Vanish (41 page)

“What?”

“She took my gun. She followed us . . .” Jane suddenly stiffened and looked up at him.

“Where’s Peter Lukas?”

“Barsanti’s watching him. He’s not going anywhere.”

Jane released a shuddering breath and turned to face the woods. “There’ll be scavengers

showing up for the body. We need to get CSU out here.”

“Whose body?”

“I’ll show you.”

Gabriel stood at the edge of the trees, staying out of the way of the detectives and the crime

scene unit, his gaze fixed on the open hole that would have been the grave of his wife and

daughter. Police tape had been strung around the site, and battery-powered lights glared down

on the man’s body. Maura Isles, who’d been crouching over the corpse, now rose to her feet

and turned to Detectives Moore and Crowe.

“I see three entry wounds,” she said. “Two in the chest, one in the forehead.”

“That’s what we heard,” said Gabriel. “Three shots.”

Maura looked at him. “How long an interval between them?”

Gabriel thought about it, and felt once again the echoes of panic. He remembered his plunge

into the woods, and how, with every step, his sense of dread had mounted. “There were two in

quick succession,” he said. “The third shot was about five, ten seconds after that.”

Maura was silent as her gaze swung back to the corpse. She stared down at the man’s blond

hair, the powerful shoulders. A SIG Sauer lay near his right hand.

“Well,” said Crowe, “I’d call this a pretty obvious case of self-defense.”

No one said anything, not about the powder burns on the face, or the delay between the second

and third shots. But they all knew.

Gabriel turned and walked back toward the house.

The driveway was now crammed with vehicles. He paused there, temporarily blinded by the

flashing blue lights of cruisers. Then he spotted Helen Glasser helping the girl into the front

passenger seat of her car.

“Where are you taking her?” he asked.

Glasser turned to him, her hair reflecting the cruiser lights like blue foil. “Somewhere safe.”

“Is there any such place for her?”

“Believe me, I’ll find one.” Glasser paused by the driver’s door and glanced back toward the

house. “The videotape changes everything, you know. And we can turn Lukas around. He has

no choice now, he’ll cooperate with us. So you see, it doesn’t all rest with the girl. She’s

important, but she’s not the only weapon we have.”

“Even so, will it be enough to bring down Carleton Wynne?”

“No one’s above the law, Agent Dean.” Glasser looked at him, her eyes reflecting steel. “No

one.” She slid in behind the wheel.

“Wait,” called out Gabriel. “I need to speak to the girl.”

“And we need to leave.”

“It’ll only take a minute.” Gabriel circled to the passenger side, opened the door, and peered in

at Mila. She was hugging herself, shrinking against the seat as though afraid of his intentions.

Just a kid, he thought, yet she’s tougher than all of us. Given half a chance, she’ll survive

anything.

“Mila,” he said gently.

She gazed back with eyes that did not trust him; perhaps she would never again trust a man,

and why should she?
She has seen the worst we have to offer.

“I want to thank you,” he said. “Thank you for giving me back my family.”

There it was—just the wisp of a smile. It was more than he’d expected.

He closed the door, and gave a nod to Glasser. “Take him down,” he called out.

“That’s why they pay me the big bucks,” she said with a laugh, and she drove away, followed

by a Boston PD escort.

Gabriel climbed the steps into the house. Inside he found Barry Frost conferring with Barsanti

as members of the FBI’s Evidence Response Team carried out Lukas’s computer and boxes of

his files. This was clearly a federal case now, and Boston PD would be ceding control of the

investigation to the Bureau. Even so, thought Gabriel, how far can they take it? Then Barsanti

looked at him, and Gabriel saw in his eyes the same steel he’d seen in Glasser’s. And he

noticed that Barsanti was clutching the videotape. Guarding it, as though he held the Holy Grail

itself.

“Where’s Jane?” he asked Frost.

“She’s in the kitchen. The baby got hungry.”

He found his wife sitting with her back to the doorway; she did not see him walk into the

room. He paused behind her, watching as she cradled Regina to her breast, humming

tunelessly. Jane never could carry a tune, he thought with a smile. Regina didn’t seem to mind;

she lay quiet in her mother’s newly confident arms. Love is the part that comes naturally,

thought Gabriel. It’s everything else that takes time. That we have to learn.

He placed his hands on Jane’s shoulders and bent down to kiss her hair. She looked up at him,

her eyes glowing.

“Let’s go home,” she said.

THIRTY-EIGHT

Mila

The woman has been kind to me. As our car bumps along the dirt road, she takes my hand and

squeezes it. I feel safe with her, even though I know she will not always be here to hold my

hand; there are so many other girls to think of, other girls who are still lost in the dark corners

of this country. But for now she is here with me. She is my protector, and I lean into her,

hoping she will put her arm around me. But she is distracted, her gaze focused instead on the

desert outside our car. A strand of her hair has fallen onto my sleeve and glitters there like a

silver thread. I pluck it up and slip it into my pocket. It may be the only souvenir I will ever

have to remember her by when our time together ends.

The car rolls to a stop.

“Mila,” she says, giving me a nudge. “Are we getting close? Does this area look right?”

I lift my head from her shoulder and stare out the window. We have stopped beside a dry

riverbed, where trees grow stunted, tormented. Beyond are brown hills studded with boulders.

“I don’t know,” I tell her.

“Does it look like the place?”

“Yes, but . . .” I keep staring, forcing myself to remember what I have tried so hard to forget.

One of the men in the front seat looks back at us. “That’s where they found the trail, on the

other side of that riverbed,” he says. “They caught a group of girls coming through here last

week. Maybe she should get out and take a look. See if she recognizes anything down there.”

