips the wait staff, and how he treats his mother. If you don’t like how he acts with them, watch out, because that’s how he’s going to treat you one day.

I don’t say anything. He narrows his eyes and
ask
s again, “What was Effie here for?” His eyes scan my desk.

A
creepy-crawly sensation slithers
up my back and over my shoulders like a giant boa constrictor settling into place, ready to claim a victim. Eric moves closer to me.

“
Just answering some questions for me.” That was technically true.
 

“About what?”

“Work.” Also technically true.

“I heard the dean’s name mentioned.”

“Were you eavesdropping?” I over-exaggerate my reaction, pretending to be more offended than I am. Every sensor
inside me is screaming with alarm and fear. Eric is dangerous. Eric is a threat. This entire conversation makes no sense and yet it triggers my need to escape.

“You don’t want to mess with the Landau family. Trust me on this.”
His words come out of
nowhere.
 

“What?”

“We all know why you’re really here, Carrie.” He looks toward the door where Effie left. “Quit trying to dig into mat
t
ers that
are none of your business.” His eyes narrow and then the skin around them changes. He lowers his voice. “I know how much you loved your father. You’re traumatized, still. It’s understandable. Any young, vulnerable woman would be.
I
t’s made you a bit unhinged.”

Unhinged. That’s the second time someone’s called me
unhinged
in two hours.

Both men can bite me.

“Thanks for your concern,” I say,
grabbing a random folder. His hand covers mine. I try to jerk it away.

Eric’s stronger than he looks. His fingers curl like a hawk’s talons, piercing its prey.
I open my mouth to cry out, but my throat is dry. I can’t move. Can’t breathe.
 

C
an’t scream.

I rip my arm away from him and feel the skin tear under his nails, my body twisting and stepping forward to walk out the door—

And I slam into a brick wall called Mark.

“
You’re
threatening
her?” Mark says in a voice so full of outrage I think he’s going to bite Eric’s head off, right there, like a huge game lion taking out a small animal. Just—gulp.
 

“I—no—it’s not what you
think,” Eric stammers.

Oh, there are those words again.
My life feels like one big repeat.
 

“I know what the fuck I just heard, asshole. You threatened her.” Mark’s eyes drift down my body. Long, red scratches dot my wrist and I look down. There’s blood.

“She’s
bleeding
? You made her
bleed
?”
Mark grabs Eric by the lapels and pulls him up so hard Eric’s feet dangle. He gags, his dress shirt
cutting against his throat. Mark looks like he’s about to kill him, eyes bulging, neck tight and red with anger, his hands in fists and forearms rippling with power. Add in the cop uniform and it looks like Eric’s having a bad day already.
 

And it’s not even 9:30 a.m.

“Did he threaten you, Carrie?” Mark asks in a voice so menacing it sounds like it’s filled with needles.
I hear Eric gagging
and thrashing, then he’s on the ground, his fist tight at his hip, and it’s pounding into Mark’s kidney.
 

Soon they’re a tangle of thrusting limbs and grunts and angry shouts of “fuck” and “goddamn” and I just stand there, amazed.

My police officer ex is pounding the shit out of my former teaching assistant. And then Eric gets some leverage and starts dealing some bad blows, too.

A broom appears
out of nowhere, attached by the hands to a little old lady screaming, “You two stop that!” It’s Effie, and she’s smashing the broom down as hard as her little bony arms will let her.

Mark looks up and gets a face full of straw. Effie cracks the broom handle hard into Eric’s shin. Even I wince. That’s got to hurt.

“Are you two insane?” I
scream. Effie lifts the broom, which I realize she must
have grabbed from the custodian’s closet. She holds the straw part high in the air, ready to hit someone again.
 

I kind of think she
likes
this.

“I am so done with this day,” I announce.

“Either one of you try to fight again or hurt a hair on Carrie’s head and I’ll beat you!” Effie hisses.

