“Hello, Holly.”
Twenty
She moves forward slowly, taking her time, her eyes never once leaving mine. She sets the briefcase on the table, pulls out the chair, and sits down.
“Cat got your tongue?”
When I don’t answer, she frowns thoughtfully.
“Such an odd expression, isn’t it? Just one of those sayings that doesn’t make sense when you think about it. I looked it up once, to find out where it came from. Supposedly it goes all the way back to the Middle Ages. They say witches’ cats would take a person’s speech so that the sighting could not be reported to the authorities. Or something along those lines. Seriously, Holly, say something. You’re starting to make me nervous.”
I don’t answer. Just keep staring back at her. Wondering how I could be so careless. I thought I did enough research to make sure she was legit, but apparently not.
“In case you’re wondering, my name isn’t Leila Simmons. But for now feel free to think of me as Leila. By the way, Eleanora is doing well. That’s actually her real name. Just like Juana was really the name of the girl those two agents killed.”
She pauses, shakes her head with a soft sigh.
“Such a shame what happened. But she knew what she was getting into. All the girls we take in know what they’re getting into. They’re desperate, you understand. They’ll do anything to save their children. They’ll do anything to make a better life for themselves.”
Another pause, and now the small smile turns cold.
“Of course, in the end, they almost always get fucked over. But blame that on today’s marketplace—it’s the children who are the moneymakers, not the girls. Most of them are damaged by the time they get to us. They’re no longer as … pure as our buyers would like.”
Okay, enough of this shit. I’m done staying silent.
“Give me one good reason why I shouldn’t shout for the sheriff and have you arrested right this second.”
The woman smiles again, and presses the buttons on the briefcase to unlatch it. She lifts the top and pulls out some photographs. Like with Sheriff Gilbert, the photographs are large, but they’re not 6 x 9. These are in color, and there are three of them. She lays them out on the table in front of me. Seeing them, my heart stops.
Leila taps the tip of her fingernail on the tabletop as she speaks.
“I don’t have much time, so I’m going to cut to the chase. We know who are. We know your name is Holly Lin. That you worked covert missions for the United States government. That you spent your day keeping an eye on the children of General Walter Hadden. That your father also worked covert missions for the government, but that he went rogue a few years ago.”
She keeps tapping her nail, a consistent, steady beat.
“Do your sister and mother know what you really did? Or what your father did? Do you think they wonder why you disappeared, or did you tell them why you left?”
In the center photograph is my mother. It looks like she’s at the grocery store, in the produce section. Inspecting a batch of bananas.
“Your nephews are quite cute. What are their names? We know one is Matthew, but the other is …”
She lets it hang there, as if she expects me to fill in the blank, but I continue to say nothing. I stare down at the photo on the left, the one that shows the two boys playing at the park. I’m not about to tell her the other boy’s name is Max.
Leila keeps tapping her fingernail on the table.
“And your sister’s husband’s name is Ryan. We know where he works. We know some of his coworkers. We know where he likes to have lunch during the week.”
My sister and Ryan are in the third photograph. It’s taken from a distance. All the photographs are taken from a distance. My family—the ones I left D.C. to save, to protect—are being watched. Were being watched. It all depends on how long ago these photographs were taken.
I lift my gaze to meet hers, and it takes everything I have not to launch myself across the table. Only I can’t. Not with my wrists shackled. She knows this, of course, and based on the look in her eyes, it amuses her greatly.
When I speak, my voice is just above a whisper.
“What do you want?”
She lifts a finger, shakes it back and forth like a metronome, and reaches back into the briefcase. Pulls out another photograph, this one also in color.
My heart stops again. Not in fear this time, but in surprise.
Leila sets the photo on top of the others, turned so I can see it right side up.
“Does this look familiar?”
It does. Of course it does. The bedroom of a mansion overlooking the town of La Miserias. The mansion belonged to a man named Fernando Sanchez Morales. The Moraleses were the last remaining cartel family Alejandro Cortez had targeted because of what they did to his family. Morales and his men had stormed La Miserias that night out of anger because the people had risen up and defied Morales, leaving his wife and child behind only to be guarded by a few men. By the time Nova and I arrived at the mansion, those men were killed, and Morales’s wife and child were cowering in the master bedroom while Alejandro Cortez stood over them.
Leila watches me stare down at the photograph.
“Morales became paranoid being locked up in his home. He wanted to make sure his family was safe, so he had security cameras installed. But he didn’t want his wife to feel like she was being watched all the time, so they were tiny cameras, hidden very well.”
They must have
