Chapter 11

Chapter 11

Alissa

He found her. He had her. She was back.My heart felt like it was going to pound its way out of my chest as I Ubered across town to Gregor’s place.

The Uber was one of those blocky former cop cars that I saw on the streets sometimes, with their heavy frames and narrow back seats. I struggled to find a comfortable position while the driver chattered about the ice storm. All I could see of him was a spray of gray shoulder-length locs and a slice of black-and-gray beard.

“Five car pileup that started right next to me. Saw it in my rearview. Ice storms are crazy, man.” His accent was Jamaican, just thick enough to make his words a little musical.

I wiped my eyes. I refused to start sobbing in front of this friendly man. He wouldn’t know that my tears were for the best reason possible. I was getting my daughter back.

He chattered on over the music for an entire ride, lonely perhaps, happy to have an audience for his tales of driving in the big city. I did my best to be polite, but my mind, my attention, raced far ahead of the car, to the apartment across town where my baby was waiting for me.

I hadn’t asked yet how he’d found her, or where. I hadn’t asked who took her. All of that was secondary to knowing that she was safe, that she was protected, and that I would soon have her in my arms again.

When we reached Gregor’s building, I was surprised by its quiet elegance, it had clean, modern lines, lots of light, mostly concrete, steel, and glass. Each one of the apartments took up half the floor, with a hallway bisecting them. I got out, tipped the driver, and nearly slipped on a patch of black ice hurrying down the walkway.

Careful,I told myself. Don’t break your damn neck just steps away from seeing your baby again.

I called up, And Gregor buzzed me in. I took the elevator, and it took ten million years to arrive. On the short ride up, I paced the few steps back and forth while my nerves hummed inside me until I shook.

Gregor’s door was steel, like the others. I knocked on it hastily, wary of the empty hallway.

Gregor opened the door. He smiled with relief to see me. “She’s in here—” he started, but a pink and purple blur had already rounded the corner and pushed past him to rush my legs. I stood frozen for a split second as my daughter’s scent, lost for a year but never forgotten, filled my nostrils again.

She hugged me tight, her face buried against my thigh. I scooped her up into my arms and she clung, hiding against my neck, shivering the whole time. And it was like Gregor had said, not one word came out of her. But right now, I barely cared as I hugged her and sobbed and leaned against the entry wall as Gregor closed it behind me.

She was home.

Gregor got us over to the couch so I could sit down, my knees were shaking and my whole body was trembling. I worried that any moment I would open my eyes in my own bed and find it a dream, my baby still missing. But—here she was, hugging me back and making little whimpers into my neck that sounded like she didn’t know whether to cry or be happy.

“My baby,” I mumbled into her hair. “Oh God, thank you, thank you.”

It felt like I’d been waiting to exhale for the past eleven months. The police had been useless. I had no family support. Even my boyfriend had crapped out on doing anything decent to help me.

Nobody had been in my corner except for Lorelei and the gang…and this man. This amazing man, who I barely knew but who had already treated me better than almost anyone in my life.

I held my child and felt the wet spot from my daughter’s tears spreading on my blouse, knowing I was a mess and just not caring. Not right now.

Finally, I pulled myself together enough that I could raise my head and look around. Gregor was hovering nearby, and had set a box of tissues on the coffee table in front of me. I fumbled for one and met his gaze as I was wiping my cheeks.

“Thank you,” I told him softly.

“I’m glad to have done it,” he replied, looking at my daughter and me fondly. “Wish I could have done it sooner.”

“I have a million questions,” I said quietly.

He nodded, going into the kitchen. “I’ll put the kettle on. I’ll answer whatever I can.” He came back and sat down on the couch next to us, near, but not too close.

I kept stroking Michelle’s hair as she calmed down. She didn’t seem hurt, she didn’t have any scars I could see. She was too thin, but energetic and her color was good. But I still had no idea what they might have done to her.

“I’ll have to take her to get checked out by a doctor.” Thank God I had kept her on my insurance.

“Yeah, that’s a good idea.” Gregor looked uncomfortable, and I could guess why. They would have to do STI tests on my baby girl. Because the world was what it was. The whole idea tore at me, but I had to be strong and face facts. Her health was way more important than anything else.

Michelle not speaking, not even saying “Mommy,” jarred against my relief, making it imperfect and tinged with a new fear.

“So she hasn’t said anything this whole time?”

“Not a word. For a while I thought maybe she just didn’t talk, but I’m guessing she—”

“It’s trauma,” I said flatly. “She was never a really big talker, but the more scared she gets, the quieter she gets. Now she’s silent.” A few of my tears dropped into her hair. I smoothed them away with my fingertips. “I’ll have to find her a specialist. At least thanks to you and a bunch of other people, I can afford to get her good care.”