Eric rolls his eyes.
He stands,
gives Mark a glare, then storms out of the room without a single word
to me.
My arm throbs and I want to take all the white-hot fury inside me out on him. I don’t. I do what I always do. I freeze and say nothing. Later, I’ll think of all the perfect ways I could have told him off.
 

But right now I just wish I were invisible.
I involuntarily touch the scratches on my wrist. My skin is wet. If I look down, I’ll see blood.

Mark’s breathing hard through his nose,
his hands on his hips, his eyes on Effie. “I could have you arrested for assaulting an officer with that thing, Effie.”

“And if you did, the chief would come after you, darling,” she says in a tight, sick voice.
She isn’t afraid of Mark. At all. And most people have a little fear of the police, especially when they were in uniform. But not Effie.
Effie Cummings.
Why did that ring a—
ooooooooh
.
 

Chief
Cummings might have something to say about having his mother arrested after she broke up a fight between one of his officers and a professor at the college.
No wonder she is so defiant.
 

Mark gives me a look that makes me gasp. It’s a blend of lust and love and fury and yearning. It’s the kind of look that makes you wish the rest of the world didn’t exist.

“
I’ll keep that little fucker
away from you, Carrie,” he promises.
 

“Language!” Effie huffs. What is it about people and swear words? If there’s ever a time to use the word “fuck,” I’d say it’s now.

“He was trying to warn me,” I explain. My own breath is ragged. Mark needs to stop looking at me like that. My blood heats up and desire pools in places where I don’t need to feel such urgency. This shift, from fear and surprise
and danger to arousal and want and need is uncomfortable.

But I can’t help it.

Mark’s shifted, too. He’s become someone I barely recognize. Where did all t
h
is dominant, possessive,
macho stuff come from?
 

“Warn you? He wasn’t warning you, Carrie. He was threatening you!” Mark says, exploding.

“
I’m
threatening you, Mark,” Effie says in a tremulous voice. “You keep shouting at Carrie like that
and I’ll....”

Mark casually reaches over and plucks the broom from Effie’s hands like he’s taking a straw from a fast food counter display. “Right. I’m so scared, Effie.”

She glares at him. “No more toffee cookies for you!”

He bites back a laugh. The tension in this room has gone from insane to flat-out absurd.

Effie looks at me. “You want me to stay?”

I take a second before answering, then
reach down and grab my
backpack
. “No. Thank you. If anyone’s leaving, it’s going to be me. I’ll take my lunch now.”

“
I
t’s 10:11 a.m.,” Mark says, voice dripping with sarcasm.

“Really?” I say, giving it right back. “I thought it was I-don’t-give-a-fuck o’clock.”

And with that I storm out. I swear I hear Effie clapping i
n
the background.

I go out into the ha
l
l and pivot suddenly, taking a small
set of stairs I’m pretty sure Mark doesn’t know about.
When I hit the bottom, I stop, then hide in a tiny file storage room. I’ll bet this is where Adele Mariega stored all these “missing” emails. The thought makes me yearn for my dad, and a pang of sadness hits out of the blue, as if it arrived like a bird landing on a tree branch, its weight making the tree bend slightly.
 

I
cry. I have no
idea how long I’m in here, but after a while I realize I need to go home and eat. Check on Minnie. Come back and oh, you know, do my actual job. The one I’ve only had for five days. The one that I’ll get fired from if I keep not showing up.

I sniff and wipe my nose carefully on the inside of my shirt. I stand and walk toward the doors to the parking garage. On hot, sunny days like this I try
to park in the shade, and this morning I was lucky. I scored an easy spot.

As I walk on the brushed concrete floor, lost in my thoughts, it hits me that Amy was just like this. Two days ago she was leaving work, probably thinking about her own problems, when suddenly, out of nowhere—

Rough
hands cover my mouth and nose, an arm looping around my waist. I’m kicking and thrashing, unable to move
as I’m lifted into the air. One eye is covered by vicious fingers that dig into my face, muting me. My backpack is still on my shoulder, weighing me down, the straps pinned between me and this motherfucker who is hurting me.