Chapter Fourteen: Cry Pretty

Gia

CRY PRETTY

Performed by Carrie Underwood

I pulled into the parking lotof the mall and, out of habit, backed into a slot near the rear so I’d be ready for a quick exit if I needed it. I was surprised at how busy the place was before realizing not only was it Saturday, but it was a rainy weekend sure to keep everyone indoors. People scurried from their cars to the large glass doors, holding umbrellas over their kids’ heads.

I didn’t have an umbrella. I didn’t have anything that was needed to take care of a child.

“Okay, ready to make a run for it?” I asked.

Ryder grunted out a response, jumping out, shoving his hat on his head, and opening the back door for Addy.

I started to open my door but then noticed the little girl hadn’t removed her seat belt yet, and, if possible, she looked even stiffer than she ever had.

Raindrops landed on Ryder’s black hat as he peered in at her, confusion in his eyes.

“Addy?” he asked.

She sat there, staring straight ahead, not looking at him.

Ryder eased toward her, reaching over her to unbuckle the seat belt, and she pulled back as far as she could into the seat, as if he’d struck her. The clank of the belt hitting the side of the car was as harsh as a gunshot. Ryder looked up at me with raised brows.

“You want to go shopping?” I asked.

She shook her head violently, fearful gaze directed at the mall doors.

“We’ll get some more clothes. Some toys. Things to make your room all yours,” he said, using a cajoling tone that spun like silk through my veins. I’d have a hard time resisting it if it was directed at me. “You want a new video game, right?”

She looked at him and gave the barest of nods.

“Okay, then.” He held out his hand.

She tucked hers under her little thighs.

Ryder frowned. “Can’t get a game sitting here, sweetheart.” He gently tugged at her arm. The movement had nothing mean or angry or cruel about it. Instead, it was full of tenderness, but Addy screamed as if he’d hit her.

She screamed and screamed and screamed.

Ryder’s eyes met mine, a shocked panic wafting between us.

“Addy, calm down,” I said softly. “It’s okay.”

But she didn’t. She continued to shriek, adding a kick of her legs to the tantrum that had come from nowhere. A tantrum that seemed so opposite of the quiet, shy, reserved little thing we’d experienced that it was more than baffling—it was scary.

She was so loud it began to draw eyes. A man getting out of a car two spaces over left his family and came striding over. I hustled out of my seat and met him at the front.

“What’s going on?” he demanded.

I flashed my badge. “It’s all right. I’ve got everything under control.”

He frowned, his gaze darting from Ryder, who was dripping with rain now beside the car, and Addy, still wailing inside it.

“She’s okay, I promise.”

He looked doubtful but headed off with his wife and kids.

I got back into the front seat, and Ryder joined me. Once all the doors were shut, Addy finally stopped yelling. She retreated into herself, tears dripping down her face, head dropping to a chest that heaved as if she’d run a marathon.

Ryder took off his hat, setting it on the floorboards, before sharing another look with me. He turned backward to take in the obviously distressed little girl.

“Addy, you said you wanted a new video game, right?” he asked.

She didn’t look up, but her head bobbed in a yes.

“And maybe some new toys?”

Another bob.

“And some new clothes?” She nodded and finally looked up, tears still pouring from her large brown eyes.

Ryder dragged a hand over his beard. “But you don’t want to go into the mall?”

She shook her head violently, eyes getting impossibly larger.

“No one will hurt you in there. I’d be right with you. Gia would be with you. The bad people don’t know you’re here. You’re safe.”

Her little chest heaved again, breathing at a pace so wild I was afraid she’d hyperventilate.

“Do you want to try one store? Just one. And if that doesn’t work, we can leave,” Ryder suggested, that coaxing tone back in his voice.

Her nails were leaving marks in her wrist again as she shook her head.

“Okay,” he said. “Sit tight. Gia and I are just going to get out and talk for a minute. You don’t have to go anywhere.”

He grabbed his hat and slid out. I did the same, and we met in front of the Escalade.

“What the hell?” he asked quietly.