I had to look on the bright side, had to hope that Michelle could heal from this like she might a broken limb. That time, patience, and effort would be enough. That it was true what they said, kids really did bounce back faster no matter what the trouble was. That they hadn’t actually done anything besides kidnap her and force her to stay with them.

But I knew that was unlikely. And that thought made me want to kill. It made me want to take the people who had done this and throw them into an industrial furnace. It made me want to rend and tear them like an angry tigress. It made me want to destroy them, make them scared, make them beg, make them suffer like they had done to us, and then erase them from the Earth.

“Who had her?” I asked, but I suspected I already knew the answer. Otherwise, he could never have found Michelle so quickly.

“A cousin of the Ivanovs,” Gregor said quietly. “They have probably had her this whole time.”

I mouthed several curses over my little girl’s head. “I knew it. Why didn’t those idiot cops ever check them out properly?”

“That’s a question I suspect everyone will be asking before this is over. Internal affairs, the public, the press…that kind of negative attention is only natural when cops screw up this badly.”

“Believe me, I’ll be glad to see it.” I swallowed the lump in my throat. “How did you get them to give her up?”

He looked me in the eyes, a touch of worry in his expression, and then sighed and shrugged. “At gunpoint.”

I should have guessed, but his confirming it still felt like a splash of cold water. “Oh.”

“I’m sorry, sweetheart, but when you’re dealing with this kind of people, sometimes you have to be nasty. The police weren’t cooperating, and I didn’t want to give them a chance to shuffle her somewhere else. I didn’t have a warrant, but I had a ten-millimeter pistol pressed into the back of Mr. Ivanov’s neck, and that seemed to work just as well.”

“What are we going to tell the police about that part when they follow up?”

“I’ll handle it.” He looked at me searchingly. “You’re not freaked out that I took her that way?”

I thought about it. “No. If I did, I’d be a hypocrite.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean that I’ve been sitting here thinking about all the things I want to do to them for what they did to my baby girl.” Michelle shifted in my arms, snuggling her face into my shoulder, and I petted her soothingly. “A blast furnace came to mind.”

His eyebrows went up. “Damn. Okay. Well, I sure can’t say I blame you. You’d just be burning trash, after all.”

“Yeah.” I wondered if that innocent, freshly free young woman from years ago would be shocked at how things had turned out for us. The child, given and returned to us by the same man. The evil in the world and the injustice in our justice system. I wondered if the me of those days would have seen the future ahead of her and run screaming back to her parents, crazy pseudo-Christian cultists or not.

I was glad that I had stayed strong, stayed free, and now I had my daughter back.

***

We ate slices of a huge pepperoni and cheese pizza that Gregor had ordered. I was amazed at her appetite and that she ate it so playfully and normally—stretching the cheese, picking off the pepperoni slices to eat separately, leaving the outer crusts. For once I had no urge to coax her to eat up the crusts, she could eat her pizza any damn way she wanted.

It was both the best thing I had ever tasted and also completely tasteless at points, most of my focus and energy was on watching my daughter.

Afterward, Michelle was full and sleepy. I carried her to bed in the guest room, where I saw some toys.

Gregor had bought her Legos. She had made one of her castles with it, and he had cut out the crayon banners she had drawn. Even as I tucked her in, I was left with more questions. But also a growing warmth toward Gregor, who had clearly tried his best to look after her and keep her entertained after rescuing her.

But why had he waited this long to call? She must have been here for several hours at least for him to have gotten her toys. For her to be clean and dressed and have color in her face and an appetite.

Once she was snoozing away in bed, I left the door ajar so I could check on her easily and went back to Gregor. “Why didn’t you contact me as soon as you had her?”

“There’s a possibly that the Ivanovs are connected. If so, there was a good chance that their people will be looking for me, and for Michelle. I had to wait until things had cooled down before calling you, and I couldn’t be seen on the street with her, so we couldn’t come to you.”

I blinked at him, puzzled. “Connected?”

“Organized crime, sweetheart.” He smiled ruefully.

“Oh.” Oh God. “I see. So it was for safety.” He was right, though. Nothing would have kept me from rushing over to hug my baby once I knew, and if his house had been watched for a while, they would have seen me. Maybe done something. The idea made my blood run cold. “Why did they want her, Gregor?”

His expression went grim. “The place they kept her, had evidence of women and girls that had been trafficked and forced into porn. Their own records said that they hadn’t been able to get Michelle to take instructions well enough for them to do it to her. But, clearly, she had to watch and hear about a lot of bad things.”

Nausea crept up the back of my throat. They had been grooming my daughter for kiddie porn. Maybe she hadn’t gone in front of any cameras or been molested yet, but that had been their intention.

It was too much to take after everything else. I had done my best to brace myself for the worst, and I knew it could have ended a whole lot worse indeed. But my chest hurt as I tried to process it. “This has been happening all this time. Three kids vanished, and the cops did nothing.”

