Hating Beauty (The Vegas Titans Series Book 6) Page 12

  Knox squeezes my shoulder reassuringly, making me wonder if he can read my thoughts and sense my tension.

  “You ok, Mystery Girl?”

  I glance at him, trying for a smile, but I don’t know if it works. He kisses me lightly on the cheek and chuckles.

  “Believe me, I get it. Cops make me crazy too. Even when I’ve been a very good boy.”

  This makes me raise an eyebrow.

  Knox laughs. “Ok, so I’m not a very good boy often. But still. They give me the willies.”

  He leans against the counter, seemingly at ease, his muscles shifting lazily under his black t-shirt as he opens his chest, stretches, and sighs. I can’t help it, but my eyes flicker over his fitted jeans and hips too before meandering back to his chiseled face.

  It’s just such a nice view.

  “Spent a lot of time in these places,” he admits, with a hint of nostalgia. “You’d think that would make me feel more at home.”

  “Or maybe think about changing your ways.”

  This comment comes from behind us, and we turn to find a handsome, young, sarcastic-looking Detective striding through an office door. He’s in jeans and a sports jacket, his curly black hair styled to within an inch of its life.

  “Lopez,” Knox laughs. He steps over and clasps hands with the newcomer, the gesture merging into a quick brotherly embrace. “You know me better than that. Something about old dogs and new tricks.”

  “Well, you know me—I’ll never stop hoping that you’ll have a come-to-Jesus moment, bat for my team for a change, instead of giving me and my boys more messes to clean up.”

  Knox grimaces. “You and your justice league. I was never that into comic books.”

  “Too bad for you,” Lopez chuckles. “Woulda raised your IQ and maybe taught you some manners. You haven’t introduced me to your lady friend.”

  “Oh, excuse me. Detective Dario Lopez, meet my friend, uh, –”

  “Tatiana,” I say reflexively, cutting off Knox before he has a chance to fumble through my list of aliases. “Tatiana White.”

  “A pleasure, Miss White.”

  Detective Lopez shakes my hand, and then looks back to Knox.

  “Tell me you’re here voluntarily,” he said, “Or do I have to get your ass out of trouble again?”

  Knox grins. “Yes, but unfortunately, also yes.”

  The Detective shakes his head and turns to open the door. “Come on back then. It’s not like I am busy solving crime or anything.”

  He leads us through a narrow hallway, past an open floor of desks and cubicles, to a little conference room. As we walk, Knox fills him in on the most basic thing: that we are lying low, that we need to find someone, that it is urgent, and might be life or death.

  Lopez seats us around a small table and crosses his arms.

  “What do you need from me?” He asks bluntly.

  Knox turns to me. “We’re looking for her sister. Disappeared in 2009. We need to look through your all Jane Does that went through the morgue, make sure she’s not one of them. Only we’re not sure where in the city she might have been. So we need to see all of them.”

  Lopez’s eyebrows shoot up. “You wanna look through all my Jane Does. All the dead Jane Does in New York City in 2009. Are you insane?”

  “Got a better idea?” Knox growls.

  “You’re a sick bastard, Cole.” The Detective shakes his head and looks at me. “I won’t ask why the sudden urgency for an old case like this. I don’t want to know what kind of trouble you’re in. But this isn’t going to be a picnic for you Miss White, if we go forward with this search. You’re going to be trying to ID your sister based on post-mortem pictures, you understand?”

  I nod. What else can I do?

  Lopez sighs. “When exactly did your sister disappear? Was there a missing person report, a date? Anything to help me narrow it down?”

  I nod and swallow, but my mouth is dry as ashes.

  “It was October fifteenth that we went to the police. My mother filed a report under the name Tamar White. My sister’s name in the report is Madlena Ketevan White, known by the nickname Sunny. We were living in Brighton Beach, 60th Precinct.”

  The Detective nods, and I can feel that he is refraining from commenting on my word choices that I am sure tell him more than I wanted to. Under the name…the name in the report…I realize he knows what is under the surface of this neat turn of phrase, that my mother and my sister and our names are not what we seem.