“I don’t know. That… I’ve never seen anything like it. I don’t think this is just her being scared of the people who killed her mom. This is like… I don’t know. Maybe she’s never been to a mall? Maybe she and her mom always had things delivered? Maybe it’s just the unknown?”

Ryder looked toward the mall and the people still darting inside as the rain lightened to a mist. Puddles glimmered along the blacktop, the car lights and the neon signs reflecting in them.

“Yesterday, I ordered her a toy online. A stuffed animal she said she’d lost.” His throat bobbed. “I guess we could try it that way. I have no idea what size she wears. Maybe I should have brought Mama or Sadie?”

It stung a bit that I was standing in front of him, and he didn’t think I could help him. But to be fair, I was as lost as he was. I watched as a woman walked by, talking on her phone, and an idea hit me.

“Why don’t I go in, and I can video call you? She can pick out things as I show them to her?”

“Still don’t know what size to get.”

I looked into the car. “Well, we can ask her. And if she packed her spare clothes I put back in her room after I finished the laundry, there’d be sizes on those.”

Ryder rounded the car, opened the back passenger door opposite Addy, and climbed inside it as I stood looking in at them.

“Gia says she’ll go in for us. She can call us on the phone, show us the items in the store, and you can pick things right from here. How does that sound?” he asked.

Addy’s little shoulders relaxed ever so slightly, her nails releasing her wrist. She nodded.

“We just need to know what size clothes to get you,” he said. “Can I look at your things in your backpack again?”

She nodded.

We pulled out the clothes she’d put inside her go bag, searching for sizes.

“How about your shoes? Can we see them for a second?” he asked.

She pulled one off and handed it to him. We looked around inside it until we found the size, and then he handed it back.

“Okay,” I said, taking my phone out of my pocket and handing it over to Ryder. “Put in your number.”

We both hesitated as our fingers brushed against each other. My skin broke out in goosebumps. It wasn’t just because our skin had touched. This was the idea of his number being on my phone. Of him having mine. As if there was something more between us.

Once he’d added it in, I started to shut the door, and he stopped me, fishing out his wallet and handing over a credit card. “Here. If you have an issue using it, I can show them my ID over the phone.”

I took it and jogged toward the mall entrance with the mist coating my makeup-free face.

I went into Target, figuring it would have pretty much everything we needed. First, I headed to the video games because that seemed to hold her interest the most. I dialed Ryder’s number, and my heart flipped at the sight of both their faces squished onto the screen.

“Hey,” I said. “So, just holler or tap Ryder or whatever when you see something you want.”

And that was how we shopped, moving from the video games, down the toy aisle, where she asked for Legos and puzzles with a smile taking over her face. She seemed uninterested in the clothes, but I added a coat, pajamas, underwear, and socks to a pile of jeans, leggings, T-shirts, and sweaters. In the shoe aisle, she only wanted another pair of shoes that looked like her Vans, but I threw in some boots because a girl always needs boots.

“Okay, almost done here,” I said. “Let me just grab a couple of things I need.” I went to the adult clothing area, throwing in a few items for myself so I didn’t need to be washing clothes every other day while I was in town. Ryder didn’t say anything, but when I looked at the screen, his eyes narrowed at the cotton underwear I tossed on the pile.

The cart was already overflowing when I breezed by the bedding department, and Ryder hollered at me to go back. He asked Addy what she wanted her room to look like, and she just did what she always did when she didn’t know—she shrugged.

“Mila loves rainbows. Is there something you love like that?” he asked.

I scanned the shelves, looking for anything that might intrigue her based on the limited time I’d gotten to know her. I was just about to give up when I saw, shoved at the back of a shelf, a fuzzy blanket with the dragons from the book she’d shown me yesterday. It wasn’t large enough for the double bed in the room, but it was something that added color and would be solely hers. I grabbed it without even asking and tossed it on top of the pile.

Then, I pushed the cart in the direction of the checkout.

“Wait, we need shampoo and bubble bath,” Ryder said. My lips twitched. It seemed almost impossible to me that this rough, gruff cowboy knew what a little girl needed. It took all those squishy feelings inside me and amplified them.