“Come, Mila.” The woman opens the door and gets out, but I do not move. She reaches into

the car. “It’s the only way we can do this,” she says softly. “You need to help us find the spot.”

She holds out her hand. Reluctantly, I take it.

One of the men leads us through the tangle of scrub brush and trees, down a narrow trail and

into the dry riverbed. There he stops and looks at me. He and the woman are both watching me,

waiting for my reaction. I stare at the bank, at an old shoe lying dry and cracked in the heat. A

memory shimmers, then snaps into focus. I turn and look at the opposite bank, which is

cluttered with plastic bottles, and I see a scrap of blue tarp dangling from a branch.

Another memory locks in place.

This is where he hit me. This is where Anja stood, her foot bleeding in her open-toed shoe.

Without a word, I turn and climb back up the riverbank. My heart is racing, and dread clamps

its fingers around my throat, but I have no choice now. I see her ghost, flitting just ahead of

me. A wisp of windblown hair. A sad, backward glance.

“Mila?” the woman calls.

I keep moving, pushing my way through the bushes, until I reach the dirt road. Here, I think.

This is where the vans were parked. This is where the men waited for us. The memories are

clicking faster now, like terrible flashes from a nightmare. The men, leering as we undress. The

girl shrieking as she is shoved up against the van. And Anja. I see Anja, lying motionless on

her back as the man who has just raped her zips up his pants.

Anja stirs, staggers to her feet like a newborn calf. So pale, so thin, just a shadow of a girl.

I follow her, the ghost of Anja. The desert is strewn with sharp rocks. Thorny weeds push up

from the dirt, and Anja is running across them, stumbling on bloody feet. Sobbing, reaching

toward what she thinks is freedom.

“Mila?”

I hear Anja’s panicked gasps, see the blond hair streaming loose around her shoulders. Empty

desert stretches before her. If she can just run fast enough, far enough . . .

The gunshot cracks.

I see her pitch forward, the breath knocked out of her, and her blood spills onto warm sand.

Yet she rises to her knees and crawls now across thorns, across stones that cut like shards of

glass.

The second gunshot thunders.

Anja collapses, white skin against brown sand. Is this where she fell? Or was it over there? I

am circling now, frantic to find the spot.
Where are you, Anja, where?

“Mila, talk to us.”

I suddenly halt, my gaze fixed on the ground. The woman is saying something to me; I scarcely

hear her. I can only stare at what lies at my feet.

The woman says, gently, “Come away, Mila. Don’t look.”

But I cannot move. I stand frozen as the two men crouch down. As one of them pulls on

gloves and brushes away sand to reveal leathery ribs and the brown dome of a skull.

“It appears to be a female,” he says.

For a moment no one speaks. A hot wind swirls dust at our faces, and I blink against the sting.

When I open my eyes again, I see more of Anja peeking out from the sand. The curve of her

hip bone, the brown shaft of her thigh. The desert has decided to give her up, and now she is

re-emerging from the earth.

Those who vanish sometimes come back to us.

“Come, Mila. Let’s go.”

I look up at the woman. She stands so straight, unassailable. Her silver hair gleams like a

warrior’s helmet. She puts her arm around me, and together, we walk back to the car.

“It’s time, Mila,” the woman says quietly. “Time to tell me everything.”

We sit at a table, in a room with no windows. I look down at the pad of paper in front of her. It

is blank, waiting for the mark of her pen. Waiting for the words that I have been afraid to say.

“I have told you everything.”

“I don’t think you have.”

“Every question you ask, I answer.”

“Yes, you’ve helped us a great deal. You’ve given us what we needed. Carleton Wynne
is

going to jail. He
is
going to pay. The whole world now knows what he did, and we thank you

for that.”

“I do not know what more you want from me.”

“I want what’s locked up in there.” She reaches across the table and touches my heart. “I want

to know the things you’re afraid to tell me. It will help me understand their operation, help me

fight these people. It will help me save more girls, just like you. You
have
to, Mila.”

I blink back tears. “Or you will send me back.”

“No.
No.
” She leans closer, her gaze emphatic. “This is your home now, if you want to stay.

You won’t be deported, I give you my word.”

“Even if . . .” I stop. I can no longer look her in the eye. Shame floods my face and I stare

down at the table.

“Nothing that happened to you is your fault. Whatever those men did to you—whatever they

made you do—they forced on you. It was done to your body. It has nothing to do with your

soul. Your soul, Mila, is still pure.”

I cannot bear to meet her gaze. I continue to stare down, watching my own tears drip onto the

table, and feel as if my heart is bleeding, that every tear is another part of me, draining away.

“Why are you afraid to look at me?” she asks gently.

“I am ashamed,” I whisper. “All the things you wish me to tell you . . .”

“Would it help if I wasn’t here in the room? If I didn’t watch you?”

I still do not look at her.

She releases a sigh. “All right, Mila, here’s what I’m going to do.” She places a tape recorder

on the table. “I’m going to turn this on and leave the room. Then you can say whatever you

want to. Whatever you remember. Say it all in Russian if that makes it easier. Any thoughts,

any memories. Everything that’s happened to you. You’re not talking to a person, you’re just

talking to a machine. It can’t hurt you.”

She rises to her feet, presses the RECORD button, and walks out of the room.

I stare at the red light glowing on the machine. The tape is slowly spinning, waiting for my first

words. Waiting for my pain. I take a deep breath, close my eyes. And I begin to speak.

My name is Mila, and this is my journey.