  But it doesn’t really matter, not for this search of Jane Does. And so he lets it go.

  “That helps me,” Lopez says, shooting Knox a look. “She helps me. You, you don’t help me. Wait here, I’ll see what I can do.”

  Knox grins as Lopez ducks out of the room.

  “We go a long way back,” Knox explains. “He’s a good man. Good friend. Good cop. World could use more like him.”

  “So I guessed.”

  Knox falls quiet a minute, then brushes his hand over mine. “First time I’ve ever introduced a girl to a buddy of mine. Feels weird.”

  The absurdity of that comment makes me laugh.

  “That’s what feels weird? I suppose this isn’t typically how that happens, how lovers meet each other’s friends. In a police station, on the run from a psychopath.”

  “Is that what we are?” Knox teases. “Lovers?”

  My cheeks flame hot then cold, but I don’t respond. I am not feeling playful. My thoughts turn to Knox’s plan, my stomach already twisting in knots.

  “Right now we seem to be investigators,” I say. “Morbid investigators. This was your big idea? Looking through dead girls to find Sunny?”

  Knox squeezes my hand, then sighs and lets it go.

  “If your sister is dead, he’ll find the right files for us to look through. The man is like a bloodhound. Hell of a detective, really knows his shit. It seemed like the only thing we could do next, the only clear step forward. Given the circumstances.”

  Even as objections and bile rise in my throat, I swallow it all down. Knox is right. If Keto is dead, I need to find out. Knowing this will help us figure out what to do next, where to go, how to outmaneuver Breslin. This will help.

  If Keto died, we’ll find her. If she’s not here, then she is probably alive, probably out there waiting for me. Needing me. I’ve never had access to those kinds of files before. I’ve never actually known for sure whether my lifelong search has been a waste.

  The only question now is: am I strong enough to do this? Am I strong enough to look straight at the truth, whatever it is?

  Until Lopez returns with three boxes of thick three-ring binders, I think the answer is yes. I think I am strong enough to do this, to look through so many tragedies and try to pick out my own.

  Then Detective Lopez sets down the boxes on the table in front of us, and gives me a kind smile.

  “Take your time,” he says. “These are the NYC Jane Does who match your sister’s physical description, age and an estimated disappearance date around October 15th, 2009. We’re lucky she’s a redhead, that really narrowed it down. I’ll have Smith bring you some coffee.”

  He withdraws like a shadow, leaving me staring at this mountain of information. Knox grabs a binder from the box closest to him, giving me a wry and reassuring smile.

  “I’ll start on this side, you start on that side. I saw your family portrait, and I’ve stared at your face more than I’d like to admit. I could recognize your sister if she’s here. I know this won’t be easy, but this is the only way I could think of to narrow down our next set of choices. You can do this, Rusiko.”

  He is being as kind as is humanly possible, and he is right.

  I force myself to remember this, to stifle my urge to lash out at him, to take out my panic and fear on the nearest living person. The sound of my family nickname on Knox’s lips makes my heart jolt, but not even that can unwind the spool of dread in my gut that has me coiled and ready to snap.

  “Thank you
,” I whisper. It’s all I can get out.

  Then I turn to the first box.

  I am not strong. I am not strong enough.

  “You can do this,” Knox whispers.

  He is right.

  I can do this.

  I have to do this. My fingers are already trembling as I reach for the first binder and open to the first inserted page. It’s a photo of a dead girl, a young girl with reddish hair and a gunshot wound in her chest. It looks like my sister, but it is not my sister. I sigh, relieved. Until I remember that it is somebody else’s sister, somebody else’s daughter.

  But I can’t think like that. If I think like that I’ll go crazy. I just need to focus, to concentrate on the good: it’s not Sunny. It’s not Keto.

  I can do this. I can do this.

  Beside me, Knox is flipping through the pages quickly and efficiently. He’s got a keen eye, a level head. I envy his ability to detach, to focus. That is what I need to do. I take a deep breath and remind myself that this is my life’s mission. I need to do this to complete my mission. I need to know, before my time is up.

