Seventy-one

There were voices. People talking, murmuring quietly. Two of them. Men, somewhere nearby. She thought maybe she’d fallen asleep at her desk again. It happened sometimes when she was working a case. She’d put her head down for a moment, waiting for results to pop up on her computer or for a uniform to deliver evidence, and end up sleeping through her lunch hour.

Nights were hard. Her mother’s sleep schedule was erratic. Sometimes she’d go days without more than an occasional nap. It was exhausting.

On their last visit, the doctor prescribed her mom a sedative so she’d sleep through the night. “Fill the prescription, Ellie,” he’d said, tearing the script off the pad before pressing it into her hand. “And give her the pills. You need sleep. You both do.”

She’d taken the prescription and said thank you. She’d even filled it, but in the end, she let it gather dust in the back of the cabinet above the refrigerator. She never even opened the bag.

She told herself it was because she wasn’t going to take the easy way. She wasn’t going to drug her own mother to make her more manageable. The truth was a harder, more painful thing to admit.

The truth was that, sometimes, in the small hours before sunrise, her mother was her mother again. Not the mother who needed constant supervision. Not the mother who couldn’t recognize her own daughters. She was her real mother. The one who took care of her. The one who told her everything was going to be okay and spent every day making sure that everything was.

The first time it’d happened, she thought it was a dream. She’d woken to the smell of tortillas toasting on the griddle, Vincente Fernandez on the living room stereo. She’d come out of her room to find her mother standing in the kitchen in her bathrobe, stretching tortilla dough and singing along to the music.

“Mamá?”’ she’d said, looking at the microwave’s digital display. It was two in the morning.

“Morning, mija,” her mother said, leaning over to drop a kiss, a quick press of her flour-dusted cheek against her own. “Did you study for your math test?”

“It’s Saturday,” she said automatically. The doctor told her that it was best to go along with her mother’s delusions. That it’d be less confusing for her. Less traumatic for them both.

Her mother’s eyes clouded briefly before she smiled. “That’s right,” she said, pressing her into her chair. “Your test isn’t until Monday.”

She nodded, throat swollen with grief while she watched her mother butter the stack of tortillas she’d already made. It wasn’t Saturday. It was Thursday and she’d have to get up for work in a few hours but she didn’t care. She let her mother press her into one of the chairs that surrounded their battered breakfast table and ate buttered tortillas until her stomach hurt.

Watching her mother move around the kitchen with an easy confidence she’d always taken for granted, she listened to her chatter on about the errands she’d have to run later in the day. Taking her dress shopping for the school dance or picking Val up from work.

She never told her sister. It was the main reason she didn’t want Val to come home. She told herself it was because she was afraid if Valerie saw her like that, she’d insist on upping her medication or worse, putting her in an assisted-living facility. But that wasn’t it. Not really. She didn’t want her sister to come home because in those brief, sporadic times, she had her mother back and she didn’t want to share her. She didn’t keep her sister away because she was afraid; she kept her away because she was selfish.

“Where is she now?” Val had asked the other night, her voice tight with worry. It was the Feast of Saint Rose and her mother had insisted on attending midnight mass. “You can’t just let her—”

“Relax, Mamá’s fine,” she’d said, moving down the center aisle of the church, heading toward the stoup. “Believe it or not, I know what I’m doing.”

“Really?” Val had said, indignation adding weight to her words. “Dr. Hayward called me. He thinks that maybe it’s time—”

“Fuck him.” She said it loud—too loud. Several people in the back of the communion line turned and scowled at her. She scowled back. “Dr. Hayward doesn’t get to decide. He isn’t her family. We are.”

“I know that, Ellie.” Val sighed. “I’m not saying he’s right. I’m just saying we should talk about it. Make these decisions together. You and me—not just you.”

“Fine. You and me. We’re not putting her in a home,” she said, her words heavy and final. “We can talk, but we’re not talking about that.”

“Okay, okay …” Val sighed again, like talking to her made her tired. “Maybe I can come—”

“You can’t,” she said quickly. “You’re pregnant, remember?”

“Can I at least talk to her?” her sister said, sounding sad.