“That won’t last,” he reassured me. “Not because of the police—you are right not to trust them—but because even criminal organizations do not want such people around. I had to use some contacts in the underworld who are now aware of what the Ivanovs are doing.”

The avalanche of helpless rage inside of me rumbled to a stop. “Will they do something?” Would that be possible? Did some authority out there, some powerful figure, actually give a damn about kids, despite being outlaws?

“Yeah, sweetheart, that’s the whole reason I got word out. If the Ivanovs are backed by underworld money, getting them behind bars will be impossible. So instead, we let news about them reach the ears of the right people…”

“And those right people kill them.” It felt like all the air had been pulled out of my lungs as I thought about it. What kind of world was I living in where the cops were cowards and lazy assholes and you had to go to crime families to get justice? “Won’t their backers protect them?”

“Word on the street is their backers had no idea they had this sick little side gig. It was supposed to be a typical underground fetish porn studio, all above board with nothing illegal going on and instead…” He spread his hands slightly.

I took a tiny swallow of tea to try to get the taste of bile out of my mouth. “I guess I’m surprised.”

“Don’t be. Even in a maximum-security prison full of the most hardened killers you could possibly imagine, nobody likes a creep who messes with children. If it gets out that that is what a man has been jailed for, he will have no mercy from his fellow inmates no matter how hard he tries. When he gets out, the underworld will be closed to him. Every knife turned against him. Once a child molester or kiddie porn producer’s name gets out, he can expect to be caught and questioned to see who else is in on these things with him. Active pedophiles tend to seek out their own kind for support, protection, and to do business with. Once their contacts have been wrung out of them, they tend to disappear.”

“And you think the Ivanovs are in for that.” I rubbed my eyes, setting my mug back down. The nausea and rage were fading away, and there was a strange sort of resolve in their place. Someone was going to actually do something. Someone was putting a stop to the Ivanovs’ filth and disappearing them from the face of the Earth in the process.

Had I wanted a media circus to descend on the Ivanovs, humiliating and exposing them to the world? Had I wanted the police to drag them from their homes on national television? Had I wanted to see them picked apart by judges and experts and the court of public opinion on the way to lifetimes behind bars? Sure. But as I searched my heart, and the year of frustrated rage stuffed down into its deepest corners, I had to just go ahead and admit it.

“I’m okay with that. I’m okay with a really scary, painful interrogation followed by death for all of them. And after everything the cops have done to kill my faith in them, I’m okay with criminals doing the job.”

He smiled, and there was something wistful in it, and I caught myself wondering how in the hell he had ended up with ties to the local underworld himself. “I know it must seem strange to you, but I have lived with that reality for a long time. When people cannot get justice from the police or the courts, nor take it in their own hands, they go to those who work beyond the law. It is one of the reasons that everything from local street gangs to the Cosa Nostra exist.”

Then his curiosity seemed to get the better of him, and he asked, “What would make it better for you? The way this went, I mean. The way it will go for the Ivanovs.”

“I mean, it’s not like either of us can do anything about it either way.” I didn’t want to think about that. And yet the thought rose in my head anyway: “I…”

“Go on, Alissa,” he said gently. “It’s all right. I won’t judge you.”

I swallowed and met his gaze slowly. “I think I’d want to question them myself. Maybe even kill them myself.” I drew a shivery breath. “But I can’t think about that. I want to hurt them so badly that when I think about it, I can’t even breathe. But I don’t know how to let me be that person and still be the safe and loving mommy my baby deserves. She’s back, and they’ll be punished. That should be enough for me. I need to focus on being whatever Michelle needs now.”

“I understand,” he said softly, moving closer to me on the couch. I was suddenly very aware of his nearness, close enough that even though he didn’t touch me yet, I could feel the heat radiating off his big, solid body like a furnace.

“I want you to know that if I could have gotten your daughter back to you the moment I found her while ensuring that both you and she would be safe, I would have,” he said quietly. It wasn’t quite an apology, but it was completely sincere.

I nodded. “You don’t seem like the kind of guy who does things recklessly. Though I’m guessing having to deal with underworld guys and criminals a lot isn’t exactly safe.”

He chuckled dryly, a far cry from his usual deep, sexy laugh. “No. It is not safe. But getting jobs like finding Michelle does require risk. I did not get where I am by playing it safe, Alissa. It is one of the reasons I keep people at arm’s length.”

“Is that why you didn’t want to exchange phone numbers before?” I asked him softly.

“Yes,” he answered without hesitation. “I don’t want a girlfriend who waits up worried, or takes off because the risks and shadier bits of my job are too much for her.”

“Oh,” I said softly. “And it was that way when you were in private security, too?”

He looked guilty for some reason. “Both have required me to mix with some unsavory people. Mostly the idle rich, but not all.”