Addy didn’t say what she liked again. She kept shrugging, but I remembered her eyes lighting up at the olallieberry pie the night before and picked up some berry-scented soaps and shampoos as well as a new toothbrush and some colorful headbands and hair ties before once again making my way to the checkout.

The sales clerk’s eyes turned wide at my pile. It took almost as long to buy everything as it did to shop, but eventually, I had the cart brimming again and was pushing it out into the parking lot, thankful the rain had stopped completely.

When I made it to the SUV, Ryder jumped out, helping me load everything into the back. He was smiling. A slow, wide grin that spoke of joy, as if being able to buy these things for the child he hadn’t known he had was one of the best things he’d done in a long, long time.

He slammed the back and then looked at me, eyes twinkling. “Thank you.”

“I’m glad I could help.”

“No…” He shook his head, the smile dimming just barely. “You should have seen her. She was… I don’t know how to explain it except the old cliché of a kid in a candy shop. She was…” He stopped and then started again. “And I got to do that for her because of your idea and because you were willing to help us.”

That overwhelmed sensation that had been with me ever since finding Anna-Ravyn’s note landed deep inside my chest again. I tried to shrug it off. “Just doing my job.”

“Don’t do that. We both know shopping for a traumatized little girl is not in your job description. But you did it anyway. So, thank you. I don’t think I’ll ever be able to repay you.”

I couldn’t look away, even though every instinct in my body was telling me to. He reached out and tucked a lock of hair that had escaped my ponytail behind my ear. My body nearly exploded. I literally vibrated with a need to touch him too. Instead, I stepped away, and he dropped his hand, as if he was as surprised as I was that he’d done it.

“You know how you can pay me back?” I asked. His gaze fell to my lips, which only increased the pulsing in my veins. “Buy me a milkshake at the drive-thru.”

His grin returned. “I think I might have just enough money left in my account to be able to get you both a milkshake.”

We headed for the car doors, both of us still smiling. When I got in and looked at Addy, she was grinning too.

And somehow, that moment, where joy overtook the seriousness, lodged itself deep inside me, permanently embedding a mark—a memory—I’d never escape.

Ryder directed me to the drive-thru of the local Dairy Queen. When we got to the menu board, he asked Addy what kind of milkshake she wanted, and she beamed at him. “Chocolate.”

Ryder sent her a smile that was so large and bright it felt like it could blow out the windows. “That’s my girl.”

He winked at her, and damn if my heart didn’t flip right over.

When the intercom buzzed, and we were asked for our order, I responded with, “Two large chocolate shakes and one large vanilla bean.”

“Anything else?”

I looked over only to see a look of horror on Ryder’s face that was almost comical. I turned back to the box. “No, that’s it.”

I was given a total and asked to pull up to the window.

“What?” I said, lips twitching.

“It’s a sin,” he said quietly. It took me a minute to realize he meant my order because my body was thinking of all the ways it would like to sin with Ryder Hatley. Ways my mind knew better than to want.

“Since when is ordering a vanilla shake a sin?”

“Please tell me you did it as a joke, because chocolate will forever and always be the only right answer when ordering a shake.”

I huffed out a laugh, even though I could see he was completely serious. “There’s nothing wrong with vanilla, especially the Dairy Queen vanilla bean shakes.”

“Vanilla is boring and bland.”

I couldn’t help but taunt and tease in return. “Chocolate is dominating and overpowering.”

He shook his head and ran his palm over the neat beard that was just past scruff. It drew my eyes to his lips, which were tilted upward ever so slightly. Those lips had been strong and confident when they’d found mine, leaving me with no doubts he knew his way around a woman’s body.

“When was the last time you tried dominating and overpowering, darlin’?”

His heated gaze fell to my mouth, and it caused my insides to ignite all over again. How could an argument about milkshakes turn so quickly into a flirtation about sex?

“Don’t call me darlin’. And believe me, dominating is overrated.” I glanced back at Addy, who seemed, thankfully, oblivious to how this conversation had turned on its head.