  “Jesus,” Knox whispers, wincing. “What the hell is wrong with this world? I can’t believe all these poor girls.”

  Someone brings coffee and sets the mugs down in front of us. I don’t look up.

  Another page. Another photo. Another girl. Pages and pages.

  The next binder. The next. How many? How many missing daughters, how many Ketos are there? How many women have been lost, how many families shattered?

  “This isn’t right,” Knox mutters. “This just isn’t how it should be.”

  The coffee is refilled once, twice. Three times.

  It takes so long, each picture feels like an hour of agonizing debate, of trying to imagine if that could be her, of deciding, no—it’s not Keto. It’s not Keto. She’s not here. She’s not in this book. Maybe the next book, the next picture. No. Not Keto.

  Keep going. Keep going, Rusiko. Do not give up.

  Lopez checks on us, removes the box of photos we have finished looking through, then another box. We are on the last box.

  Now I am jittery from caffeine and hope. There are only two binders left in the third box, and we haven’t found my sister’s face.

  Now then there is only one binder left.

  A new feeling begins to creep up my spine, and I feel my cheeks flooding with heat. It’s as if my body knows when Knox is looking at me, as if I have a sixth sense attuned just to him. He has closed his last binder, and is watching me like a hawk.

  Focus, Rusiko. Don’t look at him yet.

  I force myself to finish going through every last page of the binder before I close it with quiet thump and stack it neatly back in the box. Then I put my hands flat on the desk, stare at my empty coffee cup. I hardly know how to sort through my feelings. I hardly know how to function as a person, after looking at all those faces, all those tragedies.

  “I feel so…guilty.” Knox says, as if in answer to my own thoughts.

  “Why should you feel guilty? You didn’t kill anyone.”

  Even as I say it, I realize I don’t know whether or not it’s true.

  Knox’s voice sounds strained. “I never killed a woman. But, fuck. I never really looked out for the women I’ve known. Never let myself care. Some of these files, some of their stories…it could have happened to any of them, the women I’ve…I certainly didn’t ever protect anyone. Help anyone. I certainly never stopped anything like this from happening. I figured their lives weren’t my problem. I’m just as guilty as if I’d been an active part of something like this.”

  To my shock, he is crying. Not in a dramatic way—in fact, he stands and turns away from me to look out the window. But I hear his breath catch and his voice flatten out and see him silently wipe tears from his face as he stares into the afternoon light slanting through the blinds. His back is rigid, but somehow the moment feels intimate. He’s letting me see more than I think probably anyone else ever has.

  More than ever I want to know about him.

  More than ever I want to trust him.

  More than ever I want him to let me in.

  But I don’t know what to say. Maybe he is right, maybe he has been a monster to every woman in his life. How should I know? Maybe he is guilty, maybe he has hurt women or, just as bad, allowed them to be hurt. After all, we met because he was willing to use me. Try as I might, I can’t forget that. He was willing to use me, and the only reason I am still here with him is because I turned that around and used it to my own advantage. We’ve been using each other since we met. What a fine pair we are, both of us only caring by mistake. It seems like our paths have only become intertwined as a matter of accident, against both of our wills.

  Maybe everything I think I feel about him is a lie. Maybe he is an animal.

  But would an animal help me look for Keto? Would an animal feel conviction like this? Would an animal question themselves, or regret their past wrongs?

  I don’t know his story, he hasn’t told me. So I can’t comfort him. I can only wait to see if he’ll be guilty of hurting me, too.

  “She’s not there, though,” I say. “She’s not in any of the books. She must be alive.”

  Knox nods and turns back around, his face showing no trace of emotion.

  “Then I’ll make sure you find her before Breslin catches us,” he says quietly, a statement of fact. “Or before you have to leave. I will help you find your sister if it’s the only good thing I ever do.”

  It’s the first and only promise he’s ever made me. I tuck it away silently, a treasure.

  Then I spread my hands in the air. “But where do we look? I have no more secret clues up my sleeve. Planned Parenthood was a dead end. Death was a dead end. If she is alive, she could be anywhere.”