I thought about that, about Gregor isolating himself his whole life from anything long lasting or meaningful with a woman. I wanted to change that. I wanted to be the one he finally settled down with. Just the two of us and our baby.

But could I do that? Could I even handle trying, with the return of my daughter and her recovery taking up my life right now?

I gazed at him and said, “You know, my life is already pretty chaotic. I’ve already seen the dark side of things and had to deal with it.”

Did I sound too needy? I just couldn’t tell. But I didn’t want to hide my feelings anymore either. Even if they led to us going our separate ways because what I wanted wasn’t what he wanted.

He smiled, shocking me. “You’re one of the bravest people I’ve ever met, going through all of this almost completely alone, and with no real resources either. I feel like punching those damn cops in the teeth for failing you like this. Instead, I’m glad I was able to flex on them.”

I took a deep breath and let it out. “I don’t feel brave. Right now, I’m still wondering how to handle the cops and the press. They’re both going to have questions.”

“I need you to leave my name out of it,” he said firmly. “They don’t need to know who I am.”

I swallowed, thinking of all the pressure I was going to be under. “So what do I tell them, then? You know they won’t be satisfied by a refusal.”

“No, I’m guessing they won’t be. But I have a suggestion for getting the cops to back off.”

“And what’s that?” I struggled with my sudden irritation, not wanting to go off at him because I was under all this stress. I knew he didn’t mean to add to it.

“Tell the police that their choice is to either leave well enough alone, or you’ll end up telling every news service in town about their negligence. After all, I did in two days what they couldn’t in a year.”

Just his saying that made me want to check on Michelle again. “That brushes really close to blackmail,” I protested softly, but he just snorted.

“Blackmail? I suppose, except that they genuinely deserve it. But at this point, any attempt they make at covering their asses—which is the only reason they would come talk to you in the first place—will only end up making them look worse. They can try threatening you, but you haven’t broken the law, and if the press does its job, you’ll soon have the whole city’s support.”

That whole concept astonished me just as much as the idea that criminals might help me, or the first moment I saw my donation amounts creeping up into the six figures. It was so strange, thinking about having influence over others. A touch of celebrity, a bit of power, and from what? Being the mother who never gave up on her baby? Who did what any mother should do?

“I get what you’re saying. Chances are they’ll send Alan again. He’s the one who was handling the case when they sent me that letter.”

“Which letter?”

“That they were suspending the investigation. Lack of evidence.”

“I see.” He scowled. “That’s your ex?”

“Yeah, that jackass. He probably loved watching the brass send me that letter.”

He downed the rest of his mug of tea. “Probably. He sounds like human trash.”

“Human trash with enough of a veneer of respectability that he fooled me for a while.” But now I was free of him, and I didn’t feel like cursing myself because of his wrong actions and bad motives.

“I see. Well, then you shouldn’t feel bad at all about threatening to expose his incompetence.”

“I guess I shouldn’t.” I laughed weakly and he chuckled along with me.

“Good, good. You must be willing to play the game with these people. They will play chicken with you, see how much they have to do to intimidate you. But because you have done nothing wrong, and they have, there will be no teeth to their threats.”

I hesitated. “If you’re sure.” I felt cold inside. I wanted him to hold me. He stayed near, but he didn’t even touch me. “I just wish…”

“Wish everyone would mind their own business so we can focus on helping our—your child recover?”

I heard the slip and lifted an eyebrow slightly. He was still getting used to the idea of being a father. I could hardly blame him for it.

“Yeah. Yeah, that exactly. I shouldn’t even have to think about anything else right now but her…and you. But that’s just not how things work.”

“You’ll figure it out,” he reassured, going to freshen our tea. “I’ll help you.”

“I don’t know what I would have done without you on this,” I told him when he returned.

“Glad I was able to help. I just wish I’d known sooner what was going on.” I saw the regret in his eyes, and wondered how it was for him—to discover he was hired to rescue his own child, to know he was a father suddenly, four years later. And under these circumstances.

“The Ivanovs…did they give any excuse for what they did to her? To us?”

For a moment, something flashed in his eyes, something so dark and terrible that I flinched. Only then did I realize that in his own way, he was as angry over this as I was.

“No. I didn’t give him a chance to speak. I didn’t have to question him, I’d already hacked his computer. I have all his contacts, everyone he was working with. With but one exception it’s all family, and the exception was the one who’s connected. It’s not a lot of people. Or, fortunately, a lot of kids.”

“If their old bosses end up killing them for what they were up to, I won’t shed a tear,” I said with sudden vehemence.

“Oh, they won’t live, my dear,” he said smoothly, sending a faint chill up my back. “I promise you, the streets have their own justice. And it is harsher than the legal system, and longer in its reach.”

I didn’t know what worried me more, that he was so sure of that, or that I felt better for hearing it.