When they finally uncuffed her, Rachel’s wrists were red and raw. She exhaled sharply as her fingers caressed them, then told herself to woman up. A little pain on her wrists was nothing compared to what her daughter had endured. Was enduring.
Assuming …
Assuming Cassie was —
She wouldn’t let herself go there. Not a chance.
She was in a different interview room this time, one that looked well used and was positioned in the middle of the precinct, in full view of other officers rather than hidden in an abandoned corner of the precinct, which she guessed was a good sign. Then again, the cuffs were a bad sign. They had left her alone, for now, though of course she knew that behind the wall of mirrors facing her was any number of officers, dying to catch her in the act.
Of what, exactly? She was under arrest for “aiding and abetting a Hive fugitive,” the arresting officers had said. Which was funny, considering the only time she’d left her house was to go to work, on a transit path that was well monitored and easily able to prove her lack of contact with Cassie. Or with anyone. Yesterday’s classes had shrunk back to their expected sizes, but most of the students were still way too interested in watching Rachel crack, real time, than in learning about the origins of the Roman senate.
Someone knocked on the mirror. Rachel jumped so hard that she kicked the leg of the table. The door opened a moment later, and the arresting detective sauntered in along with another, similarly rumpled, matching smirks on their faces.
“Mrs. McKinney,” the arresting detective announced, dropping into a seat across the table from her. She eyed the other one, who leaned against the far wall, next to a small window protected by bars.
“I said, Mrs. McKinney,” he repeated, all traces of humor vanished from his face.
“What?” Rachel asked, more exhausted than annoyed.
“Watch it,” he warned, smacking his tablet against the table. “Do you know why you’re here?”
Rachel looked at him dully. The unforgiving lights of the interview room did his skin, splotchy and gray, no favors. She herself hadn’t looked in a mirror in days.
“Because you arrested me.”
He stared at her for a moment with unadulterated disdain. He turned to his partner. “You hear that, Coop? We got a comedian on our hands.”
“Lucky us,” Coop said, barely looking up from his own tablet. He was tapping furiously at his screen.
“I’m not making a joke,” Rachel sighed. She leaned back in her chair and looked at the ceiling. Rust-colored rings formed a pattern in the corner; a leak, long ago. “You arrested me. That’s why I’m here. I know exactly as much — or as little, depending on your perspective — as I did the last time I was brought in here.”
The other cop — !Coop, Harlon would have called him — leaned in close to Rachel. She expected to smell coffee on his breath, but instead she smelled spearmint: fresh, enticing. She closed her eyes and wondered when she and Cassie had last been to the dentist. Before Harlon’s death, definitely. She’d have to make an appointment when she got b —
Rachel opened her eyes and stifled a scream. She’d been near-asleep, running a to-do list through her head the way she did every night, forgetting where she was. There would be no appointments to make.
“You. Have. No. Idea. How. Much. Trouble. Your. Daughter. Is. In,” !Coop spat. He was staring at her, and she had the sense that if she’d been asleep for hours instead of seconds, he would have been staring the whole time regardless. He meant to intimidate her dreams.
Rachel raised her eyebrows. “Is that a joke? Is there a trouble beyond death that I’m not aware of?”
!Coop slammed his tablet down on the table again. Her tax dollars at work. “It’s been four days, Mrs. McKinney. We know you and your daughter were close. You have to have heard from her by now.”
Rachel looked out past the lone window. The sky was a sickly yellow, but Rachel couldn’t tell if it was the lights reflecting on the glass or if the day had really decided to succumb to a color so sad, as though it was as tired as she was. Close. She and Cassie. If only that were true. The last seventeen years had been a constant battle for Cassie’s affections, one she was always losing. The more she tried, the worse it got. She and her daughter could never get in sync.
So, no, Rachel wouldn’t classify them as close.
But it wasn’t for lack of trying. In the early days, she’d catch herself pulling away from her daughter, disconnecting sometimes, as if she was subconsciously worried that getting too close to her, loving her too much, would damage her just as equally as not loving her enough.
If she ever got Cassie back … when she got Cassie back, she corrected herself … that would all change.
Rachel met !Coop’s eyes. “You obviously don’t know my daughter. But I do. And I can assure you, if you haven’t caught her by now, you won’t ever catch her.”
That caught !Coop’s attention. He straightened, strode over to the table, power-posed next to her. “What makes you say that, Mrs. McKinney?”
“Because she doesn’t want to be found. Her life depends on it.”
“You think she doesn’t want to be found?” !Coop chuckled, shuffling from one foot to the other. “You don’t think she likes this attention, Mrs. McKinney? Just a little, tiny bit?”
A look of horror flashed on Rachel’s face. “The attention of an angry mob of people with a legal right to kill her on sight? No, sir, I don’t think she likes that kind of attention.”
!Coop grabbed Rachel’s arm and forced her to a standing position. “I’m about to teach you a little something about your daughter, Mrs. McKinney.”
He dragged her across the room, her feet tripping over each other. She was too frightened to protest.
“Tell me,” he said, shoving her roughly against the small window, gripping the back of her neck. “Do people who don’t like attention do this?”
Rachel blinked.
They were on the fourth floor of the precinct; she remembered taking the elevator. Across the street was a parking lot, a fast-food place, a bank and a billboard park — one of the ones that had been erected a few years back, where billboards of differing heights flashed ads and livestreams, visible for blocks.
But they weren’t flashing ads or livestreams now. They were showing something else.
“Been doing that on a loop for twenty minutes,” !Coop said from behind her and Coop. “Care to explain that to us?”
Rachel stared. There was only one explanation she could offer, and it brought a smile to her face that even !Coop’s angry, deranged snort of derision couldn’t erase.
Cassie was still alive.