  Knox shakes his head and sits down again, leaning toward me intently.

  “Wait,” he says. “Planned Parenthood wasn’t a dead end. It was clear they recognized her alias. Otherwise, why would they have told you they had the files when you called and then denied it in person? The only possible explanations I can think of are that they either knew she was dead, or they knew they were supposed to pretend she had never existed. And now we know she’s still alive.”

  I nod. “Yes, but so what? That doesn’t help us find her now. Dead end.”

  Knox’s eyes light up. “What if she had an appointment but never showed up - just disappeared - and then Breslin leaned on them to erase the records? What if someone helped her escape? What if someone in Breslin’s staff knew about this stuff going on, and ran interference? Someone might have smuggled her out to a safe house.”

  “A guardian angel?” I can’t keep the sarcasm out of my voice. “That’s likely. And even if that were possible, that still doesn’t help us know where she might have gone.”

  Knox shakes his head. “Yes, yes it does. Because I bet I know who it was. I bet I know the guardian angel. And I bet I know the safe house. It just hit me.”

  There’s a knock on the door and Lopez reappears.

  “Cole,” he says, “Look at this.”

  Lopez tosses a rolled up paper onto Knox’s lap. Knox unrolls it, revealing it to be The New York Times. Dominating the front page is a picture of Jasper Breslin, escorted by police through a crowd of reporters. Over the image is the headline: “Jasper Breslin Scandal Breaks—Illicit Sex, Drugs, and Organized Crime.”

  “Shit,” Knox hisses. “He’ll be out on bail by nightfall.”

  “Yeah,” Lopez grunts. “Listen. I don’t know you worked for him or had anything to do with this, I never met your friend Miss White, and I didn’t give you these.”

  He tosses something else at Knox. Knox catches it deftly then turns his palm open, examining it. It’s a set of car keys.

  “You better get the hell out of New York,” Lopez grunts.

  He melts away down the hall, leaving the door open behind him.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Rusudan Tsetsilia
Dadiana

  Hours of open road now stand between us and everything I have ever known of America; the skyscrapers and grit of New York City have been replaced by fields and farms, and even that has faded into the pitch black of deep night. I don’t really know where we are. The last sign I remember said Pennsylvania, but that was hours ago.

  It is my first road-trip really, and perhaps it is not really a good example of this very American tradition. Knox has tried to keep it light, playing old rock and roll music and telling me sarcastic versions of local history as we pass through bizarrely named towns, but even his banter hasn’t made me forget why we are driving. It hasn’t made me forget Breslin, Keto, and the clock ticking away.

  Knox has been behind the wheel the whole time, refusing to let me take a shift, refusing to tell me where we are going, or how long it will take. He is on a mission now, but since his mission is to help me with my mission, I do not complain.

  He is like a cipher beside me. Ever since I saw him crying in the police station he has been as impenetrable as stone: blocking every attempt of my questions with more jokes, sarcasm, and silence. Is he afraid to talk about himself? Does he regret letting me see so much? I want to ask him so many things. I want to know everything about him.

  But he won’t let me in.

  He may call me Mystery Girl, but actually, he is my Mystery Man.

  Why does your guilt drive you to help me?

  What are you running from? What kind of man are you, really?

  Are you truly here with me, or will you disappear as soon as your penance is paid? Is this all just an accident that we are working together, a twist of fate? Am I only an inconvenience to you?

  Do you know that I want you to stay?

  His face looks tired but determined in the dim light from the dashboard. I study him silently. He is still very young, and almost stupidly handsome. The kind of All-American man teenage girls buy posters of and have crushes on. The effortlessly charming alpha male with a mind-blowing body and smoldering eyes, but there’s more to him than that. I can see the beginnings of laugh lines around his eyes. It’s a sign of kindness, of optimism, and a good nature. But he hides those parts of himself so carefully. I have seen him so many times use his humor as a shield, laughing and shrugging important things aside as if everything in life was a joke. Pretending. Always a witty response, always a skillful dodge of intimacy.