“She’s in line to receive communion.” The fact that it was true did nothing to lessen the guilt she felt.

“Alone?”

“No,” she said, guilt instantly replaced by annoyance. “She’s not alone.” She craned her neck to see around the line of people that stretched down the aisle. Her mother had her arm anchored through the crook of Agent Vance’s elbow, her head cocked toward her while she chattered. “She’s made a friend.”

“A friend?” Now Val sounded torn between alarm and amusement. “Is this friend an actual person?”

“Sort of. She’s an FBI agent, here to help with a case, but Mamá thinks …” Like she knew she was being watched, Agent Vance turned and looked at her. “Mamá thinks she’s you,” she said.

“What?”

“I know, right? It’s weird,” she said. “She started crying when she saw her, said, ‘You came back.’”

“The FBI is there?” Val was quiet for a moment, absorbing what she’d heard. “What kind of case, Ellie?”

“A murder,” she said evasively.

“A murder? As in one.” Val sounded skeptical. As the wife of a cop, she knew the FBI wasn’t usually called in unless a case met certain criteria. A single murder was too average for them to be bothered with.

“Okay, more than one.” She hadn’t told her sister anything. Not about Rachel being abducted. Not about finding Melissa’s DNA under a victim’s fingernails. Val already worried too much about her ability to take care of their mother. The last thing Ellie needed was her big sister losing her mind over her job. “It’s a border-­town thing,” she lied. “No big deal.”

Val didn’t seem to be buying it. “What does she look like?” There was something strange about her sister’s tone. Something that went beyond worry. But she instantly dismissed it. Val was a worrier. She also insisted on treating her like she was twelve and incapable of doing anything without her breathing down her neck.

“I don’t know, Val—she looks like an FBI agent. Nothing like you,” she said, a second before her cell issued a beep. “Look, my phone hasn’t seen a charger all day. I’ll call you tomorrow …”

–––––

The voices were close, the sound of them pulling her back to the present, rising and falling in what sounded like an argument. She tried to rouse herself. The attempt at movement sent a deep, nauseating pain rolling over her. That’s when she remembered. She wasn’t at work. She hadn’t fallen asleep at her desk. She’d gone to the place where Rachel’d been held. Lured outside by her car alarm and taken. Dragged into the dark by the same man who’d killed her former best friend. He was going to do to her what he’d done to Rachel and there was nothing she could do about it.

She tried to lift her hand to her head, searching for the damage that had to be there, but her arms were heavy. Too heavy to lift. Alarm bells started to go off, faint and distant. The rolling wave of pain, sharpened by panic, pulled at her—tossing her further and dragging her closer until she was spinning inside her own skin. She was dizzy, her chest too tight to take a breath. Vomit pushed at the back of her throat, threatening to choke her. She couldn’t die. Not like this. She hadn’t even called Val back like she’d promised. She’d—

Stop.

Ellie tried to open her eyes again. To lift her arms so she could push herself up. She couldn’t stay here. She needed to run. Fight. She didn’t know which, but she knew she couldn’t just lay here and wait for him to kill her. Or worse. There was always worse.

The sickness in her belly started to swell again, fed by terror and the certainty she was never going to see her mother again. She was going to die screaming, just like Rachel. Just like Melissa.

She throat threatened to release a sob.

Stop. Don’t move. He already thinks you’re dead. Just be still …

She remembered now. He’d bashed her head against the floor. Eyes bulging, hands wrapped around her throat while he screamed at her.

“Say you’re sorry,” he hissed in her face. “Say, ‘I’m a rude little bitch and I’m sorry for interrupting your conversation.’”

But he hadn’t been talking to anyone. There’d been no one there to have a conversation with. No one but him. But there was someone here now. She could hear them still arguing. About her. About how he’d messed everything up and killed her. About how he’d let the one before her get away.

“First Maggie and now Ellie.”

Despite his casual tone, the man talking sounded angry.

“You’re gettin’ sloppy, boy. Forgettin’ everything I ever taught you …”

They thought she was dead, but it wouldn’t last. Any second now, they were going to stop fighting long enough to realize that he hadn’t killed her—and then he was going to finish the job.