In Desperation

sixteen and her friend Shawna had convinced her to go to a party downtown.

“There’s going to be older college guys there.”

Cora had never done anything wild like that in her life.

“Time for you to bust out, girl,” Shawna told her.

At the party, the people were older. Way older. There was talk that some were ex-cons on parole. Cora was uneasy and begged Shawna to leave. But Shawna was having fun and kept passing Cora these fruit drinks the older guys kept making.

Cora started feeling woozy.

Someone took her into a bedroom, told her to lie down…don’t worry you’ll be fine…relax…the walls started spinning…the bed was flying and she felt someone undressing her…she couldn’t resist…couldn’t move…the first man stood over her, climbed on top of her…when he finished another man followed him then another as she faded into oblivion…

Cora didn’t know how she got home that night.

Did someone look in her wallet for her address and drive her?

When Cora woke and realized what had happened to her, she climbed into the shower and scrubbed herself raw. She wanted to peel off her skin.

She wanted to kill herself.

How could she have been so stupid?

Shawna never knew. She’d left the party earlier, thinking Cora had left without her. Cora never told anyone what had happened. Not Shawna, not her mother, not anyone.

She was too ashamed.

She wanted to apologize to her parents, wanted to make herself invisible. She wanted to die.

In the time that followed, Cora thought she could handle it, but she couldn’t. She’d turned to drugs. It was the only way she could survive. Her mother and father tried to get through to her, tried to help her.

“What’s wrong with you, Cora?” Her mother sensed something had happened. “You’ve changed. Tell me, what’s wrong?”

Cora was so ashamed she could never bring herself to talk about it and soon grew angry at her mother’s concern, her prodding. It led to one argument after another, until the last one before she left home at seventeen. With Rake.

A nineteen-year-old heroin addict who’d convinced her that her destiny was to live with him and his friends in a drug-induced splendor by the sea in California. She was so stupid. After Rake vanished, there were other addicts. For years she drifted in a drug-addled haze.

Then came that night, that horrible rainy night in California.

She’d struggled to blot it out of her mind, to never think of it, or all the events that came later that had cast her into a pit so dark she thought she would not survive. It was while she was lost in the darkness that she’d become pregnant with Tilly.

At that time Cora never realized that Tilly was her tiny point of light. She was too terrified. She didn’t know what to do. She couldn’t go home. Ever. She was ashamed. She was scared. She went to a clinic.

But she couldn’t go through with it.

She went to a church and prayed and soon it dawned on her that this was her miracle. This was her reason to start over. She’d been given a second chance with this baby.

This new life.

But it always came back to that awful night in San Francisco.

The incident was always there. Close to the surface, breaking into her thoughts like flashes of lightning.

Don’t think about it.

The blood.

Stop.

So much blood.

Stop.

Blood on her hands.

Now she was being punished for the sin she’d committed that night.

Cora was so afraid she couldn’t breathe.

Forgive me.

Standing in the shower Cora stared at her hands.

Were they still red with blood?

Overcome, she fell against the shower wall and slid to the floor, lost in a whirlwind of confusion.

She could not let anyone find out about that night in San Francisco. She had to protect Tilly.

How did this happen?

Where was Lyle? How could he do this?

She could not survive without Tilly.

16

Somewhere in Arizona

Lyle Galviera swallowed hard.

This was the last one. It totaled $1,153,280.

All bound with elastic bands in brick-sized bundles of tens and twenties and stuffed into six nylon gym bags.

He was careful to keep his back to the security camera as he zipped the last bag closed. He set it with the others in the self-storage unit, a corrugated metal five-by-five space he’d rented from JBD Mini-Storage at the edge of Phoenix. He snapped the steel lock, tucked the key in his boot and exhaled.

The unit was air-conditioned but Galviera was sweating because the plan, this critical plan, had gone to hell when someone had kidnapped Tilly.

Why? She had nothing to do with anything.

Why, goddamn it? Goddamn it. God-fucking-damn it.

Dragging the back of his shaking hand across his dry mouth, he forced himself to keep cool. He had to fix this. All right, what could he do right now?

Stick to the plan.

It was all he had.

Adjusting his ball cap and dark glasses, he returned to JBD’s security office. When the acne-faced kid at the counter saw him, he stopped bobbing his head, tugged at his earphones and ceased playing a game on his cell phone.

“I forgot to give you some of our data, Mister…” The kid had to consult the clipboard with Galviera’s information. Galviera had rented the self-storage unit moments ago for fifty a month using a counterfeit driver’s license. “Sorry, Mr. Pilsner, here you go.”

Galviera accepted the brochure.

“And sorry, dude…I mean, sir…I also need you to sign the release that you understand our rules.”

Galviera glanced at the sheet and took up the pen.

“Only you have 24-7 access to your unit at JBD,” the kid said, “unless you give someone else your gate code, your keys and unit number. JBD has no access to your unit. As the tenant, you’re responsible for your unit and anyone you give your information to.”

“Fine.” Galviera signed. “Thanks.”

His knees nearly buckled walking to his battered Grand Cherokee. He had just finished securing $5.1 million of drug cartel cash in several locations. Before Tilly was kidnapped he was supposed to meet his cartel people to finalize his share of his biggest and last deal.