“Then, you haven’t been having the right…milkshakes,” he said, lowering his voice until it coasted over me, low and sexy, as if he’d run a finger over my most sensitive parts.

I swallowed hard but was saved from responding when the take-out window opened, and the tray with three shakes was shoved at me.

? ? ?

It took another couple of hours to unload, unpack, and put away everything we’d bought in Addy’s new room. She wanted to touch each item, as if she couldn’t believe it was hers. When I showed her the dragon blanket, she beamed all over again before spreading it carefully on the side of the bed she’d slept on the night before.

The doorbell rang, and Ryder said he’d get it.

I was hanging the last of the clothes when I heard him come back into the room, tearing apart what sounded like cardboard. I stuck my head out of the closet and saw him hand a box to Addy. The little girl peeked inside, and a look of pure delight shot over her face. She reached in and pulled out a stuffed animal. It had spots and tan fur and looked decidedly like a cat—leopard or jaguar or something. She squeezed it to her chest, eyes shutting, relief crossing over her face before she buried her nose in the fur.

“Balam,” she said. She opened her eyes and looked up at Ryder. “Thank you.”

He nodded.

“Mama pack,” she said. “In Mama’s bag.”

I leaned against the door jamb, heart pounding at the mention of her mother.

Ryder squatted down in front of her. “Your mother had it in her bag?”

She nodded.

I pulled up the inventory of what had been in the hotel room. A stuffed animal was not listed. But then again, there’d been no computer equipment either. Maybe it had been in Ravyn’s computer bag that we assumed had been taken by the killer.

“Were the two of you moving again?” he asked.

Her eyes turned cloudy, but she nodded. “Someone knock. I hide.”

“Did you always hide?” he asked.

She shrugged but then nodded again.

His gaze darted over her head to mine and then back.

“Did you see who came in?”

“Man. Ugly man. Big nose. Bad shoes.”

“Did you see…” I breathed in. “Did you see what he did?”

She froze, eyes filling with tears, but she didn’t respond. Either she’d blocked it out, hadn’t seen it, or wasn’t ready to talk about it. But she’d at least seen him. “We can draw him using the computer, like building an avatar. If we did that, we might be able to catch him. Would you like to help me?”

She slowly nodded again.

“Can you tell me what you meant by bad shoes?”

“Sharp. Like knives.”

Ryder and I frowned, and then his eyes went wide. “Hold on.” He jogged out of the room.

“You’re really brave, Addy. Do you know that? The bravest little girl I’ve ever met.”

She flushed, burying her face in the toy’s fur once more.

When Ryder came back, he had an Eastern Dude Ranchers’ Association magazine in his hand. On the cover was a tan cowboy boot that someone had filled with flowers. Attached to the boot was a bright silver spur, the edges sharp and spiky.

“Did his shoes have something like this on them?” he asked. Addy saw the spur he was pointing to and shuddered. She bobbed her head yes.

“Some cowboys use them to help guide their horses. I’ve never liked spurs much, but they don’t have to hurt the animals. They can, but they don’t have to.”

Addy didn’t say anything else. She turned back to the bed and sat down, rubbing her hand along the fuzzy blanket while the other hand clung to the stuffed cat. Ryder’s gaze locked with mine. His were sad and frustrated, but excitement surged through me. These were new clues, a step in the right direction, especially if we could get a decent image of the perpetrator.

I’d download the app we used to help witnesses with sketches. I wasn’t as good at using it as the people who’d been trained on it were, but I didn’t think Addy would talk to anyone but Ryder or me. She was barely doing that as it was. Plus, the cowboy boot and spurs led me back to the original reason I’d been pretending to write about the dude ranches to begin with—the chemicals attached to the cattle feed found on the drugs and money in the bust we’d made in Lexington.

“I need to make a few calls and see if I can get my hands on the program for us to build our avatar,” I said to Addy and Ryder. Neither of them said anything, and I hurried from the room. A part of me hated leaving the little cloud of joy we’d been wrapped in for a few moments, and a part of me was elated to have some new leads.

Hope rushed through me. Maybe this time, we really would bring the Lovatos down.